ity that Miss Forsythe in her pure
imagination attached to that position. Without yielding any of her
opinions, this idea somehow changed her relations to Margaret; a little,
I thought, to the amusement of Mrs. Fletcher and the other ladies, to
whom marriage took on a less mysterious aspect. It arose doubtless from
a renewed sense of the incompleteness of her single life, long as it had
been, and enriched as it was by observation.

In that June there were vexatious strikes in various parts of the
country, formidable combinations of laboring-men, demonstrations of
trades-unions, and the exhibition of a spirit that sharply called
attention to the unequal distribution of wealth. The discontent was
attributed in some quarters to the exhibition of extreme luxury and
reckless living by those who had been fortunate. It was even said that
the strikes, unreasonable and futile as they were, and most injurious
to those who indulged in them, were indirectly caused by the railway
manipulation, in the attempt not only to crush out competition, but to
exact excessive revenues on fictitious values. Resistance to this could
be shown to be blind, and the strikers technically in the wrong, yet the
impression gained ground that there was something monstrously wrong
in the way great fortunes were accumulated, in total disregard of
individual rights, and in a materialistic spirit that did not take into
account ordinary humanity. For it was not alone the laboring class that
was discontented, but all over the country those who lived upon small
invested savings, widows and minors, found their income imperiled by the
trickery of rival operators and speculators in railways and securities,
who treated the little private accumulations as mere counters in the
games they were playing. The loss of dividends to them was poorly
compensated by reflections upon the development of the country, and the
advantage to trade of great consolidations, which inured to the benefit
of half a dozen insolent men.

In discussing these things in our little parliament we were not
altogether unprejudiced, it must be confessed. For, to say nothing
of interests of Mr. Morgan and my own, which seemed in some danger of
disappearing for the "public good," Mrs. Fletcher's little fortune was
nearly all invested in that sound "rock-bed" railway in the Southwest
that Mr. Jerry Hollowell had recently taken under his paternal care. She
was assured, indeed, that dividends were only