opposite the stove, with the overalls and shirts hanging over him. When not at work he sits there hour after hour, his large, muscular frame bent forward, and his elbows resting on his knees, and there he endures, in the dumb agony of animal pain, the torment of rheumatism in his legs. He seldom speaks, and never of his sufferings, only sometimes in comically sententious response to something that has interested him. And the men let him alone, knowing by a true intuition that he prefers it so. After the rain let up I happened to pass through the lobby as the men were starting for their work. Old Pete was the last to move. I watched him rising slowly to his feet. In spite of him, his face drew the picture of the hideous pain he bore, but through it shone the clear courage of a man, and his eyes reflected the grim humor of a thought that touched his native sense, and he smiled as he said: "We don't have to work ; we can starve." I have spent three Sundays in the woods. On the first I fled cravenly into the forest hugging a book from out my pack, and the hours flew swiftly along the pages. The second Sunday was another glorious autumn day. By that time I had won a modest place in camp, and could hold up my head with due respect among the I asked several of them whether there was any church service at English Centre. They thought that there was, but they would take no stock at all in my plan of discovery. men. Alone I set out for the village. There was perfect quiet in the mountains, not sound of axe or saw, nor crash of falling trees, nor rumble of bark-wagons; only the tuneful flow and splash of the run, which caught the living sunlight, and flashed it back in radiance through the flushing air, that quivered in the ecstasy of buoyant life. The fire of life flamed in the glowing hues of autumn, and burned with white heat in the hoar-frost which clung to the shaded crevices in the rocks, and along the blades of seared grass, and on the fringe of fallen leaves. And I was free, as free and careless as the mountainstream, and before me was a blessed day of rest! VOL. XXII.—76 Every foot of the road was strangely familiar, but the familiarity lay in an intimate association with some distant past, as of earliest childhood. There was the camp by the dam, and there the Irishman's cabin, where the cow was still munching straw, and the sow wallowing in the mire. Then I came to the fork in the road, where one way led to Wolf's Run. It was a lifetime since I had gone up that way, feeling as cocky as a wedding-guest, and soon had come down again "a sadder and a wiser man." I felt like another Rip Van Winkle as I entered the village, but the marvel lay in there being no change at all, except in the Sunday calm which now possessed the place. The post-office is in a private house, and I knocked in some uncertainty of being able to get my letters; but the postmistress gave them to me with obliging readiness, and with them a cordial invitation to attend the Sunday-school, which, she said, was the only service of that morning. Her invitation was more welcome than she knew, for it was the first of its kind to reach me as a proletaire. I read my letters, and went to the church, which stands at the end of the village street. The service was beginning. As superintendent the postmistress was in charge. About thirty women and girls, and half a dozen boys, made up the school. The conduct of the service I thought intensely interesting. The superintendent was entirely at home in her place, and she valued the opportunity. When the classes grouped themselves for the study of the lesson, a teacher was lacking. I was asked to take the place, and was startled at finding myself in charge of a class of village belles. What their feeling toward the arrangement was, I could only guess; but it was clear that they were not accustomed to being taught by an unshaven, unshorn woodsman, in rough clothes, and boots covered with patches. But the lesson was in my favor, it was the incident of the washing of the disciples' feet at the last Passover. I soon forgot embarrassment in the interest of the text, and in an atmosphere of serious study. Last Sunday I went again to the Sunday-school, where I had my former class to teach. Some preparation had been possible during the week, and the hour passed successfully. Among the announcements was one of a prayer-meeting to be held that night. I reached the church at the hour of the evening service. I opened the door, and there sat a crowded congregation in waiting. The back seats on both sides of the aisle were solid ranks of men, lumbermen, teamsters, and tannery hands, many of them in their working-clothes. There were women and children scattered through the pews farther up, and some boys had overflowed upon the pulpit steps, but most of the company were men. There was no one in the minister's seat; but the postmistress was in place at the organ, and as I entered, she nodded to me in evident expectation of my joining her. I walked forward, and she stepped out in the aisle to meet me. "It's time to begin," she said, quietly. Is your minister not come yet? I asked. was one of our teamsters who lives in the village, and with whom I had often loaded bark. Near the door-I was not quite sure at first, but there could be no mistakenear the door was Fitz-Adams, and not far from him Long-nosed Harry and Phil the Farmer stood together. I was trembling when I began to speak, trembling with awful fear, a fear that was yet a solemn joy; for I had vision then of human hearts hungering to be fed, and, as a sharer in their need, I knew that it was given to me to point them to the Bread of Life. I could speak to them now, for with greater clearness I could see these fellowworkers as they were; strong, brave men who had won the mastery which comes to those who clear the way for progress; giving play in their natural living to the forces which make men free, and growing strong in heart, and in the will to do, as they grew strong of arm and caught the rough cun"Oh, you're going to speak to-night, ning of their trade. Men of many races, you know." yet meeting on the common ground of men all free and under equal chance to make their way; knowing no differences but those of personality, and winning their places in the crew, each man according to his kind, and his rewards according to his skill. Such were they in their outward lives, the physical life within them growing in living ways, and making them the true, efficient workmen that they were. But of the inner life that makes us men, that life wherein we act from choice, and must "give account of the deeds done in the body," that range of action which we call moral, where conscience speaks to us in words of command, there they knew no mastery at all, and least of all the mastery of the moralist. I did not know; for an instant I knew only that there was a cold, hard grip upon my heart which seemed to hold it still, and that in my brain there had begun a mad dance of all that I ever thought I knew. But from out the turmoil a sane thought emerged "This is a company of working-people, who are come to hear a fellowworkman speak to them about our deepest needs." In another instant I was cooler, and a strange, unreasoning peace ensued. I asked the postmistress to select some hymns. She handed me a list chosen with perfect knowledge of those which the congregation most enjoyed. The people were soon singing, thinly at first; but the familiar melody spread, and carried with it a sense of solidarity, in which self was merged and lost, and the swelling sound rolled on, deepening with the voices of the men. Soon it recalled college chapel, with the men in a mood to sing, and Ein' Feste Burg" mounting in the majesty of that deep-toned hymn, until the vaulted ceilings rock, and the archangels above the chancel seem to join in the splendid volume of high praise. But more helpful to me than the singing was the sight of familiar faces. Black Bob stood towering like another Saul above the mass of men; and at his side To them God was a moral ruler, dwelling afar from the daily life of men, and righteousness was a slavish obedience to His laws, and religion a mystic somewhat which was good for women and children and weak men. And yet deep in their own hearts was their supremest need. Life as they knew it brought to them no satisfaction for its craving want. It was not so in other things; they knew their work; and in the overcoming of its difficulties, they had felt the fierce joy of conquest. But confronted with temptations, the difficulties of their inner life, there they had no strength; while lust and passion mastered them, and left their real desire unsatisfied. Here, in respect of mastery, they were slaves, and as regards life, they were dead, having only the need of life. Now that I am on the eve of leaving Fitz-Adams's Camp, I cannot hide from myself my eagerness to go. I have real regrets; for while two weeks and as many days do not constitute a long period, yet time is purely relative, and I shall have There then was their want; it was for a livelier memory of the camp and of Life, abundant, victorious Life. And now I could speak to them of God; of Him who is not far from every one of us, for in Him we live, and move, and have our being;" the living God who reveals Himself in all life, and who became incarnate in the Son of Man, who speaks to us in human words which go straight to our seeking hearts: "I am the way, the truth, and the life." "I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly." "The words that I speak unto you, they are life." 46 46 Strong Son of God!" whose living words quicken us from the death of sin, and set us free. By whose grace we are renewed in the whole man after His image, and enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness." Who was "made sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin, should live unto righteousness." Whose death was not a reconcilement of God to us, but was "God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." Whose Gospel is the glad tidings of this reconciliation, and we are become "ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." And then we prayed, confessing our sinful state, our bondage, our death in sin, and pleading that we might be " transformed by the renewing of our minds, that we might prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God." certain of the men, and a keener interest in them, than I have for places and men with whom my association has been longer. But of the feelings of which I am conscious at leaving, I am surprised at the intensity of the longing to know what has happened during the three weeks nearly since I have seen a newspaper from the great world. I thought little of it as the days passed, but now I am all aglow with desire for news about the progress of the campaigns in New York and Massachusetts and Ohio. And then the last word from abroad has piqued one's curiosity to the utmost as to possible results. Mr. Smith, the leader of the House of Commons, I know is dead; and, as I was leaving Williamsport for the woods, I saw upon the bulletin-boards the announcement of Mr. Parnell's sudden death; but of the political effect of these events, no word has reached me. Is Mr. Balfour or Mr. Goschen to succeed to the leadership of the House? And if Mr. Balfour becomes the First Lord of the Treasury, will he retain the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland? And has the death of Mr. Parnell brought about a reunion between Parnellites and M'Carthyites, or is the breach as hopeless as ever? It will be intensely interesting to find. answers to these questions, and to many more, but after all I am sincerely sorry to leave the camp, and as I go up now to say good-by to Fitz-Adams, who is in his office, it is with the knowledge that I am parting from a man whom it is a privilege to have known. ["The Workers" (The East), herewith concluded, has dealt with conditions in the rural regions. "The Workers (The West), to begin early in 1898, will narrate Mr. Wyckoff's experiences in the crowded labor market of Chicago and elsewhere in the West -ED.] C I By Robert Herrick ILLUSTRATIONS BY HENRY MCCARTER LOVER GREEN was her whole name. Her mother, whom one might presume had been a sentimental person, had called her only daughter Clover from some significance which that name carries to persons of a similar sentimental disposition. Perhaps Miss Green felt the responsibility and the charm of her name; for she did very well as a simile for the flower. She was not outrageously individual, but belonged—you could see it at one glanceto the large family of green clovers, nice young women, coated in a soft, dark velvety substance, with a trig air and a healthy bloom (for she was a red clover, not a paleblooded white one). She carried about with her a conviction of propriety, not chilly or unpleasant; this made her delightfully fresh after all the Bohemianism" of these latter days of art. Palmer Ransom, naturally, did not see the full significance of the name at his first glance, that day when he arrived in the courtyard of numero cinq bis, rue du Vieux Bonhomme, with his two bags and a trunk, the oaths of a reproachful cocher hounding him on. He saw a young woman, whom he took to be an American citizeness, seated commandingly on the edge of an open window above one of many doors, any one of which might be the entrance to the pension of the "admirable Mme. Cuano." A hard-faced, unvenerable old man was bellowing a song up to the windows, and strumming an accompaniment on a dirty guitar. The huge copper sous that fell irregularly on the great paving-stones of the court put emphasis to his lines. The windows which Ransom scanned were filled with pensionnaires. Some, the younger men, were grouped about the American girl on the little stone opening which jutted out over the door below. Ransom had arrived at the crescendo and sat down on his trunk, conscious of his inopportune appearance from the flies. The old man gave out when he had climbed a certain way on his bar; then a splendid free yodel started in from a young fellow who was crouching in the door on the watch for the descending sous. It was one of the golden last days of September, full of the perfection of vintage time, that Paris had discovered late in November and had put in here at random between a week of greasy fog and another week of persistent, passionate rain. The light, pleasantly saturated with the warm sun, fell into the irregular court and made the yellowish walls of the old kennel of buildings to smile. The place was hidden behind a series of wine-cellars-you entered the outer court through a horrifying tunnel like a great cask—and it looked westward on the slope of the hill above the river and Notre Dame. There are mysteries beyond, in the little garden, on the sloping side, behind the thick walls of this outer court, which we will come to later. Ransom could see above him a sort of half-house jutting out, superimposed on the fourth story upon the wine-cellars. It was a little signal-box, or light-house tower, with its main window to the river, and a side slit that winked at the low buildings and the court-yard below. And that court-yard-once much more brave than now-with its tranquil, sunny air, the old vagabond and the guitar, the vigorous yodel echoing back from the lantern tower, and the listening folk at the windows-it had the grave unreality of a scene at the opera, of a story from Bandello; even up to the dais where sat Clover Green smiling indulgently, surrounded by men. When the music stopped-the man with the guitar and the yodeler were on the hunt between the cobbles for the sous—a sense of his position came over Ransom : he looked up straight into the kind, velvety eyes of Clover Green. She was smiling |