hope or promise or prospect of it. There was his father too--that good
gray elder who had done so much faithful work, yet had so little to show
for it, who had fished all day and had caught next to nothing, who had
given four years out of his young life to the fight for freedom only to
see the reward so shamefully fall elsewhere.... Abner evoked here a
fanciful figure of Palmer Pence himself, whom he knew in a general way to
be high up in some monstrous Trust. He saw a prosperous, domineering man
who with a single turn of the hand had swept together a hundred little
enterprises and at the same time had swept out a thousand of the lesser
fry into the wide spaces of empty ruin, and who had insolently settled
down beside his new machine to catch the rain of coins minted for him
from the wrongs of an injured and insulted people....

Abner accepted in awkward silence Mrs. Pence's liberal and fluent praise
of _The Rod of the Oppressor_,--aside from his deep-seated indignation he
had not yet mastered any of those serviceable phrases by means of which
such a volley may be returned; but he found words when she presently set
foot in the roomy field of the betterment of local conditions. What she
had in mind, it appeared, was a training-school--it might be called the
Pence Institute if it went through--and she was ready to listen to any
one who was likely to encourage her with hints or advice.

"So much energy, so much talent going to waste, so many young people
tumbling up anyhow and presently tumbling over--all for lack of thorough
and systematic training," she said, across her own broad bosom.

"I know of but one training that is needed," said Abner massively: "the
training of the sense of social justice--such training of the public
conscience as will insist upon seeing that each and every freeman gets an
even chance."