them."

"You mean . . . ?" father began, then paused.

"I mean that there is a shadow of something colossal and menacing that
even now is beginning to fall across the land. Call it the shadow of an
oligarchy, if you will; it is the nearest I dare approximate it. What
its nature may be I refuse to imagine.* But what I wanted to say was
this: You are in a perilous position--a peril that my own fear enhances
because I am not able even to measure it. Take my advice and accept the
vacation."

* Though, like Everhard, they did not dream of the nature of
it, there were men, even before his time, who caught
glimpses of the shadow. John C. Calhoun said: "A power has
risen up in the government greater than the people
themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful
interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the
cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks." And that
great humanist, Abraham Lincoln, said, just before his
assassination: "I see in the near future a crisis
approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for
the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been
enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow,
and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong
its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until
the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is
destroyed."

"But it would be cowardly," was the protest.