imagination as epic figures, such as Black Douglas must have been to
the children of the Northern Border.

But then, with widening intelligence, it became certain social forces,
at first dimly apprehended. It was the god of "business"--before which
all things fair and noble went down. It was "business" that kept vice
triumphant in the city; it was because of "business" that the saloons
could not be closed even on Sunday, so that the father might be at home
one day in seven. And was it not in search of "business" that he was
driven forth to loaf in hotel-lobbies and bar-rooms?

Who was to blame for this, Thyrsis did not know; but certain men
made profit of it--and these, too, were ignoble men. He knew this;
for now and then his father's employers would honor the little
family with some kind of an invitation, and they would have to
swallow their pride and go. So Thyrsis grew up, with the sense of a
great evil loose in the world; a wrong, of which the world did not
know. And within him grew a passionate longing to cry aloud to
others, to open their eyes to this truth!

Outwardly he was like other boys, eager and cheerful, even
boisterous; but within was this hidden thing, which brooded and
questioned. Life had made him into an ascetic. He must be stern,
even merciless, with himself--because of the fear that was in him,
and in his mother as well. The fear that self-indulgence might lay
its grisly paws upon him! The fear that he, too, might fall into the
trap!

It was not merely that he never touched stimulants; he had an
instinct against all things that were softening and enervating, all