THE TURMOIL

CHAPTER I

There is a midland city in the heart of fair, open country, a dirty and
wonderful city nesting dingily in the fog of its own smoke. The stranger
must feel the dirt before he feels the wonder, for the dirt will be upon
him instantly. It will be upon him and within him, since he must breathe
it, and he may care for no further proof that wealth is here better
loved than cleanliness; but whether he cares or not, the negligently
tended streets incessantly press home the point, and so do the flecked
and grimy citizens. At a breeze he must smother in the whirlpools of
dust, and if he should decline at any time to inhale the smoke he has
the meager alternative of suicide.

The smoke is like the bad breath of a giant panting for more and more
riches. He gets them and pants the fiercer, smelling and swelling
prodigiously. He has a voice, a hoarse voice, hot and rapacious trained
to one tune: "Wealth! I will get Wealth! I will make Wealth! I will sell
Wealth for more Wealth! My house shall be dirty, my garment shall be
dirty, and I will foul my neighbor so that he cannot be clean--but I
will get Wealth! There shall be no clean thing about me: my wife shall
be dirty and my child shall be dirty, but I will get Wealth!" And yet it
is not wealth that he is so greedy for: what the giant really wants is
hasty riches. To get these he squanders wealth upon the four winds, for
wealth is in the smoke.

Not so long ago as a generation, there was no panting giant here, no
heaving, grimy city; there was but a pleasant big town of neighborly
people who had understanding of one another, being, on the whole, much
of the same type. It was a leisurely and kindly place--"homelike," it
was called--and when the visitor had been taken through the State Asylum
for the Insane and made to appreciate the view of the cemetery from a
little hill, his host's duty as Baedeker was done. The good burghers
were given to jogging comfortably about in phaetons or in surreys for
a family drive on Sunday. No one was very rich; few were very poor; the
air was clean, and there was time to live.