Broken to the Plow

wn to the curb with them, on the pretext of looking at Hilmer's

ed Starratt, as he l

en are!" Hilmer returned. "You're th

n the last thing in his mind. He managed to voice a commonpl

over sometime… Perhap

ack into the house he walked aimlessly down the block. He had no objective beyond a desire to kil

r owners to save their old homes at any cost must have been the determining factor, Starratt had often thought, as he lingered before the old picket fences, in an attempt to revive his memories of other days. He could not remember, of course, quite back to the time when the Hyde Street hill had been in an opulent heyday, but the flavor of its quality had trickled through to his generation. This was the section where his mother had languished in the prim gloom of her lamp-shaded parlor before his father's discreet advances. The house was gone … replaced by a bay-windowed, jig-sawed horror of the '80s, but the garden still smiled, its quaint fragrance re?nforced at the proper season by the belated blossoms of a homesick and wind-bitten magnolia. He was sure, judged by present-day standards, that his mother's old home must have been a very modest, genial sort of place … without doubt a clapboard, two-storied affair with a single wide gable and a porch running the full length of the front. But, in a day when young and pretty women were at a premium, one did not have to live in a mansion to attract desirable suitors, and Fred Starratt had often h

eninsula-preferably at Hillsboro-possessed of high-power cars and a string of polo ponies … perhaps even a steam yacht… But these dazzling visions were not always in the ascendant. There were times when a philanthropic dream moved him more completely and he had na?ve and

half a chance!"

r. She was never bitter nor resentful at their profitle

ide. There were plenty of youths who worked their way through. But he always had moved close to the edge of affluent circles, where he had caught the cold but disturbing glow of their standards. He left high school with pallid ideals of gentility, ideals that expressed themselves in his reasons for deciding

erbee for money or putting his tailor off when the date for his monthly dole fell due. He had never been introspective enough to quite place himself in the social scale, but when, in his thought or conversation, he referred to people of the better class he unconsciously included himself. He was not a drunken, disorderly, or radical

him that he was not any of the fine things he imagined. He was sure that his inso

ne of the middle class

round turn. One might have called them both peasants with equal temerity.

hat defined it? Was it a matter of scant worldly possessions, or commonplace brain force, or breeding, or just an attitude of mind? Was it a term invented by the crafty to dash cold water upon the potential unity of a scattered force? Was it a scarecrow for frightening greedy and resourceful flocks from a concerted assault upon the golden harvests of privilege?… The questions submerged him in a swift flood. He did not know … he could not tell. Unaccustomed as he was to thinking in the terms of group consciousness, he fell back, naturally, upon the personal aspects of the case. He was sure of one thing-Hilmer's contempt and scorn

eration removed from a people who had subdued a wilderness … he was not many generations removed from a people who wrestled naked with God for a whole continent-that is, they had begun to wrestle; the years that had succeeded found them still eager and shut-lipped for the conflict. They had abandoned the struggle only when they had found their victory complete. Naturally, soft days had followed. Was eternal conflict the price of strength? Starratt found himself wondering. And was he a product of these soft days, the rushing whirlwinds of Heaven s

shes which insolence and circumstance had rained upon his vanity. His walk in the dusky silence had not stilled his restlessness, but it had given his impatience a larger scope … and as he stood for one last backward glimpse at the twinkling magnificence of this February night he

door to find the light still blazing, betraying the fact of Helen's w

m. At the sound of his footsteps she flung aside the magazine in he

inadequately, "I tho

ompose myself that quickly … after everything that's happened to-night … did you? I've been humiliated

got the money," he returned, dully. "But it's all pa

"It must be amusing to watch people like us attempting to be somebody and do someth

r. "Well … you know our income, down to the last penny… You know just how much I've o

m for your sake," she said, with slow emphasis. "If you played yo

, dryly, "and a damn

e's forceful." She turned a malevolent smile upon her husban

d so he knows how to give them… He may have money now, but he hasn't always been so fortunate. I've been short of funds in my day

me, where are we? Where will we be ten years from now?… T

the doorway. "Perhaps I am," he said

oward him. He stepped

he taunted as she sw

r scorn. He heard her slam the door of the bedroom. He went over to th

was chiming two when the

he heard his wife's voice

he ans