sing the Lueneburger Heath, an old lady
witnessing her trouble and finding whither she was bound, had given her
"the blessing of a person eighty years old, which would be sure to bring
her safely to the States. And the first thing I did," added Mrs. Guele,
"was to fall down-stairs."

At length we got out of the house, and some of us into the trap,
when--judgment of Heaven!--here came Mr. Guele from his vineyard. So
another quarter of an hour went by; till at length, at our earnest
pleading, we set forth again in earnest, Fanny and I white-faced and
silent but the Jews still smiling. The heart fails me. There was yet
another stoppage! And we drove at last into Calistoga past two in the
afternoon, Fanny and I having breakfasted at six in the morning, eight
mortal hours before. We were a pallid couple; but still the Jews were
smiling.

So ended our excursion with the village usurers, and, now that it was
done, we had no more idea of the nature of the business, nor of the part
we had been playing in it, than the child unborn. That all the people we
had met were the slaves of Kelmar, though in various degrees of
servitude; that we ourselves had been sent up the mountain in the
interests of none but Kelmar; that the money we laid out, dollar by
dollar, cent by cent, and through the hands of various intermediaries,
should all hop ultimately into Kelmar's till; these were facts that we
only grew to recognise in the course of time and by the accumulation of
evidence. At length all doubt was quieted, when one of the
kettle-holders confessed. Stopping his trap in the moonlight, a little
way out of Calistoga, he told me, in so many words, that he dare not
show face there with an empty pocket. "You see, I don't mind if it was
only five dollars, Mr. Stevens," he said, "but I must give Mr. Kelmar
_something_."

Even now, when the whole tyranny is plain to me, I cannot find it in my
heart to be as angry as perhaps I should be with the Hebrew tyrant. The
whole game of business is beggar my neighbour; and though perhaps that
game looks uglier when played at such close quarters and on so small a
scale, it is none the more intrinsically inhumane for that. The village
usurer is not so sad a feature of humanity and human progress as the
millionaire manufacturer, fattening on the toil and loss of thousands,
and yet declaiming from the platform against the greed and dishonesty of
landlords. If it were fair for Cobden to buy up land from own