im«iHiii«»ii«t«i»H»««tttiHiH«HH»jii«iiwri«>«m»Hi Book ^f GopyrightN? COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. SOULS OF THE INFINITE SOULS OF THE INFINITE An Outline of the Truth BY S. E. GRIGGS, A.B., M.D. ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR NEW YORK THE METROPOLITAN PRESS 1911 v\^ ^1 -■ '1 Copyright, 1911, by THE METROPOLITAN PRESS Registered at Stationers* Hall, London {All Rights Reserved) Printed in the United States of America ^, CI,A2D2389 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Dr. S. E. Griggs Frontispiece A gentle, rolling country with green hills in the back- ground 3 He came often now 5 But the soul was striving, striving to fulfil its mis- sion Facing 8 Ruins of one of the prehistoric temples in the lower Tigris Valley 21 Westward the army toiled 40 That night as Chinzer stood his guard alone 47 And there were Nejd horses there in numbers 51 lone 68 A royal hunt 95 One lone knight rode out before the battle joined, tossing his sword in air 97 Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans upon his hoe 109 Hen 121 The same old paths were by the river Facing 128 Mrs. Hassett Facing 146 PREFACE Read slow. Do not skip. Do not hasten for the end; because the moral is not there, neither is the end, without the beginning and the journey. m Souls of the Infinite CHAPTER I Once upon a time, very long ago, thousands of years before the Star of Bethelem was set, thousands of years before the Pyramids were built, away back it happened, ages and ages, before ever history began. Can you imagine how things must have looked then? When the human family was very small, when they roamed over just a portion of one continent and all the rest of the great, wide world was new and unsettled. When all of Europe, all of Africa, all of North and South America contained not one civilized being. There must have been a lot of room in the world then — think of all the countries that we know and there was nobody there — it must have been a lonesome place to live in. 2 'Souls of the Infinite How do you suppose the valley of the Ti- gris looked in those early, early days when the oldest town in the world was not yet thought of and the Jordan was away, way out on the frontier? Of course, you most probably have never seen the Tigris at any time, but then you have read about it in the geography; it is in Central Asia. Well, this valley looked quite some like it does to-day. It was much shorter, though; the river itself was swift- er and not so deep. The grass on its banks, the trees and the wild flowers, the blue sky and the hills looked just the same as now. About two-thirds of the way up the river on the eastern bank a large tributary stream used to empty in from a gentle, rolling country with green hills in the background, and it was up from the bank of this tributary stream, in that long, long-ago day which we have told, that a young man, or rather a boy, was climbing. He was hardly old enough yet to be called a man. He had been down to the river to get a drink and was going back up to the shade of a wide- spreading tree. His body was very brown from the sun and weather, for he wore no covering except a piece of sheepskin aroimd his loins, but you could see that his skin was naturally Souls of the Infinite a A gentle rolling country with green hills in the background 4 Souls of the Infinite white. From the nature of his clothing you probably suppose he was tending sheep. Well, in a way, he was; for, although this was so many, many thousand years ago, still they had sheep then and had had for a long time be- fore this. He was quite tall, this boy, and his arms and legs were rather lanky, which gave him that kind of a bean-pole appearance which comes to most boys of about this age. The expression of his face spoke for very little, though it was remarkably good, considering the people from which he came. His forehead was straighter and higher than the average and his nose was not as flat as most of the noses in those days, but on the whole he looked very much like his father and his grandparents had looked for a thousand years. Perhaps a little better, but very, very little. He was a mixture of Aryan blood, which probably partly accounted for his looks; it may also have partly accounted for the fact that he was restless and fretted a little under his shepherd's habit. You may think that nobody ever fretted in those days, but that is because you do not know. This boy was perfectly seri- ous about it; in fact, he was troubled about it, Souls of the Infinite 5 He came often now 6 Souls of the Infinite something was making him restless. Often- times in the heat of the day, when his flocks and the other shepherds' were asleep, he would be moving about or would get up and go for a drink, as he did on this occasion. There seemed to be something like a struggle going on some- where within him, but he could not place it. It seemed as if there was something he wanted to do, something he ought to do, but he could not tell what it was. He would look at the trees and the grass, the sky and the hills around the east, the river running away to the south, the whole of his little world; there must be something in it somewhere which he must do, something different than he had ever done be- fore. But his angular, sinewy arms and legs felt helpless — he could not do it with them. It was something he could not see. He did not know what it was. He did not even know how to look for it. He was sure it had nothing to do with tend- ing sheep, for he knew all that was necessary to know about that. He also knew all the folk-lore of his people, and he understood thoroughly every one of their crude indus- trial arts. He could make a bow better than any boy in his tribe, and could shoot it Souls of the Infinite 7 farther and straighter. He could also cut out a sweeter-toned reed from the pipe-plants by the river. But his fathers and his forefathers had done these things, his fellow companions could do them. It was something else that he must do ; but what could it be? What else was there to do ? He could not tell ; still, something kept calling, calling him to do. It was not any of these things which he knew. He felt nearer to it when he was farthest away from them, when he was watching the great red sun-god sink down in the western sky, or when he was alone by the river, watching its rippling waters hurrying away, always hurrying away. What was it, then, that was moving this heathen boy, that was taking the dull satisfac- tion from out his shepherd's habits? Something was calling him — a nameless something. He roamed through all his old, accustomed haunts, but it was not there. He sought the deepest shade, the wildest stretch of unbroken plain, but it was not there. No, nor could he find it through all the shades and plains of his narrow country. It came from another source. But something, which had very much to do with this calling, he felt, we can tell you; though he did not know it, it was 8 Souls of the Infinite his soul. For — yes, he had a soul. Buried most awfully deep it was and shackled by a thousand hereditary tendencies, and stunted and dwarfed, still he had it. How it got in him we are not certain, but it was there, and it was making itself felt. Neither will we say positively where it came from. We think it tumbled from the lap of destiny through the shaking of her apron ; how- ever, you are at liberty to disbelieve that if you choose. But, whether you believe it or not, it is certain she was having a great deal to do with it, and was keeping a very close track of it. Opposite the page open for its actions here she had set down the name of Thaddeus, but thus far the ciphering upon the page was very faint and very blurred. But the soul was striving, striving to ful- fill its mission. It was it, that kept stirring, that kept turning to the call, that silent, im- perative call, the call of that mysterious cur- rent which has moved man on, which is moving him on and on, to some eternal sea. This bur- ied soul had heard it. Human beings had probably been here in Central Asia for a good many thousands of years before this, but they left no traces mission Souls of the Infinite 9 of themselves — ^had made practically no prog- ress. The less removed man was from the brute, the more stationary he seemed. Ages and ages were required for the most rudimentary ad- vancement. But, however stagnate he was, he lost nothing, and all the while, slowly but sure- ly, he was approaching the time when his hu- mane nature would unfold. Something was drawing him onward, always onward, like the tiny hillside stream is drawn to the sea. Im- peded, pent up and choked at first, but always flowing on, until it sweeps a river broad and deep. To the south of this place of which we speak, about the mouth of the river, there was a darker-skinned race, who Vv^ere probably a little further advanced. They were more populous and better builders, being more industrious, but most of their buildings were huge, useless, mon- umental piles. Their mode of living was al- most the same. So away back in that heathen darkness, be- fore ever there were any signs of dawn, this current was calling Thaddeus. Calling him to make the first unguided struggle and he was groping to rise. But the task before him 10 Souls of the Infinite seemed well-nigh hopeless; he was still close to the primitive, his feet were rooted in tra- dition, there was no certain way out, and no lights to guide. Banks of superstition blinded him and he could not see. His fathers and his forefathers for genera- tions before him had not tried to see ; they had paced in unheeding darkness, the same short and beaten path. Why should he leave it? The way beyond had never yet been tried. They had passed their satisfied lives with these same simple things. Why should he strive for something different? The weight of centuries of tribal customs was on his youthful shoulders ; why should he rise to shake it off? Why could he not tie his sheepskin girdle about him, just as his forefathers had done, and lapse peace- fully into the dull contentment of his sur- roundings ? But these peaceful shepherd's surroundings had become troubled for him. The dull quiet of his accustomed ways had become disturbed. His idle haunts had come to fret and brood uneasiness. There was no place now where he could rest in dull stupidity. Not one place of dumb and dormant quiet left for him. He tried them all, over and over again, but the Souls of the Infinite 11 same unrest was in them all; the same name- less wanting brooded everywhere. The river only, of all the places that he knew, seemed yet to hold a kind of welcomeness ; but it was not rest he found beside its banks, as he watched its hurry and its motion — it was a different feeling. So he came often to it, not to drink, but just to sit beside it. There was something in the fretful murmurs of its current. Its water- spirit seemed to know his vacant wanting. And as its wavy shadows would play over his sun- browned face you might almost have thought there was a flicker of light in his eye. But oh, so faint, just the feeblest flicker. This, too, was different from the stolid countenances of his companions. Thaddeus, my gentle savage, you are wak- ing, surely waking. Your youthful shoulders are straining beneath that iron chain of cen- turies. They will break it, surely break it. He had made him a better reed and toilfully copied some new and sweeter harmonies from the river, for which he began to love the river. He played them over and over, clear and loud, then soft and low, and as he waited, listening to the echoes from the water, he began to think. 12 Souls of the Infinite Surely, to think. Yes, the mind of man, that dumb and dormant thing, which had been locked in slumbering darkness through all the vacant ages which had gone before, began to stir itself. Was it the river that made him think ? Well, maybe it was. He did not know. But he was thinking, and it was of the river that he thought the most. Who put it there? Who gave it water? Why was it always hurrying away? Who planted the trees upon its bank? Did the Great Spirit do all of these things ? He did not believe it. Many other things like these he thought. Simple, of course, but it was very well for him, because, you must remember, he had nothing to start with. Established facts he had none at all. He did not even know that two and two made four. Nobody knew it then. He could place two stones with two other stones and count them up to four, and he could place two sheep with two sheep and see that he had four, but that it would always make four he did not know. Neither did he know that there was such a thing as right and wrong. If something injured him, he immediately wanted to resent it, unless the something was too powerful ; then Souls of the Infinite 13 he was simply moved to get away. It never appeared to him as either right or wrong. Neither did it, if he injured someone else. Right or wrong he did not know, and no kind and loving angels came down to teach him. There were no angels in those days. He had just to think about these things for himself. So he worked away, and as fast as his awk- ward but energetic brain could examine things he hurried to tell them. He would talk about them to his companions, to the people in the village, but they seemed to take little interest. They could not understand. They rather con- sidered that something had gone wrong with him. He began to be avoided. Soon no one at all would listen to him. So it came to be that the most part of this thinking business of his was told only to the river. But the river was always ready to listen, was always waiting for him to come, was always telling him of new things to think, and soon these sprouting thoughts of his began to take a wider range. He began to question other things — the habits of his people. The pain- ful way they marked their bodies he par- ticularly did not like. Their sacrificing and torturing of themselves to please their sky-gods 14i Souls of the Infinite he could see little good in. Nor did he quite be- lieve in the killing of women and children, as was their funeral custom. But on these things he never voiced his thoughts. Because he was afraid. They were sacred customs. Oh, custom! Thou hast ever been one of the strongest shackles that bind the sons of men. How tedious and difficult was to become this new path he was starting, nor the delusions and racking uncertainties which beset it he did not know — ^how could he know? Nor if he was leaving the quiet ways where ignorance was bliss, he did not ask, it mattered not, there was no alternative, nor could he turn him back how- ever steep should be the road. But Thaddeus was not thinking to turn back; no, he was minded to follow it, the call he'd answered comes not to the faint. Where did it lead! Well, first, it led to labor, taxing labor, and soon these crudely fashioned, intellectual wheels of his began to grind. Thoughts began to get entangled in the cogs. He was getting hold of grist too large for such a small mill, and too much material was crowding in — river thoughts, tree and moimtain thoughts, village and people thoughts, sky thoughts, star Souls of the Infinite 15 thoughts; beyond the sky thoughts there seemed to be no limit to this thinking business. And these worrying, puzzhng, questioning thoughts so entangled him, hopelessly en- tangled him, until he began to be afraid that maybe he really had gone wrong. They would hold fast to him as if to wear him out; still he could not stop it. Something in his head would just run on, and on, as if it were a sep- arate living thing. He was bewildered. If only there was some one to whom he might go with questions, some one who might explain some things to him. But the wise men of his village did not know. At least, they could not give an answer that sounded right to him. They only seemed to know the traditions of his tribe — ^how one of their ancient chiefs had built the Thunder Mountain; how Pitris, with but a handful of braves, had driven back a myriad warriors from the savage north, and how Hus- sing had split the huge table rock with one blow of his heavy club. But these things he already knew. He wanted to ask other ques- tions — questions that kept turning over and over in his head as if they would break them- selves out. But there was no one, no one in the whole wide world to whom he might go — 16 Souls of the Infinite not one solitary mortal to help him. For the world was dark. But, strange enough, as this difficult think- ing business kept on, the troublesome things began to untangle themselves. He began to answer some of his own questions. The river helped him. The trees and the mountain helped him. The great wide plain with its hazy sky helped him. And something else, which he did not know, which had lost itself within him, was helping him most. One day, late in summer, Thaddeus drove his flocks far up the winding river, or perhaps it would be better to say he followed them, for the flocks in those days took about as much of the responsibihty and "thought for the mor- row" upon themselves as did the people who tended them. Farther up they went than ever before, because the grass was very dry on the plains. Thaddeus was playing his new har- monies, and he could play; perhaps not to the enjoyment of you or me, but it made sweet music to a savage ear. The tones seemed to blend so sweetly with the limpid notes from the water, and while he played something crept out to listen. Was it a wild- wood fawn? No; though it acted much the same. It was afraid. Souls of the Infinite 17 Still it wanted to come. It was drawn by the chords he played, and the harmonies seemed to. hold it. Ere he saw it Thaddens felt its coming, just like he felt the evening, only different — a deep- er, subtler feeling. He turned to see it, and somehow, like a memory shadow, he seemed to know it. And it was then no longer so afraid, but came a little closer and sat down to listen. There seemed to be a kind of mutual under- standing between them, perhaps they had met somewhere before, or perhaps they moved in the same social circles, or perhaps more pos- sibly they had long before this romped in the lap of Destiny together. All the rest of the long autumn days Thad- deus' flocks were pastured far up the river ; for he was now divided between two emotions. He wanted to walk by the river and think, and he wanted to sit in the wood and play his reed with this new creature whose acquaintance he had made. Her name, to destiny, was Phillis. She came from the Hill Tribe. Theirs was no formal courtship, no social ladder to climb, no ambitious parents to con- ciliate ; no, nor did they even know the worries of a flat. But as Thaddeus spent his days with 18 Souls of the Infinite Phillis, as he played to her in their leafy apart- ments, he began to lose that restless, thinking feeling — the call from the river — it came back to him fainter and fainter, like an echo from his flute. It was being lulled to sleep. It might have slumbered again, but something happened, something fierce and terrible. He had heard his grandsire tell how it had hap- pened once before. The greedy hordes from the south were marching upon Lulubi. All the flocks must be gathered in. Every tribe must muster every son. The cry flew wild through valley and plain. Thaddeus caught the spirit, it bounded through his pulse, it thrilled him. It called to fight for home, to strike the hated ravisher, — courageous impulses, but they were o'ershad- owed by a far fiercer passion which it kindled in his breast, just as it kindled in every other native breast — it was the passion for war, their dominant passion; in fact, the only passion they possessed. All the animal nature of their wild ancestors surged through them. The savage rivermen from their bone-strewn caves were incarnated again. Souls of the Infinite 19 The battle joined, with savage warcry, with clash of ragged flint and wooden buckler, with frenzied turmoil, and with streams of blood. There was charge on charge and these primi- tive sons of Lulubi may have acquitted them- selves with credit, may have performed doughty deeds of valor, but there was no one to com- memorate, no historians to chronicle and no minstrels to immortalize. But the greedy foe were unsubduable. From every charge they rallied in countless numbers. Onward they came like sand from the desert, till strength was gone; her defense was broken, there was none to hinder and Lu- lubi was stricken. Her scanty fields were wasted and her vil- lages in ashes. Her old men slain and her young men taken captive. Everywhere was ruin and slaughter. Her smiling valleys with myrtle and vine, her flocks and olive groves, all were no more. The ruthless hand spared nothing, for in those savage days to show mercy was a weakness. CHAPTER II Thaddeus was among the captives. He was led away to the south, to the sea-land, and made a slave. This youth from the upland country, this primitive explorer of thoughts, had been immeshed in the web of circumstances, vnthout choice ; his scene of action had been shifted. In- stead of the shady river bank and his reed, he had now the marl-pits and the hot southern sun. Strange places and adverse conditions were about him. Swarthy men he saw who wore straw coverings upon their bodies, and whose language could not be understood. The sun- god beat hot upon him, the mud and clay was heavy and his lanky limbs ached with the labor. But his mind was clearer now — something seemed to have had a purging effect upon it. Human strife and bloodshed, ruthless and cruel as they may have been, have been abso- lutely essential. Nothing else could break from people the tenacious hold of customs. These inhabitants of the lower Tigris, while 20 Souls of tJie Infinite 21] Ruins of one of the prehistoric temples in the lower Tigris Valley — RawUnson's ^'Ancient Monarchies" 22 Souls of the Infinite very near the same intellectual level as their northern neighbors, were a step in advance in the progress of evolution. They were more communistic in their habits, more industrious and more collective in their action. Thaddeus observed them with this wondering, question- ing curiosity of his: — The huts of their city spread out in countless numbers, yet there seemed scarce room enough for all the people, so crowded were the streets with them: — Such strange customs they observed among them- selves, and they bowed down to so many queer images of wood and clay: — They seemed also very busy, always hurrying somewhere. Thaddeus was observing things — that is not to say he was standing around looking on; he was part of the performance, very busy, very much employed. He and his fellows were making brick, or rather making large mud slabs — making them under very caustic induce- ments and with very unpleasant facilities. For, besides the driving taskmasters, besides the heat and the gritty mud which hurt his hands, he had a very uncomfortable piece of wood fastened to his leg, which made walking quite difficult and running impossible. But they could not fasten any shackles to his mind, and Souls of the Infinite 23 while his hands were busy his mind was look- ing around and considering: — The river — ^it seemed to him, they were trying to stop it run- ning, with this baked mud which they made: — Streams of captive slaves were continually carrying it into the river, but the river spread out over its banks and flowed on just the same : — They were also building high, massive piles of this mud upon the land, probably hoping by them to climb into the sky: — There were armies and armies of workers, a few were white, but the most part were dark, much darker than the Sumerian people. Thaddeus was industriously studying this new arrangement of things, contriving to un- derstand its meaning, endeavoring to associate it with the working of other things which he knew. He was trying to analyze the industry of Sumeria in a much broader way than they had ever tried to do themselves. His eager brain gathered up each frag- ment of knowledge. He began to copy their language and to adopt their manner. He was adjusting himself to these imavoidable condi- tions — an ability shown afterward to be mark- edly possessed by these white-skinned people. And while he discharged, with as much grace 24 Souls of the Infinite as possible, the disagreeable favors these Su- merians were asking, he was also formulating opinions for himself about the things he saw. For one hundred days he worked in the bitu- men and clay. A hundred days he was a part of the ceaselessly grinding mill; then, probably because of the adaptability he had shown, possibly because he was too light for the la- bor, or possibly it was just mere chance, but he was taken away from the marl-pits, into the busy part of the city, and placed with the build- ers — workmen who were none of his kin, but he perceived that they also were bondmen. But their taskmasters were less severe, and they wore a covering upon their bodies like the Su- merians, the which was also given to him, his sheepskin girdle having long since succumbed. They spoke this new language which he was be- ginning to adopt, and he learned much from them. These images which he had seen about the town were gods. These massive structures which they piled up tier on tier were god- houses. Strange, it seemed to him, that these gods should need to have such houses built for them. But his was not now to question; he was only to build ; so he accepted the inevitable. Souls of the Infinite. 25 The circumstances under which he moved were quite beyond his control; there was noth- ing else for him to expect. He understood the dominating political situation quite thoroughly, much better than many of those who dominated him. He knew that the valleys of Lulubi were wasted, that his people and kindred were scat- tered and slain. He knew that Sumeria was the master. He readily perceived her great strength and her great activity. He also saw that she was pushing forward, with forced la- bor, gigantic constructions, the object of which he could not quite understand. She was ambi- tiously creating and he was helping her, whether by his own choice it did not matter. So he built, and he built exceedingly well. The same spirit, which in the marl-pits had marked him to survive, dominated him here and drove him to excel. So diligently did he build, and such cunning did his hand display, that he soon became one of the foremost workmen, and often marked the tablets with their curious pictures, which he learned to understand. Thaddeus — the gods, for some reason, had dealt quite unkindly wiUi him ; they had all but killed him, enslaved him and then thoughtless- 26 Souls of the Infinite ly tossed him to the bottom, or, more properly speaking, to the bottom of the bottom — a stranger in bondage, without a comitry and without a people — but he was climbing up. He had already reached the first round, which was well, for the bottom rounds are very long steps, and no hand was out to help him. At the bot- tom of the ladder there are no helping hands. If there are hands stretched out to aid, then you are not at the very bottom. The god-houses he was building were very high, with long rows of steps running up and down. When Thaddeus was up he could see far out over the country of Sumeria, a beauti- ful, sunlit valley dotted with clustering palm trees and yellow with fields of grain. Of the city, the most of the huts were on the west side of the river, and farther out to the west he could see another river beyond this, the plains stretching away to meet the sky; out yonder, he learned, lived the wild savages, the enemies of Sumeria. To the south, the river wound on, some two days' journey through low, marshy country to the sea. In the streets of the city he could see trains of naked slaves going to and fro, and men of Sumeria in their straw coverings — a kind of skirt extending from the Souls of the Infinite 27 waist to midway the thighs, often very finely woven, but of women scarce a one. The women here were kept mostly about the houses, and they were kept well covered in this straw fabric. For it was already an estab- lished fact, that the most part of a woman's body is a thing obscene, not to be looked at in public. By the way, some nations still scru- pulously adhere to this heathen belief and sta- tion strong, brave men on guard at such places as Coney Island and Atlantic City. The days he worked were very long and he had only poached grain and some dried fruit to eat, and at night he slept in a roofless inclosure guarded by Sumerian soldiers. But he wore no wooden shackles here, and though he was busy the work was not so hard. He had be- come quite resigned to it, and was now a splen- did builder. Still, do you think that his mind did not often turn again to his native plains, to his flocks and the music of his flute, to those sunmier days when he walked with Phillis and played to her, when all his world was bright and he was free and careless? If you could sometimes see him gazing from the top of one of those precipitous god-houses, with a far- away, longing look on his face, and hear him 28 Souls of the Infinite heave a muffled sigh, you would know he did. But this was a far different world, an active world, harsh and cruel, where there were only days of toil. Still his hardened muscles had come not to mind it much; he was himself be- ginning to change, for continued environment of whatever kind is bound to have its ef- fect. His face now wore a different look, he was no longer that mild shepherd boy with staff and flute. He would have felt quite queer now with only a sheepskin girdle on. The hills with flocks alone would probably have seemed a lonesome place. And his work, unnatural though it was, was beginning to take a place in his life. He had become a part of the city. Her restless activity seemed to mate his rest- less mind. That subtle attachment was fastened which the city had, even in those pagan days. As his hand through care and practice be- came still more cunning, his work still lighter grew. He came to do but the finer parts. Also, with less arduous toil, more often would come that far-away look in his face. But he was not always thinking of his native hills. For that questioning thing within him, which had been obscured in the absorbing straits of Souls of the Infinite 29 new conditions, had gathered strength, and was now reasserting itself with a much firmer grasp. It was reviewing this new Hfe of his, was taking to account these Sumerian customs and these Sumerian gods. Once as he mused thus o'er his work, marking a huge ( \ | Q clay tablet — writing a his- tory that should prove all too fragile for the stretch of time — that should never reach the distant workers that were to come — once as he stood writing thus, the prince of the Western Tribe (Sumeria was composed of four tribes, each with a prince — there were no kings in the world as yet) came by and paused to watch him make the lines. He in- quired concerning the fair-skinned boy, for Thaddeus looked almost white beside his dusky companions. Then he bade the guard bring Thaddeus down to him, and as he came he liked him more, for Thaddeus was straight of bearing and had still his freeborn manner. "Gentle youth,'' said he, "where is thy na- tive land?" Thaddeus answered: "I am from the north, most noble sire, from Lulubi, near her eastern 30 Souls of the Infinite mountains ; but for twenty moons have I known this southern clime." He asked him much about his work, and why- he made the pictures running thus. And Thaddeus explained to him many things which he had thought — how that if the lines ran so, the picture should mean more, and if this way different — so that the prince seemed pleased and dismissed him and went his way. But on the morrow came a messenger and Thaddeus was taken away. The prince had bought him for a steward in his household. So Thaddeus ministered in the prince's household, and the prince favored him because of his understanding, and made him overseer both in his house and in his fields. And he waxed strong in all the lore of the Sumerians, for his brain was eager, and his restless soul was quiet only so long as there were new things to understand. This prince of the Western Tribe was ac- counted a mighty man among his people, a counselor in peace and a leader in war. He had much land and many slaves. He had cattle and houses and earthen vessels of fine work- manship. In his household were many concu- bines, who weaved fine plaits of colored straw. Souls of the Infinite 31 and his mistress wore precious stones and pieces of gold brought from a far country. She was a Turanian by birth, the daughter of a chief whom the Sumerians had taken captive, and she showed Thaddeus much rude affection, because of his stewardship. She was quite comely, with large, dark eyes, but unthinking eyes, that reflected nothing from their dark- ness, for women here were kept secluded and restricted — a picture of man's first subjuga- tion, which was woman. Thaddeus went much to and fro in the city about his master's business. He saw the build- ing of her many temples ; he read the many in- scriptions, most of which he did not believe. He did not believe there were so many, many gods, with such queer powers and requiring such useless service. Neither did he believe they did all these wonderful things for the Sumerian people. In his youth he had held little confidence in the rites and sacraments of the sky-gods; he now held nothing but vague disgust for these gods of clay. Still, often as he read he stopped and pon- dered. Perhaps his benighted mind was try- ing then to pierce the future, who knows? To peer a thousand thousand years adown the 32 Souls of the Infinite path of time, when empires should decay and students search through buried heaps for these same fragile tablets. Perhaps he vaguely saw the coming of another day which this day and time should know not — which he should know, but which should know not him — and longed to leave some lingering trace behind. Thaddeus, though mentally some advanced, was still a creature of his day and time, a man subject to the vicissitudes of men. The prince had given him to wife his handmaid, a native of the sea-land, but Thaddeus loved her not; he liked his mistress better, though neither touched his heathen heart, where buried, lay the image of a northern girl. These Sumerians were always at war, either defending their own border against the desert hordes or plundering their weaker neighbors. Peace, in their conception, was a one-winged angel; her other pinion was the pinion of suc- cessful battle. And Thaddeus now led the prince's cohorts. The prince's arm had grown too old. His burden had fallen upon Thad- deus, and Thaddeus was proving himself a strong and valiant son to this foster-mother of the south. And though he was, in custom and manner, Souls of the Infinite 33 now quite a citizen of Sumeria, his river-nature still was in him. And often when duty spared it would lead him through the city, uncon- cerned, to the Tigris's reedy banks, there to renew a kindred feeling. Better than any na- tive son he loved their Tigris with her eddying currents. To him it seemed the embodiment more of power and more worthy of adoration than their many gods. This one-time slave, now devoted to Su- meria, her strength and her weakness he knew. He had seen her dry years and her years of plenty. He had flooded the water out over her land in more abundance. He had seen her temples started and her shrines completed. He had brought many captives to hasten her build- ing. Still the river flowed on, still the moon- god waxed and waned, still seed-time and harvest unchanged. Was this, then, all? His active soul was struggling anew with the door which held locked the possibilities of man. The unsatisfied feeling of his youth was returning. The current was calling him again. The hosts of Sumeria were marshaling, so once again he led them forth. This youth from the upland country, this adopted son led them forth, with shields painted and torches burn- 34? Souls of the Infinite ing; but he came not back again. The battle- field had claimed him, had locked him in her sodden folds, to sleep the sleep of ages, to mix his ashes with the ashes of the past. Thaddeus we have lost, but the soul we shall find again. Why not? Do you suppose they perish with the body? Or do you suppose the hand that made them left them here to work a day and then to rest in idleness for ages? Ah, no ! They for some infinite purpose have been fashioned, and until that purpose is complete they will be here. CHAPTER III A THOUSAND thousand years had rolled away and a thousand thousand souls had toiled to raise the race of man, when next we look, and see among them one we know, an Ak- kadian boy, whose ways are unmistakable. He is of the landed class, the class just above the freemen, and his name is Chinzer. These hasty, pugnacious, terrestrial tenants have now divided themselves distinctly off into classes. A faint glimpse of this tendency we saw among the Sumerians, due to the fortunes of war; here it is more birth, and these aborigi- nal noblemen are quite proud and exclusive, with quite ancestral lines. We said a thousand thousand years. Time was not very accurately measured in those hazy days ; probably about four thousand years had passed. In the interim had happened the "un- wary Adam" and the "renowned Noah with his Ark," also; what Thaddeus saw as a marshy 35 36 Souls of the Infinite stretch of river-bottom was now a flourishing city, old and established, beginning to decline. Queen of the East — yes more, proud Babylon, once queen of the world. Chinzer's home was in Borsippa, a village on the Euphrates River, just to the south of this great Babylon. He was a stripling of a boy, just at that age to comprehend quite easily the conditions about him, but to question nothing, accepting everything to be as it was. He had been many times in the city of Baby- lon, with her walls and brazen gates, her straight streets running to the river, each with its brazen gate; her many sections, with dif- ferent-colored awnings; but it never occurred to him as being very great — in fact, he never thought in particular about it. He liked the Pashe section best, because the streets were shaded better there, and fewer soldiers were loitering about. He had often seen the Patesi, with his gorgeous robes and his fan-bearers, and he knew that S argon II was king, and that he lived at Nineveh. But kings and satraps troubled him very little; he was too busy with his own affairs to bother about such things. Things were transpiring fairly rapidly, how- ever, in this ancient, prehistoric metropolis. Souls of the Infinite 37 Wars of subjugation or revolt were every- where and continuous. The deposed Chaldsean prince, from his mountain retreat, was watch- ing Babylon with covetous eyes. The Baby- lonian nobility was restless under the Assyrian yoke. The common rabble were eager for any change. JMesopotamian society was in an un- settled state, but they were used to it. Things never had been very much settled. This was kind of a grabbing time. Established dwellers in favored localities had accumulated consider- able wealth, but possession still constituted ownership among the tribes of the earth; so wealth to be had, and power to get it, furnished ample grounds for war. The land here was already gathered up into vast estates, and the condition of mankind in general was about like serfage, with rapid oscillations from sol- dier to slave. So here, in this ancient, boasted civilization of the East, the soul of Thaddeus looked upon things little better, even worse, than they were four thousand years before — saw with discour- agement the tardy progress of this human family. The great revolution of things, which had been established when "man's selection" first supplanted "nature's selection," had been 38 Souls of the Infinite diverted; greed and avarice had blocked the iwheels. When Chinzer became eighteen he was taken to Nineveh to enter the king's army, for the king, as usual, was preparing for war, and he was to be a mounted archer in the southern troop. Though but a youth, he showed plainly the characteristics of the class to which he be- longed, the reduced Akkadian land-holders. They were a proud, haughty people, very cou- rageous, but of a coiu-age tinged with fierce- ness ; austere to inferiors and treating superiors with reserve; extremely religious, but their re- ligion was a sensuous affair, filled with lascivi- ous ceremonies. Long-buried Nineveh, that one-time martial mistress of the Tigris, that city of blood and palaces which ruled the nations with a rod of iron ; whose arrows were swift and terrible, and whose bow was ever bent; whose streets were like the shambles of the slaughter, and whose gates were glutted with the spoils of war — • Chinzer now saw her in all her pagan glory. She was much different from exclusive Baby- lon, much larger, with higher walls. Outside her eastern gate the army was en- camped, and such a concourse of foreign rab- Souls of the Infinite 39 ble! Chinzer looked on them in wonder. Here were wild, skin-girded Scythians from the north, marshaled beside fierce, yellow-faced Tartars from the plains; gaudy-colored Hit- tites from Syria; Medes and Elamites from the eastern mountains; Kimmerian warriors from the northern sea, and around them everywhere the brawling Assyrian soldier ; banners stream- ing above phalanx of spears and prancing chargers; guards hurrying to and fro amid shouting officers. Nineveh, with her hirelings, was going to battle; a martial host, which represented not the zeal of patriotic sons, but the rampant de- sire for plunder — soldiers who delighted in war for itself alone. They were trained fight- ers, however, tried with many battles, and their king was leading them forth to spoil. Westward, he led them forth. Westward, the army toiled; two hundred thousand men dragging its spiked shadow across the arid plain. Down into Palistena they were going, to smite the rebellious Jew. The gods of Meso- potamia, abundantly propitiated with sacrifice and burnt-offerings, were aiding them in the attack. The gods of Judea, also persuaded by 40 Souls of the Infinite Westward the army toiled Souls of the Infinite 41 the smell of roasted meats, were assisting, with equal zeal, the Hebrews in their defense. But on this occasion, for some unaccountable rea- son — possibly the meats were not good, or the flavorings were poor, or the cooking was un- hygienic — the Hebrew gods forsook the unwar- like Children of Israel; so they were put to the sword, their children sent into slavery, and their land left wasted and desolate. Assyria, through divine indulgence, was again victori- ous and triumphant, Nineveh again meted out her destructive assimilation. Two years Chinzer spent with the army in Judea, chastising the chosen faithful. This was when the mournful loss of the "Ten Tribes" was accomplished. As soon as this campaign of devastation was completed, and the booty safely carried to Nineveh, the King led his army to ravish the Elamites, whose country was just east of Kaldi. But these people were of the same fighting, rapine stock as the Assyrians, and while the King was boating his marauders down the Euphrates — although the gods had been bountifully conciliated — they flanked across overland and smote him in the rear. Such havoc did they raise v/ith his baggage and 42 Souls of the Infinite his reinforcements that the King was glad to retreat. These mountain people later aided in bring- ing about the complete destruction of his king- dom, and administered, in after years, to war- like Nineveh the annihilating subjugation which she had so long been meting out to the weaker nations about her. Now, when King Sennacherib had obtained an ample sufficiency of the sting of the Elam- ites, he turned about him for some less fortified people to beset. The masses which he held under him clamored for activity, and, unless he gave them war, his army, and consequently his kingdom, would fall to pieces. So he decided to invade Arabia. Everything else available was already despoiled to about the last degree, and, besides, Arabia had incurred his enmity. So he again marshaled his mighty host — spear- men and bowmen, a countless number, thirst- ing for the spoil — and with blaring trumpets and streaming banners led them down into Arabia. These Arabs, while not animated with the fighting spirit of the Elamites, were a more dangerous foe for such an army. They were too wild and too averse to labor. They would Souls of the Infinite 43 not build cities nor plant vineyards sufficient to furnish spoils for such a host. When the wily Arab was on his horse, and his blanket wrapped about him, his hut was empty. They were such a thieving set themselves that it was folly for any of them to accumulate much ; and so accustomed was each to pilfering neighbors that whenever the Arab left his house he always took all his belongings with him. Their only wealth being horses, these they quickly drove away, and the fleet Arab was far out of sight, leaving only vacant, deserted huts for the slow, plodding Assyrian army to ravish. They were robbers, true, these brigands of the Assyrian king, but they were no match for the thieving Arab, who even stole from the army that had come to plunder him. The monarch took a number of their wooden gods, but these the Arabs probably left to their own divine protection.* He also took captive their pretty queen, and sent her back to Nine- veh, with a detachment of his mounted archers for a guard. The rest of his mighty host were led off into the desert by the vanishing foe, where they perished. ♦"Hist. Babylonia and Assyria," Hugo Winckler. 44 Souls of the Infinite Is it possible, that there may be any truth for us in these crude pantomimes of human activity that were being played with such earn- estness here, while yet the stage was dark and curtained? Do you imagine what caused these turbulent masses to rush blindly hither and thither, with such eagerness for battle? What kept those kings, at the cost of life and king- dom, trailing their forces incessantly backward and forward across the face of Asia? It was not all for spoils. If we look deeper we can see another motive force, a remnant of which is still firmly planted in our nature. Though unidentified, it was the baser human interpretation of the universal de- sire for activity which they felt — the demand for motion, which runs through every atom of organic matter. That human desire for the new, and the unattained, when analyzed, is mainly the demand for motion. Do we not see it in the great general weeping for more worlds to conquer; in the powerful magnate who, with tottering steps, is still grasping for power; in the greedy capitalist's frenzied ef- forts for more gold? It is not wholly for the possession of these things, for they each have enough and to spare. It is the passion for ac- Souls of the Infinite 4s5 tion uncontrolled. It becomes all-absorbing, rooting out the finer qualities of man's nature, blighting his ability to appreciate the real ob- ject of living. One of the guards for the Arab queen was Chinzer, as wild as an Arab himself. His boy- hood days had seen nothing but turmoil and strife. He was thirty-one now, and had been for thirteen continuous years a warrior hired to the king. For thirteen years he had carried the soul of Thaddeus over these wreck-strewn marches and into these pillaging depredations. Chinzer, however, recognized them not as such ; he was but one of the mass, crowded backward by environment, hemmed in by custom, com- pelled by circumstances. Chinzer, we cannot say much for you; your pugnacity has exceeded its utility. If it were not for the fact that you carried the soul of Thaddeus within your bosom we would be tempted to leave you out of the picture. Combativeness and the will to attract were planted in man's nature for a purpose, but here it is being perverted, enslaved to brutish greedi- ness. Thirty-one years have you been the cus- todian of a human soul, what have you to show for it ? A scarred and dented shield and a well- 40 Souls of the Infinite worn cutlass? These are not the hope of mor- tals. You were also given some "talents"; what have you done with them, buried them or dissipated them? For thirteen years has a soldier's better self been calling to you, for thirteen years has human inspiration and feel- ing been kept hidden beneath your trooper's garb. How tediously slow to understand is the nature of man. As Chinzer followed this impatient handful of guards back across the desert he reflected. There was little else he could do. These were the most befitting days for the soul to whisper, to try and show the evil of these things men did. So he began to be dissatisfied with this marauding warfare — began to dislike his riot- ous career. "This is a dogged life," thought he to him- self, "this glorious civilization of ours; it is worse than the heathen." His idle cutlass heavy at his girdle hung and his buckler chafed his shoulder as he rode. He was moody, pursued with discontent, until by chance it happened he observed the little queen, and then his thoughts went otherwise. For she was very pretty, and the soul of Souls of the Infinite 47 That night as Chinzer stood his guard alone 48 Souls of the Infinite Thaddeus had always a fondness for pretty women. She looked very sad to him. Her tears were falling, and her eyes, so like big, dark windows, were drooping now. Chinzer wanted to com- fort her, but he knew not how. He had been so little among women, for in Assyria the women were kept secluded, and he knew not what to say. Poor captive thing, whenever she looked at him he could feel something come throbbing in his breast, for whether free or captive she was a queen. He told her, in Ara- bic, not to cry so, that the king mayhap would be kind to her. But she answered nothing, but only sobbed and drooped her head. That night, when Chinzer stood his guard alone above the sleeping caravan, his soul was heavy and his thoughts were of the day. The little queen was silent, but he could see the heaving of her bosom and would have spoken again to cheer her, but was afraid. And then she called him to her. This was the first time she had spoken, and she used his own Assyrian tongue. She told him how her heart was broken, how she could never live within walls confined, like the Assyrian women ; told him of her desert free, and pressed him Souls of the Infinite 49 long to flee away with her from death to life and liberty. Her little bosom trembled with the sobs it gave, and he could see the tear-drops to her lashes clinging. The soul of Thaddeus stirred strong within him, — it would have gone without a second's waiting, — and struggled hard to show that right was right to do, though right should break a law. Harsh, martial mandates heavy o'er this bivouac hung, and scattered round lay sym- bols of the weight of Nineveh. This beaten trail was close with laws and orders pressed; beyond it led to binding laws the same. The south away stretched wide and free, with care- less nights and days. The desert darkness bore the weeping of Sheba's sister queen. The silent air kept sigh- ing her entreaty: "Stern Nineveh is distant. There are ways where none can follow. There is safety in this mantle of the night." An Assyrian guardsman stood forbidding, but a soldier's heart was listening. And when the morning sunbeams came twinkling across the desert sands and roused the slumbering cara- van, they were not there. CHAPTER IV Two-hundred-odd years after the close of our Assyrian picture, in what was once the dim and hazy dawn of history, but which now is more distinctly seen, there was a mighty gathering together of the sons of men. The place was Critalla, in Cappadocia, and the man who swayed the scepter was Xerxes, a Persian monarch, who, while not the greatest, was still the mightiest ruler the world had thus far known. It had taken four years for this legion to gather, four years since his messengers had sped to every province of his vast domain, and now were marshaled here beneath the Persian banner the standards of well-nigh every na- tion — excepting Greece — and the gathering was for her. We said from well-nigh every nation — from sun-scorched India across to Asia Minor, from Egypt and from Africa had levies come to swell the Persian host — but from Arabia none. No foreign levies had been wrung from her, be- cause these monarchs could never bend her 50 Souls of the Infinite 51 And there were Nejd horses there in numbers 52 Souls of the Infinite stubborn neck beneath their servile yoke. True, for hire there were a few small squads of camel-drivers there, but from the great wide Nejd plain, or from Jebel Shammar, there was not a soldier. Those warriors did not fight for hire. But there were caravans of Kedar mer- chants there, come up with goods to sell, and there were Nejd horses there in numbers. Among one company of these desert sons who had come up with horses fleet to trade for Persian gold there was a prince, from Nejd, the guider of the caravan. And as he brought his dusty company to halt there was a look about him and an action which seemed famil- iar. His name was Rashid, son of Obar; still, scarcely would you have imagined that beneath his goat-hair mantle stirred a soul akin to Chinzer. Two hundred years of desert life had fash- ioned a very different man from that we lost. Besides, this Arab was of royal blood, an intru- sion quite unwelcome, for we deal but with the race of men — the general — the fashioning of nature — and take not to account such special birth or artificial privilege. But this Rashid did not act the part of east- ern lordly prince. There was no bowing and Souls of the Infinite 53 saluting as he passed by, no dusky slaves were clustering round to fan him, no hampering of his stride with fringe and trappings. Son of the desert, he would scorn such things. In Ke- dar every man was born a prince, a son of the Almighty. And Rashid, unreserved, would grasp the hand of any member of his caravan, would share his bed or share his board, or in a private brawl would meet him hand to hand on equal grounds. Such was the life he led and such the land from whence he came. No pampering to dis- dainful royalty, no proud nobility flaunting with lordly rank and title, but only men. No laws to crush the weak and fortify the strong; no grinding tax to gorge the overflowing treas- uries of the few; no doors that barred a man, but opened for a title. A man was there a man, and to kill him was a forfeit of ten camels, no matter who his father may have been. And women there were cherished and beloved, not like dumb animals confined.* They graced the daily walks of men and lent their counsel and advice, and cheered their sons on stricken fields where foreign foemen strove to break the Arab *This was before Mohammed cast his blighting shadow upon the Arabian women. 54 Souls of the Infinite neck. Such were their homely virtues, but to enjoy these sacred privileges the desert bare had come to be their only habitat. The gar- den spots had all been vanquished by^ the strong. The soul of Thaddeus had found sweet draughts for which it thirsted upon that dry and arid plain. The souls that mingled in that desert air had brought forth a race of men su- perior, by nature's measurements, to any of these nobles, lords, or kings. A race so differ- ent from this soldier type about us, two hun- dred years of such had come and gone. Tower- ing monarchies they had built, and kingdoms fair in random ruin laid ; but what had it done for them? They were positively worse, more servile, than when Chinzer left them. Do we wonder, then, at the manner of this Arab son, or at the feeling which he harbored in his breast? Rashid, though born a prince, was none the less a man, and now with eyes of wonder he surveyed this mighty host of Per- sia's, the like of which might not gather once in many epochs. Here were a million seven hundred thousand men-at-arms, two hundred thousand slaves and attendants, eighty thou- sand horses, besides camels and chariots, the Souls of the Infinite 55 greatest army Asia ever produced, A prodigi- ous multitude of all types, from the war- painted savage, with his club, to the Persian and Assyrian soldiers, who were partly civil- ized and armed with the best weapons of their time. These latter were paid, but the great bulk of the army served without pay, were im- pressed soldiers, forced levies from the various subjugated provinces, who fought or marched under the Persian lash. Rashid walked about among the camps, among the chariots and horsemen. There seemed for him a strange enticement about this marshaling of warriors. The days slipped by, his horses all were sold, and horsemen chafing to return, but still he lingered. He wandered in among the mounted archers; there was a silent beckoning about their arms, their straps and harness. He hefted a trooper's shield. How easily did he slip it on his shoulder! And how he fondled in his hand their short Chal- dsean cutlass! Does the soul remember, or do such peculiar things just happen? But, strangest thing of all, Rashid enlisted, hired out to fight, to be a brother to those marauding ruffians. Now it was not the soul that prompted this 56 Souls of the Infinite enlistment. The soul protested bitterly, but still he did it. It simply shows that there is no accounting for the ways of men ; there is a per- versity in their nature which shows up anon and gives to them an inclination to revert. He straightway went to Otaspes, the Assyrian general, made known his rank and his ability, and Otaspes made him an attendant of his horse. This now was autumn, and the army broke its camp at Critalla and marched from thence to Sardis on the Hermus, for Xerxes had Phoe- nician and Egyptian architects to span a bridge across the Hellespont, so that he might lead his horde of soldiers into Greece. But when he had his hosts made ready, and was prepared to march with much array across from Sardis, the August winds tossed up the Hellespont and washed away the bridge. Now, this made Xerxes very wroth. He was indeed a mighty monarch, and for this mean Hellespont to thus thwart his purpose, threw him in a rage. He immediately dispatched vassals to take the architects who built the bridge, and other vassals with shackles to bind the Hellespont and scourge it with the lash, and bade them also brand it with hot branding- Souls of the Infinite 57^ irons, and charged those who flogged the waters to utter these impious words:* "Thou bitter water! Thy master inflicts this punish- ment upon thee, because thou hast injured him, although thou hadst not suffered any harm from him. And King Xerxes will cross over thee whether thou wilt or not. It is with jus- tice that no man sacrifice to thee, because thou art both a deceitful and a briny river." We can imagine, with amusement, to what extent the briny Hellespont was afflicted with the chastisement, or how quickly she soused out the branding-irons. But with the poor, guiltless architects it was very different. They were brought, trembling, before the king. Men who, no doubt, were far the intellectual supe- riors of the bigoted judge into whose hands their fate was cast. They were certainly enter- prising barbarians of no small ability, to have been able to bridge the surging Hellespont with such means and resources as were known in that day. But these things weighed for nothing with their kingly judge. They were condemned to death. The discomfited king went into quarters then at Sardis, while a new bridge was being built, ♦Herodotus, ix, 16. 58 Souls of the Infinite, and so it happened that our errant Arab spent his first winter amid camp confines. But distinctions of rank and military subor- dinations sat very loosely upon his shoulders. Inconsistency — he had joined; still, he did not like these things. The servile obeisance of the vassal soldier was to him a thing of baseness, and the haughty arrogance of the Persian no- bles would make his swarthy brow to kindle. Everywhere he mingled, whether among Egyptians or Assyrians, his unbroken spirit shed an influence of intolerance, of resentment. So, after all, perhaps it was not the perversity of man, but the hand within the shadows, which had scattered such as he among these soldiers. Spring came on, and with the first warm days the army was again prepared to cross, the bridges having been rebuilt. This must have been an imposing sight — there in the murky morning of history, this warlike host, one of the largest the world had ever seen, creeping its pontooned way from Asia into Europe. First, the bridge was strewn with myrtle branches and perfumed with incense ; then, just as the sun was rising, Xerxes offered up a prayer and poured a libation into the sea; also. Souls of the Infinite 59 he threw in a golden bowl and a Persian sword. Herodotus says he never could ascertain for a certainty whether he did this latter for an offer- ing to the sun, or in repentance for having scourged the sea. Then, just as the first sun's rays kissed the parapets of the bridge, the crossing began. Foremost, leading the van, were his picked soldiers, the ten thousand Persians all wearing crowns and all with silver ferrules upon their spears. Then followed an immense body of vassal troops, with the Persian lash singing among their naked legs, to lend them courage - Then the horsemen, with purple housings, and streamers fluttering from their bridles. Next came the sacred chariot of Jupiter, drawn by eight white Nisean horses with gorgeous tapes- try, and gilded harness flashing in the sun. Then came the king, adorned with gold, in his chariot of silver, followed by a thousand of his bravest Persian soldiers, all with golden ap- ples for ferrules upon their spears, and a thou- sand of his bravest horsemen. Behind these came twenty thousand foot and horse; then, with a space left to separate them from the king's troops, the throng of all nations promis- cuous, with the Persian lash again singing and 60 Souls of the Infinite snajDping. Such a host! For seven days and nights continuously the bridge creaked and groaned beneath the load. What was the true meaning of this massive movement? Was there some hidden motive animating the pulse-beats of this mighty throng — this more than a million souls all crowding westward? Was there some super- human law impelling this surging flood? Some universal purpose permitting this action to be? The soul of Thaddeus felt no such tide. This was simply a stupendous demonstration of the ambitious selfishness of one man and his royal associates. The misguiding, for the gain of a few, of the restless power in the imthinking masses — which is always a danger, and which will always be misguided so long as there is such a power. How often since has this lesson been read to mankind in sorrow! Civilization is not a thing which can be built up for the en- joyment of a privileged class. It must include the race, else is its damnation certain. To ad- vance, we must advance the whole. The call of destiny is to the race, and whenever the ulti- mate Utopia is reached, it will be reached as one family. There will be neither Jew nor Greek, bound nor free. Souls of the Infinite 61 Well, this mixture of pomp and pagan- ism, this blunder of an all-wise providence, went down into Greece. Of the fortunes of the king you already know, but of the men there is something yet to tell. One among the many was our errant Arab, now a true soldier of fortune. The vengeance of no trampled shrine had bent his bow, nor was his bosom kin- dled with the wrongs of any country. He was simply a pilgrim of the goddess, owning allegi- ance to the Persians only as a matter of expe- diency, and terminating his respect for their laws directly with their possibility of being enforced. If his chance was good, a comely damsel or a golden prize outweighed the wrath of Xerxes or his kingdom. This promiscuous host of Asia's was entering now a country where knowledge was far ad- vanced, where men searched after truth, where wisdom was prized above riches, and where they spoke of "honor" — a thing which could not be measured in golden shekels. The civili- zation of Greece spread out about them; they gazed on it, but gazed like the unthinking ox. The voice which called to them, from the lives of these intrepid men, from their f reeborn cus- toms, from every rock and rivulet of their 62 Souls of the Infinite rugged country, no man heard — or, hearing, could not understand. Rashid looked on with his fellow invaders, but saw more than they. He wondered at the peculiar customs these people observed. They crowned their heroes with leaves of the wild- olive tree, and they esteemed these crowns of rarest value, though the tree was very plentiful. The human images they made in stone and bronze — the most wonderfully beautiful — filled him with admiration. These Greeks seemed to live for many things besides feasting and fine raiment. The soul of Thaddeus saw companions here, men who cherished the beautiful and the good ; men who had turned their attention from sor- did baseness to nobler things, and who fought, not for gold or greedy kings, but for principles of right, for truths which they had found. It stirred so mightily within this Arab's bosom that, when their city was burned and the un- daunted Greeks betook themselves to their ships, he went wandering about the ruins, a deep yearning in him to know the strange things for which these Grecians lived. The pursuing army marched on to the sea- shore, but Rashid remained with his general at Souls of the In finite 63 Thebes, for the Thebans were allies of the Per- sians. Here he made more earnest effort to understand this strange manner of living. He could feel a yearning within him for things which he knew not of. But he had that thirst which is the first great gain. So much of his time did he spend inquiring after these things, that the horse-boys of Otaspes were left to their idleness, and slept within their tents while many a noble charger neighed unattended in his stall. But Raschid was busy, very busy. His soul was groping for light, and, besides this, in his inquiring search he had become acquainted with a Gre- cian girl, lone, the wife of Attagimus, the The- ban at whose house he and his general had often supped, and something unbidden had sprung up in his heart. Nor was it a cold Gre- cian something like their marble statues, but a warm Arabian kindling, and like the morning of their southern sun. It kept continually turning him toward this Theban garden, or forming a thousand pretexts for messages to Attagimus. Many fair women he had seen, both Greek and barbarian, but this was an un- usual feeling. It grew, in spite of obstacles, with every thought. 64 Souls of the Infinite After the battle of Salamis, Xerxes started with his army for Thessalia. The courageous Greeks had been victorious, and Rashid, in his heart, was glad. But he had short opportunity to rejoice, for he was smitten sorely with the fever, and was soon about to perish. Otaspes was indeed sorry. He was loth to lose him, because he was an excellent horseman and a manly fellow, and despite his lawless hand, there was a hidden nobleness about his heart, for which Otaspes had formed a friendship. But the army must be moved, so he appointed a slave to attend his sickness, and left him with their ally, Attagimus, at Thebes. Thousands of Rashid's fellow-soldiers had fallen by this same fever, more than the Greeks had slain ; but destiny had appointed different- ly for him, so after many days of weariness he began to mend. His pallet then the Theban moved, from out the camp, to his own garden. And, as Rashid lay beneath its shade, in half delirium, his eyes would wander o'er its beauty. It was like a vdld grove surrounded by a wall, and on each side there was a colonnade supported by marble pillars. The trees within were planted so closely that the foliage inter- mingled, and the fluttering of the leaves caused Souls of the Infinite 65 wavy gleams of sunbeams to travel o'er his bed. Beside the trees, the woodbine and the ivy grew. The woodbine was in blossom, and formed crowns upon the branches with its deli- cate foliage, while the ivy mantled the brown tree-trunks with glossy green. Beneath, dis- played their various hues, the narcissus and the rose, and the violet with its blue like the calm sea. Here, with these surroundings, which were better far than leach or apotheca, our errant soldier grew better fast. But with the abate- ment of his body fever returned that throbbing feeling in his bosom, and it became another fever. lone would daily come to see him, to mark the slave's attendance, and with each visit, or each gentle touch, this other fever in his bosom waxed and burned. The summer days sped sweetly o'er the gar- den, their zephyrs whispering to the trees. They had cooled his parching malady. Otaspes awaited him in Thessaly, for now the king had gone to Asia. Still he did not go, but illness feigned ; and he was sick, but with another ail- ment — something the zephyrs could not cool. His limbs were strong again, yet to his pallet still he kept hy day ; v/e would not say but that 66 Souls of the Infinite he walked about when no one saw. And, Hke a truant boy, he would encourage carelessness in his slave, just to hear this Greek girl chafe and fret about him. But something here was growing almost out of bounds. He wrongly promised every day that he would tell her, but each time opportu- nity or courage failed, which only drove this fever in his bosom worse, for it no longer was a quiet, passive love, content to look and to adore, but had become an all-absorbing emo- tion, an impetuous passion to possess. lone never guessed, or at least we think she never guessed, the ardent pow er that was being kindled here. That she was kindling here, for there was something more than nurse's care, prompting her kind attention. lone loved this Arab prince, and once as she smoothed his ruf- fled pillow, for the wayward slave was gone again, she lifted from his brow a raven lock and bent and kissed him. Alas! the bounds to all his smoldering passion like stubble fell. Why did she do it — betray herself, undo her lord's command, forswear her sacred vow? Why did she! Because she could not help it, for this was Phillis standing here, although her name was lone, and she was a Greek. Souls of the Infinite 67 VThe wind bloweth whithersoever it listeth," and it is hardly easier to bind affections. What did the soul of Phillis know of Grecian vows? Had not this love four thousand years of prior claim? And was it wrong if Rashid strove to overstep the law of Greece? Might there not be a higher law? What if he lingered long, and often, from his heart in earnest, besought lone to leave her thoughtless lord? But she would not. Because the soul of Phillis, being it was a woman's soul, was more by law re- stricted, and had not grown with equal pace. The war was finished, and what was left of the barbarians, a shattered band, went scatter- ing back to Asia. They carried with them, however, a knowledge of Grecian liberty and an evidence of the courage of that liberty. A priceless thing. The greatest blessing Greece could give, had they been able to appropriate it. But the flower that blossomed so profusely among the sons of Greece could not take root on Asiatic soil. The lesson which these favored western souls had solved, and written in Ionian blood, their blind barbarian brothers could not read. So the struggle was for naught, or seemed for naught. Some may have read the lesson, 68 Souls of the Infinite lone Souls of tJie Infinite 69 but perished in its reading, and some through distance may have gained a clearer view, but on the whole 'twas little that was gained. The king, perhaps, was entertained, and some other interests may have been woven by the play. Time saw an Arab prince renew each year his pilgrimage to Greece. Fleet Nejd steeds he often brought for gifts to Attagimus. And a little dark-haired Grecian boy, an only child, joy of his home, played in lone's garden. CHAPTER V Rashid we left in Arabia, but as soon as Mother Earth had claimed her own, her ani- mated clay, as soon as the soul was free, we find it again in Greece. It had companions there, and besides, there was another and a stronger tie, that drew it to the shores of Hel- las. And, in life's declining time, often as lone pondered, something in the garden zephyr seemed to fold her, soft and dreamy, pressing on her silver tresses gentle kisses and caresses, though she guessed not what it was. But souls are not in idle felicity maintained ; they must grow stronger with duty done, the same as we. So Thaddeus took up his burden here in Greece, and took it gladly, for his was an ambitious soul, and here was opportunity a-plenty — examples to encourage, inspiring thoughts from minds of native force, precepts from intellects that strove to grasp the infinite. The gods austere, or exacting destinies, — * the powers that hold the mysteries of men, by 70 Souls of the Infinite 71 whatever name we know them, — ^must certainly have looked with admiration upon these reso- lute sons of Greece, these untiring souls, searching the universe for knowledge, exhaust- ing every talent, every mental resource to find and know the truth. And such lofty heights did they attain, such thinking power, their light spread out through all the world. They marked the way within the realm of thought for coming ages. What strength, then, did this hungry soul take here in Greece! The bonds of ages were broke from off it, and it bounded forward like a runner free with eager sinews. Two hundred years we might have watched its rapid strides from shrouded barbarism until they seemed, al- most, to reach the bounds of human under- standing, and then, — whether there is a limit to the might of mortal placed, or whether its fiery energy was spent, — it seemed it could go no farther, and slowly with the ebbing current of the time began to drift. In the latter days of Macedonia we find it a student of Logates, in the town of Corinth. His class of fellow-students numbered eight. They all wore tunics, very white, with golden girdles about their waist, and had their hair 72 Souls of the Infinite fantastically arranged. Had you saluted them some morning as they passed to school, fresh from their homes, you would have seen the polish of a Chesterfield, save that the style of clothes was very simple, and that their feet were bare. And had you listened to their dis- course as they waited round their lecture place, which was a corner in the public square, it probably would have made you think of Ox- ford, Yale or Harvard. They spoke with poise and ease, and much abstraction, cautious to make assertions, ever ready with many tripping questions and free and quick to ridicule. They doubted Plato's Phsedo, and they held that good old Aristotle was most probably mistaken in many things he said. If Stoic virtue was the only good, they preferred to have it proven, and it was no easy task to prove to them a theorem. A very skep- tic class, indeed, these pupils of Logates, and quite irreverent. They called their tutor, in his absence, "Old Ipse Dixit," not for any great thing which he had said, but for the whiskers which he wore. On this particular morning the class seemed agitated and in no frame of mind to listen to equations. There had been trouble in the town Souls of the Infinite 73 the night before, and now one of their senior members was recounting the atrocious acts of Sparta. "You see, fellow-students," said he, "these greedy Spartans hope, by paying court to Rome, to gather increased power imto them- selves. But their folly is only equaled by their stupidity, and they will receive a rude awaken- ing. For the hand of this plebeian mistress is not in Peloponnese or northern Greece for any good save for her own. Her base perfidy is too painfully apparent. I would rather see fair Corinth become a brother to these despised Helots of ours than to embrace this proffered friendship, this hypocrisy of Rome. Why should they be so deceived? What she has done to Macedonia, will she not do to Corinth and to Sparta? I say, fellow students, these peace commissioners have Roman breastplates beneath their togas, and these olive branches she pretends to be distributing among the states of Greece are but the forerunners of Roman javelins and Roman laws. She is not trying to foster harmony among us, but to dis- seminate dissension." "It is exactly so, as you have said, dear Pho- sas," replied a brother student, "and if only 74 Souls of the Infinite now could rise within the bounds of Corinth some son who had within his bosom the iron spirit of our fathers, would not there be a stif- fening of these Dorian necks and a fleeting pic- ture of the hinder parts of Roman legates? But alas! The times are changed. Our men have vanished. Sparta has only whimpering women within her gates, and Corinth has brought forth only daughters. The fiery blood of Greece is gone, and in its place flows only milky water. Our northern kinfolks have al- ready meekly placed their heads beneath the Roman yoke, and Sparta now is kneeling for her load. Such menial submission ! It should make the marble grave-stones of our ancestors to weep. I, for one, the last son of the house of Cypselidse, shall go to Alexandria and there bury in philosophic study the memory of these humiliating times." Rashid, or, rather, Miltias, for his name was now Miltias, sat silent ; he was the youngest of the school, though not by any means the least, and junior courtesy required it. He had in abundance that smoldering hatred for the Ro- mans, and had been one of the foremost rioters of the night before, for which he harbored many bruises now beneath his tunic. He also Souls of the Infinite 75 expected to leave Corinth upon the coming summer for Syracuse to finish mathematics, but things were so unsettled here. They had been so for months, and he had pondered much the conditions of the times. Why was it Greece was slowly slipping from her former place? She had produced the greatest minds and towered above the nations of the world, but now no more did Grecian thought create, and her national foundation was crumbling beneath her feet. Where was the fault? Was there no more within the book of life to read, or had her early readers lost the page? Perhaps she had built unevenly; had paid too little heed to the material things; forgot the homely practical for metaphysics' lofty flight. Perhaps she had been too intent on universal good, had given to the world her energetic soul and now was suf- fering in her body, and suffering broke her spirit. He did not believe one iron-willed son of Corinth, nor many such, could bolster up the dying state of Greece. The fault of that was in the framework, which had allowed the tim- ber of the superstructure to decay. This was the early spring, and Miltias went not to Syracuse that coming summer, but to Rome, and not to study mathematics, but a 76 Souls of the hi finite captive for the Roman market. Perfidious Latium had cast aside her mask, replaced her peace commissions by her legions, and fair Cor- inth was a smoldering heap of ashes. With many other captives in the market- place he stood. A huge tablet, fastened to his tunic, proclaimed in Roman letters that his name was Miltias; that he was nineteen years old; of good parentage; educated in all the knowledge of the Greeks, and that he had been a pupil of Logates. He was purchased by Q. Aurelius Critolius, a wealthy Roman noble- man. It is hard to imagine the initiatory effect of such a radical transformation, from unrestrict- ed liberty and wealth to the loss of everything ■ — home, family, and, we might say, individu- ality. But these Greeks were so predominated by intellect, which tends to minimize obligatory or unavoidable physical hardship. Miltias was an advanced type of such a man. There is danger, under pleasant physical conditions, in too rapid a rise to too lofty intel- lectual heights. The mind seems to see too suddenly the naked vanity of life ; human enig- mas are shattered, and it grows dizzy. Ambi- .tion seems to have no further attraction. Souls of the Infinite 77 I\Iortal hopes appear unreliable. The Humble aspirations of life seem insignificant. Custom loses its prestige. The mind easts about with- out compass or anchor; destination and land- marks are lost. There is danger for the soul in such a condition. The personal equation may- cause it to revert or even to annihilate itself. Miltias had begun to faintly feel this myste- rious delirium, and while now he sorrowed for his kin and Corinth, he may have halfway wel- comed the change for himself, as something new which might prove more substantial. The treatment accorded these educated slaves was often very good, for the Romans had always a deal of respect and veneration for Greek learning; though of the laboring slaves it was the most drastic, they had become so plentiful. Critolius owned ten thousand slaves himself. He cultivated two immense tracts of land in Picenum, besides his estate in Etruria, where was also his country villa. Young Miltias be- came his secretary, and as such was soon famil- iar with all his dealings. He was a gigantic schemer, and most of his private business was in connection with the government. The rec- ords, which Miltias kept in charge, showed 78 Souls of the Infinite much irregularity and dishonest practice; these vast tracts which he held in Picenum did not rightfully belong to Critolius, but were gov- ernment land, having been ceded to the Roman State when the Picenum people rebelled. The Critolii, like many other wealthy Roman fami- lies, had at first, many years before, simply leased the land, but now laid claim to it as private property. Just now this Critolius was extremely busy, and there were many meetings of senators and Optimates at his Etrurian villa. His interest, which was similar to that of other Optimates, was this: Some seven thousand acres of the land which he claimed in Picenum had been, under government supervision, leased to small farmers, Picenum families who had tilled it as their own before the government confiscation. But government supervision was irksome to these greedy Optimates. It was more profit- able to till the land with slaves, if only they could drive off these farmers. To bring this about peaceably, the Optimistic class, which was mostly the rich landholders, were engineer- ing a law through the Roman Senate which was called "The Populares' Right to Title." It provided that the poor farmer, by simply Souls of the Infinite 79 proving a certain number of years' residence upon the land, could recover his former title. The law appeared very good to the Popu- lares, and by this bait the Optimates drew great numbers of them in before the courts. They were compelled to bring their families for witnesses. But the courts dragged the mat- ters along, and once off the land, and posses- sion gone, the poor farmer never got back again. Miltias spent four years, active, in the inter- ests of Critolius, for his persistent soul would not be quiet. He made Critolius powerful, he acquired power himself. Still he was not satis- fied; a nameless wanting, which he pursued, ever evaded him. Something was distressing and disturbing. He saw the workings of such laws as this, together with other more grasping tactics, which he had aided, gradually dividing the wealth of Italy among a few greedy, over- rich landlords ; gradually filling her cities with a discouraged, poverty-stricken laboring class. He saw men of prominence, wholly without scruples, grabbing for added riches. He saw lawmakers and judges selling their honor for gold, the sacred temples of justice profaned without discretion. He saw the rulers de- 80 Souls of the Infinite praved with plundered wealth, the people de- bauched with poverty. For four years his assiduous soul had been weighing the life of Rome, but there was noth- ing new here, nothing substantial. It was in- finitely worse than Greece. There seemed to be no right, no honor nor manhood here ; every- thing prostituted for gold. Not one sacred thing remaining on which to hang a hope. He had pondered long upon the backward step of Greece, but here the riddle was easily read. They had been searching in lofty ab- straction for the true object of life. Rome was groveling in the basest material for that same object. The hope of Greece had been blighted, he believed, through faulty framework in her democracy ; but here was a country wholly per- verted, whose government was about to fall from its own rottenness. His comprehensive mind had inquired diligently, had reasoned ex- haustively. He had seen people who loved peace despoiled by the arm of the alien. He had seen the despoilers spoil their own. He had pursued with earnestness the path of knowledge; he had labored incessantly for power. He had possessed wealth and received honor as the reward of efficiency; yet all had Souls of the Infinite 81 been marred — or marred itself, was misubstan- tial, insufficient. Where, then, was the abiding good to be attained; where, then, was peace of mind; where, then, was truth? His soul was distraught and bewildered; that vacant de- lirium was returning again. Critolius sent him this summer, with rein- forcements, to his nephew, Satureius, who was encamped with Roman legions upon the Rhine, in northern Gaul. Here he saw the frontier, the outposts of the arms of Rome, the van of her invasion. His active mind quickly realized its significance, its relation to the whole. Rome, dissipated and fraught with internal strife, was of necessity finding new outlets to divert her energy; external resistance to combine herself at home. Instinctively, to prolong her life she was enlarging her border. But he read plainly the end of this. About the camp the valley woods hung sear and brown. Miltias, the Corinthian, now a centurion of mighty Rome, wandered beneath its tangled shade alone. His discouraged soul was heedless, life seemed wholly weighed and wanting; knowledge, wealth, power, all that Greece or Rome could give, was lacking; peace of mind he had not found. Around him 82 Souls of the Infinite fell the silent shadows of the past, the wind among the branches sang the same old song of ages, o'er him folded the solenm stillness of the wilderness. Somewhere locked within its ancient depths there must be peace. Aimlessly he wandered musing thus — but hark! What was that distant note which sounded from the river, so still, so distant, 'twas like the faintest echo borne? It must have been a rustle from the trees. But no — something within him stirred; he surely felt it. It comes again; and not so indistinct. 'Tis wafted by the stream from far, far down the river, the rugged lands of the wild Teutons. It is a call, enticing. It echoes round and round his discouraged soul in gently whispering ed- dies. Something within him seemed to kindle. The restless soul was harking back. Again the river brings it to him, more plain, more mellow and more coaxing: "There's welcome here. There's freedom. There's homely, honest manhood with native pride. Sweet nature for a kind, caressing mother. Come !" His soul goes out in answer to the call, and Miltias, young but old, followed the beckoning, off, off in that wilding wild. Forgot his weary Souls of the Infinite 83 mind — and the quiet of the trackless German forest covered all. The same which taught him first and sent him forth, burning with energy, had called him, tired and hopeless, back to her peaceful bosom. CHAPTER VI In the year 732 of our Lord, the 110th of the Hegira, the fifteenth of the reign of Leo III, the Isaurian; in fact, it might have had an in- definite number of dates. Dates are only arti- ficial things, made by man for his own conveni- ence, and have nothing whatever else to do with time. This planet of ours goes on making its laps around the sun, and they might just as well be enumerated one, one, one, for they are all the same. One year is no different from another, no farther from a beginning, no near- er to an end. This process is a ceaseless thing. You might probably be willing to take an oath that this is the year of our Lord 1911, but it would be a false oath, because this year has no number. You could just as honestly say it is the year one, for time changes not, but shines on continually. Thus the fallaciousness of our most established human customs. Of course, it is quite convenient to call it 1911, or some 84 Souls of the Infinite 85 other generally accepted name, so as to corre- late human events; but do not think that the years go on piling up, because they do not. Well, in this year 732 a cloud was lowering on the southern horizon of Europe. The cres- cent of Mohammed, supported by the fiery zeal of religious fanaticism, which had cast its wax- ing shadow from the Bosphorus through Asia and Africa to northern Spain, seemed now about to round into a full eclipse. Three armies of those once invincible Roman legions had tried in vain to check their rapid progress. Alexandria and the descendants of boastful Carthage had been swept like chaff before the wild enthusiasm of these desert war- riors. The Gothic guards of Spain and southern France had been cut to pieces by their crooked scimitars, and Europe lay trembling before this sable Saracen shadow. Their swift coursers were about to overrun all Christendom. But there was a rumbling beyond the Rhine, a gathering of clans. Those sturdy Teutons were coming from their bogs and marshes, from their steppes and from their forests. Girt in their rawhide harness, with heavy mace and whetted battle-ax they strode out upon the 86 Souls of the Infinite plains of Tauris to cast their rustic valor athwart the progress of these Moslem hordes. The day was long upon that trodden field, where hung the future course of history. JNIany a German fell, and many a sinking Sar- acen found his deluded paradise in sodden Frankish soil. The struggle locked in carnage, and those Semitic sabers cut furiously, but their desert god could not sustain them beneath the awful blows of these rugged Aryan yeomen. Our soul of Thaddeus was in the turmoil, though now he bore a German name. With Miltias, weary of the way of nations, it had thought to hide itself among these pristine for- est folks. But it could not be. This abiding place of mortals is too circumscribed and their interests too related to allow any member to lay down his hand. For the rest play on, and whoever is not there to tend his interests in the game will lose his heritage. The other players will it divide among themselves. The whole family will not, cannot, be quiet ; so, therefore, each must play — must play for himself, and must play for himself that is to come. So we see it here. The soul of Thaddeus could not go back to rest, could not live again, Souls of the Infinite 87 unmolested, that wild, free life which had once been his. That was gone. The course of hu- man events had buried it. And, though he may have been willing to take his share of the un- cultured German's burden, that was not suf- ficient. The Germans must take their share of the Teuton's burden, and the Teutons must take their share of the world's burden. So it is we find him here again upon the stage. He is, however, a more rugged soul than when we lost him, more prone to consider the physical aspect of things, and far less prone to call any man master, or even leader. These Teutons had an indomitable love of personal liberty. They also had a love and respect for women, which was not in the men of Italy or Greece, which revived in our soldier a buried remnant of his Arabian life. From the victorious fields of Tauris he now looked out on the world of action, the world which he had left, but it showed little attrac- tiveness to him. He saw the government of Italy fallen. Its rottenness had overtaken it. He saw petty chiefs of Western Europe wrangling over the fragments of the dying Empire. He saw the people trodden under foot, neglected and oppressed, valued onljj as 88 Souls of the Infinite so many conscripts who might be hurried to battle. His own experience was still in his memory, so now that his duty was done, the terror of Islam broken and the danger past, he turned him again to the forest. Away to the north he would go, deeper than before, far, far beyond the Rhine, into the land lapped by the German Ocean. This, however, afforded only a momentary respite. The hand of man pressed hard be- hind him, and the hand of nature stood hard before. This was a bleak and barren shore, not like the fertile forest he had left. The broken country roughly fitted his un- broken spirit. He loved peace, but not at so dear a cost. He turned at bay, and we see him leaving the Danish coast. Let others stand those rugged realms who could do no better. He is the shipmate of a long, dark, ugly- looking craft, the Gefion, On her prow is a huge dragon's head, with gaping jaws, and her sail is wide and striped with red. A red pen- nant also flutters from her masthead, for she is a pirate. The soul of Thaddeus was now within the bosom of a Viking. The Gefion's prow was turned to the south- svard. Behind her was nothing but unsheltered Souls of the Infinite 89 shores, and there was at least a hope before. The wave which had traveled over Europe had reached a barrier and the crest was breaking back upon itself. For one hundred years the home of Thad- deus was on the billow, from the German main to the coast of Italy. And many a crimson spot marked the landing of the Gefion, and many a heap of ashes marked her departure. These wild Viking pirates, men without a coun- try, crowded off the too narrow limits of the rapid-growing human family. They were still free, however, these rovers of the rolling sea, who recked not for state or land, nor kissed no petty monarch's hand ; their kingdom's bounds their galley's keel, their law the terror of their steel. So he lived ; but this, too, must have an end, and in the tenth century we find him one of a settlement of Norsemen in Normandy, France. He is a liegeman of the renowned RoUo, and his name is Bjorn. In Normandy at this time we have only free- men and their leaders, but over the rest of Eu- rope we see a rapidly forming system which might be called a feudalistic gradation of so- ciety. The thing in its incipiency may have 90 Souls of the Infinite been of necessity ; but ere it was fairly started, it was diverted and became simply a marking- off, a separation of rulers from the ruled. Europe was quieting now ; society was crys- tallizing, so to speak; it was sort of an adjust- ing time. The strong and those who had an advantage were climbing into the saddle, and laws were being fastened to the people's heads, like reins to a horse's bridle. We have seen something similar in ancient Chaldea, only that was more military, more the relation of captive to conqueror. This is more civil and more in detail. About the year 916, for the sake of peace Normandy's chief accepted a tenureship from King Charles of France. It was hardly a tenureship, for they already had the land and seemed able to hold it. It was more a form, to end hostilities, but it brought Normandy into the feudal system. By its conditions RoUo was to marry the king's daughter and to accept Christianity — he and his men. He talked it over with Bjorn: — This Chris- tianity, a queer cult which had come up from Rome, — they at Rome purporting to have re- ceived it from some prophet in the East. There was little ceremony connected with its Souls of tJie Infinite 91 acceptance, mainly the acknowledgment of their God to be greater than Odin, and being baptized in water by one of their priests. Bjorn had little compunction about this; he had never received any particular aid from Odin that he could remember, and he quite frequent- ly baptized himself. King Charles, however, demanded further, that RoUo should kiss his toe. "Ne si, be Got" (Not so, by God), answered the indignant Norseman. At last, however, he consented that it should be done by proxy, and Bjorn was appointed to the task. Such a performance as this was not in the least agreeable to Viking nature, and when Bjorn did kiss King Charles' toe he jerked it up so roughly that the king was thrown over backwards, which event is still told in Normandy. The teaching of this new cult appeared very good. It condemned many of the cruel things men did, and taught brotherly love and charity. The soul of Thaddeus embraced it warmly, though it doubted if the prophet really said a great many of the other things which it taught. Nor did these teachings appear to it to be of supernatural origin; on the contrary, they ap- peared very natural and huxnane, quite like a 92 Souls of the Infinite Grecian philosopher had taught and given his life for, ages before, but whom the people never accepted. However, the teachings were much better than those they already had, and the prophet must have been a very great and good man. They were bound to result in good if men followed them. One hundred and fifty years rolled round. Normandy is dotted with feudal castles. The seventh chief to hold the tenureship is William the Great. He is now called a duke, and the people are called Normans. Bjorn, the fourth descendant, whose name has softened into Jean, is one of his chief retainers. The people of Europe are Christianized and divided off into unstable nations of French, German, Spanish, Italian, etc. Feudalism has become thoroughly established; so much so, that the rulers of these various peoples are not the kings, but the powerful dukes and barons. The people themselves are of so little conse- quence that the current history rarely mentions them at all, save to incidentally state that a revolt of the German peasants received sum- mary justice, or that an uprising in France was Souls of the Infinite 03 stamped out and the malcontents punished (which meant exterminated) , or that the com- moners of Normandy, complaining, asking for their old-time rights as Norsemen, the peti- tioners' heads were cut off and sent back among the people for an example. The people in gen- eral had absolutely no rights at all which the nobles felt bound to respect. We said the people of Europe were divided off into Frenchmen, Germans, Spanish, Ital- ians, etc. Jean saw it thus, but to the soul of Thaddeus all Europe contained just two classes : the people and their rulers. The sepa- ration was now complete; not one tie of race, blood, or anything else, was recognized between them, save only the relation of master and ser- vant. This was recognized and rigidly en- forced. The great bulk of the inhabitants, who had once enjoyed comparative liberty and a voice in choosing their leaders, were now on a parallel with the beasts of the field, or beneath them. The rulers showed them no respect or consideration whatever. A French or Spanish noble was just as contented and just as often to be found upon a German or English duke- dom as on his own, and vice versa. It made no difference to the rulers — they were all one f am- 94 Souls of the Infinite ily, uncles, aunts, nephews, brothers, cousins, all related; but the subjects, the commoners, they were as alien as the inhabitants of Mars — ' any of their blood was a taint, a vulgar stain. Thus the soul saw it, and this Christianity, from which it had hoped so much, this church of Rome, which came preaching charity and the essential equality of high and low, now owned one-half of the land of Europe, and was using its power to uphold the unrighteous condition of things. The teachings of the Eastern prophet were good in themselves, but they had been saddled and made to draw a load of privi- leged greed. This was the summer in which William the Great prepared the invasion of England. Duke William is sometimes known by another name because of his birth, his mother, Harlotta, never having been married — ^but that need not concern us. He was the Duke of Normandy by right of title and by right of the fittest. His father sanctioned his succession and could have removed the stigma from his name had he so desired, but it would not have changed his love for Harlotta, nor his affections for his son. It was merely an existing custom which he chose not to keep. I Souls of the Infinite 95 ^'"■^^r ?V A royal hunt 96 Souls of the Infinite Normandy was this time marshaling her might; these Viking descendants, whose blood had not yet fitly cooled, were gathering for ac- tivity. Jean and his fellows, the St. Fontain Knights, were at Duke William's castle, Fa- laise, where was the flower of his army gath- ered. Gay pomp and courteous chivalry, in- deed, adorned that castle court; knights with dancing plumes were waiting; gauntleted cava- liers knelt low in gilded trappings; crested lords and stately barons bowed there to beauty's favor, paid royal fealty to blushing fair. The castle rang with merriment, and many a lively tilt was there to entertain, for William offered trophies rare for the most dex- terous knight-at-arms. It was the gay St. Fontain horsemen who carried off near every prize. Among all the Norman nobles they had no peers for daring, reckless gallantry, theirs was the lightest heart and theirs the heaviest hand. Alike they rode for love or glory, these troopers from the south, matchless knights in foraying frays or festal tournaments. And many a royal token had they won, and many a courtly dame had smiled to see them wheel their mettled chargers round. Right valiant fellows they, whose Souls of the Infinite 97 One lone knight rode out before the battle jolnea, tossing his sword in air 98 Souls of the Infinite hearts hung on their saddle-bows. One of their company it was who led the Norman charge up Hastings' hill of carnage. Perhaps in history you have read how one lone knight rode out before the battle joined, tossing his sword in air, and singing songs of Roland's stirring deeds — like a dancing bubble upon the bosom of a bursting storm — and how the astonished English gazed in stolid wonder- ment at such careless courage, such heedless dexterity. Jean was twenty years old when the battle of Hastings was fought ; after that he lived in England, a liegeman of Count Eustace, in Wessex. For fifty years he led the feudal life of that martial age, a law unto himself, render- ing nominal homage to his lord and exacting service from those beneath him. It was not a life with the civilized comforts of to-day; still, for the ruling class it was quite easy, quite romantic, those courtly castle days. The wandering minstrel came to hall and tower, an ever-welcome guest. Bards sang in castle-hold of knighthood's dauntless deeds. The harp in sweeter tones beguiled the while, in days of peace to bid the warrior smile; or, when in lovelorn notes its softer ac- Souls of the Infinite 99 cents fell, the maiden's cheek to dry or heaving breast to swell. For the toilers, however, this was a distress- ing age. Their rulers took from them the products of their labors, and their liberties as well. The reason why they endured such treat- ment, without continued rebellion, was because men then believed it to be right, or partly right. They recognized the nobility as superior beings with rightful privileges, and man has stood volumes of abuse when he believed that it was right. About the time that Jean was fifty years old a strange wave of sacred enthusiasm spread wildly over Western Europe. It was a conse- quence of this new cult, Christianity, which the soul had watched, and was actively promul- gated by an able fanatic, Peter the Hermit, who preached everjrwhere that men should take up arms and become literal soldiers of the Cross, should engage in strife and bloodshed at the behest of that lowly Nazarene who him- self taught only love and mercy, and who said to his disciple Peter, "Put up thy sword." The contagion seized all classes; lord and liegeman, knave and nob^e, flocked to enroll themselves beneath this banner of the Cross. 100 Souls of the Infinite Ere the year was spent eighty thousand men and women were gathered about this preaching monk, eager to be led against the sacrilegious infidel. The soul looked on the motley columns marching off to victory, going to retrieve the sacred sepulchre, pressing forward with right- eous indignation to wreak vengeance and slaughter, then to return with palms of blessed- ness and great rejoicing. Or, might they not return, but strew the Hellespontic strand ^\Aih. Christian bones ? Could it be possible that the gods were playing them another trick, like to the ancient Hebrews and Assyrians? The soul of Thaddeus meditated. It was doubtful of this new God, and "His Vicar here on earth," who was consecrating movements bearing so many earmarks of marauding ex- peditions. Soldiers, with little devoutness, were everywhere turning to these movements with such fervored zeal. It appeared to be a thing meet for much consideration. Man, from the very first, had always been prone to worship. Why was it? Was there some co-responsive element planted in his na- ture, which instinctively turned to God? The soul, upon careful analysis, could find no such Souls of the Infinite 101 element, but rather this worshipfulness ap- peared to be a kind of reaction, or reflection, from his own deficiency. Man measures all things by himself, and where he feels his own deficiencies he attributes to some external thing an absence of these deficiencies, a fulfillment. And to just the extent that he feels his own weakness he glories in and worships the com- plete thing. If his own wants are simple and the deficiencies he feels are of a rudimentary type, then a very simple thing will do him for a god. The savage can attribute sufficient completeness to a stone, or tree, or flame, to worship it. As soon, however, as he finds defi- ciencies in his god, or his increased knowledge of human wants enables him to imagine a more complete thing, he discards the former god. It ceases to inspire worship in him. Man was one time awed by the heavenly bodies. He then projected there a fulfillment of his own imperfection and worshiped them. Later, he imagined a more complete thing which con- trolled these bodies, and his worship was imme- diately transferred to it. He was then quite undeveloped, however, and desired something more tangible, not so distant, so he fashioned earthly images or accepted human characters 102 Souls of the Infinite as symbolical of that power and worshiped them. But as fast as these images of saints and virgins proved ineffectual, or these characters of popes and priests showed defects, he dimin- ished his worship for them. Shortly he would have left only one human character, and the power itself, to whom he could render complete devotion. These would probably prove quite substantial, because the one was no longer ac- tive and the other was afar off, which condi- tions hindered the observation of defects, and allowed man to add, from time to time, more completeness to them, as his own knowledge increased. Both, however, in time, the soul be- lieved, would cease to be objects of worship, becoming objects of admiration. This desire for a god, — this negative deplora- tion of deficiencies in mankind, — the soul ob- served, also operating in another and more sim- ple way. It was man's veneration for a great character or a hero, which is a magnifying in the hero of the absence of a deficiency which the venerator feels in himself. And in just the proportion that the worshiper feels himself the equal of the worshiped, does his veneration change to respect and regard. Morality originally had nothing to do with Souls of the Infinite 103 God. The soul could remember when the gods cared nothing for what men did to one another. Morality, the idea of right and wrong, grew up by itself, a resulting consequence of pain — first, physical ; later, mental. It developed into a varying code which this last God had adopt- ed, making it obligatory upon his followers. But this is tedious. Let us turn again to Jean, the Norman nobleman, descendant of a Viking, custodian of the soul of Thaddeus. He now is old. The mark of time is on his frosty temples. His heart, once warm and bounding, is beating a slow tattoo. Unsteady holds a staff, the hand that once could break an iron band. Short is the might of man. His life, — the world for him, — is closing like a day that's done. He is going to a long, long rest, but the soul must labor on. CHAPTER VII Five hundred years and more have passed. The soul of Thaddeus has been carried through tke rise of the barons, through the reign of the Plantagenets, the civil strife of the Roses, the Tudor monarchies, down to the House of Stuart. The vicissitudes of fortune had been many. He had risen with the obstinate, insub- ordinate barons, fallen through civil strife and the iron rule of kings, and now was bereft of land and title. Under the Edwards he was a country squire, but the existence was a continual struggle. Tke grasping rulers were never satisfied, and every harvest saw the toiler's bin grow smaller. When Richard came to the throne, the country- folk petitioned for a redress of their burdens. They had their labor and something worse for their pains; seven thousand of them were hanged and the rest stood meekly by. The soul was astounded. Where was their Teuton blood? Why would they not defend them- Souls of the Infinite 105 selves ? A patriot hero labored with the men of Essex; a parish father exhorted the Kentish farmers — equahty the burden of their gospel — "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" But it was of no avail. They could not see. Another custom of centuries' growth had crusted over the minds of men. They held their kingly despot in reverence, believed in his inviolate right, and gazed in stupid fear while home and field were wasted. This fungoid custom had sapped the fire from out their Saxon veins. The soul lamented. If for one moment they could have stood by Clovis in the stubborn shoes of their wild ancestors, how, then, would they have redressed these griev- ances! But custom had them enthralled, their hoe-handles had calloused over their indignant spirit. The discouraged soul longed to leave these trampled haunts of bruised and broken men, but there was nowhere to go. It must toil on, and hope that some day these Anglo-Saxon Teutons would awake. By the time James I was crowned, the peo- ple seemed more deluded than before. They had become so accustomed to the abuse of kings 106 Souls of the Infinite that now they attributed to them divinity ; but this was a signal of the dawn, for, though many believed it, many more would not believe. Thaddeus was now a yeoman, a Butler ten- ant in Hampshire, near the New Forest, a landmark of a ruthless king. His name was Thomas Watkins. He was poor, this Thomas Watkins, though not from waste or indolence, for he was thrifty and industrious — so had his father been before him ; but his goods were taken from him. Not literally pillaged, you understand, but taken legally: taxes, direct and indirect, tithes and rentals. All lawful and right. The royal courts, with eminent royal judges, had decided so. Things were grievous, indeed, but Thomas Watkins was a loyal subject and a good churchman. He hoped His Highness would soon become more considerate; at any rate it was wrong to take up arms against one's king. He prayed God daily to guide and direct their Royal Sovereign and to replenish him with the grace of His Holy Spirit. So did ten thou- sand other loyal subjects. There were fanat- ics and Puritans who preached resistance, but that was sinful. The church taught submis- J Souls of the Infinite 107 sion, the bishops and abbots taught it; God himself admonished, "to be in subjection to the powers that be," and "to render tribute to Csesar." True, this tribute was heavy; the king was demanding fabulous sums, was multiplying his arbitrary proclamations, increasing these royal courts, which were authorizing more "imposi- tions." But what could be done? The sanc- tity of the courts must not be questioned, nor could the king be taken to account. He was the ruler appointed by God. What God, asked the soul, and what courts, these Royal Exchequers and Star Chamber things, shrines of justice, established to give injustice a legal foundation, filled with busy, subtle serpents of the law, who would vend either truth or fallacy, before whom the cour- ageous John Hamilton was arraigned and con- demned ? What a farce, what a travesty ! And this ecclesiastic court of High Commission, which was making blankets of church dogmas to cover temporal rottenness, which was using church creed to support falsehood ! These things, however, did not shake the faith of Thomas Watkins. He was a sober, orthodox man, who believed in conformity and 108 Souls of the Infinite the established church ; who accepted the litany and the prayer-book, took the "communion," observed his fast days, contributed his "Peter's pence," paid his parish tax — a devout, law- abiding citizen, subject of James I of England. His landlord often dealt right harshly with him, for though he was a freeman, vassal to no one, still the condition of his tenancy made him very dependent, and the landlord was a master in every sense but name. Watkins must leave his own fields or neglect his own meager har- vest at the beck and call of this owner of the ground. And slight was his recourse, no mat- ter what the exaction, or how roughly he was used. "Damn you, Watkins," his noble landlord would say, "this is a devilish crop. Next year you will do better, or get nothing, you scurvy, clod-pated rascal. I have a mind now to turn you over to the gaoler for debt." Watkins knew the horrible condition of a debtor in the English jails, so worked the harder. His was a life filled with privation and hardship, but he had become accustomed to it. Laws hampered him on every side: church laws in jDrofusion, laws of state, royal game laws, taxes, tithes and rentals. It is difficult to Souls of the Infinite 109 Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans upon his hoe 110 Souls of the Infinite understand how he maintained his steadfast loyalty. Nor was he the only Thomas Wat- kins in the kingdom. There were thousands of others just like him, even more so — men who fought and gave their lives for their king after he had proven himself a more ruthless tyrant than James I. To the soul of Thaddeus, with its memories and its love of freedom, this was an abominable existence. These oppressive laws were unbear- able. It could read their unjust aim and ob- ject, could see the vicious purpose that begot them. Laws which embodied no moral obliga- tion, the which, rather, was a human crime to observe. But it seemed unable to interpret these things to Watkins. Long obedience and religion had Thomas Watkins subdued. Pos- sibly, too, the soul may not have been putting forth all the resolute persistence it had once been capable of — continued suppression will have its effect, even upon a soul. The burden of man was heavy here in Brit- ain, but it was not a comparison to the condi- tion that existed on the continent of Europe. The soul saw there the toiling millions without a vestige of liberty left. The iron rulers had robbed the struggling masses of every human I Souls of the Infinite HI right, had sunk them into ignorance, poverty and degradation. And now this striving, exhausted body of the human race had grasped rehgion, that Chris- tian cult, and it had spread among them like an epidemic of madness. For all the occult things of nature, which had puzzled man since first he began to think, they found in it an answer. All the supersti- tious fears, brood of ignorance, which had haunted him through his savage days, it solved for them. All their hope of salvation, their chance of future reward and possibility to escape eternal damnation, was in it explained. They accepted it bodily without inspection, as positive truth, conclusive, without doubt, and clung to it with the tenacity of desperation. It penetrated their minds, occupied by little rival learning, like the roots of a canker, and poisoned them one against the other. Every man's hand was against his neighbor of opposite faith. The divine teaching of love and charity was all obscured in the "Thou shalts" and the "Thou shalt nots." There was absolutely no toleration and no quarter. They turned, in their down-trodden condition, to smiting one another. The miserable state into 112 Souls of the Infinite Avhich their rulers had sunk them was multi- plied a hundredfold. Champions of despotism, like Louis XIV of France and Charles V of Spain, shifted these masses of fanaticism and ignorance from one part of Europe to the other, wiping out resist- ance, intending to break the spirit of all, so completely that they never again could rise in opposition to despotic sway. If civil dungeons had grown dark and high in England, they were of colossal blackness on the Continent. Men, women and children in thousands crowded their moldy darkness. Tens of thousands perished on scaffold and on fagot pile. Such a deplorable condition of hu- man wretchedness the soul had not yet wit- nessed in all its travel. Why should it be? These were signs of dawn; but why necessary such a harsh and cruel awakening? Could not the course of hu- man events unfold less barbarously? Could not mankind adopt these new conditions with- out all this agony and sacrifice? What was at fault? Not all of it was due to Hebrew teach- ing, though much can be laid with justice there. This Bible taught too many things besides love and charity. And coming as it had when hu- Souls of the Infinite 113 manity was so distraught, they had not the mental strength to separate good from bad, but assimilated all, and that which was corrupt out- weighed the little that was good. On society its influence was banefully detri- mental. All the lofty ideas and learning which had come from Greece and Alexandria, all the experiences of the human race, all the obvious facts of life, were set at naught before the dog- matic statements of this Book. Its teaching paralyzed social co-operation, disjointed the in- terests of people. Its fierce idealism stamped human effort but weakness, human virtues but sin, human reason but folly. Its effect upon the character of the individ- ual was equally as bad. No cannibal ever cooked a captive with one-half the savage zeal that Catholic, Calvinist, or Puritan burned rival converts. Human feeling and jDity fell before the stern injunctions of this Holy Book, and the squire or parish father, who would have shrunk from conscious cruelty, looked ruthless- ly on as the torturers ran the needles into the witch's flesh, swam her in the witch's pool, or hurried her to the witch's stake. Thus the soul survej^ed the struggle of his fellow-souls. Thomas Watkins saw mainly 114! Souls of the Infinite England, and but only part of that. Upon the coronation of Charles I, times grew still more troubled there. These odious, unnatural laws began to prick more keenly on every side. His steadfast loyalty began to waver. He heard many rumors in town and tavern about the new world in the West, where were peace, freedom and security. The hills of Devon and the meadow-lands of Kent began to lose their attractiveness, began to have a rigid look, their beauty blighted by the inhu- manness of man. His parish home began to seem but a poor abiding place. The parson preached, "Man that is born of woman is but of few days and full of trouble." Watkins and his fellow-parishioners listened in assent. How foolish, thought the soul. Man, the most fa- vored being in all the world, whose domains reach from East to West; who is not barred from any place or clime, the whole earth for his heritage — ^her peaceful valleys and sweet pasture lands are his ; who read the meaning of her smiling spring and knew the beauty of her breaking wave ; beneath whose hand the desert blossomed like the rose, and nature opened wide her store of plenty — yet he would make himself most miserable of all. Souls of the Infinite 115 Each day saw Watkins less content. Crowd- ed England was a land of exile. The soul was pining for the West ; now that there was a new land of the dipping sun, it could not stay. The westward-rolling wave had always borne it, a nameless something bound it in its sway. And Thomas began to share the yearning of this prisoner within his bosom; began to sus- pect that all these exactions, all these demands made by the zealous apostles of conservatism, were not wholly right; began to vaguely see that these champions of established customs, these advocates of stability in existing things, these scrupulous exactors of customary forms, were the ones who profited most by such exist- ing conditions. He began to suspect that if this abused under-fabric of society could move out, these disdainful nobles might be left sit- ting upon empty titles. Yes, he faintly began to perceive that it required common soldiers (toilers) to sustain and keep from emptiness the titles of these captain nobles. It slowly dawned upon him that a background of sable hue was positively necessary to make these lighter spots to shine, that it positively re- quired an extreme of wretchedness and pov- 116 Souls of the Infinite erty to furnish and display an extreme of in- dolence and ease. Possibly not as precisely as this he saw, — but he saw too much for his "clod-pated" devout- ness. He could not longer endure the murky background, and, besides, there was this calling from the West. So Thomas Watkins left the Hampshire fallows, the way of fortune through an unplowed fell to follow. CHAPTER VIII Little time has passed since last we parted, possibly two-hundred-odd years or so, but progress has been rapid, and since time is but the measure of activity, it is very distant from this picture in the New World — already old. Out in southern Oregon, tucked away among her hills of pine and cedar, is the little town of Woodville, a nosey little town of some two hundred houses, sitting beside Willow River, a tributary of the Mohawk. Here was raised an American boy. We emphasize American to show that he is a descendant from no one racial family, but could enumerate among his ances- tors Englishmen, Frenchmen, Danes, Ger- mans, Romans, Greeks, and more yet, if you would go back far enough. His name was Henry, but his mother called him Hen ; so did nearly everybody else, except- ing — ^well, excepting somebody, we will not say who, but she always said "Henry," be- ll? 118 Souls of the Infinite cause she thought Hen sounded like a chicken. Her father's name was Hall, and he ran the grocery store. Hen, however, did not mind the name a bit ; that is to say, ordinarily he did not mind it, but on special days and Sundays, when he was wearing his good clothes, he liked to be called Henry, or Henrj^ Oliver. His sec- ond name was Oliver. He was five years old, and had just two be- setting sins: he was always trying to evade disagreeable duties, and he had a general dis- like and disapproval of rules or restrictions of any kind. Of course, he had a lot of other minor faults — that was mostly what he was made up of. For one thing, he was always playing about the river. Time and time again his mother had cautioned him about it. "Some day, Henry" (she always called him Henry when she was lecturing him), "if you don't mind about that river you will fall in, and then I guess you will be either drowned — or willing to keep away." Henry listened very respectfully. He always listened to his mother, but that seemed about all there was to it. And one day, sure enough, he did fall in, but that was not till he was six. 4 Souls of the Infinite 119 and he was pretty strong then. He caught hold of the end of a boat, and, though his mother screamed and clasped her hands to her breast, he got out all right. He never would have fallen in, so he said, if she hadn't come around and scared him just as he was looking over. Well, it didn't cure him of the habit at all; if anything, it made him worse. It was on Sat- urday when he fell in — Saturday always was his worst day; his mother often said she just wished there was school every day in the week — and by Monday morning every child in the Woodville school knew about Hen Williams falling into the river. He derived quite a deal of prominence from it — the first bit of prominence he had ever at- tained — but he was not trying much for promi- nence. He was just living, truly and thor- oughly living down to the very tip of his toes, and when he would draw his lungs full of that Oregon air, and the smell of pine-trees would be in his nose, I tell you it was good — ^you could just see it. His teacher somehow did not like him very well, either, but that was not Hen's fault. She was twenty-eight and unmarried, and women 120 Souls of the Infinite are supposed to be rather ill-natured at that age. She probably could not help it. Hen never made any more noise in school than he could possibly help, and he always had his les- son; that is, he always had as much of it as he could get by packing the book about, and by his mother reading to him while he was un- dressing in the evening and while he was eating his breakfast in the morning. Which things ought certainly to be sufficient to satisfy any fair-minded teacher. In the summer there was no school at Wood- ville; then it was that it took nearly all of Mrs. Williams' time to watch Hen. He was the only child, and she often remarked that it was a blessing, because she believed that if she had one more she would be in the insane asylum. Hen, however, was not what would be called a wilfully bad boy; he never played mean tricks or did intentionally bad things; it was just sim- ply that he had to keep a-moving. And if Mrs. WilKams had often to look for him, she always knew where to look, — which in itself was some consolation. He was either back of Hall's grocery store, or over in Galegar's lot — they had a pigeon loft there — or else playing in the Woodville street, the whole Souls of the Infinite 121 Ben 122 Souls of the Infinite length of which she could see from her door- way; or there was one other place where he went, and this was the place which worried her most, but he seldom played there of late, be- cause he could get no one to accompany him, all the neighbors' children having been forbid- den to go. Still, if the afternoon were warm and she suspected him to be tired of play, Mrs. Williams would always take a chance look by the river, and there she often found him stretched out on the grassy bank, asleep. He always got woke up with a paddling, too ; not very hard ones, however, because Mrs. Williams hated to punish Hen, and Hen knew it, and, in spite of his oft-repeated offenses, there was no boy in Woodville loved his mother as well as Hen Williams did. They would generally have one of their long walks and talks after one of these occurrences. Hen al- ways shared with his mother his every boyish thought, and Mrs. Williams, appreciating to its fullest extent that close intimacy which ex- isted between her and her boy, would fondly beam upon her disobedient little son. But once or twice of late she had found him, not asleep, but just lying there, looking out into the river. Souls of the Infinite 123 "What are you doing, Hen?" she would say. "Nuthun, Dearest," (Dearest was the name she had taught this boy to say, and she loved to hear him say it.) And he wasn't, just kicking his toes into the dirt and looking. But the soul of him was, for here we find the wandering soul that we have watched for eight thousand years. There was a something in this blue-eyed boy that had roamed the wilds of Asia, eight thou- sands years ago. A definite something. There is in you. There is in me. The mere fact that we are here is positive proof. You are the di- rect material continuation of a vine which has trailed its tendrils all down the countless ages since man first began. In your case the chain has never been broken, the flame has never gone out ; if it had, you would not be here. Well, Hen attended the Woodville school until he was fourteen, and, through the varied admonition of his various teachers, and the con- stant application of his mother, he was then ready for the academy at Millsburg. Of course, a little of the credit may have been due to him, since he had to learn the stuff, no mat- ter who helped him, and, too, he had been really studious for the last year. So his trunk was 124« Souls of the Infinite packed and a thousand little things made ready. There were his new suit of clothes, and his clean linen all nicely starched, for he was to wear a white collar and a necktie now. There were warm flannel underwear, home- sewed, two pairs of shoes, woolen stockings, bedroom slippers, towels and handkerchiefs — a whole trunk packed just as full as it could possibly be squeezed together — besides a lot of other things which had to be put in a hand- satchel. There was some toilet soap, a hair- brush, a scarf for his neck, a small pair of scis- sors and a nail-file, a spool of thread, and some extra buttons. Mrs. Williams had been pre- paring for it all summer. The Millsburg school was a boarding school. It was 110 miles from Woodville, ten miles by stage and one hundred miles by the railroad, and the school kept from September to June. Hennie had never been away from home be- fore, and it was the hardest thing for Mrs. Williams to reconcile herself to it. Here was her boy, her only boy, whose youthful inclina- tions she had shaped and watched so carefully for fourteen years, whose open mind she read like a printed page, and found nothing there save what she had planted and tended. He Souls of the Infinite, 125 was going to leave her. Others would watch and tend this pliant, boyish mind, which she had striven to keep pure and noble, which was so dear to her. Would they be as careful? What all would be planted there? Would he be the same when he returned? She felt he wouldn't; Hennie could not always be just her boy; but it was awfully hard to feel the first cutting of those tender ties. To feel that this little boyish shoot of future manhood, which she had fashioned, was going out to meet the world, the great, heartless world, to be tried by its relentless methods! Would it be strong? Would it be good and true? Or might it be broken in pieces and go down? Who could tell her? Who could give her mother's heart assur- ance? When Hennie kissed her at the station and said, "Now, Dearest, don't you cry," and put his arms around her neck, — but she was already crying, and there were other tears besides her own, although he strove to hide it, that dried on Hennie's mother's cheek, that day the stage left Woodville. Millsburg was a county seat. It had quite a business center, with rows of office buildings, and spread its residential skirts in irregular 126 Souls of the Infinite ruffles round about. Just on the eastern edge, occupying a wooded campus, was the acad- emy, adorned on the one side by an imposing ladies' hall for the girls, and unadorned on the other by a ramshackle wooden building, almost pushed off the lot, for the boys. Here arrived the nucleus of a load of mother's anxiety — Hen Williams. But much of her forebodings were unfound- ed ; she had built better than she knew ; and as soon as the timidity of new surroundings had worn off, Hen Williams began to show the ef- fects of that training — a training which made for strong individuality and for personal re- sponsibility. Hen looked the buildings over as soon as his time would permit, subconsciously comparing them with other things he knew. He also gave the campus quite an ample inspection. Ad- joining the town side of it stood the Millsburg court-house, a large stone building with the blindfolded Goddess of Justice standing over the main entrance. The naked sword, in her right hand, looked very heavy and strong, but the balances, which she poised in her left, had become broken. Hen remarked that it was probably the effect of the wind, but to the soul Souls of the Infinite 127 of Thaddeus within him the picture appeared quite symbolical. The school took Hen in hand, or, rather, Hen took the school in hand, for his last year at Woodville proved to be only a sample of what he could do with schools. Before the first semester was over he had this academy all sized up, catalogued and relegated to its proper cor- ner in the sphere of his activities. His mind was expanding by leaps and bounds; that soul, which we have known before, was crowd- ing again. Here, also, evinced itself the per- sistent application which was in his nature, a transitional gift from his mother. One thing, howxver, served to hinder him somewhat, and that was his disregard for estab- lished customs and for laws ; especially laws for which he could see no reason. This often bumped him up against very hard things. But bumps did not stop him; they only served in some cases to vary his direction a little. Where he derived this determinate dislike for laws his mother could never figure out. It sometimes even carried him to extremes. By the time his four academic years were finished and he was back in Woodville, we have quite a flourishing young man, nineteen years 128 Souls of the Infinite old, with a good breadth of intellectual compre- hension. Nellie Hall was very proud of him. His mother still called him Hen, however, and, although he was much different, the change had been so gradual she had hardly noticed it. The new things which had developed had more than compensated for the things which had been lost. He was her Hennie just the same, and just as dear, and he listens just as respectfully if she lectures him — possibly, though, in a more patronizing attitude. Still, Mrs. Williams did not see it. The little town was just the same and just as nosey. The same old paths were by the river, and if only you could have lingered with the two that wander there again! If only you could have felt the depth of that mother's soul ! She had forgotten, that Time's uncaring hand was robbing her of her boy. She only saw the same flaxen-headed little youngster, and with the same beautiful mother's earnestness she counseled him. On this sunmier came the third event in Hen's career: he must go away to school again; and this time he was going much far- ther away, for he had great ambitions. Mrs. Williams, however, did not grieve so, because The same old paths were by the river Souls of the Infinite 129 she felt more confident in her son, and then, too, she had become somewhat accustomed to the substitution of "letters from Henry." Still, she felt it real hard, because San Francisco was a long way off, and he would not be able to come home for his vacations. But she wanted her Hen to be a great man; so it had to be. Four years would soon slip by. When Henry Williams took up his residence in San Francisco, San Francisco did not know it. Ngbody knew it, save possibly the old woman from whom he rented the stuffy little room on Mission Street — himself and some- body away up north among the hills of Oregon. To these latter it was quite an important event ; to the old woman on Mission Street it only amounted to two dollars a week. Of course, she was very anxious to help a young man through school. She would help a young man, or an old man, through school or through any- thing else, if they would pay her just two dol- lars a week for her dirty rooms. She had a very red nose, and Hen observed that she was more superfluous with her encour- agements when her nose was the reddest, and quite grouchy when it was not so red. She told him of some "byes" who used to room with her 130 Souls of the Infinite who always called her mother. Hen said yes, but it didn't bring to his mind any suggestion of Dearest, not the faintest. It only made him think of a beer-bucket. Our village boy — just turning twenty, full of future hopes — was here in San Francisco, that great western metropolis with its four hun- dred thousand souls. As he walked down her crowded streets he was thinking, but he could turn over nothing in his brain to compare, to accurately measure this by, for he had never seen its like before. He did not feel lost, how- ever; rather he felt quite at ease, intuitively a part of it. The exterior was new to his senses ; but underneath his mind's surface, as it were, there seemed to be a pulse-beat in harmony with the hidden soul of this throbbing city. He stopped at the corner where Kearney came into Market; the tall stone buildings, rearing aloft their rugged shapes on either side, shadowed in his mind a canyon picture. Yes, a real canyon, and there was a stream flowing through it — a turbulent, struggling stream, uniting with other turbulent, struggling streams, and flow- ing on and on. Where was it flowing? Whither was it hastening? The soul had looked upon that self-same Souls of the Infinite 131 stream many thousand times before, that stream of humanity. It had drifted with it, from the shores of the Pacific, ages ago, when it was dark and muddy. It had whirled and eddied, in seething torrents and in murmuring rivulets, until now it was splashing the shores of the Pacific again. The stream was always flowing on ; still, it was always here and always the self-same stream, whether in Nineveh or San Francisco. The school did not commence for two months yet, so Hen got himself a position as clerk in a hotel. He was going to help himself a little, for although Dearest's letters always brought something besides love and courage, still his father, to put it mildly, had never been much of a success, and this schooling in San Fran- cisco was expensive. The first morning he came down to work, the proprietor, old Mr. Oversight, introduced him to his duties, also to a young woman at the desk, Grace Winters, who was to help him. The hotel was the St. Valentine, a very nice-appear- ing place, though possibly not the most moral, if measured by the standard of this place and time. Modern morals, you understand, have been made to cover a great man;;^ customs. 132 Souls of the Infinite which, in truth, have nothing to do with ethics of right and wrong. It would be more accu- rate to say the St. Valentine was a very moral place, but not in keeping with certain customs of the day. This, however, did not worry Hen; he was not down there to designate the customs of San Francisco. Grace proved to be a very sociable girl. Be- fore the first week was past, she had asked him every possible question about Oregon, Wood- ville, the academy at Millsburg, even down to his present room on Mission Street, and Hen was just about as willing to tell her, because he had seen few people to talk to here in San Francisco, and was a bit lonesome. She also told him that she had come from Tennessee, and that she had been in that office a year. Hen Williams fell into the particular of the St. Valentine, and into the general of San Francisco, like a rain-drop into the sea. It was not that he was peculiarly adapted for these things, but more the absence of any peculiarity. He was a very average fellow, and the city meets the average best. The city, also, with her average crowding average, serves to bring out that which is strongest in a man, and this is what it began to do with Hen. Souls of the Infinite 133 He had considerable time here to read, and such an exhaustive public library from which to borrow books; so read he did every minute that he could spare, sometimes hardly taking time to sleep. There had been one ambition in his life, a university education, which he had been compelled to forego; so he was going to compensate for it, as far as possible, by read- ing. He had Henry George, or John Stuart Mill, or somebody else, always sticking under the counter, and an abridged, chronological en- cyclopedia glued to his hip-pocket. *'Henry Williams," said Grace one after- noon, "will you take your nose out of that book for a minute and let us talk a bit, now that it is quiet? I tell you that you will get positively dippy if you don't quit that." Grace was young and a little romantic, and she always wanted to talk. "Are you still slumming over there on Mis- sion Street? I honestly can't see how you stand that place. Have you got to calling the old woman 'Mother' yet?" "Well, didn't I say I was going to move? — only I can't seem to find the time to look for another place, and besides, I hardly know where to look." 134 Souls of the Infinite "Well, I can tell you where, and have said so for the past five weeks, if you would just retain consciousness long enough to listen. I know this 'Frisco town as well as I know the St. Valentine. On Eddy Street, the room I have — May Sutton and I took it together — we pay just six dollars between us, and it is a dandy room, with a big bay window and hot and cold water; but May is going back to her husband, so I guess I will have to give it up; but Rose Ramsay tells me there is just a splen- did place over on Bush Street, so I am going over to see it." *'Well, when you are over there, suppose you look around for me." And Hen's nose went back into the book. Grace blotted a name or two in the register and looked out the win- dow. That seemed satisfactory to her, if you would judge from the way she looked. Grace Winters was a real good, sociable fel- low, and while she perhaps never thought so deeply about things, city life, and her own welfare, had taught her to inspect the surface very carefully. And as the surface is all we ever come in contact with, she probably did just as well as folks who try to go deeper. She looked quite young, possibly nineteen or so. Souls of the Infinite 135 But girls' ages are very uncertain things. Hen never even chanced a speculation at them; he had other things to do. She had been married once, but that might have happened had she been only sixteen. The soul of Thaddeus liked her right well. She was honest ; not so much in what she said, but in what she did. Her ac- tions were honest actions, and her heart was good; and that combination alone was always safe, for "place or show, if not for a nose." She did her share to the running of San Fran- cisco, and was cheerful about it. She paid her own board-bill, and had to ask no one's per- mission to walk down the street. With six days for business and a Sunday at the beach or in the parks, she seemed to be taking about all the comforts ordained for mortals under the then existing city government. To the soul this appeared to be the more proper place for woman — by the side of man, sharing his toil, his worries, and his pleasures ; neither beneath him nor above him, but a hu- man being like himself. It had seen her first his drudging slave, because she was weaker physically. It had seen her kept hidden and secluded like so much plunder to be enjoyed as occasion suited by the possessor. It had 130 Souls of the Infinite seen her housed up and cherished like a deli- cate plant, or like a superhuman thing, not to be contaminated by the vulgar world of men. But in all these places she had not developed, but had been just what the compulsory condi- tions considered her. Why was she different from man? She was made from the same clay, the same blood ran through her veins, she had the same likes and dislikes, was moved by the same emotions, and under equal opportunity would be his equal. Why, then, make her different by the imposi- tion of different conditions? Why have one- half of the human race to own the other half? The one to place his name upon the other, to own it and to be a law unto it, and it to be a burden unto him ? Conditions can make a beg- gar or a prince. Why, then, these unnatural and difficult things maintain? Why not stand her by his side, his yoke-fellow, with an even yoke? But man is blind, and customs of the stupid past are bands of iron. He has, from his mag- nanimity, granted her many of the privileges which the Almighty scattered here for all. But still he needs must domineer her, must confine her, must pass upon her outgoings and her in- Souls of the Infinite 137 comings, must chastise her if she wears his clothes or if she wears not enough to suit him, must exclude her from certain fields or stamp her an impostor if she strives to enter; in a word, he has not yet recognized that she is the other half, the equal, a free moral agent like himself, to whom it is not given him to grant, or to withhold, but who stands even as he be- fore their common Maker. By the time his two months were up and school was ready. Hen had become thoroughly familiar with operating the St. Valentine, also quite well acquainted with a great many other things incidental to hotel life in a big city. Old Mr. Oversight appreciated his efficiency much, and offered him evening hours, at a small wage, so as to keep him there. Grace Winters more than liked him; you could tell it by the way she fussed around when no one was in the office. She had found him a room on Bush Street; how close it was to her own Hen never said. But they always came down the street for their breakfast together, and oftentimes you might have heard Grace scolding a little, in an under- tone, about him staying so late at the library. "Hennie Williams," she would say, "you might just as well be running around town till 138 Souls of the Infinite twelve o'clock at night. I don't know, for sure, if you are at the library." But of course she did, and she knew that he was reading there, and she knew that if ever they had an afternoon to go to the park, or anywhere else, she had the awf uUest time — she just had to search him to see that he didn't have one of those musty old books sticking about him somewhere. By the time three winters had rolled around and Hen was finishing his junior year, he was as poor as a crow. He was wearing glasses, too ; not that his eyes were so very bad, but that one of the doctors had advised it as a precau- tionary measure. He had been in school twenty-seven months and read library books three hundred and sixty-five days out of each year. He was beginning now to think he could see the end. He was beginning to have day- dreams of an office in Millsburg and Dearest and himself comfortably arranged. Just one more year, he had told her in his letter. He had left the St. Valentine now and was doing some assistant work in the City Health Department. Grace Winters was also clerk- ing in the Health Department. This was the spring that San Francisco and Souls of the Infinite 189 the nation were torn with the throes of such a heated political struggle. Hen and Ned Wayfield, a classmate and chum of his, did lieutenant work for the Boss over on the South Side. There was where the 'Frisco struggle centered. There the soul of Thaddeus watched the same old system of oppression framed up; the same old equipment for fraudulent ex- ploitation prepared ; the same old propaganda, though maneuvered with different tactics, which it had watched since first the history of people began ; the same thing which champions of despotism had used to maintain their tyr- rany in Europe ; the same thing which the an- cient Roman nobles had used to defeat the good of Italy; the same thing which Xerxes had manipulated upon the banks of the Hellespont — the control and perversion for private gain of the latent power in the ignorant masses. And this was not only so in San Francisco; every soul which had the ability to see, saw it throughout the nation — yes, throughout the world. Wherever there was ignorance suffi- cient for a movement, unscrupulous hands were using it. Hen's senior year was his hardest year of all; but the encouragements were likewise the 140 Souls of the Infinite greatest, so he kept to it. He had had an abun- dance of reserve energy when he landed in San Francisco, but now the supply was beginning to get low. Grace said she thought he was try- ing to read every book in the San Francisco Public Library. What he was trying to do was to finish his course of reading before he got out where there were no such facilities. As spring came on, it found him weary of the struggle. He was longing for the end. His ambition seemed to be slipping its hold. Dearest was sick at home, but she said in her letters that she would be better soon, and for him not to come, but to stay and finish. But Dearest's letters were not written by herself; she was too ill ; and so they brought no courage with them. He was troubled. Things upset him. He did not seem to have his old-time grip. He had been for more than four years in San Francisco, and he had passed the time by min- utes. He had read with diligence, everything, from Homer and Pythagoras to Hume and Huxley. At graduation time he took the ex's all and passed. He was twenty- four now, and, besides his profession, had dug out a liberal education Souls of the Infinite 141 that put him not behind, in mental grasp, a man from Yale or Harvard. The June commencements came on and fin- ished. Hen Williams stepped out graduated, but a different man. For four days he had been a different man. His diploma was in his pocket; but something else was also in his pocket — a letter with an ebon border. Dearest was dead. Ned Wayfield came past him on the steps and shook his hand. "Well, old man, I sup- pose you are going home." But was he? Where was home? He wasn't going anywhere. He walked slowly down to the city office, climbed up on a stool in the private laboratory, and there he sat. The clock upon the shelf ticked slowly off the seconds. What was the use of things? Where was he going? He did not care. There was not a single tie, nor one attraction, that drew him anywhere. The summer twilight began to settle round, but still he sat. He was so wholly aimless, so disconsolate, the soul within his bosom began to murmur. "Well," Henry said, "since, then, you are my soul, you of the many fortunes, perhaps 142 Souh of the Infinite that you can tell. Perhaps that you can an- swer why I feel this awful vanib^', this complete discouragement, as one awakening "svithout a purpose here. Have I labored "^^Tong '■ Have I mistaken been and vauily cast with this one throw which hf e allots us here .- What seek I now? The soul said, "Xo ; you have but only partly lost. Remember this, however: There is no one essential tiling wliich, when attained, will happiness assure. "Life goes not thus, for I have traveled far, and many knots have seen miraveled by the road. *'Know this: That mortals all seek happi- ness, but seek it most bhndly, knowing not. Some in the distant future; some in delusions rare. But 'tis not afar, nor vonder. but at vour feet. 'Tis not in riches more abmidant, nor yet in knowledge at too great a cost, but in the days and in the minutes as they pass. 'Tis in the burning of the flame." 'Ts happiness, then, all the object here below?" "Yes, for all mankind, 'tis all. The power above us may a different object have, but we know it not. nor shall we ever know it." Souls of the Infinite 14.3 "The mind can never see itself, can never watch its coming in or going out. Nor can humanity itself behold its origin or ultimatum understand. Your mind or soul is but a part of an infinity; how, then, can it contain or com- prehend the whole?" "Another question: What, then, is happi- ness—this thing for which I blindly seek." "Happiness! The gratification of desire is happiness. In the action; in the knowl- edge of past, and in the prospects of future such." "Is ignorance, then, to be considered bhss, with only one desire, if it be satisfied? Who is the happy man?" "The happy man is he who has the greatest store of gratified desires. The greatest action, and the greatest hope in future; the least pro- portion of ungratified desires. But this com- prehendeth much. "Knowledge multiplies desires. Liberty and peace attain their satisfaction, peace of mind attends it, and no one stands alone. Base, low desires, when gratified, cripple the soul and render short its future hope. If wants are sat- isfied before desire is known, it brings not hap- piness; and if upon one desire you center all, 144 Souls of the Infinite you starve the soul and to the primitive become akin. "If now you would the greatest good attain, your mission here on earth fulfill, go forth, but to these things attend. For this that I have told is not in idle jest, but is the deepest truth that man as yet can hold." CHAPTER IX After this Henry loafed around San Fran- cisco for two weeks. He could not get the idea into his head that he was not going anywhere. It was not that he was so completely crushed with sorrow, though he loved his mother dearly, as dearly as any boy could love a mother who had been everything which a mother could be, but he did not seem to be able to get a hold of things again, to readjust himself. Did you ever take a quick, unexpected journey of a day, and, awakening the next morning in some dis- tant hotel, have it take you a minute or so to understand yourself? Well, that is just the way Hen felt the whole time. His whole life had been unconsciously so fastened to this one hope — from his very first boyish brags — he was always going to be a big man and take care of Dearest. The idea that anything different might happen had never entered his head. If he had ever been earnestly in love with some girl, it might have been different ; but he hadn't. 145 146 Souls of the Infinite He had liked many, because he was a lovable fellow, but that was all. He had never taken girls, as girls, seriously. He had been extreme- ly ambitious, and Dearest's life and his life had flowed in such a harmony that he had never separated the two. Dearest had made their aim and object one. She was living only for her boy, and he had been making himself, because of Dearest. Now everything appeared different to him. He thought his whole existence over and over and over again, until at last he decided that life was one big, uncertain joke; not a serious, re- liable thing in it. He could not see what peo- ple ever tried to do anything for. So this was his frame of mind at the end of two weeks when he took a position in the office of "Harding & Hassett." He was spending days in job lots, just passing them off; Satur- day or Monday was immaterial. "Harding & Hassett" had the head office of a big life insurance company in San Francisco. Mr. Hassett, the junior member of the firm, who had come from New York, was a "frenzied financier," who was all for business from morn- ing till night. Hen often felt as if he would like to give him a poke in the mental ribs and Mrs. Ilassett Souls of the Infinite 147 say, "Wake up! What is it you are striving always so hard for — something real? Bosh! man, there is nothing to it." Of course, he was making money, but what of that? Hen was with them five months, till the fall; then Hassett took his family and one other man besides Henry and moved to their head office at Washington, D. C. The national leg- islature was convening and he wanted to oper- ate things on the ground. His family consisted simply of his wife, Mrs. Hassett. She was quite different from him — one of those sociable little bodies, who liked everybody and everything; who only used money to buy things with, and who always wanted to be having a good time, if possible. She never took anything very seriously, if she could help it; not that she had reasoned life out at all, but simply because she did not want to. Hassett was very jealous of her. His was that kind of a nature. The mere fact that he did not know what she was doing at any given time suggested to his mind the idea that she must be doing wrong. He was too busy him- self to spend time with her and he hated to have anybody else to. He was jealous of men, of 148 Souls of the Infinite course; and he was jealous of women — they might take her off where there were men. For some unaccountable reason — possibly because he had seen, as we have said, that Hen never took women seriously — he kept, in a sort of unapprobatory, temporary, expedient way, leaving her with him. We are sure it was not because he had implicit confidence in Hen, but more probably because he could think of nothing better to do. He possibly felt a little easier at thinking he knew where she was. If he had to go out of town, he would have Henry take her to dinner. If he were busy on a Sunday, he would allow her to drive to the park with Mr. Williams. Time and time again, Hen sort of found her on his hands. She often remarked about it in her joking way. Some women would have let it woriy them into the blues, but she was just making the best she could out of conditions she seemed to be unable to help. And Hen — well, we would not say that Hen tried to get away from her, because such a thing as that was not in his code of ethics, and, besides, he had quite easily slipped from toleration to something — well, to something a little more friendly than that. But we will say that, regardless of the Souls of the Infinite 149 seemingly unavoidable circumstances, his con- science, which, at best, was very dormant on matters of this kind, did, on some occasions, prick him a little. Henry stayed with the Washington office for four years; though not connected with the political end of the company, he observed in a casual way the exterior of the machinery of government. What the soul saw made it al- most believe itself back in the bosom of Mil- tias. The same dual system was at work. The same deceitful legislation was being enacted. The same iniquitous concurring and conniving of lawmakers, defeating of the common good, sacrificing of public interest, — the same greedy secret perfidy which it had seen beneath those ancient Roman togas. And what was even worse than the lawmaking was the corrupt judging of the law. Of all the prostituting of justice, praeparo decisions with gold for evi- dence, fraudulent injunctions and polluted truth that was spued out of those sacred tem- ples of justice. It would be sacrilegious to call them temples, save for the fact that the sanctity of the courts must be maintained in the eyes of the people. "An aristocracy of the robe" describes the condition not at all. The 150 Souls of the Infinite Star Chambers of Charles I were only partial examples, for they were openly avowed in their opposition to the people. The soul recognized plainly the condition. These rulers were having other interests than the interests of the nation, were getting away from the people. The two classes were form- ing again. But why were not these representatives taken to account? Did the enlightened twen- tieth-century people knowingly submit to such betrayal, such flagrant violation of oaths and obligations? Ah! there was the trouble. The people did not know. The great educator and enlightener of the people, the great check and safeguard of representative government, the public press, the thing on which they relied for information, was perjured, and belied the cause it purported to espouse, bewildered and con- fused the people, or buried irrefutable actuali- ties so deeply with statistics and hypothetical intricacies of statecraft, that it was like a grain of mustard seed lost in a bushel, or a miscar- riage of justice on a crowded calendar. Thus the soul saw the reins of government being gathered up ; thus the people being sad- dled and bridled again — taxes being levied, di- Souls of the Infinite 151 rcct and indirect; laws being thrown out on every side like lines to a runaway, soon they would begin to tighten and to prick. Hen's observation, as we said, was super- ficial ; but the little which he did see made him still firmer in his belief that life was all a joke. If he had been one of the poor, struggling, starving taxpayers, with a family of eight or ten, who had to suffer by these unjust laws and decisions, perhaps it would not have appeared so jokey to him. Or maybe, perhaps, it would, and he would have only said that he had the butt end of the joke. Howsoever, he believed it was a joke, which had, on some occasions, to be taken a bit serious — for you see, he was twenty- eight or twenty-nine now and single. He began to speculate as to the veracity and rationality of this married state, with a settling down, which his friends talked about. But, to tell you the truth, he hadn't a valid reason in the world for wishing to enter it. He was enjoying himself immensely and had been for the past four years. Of course, he had no permanent abiding place — that might have been one thing; and the philosophy the soul had taught — that no man wholly died save he who died childless — might have been another. 152 Souls of the Infinite He wanted to make sure of not letting the flame go out with him. Faint reasons, he ad- mitted; still, as we say, he was speculating about it. He hadn't laid by much of anything to set- tle down on. You see he hadn't been working much, mostl}^ loafing and holding down an easy job. So these speculations may have indi- rectly been a kind of recoil from his inactivity ; a sort of stretching of his formerly energetic nature. Because if he settled down, he would have to begin to hustle up. On this particular June morning he was standing by the office window, looking out at the figures on the sidewalk hurrying to and fro. He was philosophizing in a dreamy way : the thousand and one different motives anima- ting these different individuals, and how much alike were all — if some unseen hand could give the board half a turn without awaking the play- ers, each would go on following somebody else's purpose, none would know the difference. He was dreaming thus, not laboring with any thought — just thinking passive-like — just let- ting that innermost part of him, which was not wholly of him, spin itself along. A sort of mellowness was in his heart. He Souls of the Infini 153 took it for a feeling kind to all mankind; but it was not wholly that. There was in it some- thing more, something akin to instinct — a something which generally comes in the spring- time of our early twenties. But at that time he had been chasing with all his might a phantom. Now let me give you an accurate picture of this last house of the soul of Thaddeus. The soul itself we trust you already know quite in- timately. You have seen it in its first wild state, or semi-wild — we did not try to begin at the very beginning, because that is such a dis- agreeable picture. Man in his primitive sav- age state was anything but pleasing. We often hear of the "free and noble savage," but it is a misnomer. The true primitive savage was neither free nor noble. Nature provided grudgingly for him. He had neither the strength of the bull nor the fleetness of the wild ass. He had not a furry coat like the humble denizens of the wood, nor was his food ready prepared for him like the feathered tribe. Thus, imperfectly protected, he roamed about, suffering from the heat by day and the cold by night, hunger and starvation always staring him in the face. He was always suspicious^ 154? Souls of the Infinite always in danger, always on the watch, afraid of things seen and unseen. He depended on no one and no one could depend on him. He expected nothing from his neighbors and did unto them as he believed they would do unto him. Thus his life was one prolonged scene of selfishness and fear. But there was planted in him a quality which, in spite of his physical disadvantages, was to make him ruler of all. This quality, or essence, a self-inspiring something, having initiatory power, we have called the soul, but which ap- pears more to be a composite thing, made up of mental attributes and a subconscious influ- ence from experiences. It was this power in man which brought him out of the darkness, which exemplified the true grandeur and dig- nity of the animal, which broke the despotic sway of capricious nature — that power which for countless cycles of ages had ruled supreme over the earth. From its first wild state we have followed it through ancient Chaldea, into the desert of Arabia, into the one-sided Greek civilization, through the materialism of Rome, and then back into the morasses of western Europe. We have watched it through the second and Souls of the Infinite 155 more full dawn, then down to the present time. We have seen things which at first were con- sidered superphysical or divine, prove to be perfectly natural ; and things which came in in a perfectly natural way, later given a sacred significance. We have seen the effects of brute domination, the tyranny of kings, the working of civic influences and the stimulus of personal liberty. We have seen the powerful hold of superstition, fastened by ignorance, and have watched the very tardy extrication — many ten- tacles still firmly fastened. We have seen hu- manity dwarfed by custom and stunted by un- natural laws. We have followed this trailing vine by tedi- ous travel torn, through all the winding path, and now we have to-day man, who is the com- pilation of all the experiences of the human race — the direct continuation of the soul which was before him — the most finely organized ma- terial of this terrestrial portion of the universe. Henry Williams' ambition had carried him a little above the average of mankind. He had received some very hard bumps, had done some very hard thinking, and was trying to profit by it. To-day as he walked home for his dinner, he was humming "Give my regards to Broad- 150 Souls of the Infinite way." His mind was in a delicate balance — agate-like — with friction reduced to a mini- mum. Things which disturbed him, and he was unable to remedy, he tried to avoid ; things which pleased him, he tried to follow. He was leading a life which, while it had little of that keen enjoyment due to intense emotion, was filled with the greater amount of happiness. He was taking the peaceful sweetness out of the moments as they passed. And as the tiny ripples, which kiss the beach continually, total more than the crested waves which roll high, but only come anon, so was he trying. But too much quiet in youth accumulates an energy which is like fire-damp in an unused mine. He was following the soul's philosophy too implicitly. His balance was getting tippy. The following morning, as he came in to breakfast, the waitress seated him on the oppo- site side of the dining-room. He disliked being moved, but forgot it a second later and was looking over the morning paper. His break- fast tasted very good, and he had nearly fin- ished it, when he happened to glance over at his neighbors. It was a trifle peculiar — he glanced just in time to meet a glance, some one who was looking at him over the shoulder of an Souls of the Infinite 157 elderly gentleman. He almost stared. The incident was quite a surprise on both sides, I am sure. How Henry happened to look up just at that instant was queer, for he was reading an interesting bit of news. The couple appeared to him to be a gentle- man and his daughter, traveling. Still they might have been boarding there a month and he not seen them from his regular seat. He wanted to get another look at the girl, but her head was just behind the old gentleman's and she would not turn it. He could see a very voluptuous mass of hair, but that was all. Now it is strange that such a trivial thing as this should affect the equilibrium of Henry. He might have done the same thing a thousand times before and never noticed it — but it did. He kept thinking all sorts of things as he walked down to the office. Yet he did not really know how she looked, nor was he certain he would recognize her again, unless he saw her in exactly the same place and company — her eyes were big, and he believed she had a dimple in her chin, but was not sure. Her hair was brown, kind of a silky brown ; he saw that, plain enough. 1581 Souls of the Infinite. Things were quiet at the office that morning. Hen did little and started early home for luncheon, but his expectations were disappoint- ed. Somebody was not there. That evening at dinner-time he did not see her, but the dining-room was crowded — she might have been there. He ate demurely, listening more to the strains of music as they floated o'er the hall. The violin seemed crying, crying, and the harp in somber notes to meas- ure time, unheeding of its fellow's weeping tones. The next morning he came down to break- fast thinking. He scanned the faces; no one was there; and, though he glanced repeatedly at the doorway, no one came. So he considered it must be a closed incident; a ship that in the twilight darkness passed. He walked slowly down to work. He was in a pensive mood. He hummed a tune, but there was nothing about Broadway in it — it sounded more like "Dream- ing now of Hallie." Just as he turned into the building, who should step out of the elevator but this same girl. He knew her instantly; how or why he could not surely tell. Now Hen would not be rude enough to smile Souls of the Infinite 159 intently at a lady whom he did not know, but he was just that pleased at seeing her that he almost did, before he caught himself. She no- ticed it, but did not recognize it — not by any sign that he could name, or anybody else could name. Her eyelids never moved, nor did her rosy mouth betray a line, but still he knew she knew. Something he felt — something which came from her eyes, but was not of her eyes. Now, do you believe that? Do you believe the eyes can give a sign without a move, or with- out a facial line to aid them? Well, they can, and if you travel long enough you'll find it so. Hen went up to the office; he was quite ex- cited. Still nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Nothing peculiar had transpired. A thousand people might pass him in the Cen- tral Building. A thousand people might stop a day at the modest hotel he called his home. Nothing peculiar, save that which had hap- pened in his mind, and there is where most all peculiar things do happen. The way he fussed around the office all that day was real astonishing, he was as flustrated as a probation pastor at a "ladies' aid." He wondered a thousand things. Wondered if he could have seen the face somewhere before and 160 Souls of the Infinite if this was, then, but a caper of his memory. He scanned the hotel register at noon. He called the clerk to help him. But nothing could he find. For 'most a week, though oft he tried, he saw nor heard no more. Then came a party at the house. It was the "Seventh Annual Ball," and urban gayety was there. Hen had brought Mrs. Hassett, and though he strove to enter- tain and showed her every courtesy, still some instinct seemed to tell her he was ill at ease. It unsettled her. She hardly permitted him to leave her sight. The dance was crowded. Hen said he felt the heat, and so they walked amid the festoons of the open court. The heavy boughs were fragrant with the smell of pine. The Chinese lanterns cast a feeble glow. They passed a large palmetto, in a wooden vase, and there beneath its shadow some one sat alone. Hen saw her. He did not startle though, or stop the words he spoke, but in that instant passing there was mutual recognition unavowed — ^was meaning, more than words. Though deep, it was most silent and most subtle, this greeting, extremely quick, without an outward notice; but some one else was also Souls of the Infinite 161 quick, alert, and almost quite as subtle — ^his companion — she saw it. She had, with covert worry, felt Hen's lately listless mood, and when now he thought to hurry her again into the dance, she would not go, but spoke in anger : "Henry Williams, I know that woman, and I saw you look. You need not lie to me. You have been crazy for these past ten days, and if you think that Kittie Hassett is simple enough to stand for this, you are mistaken." "But, Mrs. Hassett " Hen was excited. He was almost scared. He had never seen her playful eyes such flaming flashes hold. Be- sides, he needs must haste away; a moment more might be too late. "Don't 'but' to me ! I'm not a child, or play- thing to be duped by pleasant explanations, or to be dropped whene'er you have a mind. I will not stand it. If you imagine you can wipe the slate, of these four years, so easily — I tell you, I can break it!" "Now do be kind enough, my dear, to calm yourself, or folks will notice. You have the next dance out, I know, and I will come. Listen " "I will not listen. Nor will you come. 162 Souls of the Infinite We'll both sit right down here, till every dance is out — or till morning, for that matter. Why, bless my soul! Do you imagine — why, mer- ciful goodness! That wicked woman yon- der " "Now, careful, Dear, you'll make a scene." "A scene! A scene out here, pray who's to see it? She? Yes, she. Well, she is nobody. She couldn't go into the ballroom. You know what I have said to you before, Henry Wil- liams. Now you are beginning it. Well, there's going to be trouble to-night. Yes — * there'll be trouble to-night, alright, — ^but we will wait till the party's over." "You and that woman — humph! But I sup- pose you know her well — ^have met her often. Puh! I've known all this week that there was something wrong with you; but I did not sus- picion this. No, I did not suspicion such a thing as this. I see now why you did not have the time to telephone. Oh! I'm a simple baby ^ — I'm asleep." "Listen a minute. I do not know——" "No; of course, you do not know her. You do not know anybody, do you? You think, Hennie, because I have always been so quiet, because I am always joking, that I do not care Souls of the Infinite tl63 —that I have no heart. Oh, no! Kittie does not care— she's only Kittie. But let me tell you this— Kittie does care, and Kittie is not an office girl or chambermaid, like poor Gracey Winters — to sit around and cry and hold her hands. What I say I'll do, I'll do. And we will attend to consequences afterwards. "Now Hsten, Henry. If you were in love with some nice single girl— to marry her— all right, I would not say a word, not if it killed me; but you shall not leave me for some other man's wife. Not while I am in my sober senses." Hen could not talk, so he listened. This state of affairs had changed his mind about "hastening away," so he pushed his arm around the back of the seat, and gradually the storm subsided. At first he had been too surprised to think. He had not expected this— or all of it— and now was glad enough to have the quiet, so said no more. They sat there through a few more dances, then went inside. Hen took her program round and explained that she was ill, then got her wraps, and took her home. The taxi, on that journey home, got various 164 Souls of the Infinite orders. First, JMrs. Hassett said, "Drive to the depot." But when almost there, the driver got other orders, to turn and drive back up to Twentieth Street. Then later he was told again to drive to the depot. The trail of that cab was marking out the course of the argu- ment within. Finally, though, after much coaxing and a good deal of promising, plus numerous cry spells alternated with periods of reproachful silence, Henry took her home. As he drove back he was too unstrung to meditate ; still, things kept running through his mind: — So Kittie knew the girl — if only she had said her name. So she was married — then this old gentleman must be her husband. Kit- tie said she was very bad — ^how did she know? He reached for his handkerchief. Something caught the lining of his pocket. It was his ring — a solitaire Kittie had given him. Kind- hearted Kittie — she was a dear, sweet thing — he liked her. It was not her fault — nor was it his. It was unfortunate that such things must happen. Well, he would probably never see this girl again. At least, he would try not to see her. Next morning, as he came down to break- fast, his mind was still quite firm. He went Souls of the Infinite 165 straight to his table, sat down and held the morning paper well above his face. He wanted very much to take a look ; but, no — 'twas better not. But his stoic self-restraint was wasted. As he got up to go, he took just one furtive glance about and saw the empty chairs. He drew a long, deep breath of relief ; but was it relief, or was it halfway disappointment? His morning at the office was taken up most- ly with hypotheticating, thinking, quite wor- ried; that "agate balance" of his was nowhere in evidence. As he went home that noon, he walked much like a person in just a trifle hurry. But the dining-room was empty, no one was there ; that is, no one for him. He was quite a little dis- appointed. He sat down, took up his napkin to unfold it — something fluttered to his lap, a tiny, white, oblong envelope. He opened it, and took out a lady's card; with it came a breath of heliotrope. He always did love heliotrope; its fragrance, he avowed, was intoxicating. The card was engraved, and one-half of the name had been erased, leaving only "Fay." He turned it over and on the back was writ- 166 Souls of the Infinite ten, "We start for the country to-morrow, but I will be sitting in the court at eight to-night." He turned it over again — "Fay," in raised blue script, and that was all. He put the letter in his pocket. He was pleased, — more than pleased. "Meet me in rose-time, Rosie," he hummed as he left the hotel. His mind was full of gen- tle ripples, like the stilling of troubled waters. He greeted the office girl with a pleasant, "How do you do, Carrie?" and one of his most beaming smiles. The afternoon could not slip by too soon to suit him. "Nice how those electric fans do work," he remarked to himself as he rolled back the top of his desk, "it must have been a good man who invented them . . . nice draft from the ventilator, too, and the shades on the window made the light just right for his desk . . . this world isn't nearly so bad as some people would make it out to be. Thus the cuckoo clock was cooing away the afternoon, till an hour or so before closing time, when he had a caller. It was Kittie. She had on her dearest gown, a pink silk Empire, and the biggest picture hat with a great white plume, which kept bobbing against her cheek. Her eye^ Souls of the Infinite 167 looked tired, but just as blue, — Kittie's eyes always did have the bluest blue shadows, in their blue, of any eyes you ever saw. She did look sweet; but this was so unexpected, so in- opportune. It upset his thinking machine. She rarely came to the office. He expected her to telephone. "Well, kiss me, Hennie. How do you like my new bonnet ? I have come to tell you some- thing: Mr. Hassett has to go to Philadelphia again this afternoon. I fixed up the telegram through Mrs. Brown — now don't scold me — and he said that I might go to dinner with you." Did we say Hen's thinking machine was up- set? It was worse than that. It was busti- cated. His eyes popped so wide open they hurt him, and Kittie stood so close to him, he could not swing round to get a breath. He kissed her and dropped down into a chair, and looked at her. "Well! Of course— I'll be delighted to take you to dinner. But your audacity stupefies me. When did Mr. Hassett go?" "I just came from seeing him off." "You fixed it up through Mrs. Brown? Well, he'll find that out." 168 Souls of the Infinite "I hope not. Mrs. Brown is to tell him, when he gets there, that she made the mistake, and that it was somebody else her husband left the message for, and she sent it down by the Jap." "Well, then, I suppose he will get the 'Owl' back at midnight." *'Uh hu — if she can't keep him any longer." "Well, Kittie, do you know I don't know what to think. I didn't suppose you would do such reckless things." "Now, don't say anything mean. This is the first pleasant moment I have had to-day;" and, with a little sigh of relief, Kittie sat down, not in a vacant chair, however. Well, they went to dinner. Hen took her early, so as to have time to think, but he had little hope of extricating himself before mid- night. Kittie had him "hanging to the ropes." He was just as nice, however, as he could be; Kittie almost forgot her worries, and was a little off her guard. At five minutes to eight they were seated in the lobby. Hen had intro- duced some new guests and they were chatting. Then he sneezed, and asked to be excused a minute to go and get a heavier coat. That sounded very plausible, didn't it? Souls of the Infinite 169 He took the elevator up, hopped off at the second floor, shot down the stairs and sauntered across the court, toward the big palmetto plant. It was quite dusk, but somebody was waiting there — just where she had sat the evening before. Hen walked straight up to her and held out his hand. "Miss Fay, you don't know how I ap- preciate this. It was most awfully kind of you." She gave his hand a hearty little squeeze and moved over for him to sit down, remarking that she had overhead the conversation of the night before. Hen explained it to her. Also he explained, as best he could, his present situ- ation, and begged a thousand pardons if he seemed to hurry ; asked her if he might call, and when and where, saying that since now they were acquainted she might be kind enough to put her journey off a day or so. In those short moments there was a lifetime of acquaintance made, a meeting of the soul. Hen got up to go. "Now, before I say good- by," he said, "let me a secret whisper." She turned her fluffy-duffle head up to the side. Hen bent over awfully close, but it was not whispering at all he did. I am surprised — and 170 Souls of the Infinite to think she would allow it; but then she prob- ably had not time to help herself. Two minutes later Henry walked into the lobby, as lively as a cricket. He had the same coat on, however, but Kittie did not notice it, he was so splendidly attentive. Well, Fay stayed th< next day and the next. A week slipped by. Then, too, these clandes- tine appointments were getting numerous. Hen simply could not keep away from her, though, it was true, she was not as nice a girl as Kittie. But then, poor Fay, perhaps she had not had as good an opportunity. You cannot people judge alone. Man is still a creature of environment; provided the environment is strong enough. So, then, it is environment that we must judge. Fay Naples was as good a girl as she could be, nor was she trying now to add to Kittie's sorrow; she had had heart- aches of her own enough. Yet neither could she bring herself to break with Henry, because, well — because, to her, he bore a different name; for Fay was Phillis. Things here were badly out of joint. What was to do ? What could be done ? Poor, pretty. Fay, with all her sins, was guilty of no moral wrong, no wilful injuries to any one; 'twas Souls of the Infinite 171 merely customs she had broken. And Kittie's heart was aching; she had loved, and was she now to lose? Nor can you really censure Henry. Some sorrow seems a sine qua non to happenings here below, but again do our stupid customs make it doubly hard to bear. A lifelong unhappy existence should not be made the price of one youthful error. The more unhappiness we exact, the worse off we make ourselves. Neither should love be strangled because it runs not to a customary line; the more love there is in the world, the better the world is off for it. a:HB END. lUL 12 19ff One copy del. to Cat. Div.