there was "a garden eastward in Eden"; and will, until the last sheaf of humanity has been garnered. So in 1769 there was a wedding in the old Bennett house-weddings were usual ly in the homesteads in those days-and after living a few years on the Derby side of the river, the young couple set up their lares and penates in a house built by Joseph Hull at the Landing, on land given by Deacon Bennett to Sally as part of her dower. This added the last one to the line of houses that have stood in peaceful neighborliness for more than a century, and here Isaac Hull was born on the 6th of March, 1773. The falling of tea-chests in Boston Harbor caused a ripple that was felt to the farthest shores of the thirteen colonies, and on July 4, 1776, the vibrant rim of Liberty Bell set in motion those waves of sound that called every man whose heart yearned for freedom to fall into line. Joseph Hull was among the first to respond, and entered the army as lieutenant of artillery. He was soon taken prisoner, and for two years endured much suffering. Then obtaining release, he was again at his country's service, and remained through the entire war. His remarkable coolness under danger, his fearlessness and great strategic ability, are verified by many traditions. At one time, riding from Derby to New Haven, as he reached the brow of a hill, he saw a number of British soldiers coming toward him. He was alone and unarmed; he stopped his horse an instant, turned and beckoned as if signalling a force to follow him, then riding forward, demanded the swords of the soldiers, which, as they expected the immediate arrival of his reenforcement, were at once surrendered. Haven was plundered and Fairfield burned, and whose turn might come next none could tell. Undoubtedly a boy's instincts are always a boy's instincts, but the age in which he lives bends them one way or another. Isaac Hull was ten years old when peace was declared, and the long record of his father's endurance, heroism, fearlessly meeting and successfully outwitting the enemy, must have done much to mould the boy for the future. Inheritance, strengthened by a noble example, called to the front the high qualities that told for his country's gain so markedly. It is easy to imagine the boy by the peaceful river-side living over his father's brave deeds and longing to emulate them. But his could not have been a dreamy life. He had an early training in the dangerous whaling expeditions on Long Island Sound in open boats, where courage and boldness of action, following a quick perception, were early instilled. That the child is father of the man " is again abundantly proved. The old houses speak only of peace now. It is not easy to realize their "troublous times." Their outlook has changed with the changes of more than a century, but they silently testify to the brave spirits, the strong-hearted men and women, and children too, to whom the blue sky and shining river and the outlines of the green hills looked as they do now, though mechanical progress and the modern gods of steam and electricity have transformed all else. Wars and rumors of wars have echoed round them, as 1812, 1848, 1861-65, have left their marks on other parts of the great country; but their peril was when the nation was born, and they have witnessed since only an ever-increasing freedom as the art of war has given place to the arts of peace. Those were days for stout-hearted women as well as men, and Sally Hull was a brave example when her husband start- That "the course of empire" is "wested on the long march for liberty, leaving ward" is well proved. Equally true it her and three little boys, Isaac, the sec- is that, despite its "course," the site of ond son, being in his fourth year. She empire remains. Who can count the Jemust have borne a patient heart during rusalems from Melchizedek till to-day? the weary years of his imprisonment, and How many Troys did Schliemann find ere the courage of the day was necessary on he reached that of Priam? Though the being left again and again to await the United States is but learning to count its unknown result while he bore his part in centuries, while the older nations sum the great struggle. Nor were the women up their millenniums, still it is verified. and children in the quiet homes always Cupheag was followed by Stratford. The in safety. The sight of the enemy's red Paugassett settlement at Derby, and the coat and the tramp of his footstep were kindred Pootatuck one, where old Ripto be watched and listened for. New ton's youngest child, the borough of VOL. LXXXV.-No. 505.-4 Shelton, now lies, and the old Indian fields and forts on the point between the two, where busy Birmingham long since established her reputation for industry, lift their voices in evidence. It is not possible to measure the distance between a cluster of wigwams on the quiet hillside and the long lines of brick factories with their din and roar; but when the turning of the soil puts a stone pestle or arrow-head into the white hand of to-day, it feels the touch of the red brother's. "We measure time by heart-throbs, not by figures on the dial." In many things the aim of the present is to reproduce the past. But the line and plummet of the most faithful of archi XVII. tects can no more make the new house like the old model than the theatrical make-up can transform the young man into an old one. The result may be admired as a work of art, but it is not nature. The touch of time gives a sag to the tent pole, a suggestion of waviness in outline, and a rounding of angles that the tool of man tries in vain to reproduce. And the old house has a human interest that cannot be obtained by opening a wide door and letting out a troop of children to play on the porch. It is like a man full of years and honors, whose mental vision sees the empty places filled with those "loved long since and lost awhile." THE WORLD OF CHANCE.* N the front room the little assemblage sect. et some small The people were plainly dressed in a sort of keeping with their serious faces; there was one girl who had no sign of a ribbon or lace about her, and looked like a rather athletic boy in her short hair and black felt hat, and her jacket buttoned to her throat. She sat with her hands in the side pockets of her coat, and her feet pushed out beyond the hem of her skirt. There were several men of a foreign type, with beards pointed and parted; an American, who looked like a school-master, and whose mouth worked up into his cheek at one side with a sort of mechanical smile when he talked, sat near a man who was so bald as not to have even a spear of hair anywhere on his head. The rest were people who took a color of oddity from these types; a second glance showed them to be of the average humanity; and their dress and its fashion showed them to be of simple condition. They were attired with a Sunday consciousness and cleanliness, though one gentleman whose coat sleeves and seams were brilliant with long use looked as if he would be the better for a little benzining, where his mustache had dropped soup and coffee on his waistcoat; he had prominent eyes, with a straining, near-sighted look. another with grave interest. They were all listening, when Ray came in, to a young man who was upholding the single-tax theory, with confidence and with eagerness, as something which in its operation would release the individual energies to free play and to real competition. Hughes broke in upon him. "That is precisely what I object to in your theory. I don't want that devil released. Competition is the Afreet that the forces of civilization have bottled up after a desperate struggle, and he is always making fine promises of what he will do for you if you will let him out. The fact is he will do nothing but mischief, because that is his nature. He is Beelzebub, he is Satan; in the Miltonic fable he attempted to compete with the Almighty for the rule of heaven; and the fallen angels have been taking the consequence ever since. Monopoly is the only prosperity. Where competition is there can be finally nothing but disaster and defeat for one side or another. That is self-evident. Nothing succeeds till it begins to be a monopoly. This holds good from the lowest to the highest endeavor from the commercial to the æsthetic, from the huckster to the artist. As long, for instance, as an author is young and poor"-Ray felt, looking down, that the speaker's eye turned on him-"he must compete, and his work must be deformed by the struggle; when it becomes known that he alone can do his kind of work, he * Begun in March number, 1892. Kane sat among them with an air at once alert and aloof; his arms were folded, and he glanced around from one to monopolizes and prospers in the full measure of his powers; and he realizes his ideal unrestrictedly. Competition enslaves, monopoly liberates. We must, therefore, have the greatest possible monopoly, one that includes the whole people economically as they are now included politically. Try to think of competition in the political administration as we now have it in the industrial. It isn't thinkable! Or, yes! They do have it in those Eastern countries where the taxes are farmed to the highest bidder, and the tax-payer's life is ground out of him." "I think," said the school-masterlylooking man, "we all feel this instinctively. The trusts and the syndicates are doing our work for us as rapidly as we could ask." A voice, with a German heaviness of accent, came from one of the foreigners. "But they are not doing it for our sake, and they mean to stop distinctly short of the whole-people trust. As far back as Louis Napoleon's rise we were expecting the growth of the corporate industries to accomplish our purposes for us. But be tween the corporation and the collectivity there is a gulf, a chasm that has never yet been passed." "We must bridge it!" cried Hughes. A young man, with a clean-cut English intonation, asked, "Why not fill it up with capitalists?" "No," said Hughes; "Those are merely the first steps," urged the young man, "which may lead now'ere." "They are the first steps," said Hughes, "and they are not to be taken over the bodies of men. We must advance together as brothers, marching abreast, to the music of our own heart-beats." "Good!" said Kane. Ray did not know whether he said it ironically or not. It made the short-haired girl turn round and look at him where he sat behind her. "We in Russia," said another of the foreign-looking people, "have seen the futility of violence. The only force that finally prevails is love; and we must employ it with those that can feel it best, with the little children. The adult world is hopeless; but with the next generation we may do something-everything. The highest office is the teacher's, but we must become as little children if we would teach them, who are of the kingdom of heaven. We must begin by learning of them." "It appears rather complicated," said the young Englishman, gayly, and Ray heard Kane choke off a laugh into a kind of snort. And several of the disciples were eldour cause should erly men," the short-haired girl put in. "Our Russian friend's idea seems to be a version of our Indian policy," said Kane. "Good adults, dead adults.' recognize no class as enemies." "I don't think it matters much to them whether we recognize them or not, if we let them have their own w'y," said the young man, whose cockney origin betrayed itself in an occasional vowel and aspirate. "We shall not let them have their own way unless it is the way of the majority too," Hughes returned. From my point of view they are simply and purely a part of the movement, as entirely so as the proletariat." The difficulty will be to get them to take your point of view," the young man suggested. "It isn't necessary they should," Hughes answered, "though some of them do already. Several of the best friends of our cause are capitalists; and there are large numbers of moneyed people who believe in the nationalization of the telegraphs, railroads, and expresses." "No, no. You don't understand, all of you-" the Russian began, but Hughes interrupted him. "How would you deal with the children?" In communities, here, at the heart of the trouble, and also in the West, where they could be easily made self-supporting." "I don't believe in communities," said Hughes. If anything in the world has thoroughly failed it is communities. They have failed all the more lamentably when they have succeeded financially, because that sort of success comes from competition with the world outside. A community is an aggrandized individual; it is the extension of the egoistic motive to a large family, which looks out for its own good against other families, just as a small family does. I have had enough of communities. The family we hope to found must include all men who are willing to work; it must recognize no aliens except the drones, and the drones must not be suffered to continue. They must either cease to exist by going to work, or by starving to death. But this great family-the real human family-must be no agglutinated structure, no mere federation of trades-unions; it must be a natural growth from indigenous stocks, which will gradually displace individual and corporate enterprises by pushing its roots and its branches out under and over them till they have no longer earth or air to live in. It will then slowly possess itself of the whole field of production and distribution." "Very slowly," said the young Englishman; and he laughed. The debate went on, and it seemed as if there were almost as many opinions as there were people present. At times it interested Ray; at times it bored him; but at all times he kept thinking that if he could get those queer zealots into a book they would be amusing material, though he shuddered to find himself personally among them. Hughes coughed painfully in the air thickened with many breaths, and the windows had to be opened for him; then the rush of the elevated trains filled the room, and the windows were shut again. After one of these interludes, Ray was aware of Hughes appealing to some one in the same tone in which he had asked him to go and send in his whiskey and milk; he looked up, and saw that Hughes was appealing to him. "Young man, have you nothing to say on all these questions? Is it possible that you have not thought of them?" Ray was so startled that for a moment he could not speak. Then he said, hardily, but in the frank spirit of the discussion, "No, I have never thought of them at all." "It is time you did," said Hughes. "All other interests must yield to them. We can have no true art, no real literature, no science worthy the name, till the money stamp of egoism is effaced from success, and it is honored, not paid." The others turned and stared at Ray; old Kane arched his eyebrows at him, and made rings of white round his eyes; he pursed his mouth as if he would like to laugh. Ray saw Mrs. Denton put her hand on her mouth; her husband glowered silently; her sister sat with downcast eyes. Hughes went on: "I find it easier to forgive enmity than indifference; he who is not for us is against us in the worst sense. Our cause has a sacred claim upon all generous and enlightened spirits; they are recreant if they neglect it. But we must be patient, even with indifference; it is hard to bear, but we cannot fight it, and we must bear it. Nothing has astonished me more, since my return to the world, than to find the great mass of men living on as when I left it, in besotted indifference to the vital interests of the hour. I find the politicians still talking of the tariff, just as they used to talk: low tariff and cheap clothes for the working-man; high tariff and large wages for the working-man. Whether we have high tariff or low, the working-man always wins. But he does not seem to prosper. He is poor; he is badly fed and housed; when he is out of work, he starves in his den till he is evicted with a ruthlessness unknown in the history of Irish oppression. Neither party means to do anything for the working-man, and he hasn't risen himself yet to the conception of anything more philosophical than more pay and fewer hours." A sad-faced man spoke from a corner of the room. "We must have time to think, and something to eat to-day. We can't wait till to-morrow." "That is true," Hughes answered. "Many must perish by the way. But we must have patience." His son-in-law spoke up, and his gloomy face darkened. "I have no heart for patience. When I see people perishing by the way, I ask myself how they shall be saved, not some other time, but now. Some one is guilty of the wrong they suffer. How shall the sin be remitted?" His voice shook with fanatical passion. "We must have patience," Hughes repeated. "We are all guilty." "It would be a good thing," said the man with the German accent, "if the low-tariff men would really cut off the duties. The high-tariff men don't put wages up because they have protection, but they would surely put them down if they didn't have it. Then you would see labor troubles everywhere." "Yes," said Hughes; "but such hopes as that would make me hate the cause, if anything could. Evil that good may come? Never! Always good, and good for evil, that the good may come more and more! We must have the true America in the true American way, by reasons, by votes, by laws, and not other wise." The spirit which he rebuked had unlocked the passions of those around him. Ray had a vision of them in the stormy dispute which followed, as waves beating and dashing upon the old man; the head of the perfectly bald man was like a buoy among the breakers, as it turned and bobbed about, in his eagerness to follow all that was said. Suddenly the impulses spent themselves and a calm succeeded. One of the men looked at his watch; they all rose one after another to go. Hughes held them a little longer. "I don't believe the good time is so far off as we are apt to think in our indignation at wrong. It is coming soon, and its mere approach will bring sensible relief. We must have courage and patience." Ray and Kane went away together. Mrs. Denton looked at him with demure question in her eyes when they parted; Peace imparted no feeling in her still glance. Hughes took Ray's little hand in his large, loose grasp, and said, "Come again, young man: come again!" XVIII. "If ever I come again," Ray vowed to himself, when he got into the street, "I think I shall know it!" He abhorred all sorts of social outlandishness; he had always wished to be conformed, without and within, to the great world of smooth respectabilities. If for the present he was willing to Bohemianize a little, it was in his quality of author, and as part of a world-old tradition. To have been mixed up with a lot of howling dervishes like those people was intolerable. He tingled with a sense of personal injury from Hughes's asking him to take part in their discussion; and he was all the angrier because he could not resent it, even to Kane, on account of that young girl, who could not let him see that it distressed her, too; he felt bound to her by the tie of favor done which he must not allow to become painful. He knew, as they walked rapidly down the avenue, crazy with the trains hurtling by over the jingling horse-cars and the clattering holiday crowds, that old Kane was seeking out his with eyes brimming with laughter, but he would not look at him, and he would not see any fun in the affair. He would not speak, and he held his tongue the more resolutely because he believed Kane meant to make him speak first. Boys He had his way; it was Kane who broke the silence, after they left the avenue, and struck into one of the cross-streets leading to the Park. Piles of lumber and barrels of cement blocked two-thirds of its space, in front of half-built houses, which yawned upon it from cavernous depths. were playing over the boards and barrels, and on the rocky hill-side behind the houses, where a portable engine stood at Sunday rest, and tall derricks rose and stretched their idle arms abroad. At the top of the hill a row of brown-stone fronts looked serenely down upon the havoc of stone thrown up by the blasting, as if it were a quiet pleasance. "Amiable prospect, isn't it?" said Kane. "It looks as if Hughes's Afreet has got out of his bottle, and had a good time here, holding on for a rise, and then building on spec. But perhaps we oughtn't to judge of it at this stage, when everything is in transition. Think how beautiful it will be when it is all solidly built up here as it is down-town!" He passed his hand through Ray's lax arm, and leaned affectionately toward him as they walked on, after a little pause he made for this remark on the scenery. "Well, my dear young friend, what do you think of my dear old friend?" "Of Mr. Hughes?" Ray asked, and he restrained himself in a pretended question. "Of Mr. Hughes, and of Mr. Hughes's friends.” Ray flashed out upon this. "I think his friends are a lot of cranks." "Yes; very good; very excellent good! They are cranks. Are they the first you have met in New York?" No; the place seems to be full of them.” "Beginning with the elderly gentleman whom you met the first morning?" "Beginning with the young man who met the elderly gentleman." We Kane smiled with appreciation. "Well, we won't be harsh on those two. won't call them cranks. They are philosophical observers, or inspired dreamers, if you like. As I understand it we |