The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-10-05
(Continued.0

 gious end for thousands of years, which men had sought In modification, in the wilderness, in meditation and by innu- merable strange paths, was. coming at last with the effect of naturalness into the talk of men, into the books they read, into their unconscious gestures, into their newspapers and daily pur- poses and everyday acts. The broad horizons, the magic possibilities, that the spirit Of the seeker had revealed to them were charming them out of those ancient and inst1nctive preoccupations from which the very. threat of heu and torment had failed to drive them And this young man, homeless and without provision even for the immediate hours, in the presence of social disor- ganization, distress and perplexity, in q blazing wilderness of thoughtless pleasures that plotted out the stars, could think as he tells us he thought
 q saw life p1atn,'' he wrote. 'sI saw the gigantic task before us, and the very sp1endor of it's intricate and i'm measurable difficulty filled me with exu1tation. I saw that we have still to discover government, that we hane still to discover education, which is the necessary reciprocal of government and that all this-in which my own little speck of a life was so manffestiy overwhelmed-this and its yesterday in Greece and Rome and Egypt were nothing, the mere first dust sw1rls of the beginning, the movements and dim murmurings of sleeper who will pres ently be awake"
 And then the story tells, with an en- gazing simplicity, of his descent from this ecstatic vision of reality.
 oYl4Iu fnf7y1d Tf4uan1f a cna7fR and I was beginning to feel cold and a lit tie hungry.',
 He bethougl1t himself of the John Burns relief offices which stood upon the Thames embankment- He made his way through the galleries of the Booksellers and the National gallery, which had been open continuously day and night to all decently dressed peo- pie now for more than twelve years, and across the rose gardens of TTafal- gar square, and so by the hotel colon made to the enbanknent. He had long known of these admirable od5cess which had swept the last beggars and matchselIers and all the casual indigent from the London streets, and he believed that he would as matter of course be able to procure 9 ticket for food and nights lodging and
  ment.
 But he had not reckoned upon the new labor troubles, and when he got to the enbankInent he found the offices hopelessly congested and besfeged by large and rather unru1y crowd He hovered for time on the outskirts of the waiting multitude, perpdexed and dismayed. and then he became aware of a movement, a purposive trickafng away of people, up through the arches INsof the great buildings that had arisen when all the railway stat1ons were re- moved to the south side of the river, and so to the covered ways Of the Strand And here in the open glare 0f midnight he found unemployed men begging, and not only begging, but begging with astonishing assurance, from the people who were emerging from the small theaters and other such places of entertainment which abound ed in that thoroughfare.
 This was an altogther unexampled thing. There had been no begging in London streets for a quarter of a century. But that night the police were evidently unwilling or unable to cope with the destitute who were invading those well kept quarters of the town They had become stonily blind to any thing but manifest disorder.
 Barnet walked through the crowd un- able to bring himself tof ask; indeed, his bearing must have been more valiant than his c1rcufnstances. foE twice he says that he was begged from. Near the Tra6a1gar square gar | dens, a girl with reddenad cheeks and blackened eyebrows, who was walking alone, spoke to him with peculiar friendliness.
 "I'n starving" he said to her ab- rupt1y.
 sOh, poor dearr, she said, and with the impuIsive generosity of her kind efanced round and slipped silver 1 piece into his hand.
 It was gift that, in spite of the l precedent of De Quincey, might under 1 the oppressive social legislation of l those times have brought Barnet with in reach of tue prison lash. But he took it, he ,eonfeRses, and thanked her as well as he wFas able, and went of gladly to sgeE food.
 A t3ny or 60 tatep-and again his free Goan no go a4 he pleased upon the roads may be taken as g mark of increasing social Reorganization and police en- barrassment-he wandered out into the l country.
 He speaks of the roads of that pluto cratic age as being ~eenced wtsh barb ed wise against unpropertied people, ]" of the high waI9ed gardens and tres | pass warnings that kept him to the dusty naTrcwness of the public ways. I In thu atr happy rich people were fly ing, heedless of the nnisfortunes about them, as he hilnaeIf hnd been flying two years ago. and along the road siWept the new traff1c, light and swift and wondeTfni. One was rarely out oi earshot of it's whistles and gongs and siEan cries evzsn tn the field paths ol over the oEea downs. The officials oi the aahog exchanges were averywherC 7 rJzzzvzopFxed fsslfss aFsssIEEassad 3aes casI1a