elsewhere the bottom of life is known by the curses of men as Hell, and by the hope of women the top of life is breathlessly known as God.

The sound of the shaft, the rumble of coal through the breakers, make their ceaseless gutturals, while life throbs on its own strange rhythm. The restlessness of men makes the city seethe in turmoil, and the agony of labor beneath the city streets sets earth a-groaning. Fathers, brothers, sons expire as they sweat for bread, and the timelessness of labor lives on. "Men must work, men must weep" all the earth over.

In the Hills of Death men must curse,-and men must work; women must weep-and women must work; children may moan-but must work.

To the breaker at twelve, fingers shredded by hot, edged slate; to the mines at fourteen-till the back is bent, and the lungs are stuffed, the man misshapen with burden. Then, back to the breaker, old men. In their second childhood they are among boys who have no childhood! Over the valley smoke and dust stretch out like streamers of death. Crepe! No death is white unless it comes to the cradle.

The very air is pregnant. The passing of a train has meaning in it-a glad departure-a father, mother, two little children going home; a father and two little children going home, the mother gone home. At night on the culm-pile in the blaze of light, a watchman! Smoke from the breakers all day. A miner's hand dirty with blood.

Children are bred in litters down there. Cripples beget children with the "waste of life" in their narrow, withered bones sticking through skins.

From the bank of the Susquehanna stand and absorb the loveliness of the Hills of Death. The view smiles

nay, grimaces. The river winds like a belt of silver among the hills. The sun shines and the lightning flashes. But above it all is the threatening-and you are bowed, humbled—you crouch, and, it may be, you crawl. Mothers from their thin breasts suckle their babes. Men grow fat on the sugar of greed. Birds sing, but children screech. A white flower blooms. It is soiled with soot. Men take disease from a chalice. But still the sun shines and the river runs and life throbs on and on-and out.

272. THE SCULPTURED FIGURES OF SOCIETY

Over the doorway of one of New York's sky-scraping office buildings four great sculptured figures are posed in crouching attitudes. With bowed heads, tense features, and muscles strained like whip-cords, they seem to carry on their broad shoulders the terrific weight of twenty or more stories of masonry. Theirs is really only a pose, the pretense of the strenuous. They are really supporting no weight; they were put in after the building was completed; they could be removed without af fecting its safety in the slightest. They have no more real responsibility than a wandering fly, tarrying a moment on the flag-pole on the roof.

There are thousands of these sculptured figures in the world today-men whose pretense is measured in tons and whose performance is counted in ounces. It is the colossal effect to seem rather than to be, the heroic, neverending attempt to appear important.

One type of the sculptured figure is the man who poses as an intellectual Atlas holding up the firmament of thought. All the great problems of life that have baffled the sages for years are as luminant to him as an electric-light sign on a dark street. He has read, per

haps, partially through one volume of Spencer or Darwin and talks elaborately, with a heavy, orotund voice of finality, of evolution. Every weak spot in religion is known to him, and where he cannot find a leak he makes one. Though he has never accomplished anything in life, he feels absolutely sure that he could run this mighty government of ours and bring justice in on schedule time on every issue.

Men of real importance think too much of their work to think much of themselves. Their great interest, enthusiasm, and absorption in their world of effort eclipse all pettiness. They are living their life, not playing a part. They are burning incense at the shrine of a great purpose, not to their own vanity. They ever have poise-not pose.

The mists of three hundred years reveal to us only the rugged outlines of chivalry. The poetry, the pathos, the passion which invested it; the thrilling incidents and stronger delights to which it gave birth, the charming witchery of its sports and pastimes are shrouded in mystery. The knights and courtiers of the middle ages seem little more than aimless dreamers in coats of mail, roaming the world over in quest of mad adventure.

But the heroes of the joust and tourney were not mere puppets in the world's drama. They fulfilled a mission rivaling in its beauty the wildest dreams of fancy. It took the name of honor; and mankind grew grave and courteous. It took the form of religion and fought for the Holy Sepulchre. It showed itself in gallantry, and helpless innocence found a sturdy, strong defense. It

took the name of letters, and behold the perfect bloom in English romance.

The shouts of the lists had long since died away in the trembling air, when the task was given to the Bard of Abbotsford, Walter Scott, to touch with magic wand the fast decaying germ of fiction, and to quicken it into perpetual life and beauty.

From over the blue Castilian hills he caught the echo of the numbers that chronicled the exploits of the Cid. From France and sunny Italy the music of the troubadours floated up to his mountain home, heralding the valorous achievements of the old Provencal knights, and ever from the dark forests of Germany the lays of the minstrels came ringing over the Scottish heather, telling of Charlemagne and his peerless paladins. Scott's great heart thrilled under this divine influence, and not until he had told how he of the Lion Heart met the Saracen upon the plains of Palestine; how Marmion fought the specter knights in the ruined abbey; how Ivanhoe, wounded, bleeding, fainting, crossed swords with BoisGilbert for Rebecca's sake; did the world know the legacy chivalry had left to the literature of romance.

Out of the darkness of the feudal ages comes the strange, weird tradition of the Wandering Jew. The legend tells us that Jesus, while on his way to Calvary, bending beneath the heavy cross, stopped to rest before the house of a Jewish shoemaker, who thereupon pushed him away, exclaiming, "Go on! Go on!"

Jesus looked at him and said, "I shall stand and rest, but thou shalt go on to the end of time."

The shoemaker straightway became a wanderer, unable

to rest, unable to die. This haggard, wayworn pilgrim, forlornly roaming the earth, is the type of the Hebrew race, wandering, sorrowful, deathless; driven on from land to land, from age to age, by human hatred, human

scorn.

Sometimes the darkness lifts a little, and reveals fleeting glimpses of the tragic scene. It is a winter night at Moscow. To the north of the city lies the Jewish suburb. The people are asleep. Around stretches the frozen forest. Out of the city steals a band of Cossacks. The little suburb is surrounded. With whip and saber the helpless people are driven from their burning homes. Gathering in the woods, the Jews kindle a few branches to keep from freezing; the soldiers follow them and stamp out the fire. In the cold light of the morning, among the white stones of a Christian cemetery, lie the frozen bodies of the dead. And this in the twilight of the nineteenth century!

Denied all means of development, the Jew became stunted, narrow, fierce, revengeful. Christianity grasped the scepter and meted out the savage law of destruction, until the whole world became a hell of torture to the despised Jew. Eighteen centuries of such grinding tyranny left the marks of their fetters on his soul. With the avenues of every occupation barred to him as with gates of brass, from a farmer and a shepherd he became a trader and a cunning money-lender, a product of a hundred generations of repression and wrong.

These were God's chosen people, for never did a nation lay the hand of violence upon them but divine vengeance overtook it. Egypt enslaved them and lies buried in the sands of the desert. The Roman church struck the children of Jacob, and her arm withered in the blow. Spain drove them from her shores, and within a hundred years,