behind interpretative science:  their mental processes were mediaeval, while their thinking on the ultimate data of existence and of the universe struck him as the same metaphysical method that was as young as the youngest race, as old as the cave-man, and older—­the same that moved the first Pleistocene ape-man to fear the dark; that moved the first hasty Hebrew savage to incarnate Eve from Adam’s rib; that moved Descartes to build an idealistic system of the universe out of the projections of his own puny ego; and that moved the famous British ecclesiastic to denounce evolution in satire so scathing as to win immediate applause and leave his name a notorious scrawl on the page of history.

So Martin thought, and he thought further, till it dawned upon him that the difference between these lawyers, officers, business men, and bank cashiers he had met and the members of the working class he had known was on a par with the difference in the food they ate, clothes they wore, neighborhoods in which they lived.  Certainly, in all of them was lacking the something more which he found in himself and in the books.  The Morses had shown him the best their social position could produce, and he was not impressed by it.  A pauper himself, a slave to the money-lender, he knew himself the superior of those he met at the Morses’; and, when his one decent suit of clothes was out of pawn, he moved among them a lord of life, quivering with a sense of outrage akin to what a prince would suffer if condemned to live with goat-herds.

“You hate and fear the socialists,” he remarked to Mr. Morse, one evening at dinner; “but why?  You know neither them nor their doctrines.”

The conversation had been swung in that direction by Mrs. Morse, who had been invidiously singing the praises of Mr. Hapgood.  The cashier was Martin’s black beast, and his temper was a trifle short where the talker of platitudes was concerned.

“Yes,” he had said, “Charley Hapgood is what they call a rising young man—­somebody told me as much.  And it is true.  He’ll make the Governor’s Chair before he dies, and, who knows? maybe the United States Senate.”

“What makes you think so?” Mrs. Morse had inquired.

“I’ve heard him make a campaign speech.  It was so cleverly stupid and unoriginal, and also so convincing, that the leaders cannot help but regard him as safe and sure, while his platitudes are so much like the platitudes of the average voter that—­oh, well, you know you flatter any man by dressing up his own thoughts for him and presenting them to him.”

“I actually think you are jealous of Mr. Hapgood,” Ruth had chimed in.

“Heaven forbid!”

The look of horror on Martin’s face stirred Mrs. Morse to belligerence.

“You surely don’t mean to say that Mr. Hapgood is stupid?” she demanded icily.

“No more than the average Republican,” was the retort, “or average Democrat, either.  They are all stupid when they are not crafty, and very few of them are crafty.  The only wise Republicans are the millionnaires and their conscious henchmen.  They know which side their bread is buttered on, and they know why.”