ation; a boarding and day school for
young ladies, the academy, some excellent district schools; a hall with
library and reading-room; a bank; rows of attractive shops and stores;
and, coming down in the scale of refinement, beer-saloons and
concert-halls, kept generally up to a certain point of morality. There
were so many laboring-men, and they must have something by way of
entertainment.

It struck Jack with a curious wonder. These stolid faces and plodding
steps were part of the human machines out of which wealth was being
ground. They went to the beer-shops at night in their dirty clothes,
smelling of grease and dye, drank beer, played a few games, and
harangued each other, and went home maudlin or stupefied. Perhaps it was
more comfortable than the slatternly wives and crying children. Did it
need to be so? If you gave the workingman a helping hand, did he turn
straightway into an unreasoning demagogue?

_He_ was not likely to be tempted by such doings. His home had always
been too clean and pleasant. He still kept up with the boys, and joined
the lyceum club; but the intimate companionship of his life was gone.

Fred did not come home for Christmas. College-life was
delightful,--would be just perfect if dear old Jack were there. The
glowing letters kept alive his own secret dissatisfaction. But how
explain it to one who would be sure to say, "Get out of it all, Jack: no
one has any right to keep you in such a distasteful round, and thwart
your life-plans." To be sure, he had no life-plans.

One raw, cold March day, Mr. Darcy went out to repair a roof that had
leaked in the previous storm. He rarely minded wind or weather.

"I declare," he said that evening, dropping into his capacious armchair,
"I feel as if I should never get warmed through. I do believe we shall
have a tremendous snowstorm to take this chill out of the air. Jack,
read the paper aloud, won't you?"

Jack complied. Local items, bits of State news, and the general progress
of the country; the starvation of a nation at the antipodes, the
discovery of a wonderful silver-mine, plans for new railroads,--how busy
the world was! It stirred Jack's youthful blood.

"I'd like to be a railroad-president," said Jack suddenly.

His father stared, then laughed at the absurdity. "Why, you're only a
boy, Jack," he replied.

"I know it. But the boy who means to be a railroad-president must begin
somewhere. Or if I could own a silver-mine," he went on, wi