oid of sentiment and blind to his
princely qualities. He tried, indeed, by nimbleness of hand and
intelligence, to impress them with his superiority to his predecessors,
but they were not impressed. At the most he escaped curses. His mind
began to work in the logic of the real. Entrance into his kingdom
implied as a primary condition release from the factory. But how could
such release come, when every morning a remorseless and insensate
hook-just like a certain hook in the machinery whose deadly certainty
of grip fascinated and terrified him, caught him from his morning sleep
every morning of his life, save Sunday, and swung him inexorably into
the factory? He looked around and saw that no one was released, except
through death or illness or incompetence. And the incompetent starved.
Any child in Budge Street with a grain of sense knew that. There was no
release. He, son of a prince, would work for ever and ever in Bludston.
His heart failed him. And there was no one to whom he could tell the
tragic and romantic story of his birth. One or two happy gleams of
brightness, however, lightened his darkness and prevented the Vision
from fading entirely into the greyness of the factory sky. Once the
Owner, an unspeakable god with a bald pink head and a paunch vastly
chained with gold, conducted a party of ladies over the works. One of
the latter, a very grand lady, noticed him at his bench and came-and
spoke kindly to him. Her voice had the same sweet timbre as his
goddess's. After she had left him his quick ears caught her question to
the Owner: "Where did you get your young Apollo? Not out of Lancashire,
surely? He's wonderful." And just before she passed out of sight she
turned and looked at him and smiled. He learned on inquiry that she was
the Marchioness of Chudley. The instant recognition of him by one of
his own aristocratic caste revived his faith. The day would assuredly
come. Suppose it had been his own mother, instead of the Marchioness?
Stranger things happened in the books. The other gleam proceeded from
one of the workmen at his bench, a serious and socialistic person who
occasionally lent him something to read: Foxe's "Book of Martyrs,"
"Mill on Liberty," Bellamy's "Looking Backward," at that time at the
height of its popularity. And sometimes he would talk to Paul about
collectivism and the new era that was coming when there would be no
such words as rich and poor, because there would be no such classes as
the