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Development of the industrial U S Almanac 1st Edition
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Author(s): Sonia G. Benson
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 Development of
the Industrial U.S.
Almanac
 Development of
the Industrial U.S.
Almanac

Sonia G. Benson
Jennifer York Stock,
Project Editor
 Development of the Industrial U.S: Almanac
Sonia G. Benson

Project Editor Imaging and Multimedia Composition

Jennifer York Stock Randy Bassett, Lezlie Light, Evi Seoud
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Benson, Sonia.
Development of the industrial U.S. Almanac / Sonia G. Benson ; Jennifer York Stock,
project editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-4144-0175-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Industries–United States–History–Juvenile literature. 2. Industrial revolution–
United States–History–Juvenile literature. [1. United States–Economic conditions–
To 1865–Juvenile literature.] I. Stock, Jennifer York, 1974- II. Title.

HC105. B454 2006

330. 973’05–dc22 2005015915

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Reader’s Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Timeline of Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii

Words to Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxv
Research and Activity Ideas . . . . . . . . . . xxxv

Chapter 1: Industrialism Takes Root

in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 2: Transportation and
Communication Systems in
the New Nation . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Chatper 3: The Machine Makers . . . . . . 28
Chapter 4: The First Factories . . . . . . . 42
Chapter 5: The Gilded Age . . . . . . . . 56
Chapter 6: Railroads:
The First Big Business . . . . . . . . . . 68
Chapter 7: The Robber Barons . . . . . . . 84
Chapter 8: Urbanization . . . . . . . . . 100

v
 Chapter 9: Workers in the Industrial Age . . . 117
Chapter 10: The American
Labor Movement . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Chapter 11: The New South. . . . . . . . 152
Chapter 12: The Effects of
Industrialism on Farming and
Ranching in the West . . . . . . . . . . 166
Chapter 13: Reformers Take on
Industry: The Progressive Era . . . . . . . 182
Chapter 14: Industrialism in the
Twentieth Century . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Where to Learn More . . . . . . . . . . . . . xli

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xliii

vi Development of the Industrial U.S.: Almanac

 Introduction

I ndustrialization is the widespread development of profit-

making businesses that manufacture products on a large
scale, using labor-saving machinery. Understanding the his-
tory of the development of industrialization in the United
States, which took place over two centuries, involves learning
about some of its technical elements, such as technology and
the economy. But the history of U.S. industrialism is also a
dramatic story of people rising and falling from power or
struggling desperately to make the world a better place.
Industrialization fueled the national culture, economy,
daily life, and politics, creating such tremendous social
changes that it is impossible to imagine what life in the
United States would be like without it.

Though the Industrial Revolution, a period of rapid indus-

trial growth causing a shift in focus from agriculture to industry,
first began in England and Europe in the middle of the eight-
eenth century, industrialization did not begin to take root in the
United States until after the American Revolution (1775–83).
Even then American industrialization had a slow start, due to
overwhelming obstacles. At the time, the vast majority of

vii
 Americans lived independent lives as farmers in remote areas.
For the most part, they had little connection with anyone but
neighboring farmers, since there were few good roads or systems
of communication. Most people did not even own clocks; time
was determined by the seasons and the rising and setting of the
sun. Few people worked for wages, and those manufactured
goods Americans could afford generally came from Europe.
The new nation had vast natural resources, such as land, timber,
metals, minerals, water power, and ports, but without transpor-
tation or manufacturing it was nearly impossible to make indus-
trial use of them.
Once begun, the American Industrial Revolution took on
its own character, differing from that of other countries. This
was primarily because Americans themselves had been shaped
and selected by a unique set of forces. After fighting hard to
gain independence from England, most Americans were pas-
sionate about the ideals of liberty and equality for all (although
to many Americans at the time this meant only white males),
and they were determined to create a society in which any
individual could rise and prosper through his or her own
efforts. They were also driven by the desire for wealth.
Though many Europeans immigrated to America to find reli-
gious or social freedom, the majority came seeking riches.
Many had faced bitter hardships and were prepared to take
major risks to obtain wealth. Another key trait of Americans
was a spirit of innovation; it had been a necessary attribute
for emigrants who left Europe in the seventeenth century, for
they would have to reinvent the most basic aspects of their
daily lives in the New World. The combined spirit of individu-
alism, greed, and innovation came to characterize U.S.
industrialism.
In the years between the American Revolution and the
American Civil War (1861–65), innovation and invention
were highly esteemed by the American public. Most industrial
designs and ideas came initially from Europe, but once they
reached the machine makers, or ‘‘mechanicians,’’ of American
shops, they were improved until they became distinctly
American, suited to the land and its people. The times pro-
duced an extremely talented group of inventors and innova-
tors, and from their workshops, which were mainly located in
the northeastern United States, the ‘‘American System,’’ or
mass production and the use of interchangeable parts,

viii Development of the Industrial U.S.: Almanac

emerged. It would forever change the nature of manufacturing
worldwide.
With new advances in technology, some enterprising busi-
ness people built the first U.S. factories, and most of them
flourished. However, from the start the stark division in wealth
and position between industry owners and their workers was at
odds with the popular belief in American liberty and equality.
Despite early factory owners’ efforts to humanize factory work,
workers faced low wages and poor working conditions. Many
claimed they were slaves to wage labor. It was not long after the
first industrial workforces were hired that the first labor strikes
took place. The conflict between employers and employees
continued, and the factory owners’ early attempts to create
ideal circumstances for workers were abandoned. Professional
managers were hired to get as much work from the workforce
as possible. A huge influx of immigrants from Europe and Asia
from the 1840s until the 1920s supplied inexpensive labor, but
labor strikes continued.

After a slow beginning in the Northeast industrialization

began to spread at a rapid pace with the nationwide building of
transportation and communications systems. The construc-
tion of the transcontinental railroad spanning the nation
from one coast to the other—a mammoth undertaking—
signaled the start of a new way of life for all Americans.
Where railroads went, towns and cities with bustling new
commerce arose. The construction of the railroads spawned
giant new industries in steel, iron, and coal. Railroads brought
farmers’ crops to distant markets and were instrumental in
bringing the industrial society to the West.

For the railroads to be built and industry to advance, capi-

tal, or vast quantities of money, was required. The art of raising
large amounts of capital and applying it to industry was mainly
accomplished by a generation of extremely capable industrial-
ists who built the gigantic industries that dominated the
nation and ruled its economy. These legendary men, admired
as the ‘‘captains of industry’’ by some and loathed as ruthless
crooks, or ‘‘robber barons,’’ by others, included railroad owner
Cornelius Vanderbilt, steel empire founder Andrew Carnegie,
Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, investment banker J.
P. Morgan, and many others. Though some of them came
from wealthy backgrounds, many were born in humble

Introduction ix
 circumstances and rose to wealth and power through their own
efforts. These industrialists created new systems of doing busi-
ness that are still in place today. Their tactics almost always
included creating monopolies, huge corporations that domi-
nated their industry nationwide and limited attempts at com-
petition by others. As the industrialists prospered, most of the
wealth of the nation fell into their hands. This period became
known as the Gilded Age, the era of industrialization from the
early 1860s to the turn of the century in which a few wealthy
individuals gained tremendous power and influence. During
the Gilded Age the power of industrialists and their corpora-
tions seemed unstoppable.

The number of U.S. companies dwindled from thousands

to hundreds as the most powerful industrialists bought out or
crushed their competitors. Once again, the national spirit of
liberty and equality was aroused. Farmers, laborers, poor immi-
grants, and labor unions as well as middle class reformers
sought relief from the power of the corporations, giving rise
to the Progressive Era, or the period of the American Industrial
Revolution that spanned roughly from the 1890s to about
1920, in which reformers worked together in the interest of
distributing political power and wealth more equally. It was
during this time that the strong hand of the federal govern-
ment was finally felt in American industry, as it began to leave
behind its laissez-faire, or non-interference, policies in order to
regulate businesses, curb monopolies, and protect workers.
By the twentieth century, the United States was the richest
and most powerful industrial nation in the world, but the
process of industrialization continued. During the twentieth
century industry was shaped by scientists like Frederick
Winslow Taylor, who devised measurable methods of business
management designed to produce top levels of efficiency. The
best-known follower of ‘‘Taylorism’’ was Henry Ford, who
began to mass produce affordable automobiles in 1909. The
Great Depression (1929–41) and World War II (1939–45) both
had profound effects on American industrialism, causing gov-
ernment controls and assistance to individuals to increase even
more. In recent decades, computers and globalism have been
the active agents of change in U.S. industrialism.
Finally, it is worthwhile to note that the development of
U.S. industrialization is not finished. It took more than one

x Development of the Industrial U.S.: Almanac

hundred years for the United States to transform from a farm-
ing society to an industrial world power. Adjusting to indus-
trialism has already taken up another century and will
continue for many years to come.
Sonia G. Benson

Introduction xi
 Reader’s Guide

T he United States began as a nation of farmers living in

remote areas, but over a period of two hundred years
the country became the wealthiest and most powerful
industrial nation of the world. During the American
Industrial Revolution inventors and innovators created
new and improved machines for manufacturing, while a
new breed of American businessmen created revolutionary
methods of conducting business and managing labor. The
road to industrialization was not always heroic.
Ruthlessness and greed were often key ingredients in
advancing industry. While a few found wealth and
power, multitudes of workers and farmers suffered, and
small businesses were crushed by the powerful new cor-
porations. Reformers, unions, and protestors against big
business played a crucial role in the industrialization pro-
cess as they pressed for the rights of workers and regula-
tions on business to help farmers and consumers. The
diverse people and events that forever changed the nation
from a rural farming economy to an industrialized urban
nation create a dramatic story that lies at the heart of U.S.
history.

xiii
 Coverage and features
Development of the Industrial U.S.: Almanac presents an over-
view of the history of American industrialization. Its fourteen
chapters cover the first American factories, inventors, the rise
of big business and railroads, urbanism, labor unions, indus-
trial influences in places such as the South or the Great Plains,
the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, the post-industrial era, and
much more. Each chapter of the Almanac features informative
sidebar boxes highlighting glossary terms and issues discussed
in the text and concludes with a list of further readings. Also
included are more than sixty photographs and illustrations, a
timeline, a glossary, a list of suggested research and activity
ideas, and an index providing easy access to subjects discussed
throughout the volume.

UXDevelopment of the Industrial U.S. Reference

Library
Development of the Industrial U.S.: Almanac is only one com-
ponent of the three-part UXL Development of the Industrial
U.S. Reference Library. The other two titles in the set are:
 Development of the Industrial U.S.: Biographies profiles
twenty-six significant figures who participated in
American industrialization. The biographies cover a wide
spectrum of people, from the creators of the first factories,
such as Samuel Slater and Francis Cabot Lowell, to inven-
tors and innovators, including John Fitch, Elijah McCoy,
and Thomas Edison. Industrialists Andrew Carnegie, J. P.
Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller are profiled, as are refor-
mers and educators such as Jane Addams, Florence Kelley,
and Booker T. Washington. Biographies also includes labor
advocates such as Eugene Debs and A. Philip Randolph.
The volume features more than fifty photographs and illus-
trations, a timeline, a glossary, and sources for further
reading.
 Development of the Industrial U.S.: Primary Sources presents
eighteen full or excerpted written works, speeches, and
other documents that were influential during American
industrialization. The volume includes excerpts from the
writings of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton
reflecting their debate on industrialization; excerpts from
legislation regarding industrialization, such as the

xiv Development of the Industrial U.S.: Almanac

 Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act;
segments of popular novels by Horatio Alger and William
Dean Howells depicting the effects of industrialization on
American society; political cartoons; a popular labor song;
an excerpt from an essay by William Graham Sumner pre-
senting the concept of social Darwinism, and much more.
Nearly fifty photographs and illustrations, a timeline,
sources for further reading, and an index supplement the
volume.

A cumulative index of all three volumes in the UXL

Development of the Industrial U.S. Reference Library is also
available.

Comments and suggestions

We welcome your comments on Development of the
Industrial U.S.: Almanac and suggestions for other topics in
history to consider. Please write: Editors, Development of the
Industrial U.S. Almanac, UXL, 27500 Drake Rd., Farmington
Hills, Michigan, 48331-3535; call toll-free: 1-800-877-4253; fax
to: 248-699-8097; or send e-mail via http://www.gale.com.

Reader’s Guide xv
 Timeline of Events

1780: American mechanics in the Northeast begin to apply

principles learned from the English Industrial
Revolution in their innovations on tools and
machines.

1781: Oliver Evans invents machines to replace human labor

in flour mills.

1790: Eighty percent of the nation’s population is made up of

farmers and ninety-five percent of the population lives
in rural areas.

1790: Congress passes the first patent law.

1776
Adam Smith
publishes Wealth
of Nations 1789
1775–83 French Revolution
American Revolution begins

1775 1780 1785 1790

xvii
 1798: Eli Whitney proposes to make 4,000 muskets for the
U.S. government, using new machine-making tools
and interchangeable parts.
1807: Robert Fulton’s steamboat, the Clermont, makes its
maiden voyage from New York City to Albany, New
York.
1807: Eli Terry builds four thousand clockworks on a tight
schedule using the latest principles of mass
production.
1817: Congress authorizes the construction of the National
Road, the first road to run west across the Appalachian
Mountains.
1817–1825: The Erie Canal is built, connecting Albany and
Buffalo, New York.
1825: The New York Stock Exchange opens its new headquar-
ters at 11 Wall Street.
1826: The first U.S. railway, the Baltimore and Ohio (B & O) is
launched.
1831: Cyrus McCormick invents the first workable reaper.
1836: Two thousand women workers go on strike for better
wages and conditions at the Lowell textile mills.
1837: John Deere invents the steel plow.
1840: The Lowell Offering, a journal written by the women
workers of the Lowell mills, is launched.
1840s: Immigration to the United States from Europe increases
significantly. Between 1840 and 1920 37 million immi-
grants will arrive in the country.
1844: Samuel F. B. Morse sends the first official telegraph
message from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore,
Maryland.

1838
1807 Northern abolitionists
London becomes the 1819 1828 organize the
first city with gas Canning industry Russo-Persian Underground
street lights begins in America War ends Railroad

1800 1815 1830 1845

xviii Development of the Industrial U.S.: Almanac

 1846: Elias Howe patents his sewing machine. Isaac M. Singer
will market a more practical sewing machine within
four years.
1851: U.S. technology exhibits impress visitors at the Crystal
Palace Exhibition of London, the first world’s fair.
1852 Samuel Colt opens a large arms manufacturing factory,
using advanced mass-production techniques.
1859 The first successful effort to drill for oil gives rise to the
oil industry.
1860: Shoemakers in Lynn, Massachusetts, launch a massive
strike for better wages and working conditions. The
strike will spread to factories over a wide area and
include as many as twenty thousand men and women
workers.
1862: The Pacific Railroad Act calls for building a transconti-
nental railroad from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento,
California.
1862: Congress enacts the Homestead Act, which provides
small pieces of public land to settlers in the West for
farming; industry soon expands into the new
territories.
1864: The first Bessemer converter, a new process for making
steel, is introduced in the United States.
1866: The National Labor Union (NLU) is formed to promote
the eight-hour workday.
1867: In the first cattle drive, organized by James G. McCoy,
cattle are driven from Texas to Abilene, Kansas, where
they are shipped by railroad to Chicago, Illinois.

1862
The Homestead
Act is passed
1859
1850 John Brown
Taiping Rebellion begins in leads a raid on 1861–65
China Harper’s Ferry American Civil War

1850 1855 1860 1865

Timeline of Events xix

 1867: The National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry
(usually called the Grange) is founded to advance the
interests of farmers.
1869: The two railroad companies, the Union Pacific and the
Central Pacific, commissioned to build the transconti-
nental railroad meet at Promontory Point, Utah, mark-
ing the completion of the first transcontinental
railroad.
1869: The Knights of Labor, one of the early national labor
unions, is founded.
1869: On September 24 or ‘‘Black Friday,’’ the price of gold fell
due to the speculations of James Fisk and Jay Gould,
creating a financial panic.
1869: A fire in the Avondale coal mine in Pennsylvania kills
108 men and boys.
1872: Hunters and railroad workers have killed millions of
buffalo on the Great Plains, reducing their numbers
from 15 million to 7 million. The extermination will
continue until less than one thousand buffalo remain
in the 1890s.
1873: One of the nation’s largest banks, owned by Jay Cooke,
fails, causing business failures and unemployment. A
nationwide depression follows.
1875: The National Farmers’ Alliance is founded. It quickly
divides into two groups, the Northern Alliance and the
Southern Alliance.
1877: A large railroad strike begins in West Virginia to protest
wage reductions. Within a few weeks, it spreads
throughout the nation with about ten thousand parti-
cipating workers. More than one hundred are killed by
federal troops and about one thousand are jailed before
the Great Strike is suppressed.

1871 1877 1881

Chicago fire destroys more Rutherford B. Hayes Clara Barton founds
than three miles of the city becomes president the Red Cross

1870 1875 1880 1885

xx Development of the Industrial U.S.: Almanac

 1886: The Haymarket Riots erupt in Chicago, pitting striking
workers against police.
1886: The American Federation of Labor (AFL) reorganizes
under the leadership of Samuel Gompers as a federa-
tion of trade unions formed to improve wages and
working conditions, shorten working hours, abolish
child labor, and provide for collective bargaining.
1886: The Colored Farmers’ Alliance is founded.
1887: Congress passes the Interstate Commerce Act to regu-
late the railroads. It is the first regulatory act designed
to establish government supervision over a major
industry.
1889: James Buchanan Duke merges his tobacco company
with four others to create the American Tobacco
Company, controlling 90 percent of the U.S. tobacco
industry.
1890: Congress enacts the Sherman Antitrust Act to prohibit
companies from restricting competition or creating
monopolies.
1890: The People’s Party, better known as the Populists, is
formed to combine the interests of farmers in the
South and West and laborers nationwide to combat
the powers of the Eastern industrialists.
1892: In the Homestead Strike, the workers at Andrew
Carnegie’s steel mills strike to protest low wages and
the hiring of nonunion workers. A violent battle
ensues, and the union in the steel mills is crushed.
1893: A financial panic, mainly due to the collapse of hun-
dreds of railroad companies, results in a nationwide
depression.

1894: When the workers at the Pullman factory go on strike

for better wages, 125,000 railroad workers in the

1896
1890 1893 Supreme Court rules on
Battle of Wounded Knee Lizzie Borden trial Plessy v. Ferguson

1890 1892 1894 1896

Timeline of Events xxi

 American Railway Union (ARU) join the strike to sup-
port the Pullman workers.
1900: New York City becomes grossly overpopulated, with
about 1.2 million people, or about 75 percent of its
population living in overcrowded tenement buildings
without adequate water, air, sewage, or garbage
removal.
1900: About 1.7 million children under the age of sixteen are
working in factories.
1900: Industrial accidents kill about 35,000 workers each
year and disable 500,000 others.
1900: African Americans begin to migrate from the South to
Northern industrial cities. By 1910, 366,880 African
Americans will migrate to Northern cities from the
South. From 1910 to 1920 between five hundred thou-
sand and one million African Americans will make the
trip north.
1900: Several U.S. magazines present a new form of journal-
ism called muckraking, which investigates corruption
in big business and government.
1903: President Theodore Roosevelt creates a federal
Department of Commerce and Labor to investigate
the operations and conduct of corporations.
1903: Frederick Winslow Taylor publishes an essay about
making the workplace more efficient that will quickly
become the basis of a new movement of scientific
business management, or Taylorism.
1904: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the Northern
Securities Trust, a combination of several railroads
owned in a trust under the management of James J.
Hill, Edward H. Harriman, and J. P. Morgan, is in viola-
tion of the Sherman Antitrust Act. It is the first major
trust to be dissolved under the act.

1900 1901 1903

Boxer Rebellion begins President William McKinley Wright brothers make
in China is assassinated historic flight

1900 1901 1903 1904

xxii Development of the Industrial U.S.: Almanac

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of
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FLAMING YOUTH

Flaming Youth
WARNER FABIAN

BONI AND LIVERIGHT

Publishers New York

Copyright 1922-1923,
By BONI & LIVERIGHT, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, January, 1923

Second Printing, February, 1923
Third Printing, February, 1923
Fourth Printing, March, 1923
Fifth Printing, March, 1923
A WORD FROM THE WRITER TO THE
READER:
"Those who know will not tell; those who tell do not know."
The old saying applies to woman in to-day's literature. Women
writers when they write of women, evade and conceal and palliate.
Ancestral reticences, sex loyalties, dissuade the pen.
Men writers when they write of women, do so without
comprehension. Men understand women only as women choose to
have them, with one exception, the family physician. He knows. He
sees through the body to the soul. But he may not tell what he sees.
Professional honour binds him. Only through the unaccustomed
medium of fiction and out of the vatic incense-cloud of
pseudonymity may he speak the truth. Being a physician, I must
conceal my identity, and, not less securely, the identity of those
whom I picture.
There is no such suburb as Dorrisdale ... and there are a score of
Dorrisdales. There is no such family as the Fentrisses ... and there
are a thousand Fentriss families. For the delineation which I have
striven to present, honestly and unreservedly, of the twentieth
century woman of the luxury-class I beg only the indulgence
permissible to a neophyte's pen. I have no other apologia to offer.
To the woman of the period thus set forth, restless, seductive,
greedy, discontented, craving sensation, unrestrained, a little
morbid, more than a little selfish, intelligent, uneducated, sybaritic,
following blind instincts and perverse fancies, slack of mind as she is
trim of body, neurotic and vigorous, a worshipper of tinsel gods at
perfumed altars, fit mate for the hurried, reckless and cynical man of
the age, predestined mother of—what manner of being?: To Her I
dedicate this study of herself.
W. F.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PART I 7
CHAPTER I 7
CHAPTER II 18
CHAPTER III 29
CHAPTER IV 39
CHAPTER V 49
CHAPTER VI 55
CHAPTER VII 65
PART II 81
CHAPTER VIII 81
CHAPTER IX 88
CHAPTER X 103
CHAPTER XI 118
CHAPTER XII 125
CHAPTER XIII 137
CHAPTER XIV 150
CHAPTER XV 159
CHAPTER XVI 167
CHAPTER XVII 182
CHAPTER XVIII 188
CHAPTER XIX 200
CHAPTER XX 214
CHAPTER XXI 220
CHAPTER XXII 231
CHAPTER XXIII 237
CHAPTER XXIV 241
CHAPTER XXV 247
 CHAPTER XXVI 255
CHAPTER XXVII 265
CHAPTER XXVIII 269
CHAPTER XXIX 276
CHAPTER XXX 285
CHAPTER XXXI 295
CHAPTER XXXII 301
CHAPTER XXXIII 311
CHAPTER XXXIV 317
CHAPTER XXXV 327

FLAMING YOUTH
PART I
 CHAPTER I
The room was vital with air and fresh with the scent of many
flowers. It was a happy room, a loved room, even a petted room.
There was about it a sense of stir, of life, of habitual holiday. Some
rooms retain these echoes. People say of them that they have
character or express individuality. But this one's character was
composite, possessing attributes of the many who had come and
gone and laughed and played and perhaps loved there, at the
behest of its mistress. A captious critic might have complained that it
was over-crowded. The same critic might have said the same of
Mona Fentriss's life.
Though a chiefly contributory part of the room's atmosphere, Mona
Fentriss's personality was not fully reflected in her immediate
environment. The room was not a married room. It suggested none
of the staidness, the habitude, the even acceptances of conjugal life.
The bed stood outside, on the sleeping porch. It was a single bed.
Unfriendly commentators upon the Fentriss ménage had been
known to express the conviction that marriage was not a specially
important element in Mrs. Fentriss's joyous existence. Nevertheless
there were the three children, all girls. There was also Fentriss.
The mistress of the room lolled on a cushioned chaise longue near
the side window. She was a golden-brown, strong, delicately
rounded woman, glowing with an effect of triumphant and
imperishable youth. Not one of her features but was faulty by strict
artistic tenets; even the lustrous eyes were set at slightly different
levels. Yet the total effect was that of loveliness; yes, more, of
compelling charm. One would have guessed her to be still short of
thirty.
"This is final, is it?" she asked evenly of a man who was standing
near the door.
"It's final enough," he answered.
He shambled across the room to her side, moving like a bear. Like a
bear's his exterior was rough, shaggy, and seemed not to fit him
well. His face was irregularly square, homely, thoughtful, and
humorous. "Want to cry?" he asked.
"No. I want to swear."
"Go ahead."
Downstairs a door opened and closed. There followed the rhythmic
crepitation of ice against metal.
"There's Ralph home," interpreted the wife. "Call down and tell him
to shake up one for me."
"Better not."
"Oh, you be damned!" she retorted, twinkling at him. "You've
finished your day's job as a physician. I need one."
As he obediently went out she mused, with the instinct of the
competent housekeeper:
"Gin's gone to twenty-five dollars a gallon. That'll rasp poor old
Ralph. I wonder how much this will jar him." By "this" she meant the
news which she had just forced from the reluctant lips of Dr. Robert
Osterhout. She pursued her line of thought. "Who'll take over the
house? The girls know nothing about running it. Perhaps he'll marry
again. He's very young for fifty."
The two men entered, Fentriss carrying the shaker. He set it down,
crossed the room and kissed his wife. There was an effect of
habitual and well-bred gallantry in the act. He was a slender, alert,
companionable looking man with a quizzical expression. Dr.
Osterhout poured out a cocktail which he offered to Mrs. Fentriss.
She regarded it contemptuously.
"Bob, you devil! That's only half a drink."
"It's more than you ought to have."
"Pour me a real one. At once! Ralph; you do it. Come on."
With a shrug and a deprecatory smile at the physician, Ralph
Fentriss filled the glass to the brim. The Fentriss cocktails were
famous far beyond the suburban limits of Dorrisdale for length as
well as flavour.
"Here's to Prohibition," said their concoctor in his suave voice, before
drinking; "and to your better health, my dear."
"A toi," she responded carelessly. "Leave the shaker, will you, Ralph?
Bob and I are talking."
Fentriss nodded and went. A moment later the concert grand in the
big living room below stairs responded to a touch at once delicate,
strong and distinctive.
"How I used to love his music!" said Mona Fentriss half to herself;
"and still do," she added. "Bob." She turned upon her physician with
laughing reproach in her eyes. "Don't you know better, after all these
years, than to try to keep me from doing anything I want to do? I
always get what I want."
"If you don't, it's not for lack of trying."
"I don't even have to try very hard. Life has been a generous
godfather to me. But I've always wanted more. Like Oliver Twist,
wasn't it? Or Jephthah's daughter?"
Dr. Osterhout grinned. "It was the horse leech's daughters that were
always crying 'Give! Give!'"
"Why cry for it? Reach out and help yourself," she said gaily. "Them's
my principles. And now the fairy godfather is going to cut me off
with a shilling. Or a year. Or less."
"Unless you obey orders it'll be considerably less."
"Let it! I'd rather do as I please while it lasts.

"'I've taken my fun where I found it,

I've rogued and I've ranged in my time,'"

sang Ralph Fentriss at the piano below to music of his own

composing.
"So have I," murmured his wife. Her eyes grew brilliant, craving,
excited as they wandered to the flower-decked mantel upon which
stood half a dozen photographs. All were of men. Though they
varied in age and indications of character, they presented a typical
similarity in being well-groomed and attractive. They might all have
belonged to the same club. "Bob, do many women confess to their
doctors?"
"Lots."
"To you?"
"No. I don't let 'em."
"Why not? I should think it would be interesting."
"It's only a trick to gratify the senses through recollection," said the
blunt physician. "Reflected lechery."
"You know too much, Bob. Then you won't be my father confessor?"
"I doubt if you could tell me much," he said slowly.
A smile, unabashed and mischievous, played upon her lips. "That's
an ambiguous sort of answer. Sometimes I suspect that very little
gets past you."
"I'm trained to observation," he remarked.
"And to silence. So you're safe. I think it would do me good to
confess to you." She grew still and pensive. "Bob, if I'd been a
Roman Catholic do you suppose I'd have been—different?"
"Doubted. Would you want to be?"
"I don't really know that I would. Anyway I'm what I had to be. We
all are."
"Fatalism is a convenient excuse."
"No; but I am," she insisted. "It's temperament. Temperament is
fate. For a woman, anyway," she added with a flash of insight. "You
don't blame me, do you? I couldn't help it, could I?"
He smiled down at her, tolerant but uncompromising.
"Oh, don't stand there looking like God," she fretted. "Do you know
what I'd resolved to do? Will you laugh at me if I tell you?"
"Probably. Therefore tell me."
"I was going to be a pattern of all the proprieties after I turned
forty."
"Too early," he pronounced judicially.
"Why? What do you mean?"
"Make it fifty."
She knit her smooth forehead. "Because I wouldn't be pretty then?"
"Oh, you'd charm and attract men at seventy. But you wouldn't have
such a—well, such an urgent temperament. That passes, usually."
"Bob! You beast!" But she laughed. "You're very much the medical
man, aren't you?"
"It's my business in life."
"Well, the whole discussion is what you call an academic question,
anyhow. If you and your hateful medical science are right, I'll never
see thirty-eight, let alone forty. I don't feel thirty-seven. There's so
much life in me. Too much, I suppose."
"No. Not too much."
"No more flutters for pretty Mona," she mused. "At least she's had
her share. Do you think Ralph cares?"
"You're the one to know that."
"If he does, he's never given any sign. But then, it's years since he's
been true to me."
Her companion made a slight, uninterpretable gesture.
"Shall I tell him? Your verdict, I mean."
"Great Judas, no! Why stir him up? It's going to be hard enough on
him anyway."
"Is it?" she said wistfully. "He'll miss me in a way, won't he? I am
fond of him, too, you know."
"Yes. I understand that."
"But you don't understand why I've gone trouble-hunting, out of
bounds."
"Yes. I understand that, too."
"Perhaps you do. You understand lots more than one would think
from your dear, old, stupid face." She paused. "Tell me something,
honestly, Bob. Has there been much talk about me?"
"Oh, there's always talk and always will be about anyone as brilliant
and vivid as you."
"Don't evade. Some of the older crowd look at me as if they thought
I was the Scarlet Woman come back to life. I'm not the Scarlet
Woman, Bob. Only a dash of pink."
He smiled indulgently.
"It's strange," she mused, "how the tradition of behaviour clings in
the blood, in that set. Your set, Bob. Ah, well! Discretion is the better
part of virtue, as someone said. And I haven't been discreet, even if
I have been virtuous. You believe I've been, don't you, Bob?"
"What, discreet?"
Again she laughed, showing little, even, animal-like teeth.
"No; the other thing."
"I believe whatever you want me to."
"Meaning that you reserve your own opinion. But you're a staunch
friend, anyway.... The trouble with me is that I was born too soon. I
really belong with this wild young age that's coming on the stage
just as I'm going off; with the girls. Listen!"
Below stairs Fentriss, still at the piano, had swung into the rhythms
of the Second Rhapsody, wild and broken as white water seething
through a rock-beset gorge.
"That's the measure they dance to, the new generation. Doesn't it
get into your torpid blood, Bob? Don't you wish you were young
again? To be a desperado of twenty! They're all desperadoes, these
kids, all of them with any life in their veins; the girls as well as the
boys; maybe more than the boys. Even Connie with her eyes of a
vestal. Ah!"
A new note had merged with the music, a hoarse, childish croon,
following the mad measure with an interwoven recitative.
"That's Patricia. She's dancing to it."
"How can you tell?" asked the physician.
"By the way she's singing. Little devil! I wonder what it'll be like by
the time she's grown up," mused the mother.
"Which won't be so long, now."
"So it won't. I keep forgetting that. She seems such a baby. What a
queer little creature it is, Bob!"
"She's a terror. But there's something lovable about her, too. A touch
of you in her, Mona."
"Of me? She's no more like me than I'm like my namesake of the
well-known Lisa family. Nor like the older girls, either. Well, why
shouldn't she be different from them? Coming five years after I'd
supposed all that sort of thing was over. She was pure accident. How
I tried to get out of having her! Perhaps that's why she's such a
strange little elf. But Ralph's crazy about her—as much as he can be
crazy about anything. I thought for a time she'd bring us together
again."
"But you found variety more amusing than pure domesticity,"
suggested the physician.
"I? It wasn't I that began it; it was Ralph. You know I never went in
for even the mildest flirtation until long after Pat was born; until I
began to get bored with the sameness of life."
"Boredom leads more women astray than passion," pronounced the
other oracularly; "in our set, anyway."
"Oh, astray," she fretted. "Don't use mid-Victorian pulpit language."
"I was only philosophising about our lot in general."
"We're a pretty rotten lot, aren't we! Though I suppose the people
you don't know, the people that nobody knows, are just as rotten.
Ah, well, so long as one preserves appearances! And Ralph has no
kick coming. He'd gone on the loose before I ever looked sidewise at
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