broad forehead with distinct, brown brows. She caught breath a bit quickly and watched his strong, well-shaped hands, which also were hers and she was conscious of so nearly giving way to emotionalism that she rebuked herself for weakening with age; and, recollecting what they had said, she remarked: "I understand the city is growing rapidly."
"It happened to have reason to go from the south edge of it to the north the other night," said Calvin, sitting back and smoking. "I was on an elevated train which went continuously for twenty miles past tenements and flats, tenements and flats crowded side by side, with only streets and shops and factories between, for every mile of the way. If I'd gone west from the lake or northwest or southwest, it would be the same. In that square of twenty miles, on the shore of that lake, mother, are more than three millions of people—the population of the thirteen colonies in the revolution."
"No," she objected.
"Yes," he insisted, a little quickly. "They're there. Not one, not a white face was there when that was hung." He touched with his boot-toe the crane which, as every Clarke knew, had been hung in the fireplace in 1790. "But now the population of the thirteen colonies is within a twenty mile square on the shore of that lake."
"An equal number of people may be there," corrected his mother, intently, "but not a like population."
"No," agreed Calvin. "Not like them."
"What can they be like, Calvin?" she inquired, leaning forward a little. "I read all the newspapers you send, I read of robbery and banditry, day and night, in banks and in hotels by broad daylight, and the constant taking of life."
"They're marking up a murder nearly every day," said Calvin.
