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Margret Howth, a Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis
page 66 of 217 (30%)
in his waistcoat-pocket.

"But do you," exclaimed the farmer, with sudden solemnity, "do
you understand this scheme of Knowles's? Every dollar he owns is
in this mill, and every dollar of it is going into some castle in
the air that no sane man can comprehend."

"Mad as a March hare," contemptuously muttered the doctor.

His reverend friend gave him a look,--after which he was silent.

"I wish to the Lord some one would persuade him out of it,"
persisted the wool-man, earnestly looking at the attentive face
of his listener. "We can't spare old Knowles's brain or heart
while he ruins himself. It's something of a Communist
fraternity: I don't know the name, but I know the thing."

Very hard common-sense shone out of his eyes just then at the
clergyman, whom he suspected of being one of Knowles's abettors.

"There's two ways for 'em to end. If they're made out of the top
of society, they get so refined, so idealized, that every
particle flies off on its own special path to the sun, and the
Community 's broke; and if they're made of the lower mud, they
keep going down, down together,--they live to drink and eat, and
make themselves as near the brutes as they can. It isn't easy to
believe, Sir, but it's true. I have seen it. I've seen every
one of them the United States can produce. It's FACTS, Sir; and
facts, as Lord Bacon says, `are the basis of every sound
speculation.' "
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