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Life in the Iron Mills - Rebecca Harding Davis · Classic Full Length Drama Books

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Part one? Is this the end o life? As futile,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: then as frail? What hope of answer or address? A
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: cloudy day? Do you know what that is? In a
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: town of iron works, the sky sank down before dawn, muddy, flat, immovable.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: The air is thick, clammy, with the breath of crowded
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: human beings. It stifles me. I open the window, and
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: looking out can scarcely see through the rain the grocer's
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: shop opposite, where a crowd of drunken irishmen are puffing
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: lynchburg tobacco and their pipes. I can detect the scent
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: through all the foul smells ranging loose in the air.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: The idiosyncrasy of this town is smoke. It rolls sullenly
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: and slow folds from the great chimneys of the iron foundries,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: and settles down in black, slimy pools on the muddy streets,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Smoke on the wharves, Smoke on the dingy boats on
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: the yellow River, clinging in a coating of greasy soot
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: to the house front, the two faded poplars, the faces
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: of the passers. By the long train of mules dragging
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: masses of pig iron through the narrow street have a
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: foul vapor hanging to their reeking sides. Here inside is
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: a little broken figure of an angel pointing upward from
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: the mantel shelf, but even its wings are covered with smoke,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: clotted and black smoke. Everywhere, a dirty canary chirps desolately
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: in a cage beside me. Its stream of green fields
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: and sunshine is a very old dream, almost worn out,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I think. From the back window I can see a
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: narrow brick yard sloping down to the river side, strewed
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: with rain butts and tubs. The river, dull and tawny colored,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: La Belle riviere, drags itself sluggishly along, tired of the
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: heavy weight of boats and coal barges. What one When
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I was a child, I used to fancy a look
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: of weary, dumb appeal upon the face of the negro
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: like river, slavishly bearing its burden day after day. Something
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: of the same idle notion comes to me to day,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: when from the street window I look on the slow
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: stream of human life creeping past night and morning to
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: the great mills, masses of men with dull, besotted faces
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: bent to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: or cunning skin and muscle and flesh, begrimed with smoke
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: and ashes, stooping all night over boiling cauldrons of metal,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: lared by day in dens of drunkenness and infamy, breathing
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: from infancy to death, an air saturated with fog and
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: grease and soot, vileness for soul and body. What do
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: you make of a case like that, amateur psychologist? You
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: call it an altogether serious thing to be alive? To
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: these men, it is a drunken jest, a joke, horrible
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: to angels, perhaps to them commonplace enough, My fancy about
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: the river was an idle one. It is no type
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: of such a life. What if it be stagnant and
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: slimy here it knows that beyond there waits for it
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: odorous sunlight, quaint old gardens, dusky with soft green foliage
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: of apple trees, and flushing crimson, with roses, air and
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: fields and mountains. The future of the Welsh puddler passing
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: just now is not so pleasant to be stowed away
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: after his grimy work is done in a hole in
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: the muddy graveyard, and after that, not air, nor green
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: fields nor curious roses. Can you see how foggy the
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: day is. As I stand here idly tapping the window
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: pane and looking out through the rain at the dirty
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: back yard and the coal boats below, Fragments of an
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: old story float up before me, A story of this
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: house into which I happen to come to. You may
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: think it a tiresome story, enough, as foggy as the day,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: sharpened by no sudden flashes of pain or pleasure. I
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: know only the outline of a dull life that, long since,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: with thousands of dull lives like its own, was vainly
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: lived and lost, thousands of them, massed, vile, slimy lives
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: like those of the torpid lizards, and yonder stagnant waterbut lost.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: There is a curious point for you to settle. My friend,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: who study psychology in a lazy, dilettante way, stop a moment.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: I am going to be honest. This is what I
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: want you to do. I want you to hide your disgust,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: take no heed to your clean clothes, and come right
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: down with me here into the thickest of the fog
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: and mud and fowl effluvia. I want you to hear
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: this story. There is a secret down here in this
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: nightmare fog that has lain dumb for centuries. I want
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: to make it a real thing to you. You egoist
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: or pantheist or Arminian, busy in making straight paths for
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: your feet on the hills, do not see it clearly,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: this terrible question which men here have gone mad and
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: died trying to answer. I dare not put this secret
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: into words. I told you it was dumb. These men
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: going by, with drunken faces and brains full of unawakened power.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Do not ask it of society or of God. Their
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: lives ask it, their deaths ask it. There is no reply.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: I will tell you plainly that I have a great hope,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: and bring it to you to be tested. It is
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: this that this terrible, dumb question is its own reply,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: that it is not the sentence of death we think it,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: but from the very extremity of its darkness, the most
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: solemn prophecy which the world has known, of the hope
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: to come. I dare make my meaning no clearer, but
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: will only tell my story. It will perhaps seem to
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: you as foul and dark as this thick vapor about us,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: and as pregnant with death. But if your eyes are
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: free as mine are to look deeper. No perfume tinted
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: dawn will be so fair with promise of the day
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: that shall surely come. My story is very simple, only
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: what I remember of the life of one of these men,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: a furnace tender in one of Kirby and John's rolling mills,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Hugh Wolf. You know the mills. They took the great
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: order for the Lower Virginia railroads there last winter run
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: usually with about a thousand men. I cannot tell why
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: I choose the half forgotten story of this wolf more
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: than that of myriads of these furnace hands. Perhaps because
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: there is a secret underlying sympathy between that story and
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: this day, with its impure fog and thwarted sunshine, or
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: perhaps simply for the reason that this is the one
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: where the wolfs lived. There were the father and son,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: both hands, as I said, in one of Kirby and
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: John's mills, for making railroad iron, and Deborah, their cousin,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: a picker in some of the cotton mills. The house
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: was rented then to half a dozen families. The wolves
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: had two of the cellar rooms. The old man, like
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: many of the puddlers and feeders, of the mills was Welsh,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: had spent half his life in the Cornish tin mines.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: You may pick the Welsh emigrants Cornish miners out of
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: the throng passing the windows any day. They are a
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: trifle more filthy. Their mussels are not so brawny. They
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: stoop more when they are drunk. They neither yell nor shout,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: nor stagger, but skulk along like beaten hounds. A pure
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: unmixed blood. I fancy shows itself in the slight, angular
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: bodies and sharply cut facial lines. It is nearly thirty
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: years since the wolves lived here. Their lives were like
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: those of their class, incessant labor, sleeping in kennel like rooms,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: eating rank pork and molasses, drinking God and the distillers
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: only know what with an occasional night in jail to
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: atone for some drunken excess. Is that all of their
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: lives of the portion given to them, And these their
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: duplicates swarming the streets to day nothing beneath all. So
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: many a political reformer will tell you, and many a
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: private reformer too, who has gone among them with a
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: heart tender with Christ's charity, and come out outraged hardened.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: One rainy night, about eleven o'clock, a crowd of half
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: clothed women stopped outside of the cellar door. They were
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: going home from the cotton mill. Good night, deb said one,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: a mulatto, steadying herself against the gas post. She needed
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: the post to steady her, so did more than one
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: of them does abal to miss Potts's to night. You'd
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: best come. Indeed, eat teb. If he'll come, he'll have fun,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: said a shrill Welsh voice in the crowd. Two or
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: three dirty hands were thrust out to catch the gown
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: of the woman who was groping for the latch of
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: the door. No, no, where's kit small then? But Gora
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: on the spools, all us behind. Though we helped her,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: we did, and with yer let deb alone. It's on
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: dacent frettin a quiet body, be the powers and we'll
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: have a night of it. There'll be lachans a drink.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: The vargent be blessed and praised fort They went on
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: the mulatto inclining for a moment to show fight and
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: drag the woman wolf off with them, but being pacified,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: she staggered away. Deborah groped her way into the cellar, and,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: after considerable stumbling, kindled a match and lighted a tallow
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: dip that sent a yellow glimmer over the room. It
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: was low, damp, the earthen floor covered with a green,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: slimy moss, A fetid air smothering the breath. Old wolf
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: lay asleep on a heap of straw, wrapped in a
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: torn horse blanket. He was a pale, meek little man
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: with a white face and red rabbit eyes. The woman
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Deborah was like him, only her face was even more ghastly,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: her lips bluer, her eyes more watery. She wore a
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: faded cotton gown and a slouching bonnet. When she walked,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: one could see that she was deformed, almost a hunchback.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: She trod softly so as not to waken him, and
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: went through into the room beyond. There she found by
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: the half extinguished fire an iron saucepan filled with cold
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: boiled potatoes, which she put upon a broken chair with
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: a pint cup of ale, Placing the old candlestick beside
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: this dainty repast, She untied her bonnet, which hung limp
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: and wet over her face, and prepared to eat her supper.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: It was the first food that had touched her lips
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: since morning. There was enough of it, however, there is
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: not always. She was hungry, one could see that easily enough,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: and not drunk, as most of her companions would have
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: been found at this hour. She did not drink. This woman.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Her face told that too, nothing stronger than ale. Perhaps
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: the weak, flaccid wretch had some stimulant in her pale
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: life to keep her up, some love or hope it
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: might be, or urgent need. When that stimulant was gone,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: she would take to whiskey. Man cannot live by work alone.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: While she was skinning the potatoes and munching them, a
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: noise behind her made her stop. Janey, she called, lifting
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: the candle and peering into the darkness, Janey, are you there?
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: A heap of ragged coats was heaved up, and the
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: face of a young girl emerged. Staring sleepily at the
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: woman Deborah, she said, at last, I'm here the night. Yes, child, hoarse, welcome,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: she said, quietly, eating on. The girl's face was haggard
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: and sickly. Her eyes were heavy with sleep and hunger,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: real milesy in eyes. They were dark, delicate blue glooming
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: out from black shadows with a pitiful fright. I was alone,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: she said, timidly. Where's the father, asked Deborah, holding out
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: a potato, which the girl greedily seized. He's beyant, put
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Haley in the stone house. Did you ever hear the
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: word tale from an Irish mouth? I came here Hugh
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: told me never to stay alone. Hugh. Yes. A vexed
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: frown crossed her face. The girl saw it and added quickly,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: I've not seen Hugh the day dab. The old man says,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: his watch last till the mornin. The woman sprang up
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: and hastily began to arrange some bread and flitch in
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: a tin pail and pour her own measure of ale
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: into a bottle. Tying on her bonnet, she blew out
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: the candle, lay it down. Janie dear, she said, gently,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: covering her with the old rags. Hork the potatoes of
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: horse hungry? Where you goin? Deb the rain sharp to
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: the mill with Hugh supper, Let him bite. Tell the
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: marn sit ye down, no, no, Sharply pushing her off
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: the boiled starve, she hurried from the cellar, while the
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: child wearily coiled herself up for sleep. The rain was
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: falling heavily as the woman pale in hand emerged from
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: the mouth of the alley and turned down the narrow
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: street that stretched out long and black miles before her.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Here and there a flicker of gas lighted an uncertain
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: space of muddy footwalk and gutter. The long rows of houses,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: except an occasional logger beer shop, were closed. Now and
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: then she met a band of mill hands skulking to
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: or from their work. Not many, even of the inhabitants
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: of a manufacturing town, know the vast machinery of system
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: by which the bodies of workmen are governed, that goes
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: on unceasingly from year to year. The hands of each
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: mill are divided into watches that relieve each other as
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: regularly as the sentinels of an army. By night and day,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: the work goes on. The unsleeping engines groan and shriek.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: The fiery pools of metal boil and surge only for
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: a day in the week in half. Courtesy to public censure,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: the fires are partially veiled, but as soon as the
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: clock strikes midnight, the great furnaces break forth with renewed fury.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: The clamor begins with fresh, breathless vigor. The engines sob
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: and shriek like gods in pain. As Deborah hurried down
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: through the heavy rain, the noise of these thousand engines
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: sounded through the sleep and shadow of the city like
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: far off thunder. The mill to which she was going
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: lay on the river, a mile below the city limits.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: It was far, and she was weak, aching from standing
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: twelve hours at the spools. Yet it was her almost
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: nightly walk to take this man his supper, though at
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: every square she sat down to rest, and she knew
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: she should receive small word of thanks. Perhaps, if she
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: had possessed an artist's eye, the picturesque oddity of the
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: scene might have made her step stagger less, and the
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: path seemed shorter. But to her the mills were only
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: somat delish to look at by night. The road leading
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: to the mills had been quarried from the solid rock,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: which rose abrupt and bare on one side of the
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: cinder covered road, while the river, sluggish and black, crept
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: past on the other. The mills for rolling iron are
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: simply immense, tent like roofs covering acres of ground open
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: on every side. Beneath these roofs. Deborah looked in on
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: a city of fires that burned hot and fiercely in
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: the night. Fire in every horrible form, Pits of flame
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: waving in the wind, liquid metal flames writhing in tortuous
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: streams through the sand, wide cauldrons filled with boiling fire,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: over which bent ghastly wretches stirring the strange brewing. And
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: through all crowds of half clad men, looking like revengeful
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: ghosts in the red light, hurried throwing masses of glittering fire.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: It was like a street in hell, even Deborah muttered
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: as she crept through. Looks like a devil's place. It
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: did in more ways than one. She found the man
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: she was looking for, at last, heaping coal on a furnace.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: He had not time to eat his supper, so she
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: went behind the furnace and waited. Only a few men
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: were with him, and they noticed her only by a
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: cure comes to hunchback wolf. Deborah was stupid with sleep.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Her back pained her sharply, and her teeth chattered with cold.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: With the rain that soaked her clothes and dripped from
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: her at every step. She stood, however, patiently holding the
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: pail and waiting. Hate. Woman, you look like a drowned cat.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Come near to the fire, said one of the men,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: approaching to scrape away the ashes. She shook her head
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: had forgotten her. He turned, hearing the man, and came closer.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: I did not think, gimme my supper. Woman. She watched
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: him eat with a painful eagerness. With a woman's quick instinct,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: she saw that he was not hungry, was eating to
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: please her. Her pale, watery eyes began to gather a
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: strange light. Is't good, hue, ta air's a bit sour.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: I feared no good enough. He hesitated a moment. You're tired,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: poor lass, bite here till I go lay down there
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: on that heap of ash and go to sleep. He
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: threw her an old coat for a pillow and turned
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: to his work. The heap was the refuse of the
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: burnt ironed and was not a hard bed. The half
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: smothered warmth too penetrated her limbs, dulling their pain and
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: cold shiver. Miserable enough, she looked lying there on the ashes,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: like a limp, dirty rag, yet not an unfitting figure
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: to crown the scene of hopeless discomfort and veiled crime.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: More fitting if one looked deeper into the heart of things,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: at her thwarted woman's form, her colorless life, her waking
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: stupor that smothered pain and hunger, even more fit to
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: be a type of her class. Deeper yet, if one
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: could look, was there nothing worth reading in this wet,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: faded thing, half covered with ashes. No story of a
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: soul filled with groping passionate love, heroic unselfishness, fierce jealousy
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: of years of weary trying to please the one human
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: being whom she loved to gain one look of real
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: heart kindness from him. If anything like this were hidden
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: beneath the pale, bleared eyes and dull, washed out looking face,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: no one had ever taken the trouble to read its
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: faint signs. Not the half clothed furnace tender wolf, certainly.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Yet he was kind to her. It was his nature
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: to be kind, even to the very rat that swarmed
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: in the cellar, kind to her in just the same way.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: She knew that, And it might be that very knowledge
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: that had given to her face its apathy and vacancy
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: more than her low, torpid life. One sees that dead,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: vacant look steal sometimes over the rarest, finest of women's faces,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: in the very midst it may be of their warmest
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: summer's day, and then one can guess at the secret
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: of intolerable solitude that lies hid beneath the delicate laces
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: and brilliant smile. There was no warmth, no brilliancy, no
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: summer for this woman, so the stupor and vacancy had
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: time to gnaw into her face perpetually. She was young, too,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: though no one guessed it, so the gnawing was the fiercer.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: She lay quiet in the dark corner, listening through the
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: monotonous din and uncertain glare of the works to the
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: dull plash of the rain in the far distance, shrinking
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: back whenever the man wolf happened to look towards her.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: She knew, in spite of all his kindness, that there
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: was that in her face and form which made him
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: loathe the sight of her. She felt by instinct, although
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: she could not comprehend it, the finer nature of the
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: man which made him among his fellow workmen something unique
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: set apart. She knew that down under all the vileness
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: and coarseness of his life, there was a groping passion
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: for whatever was beautiful and pure, that his soul sickened
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: with disgust at her deformity, even when his words were kindest.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Through this dull consciousness, which never left her, came like
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: a sting, the recollection of the dark blue eyes and
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the lithe figure of the little Irish girl she had
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: left in the cellar. The recollection struck through even her
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: stupid intellect with a vivid glow of beauty and of grace.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Little Janey, timid, helpless, clinging to Hugh as her only friend.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: That was the sharp thought, the bitter thought that drove
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: into the glazed eyes, a fierce light of pain. You
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: laugh at it, our pain and jealousy, less savage realities.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Down here in this place I am taking you to
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: than in your own house, or your own heart, your
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: heart which they clutch at. Sometimes the note is the same.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: I fancy be the octave high or low. If you
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: could go into this mill where Deborah lay, and drag
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: out from the hearts of these men the terrible tragedy
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: of their lives, taking it as a symptom of the
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: disease of their class. No ghost horror would terrify you more.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: A reality of soul, starvation, of living death that meets
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: you every day under the besotted faces on the street.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: I can paint nothing of this, only give you the
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: outside outlines of a night, a crisis in the life
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: of one man. Whatever muddy depth of soul history lies beneath,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: you can read according to the eyes God has given you. Wolf.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: While Deborah watched him as a spaniel, its master bent
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: over the furnace with his iron pole, unconscious of her scrutiny,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: only stopping to receive orders. Physically, nature had promised the man,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: but little he had already lost the strength and instinct
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: vigor of a man. His muscles were thin, his nerves weak,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: his face a meekman's face, haggard yellow with consumption. In
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: the mill, he was known as one of the girl men.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Molly Wolf was his sobriquette. He was never seen in
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: the cockpit, did not own a terrier, drank but seldom
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: when he did desperately. He fought sometimes, but was always thrashed,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: pummeled to a jelly. The man was game enough when
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: his blood was up, but he was no favorite in
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: the mill. He had the taint of school learning on him,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: not to a dangerous extent, only a quarter or so
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: in the free school, in fact, but enough to ruin
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: him as a good hand in a fight. For other
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: reasons too, he was not popular, not one of themselves,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: They felt that, though outwardly as filthy and ash covered, silent,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: with foreign thoughts and longings, breaking out through his quietness
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: in innumerable curious ways. This one, for instance, in the
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: neighboring furnace buildings, lay great heaps of the refuse from
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: the oar after the pig metal is run coral. We
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: call it here a light, poor substance of a delicate
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: waxen flesh colored tinge out of the blocks of this
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: coral wolf, in his off hours from the furnace, had
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: a habit of chipping and molding figures hideous, fantastic enough,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: but sometimes strangely beautiful. Even the mill men saw that.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: While they jeered at him, it was a curious fancy
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: in the man, almost a passion. The few hours for
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: rest he spent hewing and hacking with his blunt knife,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: never speaking until his watch came again, working at one
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: figure for months, and when it was finished, breaking it
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: to pieces, perhaps in a fit of disappointment, a morbid,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: gloomy man, untaught, unled, left to feed his soul in
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: grossness and crime and hard grinding labor. I want you
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: to come down and look at this wolf standing there
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: among the lowest of his kind, and see him just
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: as he is, that you may judge him justly when
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: you hear the story of this night. I want you
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: to look back, as he does every day, at his
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: in vice, his starved infancy, to remember the heavy years
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: he has groped through as boy and man, the slow,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: heavy years of constant, hot work so long ago he
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: began that he thinks sometimes he has worked there for ages.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: There is no hope that it will ever end. Think
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: that God has put into this man's soul a fierce
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: thirst for beauty, to know it, to create it, to
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: be something he knows not what, other than he is.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: There are moments when a passing cloud, the sun glinting
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: on the purple thistles, a kindly smile a child's face,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: will rouse him to a passion of pain, when his
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: nature starts up with a mad cry of rage against God,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: man whoever it is that has forced this vile, slimy
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: life upon him, with all this groping this mad desire,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: a great blind intellect stumbling through wrong, a loving poet's heart.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: The man was by habit only a coarse, vulgar labor,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: familiar with sights and words you would blush to name.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Be just when I tell you about this night, see
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: him as he is. Be just naught like man's law,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: which seizes on one isolated fact, But like God's judging angel,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: whose clear, sad eye saw all the countless cankering days
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: of this man's life, all the countless nights when sick
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: with starving, his soul fainted in him before it judged him.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: For this night, the saddest of all, I called this
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: night the crisis of his life. If it was, it
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: stole on him unawares. These great turning days of life
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: cast no shadow before slip by unconsciously, only a trifle,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: a little turn of the rudder, and the ship goes
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: to heaven or hell. End of Part one, Part two Wolf.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: While Deborah watched him dug into the furnace of melting
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: iron with his pole, dully, thinking only how many rails
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: the lump would yield. It was late nearly Sunday morning.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Another hour and the heavy work would be done. Only
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: the furnaces to replenish and cover for the next day.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: The workmen were growing more noisy, shouting as they had
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: to do to be heard over the deep clamor of
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: the mills. Suddenly they grew less boisterous. At the far
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: end uentirely silent. Something unusual had happened. After a moment
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: the silence came nearer, the men stopped their jeers and
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: drunken choruses. Deborah, stupidly, lifting up her head, saw the
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: cause of the quiet. A group of five or six
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: men were slowly approaching, stopping to examine each furnace as
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: they came. Visitors often came to see the mills after night.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Except by growing less noisy, the men took no notice
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: of them. The furnace where Wolf worked was near the
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: bounds of the works. They halted there, hot and tired.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: A walk over one of these great foundries is no
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: trifling task. The woman, drawing out of sight, turned over
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: to sleep. Wolf, seeing them stop, suddenly roused from his
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: indifferent stupor and watched them keenly. He knew some of them.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: The overseer Clark, a son of Kirby, one of the
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: mill owners, and a doctor May, one of the town physicians.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: The other two were strangers. Wolf came closer, he seized
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: eagerly every chance that brought him into contact with this
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: mysterious class that shone down on him perpetually with the
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: glamor of another order of being. What made the difference
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: between them? That was the mystery of his life. He
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: had a vague notion that perhaps tonight he could find
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: it out. One of the strangers sat down on a
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: pile of bricks and beckoned young Kirby to his side.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: This is hot with a vengeance a match, Please lighting
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: his cigar. But the walk is worth the trouble. If
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: it were not that you must have heard it so often, Kirby,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: I would tell you that your works looks like Dante's Inferno.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Kirby laughed, Yes, yonder is Farinata himself in the burning tomb,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: pointing to some figure in the shimmering shadows. Judging from
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: the faces of some of your men, said the other.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: They bid fair to try the reality of dantes vision.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Some day. Young Kirby looked curiously around, as if seeing
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: the faces of his hands for the first time. They're
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: bad enough, that's true, A desperate set I fancy, eh, Clark.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: The overseer did not hear him. He was talking of
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: net prophets, just then, giving, in fact a schedule of
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: the annual business of the firm to a sharp, peering
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: little yankee who jotted down notes on a paper laid
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: on the crown of his hat. A reporter for one
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: of the city papers, getting up a series of reviews
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: of the leading manufactories. The other gentlemen had accompanied them
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: merely for amusement. They were silent until the notes were finished,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: drying their feet at the furnaces and sheltering their faces
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: from the intolerable heat. At last, the overseer concluded with
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: I believe that is a pretty fair estimate. Captain here,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: some of you men, said Kirby, bring up those boards.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: We may as well sit down, gentlemen, until the rain
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: is over. It cannot last much longer at this rate,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: pig metal, mumbled the reporter. Umm. Coal facilities, um hands employed,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: twelve hundred bitumen. Um. All right, I believe, mister Clark.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: The sinking fund. What did you say was your sinking fund?
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Twelve hundred hands, said the stranger, The young man who
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: had first spoken, Do you control their votes. Kirby control. No.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: The young man smiled complacently, But my father brought seven
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: hundred votes to the polls for his candidate last November.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: No force work. You understand only a speech or two
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: to hint to form themselves into a society, and a
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: bit of red and blue bunting to make them a flag.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: The invincible Ruffs. I believe that is their name. I
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: forget the motto our country's hope. I think there was
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: a laugh. The young man talking to Kirby sat with
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: an amused light in his cool gray eye, surveying critically
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the half clothed figures of the puddlers and the slow
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: swing of their brawny muscles. He was a stranger in
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: the city, spending a couple of months in the borders
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: of a slave state to study the institutions of the South.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: A brother in law of Kirby's Mitchell. He was an
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: amateur gymnast, hence his anatomical eye, A patron in a
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: blase way of the prize ring, a man who sucked
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the essence out of a science or philosophy in an indifferent,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: gentlemanly way, who took kant navalis Humbolt for what they
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: were worth in his own scales, excepting all, despising nothing
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: in heaven, earth or hell, but a one idea man
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: with temper yielding and brilliant as summer water, until his
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: self was touched when it was ice. Though brilliant still.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Such men are not rare in the States. As he
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: knocked the ash from his cigar, Wolf caught with a
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: quick pleasure the contour of the white hand, the blood
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: glow of a red ring he wore. His voice, too,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: and that of Kirby's touched him like music low, even
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: with chording cadences about this man, Mitchell hung the impalpable
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: atmosphere belonging to the thoroughbred gentleman. Wolf, scraping away the
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: ashes beside him, was conscious of it, did obeisance to it,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: with his artist sense, unconscious that he did so. The
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: rain did not cease. Clark and the reporter left the mills.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: The other comfortably seated near the furnace, lingered, smoking and
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: talking in a desultory way. Greek would not have been
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: more unintelligible to the furnace tenders, whose presence they soon
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: forgot entirely. Kirby drew out a newspaper from his pocket
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: and read aloud some article, which they discussed eagerly. At
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: every sentence, Wolf listened more and more, like a dumb,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: hopeless animal, with a duller more stolid look creeping over
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: his face, glancing now and then at Mitchell, marking acutely
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: every smallest sign of refinement, then back to himself, seeing
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: as in a mirror his filthy body, his more stained soul.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Never he had no words for such a thought, but
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: he knew now, in all the sharpness of the bitter certainty,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: that between them there was a great gulf, never to
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: be passed. Never, the bell of the mills rang for
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: midnight Sunday morning had dawned. Whatever hidden message lay in
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: the tolling bells floated past these men unknown, yet it
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: was there, veiled in the solemn music ushering the risen
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Savior was a key note to solve the darkest secrets
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: of a world gone wrong, even this social riddle which
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: the brain of the grimy Puddler grappled with madly. To night,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: the men began to withdraw the metal from the cauldrons.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: The mills were deserted on Sundays, except by the hands
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: who fed the fires, and those who had no lodgings
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: and slept usually on the ash heaps. The three strangers
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: sat still during the next hour, watching the men cover
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: the furnaces, laughing now and then at some jest of
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Kerby's do you know, said Mitchell, I like this view
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: of the works better than when the glare was fiercest.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: These heavy shadows and the amphitheater of smothered fires are
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: ghostly unreal. One could fancy these red, smoldering lights to
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: be the half shot eyes of wild beasts and the
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: spectral figures their victims in the den. Kirby laughed, you
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: are fanciful. Come let us get out of the den.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: The spectral figures, as you call them, are a little
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: too real for me to fancy a close proximity in
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: the darkness. Unarmed too, the others rose, buttoning their overcoats
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: and lighting cigars. Raining still, said doctor May and hard,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: where do we leave the coach, Mitchell at the other
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: side of the works? Kerby? What's that? Mitchell started back,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: half frightened, as suddenly turning a corner, the white figure
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: of a woman faced him in the darkness, A woman
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: white of giant proportions, crouching on the ground, her arms
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: flung out in some wild jesture of warning. Stop, make
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: that fire burn there, cried Kerby stopping short. The flame
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: burst out, flashing the gaunt figure into bold relief. Mitchell
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: drew a long breath. I thought it was alive, he said,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: going up curiously. The others followed. Not marble, eh, asked
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Kerby touching it. One of the lower overseers stopped. Coral, Sir,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: who did it? Can't say. Some of the hands chipped
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: it out in off hours, chipped to some purpose. I
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: should say, what a flesh tint the stuff has? Do
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: you see, Mitchell? I see? He had stepped aside where
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: the light fell boldest on the figure, looking at it
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: in silence, There was not one line of beauty or
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: grace in it. A nude woman's form, muscular, grown coarse
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: with labor, the powerful limbs, instinct, with some one poignant, longing,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: one idea. There it was, in the tense ridge muscles,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: the clutching hands, the wild eager face like that of
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: a starving wolf's. Kirby and Doctor May walked round it,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: critical curious. Mitchell stood aloof silent. The figure touched him strangely,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: not badly done, said doctor. May. Where did the fellow
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: learn that sweep of the muscles in the arm in hand?
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Look at them, they are groping. Do you see clutching?
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: The peculiar action of a man dying of thirst? They
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: have ample facilities for studying anatomy, sneered Kirby, glancing at
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: the half naked figures. Look, continued the doctor, at this
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: bony wrist and the strange sinews of the instep. A
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: working woman, the very type of her class. God forbid,
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: muttered Mitchell, Why, demanded May, What does the fellow intend
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: by the figure? I cannot catch the meaning? Ask him,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: said the other dryly. There he stands, pointing to Wolf,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: who stood with a group of men, leaning on his
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: ash rake. The doctor beckoned him with the affable smile
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: which kind hearted men put on when talking to these people.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: Mister Mitchell has picked you out as the man who
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: did this. I'm sure I don't know why. But what
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: did you mean by it? She be hungry Wolf's eyes,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: answered Mitchell, not the doctor. Oh but what of a
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: stake you've made, my fine fellow. You have given no
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: sign of starvation to the body. It is strong, terribly strong.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: It has the mad half despairing gesture of drowning. Wolf stammered,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: glanced appealingly at Mitchell, who saw the soul of the
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: thing he knew. But the cool, probing eyes were turned
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: on himself, now mocking, cruel, relentless, not hungry for meat,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: the furnace tender said, at last, what then, Whiskey, jeered
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Kirby with a coarse laugh. Wolf was silent a moment,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: thinking I don't know, he said, with a bewildered look.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: It may be saw mat to make her live. I
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: think like you, whisk, you'll do it in a way.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: The young man laughed again. Mitchell flashed a look of
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: disgust somewhere, not at Wolf. May, he broke out, impatiently,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Are you blind? Look at that woman's face? It asks
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: questions of God and says I have a right to know,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Good God, how hungry it is? They looked a moment
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: then May turned the mill owner. Have you many such
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: hands as this? What are you going to do with them?
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Keep them at puddling iron. Kirby shrugged his shoulders. Mitchell's
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: look had irritated him. Sinne pamonna fare, I have no
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: fancy for nursing infant geniuses. I suppose there are some
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: stray gleams of mind and soul among these wretches. The
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Lord will take care of his own, or else they
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: can work out their own salvation. I have heard you
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: call our American system a ladder which any man can scale.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: Do you doubt it? Or perhaps you want to banish
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: all social ladders and put us all on a flat
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: table land a may the doctor looked, vexed, puzzled. Some
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: terrible problem lay hid in this woman's face and troubled
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: these men. Kirby waited for an answer, and, receiving none,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: went on warming with his subject. I tell you there's
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: something wrong that no talk of liberte or egalite will
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: do away. If I had the making of men, these
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: men who do the lowest part of the world's work
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: should be machines, nothing more hands, it would be kindness,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: God help them. What are taste reason to creatures who
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: must live such lives as that? He pointed to Deborah,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: sleeping on the ash heap, so many nerves to sting
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: them to pain? Would if God had put your brain,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: with all its agony of touch, into your fingers and
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: bid you work and strike with that, you think you
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: could govern the world better, laughed the doctor. I do
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: not think at all that is true philosophy. Drift with
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: the stream because you cannot dive deep enough to find bottom.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Ey exactly rejoined Kirby. I do not think I wash
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: my hands of all social problems, slavery, cast white or black.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: My duty to my operatives has a narrow limit, the
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: pay hour on Saturday night. Outside of that, if they
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: cut coral or cut each other's throats, the more popular
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: amusement of the two. I am not responsible, the doctor sighed,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: a good, honest sigh from the depths of his stomach.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: God help us, Who is responsible? Not I? I tell you,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: said Kerby testily. What has the man who pays the
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: money to do with their souls concerns more than the
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: grocer or butcher who takes it? And yet, said Mitchell's
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: cynical voice, look at her, how hungry she is? Kerby
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: tapped his boot with his cane. No one spoke, only
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: the dumb face of the rough image, looking into their
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: faces with the awful question what shall we do to
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: be saved? Only wolf's face, with its heavy weight of brain,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: its weak uncertain mouth, its desperate eyes, out of which
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: looked the soul of his class. Only Wolf's face turned
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: towards Kirby's. Mitchell laughed, a cool, musical laugh. Money has spoken,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: he said, seating himself lightly on a stone, with the
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: air of an amused spectator at a play. Are you answered,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: turning to Wolf, his clear magnetic face, bright and deep
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: and cold as arctic air. The soul of the man
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: lay tranquil beneath. He looked at the furnace tender as
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: he had looked at a rare mosaic in the morning.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: Only the man was the more amusing study of the two.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Are you answered, Why may look at him de profundes clamavi, or,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: to quote in English, hungry and thirsty. His soul feints
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: in him, and so money sends back its answer into
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: the depths through you. Kirby very clear the answer too.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: I think I remember reading the same word somewhere, washing
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: your hands in Eau de Cologne, and saying, I am
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: innocent of the blood of this man. See ye to it,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Kirby flushed angrily. You quote scripture freely? Do I not
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: quote correctly? I think I remember another line which may
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: amend my meaning. Inasmuch as ye did it unto one
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: of the least of these, ye did it unto me,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: deest bless you man, I was raised on the milk
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: of the word. Now, doctor, the pocket of the world,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: having uttered its voice, what has the heart to say?
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: You are a philanthropist in a small way, Nespa. Here, boy,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: this gentleman can show you how to cut coral better?
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Or your destiny? Go on? May I think a mocking
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: devil possesses you tonight? Rejoined the doctor seriously. He went
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: to Wolf and put a hand kindly on his arm.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: Something of a vague idea possessed the doctor's brain that
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: much good was to be done here by a friendly
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: word or or two. A latent genius be warmed into
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: life by a waited for sunbeam. Here it was he
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: had brought it, so he went on complacently. Do you know, boy,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: you have it in you to be a great sculptor
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: a great man? Do you understand talking down to the
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: capacity of his hearer? It is a way people have
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: with children and men like Wolf. Do you live a
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: better stronger life than I? Or mister Kirby. Here a
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: man may make himself anything he chooses. God has given
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: you stronger powers than many men me for instance. May
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: stopped heated, glowing with his own magnanimity, and it was magnanimous.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: The puddler had drunk in every word, looking through the
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: doctor's flurry and generous heat and self approval into his
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: will with those slow absorbing eyes of his. Make yourself
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: what you will. It is your right. A no, quietly,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: will you help me? Mitchell laughed again. The doctor turned
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: now in a passion. You know, Mitchell, I have not
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: the means, you know. If I had, it is in
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: my heart to take this boy and educate him for
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: the glory of God and the glory of John May.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: May did not speak for a moment, Then controlled, he said,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: why should one be raised when myriads are left? I
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: have not the money, boy to wolf shortly, money, he
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: said it over, slowly, as one repeats the guest answer
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: to a riddle. Doubtfully, that is it. Money, Yes, money,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: that is it, said Mitchell, rising and drawing his furred
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: coat about him. You've found the cure for all the
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: world's diseases. Come May, find your good humor and come home.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: The damp wind chills my very bones. Come and preach
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: your Saint Simonian doctrines tomorrow to Kirby's hands. Let them
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: have a clear idea of the rights of the soul,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: and I'll venture next week they'll strike for higher wages.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: That will be the end of it. Will you send
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: the coach driver to this side of the mills, asked Kirby,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: turning to Wolf, He spoke kindly. It was his habit
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: to do so. Deborah, seeing the puddler go, crept after him.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: The three men waited outside. Doctor May walked up and down, chafed.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Suddenly he stopped. Go back, Mitchell, you say the pocket
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: in the heart of the world speak without meaning to
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: these people. What has its head to say? Taste culture refinement? Go.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: Mitchell was leaning against a brick wall. He turned his
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: head indolently and looked into the mills. There hung about
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: the place a thick, unclean odor. The slightest motion of
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: his hand marked that he perceived it, and his insufferable disgust.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: That was all May said. Nothing only quickened his angry tramp. Besides,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: added Mitchell, giving a corollary to his answer, it would
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: be of no use. I am not one of them.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: You do not mean said may facing he him, Yes,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: I mean just that reform is born of need, not pity.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: No vital movement of the peoples has worked down for
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: good or evil, fermented instead carried up the heaving, cloggy mass.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Think back through history and you will know it. What
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: will this lowest deep thieves, magdalens, negroes do with the
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: light filtered through ponderous church creeds, Baconian theories, girta schemes,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: some day, out of their bitter need, will be thrown
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: up their own light bringer, their Jean Paul, their Cromwell,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: their messiah. Bah was the doctor's inward criticism. However, in
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: practice he adopted the theory for when night and morning
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: afterwards he prayed that power might be given these degraded
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: souls to rise. He glowed at heart, recognizing an accomplished duty.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Wolf and the woman had stood in the shadow of
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: the works as the coach drove off. The doctor had
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: held out his hand in a frank, generous way, telling
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: him to take care of himself and to remember it
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: was his right to rise. Mitchell had simply touched his
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: hat as to an equal with a quiet look of
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: thorough recognition. Kirby had thrown Deborah some money, which he
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: found and clutched eagerly enough. They were gone now, all
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: of them. The man sat down on the cinder road,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: looking up into the murky sky. T be late, you
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: wal not her come. He shook his head doggedly, and
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: the woman crouched out of his sight against the wall.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Do you remember rare moments when a sudden light flashed
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: over yourself, your world, God, when you stood on a
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: mountain peak seeing your lives? It might have been, as
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: it is, one quick instant when custom lost its force
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: and every day usage. When your friend, wife, brother stood
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: in a new light, Your soul was bared, and the
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: grave a foretaste of the nakedness of the judgment. Day,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: So it came before him his life that night. The
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: slow tides of pain he had borne gathered themselves up
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: and surged against his soul, his squalid daily life, the
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: brutal coarseness eating into his brain as the ashes into
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: his skin. Before these things had been a dull aching
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: into his consciousness. Tonight they were reality. He gripped the
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: filthy red shirt that clung stiff with soot about him,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: and tore it savagely from his arm. The flesh beneath
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: was muddy with grease and ashes, and the heart beneath that,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: and the soul God knows, then flashed before his vivid,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: poetic sense, the man who had left him, the pure face,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: the delicate, sinewy limbs, in harmony, with all he knew
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: of beauty or truth. In his cloudy fancy, he had
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: pictured a something like this. He had found it in
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: this Mitchell, even when he idly scoffed at his pain,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: a man all knowing, all seeing, crowned by nature, raining
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: the keen glance of his eye falling like a so
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: on other men. And yet his instinct taught him that
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: he too He He looked at himself with sudden loathing, sick,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: wrung his hands with a cry, and then was silent.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: When all the phantoms of his heated, ignorant fancy, Wolf
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: had not been vague in his ambitions, they were practical,
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: slowly built up before him out of his knowledge of
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: what he could do. Through years, he had day by
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: day made this hope a real thing to himself, a
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: clear projected figure of himself, as he might become able
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: to speak to know what was best to raise these
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: men and women working at his side, up with him.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Sometimes he forgot this defined hope in the frantic anguish
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: to escape, only to escape out of the wet, the pain,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: the ashes, somewhere anywhere, only for one moment of free
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: air on a hillside, to lie down and let his
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: sick soul throb itself out in the sunshine. But to
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: night he panted for life. The savage strength of his
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: nature was roused. His cry was fierce to God for justice.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: Look at me, he said to Deborah, with a low,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: bitter laugh, striking his puny chest savagely. What am I worth?
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Deb Is it my fault that I am no better?
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: My fault, my fault. He stopped, stung with a sudden remorse,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: seeing her hunchback shape writhing with sobs. For Deborah was
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: crying thankless tears according to the fashion of women. God
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: forgive me, woman. Things go harder wi you nor me.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: It's a worse share. He got up and helped her
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: to rise, and they went doggedly down the muddy street,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: side by side. It's all wrong, he muttered, slowly, All wrong.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: I dunnot understand, but it'll end some day. Come home, Hugh,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: she said, coaxingly, for he had stopped looking around bewildered home,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: and back to the mill. He went on saying this
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: over to himself, as if he would mutter down every
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: pain in this dull despair. She followed him through the fog,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: her blue lips chattering with cold. They reached the cellar
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: at last. Old Wolf had been drinking since she went out,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: and had crept nearer the door. The girl Janey, slept
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: heavily in the corner. He went up to her, touching
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: softly the worn white arm with his fingers. Some bitter
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: thought stung him as he stood there. He wiped the
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: drops from his forehead and went into the room beyond
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: livid trembling of hope. Trifling, perhaps, but very dear had
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: died just then, out of the poor puddler's life. As
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: he looked at the sleeping, innocent girl, some planned for
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: the future in which she had borne a part. He
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: gave it up that moment, then and forever, only a trifle,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: perhaps to us. His face grew a shade paler, that
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: was all. But somehow the man's soul, as God and
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: the angels looked down on it, never was the same. Afterwards.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Deborah followed him into the inner room. She carried a candle,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: which she placed on the floor, closing the door after her.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: She had seen the look on his face as he
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: turned away. Her own grew deadly, Yet as she came
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: up to him, her eyes glowed. He was seated on
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: an old chest, quiet, holding his face in his hands. Hugh,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: she said softly. He did not speak, Hugh, ttor here
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: with the man said him, with the clear voice, to
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: tour here money, money, that it would do all. He
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: pushed her away gently, but he was worn out. Her
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: rasping tone fretted him, Hugh. The candle flared a pale
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: yellow light over the cobwebbed brick walls and the woman
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: standing there. He looked at her. She was young, in
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: deadly earnest, her faded eyes and wet, ragged figure caught
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: from their frantic eagerness a power akin to beauty. Hew itis.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: True money, I'll do it, oh Hugh, boy, listen till me,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: he said it. True. It is money, A no go back.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: I donot want ye, hear Hugh. It is to last time.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: I'll never wor at or again. There were tears in
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: her voice now, but she choked them back. Hear till
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: me only to night. If one a to witch people
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: would come, then we heard offt home and give her
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: all her wants? What then, say, Hugh, what do you mean?
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: I mean money? Her whisper shrilled through his brain. If
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: one oft witch dwarfs would come at a lane Moore's
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: to night and give her money to go out out,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: I say, out, lad or to sunshine's and to heath grows,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: and to ladies walk in silken gowns, and God stays
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: all to time. Or a man lives that talked to
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: us to night. Hugh knows you could walk there like
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: a king, he thought the woman mad. Tried to check her,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: but she went on fierce in her eager haste. If
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: I were to witch dwarf, if I had to money,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: would her thank me? Would r take me out of
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: this place with horror and janey, I would not come
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: into the grand house her would build to vex her
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: with a hunch only at night, when the shadows were dark,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: stand for off to see her mad. Yes are many
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: of us mad in this way, Poor Deb, poor Deb,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: he said soothingly. It is here, she said, suddenly, jerking
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: into his hand a small roll. I took it I
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: did it me me not horror. I shall be hanged.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: I shall be burnt in hell if anybody knows. I
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: took it out of his pocket as he leaned against
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: bricks her nose. She thrust it into his hand, and
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: then her errand done, began to gather chips together to
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: make a fire, choking down hysteric sobs. Has it come
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: to this? That was all he said. The Welsh wolf
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: blood was honest. The roll was a small green pocket
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: book containing one or two gold pieces and a check
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: for an incredible amount, as it seemed to the poor puddler.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: He laid it down, hiding his face again in his hands. Hugh,
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: don't be angry with me. It's only poor deb horns.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: He took the long, skinny fingers kindly in his angry
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: God help me no, let me sleep. I am tired.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: He threw himself heavily down on the wooden bench, stunned
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: with pain and weariness. She brought some old rags to
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: cover him. It was late on Sunday evening before he awoke.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: I tell God's truth when I say he had then
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: no thought of keeping the money. Deborah had hid it
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: in his pocket. He found it there she watched him
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: eagerly as he took it out. I must give it
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: to him, he said, reading her face horns. She said,
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: with a bitter sigh of disappointment, put it his horr
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: right to keep it his right. The word struck him.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Doctor May had used the same. He washed himself, and
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: when out to find this man Mitchell his right? Why
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: did this chance word cling to him so obstinately? Do
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: you hear the fierce devils whisper in his ear as
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: he went slowly down the darkening street? End of Part two,
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: Part three. The evening came on, slow and calm. He
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: seated himself at the end of an alley leading into
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: one of the larger streets. His brain was clear, tonight, keen,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: intent mastering it. Would not start back cowardly from any
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: hellish temptation, but meet it face to face. Therefore, the
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: great temptation of his life came to him, veiled by
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: no sophistry, but bold, defiant, owning its own vile name,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: trusting to one bold blow for victory. He did not
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: deceive himself theft. That was it. At first the words
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: sickened him, Then he grappled with it, Sitting there on
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: a broken cartwheel. The faceading day, the noisy groups, the
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: church bells tolling, passed before him like a panorama, while
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: the sharp struggle went on within this money. He took
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: it out and looked at it. If he gave it back,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: what then he was going to be cool about it.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: People going by to church saw only a sickly mill
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: boy watching them quietly at the alley's mouth. They did
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: not know that he was mad, or they would not
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: have gone by so quietly, Mad with hunger, stretching out
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: his hands to the world that had given so much
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: to them for leave to live the life God had
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: meant him to live. His soul within him was smothering
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: to death. He wanted so much, thought so much, and
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: knew nothing. There was nothing of which he was certain
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: except the mill and things there. Of God and Heaven.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: He had heard so little that they were to him
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: what fairyland is to a child, something real but not here,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: very far off. His brain, greedy dwarf, full of thwarted
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: energy and unused powers, questioned these men and women going
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: by coldly bitterly that night. Was it not his right
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: to live as they a pure life, a good, true
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: hearted life, full of beauty and kind words. He only
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: wanted to know how to use the strength within him.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: His heart warmed as he thought of it. He suffered
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: himself to think of it longer. If he took the money,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: then he saw himself as he might be, strong, helpful, kindly.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: The night crept on as this one image slowly evolved
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: itself from the crowd of other thoughts and stood triumphant.
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: He looked at it as he might be. What wonder
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: if it blinded him to delirium, the madness that underlies
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: all revolution, all progress, and all fall. You laugh at
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: the shallow temptation. You see the air underlying its argument,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: so clearly that to him a true life was one
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: of full development, rather than so restraint, that he was
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: deaf to the higher tone, and a cry of voluntary
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: suffering for tooth's sake than in the fullest flow of
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: spontaneous harmony. I do not plead his cause. I only
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: want to show you the mote in my brother's eye.
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: Then you can see clearly to take it out the money.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: There it lay on his knee, a little blotted slip
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: of paper. Nothing in itself used to raise him out
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: of the pit. Something straight from God's hand. A thief, Well,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: what was it to be a thief? He met the
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: question at last, face to face, wiping the clammy drops
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: of sweat from his forehead. God made this money, the
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: fresh air too, for his children's use. He never made
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: the difference between poor and rich. The something who looked
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: down on him that moment through the cool, gray sky
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: had a kindly face. He knew loved his children alike. Oh,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: he knew that there were times when the soft floods
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: of color in the crews and a purple flames, where
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: the clear depth of amber and the water below the
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: bridge had somehow given him a glimpse of another world
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: than this, of an infinite depth of beauty and of quiet,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: somewhere somewhere, a depth of quiet and rest and love.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Looking up now, it became strangely real. The sun had
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: sunk quite below the hills, but his last rays struck upward,
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: touching the zenith. The fog had risen, and the town
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: and river were steeped in its thick gray damp. But
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: overhead the sun touched smoke. Clouds opened like a cleft ocean,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: shifting rolling seas of crimson mist, waves of billowy silver,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: veined with blood, scarlet, inner depths unfathomable of glancing light.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: Wolfe's artist eye grew drunk with color, the gates of
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: that other world fading, flashing before him. Now what in
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: that world of beauty, content and right were the petty laws,
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: the mine and thine of mill owners and mill hands.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: A consciousness of power stirred within him. He stood up,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: a man, he thought, stretching out his hands, free to work,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: to live, to love, free his right. He folded the
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: scrap of paper in his hand, as his nervous fingers
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: took it in limp and blotted, so his soul took
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: in the mean temptation, lapped it in fancied rites, in
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: dreams of improved existences, drifting and endless as the cloud
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: seas of color. Clutching it as if the tightness of
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: his hold would strengthen his sense of possession, he went
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: aimlessly down the street. It was his watch at the mill.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: He need not go, need never go again, thank God,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: shaking off the thought with unspeakable loathing. Shall I go
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: over the history of the hours that night? How the
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: man wandered from one to another of his old haunts,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: with a half consciousness of bidding them farewell. Lanes and
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: alleys and back yards were the mill hands lodged, noting
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: with a new eagerness, the filth and drunkenness, the pig pens,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: the ash heaps covered with potato skins, the bloated, pimpled
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: women at the doors, with a new disgust, a new
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: sense of sudden triumph, and under all a new vague dread,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: unknown before, smothered down, kept under, but still there. It
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: left him but once during the night, when for the
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: second time in his life, he entered a church. It
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: was a somber Gothic pile, where the stained light lost
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: itself in far retreating arches built to meet the requirements
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: and sympathies of a far other class than Wolf's. Yet
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: it touched, moved him uncontrollably. The distances, the shadows, the
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: still marble figures, the mass of silent, kneeling worshippers, the
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: mysterious music thrilled, lifted his soul with a wonderful pain.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: Wolf forgot himself, forgot the new life he was going
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: to live. The mean terror gnawing underneath. The voice of
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: the speaker strengthened to charm. It was clear, feeling full strong.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: An old man who had lived much, suffered much, whose
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: brain was keenly alive, dominant, whose heart was summer warm
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: with charity, he taught it tonight. He held up humanity
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: in its grand total, showed the great world cancer to
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: his people who could show it better. He was a
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: Christian reformer. He had studied the age thoroughly. His outlook
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: at men had been free world wide over all time.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: His faith stood sublime upon the rock of ages. His
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: fiery zeal guided vast schemes by which the Gospel was
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: to be preached to all nations. How did he preach
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: it tonight? In burning light laden words he painted Jesus,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: the incarnate life, love, the universal Man, words that became
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: reality in the lives of these people that lived again
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: in beautiful words and actions. Trifling but heroic sin, as
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: he defined it, was a foe to them. Their trials,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: temptations were his. His words passed far over the furnace
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: tender's grasp toned to suit another class of culture. They
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: sounded in his ears a very pleasant song in an
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: unknown tongue. He meant to cure this world cancer with
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: a steady eye that had never glared with hunger, and
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: a hand that neither poverty nor strychnine whiskey had taught
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: to shake. In this morbid, distorted heart of the Welsh puddler,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: he had failed. Eighteen centuries ago. The master of this
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: man tried reform in the streets of a city as
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: crowded and vile as this, and did not fail. His disciple,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: showing him to night, to cultured hears, showing the clearness
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: of the god power acting through him, shrank back from
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: one coarse fact that in birth and habit the man
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: Christ was thrown up from the lowest of the people
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: his flesh, their flesh, their blood, his blood tempted like
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: them to brutalize, day by day, to lie, to steal
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: the actual slime and want of their hourly life, and
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: the wine press he trod alone. Yet is there no
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: meaning in this perpetually covered truth if the sun of
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: the carpenter had stood in the church that night, as
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: he stood with the fishermen at Harlot's by the Sea
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: of Galilee, before his father and their father, despised and
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: rejected of men without a place to lay his head,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: wounded for their iniquities, bruised for their transgressions. Would not
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: that hungry mill boy, at least in the back seat
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: have known the man that Jesus did not stand there?
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: Wolf rose at last and turned from the church down
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: the street. He looked up. The night had come on, foggy, damp,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: The golden mists had vanished, and the sky lay dull
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: and ash colored. He wandered again, aimlessly down the street,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: idly wondering what had become of the cloud sea of
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: crimson and scarlet. The trial day of this man's life
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: was over, and he had lost the victory. What followed
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: was mere drifting circumstance, a quicker walking over the path,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: That was all. Do you want to hear the end
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: of it? You wish me to make a tragic story
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: out of it? Why? In the police reports of the
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: morning paper you can find a dozen such tragedies. Hints
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: of shipwrecks unlike any that ever befell on the high seas.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: Hints that here a power was lost to heaven, that
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: there a soul went down where no tide can ebb
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: or flow. Commonplace enough, the hints are jocose, sometimes done
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: up in rhyme. Doctor may a month after the night
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: I have told you of, was reading to his wife
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: at breakfast from the fourth column of the morning paper.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: An unusual thing, these police reports, not being in general
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: choice reading for ladies. But it was only one item
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: he read. Oh my dear, you remember the man I
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: told you of that we saw at Kirby's Mill that
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: was arrested for robbing Mitchell. Here he is just listen.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: Circuit Court Judge Day, Hugh Wolf, operative in Kirby and
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: John's Loudon Mills charge, grand larceny sentence nineteen years, hard
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: labor and penitentiary scoundrel serves him right after all our
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: kindness that night picking Mitchell's pocket at the very time
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: his wife said something about the ingratitude of that kind
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: of people, and then they began to talk of something else.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: Nineteen years. How easy that was to read. What a
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: simple word for Judge Day to utter. Nineteen years half
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: a lifetime. Hugh Wolf sat on the window ledge of
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: his cell looking out. His ankles were ironed, not usual
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: in such cases, but he had made two desperate efforts
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: to escape well, as Haley, the jailer said, small blame
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: to him. Nineteen years imprisonment was not a pleasant thing
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: to look forward to. Hailey was very good natured about it,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: though wolf had fought him savagely when he first was caught.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: The jailer said afterwards, in telling the story before the trial,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: the fellow was cut down at once, laid there on
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: that palette like a dead man with his hands over
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: his eyes. Never saw a man so cut down in
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: my life. Time of the trial, too came the queerest
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: dodge of any customer I ever had. Would choose no lawyer.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: Judge gave him one, of course, Gibson it was. He
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: tried to prove the fellow crazy, but it wouldn't go.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: Thing was plain as daylight. Money found on him. Twas
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: a hard sentence all the law allows, but it was
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: for example's sake. These mill hands are getting unbearable. When
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: the sentence was read, he just looked up and said
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: the money was his by rights, and that all the
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: world had gone wrong. That night, after the trial, a
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: gentleman came to see him here, name of Mitchell him
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: as he stole from talk to him for an hour.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: Thought he came for curiosity. Like after he was gone,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: thought Wolfe was remarkable quiet, and went into his cell
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: found him very low, bed, all bloody. Doctor said he'd
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: been bleeding at the lungs. He was as weak as
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: a cat. Yet, if you'll believe me, he tried to
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: get it past me and get out. I just carried
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: him like a baby and threw him on the pallet.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: Three days after he tried it again. That time reached
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: the wall. Lord help you. He fought like a tiger,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: gives some terrible blows, fighting for life, you see, For
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: he can't live long shut up in the stone crib
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: down Yonder, got a death cough. Now took two of
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: us to bring him down that day. So I just
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: put the irons on his feet. There he sits in there,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: going tomorrow with a batch more of em. That woman
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: hunchback tried with him. You remember, she's only got three
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: years accomplice. M she's a woman, you know. He's been
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: quiet ever since I put on irons. Give up. I
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: suppose looks white, sick, lookin' it acts different on em
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: being sentenced. Most of 'em gets reckless, devilish like some
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: praise awful and sings them vile songs of the mills
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: all in a breath. That woman, now she's desperate but
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: begging to see Hugh, as she calls him for three days.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: I'm a going to let her in. She don't go
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: with him here, she is in this next cell. I'm
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: a going to now to let her in. He let
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: her in. Wolf did not see her. She crept into
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: a corner of the set and stood watching him. He
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: was scratching the iron bars of the window with a
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: piece of tin, which he had picked up with an idle, uncertain,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: vacant stare, just as a child or idiot would do
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: trying to get out. Old boy, laughed Haley. Them irons
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: will lad a crowbar beside your tin before you can
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: open em. Wolf laughed too, in a senseless way. I
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: think I'll get out, he said. I believe his brain's touched,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: said Haley. When he came out, the puddler scraped away
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: with the tin for half an hour, still Deborah did
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: not speak. At last, she ventured nearer and touched his arm. Blood,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: she said, looking at some spots on his coat with
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: a shudder. He looked up at her. Why deb he said,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: smiling such a bright boyish smile that it went to
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: poor Deborah's heart directly, and she sobbed and cried out aloud,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: Oh Hugh, Lad, Hugh dunnot look at me when it
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: wore my fault to think I brought her to it
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: and I loved heart, so, oh Lad, I did the
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: confession even in this wretch came with the woman's blush
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: through the sharp cry. He did not seem to hear
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: her scraping away diligently at the bars with a bit
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: of tin. Was he going mad? She peered closely into
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: his face. Something she saw there made her draw suddenly back,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: something which Haley had not seen, that lay beneath the pinched,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: vacant look it had caught since the trial, or the
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: curious gray shadow that rested on it. The gray shadow, Yes,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: she knew what that meant. She had often seen it
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: creeping over women's faces for months, who died at last
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: of slow hunger or consumption that meant death, distant lingering. This,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: whatever it was the woman saw or thought she saw,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: used as she was to crime and misery, seemed to
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: make her sick with a new horror. Forgetting her fear
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: of him. She caught his shoulders and looked keenly, steadily
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: into his eyes. Hugh. She cried in a sper, whisper,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: Oh boy, not that, for God's sake, not that. The
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: vacant laugh went off his face, and he answered her
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: in a muttered word or two that drove her away,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: Yet the words were kindly enough. Sitting there in his palate,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: she cried silently, a hopeless sort of tears, but did
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: not speak again. The man looked furtively at her now,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: and then, whatever his own trouble was, her distress vexed
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: him with a momentary sting. It was market day. The
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: narrow window of the jail looked down directly on the
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: carts and wagons drawn up in a long line where
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: they had unloaded. He could see, too, and hear distinctly
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: the clink of money as it changed hands, the busy
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: crowd of whites and black shoving, pushing one another, and
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: the chaffering and swearing at the stalls. Somehow, the sound,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: more than anything else had done, wakened him up, made
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: the whole real to him. He was done with the
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: world and the business of it. He let the tin
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: fall and looked out, pressing his face close to the
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: rusty bars. How they crowded and pushed, and he he
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: should never walk that pavement again there came Neph Sanders,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: one of the feeders at the mill, with a basket
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: on his arm. Sure enough, Nef was merried the other week.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: He whistled, hoping he would look up, but he did not.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: He wondered if Neff remembered he was there, if any
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: of the boys thought of him up there, and thought
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: that he never was to go down that old cinder
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: road again, never again. He had not quite understood it before,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: but now he did not for days or years, but
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: never that was it? How clear the light fell on
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: that stall in front of the market, and how like
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: a picture it was, the dark green heaps of corn,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: the crimson beets and golden melons. There was another with game.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: How the light flickered on that pheasant's breast, with the
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: purplish blood dripping over the brown feathers. He could see
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: the red shining of the drops. It was so near.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: In one minute he could be down there. It was
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: just step, so easy, as it seemed so natural to go.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: Yet it could never be, not in all the thousands
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: of years to come, that he should put his foot
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: on that street again. He thought of himself with a
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: sorrowful pity, as of some one else. There was a
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: dog down in the market, walking after his master, with
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: such a stately grave look only a dog. Yet he
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: could go backwards and forwards just as he pleased. He
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: had good luck. Why the very vilest cur yelping there
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: in the gutter had not lived. His life had been
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: free to act out whatever thought God had put into
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: his brain. While he no, he would not think of that.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: He tried to put the thought away, and to listen
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: to a dispute between a countryman and a woman about
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: some meat, but it would come back. He what had
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: he done to bear this? Then came the sudden picture
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: of what might have been, And now he knew what
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: it was to be in the penitentiary, how it went
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: with men there. He knew how in these long years
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: he should slowly die, but not until soul and body
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: had become corrupt and rotten. How when he came out,
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: if he lived to come, even the lowest of the
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: mill hands would jeer him. How his hands would be
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: weak and his brain senseless and stupid. He believed he
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: was almost that. Now he put his hand to his
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: head with a puzzled, weary look. It ached his head
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: with thinking, he tried to quiet himself. It was only right.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: Perhaps he had done wrong, But was there right or
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: wrong for such as he? But was right? And who
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: had ever taught him? He thrust the whole matter away.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: A dark, cold quiet crept through his brain. It was
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: all wrong, but let it be. It was nothing to
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: him more than the others. Let it be. The door
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: grated as Haley opened it. Come, my woman must lock
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: up for the night. Come stir yourself. She went up
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: and took Hugh's hand. Good night, Deb, he said carelessly.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: She had not hoped he would say more, But the
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: tired pain on her her mouth just then was bitterer
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: than death. She took his passive hand and kissed it.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: Or'll never see Dub again, she ventured, her lips growing
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: colder and more bloodless. What did she say that for?
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: Did he not know it? Yet? He would not be
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: impatient with poor old Deb. She had trouble of her
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: own as well as he. No, never again, he said,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: trying to be cheerful. She stood just a moment looking
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: at him. Do you laugh at her? Standing there with
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: her hunchback, her rags, her bleared, withered face, and the
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: great despised love tugging at her heart, Come you, said Hailey, impatiently.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: She did not move. Hugh, she whispered. It was to
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: be her last word. What was it, Hugh boy? Not
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: that he did not answer, She wrung her hands, trying
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: to be silent, looking in his face in an agony
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: of entreaty, He smiled again kindly. It is best, deb
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: I cannot bear to be hearted any more. Har nose,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: she said, humbly. Tell my father good bye, and and
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: kiss little Janey. She nodded, saying nothing, looked in his
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: face again, and went out of the door. As she
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: went she staggered, drinking to day. Broke out Hayley, pushing
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: her before him, Where the devil did ye get it? Here?
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: In with ye? And he shoved her in her cell
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: next to Wolf's, and shut the door. Along the wall
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: of her cell there was a crack low down by
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: the floor through which she could see the light from Wolf's.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: She had discovered it days before. She hurried in now,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: and kneeling down by it, listened hoping to hear some sound.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: Nothing but the rasping of the tin on the bars.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: He was at his old amusement again. Something in the
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: noise jarred on her ear, for she shivered as she
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: heard it. Hugh rasped away at the bars, a dull
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: old bit of tin, not fit to cut quarrel with.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: He looked out of the window again. People were leaving
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: the market now. A tall mulatto girl, following her mistress,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: her basket on her head, crossed the street just below
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: and looked up. She was laughing, but when she caught
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: sight of the haggard face peering out through the bars,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: suddenly grew grave and hurried by a free, firm step.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: A clear cut olive face with a scarlet turban tied
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: on one side, dark shining eyes, and on the head
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: the basket poised, filled with fruit and flowers, under which
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: the scarlet turban and bright eyes looked out half shadowed.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: The picture caught his eye. It was good to see
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: a face like that. He would try to morrow and
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: cut one like it. Tomorrow. He threw down the tin
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: trembling and covered his face with his hands. When he
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: looked up again, the daylight was gone. Deborah, crouching near
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: by on the other side of the wall, heard no noise.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: He sat on the side of the low pallet, thinking
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: whatever was the mystery which the woman had seen on
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: his face. It came out now slowly in the dark there,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: and became fixed a something never seen on his face before.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: The evening was darkening fast. The market had been over
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: for an hour. The rumbling of the carts over the
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: pavement grew more infrequent. He listened to each as it passed,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: because he thought it was to be for the last time.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: For the same reason it was, I suppose that he
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of each passer
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: by wondering who they were, what kinds of homes they
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: were going to, if they had children, Listening eagerly to
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: every chance word in the street, as if God be
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: merciful to the man, What strange fancy was this, As
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: if he should never hear human voices again? It was
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: quite dark at last the street was a lonely one.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: The last passenger he thought was gone. No, there was
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: a quick step Joe Hill lighting the lamps. Joe was
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: a good old chap never passed a fellow without some
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: joke or other. Here remember at once seeing the place
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: where he lived with his wife, Grannie Hill. The boys
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: called her bedridden she was, but so kind as Joe
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: was to her, kept the room so clean, and the
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: old woman, when he was there, was laughing at some
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: of t Lad's foolishness. The step was far down the street,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: but he could see him place the ladder, run up
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: and light the gas. A longing seized him to be
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: spoken to once more, Joe. He called out of the grating,
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: good Bye Joe. The old man stopped a moment, listening uncertainly,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: then hurried on. The prisoner thrust his hand out of
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: the window and called again louder, But Joe was too
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: far down the street. It was a little thing, but
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: it hurt him, this disappointment. Good Bye Joe, he called
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: sorrowfully enough. Be quiet, said one of the jailers, passing
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: the door, striking on it with his club. Oh that
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: was the last, was it? There was an inexpressible bitterness
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: on his face as he lay down on the bed,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: taking the bit of tin which he had rafts to
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: a tolerable degree of sharpness in his hand to play
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: with it. May be he bared his arms, looking intently
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: at their corded veins and sinews. Deborah, listening in the
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: next cell, heard a slight clicking sound, often repeated. She
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: shut her lips tightly that she might not scream. The
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: cold drops of sweat broke over her in her dumb
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: agony horse breast. She muttered at last, fiercely clutching the
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: boards where she lay. If she could have seen wolf,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: there was nothing about him to frighten her. He lay
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: quite still, his arms outstretched, looking at the pearly stream
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: of moonlight coming into the window. I think in that
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: one hour that came then he lived back over all
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: the years that had gone before. I think that all
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: the low, vile life, all his wrongs, all his starved hopes,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: came then and stung him with a fair well poison
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: that made him sick unto death. He made neither moan
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: nor cry, only turned his worn face now and then
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: to the pure light that seemed so far off as
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: one that said, how long, O Lord, how long the
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: hour was over? At last, the moon, passing over her
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: nightly path, slowly came nearer and through the light across
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: his bed. On his feet. He watched it steadily as
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: it crept up inch by inch slowly. It seemed to
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: him to carry with it a great silence. He had
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: been so hot and tired. There always in the mills,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: the years had been so fierce and cruel. There was
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: coming now, quiet and coolness and sleep. His tense limbs
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: relaxed and settled in a calm languor. The blood ran
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: fainter and slow from his heart. He did not think
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: now with a savage anger of what might be and
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: was not. He was conscious only of deep stillness creeping
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: over him. At first he saw a sea of faces,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: the mill men, women he had known, drunken and bloated,
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: Janey's timid and pitiful, poor old debs. Then they floated
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: together like a mist and faded away, leaving only the clear,
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: pearly moonlight. Whether as the pure light crept up the
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: stretched out figure, it brought with it calm and peace,
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: Who shall say his dumb soul was alone with God
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: and judgment. A voice may have spoken for it from
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: far off cavalry, Father, forgive them, for they know not
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: what they do. Who dare say? Fainter and fainter the
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: heart rose and fell slower and slower. The moon floated
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: from behind a cloud, until when at last its full
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: tide of white splendor swept over the cell, it seemed
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: to wrap and fold into a deeper stillness. The dead
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: figure that never should move again, silence deeper than the night.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: Nothing that moved save the black, nauseous stream of blood
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: dripping slowly from the pallet to the floor. There was
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: out cry and crowd enough from the cell. The next day,
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: the coroner and his jury, the local editors, Kirby himself,
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: and boys with their hands thrust knowingly into their pockets
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: and heads on one side, jammed into the corners, coming
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: and going all day. Only one woman. She came late
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: and outstayed them all. A Quaker or friend, as they
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: call themselves. I think this woman was known by that
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: name in heaven. A homely body, coarsely dressed in gray
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: and white. Deborah, for Haley had let her in, took
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: notice of her. She watched them all, sitting on the
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: end of the pallet, holding his head in her arms,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: with the ferocity of a watch dog. If any of
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: them touched the body, there was no meekness, no sorrow
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: in her face, the stuff out of which murderers are made. Instead,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: all the time Haley and the woman were laying straight
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: the limbs and cleaning the cell, Deborah sat still, keenly
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: watching the Quaker's face. Of all the crowd there that day.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: This woman alone had not spoken to her, only once
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: or twice had put some cordial to her lips. After
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: they were all gone, the woman, in the same still
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: gentle way, brought a vase of wood leaves and berries
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: and placed it by the pallet. Then opened the narrow window.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: The fresh air blew in and swept the woody fragrance
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: over the dead face. Deborah looked up with a quick wonder,
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: Did horn my boy would like it? Did horno, Hugh?
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: I know Hugh. Now the white fingers passed in a slow,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: pitiful way over the dead worn face. There was a
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: heavy shadow in the quiet eyes. Did Horno? Will they'll bury? Hugh?
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: Said Deborah in a shrill tone, catching her arm. This
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: had been the question hanging on her lips all day.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: Into town yard under to mud and ash, to lattle,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: smother woman, he were born? Unto lane moor? Where to airs,
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: frick and strong take or out for God's sake? Take
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: or out what air blows? The Quaker hesitated, but only
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: for a moment. She put her strong arm around Deborah
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: and led her to the window. THEE sees the hill
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: friend over the river. THEE sees how the light lies
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: warn there, and the winds of God blow all the day.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: I live there, where the blue smoke is by the trees.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: Look at me, She turned Deborah's face to her own,
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: clear and earnest. THEE will believe me. I will take
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: Hugh and bury him there tomorrow. Deborah did not doubt her.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: As the evening wore on, she leaned against the iron bars,
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: looking at the hills that rose far off through the thick,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: sodden clouds like a bright, unattainable calm. As she looked,
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: a shadow of their solemn repose fell on her face.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: Its fierce discontent faded into a pitiful, humble quiet. Slow
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: solemn tears gathered in her eyes. The poor weak eyes
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: turned so hopelessly to the place where Hugh was to rest,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: the grave heights, looking higher and brighter and more solemn
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: than ever before. The Quaker watched her keenly. She came
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: to her at last and touched her arm. When THEE
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: comes back, she said, in a low, sorrowful tone, like
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: one who speaks from a strong heart, deeply moved with
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: remorse or pity, THEE shall begin thy life again there
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: on the hills. I came too late, but not for thee.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: By God's help, it may be not too late. Three
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: years after the Quaker began her work, I end my
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: story here at evening time it was light. There is
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: no need to tire you with the long years of
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: sunshine and fresh air and slow patient Christ Love needed
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: to make healthy and hopeful this impure body and soul.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: There is a homely pine house on one of these hills,
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: whose windows overlook broad wooded slopes and clover crimsoned meadows.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: Niched into the very place where the light is warmest,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: the air freest. It is the Friend's meeting house. Once
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: a week they sit there in their grave earnest way,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: waiting for the Spirit of Love to speak, opening their
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: simple hearts to receive his words. There is a woman, old, deformed,
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: who takes a humble place among them, waiting like them
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: in her gray dress, her worn face, pure and meek,
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: turned now and then to the sky, A woman much
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: loved by these silent, RESTful people, more silent than they,
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: more humble, more loving, waiting with her eyes turned to
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: hills higher and pure than these on which she lives,
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: dim and far off now, but to be reached some day.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: There may be in her heart, some latent hope to
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: meet there the love denied her here, that she shall
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: find him whom she lost, and that then she will
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: not be all unworthy who blames her. Something is lost
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: in the passage of every soul from one eternity to
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: the other, something pure and beautiful, which might have been
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: and was not a hope, a talent, a love over
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: which the soul mourns, like Esau deprived of his birthright.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: What blame to the meek Quaker if she took her
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: lost hope to make the hills of heaven more fair?
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: Nothing remains to tell that the poor Welsh puddler once lived.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: But this figure of the mill woman cut in Coral.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: I have it here in the corner of my library.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: I keep it hid behind a curtain. It is such
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: a rough, ungainly thing, yet there are about it touches,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: grand sweeps of outline that show a master's hand. Sometimes
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: to night, for instance, the curtain is accidentally drawn back,
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: and I see a bare arm stretched out imploringly in
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: the darkness, and an eager, wolfish face watching mine, a
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: wan woful face through which the spirit of the dead
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: Coral cutter looks out with its thwarted life, its mighty hunger,
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: its unfinished work, its pale, vague lips seem to tremble
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: with a terrible question. Is this the end? They say,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: nothing beyond no more? Why you tell me you have
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: seen that look in the eye eyes of dumb brutes,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: horses dying under the lash. I know the deep of
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: the night is passing. While I write, the gas light
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: wakens from the shadows. Here and there. The objects which
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: lie scattered through the room only faintly, though, for they
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: belong to the open sunlight. As I glance at them,
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: they recall each some task or pleasure of the coming day.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: A half molded child's head aphrodite, a bough of forest, leaves, music, work,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: homely fragments in which lie the secrets of all eternal
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: truth and beauty prophetic. All only this dumb, woeful face
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: seems to belong to and end with the night I
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: turn to look at. It has the power of its
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: desperate need, commanded the darkness away. While the room, as
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: yet steeped in heavy shadow, A cool gray light suddenly
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: touches its head like a blessing hand, and its groping
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: arm points through the broken cloud to the far east,
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: where in the flickering nebulous crimson God has set the
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: promise of the dawn end of Part three