Show PLUM T R by DAVID GRATIAN IFS author of the cost the deluge etc copl cop red ul ula IM A by BOBBS L courant Co alisT Conti tied from last issue A glance lance about t me was enough to disclose the chief reason why so many men had surrendered the inner citadel of 0 self respect in the crucial hour when they had had to choose bet between weert subservience and a hard battle battie with adversity forth ironi front the their ir hearts had issued a traitor weakness the feeling of responsibility to wife and children and this traitor had easily delivered them captive to some master or masters more afore or less than human it seemed to me was the courage that could make successful resistance ies istance to this traitor and could strike down and dra drag down wife and children 1 I must give up elizabeth I 1 said to aselt for her own sake as well as for mine mairy her I 1 must not until I 1 am established se calely in III fre freedom and when will that be in my any mood of darkness and despair the answer to hat abat fotion io tion iv was as a relentless nev ev r especially it if you are weighted with the sense selle of obligation to her of her wasting her youth in alting for you I 1 ciote lote her all al that was in illy mind you must forget lie I 1 said and I 1 fort for foi set t 3 ou tor for I 1 see that you are not lot for me the answer came by telegraph please dont ever hurt me in that way and ot of the letter aich came two tio lays days later I 1 remember cleary this sentence if you will v III not let me go on with aou I 1 will make tile the journey alone this shook tile me but I 1 knew only too well how tile the bright and beautiful legions of the romantic mantic lo and the ideal could be put to flight could be hurled headlong head lons into the abyss of oblivion by the phalanxes of fact act 1 I see what I 1 must do was my an awer to her letter and I 1 shall do it be merciful to me elizabeth do not tempt me to a worse cowardice than giving you up I 1 shall not write again and I 1 did not every one ot of her letters was answered sometimes I 1 remember I 1 wrote to her the whole light through shading my window so falat mother could not from her window soe see the reflection of rny my lamps light on the ground and become anxious an but I 1 des destroyed troed those longani long and often agonized answers and I 1 can not say whether my heart was the hemier heavier in the months when I 1 was getting getling her letters to indich I 1 dared not reply or in those succeeding months dexl when her ber small clear handwriting blust cesel cese l all to greed S ak f nm thi th t tl L ap A p ayi fyi CHAPTER IV the school of life lifets is lt it ls Is A lay day or so after I 1 lost the only case ot of consequence I 1 had had in more than a year duck buck fessenden tame lame L ame into my office and after losing dosing rile me liberally ll berall with those friendly protestations te and assurances which N aich please even when they do not convince said 1 I know you wont give me away sayler and I 1 cant stand t any longer oner to watch you going on this way dont you see the old mans after you hummer hammer and tongs hell never dever let up you wont get no clients and andia 1 you do doo ou u wont w MA in no lases z these last live words spoken la in most significant manner re rc vied aled what my modesty or it if you prefer it my stupidity had hidden from me I 1 had known all along that dominick was reaping keeping away and driving away my clients but I 1 had not suspected his creatures on the bench to this day after all these th ese beara ears ot of use only with the greatest creates t reluctance and with a moral uneasiness which would rould doubtless amuse most political managers do I 1 send suggestions su g etious or intimations to my cy men in judicial office and I 1 always alays dolt doit and always lave have done it indirectly and aad I 1 feel believed leli ieli eved and grat grats grateful ful when my illy jud judges es eager to serve the party anticipate me by sending sanding me a reassuring alint I 1 did not let duck see into my mind nonsense I 1 pooh boob ive no cause to complain of lack of business but even it if I 1 had I 1 id d not blanie dominick or any one else but myself then I 1 gave him a nt but b u t good humored look drop it buck said L I 1 W what h at did the old man send you t to 0 tile ine for what does lie he want i lie ile was too crafty to defend in an position ill admit he did send me said lie he with a arin rin but I 1 came on oil my own a account cc 0 u it to too do you want to make it lit up with h him you yon can get back under the plum tree if say tile the wo word d I 1 could see my mother as I 1 had seen her two hours before at our poor midday meal an old old woman so br broken so borill worn and all through the misery this dominick had brought upon us before I 1 c could 1 control myself to speak duck bu q t out a lo 10 look ok of alarm in his face dont say it nr mr sayler I 1 know I 1 know I 1 told him be ba no use honest he be aint as bad as you think he dont know no better belter all and its because lie liked and still likes you that lie wants you back lie ho loaned leaned across the he desk toward me in his earnestness and I 1 could not doubt ills his aln clifty sayler he went on take my advice get out ot of the state you aint the sort that gives in and no more is he youve got more nerve than any other man I 1 know bar none but dont waste it on a fool 1 you know enough about politics to know now what youre up it against thank you said 1 I but ill stay on ile he gave over ocer trying to persuade me 1 I hope said lie youve got a card up your our sleeve that the old man dont know about I 1 made some vague reply and lie he soon went avay anay I 1 felt that I 1 had confirmed his belief la in my fearlessness yet if lie could have looked into my minu mind how he would have laughed at his credulity probably ably he would woud have pitied rile me too tor for it Is one ot of the curious facts of human nature that men are amazed and even disgusted whenever they scein in others the weaknesses that are universal I 1 doubt not many who read these memoirs will be quite honestly ahari laical thanking heaven that they are not touched ili any of infirri ties it may have been coincident though I 1 think not that a few days after fes F s sen deas dens call a reform movement against dominick appeared upon the surface of 0 jackson county politics I 1 thought at the time that it was the first streak of the dawn I 1 had been watching tor for the awakening of the sluggish moral sentiment of the rank and file of the voters I 1 know now that it was as merely the result of a quarrel among the corporations that employed dominick Domin lck lie ile had been giving the largest of them roebucks universal gas and electric company called the power trust more than its proportional share of the privileges and spoils the others had protested in vain and as a last resort had ordered their lawyers to or organize anae a movement to purify jackson county dominicks stron stronghold g I 1 did not then know it but I 1 got the nomination for county prosecutor chiefly because none of the other lawyers not dot even those secretly directing the reform campaign was brave enough publicly to provoke th the 6 power trust I 1 made rt house to house use farm to farm man to man canvass we had the secret ballot and I 1 was elected the people rarely fall fail to respond to that kind of appeal it if they arc convinced that st response possibly burt billj iby i laloli their pockets arid jy ilia way choso occasional cas ional responses f significant neither of morality nor of intelligence lead political theorists far astray As if honor or honesty could win inin other than sporadic and moie or less ayio hypocritical lio homage niage practical homage 1 I mean among a people whose permanent ideal is wealth no matter how great or how bow used that Is another Y yay way ay of saying that the chief charpe te of americans is that we are human and whatever abat ever we may profess cherish the human ideal universal in a world where want is mans wickedest wick edest enemy and wealth nea th his most winning friend but as I 1 was relating I 1 was elected and in my y majority on the laco face ot of the cretu returns ri is was between 1000 and 1100 it must actually have been many thousands for never before had dominick doctored tho the tall tally sheets so recklessly financially I 1 was now on my way to the sinice IL I 1 supposed up posed t that h at I 1 had become a political personage also was I 1 not in possession of the most powerful office in ili the county I 1 was astonished that neither dominick nor any other oilier member ber of his rang mady the slightest effort to conciliate me between election day and the date of my taking office I 1 did succeed in forcing from reluctant grand juries indictments against a few of the most notorious but least important members of tho cane and I 1 got one conviction which was reversed on trial errors by the higher court tile the truth was that my power had no existence dominick Doi still ruled rule d through the judges and the newspapers the press was silent when it could not venture to deprecate or to condemn me but I 1 fought on an almost alone I 1 did not fall to make it clear to the people why I 1 was not succeeding and what a sweep there must ba before jackson jacdson county could have an real reform I 1 made an even more vigorous campaign for reelection than I 1 had made lour r years before the farmers stood by me fairly well but the town wont went overwhelmingly against me why because I 1 was bad for business and it reelected would be still worse the corporations with whose lawbreaking law breaking I 1 interfered were threatening to remove their plants from pulaski that would have meant the departure of 0 thousands of 0 the merchants best bast customers and the destruction st of tile the towns prosperity I 1 think the election was fairly ji honest onest dominicks man beat me by about the th e same majority by which 1 I had been elected bad for business the most potent of political slogans and it will inevitably result some day in the concentration cent ration of absolute power political ani and all other kinds hinds in the hands of the few who aie strongest and cleverest for they can make the people bitt bitterly efly regret and speedily r repent elc nt having baving tried 0 to o cori correct act abuses and the ins people 10 lo save their dollars will sacrifice their liberty I 1 doubt it if they will in ili our time at least learn to see far enough to realize that who ho captures their liberty captures them and therefore their dollars too by my illy defeat in III that typical contest I 1 was dis heartened embittered and ruined for in my lily enthusiasm and confidence I 1 had gone deeply into debt for the expenses of the inform campaign at midnight of the election day I 1 descended into the black cave of despair for three weeks I 1 explored it when ahen I 1 fetu ic turned tried to 10 the surface I 1 was a man ri ready ady t to deal with men on oil the terms of 0 h human U an nature I 1 had learned my lesson for woman the cost of attainment of woman hoods mau maturity rItT is the beautiful the divine freshness of gir girlhood for man tile the cost of the attainment of man hoods full strength and power is equally great and equally sad his fits divine falshan fai thin human nature ills his divine belief that abstract justian justi cn and right and truth rule the world even now when life is redeeming some orne of those large promises to pay which I 1 had bad long ago given up lit as hopeless bad debts even now it gives me a wrench to remember the cruelest chapter in that eliat bitter lesson so certain had I 1 been of reelection that I 1 had arranged to go to boston the day after my triumph at the polls for I 1 knew from fi mends lends of the in pulaski that elizabeth was still unmarried was not ea engaged enga gerl and upon that I 1 had built high a romantic hope I 1 made up my illy mind that mother and I 1 dij must st I 1 leave eave pulaski kl that I 1 must t give up tho lawand law and must in chicago or Clee cleveland cleeland fand get gee something to do that would tiling 1 in x al living at once before I 1 found coinage to tell her that which would mould blast hopes wrapped 1 round d and tooted looted in her very oa ull libart heart and d before I 1 had to confess to her the debts I 1 had bad made edward ramsay threw me a Il alfe feline liue lie ile came bustling g into my illy 0 office one afternoon big and road broad aia ai 1 l obviously pleased with himself and therefore with the world lie he had bad hardly changed in years since we v e were at ann arbor to together ether lie had kept up lib our rind and lal insisted ir aisted on visiting me several tinos though not in the 1 pt 11 1 fl fc 3 years cars which had been as busy tor for bilm as i m latterly hla his letters tubing me ma to visit him at thel their great c country place away at the other aril ocd of th the e s state ta te had set ms me a hard task tas of inventing excuses well well he exclaimed shaking in my hand violently in both 1 ills his you come to td a p sr ive come collie to see you to be |