for a promised land than in those old time frays for a fertile patch in a sterile wilderness; and I see the same call for the hero’s fighting edge; and I like the MacDonalds, who jump out from behind the Safety Line to fight for right, though it bring but the bloody bullet holes in the soft of the temple; and I like the Waylands, who take up the game trail to run down crime though it bring the sword of dismissal dangling over their own heads; and I like best of all the Matthews, who throw aside their “skin-dicate contracts” to take up the game of playing as joyfully for right as they have for wrong, “rich” (I wish you could have heard the full way in which he said that word) “rich” on “thirty dollars a year for clothes,” spending self without stint, joyfully, unknowing of self-pity, for the making of right into might, for the making of a patch of human weeds into a garden of goodness.  Only, I would put on record the fact that each man’s reward was not the hero’s crown of laurel leaves, but the crown that their great prototype wore upon the Cross.

Eleanor could not understand why she had been formally notified to attend the coroner’s inquest till the drift of the questions began to indicate that this investigation like many another was not an investigation to find out but an investigation to hush up, not a following of the clues of evidence but a deliberate attempt to throw pursuit off on false clues.  In fact, there were many things about that inquest which Eleanor could not fathom.  Why, for instance was the local district attorney not present?  Why had the Smelter Coking Company a special pleader present?  Why was the great Federal Government not represented by an attorney of equal ability, instead of this downy-lipped silent and incredibly ignorant youth?  Why was the first session of the inquest adjourned till the burial of her father?  Why did the sheriff act as a mentor at the ear of the chief coroner?  Why did the justice of the peace acting as coroner listen to all suggestions from the Smelter Company’s attorney and the Sheriff, and reject all suggestions from her father’s friends?  Why was the stenographer instructed to erase some evidence and preserve other?  What was the ground of discrimination?  If you doubt whether these things are ever done, dear reader; then, peruse with close scrutiny the first criminal trial that comes under your notice; and see if you think that the term of the Old Dispensation ‘wresting the judgment’ has become obsolete?  You don’t suppose those long-whiskered old patriarchs openly took the bribe in hand and right before the claimants, tucked the loose shekels into the wide phalacteries of holy skirts—­do you?