The citizen-Republican. (Scotland, Bon Homme County, S.D.) 1???-19??, 1906-12-13

restrain myself from rushing away"
She looked at me critically.
you've never had much to do with
women, have you?' she finally said slow
~ In a musing tone.
i wish that We're true-almost,' replied
l, on my mettle as a man, and resisting
not without effort the impulse to make
some vague Observation-Disclosures DIS
guised as ~penitential admissions-after the
customary masculine fashion.
She s~rniled-and one of those disquieting
shapes seemed to me to be floating la2iiy
and repellently downward, out of sight.
"A man and a woman can be a great deal
to each other, / believe said she; can
be-married, and all that-and remain as
strange to each other as if they had never
met-more hopelessly strangers"
There's always a sort of mystery ]
conceded. Il suppose that's one OF the
things that keep married people inter-
ested."
She shrugged her shoulders-she was in
evening dress, / recall and there was on
her white skin that intense. transparent,
blush tinge one sees on the new snow
when the sun comes out.
Mystery" she said impatiently.
There's no mystery except what we our
selves make. It's tseless-perfectly use
less" she went on absently. you're tho
sort of man who, if a woman cared for
him, or even showed friendship for him by
being frank and human and natural with
him, he'd punish her for it by-by despis-
ing her"
L smiled, much as one smiles at tho
efforts of a Drecocious child to prove that
it is a Methuselah in experience.
IF you weren't like an angel in COM
parison with the others I've KNOWN said
l, do You suppose l could care for you as
l do?"
1 saw my remark irritated her, and I
fancied it was her vanity hat was Offend
ed by my disbelief in her knowledge of
life. / hadn't a suspicion that 1 had hurt
and alienated her by slamniing in her very
face the door of friendship and f%rankness
her honesty was forcing her to try to open
for me.
In my stupidity of imagining her not
human like the other women and the men
L had known, but a creature apart and in
a class apart, j stood day after day gaping
at that very door, and wondering how L
could open 1T, how penetrate even to the
courtyard of that vestal citadel. So long
as my old-fashioned belief that good
women were more than human and bad
women less than human had influenced
me only to a sharper lookout in dealing
with the one species of woman I
then came in contact with, 70 harm
to me resulted, but on the con-
trary g~ood-whoever got into trouble
through walking the world with
sword and sword arm free? But when,
under the spell of Anita Ellersly, 1
dragged the 'superhuman goodness part
ef my theory down out of the clouds and
made 1t my guardian and g~uide-really,
it's a miracle that / escaped from the pit
into which that lunacy pitched me head
long. | was not content with idealizing
only her; l went on TO seeing good, and
only good, in everybody! The millen-
MUM was at hand; all Wall street was my
friend; whatever / wanted would hap
pen. And when Rnehllck: with an air like
a benediction from a Bishop backed by a
cathedral organ and full choir, gave mo
the tip to buy coal stocks, I canonized him
on the spot, Never did Il Jersey Jay in
Sunday clothes and allowed boots respond
TO a bunco steerer's greeting with a glad
der smile than mine to that pious old
postmaster of craft.
/ will say, in justice to myself, though
it is also In excuse, that if l had known
him intimately a few years earlier, T
should have found it all but impossible to
fool myself. For he had not long been in
a position where he could keep wholly de-
tached from the crimes committed for his
beneht and by his order, and where he
could disclaim responsibility and even
knowledge. The great lawyers of the
country have been most ingenious N de-
VeloplnS corporate law IN the direction OF
making the corporation q complete and
secure shield between the beneficiary of
a crime and it's consequences; but before
a great financier can use this shield per-
fectly, he must build up a system-he
must find iieutenants with the necessary
GOODNESS, courage and cunning: he must
teach them to understand his hints: he
must educate them, not to point out to
him the disagreeable things involved in
his orders, but to execute unquestioningly,
to eGace completely the trail between him
and them, whether or not they succeed in
covering the roundabout and faint trail
between themselves and the tools that
nominally commit the crimes.
fCan+iptad Nex+ MaoLA Is