are all dreamers. If we like a man's dream, we call him a prophet; if we don't like his dream, we call him a crank. Now, what is the matter with the dreams, severally and collectively, of my dear old friend and his friends? Can you deny that any one of their remedies, if taken faithfully according to the directions blown on the bottle, would cure the world of all its woes inside of six months?"

The question gave Ray a chance to vent his vexation impersonally. "What is the matter with the world?" he burst out. "I don't see that the world is so very sick. Why isn't it going on very well? I don't understand what this talk is all about. I don't see what those people have got to complain of. All any one can ask is a fair chance to show how much his work is worth, and let the best man win. What's the trouble? Where's the wrong?" "Ah," said Kane, "what a pity you didn't set forth those ideas when Hughes called upon you!"

mean dependence, and David Hughes is proud."

They had passed through lofty ranks of flats, and they now came to the viaduct carrying the northern railways; one of its noble arches opened before them like a city gate, and the viaduct in its massy extent was like a wall that had stood a hundred sieges. Beyond they found open fields, with the old farm fences of stone still enclosing them, but with the cellars of city blocks dug out of the lots. In one place there was a spread of low sheds, neighbored by towering apartment-houses; some old cart-horses were cropping the belated grass; and comfortable companies of hens and groups of turkeys were picking about the stableyard; a shambling cottage fronted on the avenue next the park, and drooped behind its dusty, leafless vines.

"You would call them a crew, then? Perhaps they were a crew," said Kane. "I don't know why a reformer should be so grotesque; but he is, and he is always the easy prey of caricature. I couldn't help feeling to-day how very like the burlesque reformers the real reformers are. And they are always the same, from generation to generation. For all outward difference, those men and brethren of both sexes at poor David's were very like a group of old-time abolitionists conscientiously qualifying themselves for tar and feathers. Perhaps you don't like being spoken to in meeting?"

"No, I don't," said Ray, bluntly.

I fancied a certain reluctance in you at the time, but I don't think poor David meant any harm. He preaches patience, but I think he secretly feels that he's got to hurry, if he's going to have the kingdom of heaven on earth; and he wants every one to lend a hand."

For the reason, or from the instinct, that forbade Ray to let out his wrath directly against Hughes, he now concealed his pity. He asked stiffly: "Couldn't he be got into some better place? Where he wouldn't be stunned when he tried to keep from suffocating?"

"No, I don't know that he could," said Kane, with a pensive singleness rare in him. "Any help of that kind would

to get in his work."

"Wouldn't it be rather too much like that eremitism which he's so down on?" asked Ray, with a persistence in his effect of indifference.

"Perhaps it would, perhaps it would," Kane consented, as they struck across into the Park. The grass was still very green, though here and there a little sallow; the leaves, which had dropped from the trees in the October rains, had lost their fire, and lay dull and brown in the little hollows and at the edges of the paths and the bases of the rocks; the oaks kept theirs, but in death; on some of the ash-trees and lindens the leaves hung in a pale reminiscence of their summer green.

He

"I understood the son-in-law to want a hermitage somewhere-a co-operative hermitage, I suppose," Ray went on. did not feel bound to spare the son-in-law, and he put contempt into his tone. "Ah, yes," said Kane. "What did you make of the son-in-law?"

"I don't know. He's a gloomy sprite. What is he, anyway? His wife spoke of his work."

66

'Why, it's rather a romantic story, I believe," said Kane. "He was a young fellow who stopped at the community on his way to a place where he was going to find work; he's a wood-engraver. I believe he's always had the notion that the

the lines of truth. I don't justify Nature altogether. She is not free from certain little foibles, caprices; perhaps that's why we call her she. But I don't think that, with all her faults, she's quite so bad as Business. In that we seem to have gone to Nature for her defects. Why copy her weakness and bad faith? Why not study her

"Well, I don't know! But if it isn't evident to you that Mrs. Denton is hardly fitted to be the guide, philosopher, and friend of such a man

Ray would not pursue this branch of the inquiry. "His notion of what the world wanted was to have its cities eliminated. Then he thought it would be all serene." "Ah, that wouldn't do," said Kane. Cities are a vice, but they are essential to us now. We could not live without them; perhaps we are to be saved by them. But it is well to return to Nature from time to time."

"I thought I heard you saying some rather disparaging things of Nature a little while ago," said Ray, with a remaining grudge against Kane, and with a young man's willingness to convict his elder of any inconsistency, serious or unserious.

"Oh, primeval Nature, yes. But I have nothing but praise for this kindthe kind that man controls and guides. It is outlaw Nature that I object to, the savage survival from chaos, the mother of earthquakes and cyclones, blizzards and untimely frosts, inundations and indigestions. But ordered Naturethe Nature of the rolling year; night and day, and seed-time and harvest—“

"The seasons," Ray broke in, scornfully, from the resentment still souring in his soul, "turn themselves upside down and wrong end to, about as often as financial panics occur, and the farmer that has to rely on them is as apt to get left as the husbandman that sows and reaps in Wall Street."

ence in laying the bases of civilization? We don't go to her for the justification of murder, incest, robbery, gluttony, though you can find them all in her. We have our little prejudice against these things, and we seem to derive it from somewhere outside of what we call Nature. Why not go to that Somewhere for the law of economic life? But come," Kane broke off, gayly, let us babble of green fields; as for God, God, I hope we have no need to think of such things yet. Please Heaven, our noses are not as sharp as pens, by a long way. I don't wonder you find it a beautiful and beneficent world, in spite of our friends yonder, who want to make it prettier and better, in their way." Kane put his arm across Ray's shoulder, and pulled him affectionately towards him. "Are you vexed with me for having introduced you to those people? I have been imagining something of the kind."

"Oh, no--" Ray began.

"I didn't really mean to stay for Hughes's conventicle," said Kane. "Chapley was wise, and went in time, before he could feel the wild charm of those visionaries; it was too much for me; when they began to come, I couldn't go. I forgot how repugnant the golden age has always been to the heart of youth, which likes the nineteenth century much better. The fact is, I forgot that I had brought you till it was too late to take you away." He laughed, and Ray, more reluctantly, laughed with him.

"I have often wondered," he went on, "how it is we lose the youthful point of view. We have it some night, and the next morning we haven't it; and we can hardly remember what it was. I don't suppose you could tell me what the youthful point of view of the present day is, though I should recognize that of forty years ago. I--"

He broke off to look at a party of horsemen pelting by on the stretch of the smooth hard road, and dashing into a bridle - path beyond. They were heavy

young fellows, mounted on perfectly groomed trotters, whose round haunches trembled and dimpled with their hard pace.

66

a

"Perhaps that is the youthful point of view now: the healthy, the wealthy, the physically strong, the materially rich. Well, I think ours was better; pallid and poor in person and in purse as we imagined the condition of the ideal man to be. There is something," said Kane, little more expressive of the insolence of money in one of those brutes than in the most glittering carriage and pair. I think if I had in me the material for really hating a fellow-man, I should apply it to the detestation of the rider of one of those animals. But I haven't. I am not in prospective need even, and I am at the moment no hungrier than a gentleman ought to be who is going to lunch with a lady in the Mandan Flats. By-the-way! Why shouldn't you come with me? They would be delighted to see you. A brilliant young widow, with a pretty stepdaughter, is not to be lunched with every day, and I can answer for your wel

Ray freed himself.

"I'm sorry I can't You must excuse me;

could get his story back from Chapley & Co., he would rewrite the passages that characterized the heroine, and make it less like the every-day, simple prettiness of his first love. He had always known that this did not suit the character he had imagined; he now saw that it required a more complex and mystical charm. But he did not allow himself to formulate these volitions and perceptions, any more than his conviction that he had now a double reason for keeping away from Mr. Brandreth and from Miss Hughes. He spent the week in a sort of ecstasy of forbearance. On Saturday afternoon he feigned the necessity of going to ask Mr. Brandreth how he thought a novel in verse, treating a strictly American subject in a fantastic way, would succeed. He really wished to learn something without seeming to wish it about his manuscript, but he called so late in the afternoon that he found Mr. Brandreth putting his desk in order just before starting home. He professed a great pleasure at sight of Ray, and said he wished he would come part of the way home with him: he wanted to have a little talk.

go. But I can't.

to you.

66

But-"

You don't trust me!" "Oh, yes, I do.

But I don't feel quite up to meeting people just now. I'll push on down town. I'm rather tired. Goodby."

Kane held his hand between both his palms. "I wonder what the real reason is! Is it grudge, or pride, or youth?"

"Neither," said Ray. "It's clothes. My boots are muddy, and I've got on my second-best trousers."

Ah, now you are frank with me, and you give me a real reason. Perhaps you are right. I dare say I should have thought so once."

ΧΙΧ.

Ray did not go to deliver any of his letters that afternoon; he decided now that it would be out of taste to do so on Sunday, as he had already doubted that it would be, in the morning. He passed the afternoon in his room, trying from time to time to reduce the turmoil of his reveries to intelligible terms in verse, and in poetic prose. He did nothing with them; in the end, though, he was aware of a new ideal, and he resolved that if he

place, some day, as soon as we can get turned round. Mrs. Brandreth is doing first-rate, now; and that boy-well, sir, he's a perfect Titan. I wish you could see him undressed. He's just like the figure of the infant Hercules strangling the serpent when he grips the nurse's finger. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I believe that fellow recognizes me, and distinguishes between me and his mother. I suppose it's my hat-I come in with my hat on, you know, just to try him; and when he catches sight of that hat, you ought to see his arms go!"

The paternal rhapsodies continued a long time after they were in the street, and Ray got no chance to bring in either his real or pretended business. He listened with mechanical smiles and hollow laughter, alert at the same time for the slightest vantage which Mr. Brandreth should give him. But the publisher said of his own motion,

"Oh, by-the-way, you'll be interested to know that our readers' reports on your story are in."

"Are they?" Ray gasped. He could not get out any more.

Mr. Brandreth went on: "I didn't examine the reports very attentively myself, but I think they were favorable, on the whole. There were several changes suggested; I don't recall just what. But you can see them all on Monday. We let Miss Hughes go after lunch on Saturdays, and she generally takes some work home with her, and I gave them to her to put in shape for you. I thought it would be rather instructive for you to see the different opinions in the right form. I believe you can't have too much method in these things.'

"Of course," said Ray, in an anguish of hope and fear. The street seemed to go round; he hardly knew where he was. He bungled on inarticulately before he could say: "I believe in method, too. But I'm sorry I couldn't have had the reports to-day, because I might have had Sunday to think the suggestions over, and see what I could do with them."

"Well, I'm sorry, too. She hadn't been gone half an hour when you came in. If I'd thought of your happening in! Well, it isn't very long till Monday! She'll have them ready by that time. I make it a rule myself to put all business out of my mind from 2 P.M. on Saturday till Monday 9 A.M., and I think you'll find it an advantage, too. I won't do business, and I won't talk business, and I won't think business after 2 o'clock on Saturday. I believe in making Sunday a day of rest and family enjoyment. We have an early dinner; and then I like to have my wife read or play to me, and now we have in the baby and that amuses us."

Ray forced himself to say that as a rule he did not believe in working on Sunday either; he usually wrote letters. He abruptly asked Mr. Brandreth how he thought it would do for him to go and ask Miss Hughes for a sight of the readers' reports in the rough.

Mr. Brandreth laughed. "You are anxious! Do you know where she lives?"

"Oh, yes; I stopped there last Sunday with Mr. Kane on our way to the Park. I saw Mr. Chapley there."

"Oh!" said Mr. Brandreth, with the effect of being arrested by the last fact in something he might otherwise have said. It seemed to make him rather unhappy. "Then you saw Miss Hughes's father?"

VOL. LXXXV.-No. 505.-5

"Yes; and all his friends," Ray answered, in a way that evidently encouraged Mr. Brandreth to go on.

'Yes? What did you think of them?" "I thought they were mostly harmless; but one or two of them ought to have been in the violent wards."

"Did Mr. Chapley meet them?"

"Oh, no; he went away before any of them came in. As Mr. Kane took me, I had to stay with him."

Mr. Brandreth got back a good deal of his smiling complacency, which had left him at Ray's mention of Mr. Chapley in connection with Hughes. "Mr. Chapley and Mr. Hughes are old friends.”

"They date back to the Brook Farm days together."

"Mr. Hughes is rather too much of the Hollingsworth type for my use," said Ray. He wished Mr. Brandreth to understand that he had no sympathy with Hughes's wild-cat philosophy, both because he had none, and because he believed it would be to his interest with Mr. Brandreth to have none.

"I've never seen him," said Mr. Brandreth. "I like Mr. Chapley's loyalty to his friends-it's one of his fine traits; but I don't see any necessity for my taking them up. He goes there every Sunday morning to see Mr. Hughes, and they talk political economy together. You know Mr. Chapley has been a good deal interested in this altruistic agitation." "No, I didn't," said Ray.

Mr.

"Yes. You can't very well keep clear of it altogether. I was mixed up in it myself at one time: our summer place is on the outskirts of a manufacturing town in Massachusetts, and we had our Romeo and Juliet for the benefit of a social union for the work - people; we made over two hundred dollars for them. Chapley was a George man in '86. Not that he agreed with the George men exactly; but he thought there ought to be some expression against the way things are going. You know a good many of the nicest kind of people went the same way at that time. I don't object to that kind of thing as long as it isn't carried too far. Mr. Chapley used to see a good deal of an odd stick of a minister at our summer place that had got a good some of the new ideas in a pretty crooked kind of shape; and then he's read Tolstoï a good

deal, and he's been influenced by him. I think Hughes is a sort of safety-valve for Mr. Chapley, and that's what I tell the family. Mr. Chapley isn't a fool, and he's always had as good an eye for the main chance as anybody. That's all."

Ray divined that Mr. Brandreth would not have entered into this explanation of his senior partner and father-in-law, except to guard against the injurious inferences which he might draw from having met Mr. Chapley at Hughes's, but he did not let his guess appear in his words. "I don't wonder he likes Mr. Hughes," he said. "He's fine, and he seems a light of sanity and reason, among the jack-alanterns he gathers round him. He isn't at all Tolstoïan.

"He's a gentleman, born and bred," said Mr. Brandreth, "and he was a rich man for the days before he began his communistic career. And Miss Hughes is a perfect lady. She's a cultivated girl too, and she reads a great deal. I'd rather have her opinion about a new book than half the critics' I know of, because I know I could get it honest, and I know it would be intelligent. Well, if you're going up there, you'll want to be getting across to the avenue, to take the elevated." He added, "I don't mean to give you the impression that we've made up our minds about your book, yet. We haven't. I've only glanced over the opinions of our readers, and I merely know that they're favorable to it in some respects from a literary point of view. But a book is a commercial venture as well as a literary venture, and we've got to have a powwow about that side of it before we come to any sort of conclusion. You under

stand?"

"Oh, yes, I understand that," said Ray, "and I'll try not to be unreasonably hopeful," but at the same moment his heart leaped with hope.

"Well, that's right," said Mr. Brandreth, taking his hand for parting. He held it, and then he said, with a sort of desperate impulse, "By-the-way, why not come home with me, now, and take dinner with us?"

XX.

Ray's heart sank. He was so anxious to get at those opinions; and yet he did not like to refuse Mr. Brandreth; a little thing might prejudice the case; he ought to make all the favor at court that he could for his book. "I-I'm afraid it mightn't

be convenient-at such a time-for Mrs. Brandreth—”

"Oh, yes it would," said Mr. Brandreth in the same desperate note. "Come along. I don't know that Mrs. Brandreth will be able to see you, but I want you to see my boy; and we can have a bachelor bite together, anyway."

Ray yielded, and the stories of the baby began again when he moved on with Mr. Brandreth. It was agony for him to wrench his mind from his story, which he kept turning over and over in it, trying to imagine what the readers had differed about, and listen to Mr. Brandreth saying, "Yes, sir, I believe that child knows his grandmother and his nurse apart, as well as he knows his mother and me. He's got his likes and dislikes already: he cries whenever his grandmother takes him. By-the-way, you'll see Mrs. Chapley at dinner, I hope. She's spending the day with us."

“Oh, I'm very glad," said Ray, wondering if the readers objected to his introduction of hypnotism.

"She's a woman of the greatest character," said Mr. Brandreth, "but she has some old-fashioned notions about children. I want my boy to be trained as a boy from the very start. I think there's nothing like a manly man, unless it's a womanly woman. I hate anything masculine about a girl; a girl ought to be yielding and gentle; but I want my boy to be self-reliant from the word Go. I believe in a man's being master in his own house; his will ought to be law, and that's the way I shall bring up my boy. Mrs. Chapley thinks there ought always to be a light in the nurse's room, but I don't. I want my boy to get used to the dark, and not be afraid of it, and I shall begin just as soon as I can, without seeming arbitrary. Mrs. Chapley is the best soul in the world, and of course I don't like to differ with her."

"Of course," said Ray. The mention of relationship made him think of the cousin in his story; if he had not had the cousin killed, he thought it would have been better; there was too much bloodshed in the story.

They turned into a cross-street from Lexington Avenue, where they had been walking, and stopped at a pretty little apartment-house, which had its door painted black and a wide brass plate enclosing its key-hole, and wore that air of