"What drives the world is a far higher motive, Mr. Parr, the motive
with which have been fired the great lights of history, the motive of
renunciation and service which is transforming governments, which is
gradually making the world a better place in which to live. And we are
seeing men and women imbued with it, rising in ever increasing numbers on
every side to-day."

"Service!" Eldon Parr had seized upon the word as it passed and held it.
"What do you think my life has been? I suppose," he said, with a touch
of intense bitterness, "that you, too, who six months ago seemed as
reasonable a man as I ever met, have joined in the chorus of
denunciators. It has become the fashion to-day, thanks to your
socialists, reformers, and agitators, to decry a man because he is rich,
to take it for granted that he is a thief and a scoundrel, that he has no
sense of responsibility for his country and his fellow-men. The glory,
the true democracy of this nation, lies in its equal opportunity for all.
They take no account of that, of the fact that each has had the same
chance as his fellows. No, but they cry out that the man who, by the
sweat of his brow, has earned wealth ought to divide it up with the lazy
and the self-indulgent and the shiftless.

"Take my case, for instance,--it is typical of thousands. I came to this
city as a boy in my teens, with eight dollars in my pocket which I had
earned on a farm. I swept the floor, cleaned the steps, moved boxes and
ran errands in Gabriel Parker's store on Third Street. I was
industrious, sober, willing to do anything. I fought, I tell you every
inch of my way. As soon as I saved a little money I learned to use every
ounce of brain I possessed to hold on to it. I trusted a man once, and I
had to begin all over again. And I discovered, once for all, if a man