e are a dozen just as bad in sight. He works
like a fiend--so does his wife--and what is their reward? Simply a hole
to hibernate in and to sleep and eat in in summer. A dreary present and
a well-nigh hopeless future. No, they have a future, if they knew it,
and we must tell them."

"I know Mrs. Burns," Lily said, after a pause; "she sends several
children to my school. Poor, pathetic little things, half-clad and
wistful-eyed. They make my heart ache; they are so hungry for love, and
so quick to learn."

As they passed the Burns farm, they looked for the wife, but she was not
to be seen. The children had evidently gone up to the little white
schoolhouse at the head of the lane. Radbourn let the reins fall slack
as he talked on. He did not look at the girl; his eyebrows were drawn
into a look of gloomy pain.

"It isn't so much the grime that I abhor, nor the labor that crooks
their backs and makes their hands bludgeons. It's the horrible waste of
life involved in it all. I don't believe God intended a man to be bent
to plough-handles like that, but that isn't the worst of it. The worst
of it is, these people live lives approaching automata. They become
machines to serve others more lucky or more unscrupulous than
themselves. What is the world of art, of music, of literature, to these
poor devils,--to Sim Burns and his wife there, for example? Or even to
the best of these farmers?"

The girl looked away over the shimmering lake of yellow-green corn. A
choking came into her throat. Her gloved hand trembled.

"What is such a life worth? It's all very comfortable for us to say,
'They don't feel it.' How do we know what they feel? What do we know of
their capacity for enjoyment of art and music? They never have leisure
or opportunity. The master is very glad to be taught by preacher, and
lawyer, and novelist, that his slaves are contented and never feel any
longings for a higher life. These people live lives but little higher
than their cattle--are _forced_ to live so. Their hopes and aspirations
are crushed out, their souls are twisted and deformed just as toil
twists and deforms their bodies. They are on the same level as the city
laborer. The very religion they hear is a soporific. They are taught to
be content here that they may be happy hereafter. Suppose there isn't
any hereafter?"

"Oh, don't say that, please!" Lily cried.

"But I don't _know_ that there is," he went on remorselessly, "and I do
know that these