s hard breathing shook the midnights of
all this endless valley and the pulse of his powerful arms set the great
nation to trembling.

And then, at last, out of the South, like a still, small voice, came the
third man,--black, with great eyes and greater memories; hesitantly
eager and yet with the infinite softness and ancient calm which come
from that eternal race whose history is not the history of a day, but
of endless ages. Here, surely, was fit meeting-place for these curiously
intent forces, for these epoch-making and age-twisting forces, for these
human feet on their super-human errands.

Yesterday I rode in East St. Louis. It is the kind of place one quickly
recognizes,--tireless and with no restful green of verdure; hard and
uneven of street; crude, cold, and even hateful of aspect; conventional,
of course, in its business quarter, but quickly beyond one sees the ruts
and the hollows, the stench of ill-tamed sewerage, unguarded railroad
crossings, saloons outnumbering churches and churches catering to
saloons; homes impudently strait and new, prostitutes free and happy,
gamblers in paradise, the town "wide open," shameless and frank; great
factories pouring out stench, filth, and flame--these and all other
things so familiar in the world market places, where industry triumphs
over thought and products overwhelm men. May I tell, too, how yesterday
I rode in this city past flame-swept walls and over gray ashes; in
streets almost wet with blood and beside ruins, where the bones of dead
men new-bleached peered out at me in sullen wonder?

Across the river, in the greater city, where bronze St. Louis,--that
just and austere king--looks with angry, fear-swept eyes down from the
rolling heights of Forest Park, which knows him not nor heeds him, there
is something of the same thing, but this city is larger and older and
the forces of evil have had some curbing from those who have seen the
vision and panted for life; but eastward from St. Louis there is a land
of no taxes for great industries; there is a land where you may buy
grafting politicians at far less rate than you would pay for franchises
or privileges in a modern town. There, too, you may escape the buying of
indulgences from the great terminal fist, which squeezes industry out of
St. Louis. In fact, East St. Louis is a paradise for high and frequent
dividends and for the piling up of wealth to be spent in St. Louis and
Chicago and New York and when the worl