Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/47

 28 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS foolish bubbles, education a delusion. With so much to be done, with throbbing life all about her being ground down to the level of the brute, what could excuse her self -centered life, how could one spend time on culture when life called! But even yet she found no call to work. Between trips to Europe she went, one summer, to visit in a western state where she held mortgages on some farms. It was after a long drought. The farmers were in a most des- perate condition. Their farms, their homes, and their fam- ilies bore every trace of extreme poverty. That human be- ings could live under such conditions was almost beyond be- lief. Yielding to the horror which this revelation inspired, she withdrew her investments rather than receive interest from men likely to be reduced to such conditions as these — doubtless only adding to their wretchedness by her ill-timed act. Finally came a day in April, 1888, which was to be the turn- ing point in the aimless career which had now gone on for al- most six years. With the other members of her party, which was then in Madrid, Spain, Miss Addams attended a bull fight. As she looked upon the combat, all the splendor of the imagined Roman arena, all the historic glory of the medieval tournament threw a glamour over the scene. It was not a bull fight she was witnessing — it was a dramatic representation of all the vanished splendor of historic combat. Meanwhile five bulls and several horses were killed as she looked on with- out a tremor. The spectacle had inspired her friends with only a sense of nausea, and they expressed no little displeas- ure at her insensibility. A reaction came in the evening, and she was filled with self- disgust as she realized that she had witnessed this revolting scene without a qualm. It was quite clearly borne in upon her that although she had pretended such a deep interest in life she had really been drifting to the point where she could look on suffering with esthetic pleasure. The hope that all this period of preparation was leading to some real purpose- ful end suddenly cleared itself to her as mere pampering self- ishness. The moral revulsion following the fight compelled