The Root of Evil

JAMES STUART, a young Southerner in New York. NAN PRIMROSE, his fiancée. MRS. PRIMROSE, her mother. JOHN C. CALHOUN BIVENS, a millionaire. DR. HENRY WOODMAN, who loves his neigh...

At the end of a warm spring day in New York, James Stuart sat in the open window of his room on Washington Square, smiling. With a sense of deep joy he watched the trees shake t...

The dispensary was Woodman's hobby. The old-fashioned drug store stood on a corner of the Bowery, and in the rear extension which opened on the side street, he had established w...

It was half past ten before Stuart reached Gramercy Park. The wind had shifted to the southeast and a cold, drizzling rain, mixed with fog enveloped the city. Somehow the chill...

Stuart waked next morning with a sense of hopeless depression. He had intended to make an engagement with Nan to visit the little home. It was impossible to suggest it in the mo...

It was noon when Stuart reached the Primrose house and Nan was again out. He received the announcement from her mother with a feeling of rage he could ill conceal.

The suddenness of his dismissal broke the strain under which Stuart had been labouring for hours. It was ridiculous. He began to laugh at the silliness of the whole thing--what...

When Stuart heard the door close and Bivens's step die away on the pavement below, he came down to see the doctor, haunted by a strange vision. Through every day of his subseque...

The longer Stuart wrestled with the problem of Nan's yielding to the lure of Bivens's gold the more hideous and hopeless it became. He cursed her in one breath, and with the nex...

The little financier had sent him an invitation, and worst of all had called to ask that he act as his best man. He refused so curtly that Bivens was deeply wounded. He hastened...

Stuart reached home from his walk thoroughly tired and dropped into a feverish sleep. A strange dream haunted this attempt to rest. He found himself laughing and chatting with B...

Stuart left the theatre with the mysterious conviction stirring within him that only God could have directed his steps to that building. The more overwhelming the author's argum...

For nine years he had refused to see or speak to her. He met Bivens as a matter of course, but always down town during business hours or at one of his clubs. For the first year...

On the night following Stuart worked late in his office, developing his great case. He was disappointed in the final showing of the evidence to be presented to the Grand Jury. H...

Nan received the announcement of Bivens's failure to settle Woodman's suit with a grim resolution to win now, at all hazards. The sensational reports of Stuart's action against...

The deeper the young lawyer probed into the mass of corruption Bivens had placed in his hands the more profound became his surprise. At first he was inclined to scout the whole...

The sensation which the District Attorney sprang in the sudden indictment of the president of the Iroquois Company was profound and far-reaching. The day before the indictment w...

The morning came in a mist of dull gray clouds that clung in rings about the street lamps like the damp fog of a typical February thaw, yet it was the last day of October. Such...

Bivens's plan would have gone through without a hitch but for one thing. He had overlooked the fact that the Kingdom of Mammon in America has a king and that the present ruler i...

For a week the panic held the financial world in the grip of death. A dozen banks had closed their doors and a score of men who had long boasted their courage among men had died...

Stuart rose next morning with a dull headache. The more he had puzzled over the speech he should make to the mob besieging Bivens's bank the more doubtful seemed the outcome. St...

The clouds of the panic slowly lifted and the sun began once more to shine. A fearless officer of the law had struck a blow for justice that marked the beginning of a new era of...

When Stuart reached Bivens's new offices in Wall Street he was amazed at their size and magnificence. The first impression was one of dazzling splendour. The huge reception hall...

He could hear Bivens giving orders to his employees about the removal of his millions to the vaults below. It would take hours to complete the task. He could hear the deep vibra...

As Stuart dressed for the dinner he thought of Harriet with a pang. He had promised her to try to keep out of danger. But could she know or understand the struggle through which...

A mass meeting of the unemployed had been called to protest against their wrongs and particularly to denounce the men who had advanced the price of bread by creating a corner in...

The face of the dying boy haunted the doctor's imagination. With his eyes closed or open, at noon or alone at night the pity and the horror of his lonely death gripped him. A bo...

The bitter reference to Bivens and the crime of his corner in wheat had roused Nan's lighting blood. She would accept the challenge of this rabble and show her contempt for its...

As Stuart dressed for Nan's party he brooded over his new relation to his old sweetheart with increasing pleasure. She had begun to tease him with gentle raillery about his trag...

Apparently on entering the banquet hall they were stepping outdoors into an enchanted pine forest. The walls were completely hidden by painted scenery representing the mountains...

As he watched the magnificent ball his eyes grew dim at the thought of the social tragedy which it symbolized, of his own poverty and of the deeper wretchedness of scores to who...

The two weeks which followed the Bivens ball, were the happiest Harriet Woodman had known since Nan's shadow had fallen across her life. Every moment was crowded with the work o...

The financier was present with two great lawyers who smilingly assured him that he need have no fear as to the result. Yet the little man was uneasy. He fidgeted in his seat and...

Stuart's appeal to the New York papers in behalf of Harriet was successful. For a week he bought every morning and evening edition and read them eagerly. Not a line appeared to...

In five days the party had completed all preparations and Bivens's big steamer, the _Buccaneer_, slipped quietly through the Narrows and headed for the Virginia coast, towing a...

On the sixth day Bivens rose early and declared that he would try the ducks. The day before had been, in the local vernacular, a "weather breeder"--a day of breathless seas, a s...

Stuart refused to talk to Nan, went abruptly to his stateroom, and spent a night of feverish dreams. His exhaustion was so acute, restful sleep was impossible. Through the night...

The stirring scenes of Virginia brought Stuart more and more into intimate personal relations with Bivens and he had taken advantage of the fact to draw away from his wife. The...

When Nan made up her mind, she acted with lightning rapidity. She would force Stuart to an avowal of love that would fix their relation beyond disturbance by the little singer....

On the fourth day Nan planned a coaching party to ascend Mount Mitchell, the highest peak in the Land of the Sky, the highest point of ground this side the Rockies. She had take...

"Stay a week longer," the little man urged, "and I'll go with you; we'll go together, all of us, in my car. I'm getting worse here every day. I've got to get back to my doctors...

He found her standing by a window, apparently calm. Stuart looked at her a moment with a curious detached interest. Suddenly aware of his presence she turned, her eyes shining w...

Strangers no longer live in the cottage Stuart built on the hills. A jaunty sailboat nods at the buoy near the water's edge. The drone of bees from the fruit trees in full bloom...