we were fast verging to the state of
older countries, where there were the few rich and the many poor: there
was a surplus of labor, and was there not also a surplus of people?

There was another sad side to it all, that made Jack's heart ache. These
young men and boys tramping through the country, begging or worse,
swearing, telling foul stories, herding together anywhere, corrupting
one another's morals, smoking, drinking,--somehow they managed to obtain
these indulgences,--looking furtively out of languid, sodden eyes, their
faces hard and worn, their voices coarse and gruff; and they were to be
the next generation of what?--loyal and honest citizens, or jail-birds?

It was not all so sombre. At five and twenty a healthy, unwarped nature
is many-sided. There were countless marvels to see and to study. He
stumbled over people who had known Mr. Lawrence, and who had a kindly
feeling for a Hope Mills man. And he had done something more in the last
eight years than merely learn how to make cloth. He had dipped into
chemistry, and knew a little about dyes; he had studied up in grades and
kinds of wool, and was interested in labor processes. With fresh
opportunities he looked into it more closely, observed new methods of
decreasing waste, or saving labor. He was a well-informed,
well-mannered, sensible fellow; and occasionally some one would say of
him, "A smart, long-headed chap, that! The world will hear of him some
day, or I am mistaken."

He kept looking about for some place where, if the world did not hear of
him, he might get a chance in some enterprise where he could take a few
steps upward. There certainly were more men than places. The world was a
bee-hive, surely; but alas for those who swarmed out in such times as
these!

After he had gone as far West as Minnesota, he went down the
Mississippi to a different kind of civilization in the quaint old
cities. It was none the less heart-sickening. He found traces of the
war, that we had almost forgotten, fresh at every step; still it seemed
as if the hand of Nature was much more bounteous than at the bleak
North. Yet Bishop Heber's old missionary hymn rang continually through
his mind. Even amid the Florida orange-groves, and the great
cotton-fields, some cause brought about baleful results, in the unwisdom
of man.

Then to the cities of luxury and thrift, where wealth was strong enough
to crowd poverty out one side, where art and music and cultivation made
a s