People differ as to what constitutes success; some go so far as to say that the highest fulfillment lies in renunciation; and certainly there was once a life that might have been called a failure because it ended upon a cross on Calvary.
I suppose it all depends on how you look at it.
[THE LAW, OR THE GOSPEL]
I
EVERYBODY in Mercer knew Sara Wharton; in the first place, she was Edward Wharton’s daughter; the Edward Wharton of the Wharton & Blair Company, whose great Rolling and Smelting Mills darken Mercer’s sky with vast folds of black smoke, and give employment to two thirds of Mercer’s population. In the second place, she was a very charming young lady, who was too pretty to pass unnoticed when her victoria went rolling along the river road on fine afternoons. And in the third place, she was the president of two girls’ clubs, and the organizer of the Boys’ Alliance, and the Young Men’s Literary Association, and the founder of the Y. W. C. T. U., and the kindly autocrat of all Mercer’s rough, grimy, under-fed young people. She was a sweet-hearted, wholesome-minded, impulsive, dear child; the kind of girl who loved a party just as much, and planned her pretty dresses just as anxiously, and adored her father and mother just as unreasonably, as though she had never heard of a committee, and was indifferent to the Cause of Humanity. All Mercer knew her, and believed in her; and so when, one gray November afternoon, she was seen to go quietly up the steps of a certain house on Baker Street—a house which decent folk affected to ignore when they passed it by at midday, but at which they glanced curiously after nightfall—when Sara Wharton went into this house, those who chanced to see her said only, “Well! what won’t that girl do next?”
The woman who answered her ring opened the door scarcely more than a crack, and peered out at her sourly.
“I want to see Nellie Sherman,” said Miss Wharton.