News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1921-05-18
SYNOPSIS.

willie thirteen-year-o Robert Emmett Mo
ran, crippled son of a poor widow, il
known as the Shepherd of the Birds. His
world is his mother and friends, hi!
little room, the flower garden OF Judge
Croker and every flying thing he sees
from his window. The painting of pic
lures is his enjoyment, and little Pauline
Baker, small daughter of neighbor, the
object of his boyish affection. To him
j. Patterson Bing, the first citizen OF
Singville, is the ideal of a really great
man.
CHAPTER 1.-THE village becomes
money mad, rejecting the great world in
dts state of unrest. The Bing family is a
aeader in the change To them the village
has become provincial" Pauline Baker,
victim of her surroundings elopes with a
stranger, and her parents are unable to
trace her.
CHAPTER III.-Severe winter weather
orings distress to Ringvlle. Spoiled by
false prosperity, the citizens nave failed
60 look ahead, and many suffer absolute
privaton The Reverend Otis Singleton,
one of the few in the village who seek to
stem the tide of extravaganza and folly,
effects reformation in Hiram Blenkin-
sop, town drunkard and general "black
Nhaa~"
CHAPTER IV.-Mainly owing to Judge
Croker the village awakes to its short
sightedness in having considered money
the essential and neglecting the real
things of life and true democracy. Some
of the leading men also receive a lesson,
an the increasing waywardness of men,
fbers of their families
CHAPTER V.-The Bing family feels
che strain of the prolonged "giddy whirl."
Phyllis, the daughter of the house, is
threatened with nervous prostration Mr.
Bling purchases a pearl necklace costing
Sl0o,o00 for her. His employees, hearing
3f this extravaganza, demand more pay
and less work.
CHAPTER VI.-Hiram Benkinsop, after
q period of right living, falls from grace
Following a prolonged debauch, Ill and
penniless, he takes refuge in the church,
yard. There he meets Pauline Baker. de-
serted by her husband, and with a baby
in her arms Hiram takes them to the
Widow Moran, who gives them welcome
and shelter.
eve have hit at once the source of
your trouble" the judge went on.
t"'The Shepherd is a representative
II
the unfortunate in this village. You
have never gone to see him because
well, probably it was because you
feared that the look of him would
distress you. The thing which would
have helped and inspired and glad
dened his heart more than anything
else would have been the feel of your
hand and a kind and cheering word
and sympathetic counsel Under those
circumstances, l think | may say
that it was your duty as a neigh
Dor and a human being to go to see
him. Now, he never needed money.
In the kindest spirit, ask you if that
money you sent to him in the best
of goodwill was not, in fact, a species
of bribery? Were you not. indeed,
seeking to buy immunity from duty
incumbent upon you as a neighbor and
a human being?' N
Mr.. Bing answered quickly.
''There are plenty of people who have
else to do but carry cheer and
to the unfortunate. l have
other things to do"
"That, sir, does not relieve you of
the liabilities of a neighbor and a
human being, in my view. If your
business has turned you into a shaft
or a cOg-wheel, it has done you a great
injustice. | fear that it has been your
master-that it has practiced upon
you a kind of deSpOtiSm. You would
better get along with less-far less
business than suffer such a fate. l
don't want to hurt you. We are
looking for the cause of a certain re-
SulL<nd / can help you only by be-
ing frank With all your generosity
YOU have never given your heart to
this village. Some unkind people
have gone so far as to say that you
have no heart. You can not prove it
with money that you do not miss.
Money is good but it must be warmed
with sympathy and some degree of
sacrifice. Has it never occurred to
you that the warm hand and the
cheering, word in season are more,
vastly more. than money in the i'm
portant matter of making goodwill?
a line and placed yourself on one side
of il and the people on the other.
Broadly speaking, you are capital and
the rest are labor. Whereas, in fact,
YOU are all working men. Some of the
rest have come to regard you as their
natural enemy. They ought to re-
gard you as their natural friend. Two
kinds of despotism have prevented it.
First. there is the despotism of your
business in making you a slave-so
.u4ueh Of a slave that you haven't time
10 be human; second there is the
.despotism of the. labor union in dis
Icouraging individual excellence, in
demanding equal pay for the faith
full man and the Stacker, and in deny
ing the right of free men TO labor
when and where they will. All this
is tyranny as gross and un-American
as that of George the Third in try
inc to force his will upOn thp colonies