THE NEW ARCADIA.
CHAPTER I.
STILLING THE TEMPEST.
"We sit on a cloud and sing ...
And say the world runs smooth—while right below,
Welters the black fermenting heap of life,
On which our State is built."—The Saint's Tragedy.
"Pull him down!" "Knock him off the seat!" "An aristocrat riding us down like dogs!" A smart fusillade of such epithets, portending hand-to-hand conflict, broke from the foremost of a straggling band of workmen; some reckless and uncanny in appearance, others listless and half-interested, but animated, for the moment, as dullest street crowds are, by occurrence of "an accident."
The dog-cart, apparently of a professional man, had run over a city waif hanging on the outskirts of a detachment of "the unemployed" on their course to the noontide rendezvous.
The leaders, welcoming a victim, were venting curses on the head of the luckless Jehu.
