It was shortly after this day that Ernest told me, as a good story, the
offer he had received from the government, namely, an appointment as
United States Commissioner of Labor. I was overjoyed. The salary was
comparatively large, and would make safe our marriage. And then it
surely was congenial work for Ernest, and, furthermore, my jealous pride
in him made me hail the proffered appointment as a recognition of his
abilities.

Then I noticed the twinkle in his eyes. He was laughing at me.

"You are not going to . . . to decline?" I quavered.

"It is a bribe," he said. "Behind it is the fine hand of Wickson, and
behind him the hands of greater men than he. It is an old trick, old as
the class struggle is old--stealing the captains from the army of labor.
Poor betrayed labor! If you but knew how many of its leaders have been
bought out in similar ways in the past. It is cheaper, so much cheaper,
to buy a general than to fight him and his whole army. There was--but
I'll not call any names. I'm bitter enough over it as it is. Dear heart,
I am a captain of labor. I could not sell out. If for no other reason,
the memory of my poor old father and the way he was worked to death
would prevent."

The tears were in his eyes, this great, strong hero of mine. He never
could forgive the way his father had been malformed--the sordid lies and
the petty thefts he had been compelled to, in order to put food in his
children's mouths.

"My father was a good man," Ernest once said to me. "The soul of him was
good, and yet it was twisted, and maimed, and blunted by the savagery