from the effects of undue enterprise. It is a mistake in which we all have shared and which, having brought benefits to the world, will now bring temporary losses. This condition of affairs seems strange, for trade can hardly be too good, crops too fine, railroad traffic too large, factory products excessive. Yet such is the case to-day, for we need capital and ready money. When the pressure for ready money becomes too severe, some large house or some bank fails and then fright seizes people who, otherwise reasonable, fear the loss of their money on deposit, and, forgetting all common-sense arguments, withdraw it and hide it in stockings or boxes, thereby greatly increasing the difficulties of the borrowers. Such action is natural, childish, selfish, for the lender has been glad to lend his money and, therefore, to receive interest for it; and he cannot fairly at a critical moment ruin the borrower or inflict on him heavy loss. In such days who is it that saves the situation? It is the business men of nerve and experience, the founders and managers of great enterprises, because they know that this same law of combination, of manful and resourceful teamplay, is effective and sure of success in the end. See what a few determined, thoughtful men have lately done in New York; simply by joining hands all around, they help the men temporarily embarrassed, and keep cool, because they know the true course to be taken and think of the great public rather than of themselves. They know that our financial institutions are sound and well conducted, and, if a weak spot is seen, they repair it for the moment and later on cure it. They fully recognize the need of prompt action and few words.

At such times as we have lately been through some honest men, wishing to meet their obligations, are prone to lose their nerve, and any relief, any assurance which can quiet them, is wise. At such times hard words and harsh legislation are dangerous because they may easily lead to the long depression usually fol

lowing panics, and to the consequent idleness of many wage-earners. If, on the other hand, these pioneers and capitalists are not harshly treated, probably after a period of adjustment the corporations will go on and presently flourish; but several remedies for the existing troubles may be applied to-day.

It may never be forgotten that we are all in the same boat, that we must help or hurt one another, and that it is idle to call Wall Street hard names or to speak of serious troubles there as a "Wall Street flurry." Wall Street is the money shop of our country, to which the man who would build a railroad or a factory or open a mine comes for his capital. He comes at first when he begins or he comes at last when he needs more capital. In this same street live and labor a large number of able, wise, courageous men who are ready for any enterprise which is promising and well considered. They are not gamblers or thieves as is sometimes said, but men who know that ability, knowledge, and chiefly character, are the needed elements of success. Nowhere in the world is character more highly valued or relied on than in the great marts of commerce. The nation and our legislators can safely trust the ruling Wall Street men and expect great results from them. Any nation is fortunate if its public men average as well as they do.

Interdependence of the farmer, the wage-earner, the manufacturer, the railroad manager, the miner, the banker, the schoolteacher, the seamstress, the professional man is essential; is, in short, the essence of all society, all nations. To-day the farmer and the planter assert their independence of banks and rely on their real riches, the crops; but they can hardly move their crops to market, because, through foolish fear, money is hard to find, and yet the money of the last month or last year is all in existence and has not been eaten up. It is simply hidden by foolish people who presently will recover their senses, deposit their money in the banks, which will send it to the

----

farmers, who then will return bread and meat to feed us. It is a circle which must exist, and he who breaks it even for a minute injures us all. The farmer depends on the banker and the banker on the farmer, and so on, it is a law of God, for which we may all be grateful. The laws of the world which have sprung from human usage, from the struggles and habits of men, from the thought and high purpose of great statesmen, in short, the unchangeable laws of the world,1 may well be deemed better guides than the laws occasionally enacted by legislators who often do not understand their sub

ject and still more often do not express themselves clearly, -vide the Sherman Law.

Punish future infractions of the laws by the corporations, but punish the officials and not the stockholders. If juries hesitate and fine the corporations, it is an act of great injustice; in short, it is an outrage. Let the present laws stand and watch their result, for the wise physician prescribes one medicine and watches its effect before prescribing another. Cease all threats or hard words about the corporations and capitalists, for such words are only idle and frighten a public already scared. And one may not forget that the savings banks are the great owners of corporation bonds and notes,

1 Since writing this article I have seen the noble words of the late Mr. James C. Carter, and I add them (with deep gratitude to him) to my own words: "I hope at least that I have done something to convince my hearers that while Legislation is a command of the Sovereign, the unwritten Law is not a command at all; that it is not the dictate of Force but an emanation from Order."

are, in short, the trustees of the wages of the great wage-earning public; for the poor men lend to the rich corporations because they know that the notes of the rich corporations have always been their safest investment.

Let bygones be bygones. Past offenses against laws which have not been diligently enforced may safely be regarded with leniency, for the offenders have perforce formed their habits of business long ago and have not believed that the government really "meant it." Now they are sure that the government “means it." The old Saturday night spanking for faults which the children may have committed without the knowledge of their parents has been given up. Let us begin anew, knowing that the corporations are to-day obeying the laws, and knowing also that the standards of honesty, honor, and fair dealing between man and man have been carefully studied and are higher than in the last century. We live in a busy day, and so let us busy ourselves with the future and try to fit our acts to the newer standards.

Finally, the power to see the truth and to deal out justice to many men of many virtues and faults is difficult, and humility in the face of great problems as yet unsolved is needed if our rulers, wishing to do their full duty and to be honored in the future, are to be called not only able but wise. Our rulers of nation and of state are our servants also, and we expect of them trust and belief in our citizens, just as we trust them, and we ask them to recognize that the highest, largest virtue is wisdom-wisdom in the administration of human affairs.

XI

On the way back to the house, Peter kept looking solicitously at Rose, breaking now and then into quick regrets.

"What have I done?" he asked her, in his impetuous stammer. "Should n't I have written to your father? Rose, what have I done?”

She seemed not to hear him. Her face had a strained expression, the old look he remembered from the days of Tom's illness and her not quite natural grief. Then she had never given way to the irrepressible warmth of sorrow, like a loving wife. She had seemed to harden herself, and that he accounted for by his knowledge of Tom's hideous past. The woman had known him, Peter reflected, from illuminating intercourse, and his death meant chiefly the turning of a blotted page. But now! over her bloom of youth was the same shadowing veil. She was not so much a woman moved by strong emotion as made desperate through hidden causes. Still he besought her to forgive him, finally to look at him. Then she wakened.

"It's all right, Peter," she said absently. "It had to be.'

But still he saw no reason for her blight and pain. It was not merely incredible, it was impossible that any one should shrink because Markham MacLeod was coming. At the door she did look at him. He was shocked at the drooping sadness of her face. Yet she was smiling.

"Don't bother, Peter," she said. “You 've done nothing wrong, nothing whatever."

not formulated, emotions one yeast of unrest went surging through him, until he felt himself a riot of forces he could not control. It was youth that moved him, his own ungoverned youth, but it seemed to him life, and that all life was like it. Peter thought he had experienced enormously because he had lived in Paris and painted pictures. Yet he had never governed his course of being. It had been done for him. The greatest impression it had made on him thus far was of the extreme richness of things. There was so much of everything! He was young. There was a great deal of time, and if he did not paint his pictures this year, he could do it next. There were infinite possibilities. He had ease and talent and power. He had, even so far, won laurels enough to be a little careless of them. Since he had by the happy pains of art got so much out of life, he made no doubt that by superlative efforts, which he meant to make in that divine future where the sun was always shining, he should set all the rivers afire. There was money enough, too. He had never lacked it, thanks to old Osmond's thrift, Osmond who did not need it himself in the ordinary ways of man. He found such pure fun in the pleasures money bought that there was a separate luxury in giving it up, turning it in to the sum of things, and living straitly that labor might take

some ease.

Then she went up the stairs, and Peter, after watching the last glimmer of her dress, strode away into the orchard and threw himself on the grass. Thoughts VOL. 101 - NO. 1

17

ous trouble moved him, he thought of her until they seemed to be alone together on the earth, and that was happiness. Beauty! that was what she meant to him, he told himself when thought was at last uppermost, and not mere passionate feeling. She was delight and harmony, and allegiance to her was like worship of the world.

When he got out of his dream and went in to dinner with the noon sun upon his burning face, she was on the veranda with grannie, a little pale still, but sweet and responsive in the quiet ways she had for every day. Peter, looking at her, felt the sun go out of his blood, and the mad worship of that hour in the orchard seemed like a past bacchanal rout and triumph when the worshipers go home to feed the flocks. His will, recalled. took him by swift revulsion to Electra, but it could not make the journey welcome. She seemed to be far away on some barren plain at the top of climbing. Rose, too, was far away, but the mountain where she lived was full of springs and blossomy slopes, and at the top the muses and the graces danced and laughed. There were flying feet always, the gleam of draperies, the fall of melody, - always pleasures and the hint of pleasures higher still, and echoes from old joys tasted by gods and nymphs in the childhood of the world. The way there, too, was hard, but what would the path matter to such blisses of the mind and soul? In his daze he became aware that grannie was looking at him kindly.

"I guess you've been asleep," said she. "He's been dreaming, too," said Rose, in her intimate kindliness, always the same to him as if he were a boy with whom she had a tender and confident relation.

Peter rubbed his eyes.

"I got lost," he said ruefully. "I went up on the mountain and got lost."

"I guess you dreamed it," said grannie. "Come, let's have our dinner;" and they went in together, both the young things helping her.

Peter reflected that Rose had not even

heard what he said. She did not care what the mountain was, or whether he was lost. But at the table, while grannie talked about gardening and the things Osmond meant to do another year, and Rose glanced up with involuntary question in her eyes whenever Osmond's name was mentioned, he seemed to have the vision of the mountain again before him and to hear the laughter and the sound of dancing feet. The picture, little by little, faded and would not be recalled, and by afternoon it had quite gone. Sobered, his feet on the earth again, he went away in the early evening, to see Electra.

Rose waited until the dark had really fallen and evening sounds had begun. Then she stole out of the house and, a black cloak about her, this time, went across the fields to the oak-tree. At a little distance from it she paused, her heart too imperious to let her speak and find out whether he was there. But when she was about to venture it, a voice came from under the tree.

"Don't stay there, playmate. Come into the house."

Then she went on.

"Where are you?" she asked. There was an eloquent quiver in her voice.

"Never mind. I'm in the house. Stop where you are. There's a little throne. I made it for you."

She had her hand on the back of a rough chair. At once she seated herself.

"I never heard of a throne in a playhouse," she said, with that new merriment he made for her.

"You never saw a playhouse just like this. That's a beautiful throne. It fits together like a chair. It's here in the playhouse by night, but before daylight I draw it up into the tree and hide it."

"What if somebody finds it?"

way. Well, playmate, how have you been, all this long time?

When she came across the field she had meant to tell him how sad she was, how perplexed, how incapable of meeting the ills confronting her. But immediately it became unnecessary, and she only laughed and said,

"It has n't been a long time at all.” "Has n't it? Oh, I thought it had." "Have you been here every night?" "Every night."

"But it rained."

"I know it, outside. It does n't rain in a playhouse."

"Did you truly come?"

"Of course. What did I tell you? I said 'every night." "

"Did you have an umbrella?

"An umbrella in a playhouse? You make me laugh."

"You must have got wet through." "Not always. Sometimes I climbed up in the branches in the roof, I mean. You're eclipsed to-night, are n't you?" "What do you mean?”

"That dark cloak. The other night you were a white goddess sitting there in the moonlight. You were terribly beautiful then. It's almost a shame to be so beautiful. This is better. I rather like the cloak. You're nothing but a voice to-night, coming out of the dark."

Immediately she had a curious jealousy of the white dress that made her beautiful to him when he did not really know her face.

"You have never seen me," she said involuntarily.

"Oh yes, I have. In the shack, that night. Then the day you came. I saw you driving by."

"Where were you?'

"In the yard looking at some grafted trees. Peter was late from the train. I got impatient, so I went round fussing over the trees, to keep myself busy. Then you came up the drive, and I saw you and retreated in good order."

"You need n't have hated me so. You had n't really seen me."

Some daring prompted her to ask, 'What was it then?" but she folded her hands and crossed her feet in great contentment and was still.

"Tell me things," she heard him saying.

"What things? About the house up there? About grannie? About Peter? "No, no. I know all about grannie and Peter. Tell me things I never could know unless we were here in the playhouse, in the dark."

Her mind went off, at that, to the wonder of it. She was here in strange circumstances, and of all the occurrences of her life, it seemed the most natural. Immediately she had the warmest curiosity, the desire that he should talk inordinately and tell her all the things he had done to-day, yesterday, all the days.

"You tell," she said. "Begin at the beginning, and tell me about your life.”

"Why, playmate!" His voice had even a sorrowful reproach. "There's nothing in it. Nothing at all. I have only dug in the ground and made things grow."

"What people have you known?"
"Grannie."

"She is n't people."

"She's my people. She's all there is, except Peter, and he has n't been here." Something like jealousy possessed her. She was stung by her own ignorance.

"But there are lots of years when we did n't meet," she said.

"Lots of them. But I don't care anything about them. I told you so the other night."

"Don't you care about mine?" "Not a bit."

She was lightheaded with the joy of it. There were things she need not tell him.