If his factory had to close, it could be opened again some day. Or even if he could not recover, how many better men than he had failed? To be crushed by the luck of things was no crime. There was a glory of defeat as well as of victory.
The one great gleaming truth was that he was still alive, still in the ring. He was not dead yet. He was not going to die. He was going to get up and win.
There was no shame in the misfortunes he had had. There was no disgrace in the fears he had bowed to. All the nations and all the men in them were in a night of fear. But already there was a change of feeling. The darker the hour, the nearer the dawn. The worse things were, the sooner they must mend.
People had been too prosperous; the world had played the spendthrift and gambled too high. But economy would restore the balance for the toilers. What had been lost would soon be regained.
Fate could not down America yet. And he was an American. What was it "Jim" Hill had said to the scare-mongers: "The man who sells the United States short is a damned fool." And the man who sells himself short is a damneder fool.
Thus he struggled through the bad weather of his soul. The clouds that had gathered and roared and shuttled with lightnings had emptied their wrath, and the earth still rolled. The mystery of terror was subtly altered to a mystery of surety.
Lying in the dark, motionless, he had wrought out the miracle of meditation. Within the senate chamber of his mind he had debated and pondered and voted confidence in himself and in life.
His eyes, still open, still battling for light, had found none yet. The universe was still black. He could not distinguish sky from window, nor casement from ceiling. Yet the gloom was no longer terrible. The universe was still a great ship rushing on, but he was no longer a midget in a little cockleshell about to be crushed. He was a passenger on the ship. The night was benevolent, majestic, sonorous with music. The sea was glorious and the voyage forward.
And now that his heart was full of good news, he had a wild desire to rush home with it to her who was his home. How often he had left her in the morning after a wrangle, and hurried back to her at night bearing glad tidings, the quarrel forgotten beyond the need of any treaty. And she would be there among their children, beaming welcome from her big eyes.