o, I remembered, might purchase a
precarious confidence that after their death their loved ones would
not, for a while at least, be trampled under the feet of men. But this
was all, and this was only for those who could pay well for it. What
idea was possible to these wretched dwellers in the land of Ishmael,
where every man's hand was against each and the hand of each against
every other, of true life insurance as I had seen it among the people
of that dream land, each of whom, by virtue merely of his membership
in the national family, was guaranteed against need of any sort, by a
policy underwritten by one hundred million fellow countrymen.

Some time after this it was that I recall a glimpse of myself standing
on the steps of a building on Tremont Street, looking at a military
parade. A regiment was passing. It was the first sight in that dreary
day which had inspired me with any other emotions than wondering pity
and amazement. Here at last were order and reason, an exhibition of
what intelligent cooperation can accomplish. The people who stood
looking on with kindling faces,--could it be that the sight had for
them no more than but a spectacular interest? Could they fail to see
that it was their perfect concert of action, their organization under
one control, which made these men the tremendous engine they were,
able to vanquish a mob ten times as numerous? Seeing this so plainly,
could they fail to compare the scientific manner in which the nation
went to war with the unscientific manner in which it went to work?
Would they not query since what time the killing of men had been a
task so much more important than feeding and clothing them, that a
trained army should be deemed alone adequate to the former, while the
latter was left to a mob?

It was now toward nightfall, and the streets were thronged with the
workers from the stores, the shops, and mills. Carried along with the
stronger part of the current, I found myself, as it began to grow
dark, in the midst of a scene of squalor and human degradation such as
only the South Cove tenement district could present. I had seen the
mad wasting of human labor; here I saw in direst shape the want that
waste had bred.

From the black doorways and windows of the rookeries on every side
came gusts of fetid air. The streets and alleys reeked with the
effluvia of a slave ship's between-decks. As I passed I had glimpses
within of pale babies gasping out their lives amid sult