pward, in the place of the
free sunlight and the azure liberty of God's sky, he beheld the
senseless scurrying of thousands of human ants bent on the same golden
errand.

When a man looks down he always sees dollar-chasing insects--his
brothers!

He clenched his fists and changed, by the magic of the season, into a
fighting-man. He saw that the ant life of Wall Street was really a
battle. Men here were not writing on ledgers, but fighting deserts, and
swamps, and mountains, and heat, and cold, and hunger; fighting Nature;
fighting her with gold for more gold. It followed that men were fighting
men with gold for more gold! So, of course, men were killing men with
gold for more gold!

So greatly has civilization advanced since the Jews crucified Him for
interfering with business, that to-day man not only is able to use
dollars to kill with, but boasts of it.

"Fools!" he thought, having in mind all other living men. After he
definitely classified humanity he felt more kindly disposed toward the
world.

After all, why should men fight Nature or fight men? Nature was only too
willing to let men live who kept her laws; and men were only too willing
to love their fellow-men if only dollars were not sandwiched in between
human hearts. He saw, in great happy flashes, the comfort of living
intelligently, brothers all, employers and employed, rid of the curse of
money, the curse of making it, the curse of coining it out of the sweat
and sorrow of humanity.

"Fools!" This time he spoke his thought aloud. A hurrying broker's clerk
smiled superciliously, recognizing a stock-market loser talking of
himself to himself, as they all do. But Hendrik really had in mind bank
clerks who, instead of striking off their fetters, caressed them as
though they were the flesh of sweethearts; or wept, as though tears
could soften steel; or blasphemed, as though curses were cold-chisels!
And every year the fetters were made thicker by the blacksmith Habit. To
be a bank clerk, now and always; now and always nothing!

He now saw all about him hordes of sheep-hearted Things with pens behind
their ears and black-cloth sleeve-protectors, who said, with the
spitefulness of eunuchs or magazine editors:

"_You also are of us!_"

He would _not_ be of them!

He might not be able to change conditions in the world of finance, not
knowing exactly how to go about it, but he certainly could change the
financial condition of Hendrik Rutgers. He would