``She wouldn't
even keep clean if it wasn't the easiest thing in the world for
her to do, and a help at filling in her long idle day.''
Yet--Martha Galland had every comfort and most of the luxuries,
was as sheltered from all the hardships as a hot-house flower.
Then there was Hugo--to go no further afield than the family.
Had he ever done an honest hour's work in his life? Could anyone
have less brains than he? Yet Hugo was rich and respected, was a
director in big corporations, was a member of a first-class law
firm. ``It isn't fair,'' thought the girl. ``I've always felt
it. I see now why. It's a bad system of taking from the many
for the benefit of us few. And it's kept going by a few clever,
strong men like father. They work for themselves and their
families and relatives and for their class--and the rest of the
people have to suffer.''
She did not fall asleep for several hours, such was the tumult in
her aroused brain. The first thing the next morning she went
down town, bought copies of the New Day--for that week and for a
few preceding weeks--and retreated to her favorite nook in her
father's grounds to read and to think--and to plan. She searched
the New Day in vain for any of the wild, wandering things Davy
and her father had told her Victor Dorn was putting forth. The
four pages of each number were given over either to philosophical
articles no more ``anarchistic'' than Emerson's essays, not so
much so as Carlyle's, or to plain accounts of the current
stealing by the politicians of Remsen City, of the squalor and
disease--danger in the tenements, of the outrages by the gas and
water and street car companies.
Pages:
44
45
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