Christian socialism -- Fiction; German Americans -- Fiction; Shoemakers -- Fiction
“Is there a God?” cried the pastor, wildly tossing his thin arms upward,
“that he lets the sun rise upon such scenes as this!”
“There is a God,” said Ernest Clare, “who spared not His own Son, but
delivered Him up to death, that we might live forevermore. Courage,
friend, the day of freedom is at hand; you would not grudge your
daughter the glory of helping Him to redeem the world; of filling up
that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ?”
“It is for Henry Randolph’s daughter that mine has died,” said the
pastor, but with less violence; “upon the floors and walls of that
palace, to which he has no right, which he has robbed from others, she
spent her precious life.”
“Henry Randolph!” it was like the cry of a wild beast, as Paul Kellar
sprang to his feet with clinched hands and red and glaring eyes.
“Henry Randolph! the bloated millionnaire who cuts down his workmen’s
wages! the gambler with the daily bread of thousands, starving them by
hundreds that he may add another cipher to his bank-account! Is _he_ the
murderer of my wife?”
“Not wittingly, oh, not wittingly!” Ernest Clare knew better than to
urge any plea of “employment” and “wages” at such a moment as this. “Not
wittingly, Paul, does he injure any man. Therefore, Father,” he added,
looking upward, “forgive both him and those like unto him. Forgive them,
Father, for they know not what they do!”
But Paul Kellar had rushed away into the early and peaceful morning;
while the pastor, falling upon his knees beside his dead child, cried
out,—
“She was my first-born! I called her Christina that she might be like
unto Christ; and behold, like Him, she has died,—died for the sins of
the world.”
Tina Kellar’s piteous death was, to the labor-world of Micklegard, the
breath which, fanning the clouds of their discontent a hair’s-breadth
nearer, completed the power of the gathering storm. A martyr! That was
their name for her; but a martyr whose death they were bound to avenge?
that, to students of Scripture, seemed less fit and natural.
Karl Metzerott was foremost in proclaiming the duty of revenge. In his
youth a silent man, and given to much thinking, the years had brought
with them a power of rude but vivid eloquence, beneath which his hearers
were swayed as the tree-branches bend before the wind.
It was a glorious victory for Karl Metzerott, this triumph of the
doctrine of violence; for, though a few faithful ones still clung to
Ernest Clare, with the majority his influence was a thing of the past;
and Karl rejoiced over his enemy with a mighty joy, careless or
unknowing that what these men followed was not “the Emperor,” as they
had called him, but the anger and lust for blood and vengeance of their
own hearts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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