Produced by ellinora, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) PETER PARAGON A Tale of Youth BY JOHN PALMER [Illustration: Decoration] NEW YORK DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 1915 COPYRIGHT, 1915 BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY TO MILDRED PETER PARAGON I Peter might justly have complained that his birth was too calmly received. For Peter's mother accepted him without demur. Women who nurse themselves more thoroughly than they nurse their babies will incredulously hear that Mrs. Paragon made little difference in her life on Peter's account until within four hours of his coming. Nevertheless Peter was a healthy baby, shapeless and mottled. Mrs. Paragon was tall and fair, with regular features and eyes set well apart. They looked at you candidly, and you were aware of their friendly interest. They perfectly expressed the simplicity and peace of her character. She was mild and immovable; with a strength that was felt by all who dealt with her, though she rarely asserted it. She had the slow, deep life of a mother. Mr. Paragon was at all points contrasted. He was short, and already at this time he was stout. He had had no teaching; but he was not an ignorant man. He was naturally of an active mind; and he had read extensively the literature that suited his habit of reflection. Mr. Paragon was the son of a small tradesman, and had by the death of his parents been thrown upon the London streets. After ten years he had emerged as a managing clerk. Had Mr. Paragon been well treated he might have reached his fortieth year sunny and charitable, with a cheerful faith in people and institutions. But living a celibate life, insufficiently fed, shabbily clothed, and never doubting his mental superiority to prosperous employers, he had naturally adopted extremely bitter views of the world. Surmounting a shelf of Mr. Paragon's favourite books was a plaster bust of Bradlaugh. The shelf itself included Tom Paine's _Rights of Man_, Godwin's _Political Justice_, and the works of Voltaire in forty English volumes. Mr. Paragon talked the language of Godwin's philosophic day. Priests, kings, aristocracies, and governments were his familiar bogies. He went every Sunday to a Labour church where extracts from Shelley and Samuel Butler were read by the calendar; and he was a successful orator of a powerful group of rebels among the railwaymen. Mr. Paragon was more Falstaff than Cassius to the eye. There was something a little ludicrous in Mr. Paragon, with legs well apart, hands deep in his trousers, demonstrating that religion was a device of government for the deception of simple men, and that property was theft.