IT was ten o'clock at night when Walter finally went out of the shop and up to his room. He did not turn on the light at once, but went over by his table and sat down.
The temptation he still faced had assumed alluring shapes. In the first place, he was saying to himself, "Bauer's drawings differ only a trifle from my own and I had practically gone as far as he, only one or two points were suggested to me by his diagram of the electrodes resting at an angle on the porcelain plate. The cutting of the teeth in the soft metal was also suggested by him. But I had thought out other points that were essential."
Then, again, Walter kept going over the great advantage it would be to him if this discovery were made by him first. He knew that the commercial value of any real improvement in city lighting was very large. There was money for him in this discovery. And Walter was growing more and more restless over his stewardship and the burdens it involved. He hated the drudgery and the time it took, and of late he began to feel quite certain that the same attitude displayed in other schools was creeping into Burrton, an attitude of contempt for the working student, nothing very pronounced, but enough to make him feel disagreeable and annoyed, for he was a finicky youth, sensitive to a great degree and with the taste of an aristocrat at heart.
"I don't see that I do Bauer any harm if I go ahead and make a model. I'll do that anyhow," he said out loud at last, as he got up and turned on his light. And then he saw under the edge of his door a note which had been slipped in there.
He went over, picked it up, opened it, and found it was a note fromBauer.
"My Dear Douglas:—Within an hour after leaving the shop to-night I had a telegram calling me home. I do not know how soon I shall be able to return to Burrton, if at all. Will you kindly see if I left any of my apparatus or papers on my table and return them to my locker? I enclose the key with this note. Thank you. "FELIX BAUER."
So Bauer was going to be away indefinitely. He might not come back at all. He had not given any reason for the call to come home, but Walter remembered one remark the German student had made one day which led him to believe that Bauer's home life was unhappy and the relations between his father and mother were unpleasant. Suppose he never came back. Suppose he never finished his investigation of the lamp? Suppose—there was a number of possibilities to suppose. Why, then the field would be open to him and he could go ahead with a clear conscience. But could he? In spite of all sophistry and special pleading with himself Walter knew he had caught the idea of the electrodes from Bauer's drawing, which suggested the secret. How did he know but that Bauer had discovered it as indicated in his own diagram and was making that preliminary to the finished lamp?
There was one honest and plain way out for Walter. He could write to Bauer and frankly tell him that he had seen his drawings and had received from them a hint for the discovery and ask him if he were willing to share with him, Walter, in the result if the lamp proved worth while financially. But here was Walter's weak point. He was proud of his technical knowledge. Already it was conceded by all the students in the electrical engineering department that Douglas of Milton was the star. The instructors had given him special notice. He had already made one or two very valuable and original contributions to the problems that faced the shop every day. But nothing he had so far done would begin to compare with this new arc light. The thought of sharing his discovery with any one else touched his pride in its most sensitive and personal spot.
He threshed it all over back and forth and when he finally went to bed he was still undecided as to his course. The fact is, he could not escape all the time the standard he had been trained in at home. If Paul and Esther had done nothing else for their children they had certainly done this; they had implanted in their minds a deep and strong feeling that one of the things to be most desired in life is honesty; clean, frank, wholesome honesty, free from cant and hypocrisy and double dealing. And Walter knew in his heart that what he was going to do was not honest to Bauer, even after he had juggled with his conscience and proved to himself that Bauer had no real rights in the matter. He knew perfectly well that the German student did have rights of prior discovery. No amount of argument or defense of his own discoveries could remove that fact.
Nevertheless, next day in the shop after he had put Bauer's belongings, including the paper with the drawings, into Bauer's locker, Walter found himself working with nervous haste over his model. It went together with wonderful exactness and in spite of his feeling that he was acting the part of a miserable cheat, he was, at least, during a part of the time, in a glow of enthusiasm. For the most part he worked at night, when he was least liable to watching from the other fellows. There were several reasons why he could do this, among them an unusual interest in the school at that time in evening functions which drew most of the shop workers out.
Walter took parts of his model up to his room each night and studied them. At the end of two weeks he had completed the lamp and it remained only to give it an actual test. No word had been received from Bauer, and inquiry from different professors had failed to discover any news from him. It seemed to Walter almost certain that Bauer would not return, and each day of his absence gave Walter less uneasiness, if not an actual dulling of the keen edge of his conscience.
The day before he planned to test his lamp at the shop, Walter received another letter from his mother, one part of which annoyed him greatly. His mother wrote chiding him good-naturedly for not sending his usual weekly letter. In fact, since his discovery of Bauer's plan, Walter had failed to write home, for the first time since coming to Burrton. He could not account for this failure except on the ground that he was too busy.
But his mother wrote without any knowledge of all this, telling him bits of news that she thought he would most want to know.
"Your father has been asked by the Citizens' Committee, to let his name go on the primaries for senator from the Fifth district. I have my doubts about the wisdom of a newspaper editor going into politics, but your father, while he had some hesitation, has finally agreed to let his name go down. So now we can expect lively times in the Douglas family until after election next fall.
"Helen has two more beaus, one of them ten years older than herself. I am not making fun of this, as you know, for I have tried to teach you all that the love part of life is in some ways the most serious as well as the most happy of all your experiences. Helen has good sense when it comes to a final decision on anything. I am not afraid for her.
"Louis is better than he has been for a long time. His eyes are stronger and his headaches have almost ceased. He seems to enjoy his studies this term and is making progress. We all feel pleased of course. Louis has had an offer from his uncle to go into the store, but your father and I would much prefer to keep him in school if his health will allow. We are ambitious for all of you and want you to have an education and do in the world what you are best fitted to do.
"We want you to come home for Christmas. And from the different bits you have written about your German friend Bauer we have been wondering if he could not come with you. I understand from one of your letters that he is rather a lonesome fellow, without many friends. If he is not going to his own home at Christmas time, give him a good, strong invitation from father and me to come with you. You know we have never been separated at the holiday season, and it will be my treat to pay your expenses home this time unless you make a new arc light and get it patented and make a lot of money out of it. We are all interested in the light and speak of it almost every day. Your father was saying this morning that our street lights are a disgrace to Milton. There is a citizens' war going on at present over the situation and every number of theNewscontains letters from angry taxpayers calling the city government to account for the wretched nature of the street lighting. If you should happen to discover an economical and satisfactory city lamp, the people of Milton would be ready now to compel the council to purchase and install it. Of course this all sounds rather like a story, but stranger things have happened in the history of inventions. And if you should happen to be the fortunate discoverer, we would be very proud and happy.
"Don't forget to make the invitation to Mr. Bauer as hearty as you can.I am anxious to see you, as all of us are."YOUR LOVING MOTHER."
The things which annoyed Walter in this letter were, first of all, his mother's invitation to Bauer. Of course if he did not return to school, that would be the end of it. But if he should return, why, then, under the peculiar conditions that existed it would be more than embarrassing for Walter to bring Bauer home with him. And to add to his annoyance Walter began to feel hard toward the German student, as if Bauer had done him a wrong. It is, of course, true that one of the surest ways to acquire a hatred of anyone is first of all to do him an injustice. Having already wronged Bauer in stealing his ideas, Walter was fast entering on the second stage of his relations to him and beginning to feel hateful toward him.
The other annoyance caused by his mother's letter was due to the fact that in her ignorance of the situation she was all unconsciously strengthening his temptation to complete the light and get it before the public as his own as soon as possible. The street-lighting conditions in Milton were duplicated in hundreds of municipalities all over the country. There was no doubt in Walter's mind that the first really successful economical lamp offered the public would find a quick and remunerative sale. With a growing excitement he began to see the great probabilities before his invention. And all that his mother had written simply tended to push him on to complete his work before Bauer could return and make the necessary discovery for himself.
He was vexed and annoyed to a degree he had never before experienced. And he knew deep down in his heart that it was because he was acting a dishonourable part toward the absent classmate. He began to lose sleep over it, and grew nervous and exceedingly unhappy. On the one hand, his home training had made him sensitive to moral standards. He would not have dared to write to his mother about the affair to ask her advice as to what he ought to do, because he knew without writing what she would say. On the other hand, his ambition goaded him to ignore what it called a technicality, tried to befog the issue by whispering that Bauer could not succeed without putting into the lamp the things which Walter had discovered already himself, and constantly insinuated that even if he had not happened to see Bauer's diagram, Walter would probably have worked it out in a day or two anyhow.
He replied to his mother's letter briefly, saying he was unusually busy and adding that he did not think Bauer could come with him because he had been called home and would not in all likelihood return to Burrton. He said nothing in this letter about the lamp; he could not bring himself to mention it. And he knew when he posted the letter that the tone of it would make his mother ask questions because it was so different from the enthusiastic, jolly letters he had written before.
It was during this week that he fixed on a certain evening to make a practical test of his lamp. He had guarded his secret successfully. Not a soul, including both instructors and students, knew the special work he had been doing. Among the great number of special and changing experiments going on in the shop it had not been difficult to keep his discovery to himself.
He chose a night when a great social event was occurring in hopes that he might have the shop to himself. There were a few enthusiastic specialists who did considerable night work, but on this particular evening they went out early and by nine o'clock he found himself alone. The power which lighted the town of Burrton was the same as that in use at the school and was in operation day and night. The conditions seemed absolutely favorable to a test of his invention, and by ten o'clock Walter had made all connections and brought his electrodes into position.
The only question with him was whether the heat of the arc would melt the soft metal teeth at the right time and with even regularity. He was pale and nervous with the tension of the work, his loss of sleep and his goading of conscience, and when the carbons started to glow with the familiar hiss, he started back as if someone had come in, and looked around the shop fearfully.
Then he laughed hysterically and turned again to his machine. His whole attention was now fastened upon it, and with the true inventor's ecstasy he forgot Bauer, forgot his mother, forgot that he was at the center of a great moral tragedy for his own soul, forgot there was a God, and a judgment day and any such things as conscience or remorse, or injustice.
His whole soul flung itself on that point of dazzling light and the soft metal teeth which he had coupled in a strip to the electrodes. He watched it, fascinated and fearful. He saw the tooth begin to glow to a red, then to a white, heat and then it melted softly away, letting the electrodes fall gently, keeping the points of their position in perfect place while the second tooth slipped down in turn to be transformed into a soft and yielding point.
The lamp worked! It was a practical success! It had stood the test! He did not know how long he had been in the shop or how long he had been watching the mechanism. He switched off the power, and adjusted a part of the scissors-coupling. Then he turned on the current again and with the same feeling of fascination watched the softening and dissolving of the metal tooth.
A noise of a door opening aroused him and he looked up. Someone had come in, and was walking directly toward his bench.
The glare of the lamp blinded him, and his eyes had to become adjusted to the dimness as he turned his back on the lamp. But when the person was ten feet away he recognised in a moment the face of Bauer, as he came walking slowly toward him.
WALTER'S mind worked with what he afterward described to himself as an unquestioning obedience to a first impulse, at the centre of which was an instantaneous fear of discovery. Before Bauer had taken another step nearer him he had turned, switched off the power from the lamp, and snatched up a hammer from his bench.
With one blow he smashed the electrodes and then, as if made frantic over the act, he struck at the mechanism until it was a heap of bent and twisted wires and metal. It lay on his bench in a tangled mass and he stooped over it and began to sweep it off into the refuse box. Bauer had not yet said a word. Only with the first blow of the hammer he had ejaculated "Ach!" As Walter was flinging bits of the lamp into the box the German student came up and stood near, looking at Walter in astonishment.
"What is the matter?"
Walter simply muttered some unintelligible thing. He was, to tell the truth, tremendously excited, disturbed, overwhelmed by Bauer's return at this particular time.
"I've—I've been experimenting and have failed," he finally managed to say, stammering out the words with great difficulty. He was terrified to think Bauer might read in his face the whole story.
But Felix Bauer was one of the most simple-hearted and unsuspicious souls that ever lived. If he had not been, some of the things that are going to be true of this story could never have happened. He looked at Walter and then at the broken mechanism and simply said: "I am sorry you have failed. But it is nothing by the side of dishonor."
And then for the first time Walter looked openly and squarely into Bauer's face and saw tragedy there. The incandescent light over the bench was not a strong one. But Bauer was close to him and Walter quickly saw that he was not thinking of what Walter had done, was not going to ask him any questions about it, because some other thing was gripping him, some other thing so strong and insistent and sorrowful that it took possession of him and dominated him. Walter's action had already passed out of his mind as simply an incident connected with some disappointing experiment, and he was looking at Walter with an appeal in his great, sad eyes which smote Walter like a blow in the dark.
He felt almost faint and instinctively he sat down. Bauer had gone over to his own desk and stood leaning against it.
"I ought not to come in here and annoy you at this time," he said in his slow, almost stammering manner, "but I—you see, somehow I felt so lonely, so afraid, when I got off the train to-night, that I could not help the desire to see you, and they told me you must be in the shop. Heine says in the Lorelei, you know, 'Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten, das Ich so traurig bin?' But I do know why I am so sad. It is disgrace which has befallen me, such deep disgrace to my home, my father———"
He stopped and looked at Walter timidly as if not quite sure how his confidence might be received. Walter sat with his head bowed, and smitten into silence. He did not know what to say, but Bauer probably took his silence for quiet sympathy, being of that nature himself and mistaking Walter's attitude for earnest attention.
"My father—you will understand what it means—has deserted my mother, and she has run away, the home destroyed is to be, and the disgrace—Oh, it is greater, more than I can endure, I said as I was obliged to come back for my things. It is more than I can bear alone, and you are so strong, so principled."
Walter cowered in his chair, appalled at the thing that was happening to him. Here was a soul in desperate need who had come to fling itself on him for companionship and courage, and he with his own soul stained with deception for the love of fame and money! He would have cried out; he wanted to, but Bauer went on, now he had broken over his natural reserve. He eagerly awaited Walter's sympathy, and his spirit hungered for light in his darkness.
"Yes, you see, I don't know anyone here, and your action about the story telling in your room—I heard of that—I counted it a brave thing to do. And, oh, I am so hungry for a friend! I need one; do you think you could be friend to me, do you, Douglas? Friend to a disgraced family? It is asking a great deal, but I feel the dark, the dark—it is so heavy for me———"
Bauer, looking at Walter in his almost animal-like appeal, saw at last that there was something he did not understand in Walter's attitude. Walter's mind was not confused by the strange situation, it was clear and vibrating with feeling. But it was a long time before he could speak. How could he tell Bauer the truth now? Why not let him remain in ignorance of the purpose to steal his ideas? Nothing had been done so far to really wrong him. The lamp was destroyed. Walter would not make another, and the basis of a possible friendship, such as Bauer needed, could be established without any explanation or foolish confession.
But somehow Walter could not rest with that suggestion. He felt that if Bauer had his friendship it must rest on truth and a frank outspoken revelation of the character of the soul he was appealing to for help.
It was very still in the big shop when Walter finally looked up and said to Bauer:
"I am not worthy of your friendship. I am not what you think I am."
"Not worthy? Not———" Bauer looked at him in amazement.
"No, not worthy. Look!" Walter spoke fast now as if afraid he might fail in courage. "Open your locker! Here! here is the key! You left it with me."
He thrust the key at Bauer, and Bauer turned around, and under the pressure of Walter's look and voice opened his locker and stood in front of it holding on to the door.
"There! That paper! Your plan, your drawing of the lamp! Open it. Let me show———"
Bauer obeyed mechanically. Walter got up and stood by Bauer's table. Bauer slowly unfolded the paper. His look showed he had almost forgotten it.
"There! See! You were on the right track! The soft metal teeth coupled to the electrode! Don't you see?" Bauer's face began to glow for the first time that evening, for he, too, like Walter, had the inventor's sensitive hunger. "You left the paper here the night you were called home. I saw it and copied it before I put it back. I made the model and it works. That is it there," and Walter pointed to the stuff on the table and in the refuse box. "Do you understand? I stole your plans. I was going to get out the lamp without telling you if you had not come back. And I am the person you want for a friend. Am I worthy? Do you understand now?"
A dull red spot began to creep up into the German student's face. He was still holding the locker door with one hand. His eye travelled from the diagram to Walter and then back again. Walter stood very erect, his head thrown back almost defiantly now that he had made his confession, and he was absolutely in the dark as to the effect of it on Bauer. He would and could not blame him for being angry. And he was angry for a moment. But only a moment. Then his great brown eyes softened and he said in a quiet, gentle way that moved Walter more than any burst of passion could have done:
"I am not a judge for you. While on the way home I suddenly thought out the secret of the metal teeth. See! I have it here." He took out of his pocket a paper and opening it spread it out on Walter's desk. Walter saw in a second's glance that Bauer had discovered the working basis for the successful light. "And I was going to work on the plan when I came back. But all my trouble drove it away. I lost my ambition. And I understand what you did. I might have done the same. But still, Douglas, do you know, I don't care. I—I am hungry for a friend just like you. What you have said does not change anything. What difference does that make? That is not trouble, not for me."
Walter looked at him a moment and then in the reaction which was really the taking off of the strain of weeks, he put his head between his hands and sobbed. Bauer did not venture to say anything. When Walter could control himself he reached out his hand. Bauer took it, and in that grasp the two young men understood each other for life. I think each gave as much as he took. The sacred compact they sealed in the big empty shop that night was made with few words, but it was never disturbed nor broken in after years. And each one of them realised something of the depth and joy of real friendship. Do you? Does anybody? Our human friendships, when they are real and permanent, are the finest and richest possessions of our lives. Pity we treat them so lightly and measure them so tamely.
That same night Bauer in his simple manner told Walter something more of his home troubles, enough to give Walter a glimpse into the real sorrow of his heart. Walter in his turn told in part the story of his temptation and of his struggles and tortures to escape. To this Bauer listened with a faint smile and with perfect understanding.
In the days that followed, they agreed to construct the lamp between them and share in the profits from it. And when they began work on the mechanism each found that the other had discovered little improvements which were necessary to the best construction, finally producing a lamp far more perfect and practical than Walter's first attempt.
The day after that memorable scene with Bauer in the shop Walter wrote home a long and exuberant letter, a part of which we may read.
"Mother, I can't begin to tell you what a relief I have experienced since I told Bauer all about it. I believe I had a little taste of hell for a while and I don't want to go through it again. Bauer and I are the best friends you ever saw. He is just the opposite of me. I'm impulsive and quick and get mad quick and all that. You know all about it, but he is slow and calm and talks only a little at a time. He is not what you would call handsome, but he has the most beautiful brown eyes I ever saw. If I was a girl I would think he was handsome because his eyes are. He has told me a good deal about his home life and I have told him something about ours, and he has asked some questions. And, oh yes, he is coming home with me for the holidays. At first he refused, but when I told him how much you wanted him to come and how lonesome it would be for him here he consented to come. I hope you will all like him. Helen will probably think he is odd and solemn, but I hope she will be kind and all of us can make him feel at home.
"We are working on the lamp together and it is almost finished. We are keeping the construction of it a secret because we want to spring it on Anderson, the foreman. I haven't told you about him. He is all up on electricity, knows as much about it as Edison, at least he almost says so at times, and he really does know a lot, but he is the one teacher in the whole bunch I don't like. There is a manner about him that makes you feel he has on a dress suit and a stovepipe hat all the time. I heard the other day he is related to the Van Shaws, a cousin or something of the steel magnate at Pittsburgh. I have never had any trouble with Anderson, but I felt relieved the other day to hear that I was not the only fellow in the school that he ruffled. He is mighty unpopular. Bauer and I are going to make sure of our lamp first and then give Anderson a look at it. If the thing goes as well as we expect I don't know how much there will be in it for us. But if it is anything like what I expect, no more stewardship for me. I'm tired of waiting on the swells, and since the Van Shaw episode I've not had a very pleasant time with some of them. You see, mother, there is a crowd here that seems to think it is necessary to be coarse and fast in order to be men. The more money they can spend, the more beer they can drink, the more chorus girls' photographs they can get to paste up in their rooms, the more tobacco pipes they can display over and under their mantels, the more slang and indecency they can learn, the more college atmosphere they think they are creating. I wonder sometimes why the professors don't seem to care about the morals of us students. We never hear anything in the class room or the shop except the technical parts of our studies. I haven't a single teacher at Burrton that I would go to if I were in real trouble and I never would think of going to President Davis about anything. He is a great scholar and hustler for money, but I should hate to have to go to him for advice or sympathy.
"Well, I have made the letter long enough. I'm getting a little homesick to see you all, and looking forward to the holidays. Expect me home with a trunk full of money from the sale of the lamp. If we get it patented we may either sell the thing outright, or Bauer thinks we can better make profitable terms with some good electrical manufacturing firm like Madison Brooks & Co., New York. Love to all. "Walter."
Mrs. Douglas answered him at once and in the course of her letter expressed her delight at the happy outcome of Walter's experience with the lamp and with Bauer's friendship.
"I don't know when you have given your mother more happiness, boy. I was so happy I cried all the forenoon while your father and Helen and Louis were out of the house. I am delighted that you have made a friend. Do you know what that means? If Bauer is what you think he is, you and he have something more than a trunkful of money. A man or a woman can live to be fifty years old without gaining more than two or three such friends as Bauer. So what has really happened to you is a splendid thing. And I hope you will feel very rich indeed. Of course we would all be pleased if the lamp turns out to be a success. But I suppose you will make up your mind to be ready for anything. There are many slips between models and patents, and it will be well for both of you not to buy expensive trips around the world on the strength of your discovery until the money is really in hand.
"Louis is giving us some trouble lately. He is very slow in his studies, especially his English, Your father, I think, feels annoyed by it, because he wants Louis to be literary. But Louis's English teacher brought to your father the other day a composition Louis had written on the Tuberculosis Outdoor Hospital recently established at the Mansfield farm by the State Board of Health. Miss Barrows, the teacher, is a very practical person and she went out to this tuberculosis station with a section of her class in English, and told the members to keep their eyes open and on their return to the school to write one hundred words about what they had seen. And this is Louis's contribution to the symposium:
"'Tuberculosis was started in 1884, by Dr. Trudeau, who had it in the Adirondacks. Although consumption is not inherited and does not belong in the climate it is getting very popular. The sleeping bags are very useful to the consumptive people because they can keep their heads out and put the rest of their bodies into them. I saw the germs. It is a big white ball with blue spots on it. I think it would be fine to sleep in one of those beds with the head inside and the lungs outside.'
"Well, when your father read this, he simply choked. In fact we all choked, and Helen who happened to get hold of it somehow, just screamed. Poor Louis was mad at every one of us and especially at Miss Barrows when he heard she had taken his account to his father. At first your father thought Louis was trying to be funny at the expense of the English department in the high school. But he wasn't. He was in dead earnest, and doing his best. I tell your father that it isn't fair to ridicule Louis. Ridicule is a dangerous form of criticism and Louis is very sensitive. I don't blame him for saying that the teacher ought not to make fun of him when he is trying to get his lessons. He fairly hates some of his teachers because they use sarcastic or ironical remarks about him in the presence of the whole school. It seems strange to me that any teacher will do that, especially in the case of a boy like Louis. They defend themselves by saying it is the only way to wake up the students or shame them into doing good work. But I believe they are wrong in their methods with boys like Louis and I am going to talk with them about it for his sake.
"We will welcome Bauer with you at the holidays. He will feel at home with us if your mother has anything to do about it. We all anticipate his coming. If you are a little homesick to see us we are all more than a little eager to see you. I pray the good God to keep you pure and true. Lovingly, "MOTHER."
Two weeks after this and two weeks before the Christmas holidays, Walter and Bauer had completed their lamp and given it a test. It was more perfect by far than Walter's model. It worked with a practical certainty that left no doubt in their minds that unless some unforeseen factor came in to change conditions they had a workable, economic mechanism which was automatic and durable.
Within a day or two they decided to let Anderson into the secret and Walter asked him to come into the shop at night to see the result of some special original work. This was a common request and the foreman simply made his engagement at the hour assigned, and when the hour came he went in and Watched Walter and Bauer bring out the lamp and make the necessary connections. Anderson had respect for Walter's ability, recognising in him the brightest mind for electricity that Burrton had ever seen in a student. He stood by silently at first while Walter in considerable excitement and some evident pride did the explaining. But when the light started in the arc and the brilliant glow of it began to fling out its dazzling shafts through the shop the professor started forward, a look of astonishment came over his face and he asked Walter a question, so unexpected, that Walter turned pale and looked first at Anderson and then at Bauer in blind wonder and a great sinking of heart.
"DIDN'T you know that this lamp has already been made and patent applied for by Gambrich of New York?"
"No! When?"
"Within the last week. Wait. I'll show you."
Anderson went over to his own desk at the end of the shop. In the few minutes he was gone, Walter and Bauer exchanged questions.
"Do you suppose that's true?"
"Doesn't seem possible, does it? If it is, our cake is dough."
"Anderson seemed pleased when he announced the fact, if it is one," saidWalter bitterly.
"It may not be true, you know," said Bauer hopefully.
Anderson had come back in time to hear the last sentence.
"It is true, though, young man. See."
He had the last copy of theElectrical News, and it was open at an illustrated page.
He laid it down on Walter's bench and he and Bauer eagerly bent over it.
Almost the first glance revealed the fact that the lamp described in the paper was identical with their own and application for a patent had been made within ten days. The account of the discovery, moreover, made the date earlier than the discovery made by Walter.
"You see, don't you," said Anderson. "Gambrich has exactly the same device of metal teeth coupled to one electrode. It's an ingenious device and you fellows have certainly great credit for thinking it out almost simultaneously with Gambrich."
"According to this account, our lamp was made before Gambrich's. Does that give him priority of invention?" asked Walter eagerly.
Anderson shrugged his shoulders.
"Priority of manufacture does not legally cut any figure by the side of priority of invention. You might be able to prove that you had made the lamp before Gambrich made his, but that would not help you any if he invented his arrangement first, long before you made your lamp."
"Is that really strict justice?" said Bauer slowly.
"It is law," said Anderson grimly, "and you must remember that law and justice are not in every case synonymous. I'm sorry for you fellows. There's a lot of money in that invention for the manufacturers of the lamp, and considerable for the inventor if he knows how to make terms."
"Do you mean," asked Walter gloomily, "that really we have no right at all with what we have made?"
"Don't you see you haven't? What can you do? Ask any lawyer, if you don't believe me."
Anderson spoke somewhat testily as he started to go away.
"I believe you're glad we missed this opportunity," said Walter angrily. He was tremendously discouraged over the event and could not control his feelings.
Anderson grew very red and turned on Walter in a rage.
"I don't mind saying I am glad your pride has had a tumble. You have been unbearable for some time. Maybe this will teach you a lesson. There are people in the world who know a little about electricity as well as yourself."
All of which was not calculated to sweeten Walter's sense of defeat or make him more friendly to Anderson, who, after glaring at Bauer, who had not said a word, abruptly went out of the shop.
The lamp was working all this time, with an exasperating smoothness and precision that spoke eloquently of its financial possibilities. There were a few workers in the other parts of the shop who, realising that some unusual event was on, began to gather around Walter and Bauer and ask questions. Among the group was Van Shaw.
In a few moments everyone knew the story of the lamp, and Walter and Bauer came in for congratulations over the invention and sympathy for its uselessness to them.
"I could have told everybody about that lamp two months ago," said Van Shaw, speaking with an indirect manner peculiarly offensive to Walter. "I have had advices from a near friend in New York that Gambrich was at work on this device. It's a pity some Burrton man can't have the credit and the cash that are going to Gambrich."
Walter's fingers closed around one of the tools on his bench and he felt mad enough at that moment to throw it either at Van Shaw or the lamp. He did not do either, but when the crowd had finally gone away, he sat down at his bench and said to Bauer: "What chumps we were not to apply for a patent weeks ago. We might have contested it. We have let a fortune slip out of our hands through our stupidity."
"It's because we did not take anyone into confidence. I never thought of a patent. I was too much absorbed in the lamp itself to think anything about anything else."
"Whom could we have taken into confidence? Van Shaw or Anderson? But I don't feel like giving up. Why can't we contest our rights? There are cases in the courts every day over patents and inventions."
"But it takes a lot of money to hire a lawyer and go to law," said Bauer with real Teutonic caution. "And I haven't a dollar to spare. According to Anderson, it's as good as settled that Gambrich has the legal right to the lamps."
Walter stared at the arc gloomily. He felt the disappointment with deep bitterness. Not only was his pride smitten at the thought of others who were working out his ideas, but the thought of the money he might have made, and the relief that money might have brought him, rankled deepest in his mind.
Bauer took the affair more philosophically. He went over to Walter and put a hand on his shoulder.
"When we are beaten we might as well accept it and make something else.I don't like to see you take the thing so hard."
"What else can we make?" Walter said after a moment. "I've lost my ambition."
"Oh, no you haven't; not for good and all. Why, we might invent a typewriter telegraph."
"It's too late, that's already been done."
"I'll tell you what would bring us fame and money," said Bauer with his usual slow manner and his friendly smile. "What the world needs is a letter writer that will take letters at dictation, first hand."
Walter stared at Bauer gloomily. "What's that?"
"A direct letter writer," said Bauer. "A machine that the business man and the minister and the college professor and the politician and the railroad man and the lover could talk into. As fast as he talked, it would make a visible mark on the paper and when the person was through dictating his letter he could pull it out all typewritten ready to send. Just think what a blessing this would be to the busy letter writer."
Walter stared at Bauer as if his friend was crazy. Then, after a moment of doubt, he burst into a great laugh.
"Well, of all the—It's the first time I ever knew a German could be out and out funny. Do you know what your letter writing machine would have to do? It would have to know how to spell right."
"No, it wouldn't. All it would have to do would be to spell phonetically. Every machine would spell and print just as the person talked."
"Yes, and what will become of the great army of stenographers and typewriter girls who make their living now at taking dictation? I don't want to invent something that is going to deprive thousands of people of a living."
"You could marry one of them and I would marry another. That would take care of two of 'em," said Bauer solemnly.
Walter looked up at him a moment, and then he roared. It was what Bauer wanted him to do. And when they finally went to their rooms Walter was feeling somewhat better, although he did not get a good night's sleep. His dreams had in them fitful glimpses of Van Shaw and Anderson and a red hot arc lamp that glared and flamed at him with a diabolical grin that rejoiced in his defeat.
It was two days before he could bring himself to write home a full account of the matter. Both his father and his mother replied to this and each wrote in full sympathy with him and a knowledge of what his disappointment would be to him.
"Of course," Paul said, at the close of his letter, "if it is true that the New York man really invented the idea of the lamp before you did and then patented it before you did, that settles it, even if you were first to make an actual model. The patent laws recognise priority of invention where no unreasonable delay has followed the invention and the application for patent. Looking up the subject in theElectrical Newsand consulting with Alvord, our best patent lawyer here in Milton, I am afraid you are too late to do anything, and a contest, Alvord thinks, would result in nothing but expense for you and your friend. If I thought there was any legal right you possessed and ought to have I would be willing to help you contest for it. But that seems to be out of the question.
"Don't let this defeat mean too much to you. It is not a defeat. You did your best and actually made a very important discovery, you and Bauer. If you can do that, you can do other things as well. The unknown, undiscovered world of electricity is boundless. You have as much right to enter in as anybody, and far more probabilities than most persons that you will find something worth while. We are all anticipating your home coming for holidays and expect Bauer to come with you. Affectionately your father.
Walter's mother wrote in much the same way and cheerfully urged him to take all the disappointing things with hopeful equanimity.
"The longer I live, the more I find the real joy of life consists in doing our best with God's help and leaving the results with Him. Of course we all like to get results out of our efforts. But we forget that results always do follow honest effort, only they are not always the results we expected and wanted. No doubt, boy, you feel like saying to us at home, 'Yes, it's easy for you to sit there at your ease and deal out calm chunks of sympathy to me and tell me not to worry or feel bad, but if you had worked as hard as I did you wouldn't find it quite as easy to be happy over this disappointment.'
"Well, we confess all that, but your mother doesn't want to see her son give up and go down to defeat from one or two or a dozen or even a hundred blows. You have had the joy of making the lamp (after you cleared your soul by confession to Bauer), and you know that your brain works at its best along inventive lines and you know the field of invention, especially in electricity, is limitless. Your mother says to you, we feel proud of you and we will feel doubly proud if you will learn to take this disappointment cheerfully. Don't be a baby over it. Be a man. The tests of manhood are not found in the easy, but in the difficult things of life.
"The great thing after all, is to live up to the high calling. I don't care much, Walter, whether you ever invent anything or not, although I wish you could find out how to make a machine that will take off a woman's hat and hold it in church so that she can take care of her hymn book, her Bible, her gloves, her pocket book, her fan, her umbrella and her handkerchief, but if you never discovered a single secret of nature and discover the secret of a useful life, I would be and shall be the happiest of all women, for that is my ambition for you and always will be.
"Be sure and bring Bauer home with you. We are all interested to see him.
"Lovingly,"MOTHER."
Helen also wrote to Walter at this time. She was not much of a letter writer but she wanted to add her word of sympathy with the rest and Walter felt especially pleased that she exerted herself on this occasion.
"Dear Bub," Helen wrote, using the name she had always given him in her childhood. "We all feel awfully sorry about the way the lamp came out. It didn't seem fair to you and I hope you will invent something better that will throw that lamp in the shade, so to speak. We all believe in you and I have never for a moment doubted that in time you would be another Edison. I'm enjoying my school this year more than ever. Since our new gymnasium director was appointed I have found favor in her eyes and she has turned over one of the academy classes to me by consent of President Bruce. I did plan to study for a position as professor of domestic science, but since this appointment work opened up I feel as if I could like to be a physical director in a college or a Y. W. C. A. I love the gymnasium work immensely and Miss Rhodes says I am her best pupil.
"We are all wondering what sort of an individual your Felix Bauer is. Does he speak broken English very badly? Will it be difficult to talk to him without a German grammar? I have an idea I shall not like him very well, from what you have written about him. But I don't suppose that will make any difference to him.
"Father has got into politics all right and as he and mother have written you, he has been elected senator and will begin his term in January when the legislature meets. Father is very hopeful about doing things. Mother says he will have lots of opposition from the machine. I don't understand all this political discussion, but you know father. He is dead in earnest as you know and now that he is elected he is going to make the machine, whatever that is, 'sit up and take notice.' This is what my teacher in English would call a disjointed metaphor.
"Father is working over a dozen bills calculated to reform the state. The word 'reform' is a household word in the Douglas family. But you know father. Isn't he the dearest man that ever lived? It makes me mad to read what the papers have been saying about him ever since he was nominated. Anyone who didn't know father would think from reading these papers that he was an out and out villain. And we all know, and Milton people know, that if ever a man lived who had a pure and earnest desire to help make a better world, father is that man. I hate politics. It seems to me it is the meanest thing there is. I don't know anything else so mean as to take a man like father and question his motives and call him all sorts of names and try to blacken his character. Mother says she doesn't mind, but I believe she can't help feeling it some. It just makes me mad.
"Well, bub, don't be discouraged. We believe in you just as much as ever. We are looking for you home next week.
"Oh, by the way, does your friend Bauer have to have his beer regularly? And must we lay in an extra supply of sauer kraut and pretzels? I am sitting up nights studying my German exercises so I can say 'Eine Schwalbe macht noch Keinen Sommer' and other interesting topics of conversation. Lovingly your sister.
Walter laughed over this letter, but rather resented the tone Helen displayed about Bauer. "I hope Bauer won't make any bad breaks and I don't believe he will." But Walter had a little talk with Bauer that same evening in which Bauer expressed a little nervousness about his approaching visit at Walter's home.
"I haven't ever been anywhere to speak of, you know," he said a little doubtfully. "And I begin to feel a little afraid of meeting your folks."
"Afraid? Why, you can't even look at mother without falling in love with her. And as for father he will take to you right off. I know he will, for several reasons."
"But your sister?" Bauer looked up at the photograph of Helen on Walter's dresser. "Somehow I feel a little afraid of her. I don't believe I'll get along very well. Does she talk German? I feel a little more at my ease if I can talk what you call small talk in my own language."
"No, I don't believe Helen knows enough German to talk it intelligently. But you needn't be afraid of her. She is interested in your coming as all the family are and she has asked me several questions about you," said Walter, not venturing to tell Bauer what the questions were.
"Is that so?" said Bauer, looking pleased. Then after a moment he added,"It's awfully good of you to ask me to your home. I won't forget it."
And indeed, Felix Bauer, you never will.
The two friends reached Milton three days before Christmas and were met at the station by Paul and Louis. Paul took to Bauer from the moment he first saw him. You know how that is, that indescribable attraction you feel towards certain people even without an introduction, and Bauer had the same feeling for Walter's father. At the dinner table that night Bauer soon forgot his timidity because everyone was so kind. There was any number of questions to ask. Walter did a large share of the talking. Mrs. Douglas looked proud and Helen was on her best behavior and in less than ten minutes Bauer had lost his fear of her and was in danger of entertaining the opposite feeling. Walter Darcy and Louis Darcy, Esther's brothers, were present, and helped to make the meal a lively and entertaining occasion. And Felix Bauer said to himself when the evening was over that it was the pleasantest evening of his life.
The next morning Paul asked Bauer to go down to the office with him, TheNewswas installing a recently invented linotype and Paul wanted Bauer to see it.
They looked over the mechanism and then came back to Paul's office room. Bauer was looking over some specimen type Paul had on his table when three men came in.
Paul looked up, his face changed colour for a moment and he asked the visitors to be seated. He knew two of the men and they introduced the third.
"Senator Douglas, this is Judge Livingston of Camford. We want a talk, a private talk with you on political business," said the speaker, the Hon. George Maxwell, as he looked at Bauer.
"This young man is a friend of mine, spending the holidays with us," said Paul quietly, and he introduced Bauer to the three visitors.
There was a pause, and then Mr. Maxwell said, "We want a private conference with you, Mr. Douglas, if you don't mind." Bauer started to go out and Paul said to him, "You don't have to go unless you prefer."
"I'll go back to the house, Mr. Douglas," Bauer said, and immediately went out.
Maxwell started to shut the door after him.
"Mr. Maxwell, that is not necessary," said Paul very distinctly. "I think I know what you have come to see me about. Let me say, gentlemen, once for all, that I have no secrets, and no use for any in my political life. I do not believe in all this private conference and closed doors in connection with any action of mine in the coming legislature. I am not going to do a single thing that will require me to whisper or retire behind any closed doors. So, seeing this is my office, and it is the regular custom to leave the door open, we will leave it open."
The Hon. Maxwell looked doubtfully at Paul and the other visitors did the same. They finally went over to a corner of the office and whispered together. Then they came back, drew their chairs close up to Douglas's desk and Maxwell said:
"Mr. Douglas, we have come to see you about some of these proposed bills of yours. This Reform business is being run into the ground. We are tired of it. The people are getting tired of it. You are going to have a great influence in the legislature. We concede that fact. Now, what we want to do is to talk over some of these bills and get your influence to modify or change in some ways."
Paul listened thoughtfully and when Maxwell was through he said, "Will you mention the particular bills you have in mind? I am not certain I know after all just what your business with me is."
Maxwell coughed and drew up his chair nearer. The other two men did the same. The hum of the presses was beginning to pervade the building as Maxwell, in reply to Paul's request, continued.
"YOU see, Senator," said the Hon. Maxwell, "that the party is not agreed on these bills you are preparing. Take for example that bill, I understand you are the author of it, on public health. As we understand the matter, it is going to work great hardship on the retail dealer, and besides, pardon me, it is so full of fads and absurdities that it will make the party the laughing stock of the state. And there is that bill on public lands and investigating old entries. That will stir up an unnecessary lot of trouble and help to disrupt the party. You must remember, Senator, that while you call yourself independent in politics, you allowed your nomination to be made by the party, and you are one of us and have no right to split the party into factions. More than half these bills you are advocating in theNewsare of questionable value and all of them, it seems to us, are calculated to make enemies in our own ranks. The thing for you to do, it seems to us, is to stand pat. Wages are good and the people are generally contented. Prosperity is beginning to come back and it is poor policy to stir up matters. I've been through a lot of campaigns and I want to say to you, Senator, that I know the people pretty well, sir, and the people are beginning to feel sore over all this reform business. They are beginning to feel that they can't turn around or do a thing without someone claiming the right to pass a law telling 'em how to do it. The effect of the reform measures you are advocating will be to disrupt the party."
The Hon. Maxwell paused and his two friends nodded assent after his somewhat lengthy talk. Paul's first impulse was to get tremendously mad and tell the visitors to get out, as politely as it could be done in a hurry. Then his sense of humour and of right proportion came to save him.
Maxwell he knew fairly well to be one of the most narrow minded type of politicians, honest enough so far as that went, but without a shred of real patriotism or any faintest glimmer of sense on matters of public welfare. His little soul revolved in a jerky and contracted orbit about the party. This orbit never took him out of sight of the "party." Under good men and bad in office, under defeat and under victory, under the varying vicissitudes of fortune that his meagre political life had known for forty years, he had never gone back on the party. He had held one or two minor offices in the course of his career and was deeply grateful to the party for recognising his right to an office. But when the party ignored him and put in some other creature, Maxwell never complained. To change the figure from the satellite and the orbit to a living organism, Maxwell was like Bill Syke's dog; no matter how the party treated him, he licked its hand just the same and showed the same loyalty and affection for the party when it kicked him down stairs as when it fed him at the pie counter. In forty years Maxwell had not learned a new idea or grown an inch in political stature. He was a party man and was proud of it. His one great virtue was that he was honest. He voted regularly for all sorts of thieves and boodlers and scoundrels nominated by the party, but he had in some marvelous fashion known only to his Maker, kept himself clear of all personal bribery and political trickery.
All this Paul knew quite well, and he was not able to despise Maxwell on account of his one redeeming factor. But the slavery that had tied Maxwell body and soul all his life was so foreign to Paul's whole makeup that he could not understand it and he had to repress his natural desire to explode over Maxwell's talk. But he did manage to say quite calmly:
"Mr. Maxwell, I appreciate your plea for the party, but I don't see things as you do. While I accepted the nomination, as you say, at the hands of the party, I distinctly outlined my views at the time and made no pledges that bind me either to the party or to measures, if these measures conflict with my own sense of what is for the best interests of the people. I think the people who elected me understand that I am free to act in that way. And, frankly, that is the way I intend to act. There may be some mistakes in some of these bills. It would be strange if there wasn't. But I believe they are for the good of all the people or, of course, I would not urge them."
Maxwell shook his head doubtfully.
"This reform business has gone too far. My friends here know that. JudgeLivingston can tell you how the people out his way feel."
"Yes, sir," said Livingston in a dry, machine-made manner; "Senator, the people in our district are growing restive over the reform business. They want to be let alone. We have too many laws now, laws that interfere with our personal liberty." (The judge grew eloquent.) "Laws that attempt to dictate to us what we shall eat and drink and where to go, and I for one say for my district that these continual efforts to legislate on personal matters will not only disrupt the party, but lead to a counter revolution that will surprise the so-called reform bosses of the state."
Paul looked at the judge steadily. If he could have looked at him with an X-ray eye he would have seen a small sample whisky bottle in the judge's coat pocket, one of the adjuncts of "personal liberty" the judge was defending. Not seeing that, Paul did size up the man for about what he was and answered him accordingly.
"As to legislation that affects personal liberty, these bills you say you have come to see me about deprive no man of any liberty he has a right to possess. But I am ready to confess they do deprive some persons of the liberty to steal the people's land and water power. They do aim to take away the liberty of certain food makers to poison the people, and of certain other food sellers to give the people short weight. Some of these acts are also designed to take from certain persons the liberty to demoralise youth, as for example the measure a number of us hope to get through the legislature regulating bill boards and indecent posters. For years a little company of men has insulted all the people with these public monstrosities. I am frank to say I have no scruples in depriving them of the liberty to do so any more. And as to dictating to the people what they should eat and drink, don't you think the saloon and the patent medicine men and the adulterated food makers and the dirty food sellers have been dictating to the people centuries enough, to give us some excuse for depriving them of their long monopoly to deal out sickness and death at wholesale? When you talk of 'personal liberty,' it is well to remember the fact that no man has any right to a personal liberty which results in evil to his neighbour or to society."
The judge turned very red, and was on the point of replying. ButMaxwell broke in.
"This is aside from the question, Senator. The main fact you ignore. The main fact is that what you are planning to do will split the party."
Paul lost his temper.
"Let it split, then! I don't worship the party! What is the party by the side of the people?"
Maxwell looked shocked. I think he really felt as he looked. Paul could not have said anything more treasonable.
"Senator, you will regret those words. Mark me. You will regret it. One of the things I was going to say was———" Maxwell lowered his voice and looked around. "I was going to say that you have it in your power so to shape your own future that the governorship would come to you in two years, or the national senatorship. The party would be willing to reward a man like you———"
Paul exploded again. "Governorship! Senatorship!" he almost shouted while Maxwell looked apprehensively at the open door.
"Do you think I care about them as reward for political slavery?" Then he suddenly realised how useless it was to let a man like Maxwell understand.
"Gentlemen," he said good naturedly, "excuse me. The occasion does not call for excitement. I understand your purpose in coming to see me. It will save your time and mine to say that I shall not change my plans to press these bills even if the result is to disrupt the party. And you are as free to say that as I expect to be in my editorial this evening."
Maxwell nervously interrupted.
"You are committing political suicide, Mr. Douglas."
"That's better than hari kari, eh?" said Douglas with a smile.
Maxwell stared. He had heard of hari kari perhaps, but did not know whether it was the name of a new type of airship or a health food. He went away with his two friends, firmly convinced, however, that the editor of theNewswas on the road to political destruction.
After Paul had written his editorial for theNewshe was not certain himself that he had not really done what Maxwell predicted. He had certainly never spoken so plainly and even bluntly on the issues of the campaign, and he knew perfectly well that the Maxwell political type dominated thousands of voters, men who resent any act in politics which threatens to disarrange the smooth running of the machine. In politics it is almost as easy to raise a howl against reform as it is to raise a cry for it. There are thousands of party men in this republic who as long as they can make their bread and butter out of machine politics don't care what price the people have to pay for their bread and butter.
When Paul went home that night he did what he had done for twenty-one years. The minute he was in the hall, he said, "Esther?" with an interrogation point after the name.
Esther was upstairs in the upper hall. She replied in a subdued tone, "Yes, here I am," and Paul ran up three steps at a time to greet her. Marriage may be a failure with some people, but it certainly was not with Paul and Esther who had remained lovers all these years, simply because they had made their married life a joyful, sacred and deeply Christian compact, a genuine union of heart and head and soul. Paul wrote love letters to his wife, sent her flowers and in general courted her in much the same fashion Esther had known when Paul was a struggling reporter. And Esther kept herself bonny for his sake, entered in whole-souled fashion into his ambitions and was not afraid to debate politics with him and keep womanly. One great secret of their joyful married life was found in the perfect frankness each showed the other, and also in the blessed fact that each of them had almost a perfect physical constitution, not frayed nor tortured with nerves and sensitiveness.
The minute Paul saw Esther he knew some unusual event had occurred. Paul was quick to detect the presence of any new thing because Esther's expressive face could never hide a great secret. Paul was on the point of asking what it was when his eye was attracted by a commotion going on behind the door of a cedar linen closet at the end of the hall. There was a sudden wrenching and tearing of cloth, then a great Jovian sized laugh, the door burst open and a huge figure stepped out into the hall where Esther stood laughing hard.
"George Randall!" cried Paul, and the next minute he and his old pupil were in each other's arms.
"As big as ever," cried Paul, as he stepped back to look at his unexpected visitor.
"Bigger," said George, grinning. "Mrs. Douglas, if you'll get a needle and thread I'll mend my coat. You see, I just stepped in there to surprise you a minute and I backed up against a hook and it caught right under my collar and tore half of it off. What makes you make your closets so small?"
While Paul was overwhelming Randall with greetings and questions, and Mrs. Douglas was sewing on the medical missionary's coat collar, Randall was explaining his unexpected appearance in Milton.
"You see I've been transferred to Feu Chou Fu, the new hospital there. I've been called home by the board to help raise funds for the plant. I left so sudden I didn't have time to write you and I wasn't certain either that I would come here. But my father! Do you know about what's happened to him?"
"No," said Paul. "I knew he'd been travelling with your mother for her health, but I haven't seen either of them for two years since they went abroad the last time."
"My father is going to be a Christian! He and mother never took kindly to my going as a medical missionary, but last year they stopped to see me at Shaowu. I didn't know it at the time, but father was tremendously impressed with the missionary situation. Then over at Ponasang, father was taken ill, and what should happen to him providentially but he had to go to our hospital there. Dr. Wilder fixed up his body, and what is more he reached his soul, and father wrote me just before I left Feu Chou Fu that he had found the light after living in the dark all his life, and at the close of his letter said he and mother were on their way home to Milton and wanting to know how he could best serve the cause of Christ. I hardly slept all the way over to Vancouver for the joy of lying awake thinking of it. A cable from father reached me this morning from San Francisco, saying they would be at Milton next week. They sailed by way of Auckland and Honolulu. So I thought I might as well come and board with Mrs. Douglas and you until they arrived. You can open a can of something, and that will do for me, and I can hang myself up in the closet if you are short of beds.
"But won't father and I have a jolly time when he gets back? I won't ask him for more than half a million to start with to put into the surgical department. Poor old pater! He has never had any fun with his old money. I'm going to help him have the time of his life now spending it for Christ and the Kingdom. My! But won't we have a jolly lot of fun with that money now?"
That evening at the supper table George Randall simply fascinated the whole company with his stories of Chinese life and the victories of the gospel. Esther invited in her brothers, Walter and Louis. Felix Bauer had never seen anyone like Randall, and he sat the whole evening absorbed, listening to the recital of as marvellous a story of conquest as any to be found in the chapters of Caesar, Frederick the Great or Napoleon. And what a conquest! Not war and pillage and pitiful man's ambition for power, but conquest of that great territory called the human heart.
"My, but I wish you folks could have seen what I saw there months ago at Shantung; five thousand people stood up in a public square in front of one of the old temples, no one knows how old, and threw thousands of idols into a heap on the ground and burned them, and then sang in their own language to our tune, 'Anywhere With Jesus I Can Safely Go.' For five days, much of the time through a pouring rain, more than five thousand people met to listen to the gospel of light and life and healing. We rigged up a sort of field hospital, using part of the temple for a clinic, and Walter and Rice and Colfax and I cut off legs and arms and heads of no end of diseased folks and operated for compound cataract and every known and unknown disease, and the Lord was with us. We didn't lose a case, and you never saw or heard such sights in prosaic money-loving America. Why, those people are born again! That whole district is simply awake out of several centuries' sleep. I have the consent of the high powers in that district to negotiate over here for a lot of machinery and stuff for agricultural purposes. And those people are putting up a church at Angfu that will beat any church in Milton for work and worship. Think of that, beloved! In a country that has stood still for twenty-five centuries, worshipping the past and bowing down to nineteen thousand filthy gods, you can hear 'My Faith Looks Up to Thee' and 'All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name' sung by congregations so big that they have to meet out doors. And yet I understand from reading one or two high-browed religious magazines printed in this country that the old gospel has lost its power and that the world must have a new brand of religion of the hermetically canned variety suited to the elevated culture and new thought of the times. But the old gospel seems to do the work in China all right. At any rate it makes real men and women out of animals, and changes sinners into saints. I don't know any test of a religion bigger than that, do you?"
Paul asked one or two questions and started Randall off on an account of a missionary tour into the unexplored parts of west China. Then he spoke of the contemptuous criticism offered by a certain type of globe trotters he had met on his way home. In telling about this his great form seemed to tower up and his great head with its mild blue eyes looked sternly gigantic with righteous indignation.
"There was a bunch of naval officers coming over on theZarinawith us, and some of them were quite fine fellows. But there was one officer who used to get out with the author of a book on the Eastern situation, and they would spend hours criticising the missionaries and laying the blame on them for all the Boxer troubles and the hatred of foreigners generally.
"I didn't know until later on that the reason for the distinguished author's feelings against missionaries was because some of his own personal immoralities had been rebuked by a missionary in Pao Ting Fu and he had been mad ever since.
"His friend, the naval officer (and I was thankful he didn't belong to our country), took great pride in describing his conquests with the fair sex in the different quarters of the globe where he had been on his war vessel.
"Think of that, dearly beloved! Here was a man who when he touched at a foreign port had no more exact knowledge of the work done by missionaries than the knowledge he gained from going to a high-priced ball or champagne supper held a few feet from the shore, expressing the most emphatic opinions concerning the value of a foreign missionary's life and influence! He changed his costume several times a day. And I learned from a midshipman who volunteered the information that the following comprises the regular and compulsory list of clothes a naval officer in this Christian age is obliged to possess and solemnly wear on the proper occasions. Want to hear it?"