Step by step my investigation of blindness led me into the industrial world. And what a world it is! I must face unflinchingly a world of facts--a world of misery and degradation, of blindness, crookedness, and sin, a world struggling against the elements, against the unknown, against itself. How reconcile this world of fact with the bright world of my imagining? My darkness had been filled with the light of intelligence, and, behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness. At first I was most unhappy; but deeper study restored my confidence. By learning the sufferings and burdens of men, I became aware as never before of the life-power that has survived the forces of darkness--the power which, though never completely victorious, is continuously conquering. The very fact that we are still here carrying on the contest against the hosts of annihilation proves that on the whole the battle has gone for humanity. The world's great heart has proved equal to the prodigious undertaking which God set it. Rebuffed, but always persevering; self-reproached, but ever regaining faith; undaunted, tenacious, the heart of man labors towards immeasurably distant goals. Discouraged not by difficulties without, or the anguish of ages within, the heart listens to a secret voice that whispers: "Be not dismayed; in the future lies the Promised Land." Heirs of Time BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON (American poet and essayist, 1823-1911; a vehement anti-slavery agitator, he was colonel of the first negro regiment during the Civil War, and in later life became a devoted Socialist) From street and square, from hill and glen, Of this vast world beyond my door, I hear the tread of marching men, The patient armies of the poor. Not ermine-clad or clothed in state, Their title-deeds not yet made plain, But waking early, toiling late, The heirs of all the earth remain. The peasant brain shall yet be wise, The untamed pulse grow calm and still; The blind shall see, the lowly rise, And work in peace Time's wondrous will. Some day, without a trumpet's call This news will o'er the world be blown: "The heritage comes back to all; The myriad monarchs take their own." Beyond Human Might BY BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON (Next to Ibsen, the greatest of Norwegian dramatists, 1832-1910. In the following scene, from a two-part symbolic drama of the problem of labor and capital, a young clergyman is speaking to a crowd of miners in the midst of a bitterly fought strike) BRATT:--Here it is dark and cold. Here few work hopefully, and no one joyfully. Here the children won't thrive--they yearn for the sea and the daylight. They crave the sun. But it lasts only a little while, and then they give up. They learn that among those who have been cast down here there is rarely one who can climb up again. SEVERAL:--That's right!...