Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/61

Rh leader of London, or Paris, or Berlin. You are more hated and more feared than any one employer in England; and this is the man without whose aid and guidance I should, in all human probability, to-day be the titled master of vast landed possessions, a waster of farms in the interests of game preserves, an expeller of men, women, and children for the sake of hares, partridges, and grouse.

'My friend (I still call you so, just as I still speak to you with absolute candour, for the sake of the memory of the old time), what should we gain by seeing one another now, and making, as perhaps we should make, the effort to renew the ancient intercourse? Let me recall to you the fact that the very palace (for so I am told it is) from which your letter came to me calls up the most hideous memories. Was it not at the courtyard gates of Felixstowe that a deputation of starving women, with starving children in their arms and at their milkless breasts, came to you at the bitter close of the strike, and told you that, if their husbands could not be taken on again, death stared them in the face? How could I approach those gates, and pass through them, and enter your house as your guest—as your friend?

'No, Daniel, no! Our paths lie in contrary directions, and must to the end. A chance gave you the means of writing to me. You took it, and