Susan Lenox, Her Fall and Rise

"Turn on the water!" shouted a fireman.

"No! No!" roared a voice, and a man in his undershirt rushed up and tried to tear the hose away from those that directed it. It was Oscar.

"No! Let her burn! Let her burn! We'll show that infernal hound of a Moore if he can take our chances away from us!"

"Oh, then 'twas you!" cried Moore, and he leaped for Oscar.

A dozen men sprang to pull them apart, but Roger was there first. He hung onto his father in desperate silence, while others pulled Oscar away. Mr. Wolf and Ernest followed the Moores as Roger led the way to a seat on a heap of débris.

"There, old friend, there!" said Wolf. "Don't take it so hard! I know! I know! If it was my store it would break the heart of me. But we cannot break. We cannot."

Roger kept his hand on his father's shoulder. Moore rested his head on his hand and said nothing.

"It's all right, Daddy! You walloped him a good one," said Roger.

"His old snoot was all over his face," added Ernest in a cheerful voice.

"Hush, boys, come away for a little bit," said Mr. Wolf. And he led the two back toward the hose. But Roger would not go far. He loitered behind lest some one should molest that silent figure on the heap of débris. All the vicinity was brilliant with firelight. And standing waiting thus he saw a sight that he never was to forget. It was his father, bowing his head on a piece of the twisted, wrecked machinery--the machinery into which he had put the passionate hopes and dreams of his manhood. And moving nearer lest some one else should see, Roger saw that his father was sobbing as if indeed his heart was broken.

That picture was to direct the entire course of Roger's life. For it never left him. And at first it filled his boyish mind with such bitterness that he could not hear of labor and its strivings and troubles without seeing red.

But as the years on the farm slipped by and the atmosphere of competition and of feverish ambition gave place to the sweet silences, the quiet plodding, the placid sureness of farm living, the bitterness gave way to a dream.

Gradually Roger ceased to blame the factory workmen who had destroyed his father, or to blame his father for the egotism and selfishness that had driven his employees into reckless stubbornness. He saw behind both the urge of the inevitable, unquenchable desire of human beings for happiness; for the happiness that comes only when men have sufficient leisure in which to expand their minds and souls.