“It’s corking! Simply corking!” cried Haynerd, when he and Hitt had finished reading Carmen’s report on her first few days in Washington. “Makes a fellow feel as if the best thing Congress could do would be to adjourn for about fifty years, eh? Such freak legislation! But she’s a wonder, Hitt! And she’s booming the Express to the skies! Say, do you know? she’s in love, that girl is! That’s why she is so––as the Mexicans say––simpÁtico.”

“Eh? In love!” exclaimed Hitt. “Well, not with you, I hope!”

“No, unfortunately,” replied Haynerd, assuming a dejected mien, “but with that RincÓn fellow––and he a priest! He’s got a son down in Cartagena somewhere, and he doesn’t write to her either. She’s told Sid the whole story, and he’s working it up into a book during his odd moments. But, say,” turning the conversation again into its original channel, “how much of her report are we going to run? You know, she tried to head us off. Doesn’t want to attack Ames. Ha! ha! As if she hadn’t already attacked him and strewn him all over the field!”

“We’ll have to be careful in our allusions to the President,” replied Hitt. “I’ll rewrite it myself, so as not to offend her or him. And I––but, by George! her reports are the truth, and they rightfully belong to the people! The Express is the 174 avowed servant of the public! What she finds out belongs to all. I see no reason for concealing a thing. Did I tell you that I had two inquiries from Italian and German papers, asking permission to translate her reports into their own columns?”

“No? Jerusalem! We’re becoming famous! Did you wire her to see Gossitch and Mall?”

“Yes, and Logue, as well as others. And I’ve put dozens of senators and congressmen on our mailing list, including the President himself. I’ve prepared letters for each one of them, calling attention to the girl and her unique reports. She certainly writes in a fascinating vein, doesn’t she? Meanwhile, she’s circulating around down there and advertising us in the best possible manner. We’re a success, old man!” he finished, slapping the city editor roundly upon the back.

“Humph!” growled the latter. “Confine your enthusiasm to words, my friend. Say, what did you do about that liquid food advertisement?”

“Discovered that it was beer,” replied Hitt, “and turned it firmly down.”

“Well, isn’t beer a food? Not that we care to advertise it, but––”

Hitt laughed. “When that fellow Claus smoothly tried to convince me that beer was a food, I sent a sample of his stuff to the Iles chemical laboratory for analysis. They reported ninety-four per cent water, four per cent alcohol––defined now as a poisonous drug––and about two per cent of possible food substance. If the beer had been of the first grade there wouldn’t have been even the two per cent of solids. You know, I couldn’t help thinking of what Carmen said about the beer that is advertised in brown bottles to preserve it from the deleterious effects of light. Light, you know, starts decay in beer. Well, light, according to Fuller, is ‘God’s eldest daughter.’ Emerson says it is the first of painters, and that there is nothing so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful. Light destroys fermentation. Thus the light of truth destroys the fermentation which is supposed to constitute the human mind and body. So light tries to purify beer by breaking it up. The brewers have to put it into brown bottles to preserve its poisonous qualities. As Carmen says, beer simply can’t stand the light. No evil can stand the light. Remarkable, isn’t it?”

“Humph! It’s astonishing that so many so-called reputable papers will take their advertising stuff. It’s just as bad as patent medicine ads.”

“Yes. And I note that the American public still spend their annual hundred million dollars for patent medicine dope. Most of this is spent by women, who are largely caught by the mail-order 175 trade. I learned of one exposure recently made where it was found that a widely advertised eye wash was composed of borax and water. The cost was somewhere about five cents a gallon, and it sold for a dollar an ounce. Nice little profit of some two hundred and fifty thousand per cent, and all done by the mesmerism of suggestive advertising. Shrewd business, eh? Nice example in morality. Speaking of parasites on society, Ames is not the only one!”

“And yet those fellows howl and threaten us with the boycott because we won’t advertise their lies and delusions. It’s as bad as ecclesiastical intolerance!”

Carmen spent a week in Washington. Then she returned to New York and went directly to Avon. What she did there can only be surmised by a study of her reports to Hitt, who carefully edited them and ran them in the Express. Again, after several days, she journeyed back to Washington. Her enthusiasm was boundless; her energy exhaustless; her industry ceaseless; and her persistency doggedly unshakable. In Washington she made her way unhindered among those whom she deemed essential to the work which she was doing. Doubtless her ability to do this and to gain an audience with whomsoever she might choose was in great part due to her beauty and charming simplicity, her grace of manner, and her wonderful and fearless innocence, combined with a mentality remarkable for its matured powers. Hitt and Haynerd groaned over her expenses, but promptly met them.

“She’s worth it,” growled the latter one day. “She’s had four different talks with the President! How on earth do you suppose she does it? And how did she get Mall and Logue to take her to dinner and to the theater again and again? And what did she do to induce that doddering old blunderbuss, Gossitch, to tell her what Ames was up to? I’ll bet he made love to her! How do you suppose she found out that Ames was hand in glove with the medical profession, and working tooth and nail to help them secure a National Bureau of Health? Say, do you know what that would do? It would foist allopathy upon every chick and child of us! Make medication, drugging, compulsory! Good heavens! Have we come to that in this supposedly free country? By the way, Hitt, Doctor Morton has been let out of the University. Fired! He says Ames did it because of his association with us. What do you think of that?”

“I think, my friend,” replied Hitt, “that it is a very serious matter, and one that impinges heavily upon the rights of every one of us, when a roaring lion like Ames is permitted to run loose through our streets. Can nothing stop him!”

“I’ve centered my hopes in Carmen,” sighed Haynerd. “She’s my one last bet. If she can’t stop him, then God himself can’t!”

Hitt turned and went into his office. A few moments later he came out again and handed an opened letter to Haynerd. “Some notes she’s sent from Washington. Mentions the National Bureau of Health project. It hasn’t escaped her, you see. Say, will you tell me where she picks up her information?”

“The Lord gives it to her, I guess,” said Haynerd, glancing over the letter. “What’s this?”

“‘Reverend Borwell and Doctor Siler are down here lobbying for the National Bureau of Health bill. Also, Senator Gossitch dropped a remark to me yesterday which makes me believe that he and other Senators have been approached by Tetham with reference to sending an American ambassador to the Vatican. Mr. Ames favors this.’”

Haynerd handed the letter back to Hitt and plunged into the papers on his desk. “Don’t say another word to me!” he exclaimed. “This country’s going stark, staring mad! We’re crazy, every mother’s son of us!”

“It’s the human mind that is crazy, Ned, because it is wholly without any basis of principle,” returned Hitt with a sigh.

---

“Doctor Siler! I beg your pardon!”

“Eh? Why, Miss Carmen!” exclaimed that worthy person, looking up from the gutter, whither he had hastened after his silk hat which had been knocked off by the encounter with the young girl who had rounded the corner of Ninth street into Pennsylvania avenue and plunged full into him.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Doctor! I was coming from the Smithsonian Institution, and I guess––”

“Don’t mention it, Miss Carmen. It’s a privilege to have my hat knocked off by such a radiant creature as you.”

“But it was so stupid of me! Dreaming again! And I want to offer my––”

“Look here, Miss Carmen, just offer yourself as my guest at luncheon, will you? That will not only make amends, but place me hopelessly in your debt.”

“Indeed I will!” exclaimed the girl heartily. “I was on my way to a restaurant.”

“Then come with me. I’ve got a little place around the corner here that would have made Epicurus sit up nights inditing odes to it.”

The girl laughed merrily, and slipped her arm through his. A few minutes later they were seated at a little table in a secluded corner of the doctor’s favorite chophouse.

“By the way, I met a friend of yours a few minutes ago,” announced the doctor, after they had given their orders. “He was coming out of the White House, and––were you ever in a miniature cyclone? Well, that was Ames! He blew me right off the sidewalk! So angry, he didn’t see me. That’s twice to-day I’ve been sent to the gutter!” He laughed heartily over his experiences, then added significantly: “You and he are both mental cyclones, but producing diametrically opposite effects.”

Carmen remained seriously thoughtful. The doctor went on chatting volubly. “Ames and the President don’t seem to be pulling together as well as usual. The President has come out squarely against him now in the matter of the cotton schedule. Ames declares that the result will be a general financial panic this fall. By the way, Mr. Sands, the Express correspondent, seems to be getting mighty close to administration affairs these days. Where did he get that data regarding a prospective National Bureau of Health, do you suppose?”

“I gave it to him,” was the simple reply.

The doctor dropped his fork, and stared at the girl. “You!” he exclaimed. “Well––of course you naturally would be opposed to it. But––”

“Tell me,” she interrupted, “tell me candidly just what you doctors are striving for, anyway. For universal health? Are your activities all quite utilitarian, or––is it money and monopoly that you are after? It makes a lot of difference, you know, in one’s attitude toward you. If you really seek the betterment of health, then you are only honestly mistaken in your zeal. But if you are doing this to make money––and I think you are––then you are a lot of rascals, deserving defeat.”

“Miss Carmen, do you impugn my motives?” He laughed lightly at the thought.

“N––well––” She hesitated. He began to color slightly under her keen scrutiny. “Well,” she finally continued, “let’s see. If you doctors have made the curative arts effective, and if you really do heal disease, then I must support you, of course. But, while there is nothing quite so important to the average mortal as his health, yet I know that there is hardly anything that has been dealt with in such a bungling way. The art of healing as employed by our various schools of medicine to-day is the result of ages and ages of experimentation and bitter experience, isn’t it? And its cost in human lives is simply incalculable. No science is so speculative, none so hypothetical, as the so-called science of medicine.”

“But we have had to learn,” protested the doctor.

“Do you realize, Doctor,” she resumed, “that the teaching 178 and preaching of disease for money is one of the greatest curses resting upon the world to-day? I never saw a doctor until I was on the boat coming to New York. And then I thought he was one of the greatest curiosities I had ever seen. I followed him about and listened to him talk to the passengers. And I learned that, like most of our young men, he had entered the practice of medicine under the pressure of dollars rather than altruism. Money is still the determining factor in the choice of a profession by our young men. And success and fortune in the medical profession, more than in any other, depend upon the credulity of the ignorant and helpless human mind.”

“Do you deny that great progress has been made in the curative arts?” he demanded. “See what we have done with diphtheria, with typhoid, with smallpox, and malaria!”

“Surely, Doctor, you can not believe that the mere temporary removing of a disease is real healing! You render one lot of microbes innocuous, after thousands of years of experimentation, and leave mankind subject to the rest. Then you render another set harmless. Do you expect to go on that way, making set after set of microbes harmless to the human body, and thus in time, after millions of years, eradicate disease entirely? Do you think that people will then cease to die? All the time you are working only in matter and through material modes. Do you expect thereby to render the human sense of life immortal? I think a sad disappointment awaits you. Your patients get well, only to fall sick again. And death to you is still as inevitable as ever, despite your boasted successes, is it not so?”

He broke into a bantering laugh, but did not reply.

“Doctor, the human mind is self-inoculated. It suffers from auto-infection. It makes its own disease microbes. It will keep on making them, until it is educated out of itself, and taught to do better. Then it will give place to the real reflection of divine mind; and human beings will be no more. Why don’t you realize this, you doctors, and get started on the right track? Your real work is in the mental realm. There you will find both cause and cure.”

“Well, I for one have little respect for faith cure––”

“Nor I,” she interposed. “Dependence upon material drugs, Doctor, is reliance upon the phenomena of the human mind. Faith cure is dependence upon the human mind itself, upon the noumenon, instead of the phenomenon. Do you see the difference? Hypnotism is mental suggestion, the suggestions being human and material, not divine truth. The drugging system is an outgrowth of the belief of life in matter. Faith 179 cure is the belief of life and power inherent in the human mind. One is no higher than the other. The origin of healing is shrouded in mythology, and every step of its so-called progress has been marked by superstition, dense ignorance, and fear. The first doctor that history records was the Shaman, or medicine-man, whose remedies reflected his mental status, and later found apt illustration in the brew concocted by Macbeth’s witches. And think you he has disappeared? Unbelievable as it may seem, it was only a short time ago that a case was reported from New York where the skin of a freshly killed black cat was applied as a remedy for an ailment that had refused to yield to the prescribed drugging! And only a few years ago some one applied to the Liverpool museum for permission to touch a sick child’s head with one of the prehistoric stone axes there exhibited.”

“That was mere superstition,” retorted the doctor.

“True,” said Carmen. “But materia medica is superstition incarnate. And because of the superstition that life and virtue and power are resident in matter, mankind have swallowed nearly everything known to material sense, in the hope that it would cure them of their own auto-infection. You remember what awful recipes Luther gave for disease, and his exclamation of gratitude: ‘How great is the mercy of God who has put such healing virtue in all manner of muck!’”

“Miss Carmen,” resumed the doctor, “we physicians are workers, not theorists. We handle conditions as we find them, not as they ought to be.”

“Oh, no, you don’t!” laughed the girl. “You handle conditions as the human, mortal mind believes them to be, that’s all. You accept its ugly pictures as real, and then you try desperately through legislation to make us all accept them. Yet you would bitterly resent it if some religious body should try to legislate its beliefs upon you.

“Now listen, you doctors are rank materialists. Perhaps it is because, as Hawthorne puts it, in your researches into the human frame your higher and more subtle faculties are materialized, and you lose the spiritual view of existence. Your only remedy for diseased matter is more matter. And these material remedies? Why, ignorance and superstition have given rise to by far the larger number of remedies in use by you to-day! And all of your attempts to rationalize medicine and place it upon a systematic basis have signally failed, because the only curative property a drug has is the credulity of the person who swallows it. And that is a factor which varies with the individual.”

“The most advanced physicians give little medicine nowadays, Miss Carmen.”

“They are beginning to get away from it, little by little,” she replied. “In recent years it has begun to dawn upon doctors and patients alike that the sick who recover do so, not because of the drugs which they have taken, but in spite of them! One of the most prominent of our contemporary physicians who are getting away from the use of drugs has said that eighty-five per cent of all illnesses get well of their own accord, no matter what may or may not be done for them. In a very remarkable article from this same doctor’s pen, in which he speaks of the huge undertaking which physicians must assume in order to clear away the materia medica rubbish of the ages, he states that the greatest struggle which the coming doctor has on his hands is with drugs, and the deadly grip which they have on the confidence and affections both of the profession and of the public. Among his illuminating remarks about the drug system, I found two drastic statements, which should serve to lift the veil from the eyes of the chronic drug taker. These are, first, ‘Take away opium and alcohol, and the backbone of the patent medicine business would be broken inside of forty-eight hours,’ and, second, ‘No drug, save quinine and mercury in special cases, will cure a disease.’ In words which he quotes from another prominent physician, ‘He is the best doctor who knows the worthlessness of most drugs.’

“The hundreds of drugs listed in books on materia medica I find are gradually being reduced in number to a possible forty or fifty, and one doctor makes the radical statement that they can be cut down to the ‘six or seven real drugs.’ Still further light has been thrown upon the debasing nature of the drugging system by a member of the Philadelphia Drug Exchange, in a recent hearing before the House Committee on municipal affairs right here. He is reported as saying that it makes little difference what a manufacturer puts into a patent medicine, for, after all, the effect of the medicine depends upon the faith of the user. The sick man who turns to patent medicines for relief becomes the victim of ‘bottled faith.’ If his faith is sufficiently great, a cure may be effected––and the treatment has been wholly mental! The question of ethics does not concern either the patent medicine manufacturer or the druggist, for they argue that if the sick man’s faith has been aroused to the point of producing a cure, the formula of the medicine itself is of no consequence, and, therefore, if a solution of sugar and water sold as a cure for colds can stimulate the sufferer’s faith to the point of meeting his need, the business is quite legitimate. ‘A bunch of bottles and sentiment,’ adds this member of the Drug Exchange, ‘are the real essentials for working healing miracles.’”

“Say!” exclaimed the doctor, again sitting back and regarding her with amazement. “You have a marvelous memory for data!”

“But, Doctor, I am intensely interested in my fellow-men. I want to help them, and show them how to learn to live.”

“So am I,” he returned. “And I am doing all I can, the very best I know how to do.”

“I guess you mean you are doing what you are prompted to do by every vagrant impulse that happens to stray into your mentality, aren’t you?” she said archly. “You haven’t really seriously thought out your way, else you would not be here now urging Congress to spread a blanket of ignorance over the human mind. If you will reflect seriously, if you will lay aside monetary considerations, and a little of the hoary prejudice of the ages, and will carefully investigate our present medical systems, you will find a large number of schools of medicine, bitterly antagonistic to one another, and each accusing the other of inferiority as an exact science, and as grossly ignorant and reprehensibly careless of life. But which of these warring schools can show the greatest number of cures is a bit of data that has never been ascertained. A recent writer says: ‘As important as we all realize health to be, the public is receiving treatment that is anything but scientific, and the amount of unnecessary suffering that is going on in the world is certainly enough to make a rock shed tears.’ He further says that, ‘at least seventy-five per cent of the people we meet who are apparently well, are suffering from some chronic ailment that regular medical systems can not cure,’ and that many of these would try further experimentation were it not for the criticism that is going on in the medical world regarding various curative systems. The only hope under the drugging system is that the patient’s life and purse may hold out under the strain of trying everything until he can light upon the right thing before he reaches the end of the list.”

“And do you include surgery in your general criticism?” he asked.

“Surgery is no less an outgrowth of the belief of sentient matter than is the drugging system,” she replied. “It is admittedly necessary in the present stage of the world’s thought; but it is likewise admitted to be ‘the very uncertain art of performing operations,’ at least ninety per cent of which are wholly unnecessary.

“You see,” she went on, “the effect upon the moral nature of the sick man is never considered as rightfully having any influence upon the choice of the system to be employed. If Beelzebub can cast out demons, why not employ him? For, 182 after all, the end to be attained is the ejection of the demon. And if God had not intended minerals and plants to be used as both food and medicine, why did He make them? Besides, man must earn his bread in some way under our present crude and inhuman social system, and if the demand for drugs exists we may be very sure it will be supplied by others, if not by ourselves. Again, the influence of commercialism as a determining factor in the choice of a profession, is an influence that works to keep many in the practice of a profession that they know to be both unscientific and harmful. The result is an inevitable lowering of ideals to the lust of material accumulation.”

“Well!” he exclaimed. “You certainly are hard on us poor doctors! And we have done so much for you, too, despite your accusations. Think of the babies that are now saved from diphtheria alone!”

“And think of the children who are the victims of the medical mania!” she returned. “Think how they are brought up under the tyranny of fear! Fear of this and of that; fear that if they scratch a finger blood poisoning will deprive them of life; fear that eating a bit of this will cause death; or sitting in a breeze will result in wasting sickness! Isn’t it criminal? As for diphtheria antitoxin, it is in the same class as the white of an egg. It contains no chemicals. It is the result of human belief, the belief that a horse that has recovered from diphtheria can never again be poisoned by the microbe of that disease. The microbe, Doctor, is the externalization in the human mentality of the mortal beliefs of fear, of life and power in matter, and of disease and death. The microbe will be subject, therefore, to the human mind’s changing thought regarding it, always.”

“Well then,” said the doctor, “if people are spiritual, and if they really are a consciousness, as you say, why do we seem to be carrying about a body with us all the time––a body from which we are utterly unable to get away?”

“It is because the mortal mind and body are one, Doctor. The body is a lower stratum of the human mind. Hence, the so-called mind is never distinct from its body to the extent of complete separation, but always has its substratum with it. And, Doctor, the mind can not hold a single thought without that thought tending to become externalized––as Professor James tells us––and the externalization generally has to do with the body, for the mind has come to center all its hopes of happiness and pleasure in the body, and to base its sense of life upon it. The body, being a mental concept formed of false thought, passes away, from sheer lack of a definite principle 183 upon which to rest. Therefore the sense of life embodied in it passes away with it. You know, the ancients had some idea of the cause of disease when they attributed it to demons, for demons at least are mental influences. But then, after that, men began to believe that disease was sent by God, either to punish them for their evil deeds, or to discipline and train them for paradise. Funny, isn’t it? Think of regarding pain and suffering as divine agents! I don’t wonder people die, do you? Humboldt, you know, said: ‘The time will come when it will be considered a disgrace for a man to be sick, when the world will look upon it as a misdemeanor, the result of some vicious thinking.’ Many people seem to think that thought affects only the brain; but the fact is that we think all over!”

“But look here,” put in the doctor. “Here’s a question I intended to ask Hitt the other night. He said the five physical senses did not testify truly. Well now, if, as you say, the eyes do not testify to disease, then they can’t testify to cures either, eh?” He sat back with an air of triumph.

“Quite correct,” replied Carmen. “The physical senses testify only to belief. In the case of sickness, they testify to false belief. In the case of a cure, they testify to a changed belief, to a belief of recovered health, that is all. It is all on the basis of human belief, you see.”

“Eh? But––nerves feel––”

“Nerves, Doctor, like all matter, are externalizations of human thought. Can the externalization of thought talk back to thought? No. You are still on the basis of mere human belief.”

At that moment the doctor leaned over and tapped upon the window to attract the attention of some one in the street. Carmen looked out and caught sight of a tall, angular man dressed in clerical garb. The man bowed pleasantly to the doctor, and cast an inquiring glance at the girl, then passed on.

“A priest?” inquired Carmen.

“Yes, Tetham,” said the doctor.

“Oh, is that the man who maintains the lobby here at the Capital for his Church? I’ve heard about him. He––well, it is his business to see that members of his Church are promoted to political office, isn’t it? He trades votes of whole districts to various congressmen in return for offices for strong church members. He also got the parochial schools of New York exempt from compulsory vaccination. The Express––”

“Eh? The Express has heard from him?” inquired the doctor.

“Yes. We opposed the candidate Mr. Ames was supporting for Congress. We also supported Mr. Wales in his work on the cotton schedule. And so we heard from Father Tetham. 184 He is supporting the National Bureau of Health bill. He is working for the Laetare medal. He––”

“Say, Miss Carmen, will you tell me where you pick up your news? Really, you astonish me! Do you know something about everybody here in Washington?”

She laughed. “I have learned much here,” she said, “about popular government as exemplified by these United States. The knowledge is a little saddening. But it is especially saddening to see our constitutional liberties threatened by this Bureau of Health bill, and by the Government’s constant truckling to the Church of Rome. Doctor, can it be that you want to commit this nation to the business of practicing medicine, and to its practice according to the allopathic, or ‘regular’ school? The American Medical Association, with its reactionary policies and repressive tendencies, is making strenuous endeavors to influence Congress to enact certain measures which would result in the creation of such a Department of Health, the effect of which would be to monopolize the art of healing and to create a ‘healing trust.’ If this calamity should be permitted to come upon the American people, it would fall as a curtain of ignorance and superstition over our fair land, and shut out the light of the dawning Sun of Truth. It would mean a reversion to the blight and mold of the Middle Ages, in many respects a return in a degree to the ignorance and tyranny that stood for so many centuries like an impassable rock in the pathway of human progress. The attempt to foist upon a progressive people a system of medicine and healing which is wholly unscientific and uncertain in its effects, but which is admittedly known to be responsible for the death of millions and for untold suffering and misery, and then to say, ‘Thou shalt be cured thereby, or not be cured at all,’ is an insult to the intelligence of the Fathers of our liberties, and a crime upon a people striving for the light. It smacks of the Holy Inquisition: You accept our creed, or you shall go to hell––after we have broken you on the rack! Why, the thought of subjecting this people to years of further dosing and experimentation along the materialistic lines of the ‘regular’ school, of curtailing their liberties, and forcing their necks under the yoke of medical tyranny, should come to them with the insistence of a clarion call, and startle them into such action that the subtle evil which lurks behind this proposed legislative action would be dragged out into the light and exterminated! To permit commercialism and greed, the lust of mammon, and the pride of the flesh that expresses itself in the demand, ‘Who shall be greatest?’ to dictate the course of conduct that shall shape the destinies of a great people, is to admit the failure of 185 free government, and to revert to a condition of mind that we had thought long since outgrown. To yield our dear-bought liberties to Italian ecclesiastics, on the other hand––well, Doctor, it is just unthinkable!”

“H’m! Well, at least you are delightfully frank with me. Yet you have the effect of making me feel as if––as if I were in some way behind a veil. That––”

“Well, the human mind is very decidedly behind a veil––indeed, behind many of them. And how can it see God through them? Mankind just grope about all their lives back of these veils, not knowing that God is right before them all the time. God has got to be everything, or else He will be nothing. With or without drugs, it is God ‘who healeth all thy diseases.’ The difficulty with physicians is that they are densely ignorant of what healing means, and so they always start with a dreadful handicap. They believe that there is something real to be overcome––and of course fail to permanently overcome it. Many of them are not only pitiably ignorant, but are in the profession simply to make money out of the fears and credulity of the people. Doctor, the physician of to-day is in no way qualified to handle the question of public health––especially those doctors who say: ‘If you won’t take our medicines we’ll get a law passed that will make you take them.’ To place the health of the people in their hands would be a terrible mistake. The agitation for a federal Department of Health is based upon motives of ignorance and intentional wrong. If the people generally knew this, they would rise in a body against it. Make what laws you wish for yourself, Doctor. The human mind is constantly occupied in the making of ridiculous laws and limitations. But do not attempt to foist your laws upon the people. Tell me, why all this agitation about teaching sex-hygiene in the public schools? Why not, for a change, teach Christianity? What would be the result? But even the Bible has been put out of the schools. And by whom? By your Church, that its interpretation may continue to be falsely made by those utterly and woefully ignorant of its true meaning!”

For some moments they continued their meal in silence. Then the girl took up the conversation again. “Doctor,” she said, “will you come out from among them and be separate?”

He looked at her quizzically. “Oppose Ames?” he finally said.

“Ah, that is the rub, then! Yes, oppose ignorance and falsity, even though incarnate in Mr. Ames,” she replied.

“He would ruin me!” exclaimed the doctor. “He ruins everybody who stands in his way! The cotton schedule has gone against him, and the whole country will have to suffer for it!”

“But how can he make the country suffer because he has been blocked in his colossal selfishness?” she asked.

“That I can not answer,” said the doctor. “But I do know that he has intimated that there will be no cotton crop in this country next year.”

“No cotton crop! Why, how can he prevent that?”

The doctor shook his head. “Mr. Ames stands as the claim of omnipotent evil,” was his laconic reply.

And when the meal was ended, the girl went her way, pondering deeply. “No cotton crop! What––what did he mean?” But that was something too dark to be reported to the Express.

---

Three weeks from the day he had his brush with Carmen in the presence of the President, Ames, the great corruptionist, the master manipulator, again returned from a visit to Washington, and in a dangerous frame of mind. What might have been his mental state had he known that the train which drew his private car also brought Carmen back to New York, can only be conjectured. It was fortunate, no doubt, that both were kept in ignorance of that fact, and that, while the great externalization of the human mind’s “claim” of business sulked alone in his luxurious apartments, the little follower after righteousness sat in one of the stuffy day coaches up ahead, holding tired, fretful babies, amusing restless children, and soothing away the long hours to weary, care-worn mothers.

When the financier’s car drew into the station his valets breathed great sighs of relief, and his French chef and negro porter mopped the perspiration from their troubled brows, while silently offering peans of gratitude for safe delivery. When the surly giant descended the car steps his waiting footman drew back in alarm, as he caught his master’s black looks. When he threw himself into the limousine, his chauffeur drew a low whistle and sent a timidly significant glance in the direction of the lackey. And when at last he flung open the doors of his private office and loudly summoned Hood, that capable and generally fearless individual quaked with dire foreboding.

“The Express––I want a libel suit brought against it at once! Draw it for half a million! File it in Judge Penny’s court!”

“Yes, sir,” responded the lawyer meekly. “The grounds?”

“Damn the grounds!” shouted Ames. Then, in a voice trembling with anger: “Have you read the last week’s issues? Then find your grounds in them! Make that girl a defendant too!”

“She has no financial interest in the paper, sir. And, as for 187 the reports which they have published––I hardly think we can establish a case from them––”

“What? With Judge Penny sitting? If you and he can’t make out a case against them, then I’ll get a judge and a lawyer who can! I want that bill filed to-morrow!” bringing his fist down upon the desk.

“Very well, sir,” assented Hood, stepping back.

“Another thing,” continued Ames, “see Judge Hanson and have the calling of the Ketchim case held in abeyance until I am ready for it. I’ve got a scheme to involve that negro wench in the trial, and drag her through the gutters! So, she’s still in love with RincÓn, eh? Well, we’ll put a crimp in that little affair, I guess! Has Willett heard from Wenceslas?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“I’ll lift the scalp from that blackguard Colombian prelate if he tries to trick me! Has Willett found Lafelle’s whereabouts?”

“No, sir. But the detectives report that he has been in Spain recently.”

“Spain! What’s he––up to there?” he exclaimed in a voice that began high and ended in a whisper.

He lapsed into a reflective mood, and for some moments his thoughts seemed to wander far. Then he pulled himself together and roused out of his meditations.

“You told Jayne that I would back the Budget to any extent, provided it would publish the stuff I sent it?”

“Yes, sir. He was very glad to accept your offer.”

“Very well. You and Willett set about at once getting up daily articles attacking the Express. I want you to dig up every move ever made by Hitt, Haynerd, that girl, Waite, Morton, and the whole miserable, sneaking outfit! Rake up every scandal, every fact, or rumor, that is in any way associated with any of them. I want them literally cannonaded by the Budget! Hitt’s a renegade preacher! Haynerd was a bum before he got the Social Era! Waite is an unfrocked priest! Miss Wall’s father was a distiller! That girl––that girl is a––Did you know that she used to be in a brothel down in the red-light district? Well, she did! Great record the publishers of the Express have, eh? Now, by God! I want you and Jayne to bury that whole outfit under a mountain of mud! I’m ready to spend ten millions to do it! Kill ’em! Kill ’em all!”

“I think we can do it, Mr. Ames,” returned the lawyer confidently.

“You’ve got to! Now, another matter: I’m out to get the President’s scalp! He’s got to go down! Begin with those New York papers which we can influence. I’ll get Fallom and 188 Adams over here for a conference. Meanwhile, think over what we’d better say to them. Our attacks upon the President must begin at once! I’ve already bought up a Washington daily for that purpose. They have a few facts now that will discredit his administration!”

“Very well, Mr. Ames. Ah––a––there is a matter that I must mention as soon as you are ready to hear it, Mr. Ames––regarding Avon. It seems that the reports which that girl has made have been translated into several languages, and are being used by labor agitators down there to stir up trouble. The mill hands, you know, never really understood what your profits were, and––well, they have always been quite ignorant, you know, regarding any details of the business. But now they think they have been enlightened––they think they see how the tariff has benefited you at their expense––and they are extremely bitter against you. That priest, Father Danny, has been doing a lot of talking since the girl was down there.”

“By God!” cried Ames, rising from his chair, then sinking back again.

“You see, Mr. Ames,” the lawyer continued, “the situation is fast becoming acute. The mill hands don’t believe now that you were ever justified in shutting down, or putting them on half time. And, whether you reduce wages or not, they are going to make very radical demands upon you in the near future, unless I am misinformed. These demands include better working conditions, better tenements, shorter hours, and very much higher wages. Also the enforcement of the child labor law, I am sorry to say.”

“They don’t dare!” shouted Ames.

“But, after all, Mr. Ames, you know you have said that it would strengthen your case with Congress if there should be a strike at Avon.”

“But not now! Not now!” cried Ames. “It would ruin everything! I am distinctly out of favor with the President––owing to that little negro wench! And Congress is going against me if I lose Gossitch, Logue, and Mall! That girl has put me in bad down there! Wales is beginning to threaten! By G––”

“But, Mr. Ames, she can be removed, can she not?”

“Violence would still further injure us. But––if we can drive the Express upon the shoals, and then utterly discredit that girl, either in the libel suit or the Ketchim trial, why, then, with a little show of bettering things at Avon, we’ll get what we want. But we’ve got work before us. Say, is––is Sidney with the Express?” he added hesitatingly.

Hood started, and shot a look of mingled surprise and curiosity at his master. Was it possible that Ames––

“You heard my question, Mr. Hood?”

“I––I beg pardon! Yes, sir––Sidney is still with them. He––a––they say he has quite conquered his––his––”

“You mean, he’s no longer a sot?” Ames asked brutally. “Out with it, man! Don’t sit there like a smirking Chinese god!”

“Well, Mr. Ames, I learn that Sidney has been cured of his habits, and that the––that girl––did it,” stammered the nervous lawyer.

Ames’s mouth jerked open––and then snapped shut. Silence held him. His head slowly sank until his chin touched his breast. And as he sat thus enwrapped, Hood rose and noiselessly left the room.

Alone sat the man of gold––ah, more alone than even he knew. Alone with his bruised ambitions, his hectored egoism, his watery aims. Alone and plotting the ruin of those who had dared bid him halt in his mad, destroying career. Alone, this high priest of the caste of absolutism, of the old individualism which is fast hurrying into the realm of the forgotten. Alone, and facing a new century, with whose ideals his own were utterly, stubbornly, hopelessly discrepant.

Alone he sat, looking out, unmoved, upon the want and pain of countless multitudes gone down beneath the yoke of conditions which he had made too hard for them. Looking, unmoved, unhearing, upon the bitter struggles of the weak, the ignorant, the unskilled, the gross hewers of wood and drawers of water. Looking, and knowing not that in their piteous cry for help and light was sounded his own dire peril.

The door opened, and the office boy announced the chief stenographer of the great bank below. Ames looked up and silently nodded permission for the man to enter.

“Mr. Ames,” the clerk began, “I––I have come to ask a favor––a great favor. I am having difficulty––considerable difficulty in securing stenographers, but––I may say––my greatest struggle is with myself. I––Mr. Ames, I can not––I simply can not continue to hire stenographers at the old wage, nine dollars a week! I know how these girls are forced to live. Mr. Ames, with prices where they are now, they can not live on that! May I not offer them more? Say, ten or twelve dollars to start with?”

Ames looked at him fixedly. “Why do you come to me with your request?” he asked coldly. “Your superior is Mr. Doan.”

“Yes, sir, I know,” replied the young man with hesitation. “But––I––did speak to him about it, and––he refused.”

“I can do nothing, sir,” returned Ames in a voice that chilled the man’s life-current.

“Then I shall resign, Mr. Ames! I refuse to remain here and hire stenographers at that criminal wage!”

“Very well, sir,” replied Ames in the same low, freezing tone. “Hand your resignation to Mr. Doan. Good day, sir.”

Again the guardian of the sanctity of private property was left alone. Again, as he lapsed into dark revery, his thought turned back upon itself, and began the reconstruction of scenes and events long since shadowy dreams. And always as they built, the fair face of that young girl appeared in the fabric. And always as he retraced his course, her path crossed and crossed again his own. Always as he moved, her reflection fell upon him––not in shadow, but in a flood of light, exposing the secret recesses of his sordid soul.

He dwelt again upon the smoothness of his way in those days, before her advent, when that group of canny pirates sat about the Beaubien’s table and laid their devious snares. It was only the summer before she came that this same jolly company had merged their sacred trust assets to draw the clouds which that autumn burst upon the country as the worst financial panic it had known in years. And so shrewdly had they planned, that the storm came unheralded from a clear sky, and at a time when the nation was never more prosperous.

He laughed. It had been rich fun!

And then, the potato scheme. They had wagered that he could not put it through. How neatly he had turned the trick, filled his pockets, and transformed their doubts into wondering admiration! It had been rare pleasure! Oh, yes, there had been some suffering, he had been told. He had not given that a thought.

And the Colombian revolution! How surprised the people of these United States would be some day to learn that this tropic struggle was in essence an American war! The smug and unthinkingly contented in this great country of ours regarded the frenzied combat in the far South as but a sort of opÉra bouffe. What fools, these Americans! And he, when that war should end, would control navigation on the great Magdalena and Cauca rivers, and acquire a long-term lease on the emerald mines near BogotÁ. The price? Untold suffering––countless broken hearts––indescribable, maddening torture––he had not given that a thought.

He laughed again.

But he was tired, very tired. His trip to Washington had been exhausting. He had not been well of late. His eyes had been bloodshot, and there had been several slight hemorrhages from the nose. His physician had shaken his head gravely, and had admonished him to be careful––

But why did that girl continue to fascinate him? he wondered. Why now, in all his scheming and plotting, did he always see her before him? Was it only because of her rare physical beauty? If he wrote or read, her portrait lay upon the page; if he glanced up, she stood there facing him. There was never accusation in her look, never malice, nor trace of hate. Nor did she ever threaten. No; but always she smiled––always she looked right into his eyes––always she seemed to say, “You would destroy me, but yet I love you.”

God! What a plucky little fighter she was! And she fought him fairly. Aye, much more so than he did her. She would scorn the use of his methods. He had to admit that, though he hated her, detested her, would have torn her into shreds––even while he acknowledged that he admired her, yes, beyond all others, for her wonderful bravery and her loyal stand for what she considered the right.

He must have dozed while he sat there in the warm office alone. Surely, that hideous object now floating before his straining gaze, that thing resembling the poor, shattered Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, was not real! It was but a shadow, a flimsy thing of thought! And that woestricken thing there, with its tenuous arms extended toward him––was that Gannette? Heavens, no! Gannette had died, stark mad! But, that other shade––so like his wife, a few months dead, yet alive again! Whence came that look of horror in a face once so haughty! It was unreal, ghastly unreal, as it drifted past! Ah, now he knew that he was dreaming, for there, there in the light stood Carmen! Oh, what a blessed relief to see that fair image there among those other ghastly sights! He would speak to her––

But––God above! What was that? A woman––no, not Carmen––fair and––

Her white lips moved––they were transparent––he could see right through them––and great tears dropped from her bloodless cheeks when her accusing look fell upon him!

Slowly she floated nearer––she stopped before him, and laid a hand upon his shoulder––it was cold, cold as ice! He tried to call out––to rise––to break away––

And then, groaning aloud, and with his brow dripping perspiration, he awoke.

Hood entered, but stopped short when he saw his master’s white face. “Mr. Ames! You are ill!” he cried.

Ames passed a hand across his wet forehead. “A––a little tired, that’s all, I guess. What now?”

The lawyer laid a large envelope upon the desk. “It has come,” he said. “There’s a delegation of Avon mill hands in the outer office. Here are their demands. It’s just what I thought.”

Ames slowly took up the envelope. For a moment he hesitated. Again he seemed to see that smiling girl before him. His jaw set, and his face drew slowly down into an expression of malignity. Then, without examining its contents, he tore the envelope into shreds, and cast the pieces into the waste basket.

“Put them out of the office!” he commanded sharply. “Wire Pillette at once to discharge these fellows, and every one else concerned in the agitation! If those rats down there want to fight, they’ll find me ready!”

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