flesh and spirit over dollars and cents, and to whom the thin wail of
the starved slum child meant more than all the pomp and circumstance of
commercial expansion and world empire. All about me were nobleness of
purpose and heroism of effort, and my days and nights were sunshine
and starshine, all fire and dew, with before my eyes, ever burning
and blazing, the Holy Grail, Christ's own Grail, the warm human,
long-suffering and maltreated but to be rescued and saved at the last."

As before I had seen him transfigured, so now he stood transfigured
before me. His brows were bright with the divine that was in him, and
brighter yet shone his eyes from the midst of the radiance that seemed
to envelop him as a mantle. But the others did not see this radiance,
and I assumed that it was due to the tears of joy and love that dimmed
my vision. At any rate, Mr. Wickson, who sat behind me, was unaffected,
for I heard him sneer aloud, "Utopian."*

* The people of that age were phrase slaves. The abjectness
of their servitude is incomprehensible to us. There was a
magic in words greater than the conjurer's art. So
befuddled and chaotic were their minds that the utterance of
a single word could negative the generalizations of a
lifetime of serious research and thought. Such a word was
the adjective UTOPIAN. The mere utterance of it could damn
any scheme, no matter how sanely conceived, of economic
amelioration or regeneration. Vast populations grew
frenzied over such phrases as "an honest dollar" and "a full
dinner pail." The coinage of such phrases was considered
strokes of genius.

Ernest went on to his rise in society, till at last he came in touch