"'They never fail who dieIn a great cause: the block may soak their gore:Their heads may sodden in the sun: their limbsBe strung to city gates and castle walls—But still their spirit walks abroad. Though years[70]Elapse and others share as dark a doom,They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughtsWhich overpower all others, and conductThe world at last to freedom!'"
"'They never fail who dieIn a great cause: the block may soak their gore:Their heads may sodden in the sun: their limbsBe strung to city gates and castle walls—But still their spirit walks abroad. Though years[70]Elapse and others share as dark a doom,They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughtsWhich overpower all others, and conductThe world at last to freedom!'"
A shout of wild applause rent the air as the last note of Byron's immortal song fell from her beautiful lips. And then, in a low, intense voice, she closed her speech with a thrilling appeal for human brotherhood. To Norman, who hung on her lips, the slight girlish figure seemed transformed before their eyes into a radiant messenger of the spirit. And when the sweet womanly tones at last broke and choked into deep-drawn sobs, his soul and body seemed no longer his own. As her last words sank into his heart: "From to-day let each of us swear allegiance to but one flag, the deep-red emblem of human blood, God's sign of universal brotherhood!" Norman leaped to his feet, sprang on the platform, and while the crowd swayed in a frenzy of applause, hauled down the Stars and Stripes and quickly raised the big red standard of Socialism which was thrown across the speaker's table.
And then the great crowd seemed to go mad. Wave after wave of cheering rose and fell, rose and fell, in apparently unending power. Catherine threw her arms around Barbara in a paroxysm of emotion, while the big figure of Wolf toweredabove them both, shouting and gesturing like a madman. Barbara at last lifted her hand and, as the storm subsided, began the Marseillaise hymn.
The first stirring notes had just swept the audience when the stalwart figure of Colonel Worth suddenly appeared on the platform, his face a blaze of anger, his magnificent figure erect, every nerve and muscle drawn to the highest tension.
He stepped to the edge of the stand, lifted his head, and his voice rang over the crowd like the sudden boom of a cannon:
"Silence!"
He didn't repeat the word.
The singing stopped, and every eye was riveted on the group that stood on the platform.
The Colonel confronted Wolf, and shot his words at him as though from a machine-gun.
"Who lowered that flag?"
A moment of silence followed. The Colonel spoke with increasing rapidity.
"Who lowered that flag? The man who did it must answer to me!"
Some one behind him moved, and the Colonel turned, confronting Norman.
"I did it, Governor," was the quiet answer.
"You?" the father gasped.
"Yes," said the even, firm voice.
"Haul that red rag down and raise the flagback to its place!" The Colonel's voice was low and thick with rage.
Elena put her hand on his arm and said gently:
"Guardie!"
"Will you do it?" he firmly asked, ignoring Elena, and holding Norman with his gaze.
The young man hesitated an instant, met his father's look with a deadly straight stare, and slowly replied:
"I will not."
A smothered cry from Barbara, half joy, half pain, was the only sound that followed, until the Colonel said:
"Then I'll do it for you."
Amid a dead silence he hauled down the red flag, threw it on the floor, boldly stamped on it, made fast the Stars and Stripes, and quickly raised it to the top of its staff. He turned to the crowd, and in clear-cut, sharp tones of command shouted:
"This is my flag, my house, my lawn. Get off it! And do it quick!"
As the crowd hastened away, he turned to Norman:
"You and I must come to an understanding at once, young man," he said, with angry emphasis.
"I'll meet you in the library in thirty minutes," was Norman's firm reply as he led Barbara from the platform and joined the retreating throng.
Lift the Flag Back to its Place.Lift the Flag Back to its Place.ToList
Lift the Flag Back to its Place.ToList
The Colonel paced the floor of his library with increasing anger as he waited the return of Norman. Never in his life had his whole being been so abandoned to incontrollable rage. He had always been a man of fiery temper, but an iron will had held his temper in control.
His most intimate business associates had always found him suave, persuasive, and genial in every hour of trial. Never once had they heard a threat or an idle boast fall from his lips. He had the rare faculty of beating his enemies in a fight in which no quarter was asked or given, and coming out of it with his bitterest foe turned into a friend. This was one of the secrets of his fortune—an instinctive leadership among powerful men.
For the first time he realized that he had challenged the one man in all his personal acquaintance about whose character he knew nothing—his own son. For the first time he realized that they were strangers. He had been absorbed in the big affairs of life. He had taken the boy for granted. Since the death of his mother twelveyears ago, Norman had spent most of his time at school.
The Colonel had always been in command. His word had been law for so many years, it brought him up with a disagreeable start to find that the one man with whom his life was bound, and in whom his hopes centred, could dare thus to defy and flaunt his wishes. It was the most disgusting, enraging fact he had ever encountered. The longer he confronted the situation the more furious and blind his anger became.
Elena had timidly entered the room, and stood watching him gravely before she spoke.
"Has he returned from that woman yet?" the Colonel asked with sudden energy.
"No, and I hope he will stay all day," she answered slowly.
"But he won't," the father snapped.
"I'm sure he will not," the girl sighed. "I don't like you to-day, Guardie."
"You, too, side with these fanatics then?"
"No. I hate them—hate everything they say and do and stand for. I loathe the very sight of them. But you were unfair to Norman."
"Unfair? How?"
"You allowed him the widest liberty to do as he pleased, think as he pleased, associate with whom he pleased, and then all of a sudden you sprangon that platform and insulted him before his invited guests."
"How could I dream that he would commit such an act of insane treason before my very eyes?"
"You make no allowance for the spell of Barbara Bozenta's eloquence. I don't like her, but she's a wonderful little woman, and I envy her her power over men."
"I'll end this folly to-day," was the Colonel's firm announcement.
"I'm not so sure," Elena warned.
"I'll show you!"
She came close and laid her hand on the Colonel's arm.
"Will you promise me one thing, Guardie?" she asked, tenderly.
The anger faded from the strong face, and his voice sank low.
"I'm afraid I've never been able to refuse you anything, child. It's on your account, I think, I'm most angry with Norman to-day."
"You promise?" she repeated.
"Yes, what is it?" he said, bending to kiss her smooth, white forehead.
"Promise to put all anger out of your heart and talk to Norman as a father, not as an enemy—won't you?"
"An enemy?" the Colonel slowly asked.
"Yes. I thought you were going to strike him once. It would have been horrible. I never could have forgiven you for that. You've always been my hero, Guardie—I never saw you give way to anger before. I don't like it. You'll talk to him lovingly and tenderly as a father, won't you?"
"Yes, dear, for your sake, I will," he answered.
"Then I'll tell him to come. I asked him to wait outside until I saw you."
She turned and quickly left the room. In a moment Norman entered and stood facing his father.
The Colonel flushed with anger at sight of the insolence with which the younger man calmly surveyed him.
"Well, sir," the father said, at length, "have you nothing to say to me after what has occurred to-day?"
"I was under the impression that you had something to say to me," was the cool answer.
By an effort of will the older man crushed back an angry retort, smiled, and said:
"Sit down, please—I've a good deal to say to you."
Norman threw himself lazily into a chair, and continued to watch his father with a curiousexpression of half-amused contempt. The Colonel stood in silence, evidently struggling with his emotions, and feeling for the right word with which to begin.
Norman anticipated him.
"Honestly, now, Governor, just between us, don't you think you were a little bit absurd to-day?"
"Absurd?" his father broke in with rising accent.
"Just a little childish about a piece of red, white, and blue cloth?"
"Perhaps so, my boy," was the answer. "Just about as absurd as you were over the red rag you lifted in its place. Why did you do it?"
"On the impulse of the moment, to express my feeling of contempt for war, and my faith in my fellow man."
"Exactly. So I acted on the impulse of the moment to express my contempt for that crowd of fools and fanatics—my loyalty and faith in my country."
"I can't understand how a man of your age, poise and pride, culture and power, could be so foolish. A sixteen-year-old school-boy on the Fourth of July, yes! But you——"
"Norman," the Colonel interrupted, in even tones, "I'm sorry I've been too busy for us to get acquainted. It's time we began. It mayinterest you to know that I, too, hate war—learned to hate it long before your Socialist orator was born—learned it in the grim University of Hell—war itself. Socialism has no patent on the hope of universal peace. I am a member of a peace society. I have always believed the Civil War should have been prevented. All the Negroes on this earth are not worth the blood and tears of one year of that struggle. Whether it could have been prevented God alone knows. When it came I volunteered—a drummer-boy at fourteen—and marched to the front beneath the flag you tore down to-day."
"I never thought of that, Governor—honestly, I never did!" the boy exclaimed.
"I went in," the Colonel continued, "with my head full of silly rubbish about the glory of war. When I beat the call to my first charge, and saw the men I knew and loved shot to pieces, and heard their groans and cries for water, I had no more delusions. I worked on the field that night until twelve o'clock, helping the men who were wounded—enemies as well as comrades. I learned the brotherhood of man and the meaning of red blood in the big, tragic school of life, my son. Many a boy in gray, whom I had fought, died in my arms while my heart ached for his loved ones in some far-away Southern home.
"But I knew the war had to be when once it was begun. I was fighting for the flag I loved—and I grew to love it better than life. To you it may be a bit of red, white, and blue bunting; to me it is the symbol of truth and right, liberty and human progress.
"My people in western North Carolina were all slave-holders and loyal to their state, except my father. He hated slavery, loved the Union, and moved on westward before the war. I saw them bury him in the flag you tore down to-day, my boy.
"Many a night I've lain on the ground looking up at the stars before the dawn of a day of battle and seen visions of that flag flying triumphant in the sky. I've seen the men who carried it shot down again and again, and another snatch it from their dying grasp and bear it on to victory.
"I grew not only to love it, but to believe in it with all the passionate faith of my soul. I believe in its destiny, in its sublime mission to humanity. The older I've grown and the more I've seen of my fellow man, the wider I've travelled in foreign lands, the deeper has become my conviction that our flag symbolizes the noblest, freest ideal ever born in the soul of man; that we have but to live up to its standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, and the kingdom of human brotherhood is already here.
"After the war, I joined the regular army, not because I loved war, but because there seemed nothing else for me to do at the time. I was absolutely alone in the world. At twenty-five I was in command of a company on the frontier. I had not been in battle since the end of the Civil War, when suddenly I found myself surrounded by a horde of hostile Indians, and I had to turn my machine guns on them and mow them down. The slaughter was something terrific. As the last charge was made I saw a young squaw retreat in the face of a withering fire, walk backward facing our men, holding a bundle of something behind her body. She fell at last, riddled with bullets. I rode up where she lay, and found the bundle to be a little Indian baby boy. He was unhurt, and stretched out his hand to me in friendly baby greeting. I found the squaw quite dead, and discovered the child was not her own. She was simply trying to save it for the tribe. I took the child and educated him. But he went back to the free life of the plains. I found him again, and made him the gamekeeper of our mountain preserves."
"You mean Saka?" Norman asked.
"Yes. That night as I lay in my tent I saw war as it is—a hideous, savage nightmare. From that moment I hated the service, hated itsiron laws of discipline, its cruel machinery devised for suppressing the individuality of its members. I saw that night a larger vision of life. I made up my mind to create, not to kill—to build up, not to tear down. I left the army and mastered mining.
"Your leather-lunged agitators say that I stole my millions from the earnings of the men who worked for me. A more stupid lie was never uttered. I invented improved mining machinery. I made deserts blossom and gave employment to thousands of men who couldn't think for themselves. I did their thinking for them, and set their tasks. I have made millions, and have added tens of millions to the wealth of the West."
"If labour is the creator of all wealth can one man ever earn a million dollars?" Norman interrupted.
"Manual labour is not the creator of wealth. The brain which conceives is the creator of wealth. The hand which executes these plans is merely the automaton moved by a superior power."
"Yet nothing could be accomplished without it," persisted Norman.
His father lifted his hand with a gesture of command.
"We'll not discuss the theory of Socialism to-day, my boy. I grant you have plausible arguments which skilful demagogues are using with more and more efficiency. I don't object to your study of this subject. I'm rather pleased at the serious turn your energies have taken. What I do object to is your continued association with the kind of people who made up that crowd to-day—people who make the agitation of the revolutionary programme of the Socialists a daily profession, people who are seeking to destroy modern civilization itself."
"You will have to come down to earth, Governor," Norman said, "in your indictment of these people. The time has gone by when you can scare anybody with a few high-sounding phrases. If modern civilization is rotten, it ought to be destroyed, and who cares if it is?"
"The issue between us, my boy," the Colonel continued, gravely, "is not an academic one. It is not open to discussion. Some of the people you are associating with have criminal records. If they continue their present wild harangues they will be shot down like dogs in the streets. I cannot afford to have my name even under the suspicion of sympathy for them, through you. Do you understand me?"
"I think I do," Norman replied, holding his father's steady gaze.
"You are my son and the heir of my fortune. But you must remember that I am the master of this establishment."
"I am aware of that fact, sir," the boy replied, in cold tones.
"I trust that it will not be necessary, then, for me to repeat to you my first positive order—that you will immediately sever your connection with the Socialist Club, and never again appear in public or private with the three people who were on that platform to-day."
"It will not be necessary for you to repeat your order," the young athlete replied, with a curious smile and a slight tightening of the lips.
"I thought as much."
Norman laughed, and the Colonel's eyes began to blaze.
"What do you mean, sir?" he sternly asked.
"That it will be unnecessary for you to repeat your order, for the very simple reason that I'm a man. I've the right to do my own thinking, and I propose to do it."
With a quick stride the Colonel confronted the young rebel, his breath quick and laboured, his face aflame with unbridled rage.
"You dare thus to defy my wishes?"
"If you put it that way, yes."
The Colonel stepped to the door and opened it.
"You will obey my order or get out of this house never to enter it again. Take your choice!"
"You mean it?" the younger man asked, with sullen emphasis.
"Exactly what I say," was the cold reply.
Norman turned without a word, seized his hat, and left the room. As he reached the end of the corridor, and placed his hand on the front door, his father's voice rang out suddenly:
"Norman!"
He paused, and looked back without taking his hand from the knob.
"You can't be such a fool!" the Colonel cried.
"It looks that way, Governor!"
He opened the door, softly closed it, and was gone.
Norman's break with his father created a sensation. The flag episode, coming on the Fourth of July and at the very hour when the guns of the forts were thundering their celebration of the fleet's victory at Santiago, presented the dramatic contrast which stirred the indignation of the public to unusual depths. The morning papers devoted from four to five columns to the story. The remarkable speech of Barbara Bozenta was reported in full, with a sketch of her life, interspersed with portraits of the Wolfs, of Norman, Elena, his father, the palatial home on Nob Hill, and the country estate where the stirring little drama had been played.
The Socialist cause received a tremendous impetus. The very violence of the editorial assaults on their programme reacted in their favour. Thousands of men who did not know the meaning of the word Socialism began to read and think and discuss its principles. Their meetings were crowded, and the fame of the littlebrown-eyed Joan of Arc became so great it was no longer possible for her to pass through the streets without an escort.
All sorts of stories about the relations of the famous millionaire and his son filled the air. Some were printed, others were vague rumours. A sensational paper published the story that they had actually come to blows, and had fought a duel in the big library which might have ended fatally for one or both but for the timely interference of Colonel Worth's ward, Elena Stockton.
Norman became at once the hero of the Socialist's cause. His appearance at a meeting was the signal for pandemonium to break loose. He secured employment on a sensational daily paper, and his signed articles were made a feature.
Colonel Worth was so enraged over the vulgar notoriety with which the incident had overwhelmed him that he denied himself to all callers, refused to speak to a reporter or to allow a word to be uttered in confirmation or denial of any stories printed or rumoured.
He issued orders that Norman's name should never again be spoken in his house.
When he made this announcement to Elena her full, red lips, quivered and she looked at him reproachfully.
"I mean it, Elena," he said, sternly.
The girl spoke in tenderness.
"I don't believe you, Guardie. It isn't like you at all. I'll not mention his name to a servant, but I will to you."
"I don't want to hear it!"
"That's because you know you've done a great wrong."
"I accept the responsibility. It's done, and that's the end of it."
"Nothing ends until it ends right, Guardie," spoke the soft, even voice.
"I know it's hard on you, dear," the Colonel responded, with feeling. "It was for your sake I made the issue. If he has turned from you for a loud-mouthed vulgar agitator, he's not worth a thought. Forget that he lives. I'm going to leave my fortune to you."
"I don't want it at the price, Guardie," she replied, slipping her arm around his neck and resting her head on his shoulder. "I couldn't be happy with such a fortune. What you've done hurts me more than it hurts Norman."
"Yes, yes. I know that you love him, child, but your happiness could not be found among a crowd of criminals and revolutionists."
"I'm not thinking of myself," was the lowresponse as she withdrew from his arms, "I was thinking of you."
"Of me?"
"Yes. You've broken my idol. To me you were the one perfect man in the world. I didn't know you. I didn't know that you were hard and cold and cruel and selfish and proud."
"I'm not, Elena."
"You allowed Norman to drift into any crazy theory that might strike his fancy. And the moment he fails to agree with your views you turn like a madman and drive him into the streets."
"He went of his own accord. I gave him his choice."
"And I admire his pluck. It was a manly thing to do."
"It was the act of a fool."
"Yet, you know, Guardie, in your heart of hearts you admire him for it. He showed you that he was made of the same stuff as his father."
The Colonel scowled, and the girl took courage.
"I'm going to meet him this evening——"
"I forbid it!"
"You can't help it," she cried, as the tears slowly gathered. "I'm going to tell him you wish to see and talk with him again."
"On one condition only—his absolute obedience to my wishes."
"I love him all the more for defying you—love him better than I ever did in my life. And—and, Guardie—I don't love you any more. You are cruel and unjust."
With a sob she turned and left the room.
Elena's tears had shaken the Colonel's confidence in his position as nothing else could possibly have done. Since she had finished her course in college two years before, and he had come in daily contact with her strong personality, a most intimate and perfect sympathy had grown between them. He had never before known her intuitive judgment to be wrong. Her impressions of character especially he had found singularly accurate, her sense of right and her good taste nearly perfect.
He retired to his room at night with a deep sense of uneasiness. His anger had cooled, and in its stead a feeling of depression slowly settled. From every nook and corner came memories of the boy he had driven from his door. His pictures hung on the walls and stared at him from every piece of furniture on which a frame could be placed. He had learned photography as a pastime years before the kodak was invented, and most of the pictures he had taken himself.
One photograph in particular, which stood by theclock on the mantel, set in a heavy frame of hammered gold, which he had made himself from the product of his first mine, riveted and held his attention. His first impulse was to tear these pictures all down and throw them in the fire. He had picked this one up first, to carry out his furious impulse, but something held his hand and he placed it back in its old place with the grim exclamation:
"No! It's the act of a coward. I've got to live with my memories—or surrender at once."
Again and again his eye came back to this picture. He had taken it twenty-three years ago in a little bedroom in a dirty hotel of a desolate, God-forsaken mining town in Nevada. How well he remembered it! He was poor then, and had just begun the first big fight of his life for wealth and power. The boy was four weeks old, and he had insisted on taking the picture of the mother with the baby in her arms. He had carefully posed her, standing by the window looking down into the child's upturned face. It had turned out a remarkable likeness of both—the young mother's face wreathed in smiles, tender and frail and happy, with the great joy of the dawn of motherhood shining in her eyes.
He looked at it long and tenderly. And, as athousand memories of life crowded his soul, he suddenly exclaimed:
"God in heaven! What does she say to-day if she knows what I've done?"
His eyes blinked, and the tears blinded them.
He kissed the picture and buried his face in his hands as a sob of anguish shook his frame.
"The girl's right. My boy's my boy after all. I'm wrong!"
When the Colonel had greeted Elena at breakfast next morning he quietly asked:
"You met Norman?"
"Yes."
"I shall be glad to see him when he comes."
Elena threw her arms impulsively around his neck.
"Now you're a darling! Now you're big and strong and good and great again—and I love you."
The Colonel stroked her hair slowly, and asked with a smile:
"What time is he coming?"
"He's not coming." Elena laughed.
"Not coming?" the colonel repeated blankly.
"No. You're going to see him."
"Indeed!"
"You see, Guardie, he is a chip off the old block."
"It begins to look like he's the whole block," the Colonel remarked, dryly.
"Can you blame him after the way you acted?"
"I can't say I do, much. I like a boy of spirit——"
"And individuality—that's your own pet idea Guardie."
The Colonel was silent a moment.
"Yes. I like his grit. Where will I find him?"
"At his desk at work in the newspaper office."
"I'll call him up and make an appointment."
The Colonel seized the telephone, called the newspaper office, and asked for Norman. He waited for several minutes before any one reached the 'phone. He scarcely recognized the short, sharp business accent of Norman's voice:
"Well, well, what is it?"
The Colonel cleared his throat.
"Here! Here! Get a move on you—what's the matter—I'm in a hurry!"
"This is your father, Norman——"
"Get off the wire or quit your kiddin'—what do you want?"
His father laughed.
"I beg your pardon, Governor, honestly I didn't recognize your voice until you laughed. I'm awfully glad to hear it again. What can I do for you?"
"Well, I must say I like your impudence. What canyoudo for me? I want to see you right away. Shall I call at your office?"
A pause ensued, followed by audible smiles at both ends of the wire.
"Of course not, sir. It seems a long time since I left home but I've not forgotten the way. I'll come over as soon as I can leave my desk."
Two hours later he entered the library with a boyish laugh and grasped his father's hand.
The Colonel pressed it with deep tenderness.
"You must forgive me, boy. I wasn't fair to you the other day."
Norman tried to laugh, and stammered awkwardly:
"Well, when I hear a man of your age and experience say a thing like that, Governor, I begin to fear I'm not quite as big as I thought I was."
"Then we're both in the right mind now, to begin all over again, are we not?"
"It's with you, sir," was the quick reply.
"Suppose I can convince you that you have entered on a mistaken mission—that your programme is foolish, impossible, and dangerous?"
"Do it, and I'll join you in trying to put an end to Socialism."
"Before I begin, let me ask you a very personal question."
"As many as you like, Governor," was the frank response.
"Are you mixed up in any way personally with the young woman who spoke here that day?"
"We're comrades in the cause of humanity—that's all."
"You're sure that it is not her personal influence over you that has made you a Socialist?"
"Only in so far as she has made me think and feel."
"You have not made love to her?"
"Certainly not. I'm engaged to Elena."
"Then it ought to be easy for us to understand each other. Come down out of the clouds of theory now, and tell me exactly how you are going to save humanity, and let's see if we can't work together for the same end. A great purpose like yours ought not to separate father and son—you can't defend such platitudes as this, for example, which one of your orators got off last night—listen!"
The Colonel took the morning paper from the table and read:
"Remember in this supreme hour that capitalism has you and your loved ones by the throats, is stealing your substance, draining your veins, and reducing you inch by inch to the potter's field. Every sweating den cries out to you as from the depths of hell to gird up your loins and march forth in one solid phalanx to strikethe blow that shall sound the knell of capitalistic despotism, and set the star of hope in the skies of the despairing and dying thousands of your class who are at the mercy of the vampires of soulless wealth. How long shall capitalism be allowed to work its devastation, spread its blighting curse, destroy manhood, debauch womanhood, and grind the flesh and blood and bone of childhood into food for Mammon?"
The Colonel paused.
"Such appeals to passion can only end in riot, bloodshed, and prison bars. You don't write such rot as that yourself, and yet the men you are following preach it."
"I'm not following just now, Governor—I'm trying to direct this tremendous impulse, this enthusiasm for humanity, called Socialism, into a practical experiment that will demonstrate the truths of their faith, and from this white city of a glorified human life send out our missionaries to conquer the world. Give me ten thousand earnest men and women on the island of Ventura, isolated from contact with the corruption of the outside, and I'll show you a miracle more wonderful than if they had risen from the dead."
"And what are the foundations on which you propose to build this heaven on earth?"
"Squarely on these principles: From every manaccording to his ability; to every man according to his needs; and to every child born the right to laugh and play and grow to a strong manhood and womanhood. We are not civilized so long as there is one child sobbing to be freed from the tomb of the modern workshop, so long as there is one man willing to work and not able to find it, so long as there is one soul striving upward who is crushed to earth, so long as one man lives in idleness and luxury while his neighbour starves, so long as there's one spot of this earth on which a man lives by tearing the bread from the lips of another."
"Hasn't your imagination been caught by beautiful phrases, my boy?" asked the father. "In your new State of Ventura you will give to each man according to his needs?"
"Yes."
"And who will decide how much each one needs—the man who feels the need or the state?"
"The state, in the last resort."
"Exactly. And who will determine how large the service required of each man? Who will decide the question of ability?"
"The state, of course."
"Are you not cutting out a pretty big job for the state, remembering that the state is nothingmore or less than a lot of ordinary second-rate politicians named Tom, Dick, and Harry, who individually or collectively haven't as much sense as you or I?"
"In the new world it will be different."
"Then you are going to import a new breed of men and women?"
"No, we will simply give the God in man a chance to be."
"But how about the beast that's in man—the elemental instinct to fight and kill—to take the woman he desires by the force of his hands and muscle?"
"When man is free and strong and happy he can have no motive to kill or play the beast."
"That remains to be seen, my boy! Your assertion does not change the nature of man. Another problem in your scheme I can't solve is wages."
"We will abolish wage slavery."
"Yes, yes, I know; but man must work—all men must work in your new state?"
"Certainly."
"And the man who refuses to work?"
"Will be made to work according to his ability."
"Just so. We live under the wage system now—the system of free contract by which labourerand employer agree. Under your system contract would be abolished, and men would do what they aretoldto do—a system ofcommandinstead ofcontract—is it not so?"
"I should say just the opposite. Men are forced to work now at tasks they loathe and for pay that is insufficient. Under our state they would be free to choose the work for which they are fitted."
"And suppose they all choose one job?"
"The state would assign their work in the last resort."
"There you are, once more, bowing down to the same Tom, Dick, and Harry. And you cannot see that Socialism would impose on man the most colossal system of slavery, the most merciless because the most impersonal, the world ever saw?"
"No, I cannot. Give me a chance on one spot of earth free from the corruption of your present system, and I'll show you that man is a child of God, that deep in every human soul is planted the sense of brotherhood, justice, and human fellowship."
"And you will abolish private property?"
"Except what each man earns or makes for himself."
The Colonel laughed aloud.
"Can he earn a wife, or make one for himself?"
"No; nor own one as a slave."
"You can never abolish private property, my boy, so long as any man has the right to say, 'This woman is mine.' The home is the basis of modern civilization. If you destroy it the home will not survive. If the home survives it will kill Socialism. The two things can't mix."
Norman laughed.
"And you think capitalism is building ideal homes with its drudgery that kills woman—its poverty that starves the man and drives the girl to a life of shame?"
"Our conditions are not ideal, my son. But they are growing better with each generation. Because all homes are not ideal, you propose to abolish the institution. There are ten million homes in America. Perhaps a million of them are unhappy. Can we mend matters by destroying them all?"
"Socialism proposes to build the highest ideal of home ever seen on earth, founded on love—and only love."
The Colonel smiled sadly.
"I see I'm too late. You've got it bad. Socialism is a contagious disease, imported from the old world—a brain disease, the result of centuries of wrong and oppression. Its reasonsfor existence in this country are purely imaginary. If it were possible for you to build the new State of Ventura of which you dream——"
"Dream! We are going to do it, I tell you, Governor! We have a hundred thousand dollars already pledged. We hold to-morrow night a great mass-meeting at which five thousand Socialists will be present. Four hundred thousand dollars more will buy the island and give a capital of three hundred thousand with which to begin."
"Then I can't persuade you to give up this madness?" the Colonel asked, tenderly.
"It's my life," Norman answered firmly.
The father slipped his arm around the tall, strong figure.
"All right! Remember now, from this moment on, one thing is settled for good and all. My boy's my boy, right or wrong, good or bad, wise or foolish——"
The Colonel's voice broke, and his grip tightened.
Norman looked out of the window, blinked his eyes, and said in low tones:
"I understand, sir!"