The Nine-Tenths

a war-dance about her. This paralyzed her throat, her hands, and her feet, and she could only stand, flooded with horror, awai

life is most intense and most exciting. The romance of crowds, of wealth, of art, of concentrated pleasure and concentrated vice, of immense money-power, the very architecture of the world-city, the maelstrom of people, drew the young Fall River woman ir

om either shore a city climbed, topped with steeples and mill chimneys-floods of tenements and homes. Then the boat swept under the enormous steel bridges which seemed upheld by some invisible power and throbbed with life above them. And then, finally, came the Vision of the City. The wide expanse of rolling, slapping water was busy with innumerable harbor craft, crowded ferries, puffing tugs, each wafting its plume of smoke and white steam; but fro

an was moved to tears. She seemed to slough off at that moment the church of her youth, averring that New York was too big for a creed. It was the great human outworking; the organism of the mighty many. It seemed a miracle that all this splendor and wonder had been wrought by human hands. Surely human nature was great-greater than she had dreamed. If creatu

, and felt the mystery of what might be termed crowd-touch. Here, surely, was life-life thick, happy, busy, daring, ideal. Here was pioneering-a reaching fo

of introduction to a friend of her mother's secured her a companion, who "showed her the sights" and helped her choose her boarding-house in East Eigh

ing, sometimes until late in the night, and meeting at meals unfriendly people that she disliked. Her class was composed of rather stupid, rather dirty children. They smelled-a thing she never forgave them. And what could one woman do with fifty or sixty children? The class was at least three times too big for real teaching, and so almost inevitably a large part of the work became rou

she had dreamed. She never saw again that Vision of the City; never felt again that throb of life, that sense of pioneering and of human power. And yet in those years Myra had developed. She was thrown back on books for friendship, and through th

owered her. She had almost forgotten sex in the aridity of those ten years; she had almost become a dried old maid; but now by the new color in her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes, the fresh rapidity of her blood, and through

t at the riverside when the spirit of life had drenched her and she had become grave, tender, and wrought of all lovely power. Joe was just a boy then to her, and her great woman-heart drew him in and sheltered him in the sacred warm

in ... dead girls...." All that night she tossed about in a horror, and in the morning she feverishly read the terrible news until she thought she must swoon away. She became sick; the landlady had to come

hat his whole old life had been consumed in that fire, and lay in ruins, and she felt subtly that he had been taken from her. By one blow, at the very moment

est and became indignant because he blamed himself. Who was to blame for such an accident? It was not his cigarette that had started the blaze. In her overwrought condition she passed from a terrible love to a sharp hate, and back and forth. Was he a fool or was he more noble than she could fathom? He should have seen her sooner, he should not have

t, as she paced up and down the narrow white little room, she heard the landlady climbing the stairs, advancing along the hall, and the

brief a

to-morrow morning-I'll be out in the street and wait for you. We

o

e didn't go? A fine letter that, after that half-hour at the riverside. A love-letter! She laughed bitterly. And then her heart seemed to break within her. Life was too hard. Why had she ever left the peace and quiet of Fall River? Why had she come down to the cruel, careless, vicious city to be ground up in a wholesale school system and then to break her heart for an uncouth, half-educated printer? It was all too hard, too cruel. Why had she been born to suffer so?

looked in the glass at he

," she thought, and

him again. Yes, how she loved him! loved with all her nature. It was the intensity of her love that made her hate. And she lay thro

letter, her doubts returned. He was coming to renounce her. He would make all sorts of plausible excuses, he would be remorsefu

to take away the sharpness of her expression, and when her little clock showed seven she put on hat and coat with trembling hands and went swiftly do

shop-girls on the way to work; people streamed hurrying to their day's toil. The city was awake, shaking in every part of her with glad breakfast and the rush to activity. What colossal forces swinging in, swinging out of the metropolis in long pulsations of freight and ship and electricity! Wall Street would roar, the skyscrapers swarm, the sch

is gray slouch hat-shabby and homely, and ill-proportioned, stooping a little, his rough shock of hair framing the furrowed face and sunken melancholy eyes. And it was for this man

magic presence, her womanly splendor. This alone was real, and all the rest fantastic. And he had walked up and down the street with all the October morning singing in his blood; the world was glorious again and he was young; he would take her, he would forget all else, and

in a lo

yr

d she became more pale, and stood unable to f

there was a ne

cold, uneven voice. "We'd better be going then. I w

, each charged with inexpressible, conflicting emotions, and each waiting for th

en to see you ... but you'll understand,

en again came the

have foun

adway, past low green hills to the right and the sinking lawns to the left, crossed the roadway, and climbed the steep

ps, blowing in dry leaves, sparkling on every spot of wet, and all suffused and splashed and strangely fresh with the low, red, radiant sunli

it here,"

squirrels ran up to them, tufted their tails and begged for peanuts with lustrous beady eyes, and now and then some early wa

tolerable again. Joe t

yr

ld be in his arms, sobbing, forgiving hi

to me-I'm waiting.

he face; his own v

ng it very h

hing, and he

I felt I was guilty.... I went to a mass-meeting and one of the speakers acc

poke s

o s

s He

O

enough of women, either, to divine how Myra was suffering, to know that she had reached a nervo

ation to the toilers, ... had to spend my life making conditi

l gibberi

o you mean?" sh

ve among the poor and arouse them and teach the

ghed st

settlement work

s stu

can't y

ttle; "you're going to live in the slums and y

s beautiful dream, and she was startl

g it impossib

ittle, stroking

ng the poor ... and you didn

o involve you unt

you're

he c

er voice a l

f I couldn't help you

ike cold lead in his breast; his head ached. He felt her sid

ad seemed to explode, and she

o school. I want to

nd went of

ing up, but she only a

l-length on the bed, buried her face in the pillow, and shook for a