ramparts of the Promised Land. Do not call us traitors, then,
who choose to be cool and silent through the fever of the
hour,--who choose to search in common things for auguries of the
hopeful, helpful calm to come, finding even in these poor
sweet-peas, thrusting their tendrils through the brown mould; a
deeper, more healthful lesson for the eye and soul than warring
truths. Do not call me a traitor, if I dare weakly to hint that
there are yet other characters besides that of Patriot in which a
man may appear creditably in the great masquerade, and not blush
when it is over; or if I tell you a story of To-Day, in which
there shall be no bloody glare,--only those homelier, subtiler
lights which we have overlooked. If it prove to you that the sun
of old times still shines, and the God of old times still lives,
is not that enough?


My story is very crude and homely, as I said,--only a rough
sketch of one or two of those people whom you see every day, and
call "dregs," sometimes,--a dull, plain bit of prose, such as you
might pick for yourself out of any of these warehouses or
back-streets. I expect you to call it stale and plebeian, for I
know the glimpses of life it pleases you best to find; idyls
delicately tinted; passion-veined hearts, cut bare for curious
eyes; prophetic utterances, concrete and clear; or some word of
pathos or fun from the old friends who have endenizened
themselves in everybody's home. You want something, in fact, to
lift you out of this crowded, tobacco-stained commonplace, to
kindle and chafe and glow in you. I want you to dig into this
commonplace, this vulgar American life, and see what is in it.
Sometimes I think it has a new and awful significance that we do