The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1915-07-06
The Shadow.
BY JOHN d. BARRY.
PART II,

fAR1
Concluded From Yesterday
Q o 1 must speak for that Other Self in the
= sums, my Shadow, the man might have
been.
What could 1 say?
went back to the beginning.
We had been alike my Shadow and 1. When
came the moment that we began to grow apart?
Surely it could not have come with the first
drops drawn from our mothers breasts. T.
Was it when the first sights and sounds broke
on our consciousness. Or did we grow, side by
side though far away, till our longings began to
assert themselves, our aspirations. our dreams.
Were his thwarted and stunted while mine
were fostered?
He must have gone to school in those early
years. All boys go to school Certainly he must
have been doing just what I did.
But school isn't everything There are the in
fuences of the home, of the street.
He was living down there my Shadow Boy in
the slums.
Already they must have caught him.
shadows of that terrible thing the philosophers
and the social reformers call environment"
Already they must have cought him.
Into the shadows he must 60 deeper and deep
er, and deeper.
And now / feel as l were parting from my
Shadow Man. But how l part from him. Is
he not going through life with me. So long as
stay, he stays.
What did he do at the end of his brief school
ing? Did he become one OF the millions that
trudge YEARLY to work in the early morning and
tend a machine till nightfall?
How long did it take to make him forget his
carly hopes and ambitions?
Perhaps he didn't forget. Perhaps at night
when he returned home he would try to lead the
life of the imagination.
Did it take him years to realize that he was in
the grip of fate:
Did he try to resist:
Perhaps he didn't even try.
Would | have tried under the same crcumstan-
ces, out in body and BRAIN Certainly not
Then | thought of his years of monotonous
labor, OF treadmill routine of underpay
But these things seemed almost Paradise COM
pared with the times when there was a worse
monotony, dleness, when there was no work and
no pay
The eyes of my Shadow told me there had been
many such times.
Suppose, the other hand, my Shadow and I
had changed places.
Suppose it were he who had the chances
He might have done more with them He
might have done the things l had left undone the
things l had only dreamed.
Perhaps, in the economy of things, here lies
the greatest waste. 1t may be it is |, who, in
some mysterious way, have cheated him out of
his birthright, it is who should be in his place
And the counterpart of you-think about hml
Ask yourself if you have done we'll by your
chances as he might have done if they had been
his chances.
And if you are a woman, let your heart go out
to that Shadow in the slums. For terrible as
poverty is to it is far more terrible to a
woman. 1t may drive her into degradation worse
than death.
This thought you might keep in mind when YOU
are tempted to condemn the women of the streets
Those women Shadows of women as good
as you And if Environment had been more mer-
ciful they might have been good women, too
Shall we let them stay there, the Shadow
People? Shall we not lift finger to help them
cscapeo
1t seems hopeless task. They are millions.
And each one of us is only one
But II we would only work together how easy
the task would be-
If we will not help them to escape, there is
something else do
We can help them to resist Environment
And we can help to improve Environment for
them
And, best of all, we help them to help them
selves.
And all these things we may do by forgetting,
for moment, about ourselves and thinking of our
just relation to that strange growth called Society,"
Already mighty movement has begun among
the Shadow people. l recognize their claim on
one another. 1t asserts their claim on us.
And when they find that each of them has an
Other Self among the claim will be all the
stronger.
But before that day comes why cannot we be
great enough to acknowledge the relation and to
live up to it in all its responsibilities in all its
joys?