e fuse every week. I'm that old Commodore Noah
that's telling you to get out your rubbers for the flood."

The First Voice, _andante con expression_:

"It's a queer world--a mighty queer world. Here's Laura's kindergarten
growing until it joins with Violet Hogan's day nursery and Laura's
flower seeds splashing color out of God's sunshine in front yards clear
down to Plain Valley. Money coming in about as they need it. Dan Sands
and Morty, Wright and Perry and the Dago saloon keeper, Joe Calvin, John
Dexter and the gamblers--all the robbers, high and low, dividing their
booty. With all the prosperity we are having, with all the opening of
mills and factories--it's getting easier to make money and consequently
harder to respect it. The more money there is, the less it buys, and
that is true in public sentiment just as it is in groceries and
furniture. Do you fellows realize that it's been ten years since the
_Times_ has run any of those 'Pen Portraits of Self-Made Men'?" A
silence, then the voice continues:

"George, I honestly believe, if money keeps getting crowded farther and
farther into the background of life--we'll develop an honest politician.
We know that to give a bribe is just as bad as to take one. Think of the
men debauched with money disguised as campaign expenses, or with offices
or with franks and passes and pull and power! Think of all the bad
government fostered, all the injustices legalized, just to win a sordid
game! The best I can do now is to cry, 'Lord have mercy on me, a sinner!
The harlot and the thief are my betters.'"

The _voices_ cease. The earth whirls on. The brooding spirits at
the loom muse in silence, for they need no voices.

The First Fate: "The birds! The birds! I seemed to hear the
night birds twittering to bring in the dawn."

The Second Fate: "The birds do not bring in the dawn. The dawn
comes."

The First Fate: "But always and always before the day, we hear
these voices."

The Third Fate: "World after world threads its time through our
loom. We watch the pattern grow. Days and eras and ages pass. We know
nothing of meanings. We only weave. We know that the pattern brightens
as new days come and always voices in the dark tell us of the changing
pattern of a new day."

The First Fate: "But the birds--the birds! I seem to hear the
night birds' voices that make the dawn."

The Second Fate: "They are not birds calling, but the whistle
of shot and shell and the shrill, far cr