The clear waters and fresh green lawns and fragrant posies didn't extend fur enough back; if they had her life might have been saved, but they only went as fur as the sharp wall her pa had riz up and thought safely warded his own child from all the evils of the lower classes. No, it didn't go fur enough back, and sweet Dorris had to pay the penalty of her pa's blindness and selfishness. For what duz the Book say? "The innocent shall suffer for the guilty." Her broken-hearted mother followed her to the grave, and it wuz on that very day, Mudd-Weakdew bein' shut up with doctors, that the little boy wuz stolen. The discharged workman, whose little boy had died of starvation, disappeared too. He wuz said to be half-crazy and had threatened vengeance on his old employer. There wuz a story that he had been seen with a child richly dressed, and afterwards with a child dressed in the coarse clothing of the poor, embarking on a foreign ship, but the clue wuz lost, so the living trouble wuz worse to bear than the dead one. The strike wuz ended, Capital coming out ahead; the workmen had lost, and the Mudd-Weakdews had a chance to coin more money than ever out of the half-paid labor and wretched lives of their men. They could still be exclusive and foller the star of gentility till it stood over the cold marble palace of disdainful nobility. But the wall of separation he had built up between wealth and poverty had not stood the strain; Deadly Pestilence, Triumphant Hatred and sharp-toothed Revenge had clumb over and attacked him with their sharp fangs, him and his wife, and they had to bear it. I knowed it, I knowed that no walls can ever be built high enough to separate the sordid, neglected, wretched lives of the poor and the luxurious, pleasure-filled lives of the rich. Between the ignorant criminal classes and the educated and innocent. You may make 'em strong as the Pyramaids and high as the tower of Babel, but the passions and weaknesses of humanity will scale 'em and find a way through. The vile air of the low lands will float over into and contaminate the pure air of the guarded pleasure gardens, and the evil germs will carry disease, crime and death, no matter how many fountains and white statutes and posies you may set up between. Envy, Discontent and Revenge will break through the walls and meet Oppression, Insolence and Injustice, and they will tear and rend each other. They always have and always will. Robert Strong, instead of buildin' up that wall, spends his strength in tearin' it down and settin' on its crumblin' ruins the white flowers of Love and Peace.