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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Barriers Burned Away," Edward Payson Roe masterfully weaves a narrative that explores the intricate interplay of faith, societal constraints, and individual autonomy during the transformative period of the late 19th century. Roe's literary style is characterized by its vivid descriptions and moral undertones, deftly illuminating the struggles of his characters against the backdrop of a rapidly changing America. The novel delves into contemporary themes such as reform, the role of women in society, and the quest for personal redemption, positioning it within the broader context of American regionalism and early realism. Edward Payson Roe, an acclaimed novelist of his time, was deeply influenced by his upbringing in a strict religious environment and his training as a civil engineer. His experiences in both the literary and pastoral spheres equipped him with a profound understanding of human resilience, which he channels into his storytelling. These elements illuminate the moral dilemmas faced by his characters, reflecting his own struggles with faith and societal expectation. "Barriers Burned Away" is highly recommended for readers seeking a rich, character-driven narrative that prompts reflection on personal and societal limitations. This book will resonate not only with fans of historical fiction but also with anyone interested in exploring themes of spirituality and self-discovery amidst adversity. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Barriers Burned Away
Table of Contents
Introduction
In a city racing toward modern prominence yet vulnerable to sudden ruin, Barriers Burned Away traces how catastrophe strips away convention and pretense, forcing ambition, affection, and faith to confront the stark demands of survival and the claims of conscience until what proves genuine endures and what is brittle falls aside.
Edward Payson Roe’s novel belongs to nineteenth-century American popular fiction and blends elements of urban romance, moral drama, and realist catastrophe narrative. Set in Chicago and anchored by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, it situates private lives within public disaster. First published in the early 1870s, the book reflects a period of rapid urban growth and reform-minded discourse in the United States. Roe uses the bustling, commercial energy of Chicago as both setting and symbol, capturing the optimism and volatility of a city that seemed to embody national aspirations—and the sudden vulnerability that history made painfully visible.
The premise is straightforward yet charged: a young newcomer seeking opportunity in a booming metropolis encounters a cultivated social circle whose values are tested when the city’s streets fill with smoke and flame. The novel’s early chapters establish manners, aspirations, and quiet rivalries; its central sections usher readers into mounting urgency as the fire advances. Roe’s voice is earnest and accessible, his pacing brisk but attentive to character. Readers should expect vivid urban scenes, moments of suspense, and reflective pauses that weigh motives and choices without disclosing outcomes. The mood oscillates between hope, peril, and sober moral reckoning.
True to its title, the novel explores how barriers—of class, taste, and belief—can harden into walls in ordinary times yet dissolve under pressure. Roe treats status and propriety as fragile when measured against duty, compassion, and integrity. The city’s cultural life, its commerce, and its neighborhoods provide a textured field in which ideals meet practical necessity. Questions of trust, responsibility to strangers, and the cost of moral courage recur as the narrative unfolds. The fire functions not only as spectacle but as a severe examiner of character, revealing what people will preserve, whom they will aid, and what they are willing to relinquish.
For contemporary readers, the book’s relevance lies in its portrayal of communal vulnerability and the ethics of response. It invites reflection on how quickly daily routines can yield to crisis, and how personal convictions translate into action when structures fail. It also probes the allure of sophistication and the limits of cynicism, asking whether refinement without empathy can withstand a public emergency. The novel’s attention to civic bonds and mutual aid resonates with modern conversations about resilience, urban inequality, and shared responsibility. Without prescribing easy answers, Roe presents a story that tests ideals in the most unforgiving of circumstances.
Although it dramatizes a well-documented historical event, the novel is not a chronicle but a work of fiction that relies on the Great Fire’s scale to shape a wide canvas. Roe’s approach places intimate choices alongside sweeping destruction, allowing readers to sense the contingency of fortune and the speed with which social arrangements can change. The book participates in broader nineteenth-century traditions that used recognizable cities to frame moral inquiry, yet its focus remains on individual transformation rather than institutional analysis. This balance—between panoramic scenes and personal stakes—gives the story its momentum and its enduring narrative clarity.
Approached today, Barriers Burned Away offers a reading experience that combines the momentum of a disaster tale, the tenderness of a courtship narrative, and the earnestness of a moral inquiry. Its prose reflects its era—direct, sometimes fervent, and intent on the meanings of conduct—while its scenes of urban urgency retain a gripping immediacy. Readers interested in American city writing, historical catastrophe, and character-driven drama will find a compelling blend. Above all, the novel suggests that decisive moments clarify values, inviting us to consider what we hold fast to when the visible structures of life ignite and the familiar world is remade.
Synopsis
Edward Payson Roe’s Barriers Burned Away is a historical novel set in Chicago during the early 1870s, culminating in the city’s great conflagration. It follows a young man who comes west seeking opportunity and steadier purpose, and finds both amid the bustling commercial and cultural life of a growing metropolis. The narrative blends personal ambition, aesthetic pursuits, social mobility, and moral testing with a detailed portrait of urban energy. As the story advances, the city’s rhythms, neighborhoods, and contrasts are carefully drawn, preparing readers for a pivotal crisis that compels characters to reexamine their loyalties, identities, and guiding beliefs.
The protagonist, Dennis Fleet, arrives with limited means but clear resolve, securing modest lodgings and pursuing employment that matches his artistic training. He finds a place in an elite art establishment managed by Mr. Ludolph, a cultivated, skeptical German émigré whose refined tastes shape the store’s clientele. There Dennis meets Ludolph’s daughter, Christine, whose beauty, intellect, and social poise command attention. Professional obligations and class distinctions keep relationships formal, yet early interactions establish key dynamics of admiration, reserve, and measured rivalry. The setting of gallery rooms, drawing lessons, and cultured salons provides the social framework within which the principal characters first move.
Roe contrasts polished circles with the city’s humbler precincts through Dennis’s friendships in boardinghouses and workshop neighborhoods. These quieter scenes highlight everyday kindness, thrift, and perseverance, balancing the elegant surfaces of the Ludolphs’ world. Dennis’s conscientious work and plain habits mark him as reliable, even as he navigates expectations from patrons and colleagues. Meanwhile, Mr. Ludolph’s urbane skepticism and confidence in worldly sagacity frame an alternative ethos. Christine’s education in art and society has equipped her to prize success, discrimination, and self-possession. The juxtaposition of convictions—practical faith, cultivated doubt, and social ambition—sets the stage for choices that will later carry unusual weight.
In the gallery and at select gatherings, Dennis’s skill and judgment earn cautious respect. He assists with acquisitions, installations, and instruction, sometimes guiding Christine’s work while learning her standards. Subtle rivalries emerge in business and in social courtship, with notable patrons and well-placed acquaintances observing the newcomers’ progress. Dennis keeps his aspirations private, aware that status and circumstance limit his standing. Christine, keenly conscious of position, tests boundaries with composed reserve. These exchanges clarify roles while hinting at sympathies not openly acknowledged. Roe emphasizes decorum and self-command, allowing sentiment and conviction to develop beneath formalities, in measured dialogues and small, carefully observed gestures.
Pressures mount as commercial risks, personal vanities, and city temptations intersect. Hints of sharp dealing and speculative ventures circle the art trade, inviting shortcuts that could compromise integrity. Dennis faces minor but telling trials of conscience, where diligence and honesty compete with expediency. Mr. Ludolph’s assertive methods and strong opinions challenge those around him to prove themselves. Christine encounters delicate tests of loyalty and pride, especially when appearances and values diverge. A hazardous incident, narrowly averted, reveals character under strain and foreshadows a greater ordeal to come. The narrative tightens, channeling private tensions toward a public emergency that will expose what has been concealed.
Warnings accumulate in the city itself. A dry season, close-built districts, and heavy winds create unforgiving conditions. When fire breaks out on a Sunday night, an ordinary alarm becomes a chain of events that overtakes wards and thoroughfares. Roe slows to a vivid chronicle of smoke, sparks, and shifting gusts, describing landmarks, crowds, and the accelerating confusion. The movement of people—on foot, by wagon, bearing bundles and children—conveys a community caught between disbelief and necessity. Streets once familiar become corridors of heat and glare. Against this backdrop, the characters’ paths converge, the city’s map becoming a field of urgent choices and narrowing options.
As the fire advances, the novel centers on flight, rescue, and the prioritizing of lives over possessions. Dennis navigates through falling embers and surging throngs, compelled to decide whom to aid, what to risk, and how to guide the vulnerable. Christine and Mr. Ludolph face immediate peril that tests their composure and assumptions, while acquaintances made earlier resurface in unexpected roles. Acts of practical courage—steady hands, clear signals, timely lifts—matter as much as grand gestures. Buildings and distinctions give way before the blaze, leaving character and resolve starkly visible. The crisis culminates in a sequence of desperate efforts that alter relationships without immediately resolving them.
After the flames pass, the city’s ruins frame a quieter reckoning. Displacement, hunger, and cold replace spectacle. Relief lines and makeshift shelters bring together people once separated by fashion and fortune. In this stripped landscape, the survivors reassess priorities: work regains honor, compassion finds pathways, and long-contested ideas receive fresh hearing. Mr. Ludolph’s confidence in self-sufficiency confronts the limits of control. Christine weighs the demands of pride against the witness of endurance and generosity she has observed. Dennis’s steadiness, tested in danger, becomes visible even to those who previously overlooked it. The story edges toward decisions with lasting personal and moral consequence.
Barriers Burned Away presents calamity as catalyst, using the fire to melt social distances and challenge entrenched skepticism. Without lingering on spectacle alone, the book ties public disaster to private transformation, arguing for the durability of conscience, charity, and hope. Its narrative arc moves from aspiration through trial to the possibility of renewal, suggesting that genuine worth outlives possessions and display. Roe’s portrait of Chicago balances realism with purpose, showing how a community rebuilds by fostering trust and service. The closing chapters affirm recovery and reconciliation without discarding complexity, leaving readers with a sense of tested values and a future shaped by wisely chosen commitments.
Historical Context
Edward Payson Roe sets Barriers Burned Away in Chicago at the very moment the city vaulted from raw frontier entrepôt to modern metropolis. The narrative unfolds around 1871, when Chicago’s population had exploded from 29,963 in 1850 to nearly 300,000 by 1870. Its wood-built neighborhoods, dense commercial corridors along Lake and Randolph streets, and the rail yards and warehouses tethered to the Board of Trade formed a combustible urban tapestry. The lakefront, river basins, lumber yards, and grain elevators framed everyday life. Roe’s scenes capture crowded streets, heterogeneous crowds, and the restless confidence of a post–Civil War city poised for, and vulnerable to, transformational change.
Postwar urbanization and industrial capitalism shaped Chicago between the 1850s and early 1870s. Railroads converged to make it the Midwest’s hub; the Chicago Board of Trade (founded 1848) standardized grain futures; mechanized grain elevators and the Union Stock Yards (opened 1865) accelerated commerce. By 1870, multiple trunk lines linked the city to national markets, and dry-goods houses such as Field, Leiter and Co. symbolized retail modernity. The novel mirrors this boomtown energy through depictions of mercantile ambition, crowded shops, and the social bustle of showrooms and galleries, contrasting entrepreneurial opportunity with precariousness in a city where fortunes—and reputations—could be made or lost overnight.
Mass immigration defined Chicago’s social fabric. In 1870 nearly half the population was foreign-born, dominated by Germans and Irish, with growing Scandinavian communities. Ethnic neighborhoods clustered near industrial corridors and along the river, while churches, mutual-aid societies, and beer gardens structured communal life. Tensions surfaced over temperance, Sunday laws, and schooling, even as workplaces mixed languages and customs. Roe’s story situates characters in a heterogeneous urban public where class and ethnicity intersect. The catastrophe that anchors the plot compels crossings of social boundaries, depicting how crisis can recast relations among immigrant laborers, native-born merchants, and the professional middle class.
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 is the decisive historical event that forms the novel’s core. After an unusually dry summer and early autumn, a blaze ignited on the city’s West Side on the evening of Sunday, October 8, near DeKoven Street. Fanned by strong southwest winds and fed by miles of wooden buildings, sidewalks, and roofs, the fire jumped the South Branch of the river, consumed the central business district, and by early October 10 had scorched parts of the North Side. Miscommunication in the alarm system and exhausted fire crews—after a serious fire on October 7—hindered the initial response. Roughly 3.3 square miles were burned, about 17,000 buildings destroyed, an estimated 100,000 people left homeless, and around 300 lives lost. The iconic Water Tower and adjacent pumping station on Michigan Avenue survived, while City Hall, the Courthouse, and numerous churches and theaters fell. Damage topped $200 million in 1871 dollars, triggering a national insurance crisis that felled dozens of companies. Relief flowed from across the United States and Europe even as other conflagrations raged the same night, including the devastating Peshtigo Fire in Wisconsin. Roe situates pivotal scenes within this inferno and its aftermath—crowds fleeing along the lakefront, ad hoc rescues, and moral reckonings in the glow of destruction. The title’s metaphor is literalized as flames erase physical and social partitions, forcing characters to confront precariousness, obligation, and faith amid a cityscape turned to ash.
Disaster governance and relief redefined civic power after the fire. Mayor Roswell B. Mason organized a Committee of Public Safety, and General Philip H. Sheridan deployed regular troops and state militia to deter looting and enforce curfews. The Chicago Relief and Aid Society centralized distribution, channeling more than five million dollars in cash contributions between 1871 and 1873, along with food, clothing, and shelter in barracks districts. Debates over deservingness and work requirements foreshadowed the charity-organization movement’s methods. Roe reflects these tensions in depictions of organized benevolence, probing whether philanthropy dignifies or disciplines survivors and how public order balances compassion with social control.
Rebuilding brought sweeping regulatory and economic change. The City Council and Board of Public Works quickly expanded fire limits and enacted stricter building codes in late 1871 and 1872, curbing wooden construction in the core and favoring brick, stone, and iron. Insurance failures—about 58 companies collapsed under claims—spurred new underwriting standards. By 1875 the business district largely stood anew, even as the Panic of 1873 complicated finance. The transformed streetscape, with more fireproof commercial blocks, signaled a civic creed of resilience. Roe uses the reconstruction milieu to explore renewal: characters confront ethical rebuilding alongside architectural reform, weighing prudence, enterprise, and the civic duty to prevent future catastrophe.
Religious mobilization surged in the city’s wake. Dwight L. Moody, the Chicago evangelist whose Illinois Street church burned, interpreted the fire as a providential summons, soon partnering with Ira D. Sankey for transatlantic revivals (1873–1875) and expanding urban missions and YMCA work. Churches across denominations rebuilt and extended relief to the displaced, knitting faith and social service. Roe, himself a Union Army chaplain and clergyman, channels this evangelical moment into the novel’s moral arc. Conversion, repentance, and charitable action are framed not as abstractions but as urgent responses to urban vulnerability and loss revealed by the disaster.
As social and political critique, the novel exposes the hazards of laissez-faire growth—combustible housing, inadequate infrastructure, and speculative haste—alongside the brittleness of status hierarchies. Roe indicts materialism that prizes show windows over safety, yet he also challenges paternalistic charity that sorts the worthy from the unworthy poor. By juxtaposing merchants, artisans, immigrants, and socialites in the common crucible of the fire, the book interrogates class distance and ethnic prejudice. It also scrutinizes public authority, urging accountable regulation and civic duty. Ultimately, the narrative argues that urban prosperity requires moral responsibility, equitable relief, and institutions strong enough to protect the vulnerable.
Barriers Burned Away
CHAPTER I
LOVE UNKNOWN
From its long sweep over the unbroken prairie a heavier blast than usual shook the slight frame house. The windows rattled in the casements, as if shivering in their dumb way in the December storm. So open and defective was the dwelling in its construction, that eddying currents of cold air found admittance at various points—in some instances carrying with them particles of the fine, sharp, hail-like snow that the gale was driving before it in blinding fury.
Seated at one of the windows, peering out into the gathering gloom of the swiftly coming night, was a pale, faded woman with lustrous dark eyes. An anxious light shone from them, as she tried in vain to catch a glimpse of the darkening road that ran at a distance of about fifty yards from the house. As the furious blast shook the frail tenement, and circled round her in chilly currents from many a crack and crevice, she gave a short, hacking cough, and drew a thin shawl closer about her slight frame.
The unwonted violence of the wind had its effect upon another occupant of the room. From a bed in the corner near the stove came a feeble, hollow voice—"Wife!"
In a moment the woman was bending over the bed, and in a voice full of patient tenderness answered, "Well, dear?"
"Has he come?"
"Not yet; but he MUST be here soon."
The word MUST was emphasized in such a way as to mean doubt rather than certainty, as if trying to assure her own mind of a matter about which painful misgivings could not be banished. The quick ear of the sick man caught the tone, and in a querulous voice he said, "Oh! if he should not get here in time, it would be the last bitter drop in my cup, now full and running over."
"Dear husband, if human strength and love can accomplish it, he will be here soon. But the storm is indeed frightful, and were the case less urgent, I could almost wish he would not try to make his way through it. But then we know what Dennis is; he never stops to consider difficulties, but pushes right on; and if—if he doesn't—if it is possible, he will be here before very long."
In spite of herself, the mother's heart showed its anxiety, and, too late for remedy, she saw the effect upon her husband. He raised himself in bed with sudden and unwonted strength. His eyes grew wild and almost fierce, and in a sharp, hurried voice, he said: "You don't think there is danger? There is no fear of his getting lost? If I thought that I would curse God and die."
"Oh, Dennis, my husband, God forbid that you should speak thus! How can you feel so toward our Best Friend[6]?"
"What kind of a friend has He been to me, pray? Has not my life been one long series of misfortunes? Have I not been disappointed in all my hopes? I once believed in God and tried to serve Him. But if, as I have been taught, all this evil and misfortune was ordered and made my inevitable lot by Him, He has not been my friend, but my enemy. He's been against me, not for me."
In the winter twilight the man's emaciated[3], unshorn face had the ghostly, ashen hue of death. From cavernous sockets his eyes gleamed with a terribly vindictive light, akin to insanity, and, in a harsh, high voice, as unnatural as his appearance and words, he continued: "Remember what I have gone through! what I have suffered! how often the cup of success that I was raising to my lips has been dashed to the ground!"
"But, Dennis, think a moment."
"Ah! haven't I thought till my heart is gall and my brain bursting? Haven't I, while lying here, hopelessly dying, gone over my life again and again? Haven't I lived over every disappointment, and taken every step downward a thousand times? Remember the pleasant, plentiful home I took you from, under the great elms in Connecticut. Your father did not approve of your marrying a poor school-teacher. But you know that then I had every prospect of getting the village academy, but with my luck another got ahead of me. Then I determined to study law. What hopes I had! I already grasped political honors that seemed within my reach, for you know I was a ready speaker. If my friends could only have seen that I was peculiarly fitted for public life and advanced me sufficient means, I would have returned it tenfold. But no; I was forced into other things for which I had no great aptness or knowledge, and years of struggling poverty and repeated disappointment followed. At last your father died and gave us enough to buy a cheap farm out here. But why go over our experience in the West? My plan of making sugar from the sorghum[2], which promised so brilliantly, has ended in the most wretched failure of all. And now money has gone, health has gone, and soon my miserable life will be over. Our boy must come back from college, and you and the two little ones—what will you do?" and the man covered his head with the blanket and wept aloud. His poor wife, borne down by the torrent of his sorrow, was on her knees at his bedside, with her face buried in her hands, weeping also.
But suddenly he started up. His sobs ceased. His tears ceased to flow, while his eyes grew hard and fierce, and his hands clenched.
"But he was coming," he said. "He may get lost in the storm this bitter winter night."
He grasped his wife roughly by the arm. She was astonished at his sudden strength, and raised a tearful, startled face to his. It was well she could not see its terrible expression in the dusk; but she shuddered as he hissed in her ear, "If this should happen—if my miserable death is the cause of his death—if my accursed destiny involves him, your staff and hope, in so horrible a fate, what have I to do but curse God and die?"
It seemed to the poor woman that her heart would burst with the agony of that moment. As the storm had increased, a terrible dread had chilled her very soul. Every louder blast than usual had caused her an internal shiver, while for her husband's sake she had controlled herself outwardly. Like a shipwrecked man who is clinging to a rock, that he fears the tide will submerge, she had watched the snow rise from one rail to another along the fence. When darkness set in it was half-way up to the top rail, and she knew it was drifting. The thought of her ruddy, active, joyous-hearted boy, whose affection and hopefulness had been the broad track of sunlight on her hard path—the thought of his lying white and still beneath one of these great banks, just where she could never know till spring rains and suns revealed to an indifferent stranger his sleeping-place—now nearly overwhelmed her also, and even her faith wavered on the brink of the dark gulf of despair into which her husband was sinking. Left to herself, she might have sunk for a time, though her sincere belief in God's goodness and love would have triumphed. But her womanly, unselfish nature, her long habit of sustaining and comforting her husband, came to her aid. Breathing a quick prayer to Heaven, which was scarcely more than a gasp and a glance upward, she asked, hardly knowing what she said, "And what if he is not lost? What if God restores him safe and well?"
She shuddered after she had thus spoken, for she saw that her husband's belief in the hostility of God had reached almost the point of insanity. If this test failed, would he not, in spite of all she could say or do, curse God and die, as he had said? But she had been guided in her words more than she knew. He that careth for the fall of the sparrow had not forgotten His children in their sore extremity.
The man in answer to her question relaxed his hold upon her arm, and with a long breath fell back on his pillow.
"Ah!" said he, "if I could only see him again safe and well, if I could only leave you with him as your protector and support, I believe I could forgive all the past and be reconciled even to my hard lot."
"God gives you opportunity so to do, my father, for here I am safe and sound."
The soft snow had muffled the son's footsteps, and his approach had been unnoted. Entering at the back door, and passing through the kitchen, he had surprised his parents in the painful scene above described. As he saw his mother's form in dim outline kneeling at the bed, her face buried in its covering—as he heard his father's significant words—the quick-witted youth realized the situation. While he loved his father dearly, and honored him for his many good traits, he was also conscious of his faults, especially this most serious one now threatening such fatal consequences—that of charging to God the failures and disappointments resulting from defects in his own character. It seemed as if a merciful Providence was about to use this awful dread of accident to the son—a calamity that rose far above and overshadowed all the past—as the means of winning back the alienated heart of this weak and erring man.
The effect of the sudden presence in the sick-room was most marked. The poor mother, who had shown such self-control and patient endurance before, now gave way utterly, and clung for a few moments to her son's neck with hysterical energy, then in strong reaction fainted away. The strain upon her worn and overtaxed system had been too severe.
At first the sick man could only look through the dusk at the outline of his son with a bewildered stare, his mind too weak to comprehend the truth. But soon he too was sobbing for joy.
But when his wife suddenly became a lifeless weight in his son's arms, who in wild alarm cried, "Mother, what is the matter? Speak to me! Oh! I have killed her by my rash entrance," the sick man's manner changed, and his eyes again became dry and hard, and even in the darkness had a strange glitter.
"Is your mother dead?" he asked, in a low, hoarse voice.
"Oh, mother, speak to me!" cried the son, forgetting for a time his father.
For a moment there was death-like silence. Then the young man groped for an old settle in the corner of the room, laid his mother tenderly upon it, and sprang for a light, but as he passed his father's bed the same strong grasp fell upon his arm that his mother had shuddered under a little before, and the question was this time hissed in his ear, "Is your mother dead?" For a moment he had no power to answer, and his father continued: "What a fool I was to expect God to show mercy or kindness to me or mine while I was above ground! You are only brought home to suffer more than death in seeing your mother die. May that God that has followed me all my life, not with blessings—"
"Hush, father!" cried his son, in loud, commanding tones. "Hush, I entreat," and in his desperation he actually put his hand over his father's mouth.
The poor woman must have been dead, indeed, had she long remained deaf to the voice of her beloved son, and his loud tones partially revived her. In a faint voice she called, "Dennis!"
With hands suddenly relaxed, and hearts almost stilled in their beating, father and son listened for a second. Again, a little louder, through that dark and silent room, was heard the faint call, "Dennis!"
Springing to her side, her son exclaimed, "Oh, mother, I am here; don't leave us; in mercy don't leave us."
"It was I she called," said his father.
With unnatural strength he had tottered across the room, and taking his wife's hand, cried, "Oh, Ethel[1], don't die! don't fill my already full cup to overflowing with bitterness!"
Their familiar voices were the best of remedies. After a moment she sat up, and passing her hand across her brow as if to clear away confusion of mind, said: "Don't be alarmed; it's only a faint turn. I don't wonder though that you are frightened, for I never was so before."
Poor woman, amid all the emergencies of her hard lot, she had never in the past given way so far.
Then, becoming aware of her husband's position, she exclaimed: "Why, Dennis, my husband, out of your bed? You will catch your death." "Ah, wife, that matters little if you and Dennis live."
"But it matters much to me," cried she, springing up.
By this time her son had struck a light, and each was able to look on the other's face. The unnatural strength, the result of excitement, was fast leaving the sick man. The light revealed him helplessly leaning on the couch where his wife had lain. His face was ashen in color, and he was gasping for breath. Tenderly they carried him back to his bed, and he was too weak now to do more than quietly lie upon it and gaze at them. After replenishing the fire, and looking at the little ones that were sleeping in the outer room, they shaded the lamp, and sat down at his bedside, while the mother asked her son many eager questions as to his escape. He told them how he had struggled through the snow till almost exhausted, when he had been overtaken by a farmer with a strong team, and thus enabled to make the journey in safety.
As the sick man looked and listened, his face grew softer and more quiet in its expression.
Then the young man, remembering, said: "I bought the medicines you wrote for, mother, at Bankville. This, the druggist said, would produce quiet and sleep, and surely father needs it after the excitement of the evening."
The opiate was given, and soon the regular, quiet breathing of the patient showed that it had taken effect. A plain but plentiful supper, which the anxious mother had prepared hours before, was placed upon the kitchen table, and the young man did ample justice to it; for, the moment the cravings of his heart were satisfied in meeting his kindred after absence, he became conscious of the keenest hunger. Toiling through the snow for hours in the face of the December storm had taxed his system to the utmost, and now he felt the need of food and rest. After supper he honestly meant to watch at his father's bedside, while his mother slept; but he had scarcely seated himself on the old settle, when sleep, like an armed man, overpowered him, and in spite of all his efforts he was soon bound in the dreamless slumber of healthful youth. But with eyes so wide and lustrous that it seemed as if sleep could never close them again, the wife and mother, pale and silent, watched between her loved ones. The troubled expression was gone, for the ranks of her little band had closed up, and all were about her in one more brief rest in the forward and uncertain march of life. She seemed looking intently at something far off—something better discerned by the spiritual than by the natural eye. Disappointments had been bitter, poverty hard and grinding, but she had learned to escape into a large world that was fast becoming real to her strong imagination. While her husband was indulging in chimerical[4] visions of boundless prosperity here on earth which he would bring to pass by some lucky stroke of fortune or invention, she also was picturing to herself grander things which God would realize to her beyond time and earth. When alone, in moments of rest from incessant toil, she would take down the great family Bible, and with her finger on some description of the "new heavens and new eart[5]h," as the connecting link between the promise and her strong realization of it, she would look away with that intent gaze. The new world, purged from sin and sorrow, would rise before her with more than Edenlike loveliness. Her spirit would revel in its shadowy walks and sunny glades, and as the crowning joy she would meet her Lord and Saviour in some secluded place, and sit listening at His feet like Mary of old. Thus, in the strong illusion of her imagination, Christ's words seemed addressed directly to her, while she looked up into His face with rapt attention. Instead of reading her Lord's familiar sayings, she seemed to listen to them as did the early disciples. After a little time she would close the Bible and go back to her hard practical life, awed yet strengthened, and with a hopeful expression, like that which must have rested on the disciples' faces on coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration.
CHAPTER II
LOVE KNOWN
Hour after hour passed. The storm was dying away, and at times, through broken rifts in the clouds, stars would gleam out. Instead of the continued roar and rush, the wind blew in gusts at longer intervals, and nature seemed like a passionate child that had cried itself to sleep. The fitful blasts were the involuntary sobs that heave the breast, till at last quiet and peace take the place of stormy anger.
It seemed as if the silent watcher never could withdraw her gaze from the beautiful world of her vision. Never had it seemed so near and real before, and she was unconscious of the lapse of time. Suddenly she heard her name called—"Ethel!"
If the voice had come from the imaginary world present to her fancy, it could not have startled her more for a moment. Then she realized that it was her husband who spoke. He had called her name in his sleep, and yet it seemed a call of God. At once it flashed through her mind that in dreaming of a glorious and happy future she was forgetting him and his need.
She turned the light upon his face. Never had he looked so pale and wan, and she realized that he might be near his end. In an agony of self-reproach and yearning tenderness she kneeled at his bedside and prayed as she never had prayed before. Could he go home? Could he be received, feeling toward his Father as he did? He had talked of forgiving, when he stood so sorely in need of Christ's forgiveness; and she had been forgetting that need, when every moment might involve her husband's salvation. Out of his sleep he had called her to his help. Perhaps God had used his unconscious lips to summon her. With a faith naturally strong, but greatly increased by the vision of the night, she went, as it were, directly into the presence of her Lord, and entreated in behalf of her husband.
As she thus knelt at the bedside, with her face buried in the covering, she felt a hand placed softly on her head, and again her husband's voice called, "Ethel!"
She looked up and saw that he was awake now, his eyes fixed on her with an expression of softness and tenderness that she had not seen for many a long day. The old restless, anxious light had gone.
"What were you doing, Ethel?" he asked. "Praying that you might see that God loved you—that you might be reconciled to Him."
Two great tears gathered in the man's eyes. His lips quivered a moment, then he said, brokenly, "Surely God must love me, or He would never have given me—a wife—who would watch and pray for me—the long winter night."
"Oh, Dennis, forgive me; I cannot deceive you; for a time I forgot you, I forgot everything, and just wandered through Paradise alone. But in your sleep you called me to your help, and now it seems as if I could not be happy even there without you. I pray you, in Christ's stead, be reconciled to God," she pleaded, falling into the familiar language of Scripture, as she often did under strong emotion. Then, in low, thrilling words, she portrayed to him the "new earth" of her vision, wherein "God shall wipe away all tears, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." She showed him that all might still be well—that eternity was long enough to make up for the ills of our brief troubled life here. But his mind seemed preoccupied. These future joys did not take that hold upon him that she earnestly desired. His eyes seemed to grow dim in tender, tearful wistfulness, rather than become inspired with immortal hopes. At last he spoke:
"Ethel, it seemed as if I heard some one calling me. I woke up—and there you—were praying—for me. I heard my name—I heard God's name—and I knew that you were interceding for me. It seemed to break my hard heart right up like the fountains of the great deep to see you there—praying for me—in the cold, cold room." (The room was not cold; it was not the winter's chill that he was feeling, but a chill that comes over the heart even in the tropical summer.) "Then, as you prayed, a great light seemed to shine into my soul. I saw that I had been charging God unjustly with all my failures and misfortunes, when I had to thank myself for them. Like a wilful child, I had been acting as if God had but to carry out my wild schemes. I remembered all my unreasonable murmurings and anger; I remembered the dreadful words I was on the point of uttering tonight, and for a moment it seemed as if the pit would open and swallow me up."
He paused for breath, and then went on:
"But as my despairing eyes glanced restlessly around, they fell upon the face of my son, noble and beautiful even in sleep, and I remembered how God had brought him safely back. Then your low, pleading tone fixed my attention again. It seemed to me that God's love must be better and stronger than human love, and yet you had loved me through all my folly and weakness; so perhaps had He. Then I felt that such a prayer as you were offering could not remain unheard, you seemed to pray so earnestly. I felt that I ought to pray myself, and I commenced calling out in my heart, 'God be merciful to me—a sinner.' Then while I prayed, I seemed to see my Saviour's face right above your bowed head. Oh, how reproachfully He looked at me! and yet His expression was full of love, too. It was just such a look, I think, that He fixed on Peter when he denied Him. Then it seemed that I fell down at His feet and wept bitterly, and as I did so the look of reproach passed away, and only an expression of love and forgiveness remained. A sudden peace came into my soul which I cannot describe; a rush of tears into my eyes; and when I had wiped them away, I saw only your bowed form praying—praying on for me. And, Ethel dear, my patient, much-enduring wife, I believe God has answered your prayer. I feel that I am a new man."
"God be praised!" exclaimed his wife, with streaming eyes. Then in a sudden rush of tenderness she clasped her husband to her heart, her strong love seeming like the echo of God's love, the earnest here on earth of that above, where all barriers shall pass away.
The sound of their voices toward the last had awakened their son, and he now stood beside them with wet eyes and heaving breast.
When the wife rose from her embrace, she saw that her husband was very weak. For a few moments he gasped for breath. Then, getting a little easier, he looked up and saw his son, and exclaimed: "Thank God—my boy—thank God—you are here. Ah, my son—I have learned much—since we spoke together last. I have seen that—I have much more—need of forgiveness than—to forgive. Thanks to your—mother's prayers—I believe—I feel sure that I am forgiven."
"More thanks to God's love, Dennis," said his wife. "God wanted to forgive you all the time more than we wanted Him to. Thank God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us. He is longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish."
"Those are sweet words, wife, and I have found them true."
For a little time they sat with clasped hands, their hearts too full to speak. Faint streaks along the eastern horizon showed that the dawn was near. The sick man gave a slight shiver, and passed his hands across his eyes as if to clear away a mist, and then said, feebly: "Dennis, my son—won't you turn up the lamp a little—and fix the fire? The room seems getting so cold—and dark."
The wife looked at her son in quick alarm. The stove was red-hot, and the lamp, no longer shaded, stood openly on the table.
The son saw that he must take the lead in the last sad scene, for in the presence of death the heart of the loving, constant woman clung to her husband as never before. Throwing herself on her knees by his side, she cried with loud, choking sobs, "Oh, Dennis—husband—I fear—you are leaving me!"
"Is this death?" he asked of his son, in an awed tone.
"I fear it is, father," said the young man, gently.
After a moment his father said, composedly: "I think you are right. I feel that—my end is near, Ethel—darling—for my sake—try to be calm—during the last few moments I am with you."
A few stifled sobs and the room was still.
"I have but little time to—put my house—in order—and if I had months—I could not do it. Dennis, I leave you—little else—than debts—embarrassments, and the record of many failures. You must do—the best you can. I am not able to advise you. Only never love this world as I have. It will disappoint you. And, whatever happens, never lose faith in the goodness of God<[1q]/i>. This has been my bane. It has poisoned my life here, and, had it not been for this dear wife, it would have been my destruction here-after. For long years—only her patient love—has stood between me and a miserable end. Next to God—I commit her and your little sisters to your care. Be true to this most sacred trust.
"Ethel, dear, my more than wife—my good angel—what shall I say to you?" and the man's lip quivered, and for a time he could say no more. But the unwonted composure had come into his wife's manner. The eyes were gaining that intent look which was their expression when picturing to herself scenes in the life beyond.
"Oh, Dennis, we seem just on the confines of a glorious world—it is so near, so real—it seems as if but a step would take us all into it. Oh! if you could but see its beauties, its glories—if you could hear the music, you would not fear to enter. It seems as if we were there together now."
"Oh, Ethel, come back, come back," cried her husband, piteously. "I am not worthy of all that. I have no heart for glory now. I can see only my Saviour's face looking—at me—with love and forgiveness. That is heaven enough for me—and when you come—my cup will be more than full. And now—farewell—for a little while."
For a few moments they clung to each other. Then the little girls were brought, and their father pressed his cold lips to their warm, fresh young faces. They wondered at a scene they could not understand, and were tearful because of the tears of others.
He was now going very fast. Suddenly he turned to his son and said, "Dennis, repeat to me that verse, 'This is a faithful saying—'"
With a voice hoarse and broken by emotion, his son complied: "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."
"Of whom I am chief," said his father, emphatically. "And yet"—his face lighting up with a wan smile, like a sudden ray of light falling on a clouded landscape before the sun sinks below the horizon—"and yet forgiven."
By and by he again whispered, "Forgiven!" Then his eyes closed, and all was still. They thought he was gone. But as they stood over him in awed, breathless silence, his lips again moved. Bending down, they heard in faint, far-away tones, like an echo from the other side, "Forgiven!"
CHAPTER III
LAUNCHED
Scarcely was the last word spoken when a sudden glory filled the room. So brilliant was the light that mother and son were startled. Then they saw what had been unnoted before, that day had broken, and that the sun, emerging from a single dark cloud, was shining, full-orbed, into the apartment with a light that, reflected from myriads of snowy crystals, was doubly luminous. Nevertheless it seemed to them a good omen, an earnest, an emblem of the purer, whiter light into which the cleansed and pardoned spirit had entered. The snow-wrapped prairie was indeed pure and bright, but it was cold. The Father's embrace, receiving home the long-absent, erring, but forgiven child, would be warm indeed.
Though the bereaved wife believed that a brighter dawn than that which made the world resplendent around her had come to her husband, still a sense of desolation came over her which only those can understand who have known a loss like hers. For years he had filled the greater part of time, thought, and heart. As she saw her first and only love, the companion of a life which, though hard, still had the light and solace of mutual affection—as she saw him so still, and realized that she would hear him speak no more—complain no more (for even the weaknesses of those we love are sadly missed after death)—a flood of that natural sorrow which Christianity consoles, but was never designed to prevent, overwhelmed her, and she gave way utterly.
Her son took her in his arms and held her silently, believing that unspoken sympathy was worth more at such a time than any words.
After the convulsive sobbing had somewhat ceased, he struck the right chord by saying: "Mother, father is not lost to us. He himself said good-by only for a little while. Then you have us to love and think of; and remember, what could we do without you?"
The unselfish woman would have tried to rise from a bed of death to do anything needed by her loved ones, and this reminder of those still dependent on her care proved the most potent of restoratives. She at once arose and said: "Dennis, you are right. It is indeed wrong for me to give way thus, when I have so much to be thankful for—so much to live for. But, O Dennis! you cannot understand this separation of husband and wife, for God said, 'They twain shall be one flesh'; and it seems as if half my very life had gone—as if half my heart had been wrenched away, and only a bleeding fragment left."
The patter of feet was heard on the kitchen floor, the door opened, and two little figures in white trailing nightgowns entered. At first they looked in shy wonder and perplexity at their tall brother, whom they had not seen for months, but at his familiar voice, recalling many a romp and merry time together, they rushed to his arms as of old.
Then they drew near the bed to give their father his accustomed morning kiss; but, as they approached, he seemed so still that awe began to creep over their little faces. A dim recollection of the farewell kiss given a few hours before, when they were scarcely awake, recurred to them.
"Father," said the elder (about five), "we want to give you good-morning kiss."
Seldom had their father been so sick or irritable but that he reached out his arms to his little ones and gave them a warm embrace, that did him more good than he realized. The influence of trusting children is sometimes the most subtile oil that can be thrown on the troubled waters of life.
But as the little ones saw that their father made no response to their approach and appeal, they timidly drew a step nearer, and looked into his wasted, yet peaceful face, with its closed eyes and motionless repose, and then, turning to their mother, said in a loud whisper, with faces full of perplexity and trouble, "Is papa asleep?"
The little figures in their white drapery, standing beside their dead father, waiting to perform the usual, well-remembered household rite, proved a scene too touching for the poor mother's self-control, and again she gave way to a burst of sorrow. But her son, true to his resolution to be the stay and strength of the family, hastened to the children, and, taking them by the hand, said gently: "Yes, little ones, papa is asleep. It may be a long time before he wakes, but he surely will by and by, and then he will never be sick any more. Come, we will go into the other room and sing a pretty hymn about papa's sleep."
The thought of hearing their brother sing lured them away at once, for he had a mellow tenor voice that seemed to the little girls sweeter than a bird's. A moment later the widow's heart was comforted by hearing those words that have been balm for so many wounds:
"Asleep in Jesus! blessed sleep! From which none ever wakes to weep."
Then, putting on his sisters' flannel wrappers, he set them down by the fire, telling stories in the meantime to divert their thoughts from the scene they had just witnessed.
Thus no horror of death was suffered to enter their young minds. They were not brought face to face with a dreadful mystery which they could not understand, but which would have a sinister effect for life. Gradually they would learn the truth, but still the first impression would remain, and their father's death would ever be to them a sleep from which he would wake by and by, "never to be sick any more."
Dennis set about preparations for their simple morning meal so deftly and easily as to show that it was no unaccustomed task. A sister older than himself had died while yet an infant, leaving a heartache till he came—God's best remedy. Then two sisters had died after his day, and he had been compelled to be to his mother daughter as well as son, to make himself useful in every household task. His father had been wrapped up in useless inventions, vain enterprises, and was much away. So mother and son were constantly together. He had early become a great comfort and help to her, God blessing her in this vital respect, though her lot seemed hard in other ways. Thus, while he had the heart and courage of a man, he also had the quick, supple hand and gentle bearing of a woman, when occasion required. As proof of his skill, a tempting meal from the simplest materials was placed smoking on the table, and the little girls were soon chatting contentedly over their breakfast. In the meantime the wife within had drawn near her dead husband and taken his cold hand. For a while she dwelt on the past in strong and tearful agony, then, in accordance with long-established habit, her thoughts went forward into the future. In imagination she was present at her husband's reception in heaven. The narrow, meagre room melted away, and her feet seemed to stand on the "golden pavement." The jubilant clash of heavenly cymbals thrilled her heart. She seemed taking part in a triumphal march led by celestial minstrelsy toward the throne. She saw her husband mount its white, glistening steps, so changed, and yet so like his former self when full of love, youth, and hope. He appeared overwhelmed with a sense of unworthiness, but his reception was all the more kind and reassuring. Then as he departed from the royal presence, crowned with God's love and favor forever, though he had all heaven before him, he seemed looking for her as that he longed for most, and her strong effort to reach his side aroused her from her revery as from a dream. But her vision had strengthened her, as was ever the case, and the bitterness of grief was passed. Imprinting a long kiss on her husband's cold forehead, she joined her family in the outer room with calm and quiet mien. Her son saw and understood the change in his mother's manner, and from long experience knew its cause.
We need not dwell on what followed—preparations for burial, the funeral, the return to a home from which one who had filled so large a place had gone—a home on which rested the shadow of death. These are old, familiar scenes, acted over and over every day, and yet in the little households where they occur there is a terrible sense of novelty as if they then happened for the first time. The family feel as if they were passing through a chaotic period—the old world breaking up and vanishing, and a new formation and combination of all the elements that make up life taking place.
Many changes followed. Their farm was sold. Part of a small house in the village of Bankville was rented as their future residence. A very small annuity from some property in the East, left by Mrs. Fleet's father, was, with Dennis's labor, all the family had to depend on now—a meagre prospect.
But Dennis was very sanguine; for in this respect he had his father's temperament. The world was all before him, and Chicago, the young and giant city of the West, seemed an Eldorado, where fortune, and perhaps fame, might soon be won. He would not only place the family beyond want, but surround them with every luxury.
Dennis, wise and apt as far as his knowledge went, was in some respects as simple and ignorant as a child. There were many phases and conditions of society of which he had never dreamed. Of the ways of the rich and fashionable, of the character of artificial life, he had not the remotest experience. He could not see or understand the distinctions and barriers that to the world are more impassable than those of ignorance, stupidity, and even gross immorality. He would learn, to his infinite surprise, that even in a Western democratic city men would be welcomed in society whose hand no pure woman or honorable man ought to touch, while he, a gentleman by birth, education, and especially character, would not be recognized at all. He would discover that wealth and the indorsement of a few fashionable people, though all else were lacking, would be a better passport than the noblest qualities and fine abilities. As we follow him from the seclusion of his simple country home into the complicated life of the world, all this will become apparent.
Long and earnest was the conversation between mother and son before they separated. Pure and noble were the maxims that she sought to instil into his mind. They may not have been worldly wise, but they were heavenly wise. Though some of her advice in the letter might avail little, since she knew less of the world than did her son, still in its spirit it contained the best of all wisdom, profitable for this life and the life to come. But she sent him forth to seek his fortune and theirs with less solicitude than most mothers have just cause to feel, for she knew that he had Christian principle, and had passed through discipline that had sobered and matured him far beyond his years. She saw, however, in every word and act his father's sanguine temperament. He was expecting much, hoping far more, and she feared that he also was destined to many a bitter disappointment. Still she believed that he possessed a good strong substratum of common-sense, and this combined with the lessons of faith and patience taught of God would prove the ballast his father had lacked.
She sought to modify his towering hopes and rose-colored visions, but to little purpose. Young, buoyant, in splendid health, with a surplus of warm blood tingling in every vein, how could he take a prudent, distrustful view of the world? It seemed to beckon him smilingly into any path of success he might choose. Had not many won the victory? and who ever felt braver and more determined than he, with the needs of the dear ones at home added to his own incentives and ambitions? So, with many embraces, lingering kisses, and farewell words, that lost not their meaning though said over and over again, they parted. The stage carried him to the nearest railway station, and the express train bore him rapidly toward the great city where he expected to find all that a man's heart most craves on earth.
Sanguine as his father, constant as his mother, with a nature that would go right or wrong with tremendous energy, as direction might be given it, he was destined to live no tame, colorless life, but would either enjoy much, or else suffer much. To his young heart, swelling with hopes, burning with zeal to distinguish himself and provide for those he was leaving, even the bleak, snow-clad prairie seemed an arena in which he might accomplish a vague something.
CHAPTER IV
COLD WATER
The train, somewhat impeded by snow, landed Dennis in Chicago at about nine in the evening. In his pocket he had ten dollars—ample seed corn, he believed, for a golden harvest. This large sum was expected to provide for him till he should find a situation and receive the first instalment of salary. He would inform his employer, when he found him, how he was situated, and ask to be paid early and often.
Without a misgiving he shouldered the little trunk that contained his worldly effects, and stalked off to a neighboring hotel, that, from its small proportions, suggested a modest bill. With a highly important man-of-the-world manner he scrawled his name in an illegible, student-like hand on the dingy, dog-eared register. With a gracious, condescending air he ordered the filthy, tobacco-stained porter to take his trunk to his room.
The bar-room was the only place provided for strangers. Regarding the bar with a holy horror, he got away from it as far as possible, and seated himself by the stove, on which simmered a kettle of hot water for the concoction of punches, apparently more in demand at that hotel than beds. Becoming disgusted with the profanity and obscenity downstairs, he sought refuge in the cold, miserable little room assigned to him. Putting on his overcoat, he wrapped himself up in a coverlet and threw himself down on the outside of the bed.
The night passed slowly. He was too uncomfortable, too excited, to sleep. The scenes of the past blended confusedly with visions of the future, and it was nearly morning when he fell into an unquiet slumber.
When at last aroused by the shriek of a locomotive, he found that the sun was up and shining on the blotched and broken wall above him. A few minutes sufficed for his toilet, and yet, with his black curling hair, noble forehead, and dark, silken upper lip, many an exquisite would have envied the result.
His plan was simple enough—dictated indeed by the necessities of the case. He must at once find a situation in which he could earn sufficient to support his mother and sisters and himself. Thence he could look around till he found the calling that promised most. Having left college and given up his chosen profession of the law, he had resolved to adopt any honest pursuit that seemed to lead most quickly to fortune.
Too impatient to eat his breakfast, he sallied forth into the great city, knowing not a soul in it. His only recommendations and credentials were his young, honest face, and a letter from his minister, saying that he was a member of the church in Bankville, "in good and regular standing," and, "as far as he knew, a most worthy young man"—rather meagre capital amid the competitions of a large city. But, with courage bold and high, he strode off toward the business part of the town.
As he passed the depot it occurred to him that an opening might exist there. It would be a good post of observation, and perhaps he would be able to slip home oftener. So he stopped and asked the man in the ticket-office, blandly, "Do you wish to employ a young man in connection with this depot or road in any capacity?"
The ticket-man stared at him a moment through his window, frowned, and curtly said, "No!" and then went on counting what seemed to poor Dennis millions of money. The man had no right to say yes or no, since he was a mere official, occupying his own little niche, with no authority beyond. But an inveterate feud seemed to exist between this man and the public. He acted as if the world in general, instead of any one in particular, had greatly wronged him. It might be a meek woman with a baby, or a bold, red-faced drover, a delicately-gloved or horny hand that reached him the change, but it was all the same. He knitted his brows, pursed up his mouth, and dealt with all in a quick, jerking way, as if he could not bear the sight of them, and wanted to be rid of them as soon as possible. Still these seem just the peculiarities that find favor with railroad corporations, and the man would probably vent his spite against the public throughout his natural life.
From him, however, Dennis received his first dash of cold water, which he minded but little, and went on his way with a good-natured laugh at the crusty old fellow.
He was soon in the business part of the city. Applying at a large dry-good store, he was told that they wanted a cash boy; "but he would not do; one a quarter his size would answer."
"Then I will go where they want the other three-fourths and pay accordingly," said Dennis, and stalked out.
He continued applying at every promising place, but to no purpose. It was midwinter; trade was dull; and with clerks idling about the shops employers were in no mood to add to their number.
At last he found a place where an assistant book-keeper was wanted. Dennis's heart leaped within him, but sank again as he remembered how little he knew of the art. "But I can learn quickly," he thought to himself.
The man looked carelessly at his poor little letter, and then said, in a business-like tone, "Show me a specimen of your handwriting."
Poor Dennis had never written a good hand, but at college had learned to write a miserable scrawl, in rapidly taking notes of lectures. Moreover, he was excited, and could not do himself justice. Even from his sanguine heart hope ebbed away; but he took the pen and scratched a line or two, of which he himself was ashamed. The man looked at them with an expression of mild disgust, and then said, "Mr. Jones, hand me your ledger."
