"If the rich lived simpler and less showy, the poor wouldn't envy them as much, nor feel as bitter against society, and the money that was saved could be pretty well invested in kinds of education that would cure poverty and destitution by preventing them, and the people that would be thrown out of work by the economies of the rich might be a good deal better employed in more productive work. It seems a pity, anyway, to keep people at practically useless labor, when the brains and the money that keep them employed in that way might be used in keeping them at productive labor, and it's all the greater pity as long as there's bitter want in the world for the necessaries of life."
This, in substance, is what he said. I apologize for the injustice of the account, its vagueness in contrast with his clearness, its circumlocutions in contrast with his crisp sententiousness, its weakened renderings of his vigorous forms of native speech; but I have tried to suggest it all, and to give the sense of its manly, wholesome spirit.
Under the stars we sat talking until nearly midnight, and, quite inevitably, we launched upon the subject of religion. Mr. Hill appeared curiously apathetic, I thought, as I urged what seemed to me vital. And when, at the end, he narrowed it all to the single inquiry as to whether I believed in a real recognition in some future life among those who have loved one another here, I found myself wondering, with a feeling of disappointment, at so wide a drift from essentials, on the part of a mind which had impressed me as so natively clear and strong. I looked up in my surprise. Even in the starlight I could see the tears, and from a single halting sentence, I got the hint of a daughter dead in early childhood, and of a sorrow too deep for human speech, and of an eager questioning of the future that was the soul's one great desire.
"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known," was all that I could say to him, and I went to bed pitying myself for my shallow judgment, and my ignorance of life.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] I have presented here, together with ideas advanced by Mr. Hill, others secured in fragmentary conversations with various farmers by the way. These ideas seem to me to represent a body of accordant thinking. It is fair to say that I also found among the farmers quite another school of thought. This I shall try to present later with equal fulness.
CHAPTER VI IN A LOGGING CAMP
Fitz-Adams's Camp, English Centre, Lycoming
County, Pa., Tuesday, October 27, 1891.