"Padre! I'm sick of the way things are run in Appleboro! I've talked with other boys and they're sick of it, too. You know why they want to get away? Because they think they haven't got even a fighting chance here. Because towns like this are like billion-ton old wagons sunk so deep in mudruts that nothing but dynamite can blow them out—and they are not dealers in dynamite. If they want to do anything that even looks new they've got to fight the stand-patters to a finish, and they're blockaded by a lot of reactionaries that don't know the earth's moving. There are a lot of folks in the South, Padre, who've been dead since the civil war, and haven't found it out themselves, and won't take live people's word for it. Well, now, I mean to do things. I mean to do them right here. And I certainly shan't allow myself to be blockaded by anybody, living or dead. You've got to fight the devil with fire;—I'm going to blockade those blockaders, and see that the dead ones are decently buried."
"You have tackled a big job, my son."
"I like big jobs, Padre. They're worth while. Maybe I'll be able to keep some of the boys home—the town needs them. Maybe I can keep some of those poor kids out of the mills, too. Oh, yes, I expect a right lively time!"
I was silent. I knew how supinely Appleboro lay in the hollow of a hard hand. I had learned, too, how such a hand can close into a strangling fist.
"Of course I can't clean up the whole state, and I can't reorganize the world," said the boy sturdily. "I'm not such a fool as to try. But I can do my level best to disinfect my own particular corner, and make it fit for men and safe for women and kids to live and breathe in. Padre, for years there hasn't been a rotten deal nor a brazen steal in this state that the man who practically owns and runs this town hadn't a finger in, knuckle-deep. He's got to go."
"Goliath doesn't always fall at the hand of the son of Jesse, my little David," said I quietly. I also had dreamed dreams and seen visions.
"That's about what my father says," said the boy. "He wants me to be a successful man, a 'safe and sane citizen.' He thinks a gentleman should practise his profession decently and in order. But to believe, as I do, that you can wipe out corruption, that you can tackle poverty the same as you would any other disease, and prevent it, as smallpox and yellow fever are prevented, he looks upon as madness and a waste of time."
"He has had sorrow and experience, and he is kind and charitable, as well as wise," said I.
"That's exactly where the hardest part comes in for us younger fellows. It isn't bucking the bad that makes the fight so hard: it's bucking the wrong-idea'd good. Padre, one good man on the wrong side is a stumbling-block for the stoutest-hearted reformer ever born. It's men like my father, who regard the smooth scoundrel that runs this town as a necessary evil, and tolerate him because they wouldn't soil their hands dealing with him, that do the greatest injury to the state. I tell you what, it wouldn't be so hard to get rid of the devil, if it weren't for the angels!"
"And how," said I, ironically, "do you propose to set about smoothing the rough and making straight the crooked, my son?"