Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/322

 should lead the people out of Darkness into the land of Promise. But, of course, the Biblical hero-worship, taught him first by that pious woman, his good mother, made it a religious influence, as it still is, for when U'Ren, the blacksmith, is fashioning his legislative tools he works not alone with the affection of the true mechanic, but with the devotion of a faith that his laws will indeed deliver the people from bondage.

All his life William U'Ren had heard of liberty. His father's father lived in Cornwall on land leased for ninety-nine years; his mother's father on land leased for "three lives." That's why his father emigrated at seventeen, and his mother at ten, to the "land of the free." And one of William's first recollections of "American liberty" is of our war against slavery. His mother told stories of "poor little black children sold away from their mothers," and his father pointed out the power of the "slave interest." He realized the Power of Evil, that father did.

A strong, independent spirit, he wanted to work for himself. He was an expert mechanic. The son tells how once when they got a job together, he boasted of his father's skill, and the next time a piece of work came along calling for a master workman, the elder U'Ren was put to it. He did it to a turn "in one heat." So he