women: I would seek the
men with Knowles. Leaving the child, I crossed the darkening streets to
the house which I had seen him enter. I found him in a well-furnished
room, sitting at a table, in council with half a dozen men in the
old-time garb of the Communists. If their clothes were relics of other
times, however, their shrewd, keen faces were wide awake and alive to
the present. Knowles's alone was lowering and black.

"These are the directors of the society," he said to me aloud, as I
entered.

"Their reception of us is hardly what I expected," nodding me to a seat.

They looked at me with a quiet, business-like scrutiny.

"I hardly comprehend what welcome you anticipated," said one, coolly.
"Many persons offer to become members of our fraternity; but it is, we
honestly tell you, difficult to obtain admission. It is chiefly an
association to make money: the amount contributed by each new-comer
ought, in justice, to bear some proportion to the advantage he
obtains."

"Money? I had not viewed the society in that light," stammered Knowles.

"You probably," said the other, with a dry smile, "are not aware how
successful a corporation ours has been. At Harmony, we owned thirty
thousand acres; here, four thousand. We have steam-mills, distilleries,
carry on manufactures of wool, silk, and cotton. Exclusive of our
stocks, our annual profit, clear of expense, is over two hundred
thousand dollars. There are few enterprises by which money is to be made
into which our capital does not find its way."

Knowles sat dumb as the other proceeded, numbering, alertly as a broker,
shares in railroad stocks, coal-mines, banks.

"You see how we live," he concluded; "the society's lands are
self-supporting,--feed and clothe us amply. What profits accrue are
amassed, intact."

"To what end?" I broke in. "You have no children to inherit your wealth.
It buys you neither place nor power nor pleasure in the world."

The director looked at me with a cold rebuke in his eyes. "It is not
surprising that many should desire to enter a partnership into which
they bring nothing, and which is so lucrative," he said.

"I had no intention of coming empty-handed," said Knowles in a subdued
voice. "But this financial point of view never occurred to me."

The other rose with a look of pity, and led us out through the great
ware-rooms, where their silks and cottons were stored in chests, out to
the stables to inspect stock, and so forth. But b