Gossamer

occupy my time, a very poor form of amusement compared to tramping the fields after partridge. I suppose it is inevitable that a man in my position should indu

sun rose clear of the light mist and shone on them. Sometimes the threads floated free in the air, attached to some object at one end, the rest borne about by faint breaths of wind, waved to and fro, seeking other attachment elsewhere. Some threads reached from tufts of grass to little hummocks or to the twigs which form the boles of elm trees. Others still, with less ambitious span, went only from one blade of grass to anothe

plantations would be either better or worse if there were no such thing as gossamer. But I am no longer contented with my ignorance. I mean to find out all that is k

s, to give an account of my experiences. I shall describe the long strip of the world over which I wandered as a landscape on a quiet autumn morning, netted over with gossamer. That is the way it stri

he does, bursts the filaments and destroys the shimmering beauty which was before he came. That, I suppose, is what happens. But the passing of a man, however violent he is, is the passing of a man and no mor

lf, on the passenger list, Bishop Zacchary Brown. He was apostolic in his devotion to the Gospel as he understood it. His particular field of work lay in the northern part of South America. He ranged, so I understood, through Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. He was full of h

r the republic in which he was interested. He wante

pare money," he sa

ishop Zacchary Brown was not anxious about my future or my fortune. He did not care, cannot have cared, whether the Panama Canal made me rich or not. Nor did it seem to him an important thing that the fruit trade of South America should develop. What he cared for was his conception of r

, and, as we both spoke the language badly, understood each other without much difficulty. It is one of the peculiarities of the French language that

minion, centred in Washington. He regarded the Monroe Doctrine as the root from which such an extension of power might grow. It was no business of mine to argue with him, though I am convinced that the citizens of the United States are of all peoples the leas

ndeveloped. We cannot become strong in a military sens

ate" for that was plainly what he meant. But sta

, ought in their own interests to pour capital into our republics. The return, in the end, would be enormous. But more

ads which Ascher spins. The Gospel and international politics are caught in the same web. I seemed to see Diocletian the Emperor and Saint John, who

hemp and wire. I saw the lines of steel on which trains go, stretched out across vast prairies, and knew that they were not in reality lines of steel at all but gossamer threads. I saw torrents made the slaves of man, the weight of falling water transmuted into

potentiality of wealth so great that, if it were realised, men everywhere would be raised above the fear of want. A whole continent was crying out to Ascher that

roducts of English factories. Some acted as the agents of steamboat companies, arranging for freights and settling the destinations of ships which went voyaging. Some grew wheat or bred cattle. Like all Englishmen whose lot i

ded English Government and English statesmanship, ignoring party loyalties with a fine impartiality. They decried English social customs, contrasting the freedom of life in the

heir various activities were separated, these men were all conscious

endents. They were united to England, to Europe, to each other, by Ascher's threads. Whether they bred cattle and so

nevitable, that I should see the world through bankers' eyes. Perhaps credit was not after all the life blood of our civilisation. I failed to convince myself. The very fact that I could go so far under the shadow of a bank p

ed up, the gossamer threads. Then, long before his march was done, while awe-struck men and weeping women still listened to the strident clamour of his arms, the spinners of the webs were at work again, patient