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The TWILIGHT of OPPORTUNITY
ICHARDSON Sanderson closed his ma
hogany desk and drew a long breath as
he heard the bolt fall quietly into place.
There was a finality about its half-aud
ible click that soothed and satisfied him.
He stood for fully a minute, his hand
still resting on the polished wood; his
eyes traveling far, far over the smoky
parapets that glistened underneath his
office window, to the blue belt of hills that grazed the
sky-line beyond the limits of the huge city.
It had come at last—the day for which he had
toiled and waited so long. The last paper had been
signed; the last check had been endorsed. His
business was sold—converted first into cash and
then into gilt-edge bonds. In his hand, as he rose
and walked to the window, he held a package of
engraved paper which, with sundry like packages
in his box at the bank, made him a millionaire.
They had been hard, perilous years, from the be
ginnings of that business until now. He had risen
early and gone to bed late. He had thought it
nothing to miss one and two meals a day. He had
schemed and planned and hoped and feared—de
nying himself, neglecting his friends and even his
family—that he might enjoy this good hour.
And the hour had come. It was no dream or fig
ment of his fancy. It was solid truth. Richard San
derson, millionaire, had come into his own.
As he stood at the window, which was raised to
admit the late summer breeze, he followed with his
mind the wide track which his eyes mapped out
along the bluish hills; and thence to a larger zone
that embraced all Nature—all the mountains and
oceans and little boiling towns, the planets and stel
lar systems. His mind, emancipated as by a single
blow from the self-wrought fetters of routine, leapt
suddenly out of the narrow circle in which it had
been so long confined, and paused just this side
of madness. The recoil was swift, and scarcely less
violent. A blank numbness overcame him. Was it
really true? and was the long battle actually over?
Was he indeed free—free to do as he pleased, think
as he pleased, write and talk as he pleased, without
fear of the Wolf, without counsel of Bull and Bear?
He turned, somewhat unsteadily, and took his
hat and stick from their accustomed place. At the
door he halted. Conway had not handed in his re
port. Then he laughed confusedly. There was no re
port. Conway was hereafter chargeable to his new
employers. Poor, honest Conway! How faithful he
was; how sure and capable—never lacking in re
source ; yet always with the still, sad smile of a
man whose heart is slowly dying within him for
want of a genial atmosphere.
Sanderson’s ride home, after a short visit to the
safe deposit vault, was purely automatic. He had
done the same thing in the same way at the same
hour for so many years, that it was no longer an
act of conscious volition. He hailed the proper car,
got off at the proper crossing, and walked to the
proper house, without any effort of will or inter
ruption of his chain of thought. Not until he was
well within his own living-room, and his wife had
seated him by the coolest window, and made his iced
tea for him with her own hands, did he realize that
he was not only home at last, but home to stay.
It was his wife who broke the silence. “Is ev
erything all arranged, now?” she inquired.
“Yes,” he answered, “it is all settled. I bought
the last batch of bonds to-day.”
(She leaned forward eagerly. “And you won’t
have to go back to work?”
“I’m not even going back to the office. Conway
will have my desk sent out here.”
Her hand sought his with an old instinctive move
ment that had some how fallen into disuse of late
years. Their eyes met; his tired, but content; hers,
wide open and illumined with a large tenderness.
“I am so glad,” she murmured; and then, after
a moment, “because now you cun rest, and study,
wrjfe," . . . , s _
CHAPTER I.
The Golden Age for March 22,1906.
B William Hurd Hillyer
“Yes,” he repeated, as if he hardly grasped the
full meaning of her words, “yes, I can write. 1
can write.”
“And be with meand the children,”
she added, softly.
He flung his arms about her with a sudden im
pulse. “Yes, my darling,” he whispered, “my faith
ful sweetheart wife, the bright days have come!
No more worry and hurry; no more daily, deadly
grind! I am free, Esther. Now at last I can truly
live!”
“I shall expect great things of you, Richard. And
when your book is published, and you are famous,
I shall be even more proud of you than I am now.”
He kissed the hand which she had placed in his.
“You have always understood me, Esther. And
you have always rated me higher than I deserved.
I only pray that from henceforth I may not fall so
far short!”
The desk arrived the next day. Sanderson had it
earned up to his study—otherwise called his “den.”
This was a small room adjoining the library, which
occupied the entire front of the second floor. Dur
ing ten years of increasing prosperity, the master
of the house had gathered a well-selected library
of several thousand volumes, which reposed in per
fect order along the weathered-oak shelves; their
rest unbroken by any touch more rude than the
housemaid’s feather-duster. Here, Sanderson
thought, as he stood in the doorway of his study,
were treasures inexhaustible. Here he would pass
the greater part of his time, in company with the
noblest minds of the ages. Here he would read, and
learn, and think; and at yonder desk he would
write.
Mechanically he turned to the desk and opened
it. The first thing that met his eye was a letter
from a friend of his out in Montana offering him
a third interest in a somewhat unpromising mine
for a ridiculously small sum. He remembered, with
an illogical thrill, an item in the morning paper
stating that this very mine had developed a rich
pay streak and that the stock was soaring skyward
at a rate that passed all precedent. “I should have
bought that,” he muttered, spreading the letter
out on the tray. “That is, I would have bought it
if I had been going to stay in business.”
All the papers relating to the current affairs of
the factory had been turned over to the new owners.
There were left only a few packages of personal
letters recently received, and his private account
books. One of these last he now opened: and noted
with silent satisfaction the fresh entries, in pale
ink not yet darkened by age, recording the sale of
the factory and the conversion of the purchase
money into gilt-edged securities. Then he took from
a nearby shelf a small bottle of red ink and found
a clean pen. He seated himself at the desk, with
the book out before him, and poised the becrimsoned
pen above the page for some seconds before writ
ing anything. At length, after a preliminary series
of gyratdons, he wrote, below the last entry:
“July 30th. Retired from business this day. Will
travel abroad and engage in literary work.”
Underneath this he drew a double red line.
The study was very quiet. Its thousand cubic feet
of silence were unbroken by any sound harsher
than the twittering of sparrows in the eaves and
the occasional faint rhythm of a passing vehicle.
Athwart the open door of the library slanted a
streak of sunlight, as if to bar the way. Beyond,
ranged in solemn rows one above the other, were
Shakespeare in brown, Dickens in olive-green. Bal
zac in rich maroon. Sanderson rose from his desk,
and stood with his hands in his pockets, peering
absently at those pregnant shelves. Something in
the atmosphere that hung about them stirred with
in him vague hungerings that had long lain as
dead. Vividly there flashed before him a certain
April morning in the world’s yesterday, when he
had climbed a hill—that same great, sloping hill—
tbw was but b&d on tbe bigbeot boub
(IN TWO PH-RTS)
der and looked out at the clouds and flat circle
of earth. Then it was that the Sense of Brother
hood first came to him. He watched the blue smoke
up-curling from the chimneys of a farm-house; the
slow, peaceful crawl of a hay-wagon along the road;
the minute horse-insect that worked its way back
and forth over the arable. Far off among the pines
he heard the confident yell of a locomotive, followed
by the faint but distinct rattle of heavy cars and
the whine of brakes. All the dreams of his dreamy
childhood, all the fancies and ideals and longings
that his life had ever held, crowded in upon him
as one supreme impulsion. Gradually, almost tang
ibly, he felt himself lifted out of himself and placed
as it were upon the summit of another and loftier
hill, of which this was but the temporal counterpart.
Then, more plain than spoken words, came the Mes
sage.
Through all the twenty years that had passed
since that day, lie had kept the Message in his
heart, ready to give it to mankind—when he should
have opportunity. It was a healing Message, full of
strength and power and comfort to those who toil
in the world’s galleys—a new and noble Message
that would have circled the globe and smoothed out
many of its sad furrows. But he did not utter it
then, when it first came to him, because he lacked
the full equipment of language. He must first study
his mother tongue, that his words might be keen
and swift, and that he might say so clearly that
those who heard could not do otherwise than listen
and understand. He did not utter it later, because
during his last year at college a friend in the tech
nical department had perfected what seemed to be
a very valuable invention, and Sanderson had invest
ed his modest patrimony in exploiting the same.
This was the first of a series of business ventures,
all more or less fortunate, culminating at length in
the large establishment which he had just disposed
of. There was a fascination about doing things—
real, touchable things—that irresistibly caught and
held him. All his thoughts, his energies, his very
dreams, became focussed upon the so-called “prac
tical” objects. And because, especially after his mar
riage, money seemed to be the most practical thing
in the world, his aim slowly shifted until it pointed
to that same dollar mark which lured and deceived
his fellows At first this aim was unconscious, and
Sanderson persuaded himself that he was in busi
ness simply for his daily bread. Even when his for
tune rose beyond thtf average of physical and per
sonal need, and his motive became self-confessed,
he still cherished the theory that his pursuit of
money was tentative and experimental—a mere
preparation for his life-work, which was to be the
complete publication of his Message. He resolved
that as soon as he could realize a quarter of a million
dollars, he would invest all in safe securities and de
vote himself entirely to this larger calling. The fig
ure was afterwards raised to five hundred thousand
—to a full million. And there his natural decision
of character asserted itself and, as we have seen,
he made the long contemplated change.
So Richard Sanderson, millionaire and forty years
old, stood irresolute before his book shelves, not
knowing which volume to choose—like a schoolboy
at a confectioner’s. It had been so long since he
had tasted one of those literary morsels that he could
not remember which were bitter and which were
sweet. Just for no reason in the world, he chose
a volume of poems by Matthew Arnold. Almost the
first stanza which caught his eye was the following:
“Thoughts light, like dreams, my spirit’s sky,
But they will not remain.
They light me once—they hurry by
And never come again.”
The verses did not please him. He shut the book
and put it back on the shelf.
He took down one volume after another, but none
of them interested him. Then he walked the floor
for ft Jong time—a habit of his when
(Concluded on page,)