sgrace
in the fears he had bowed to. All the nations and all the men in them
were in a night of fear. But already there was a change of feeling. The
darker the hour, the nearer the dawn. The worse things were, the sooner
they must mend.

People had been too prosperous; the world had played the spendthrift
and gambled too high. But economy would restore the balance for the
toilers. What had been lost would soon be regained.

Fate could not down America yet. And he was an American. What was it
"Jim" Hill had said to the scare-mongers: "The man who sells the United
States short is a damned fool." And the man who sells himself short is a
damneder fool.

* * * * *

Thus he struggled through the bad weather of his soul. The clouds that
had gathered and roared and shuttled with lightnings had emptied their
wrath, and the earth still rolled. The mystery of terror was subtly
altered to a mystery of surety.

Lying in the dark, motionless, he had wrought out the miracle of
meditation. Within the senate chamber of his mind he had debated and
pondered and voted confidence in himself and in life.

His eyes, still open, still battling for light, had found none yet. The
universe was still black. He could not distinguish sky from window, nor
casement from ceiling. Yet the gloom was no longer terrible. The
universe was still a great ship rushing on, but he was no longer a
midget in a little cockleshell about to be crushed. He was a passenger
on the ship. The night was benevolent, majestic, sonorous with music.
The sea was glorious and the voyage forward.

And now that his heart was full of good news, he had a wild desire to
rush home with it to her who was his home. How often he had left her in
the morning after a wrangle, and hurried back to her at night bearing
glad tidings, the quarrel forgotten beyond the need of any treaty. And
she would be there among their children, beaming welcome from her big
eyes.

And she was always so glad when he was glad. She took so much blame on
herself; though how was she to blame for herself? Yet she took no credit
to herself for being all the sweet things she was. She was the flowers
and the harvest, and the cool, amorous evening after the hard day was
done. And he was the peevish, whining, swearing imbecile that chose a
woman for wife because she was a rose and then clenched her thorns and
complained because she was not a turnip.

He felt a longing to tell he