Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1911-06-02


only a great pity for Nan began to fill
| his heart.
CHAPTER X.
Cropping.
Stuart reached home from his walk
thoroughly tired and dropped into a
| feverish sleep. A strange dream
haunted this attempt to rest. He
found himself laughing and chatting
with Bivens on terms of intimate
friendship. All feeling of resentment
against him had gone. The little man
had grown to be a great figure and he
was happy in remembering their boy
hood associations. And strangest OF
ALL they had united in a feeling OF
hatred for Nan. She was the common
enemy of both, and not only so, she
was the enemy of all men. AS she
passed through the street, crowds
were kissing and insulting her, and
as she was entering her home they
tried to kill her. A stone struck her
beautiful forehead, and the blood was
tricklng down the white drawn face
He was hurting himself against the
mob I'm a vain effort to reach her side,
and while the crowd laughed and
Knocked, an officer mounted the steps
and instead of driving the mob back
began to strike her furiously with his
| club.
| Stuart walked with a cry-pressed his
head and looked about the room, be-
wildered. The tip of a swinging limb
was pounding against his window
pane.
| He opened the window quickly and
broke the twig.
What a nightmare!" he exclaimed
with a shiver.
For hours its horror haunted his i'm
agination.
He dressed and started to his club
| for dinner, changed his mind and
turned down Broadway for the old
| Cafe Boulevard on Second avenue. He
stopped again in front of the dingy
| Bible House at the head of the Bowery
and watched the flood of shopgirls and
clerks passing across the street from
the department stores. What an end
tens of thousands, men and women,
girls and boys, hurrying homeward.
He had never noticed them before
this mighty host of three hundred
| thousand women and five hundred
thousand men who rush into these
swarming hives every morning and
stream out again in the gathering dusk
of spring and the deepening nights of
winter.
For the first time they seemed hu-
man beings who might have hopes and
fears, joys and sorrows, even as he.
How strange the world began to
look through the new eyes of pity a
| great sorrow had given him. How
worn the faces of these children. They
must be horribly overworked. What a
| pitiful, starved life for child. He
thought of his own childhood, and saw
himself with swift bare feet roaming
the open fields of the south.
He was strucy with the wistful faces
of the very young girls-eager and
wise beyond their years. What an in
congruous thing this minglng of the
tense eagerness of young Gir!hood in
the straight open stare of worldly wis
| dom with which some of them looked
at him, and, passing, turned to look
again. 1t made him shiver. They ought
to be at school, these children; why
were they here, jostling, elbowng, and
| fighting their way through this crowd
A floor walker passed, holding pref
| ty girls arm. His position was un-
mistakable. No other man strolls
through the world with just his step
and just his elevation of china chin
that will hold it's angle in death
Among the hurrying throng that jos
tied by were men and women with
the deep cut lines of sorrow and TRACE
dy in faces that had seen better days
but had somehow lost their way.
Stuarts heart went out to the pass
ing crowd in a throb of sympathy
these slaves of the Modern Invisible
Master without a soul-who asked al
ways and without comment for eff
cheney and economy. They must make
money for him or fall by the wayside
and, if they FELL the master never knew
and couldn't care.
| He ate his dinner i'm a whirl of con-
fused emotion and again found him
self on Broadway walking at a furious
pace uptown He had no idea how
furious the pace until he suddenly no.
ticed that he was an object of mild Gu
riosity. He slackened his speed, con-
scious at last that big forces were
fighting within the first pitched battle
for the mastery of life.
). Could high ideals survive the white
heat of this furnace-the focus of the
modern worlds fiercest desire to live
and to will-the money centre of the
earth? Was not the whole structure
of Society at last thoroughly material
istic? Was not religion merely a ira
dition, honor and virtue merely the
themes of song and story? Had not
self and self-nterest at last become
the sole force behind all great deeds
1t looked that way. Then why should
any man be a sentimental fool? VIII!
not grasp the main chance?
/ Why not turn now and beat Bivens
at his own game? There was yet time
to accept his offer, join his powerful
group of the eXploiters of modern in
dustry, crush this little shrimp in the
hollow of his fist at last, and take the
woman he loved from him by the law
of might. Deep within he felt throb-
hing forces of savage cruelty that il
the centuries of the past had given his
ancestors the leadership of men before
the finer virtues of love and mercy
which permitted a Bivens to exist hat
been born. The big nostrils of his
long straight nose dilated, the white
hard teeth of his strong jaw snapped