nothing but the making and buying of that which sells; who out from the
magic of his hand rolled over miles of iron road, ton upon ton of food
and metal and wood, of coal and oil and lumber, until the thronging of
knotted ways in East and real St. Louis was like the red, festering
ganglia of some mighty heart.

Then from the East and called by the crash of thunderbolts and
forked-flame came the Unwise Man,--unwise by the theft of endless ages,
but as human as anything God ever made. He was the slave for the miracle
maker. It was he that the thunderbolts struck and electrified into
gasping energy. The rasp of his hard breathing shook the midnights of
all this endless valley and the pulse of his powerful arms set the great
nation to trembling.

And then, at last, out of the South, like a still, small voice, came the
third man,--black, with great eyes and greater memories; hesitantly
eager and yet with the infinite softness and ancient calm which come
from that eternal race whose history is not the history of a day, but
of endless ages. Here, surely, was fit meeting-place for these curiously
intent forces, for these epoch-making and age-twisting forces, for these
human feet on their super-human errands.

Yesterday I rode in East St. Louis. It is the kind of place one quickly
recognizes,--tireless and with no restful green of verdure; hard and
uneven of street; crude, cold, and even hateful of aspect; conventional,
of course, in its business quarter, but quickly beyond one sees the ruts
and the hollows, the stench of ill-tamed sewerage, unguarded railroad
crossings, saloons outnumbering churches and churches catering to
saloons; homes impudently strait and new, prostitutes free and happy,
gamblers in paradise, the town "wide open," shameless and frank; great