The Web of Life

"When the men confront bayonets, you know, they'll give in quick enough. I have reason to believe that the President has already ordered United States troops to protect lives an...

One still, frozen winter day succeeded another in changeless iteration. The lake was a solid floor of gray ice as far as one could see. Along the shore between the breakwaters t...

The engagement was not one to be missed, at least by a young professional man who had his way to make, his patients to assemble, in the fierce struggle of Chicago. The occasion...

Mrs. Ducharme returned to the temple at an early hour the next morning. Sommers saw her mumbling to herself as she came across the park. Before she knocked, he opened the door;...

A change, even so small a change as from one boarding-house to another, is caused by some definite force, some shock that overcomes the power of inertia. The eleventh of June So...

These days there were many people on the streets, but few were busy. The large department stores were empty; at the doors stood idle floor-walkers and clerks. It was too warm fo...

"I was detained at the office over at the yards. The men and the girls had pretty nearly all gone. I was just about to leave, when a fellow opened the door--he looked like a Swe...

The young surgeon examined the man as he lay on the hospital chair in which ward attendants had left him. The surgeon's fingers touched him deftly, here and there, as if to test...

The Fourth, of July had never before been kept in the like manner in Chicago. There was a row or two at Grand Crossing between the strikers and the railroad officials, several d...

Dr. Lindsay's offices were ingeniously arranged on three sides of the Athenian Building. The patient entering from the hall, just beside the elevators, passed by a long, narrow...

The Hitchcocks and the Sommerses came from the same little village in Maine; they had moved west, about the same time, a few years before the Civil War: Alexander Hitchcock to C...

Mrs. Preston started, and her hand closed instinctively upon the gate, as if to bar further entrance to her privacy. Then without reply she opened the gate, led the way across t...

The Athenian Building raises its knife-like facade in the centre of Chicago, thirteen stories in all; to the lake it presents a broad wall of steel and glass. It is a hive of do...

"It was that Dresser man. I wish we'd never laid eyes on him--he kept getting tips from Carson, the man who owned most of his paper. I guess Carson didn't take much interest in...

Long after the horse's hoofs had ceased to beat in the still evening, Mrs. Preston sat by the open window in the bare cottage room, her head resting on her arms, her eyes peerin...

"Shall we walk over to the lake," the girl suggested gently, as if anxious to humor some incomprehensible child. "There is a lovely ravine we can explore, all cool and shady, an...

For Sommers had joined the staff of the great specialist, and resorted daily to the busy offices in the Athenian Building. A brief vacation had served to convince him of the fol...

The summer burned itself out, and the autumn winds pierced the rotten staff walls of the temple. They were no nearer to moving into better quarters than they had been in the spr...

Sommers did not go to his rooms, however. He could delay no longer reaching Mrs. Preston. From the quiet decorous boulevard, with its clean asphalt pavement and pleasant trees,...

That morning Sommers returned to the city. Mrs. Preston had asked him to notify Dr. Leonard and Miss M'Gann, the only friends she had in Chicago, that the funeral would take pla...

At the gate of the cemetery he fled from the little company. Dr. Leonard wanted to return to the city with him, but he shook off the talkative dentist. He must escape all sense...

"No, no, don't speak of it again, at least to _him_," Alves pleaded anxiously. "He would do that, or anything, if he thought I wanted it. I _don't_ want it, I tell you; I'm happ...

The next day Sommers applied at the drug store for permission to hang his sign beneath the others. The question was referred to Jelly, who seemed to be the silent partner in the...

Mrs. Ducharme opened the door of the cottage in response to Sommers's knock. Attired in a black house dress, with her dark hair smoothly brushed back from round, fat features, s...

Webber had a well-developed case of typhoid, and Sommers had him moved to St. Isidore's. The doctor accompanied him to the hospital, and once within the doors of his old home, h...

During the next two years the country awoke from its torpor, feeling the blood tingle in its strong limbs once more, and rubbing its eyes in wonder at its own folly. Some said t...

After giving the invalid his breakfast, and arranging him on his couch where he could see the cars pass, Mrs. Preston hurried over to the Everglade School, which was only two bl...

"It could not be!" he muttered, as he stumbled on in the dark. He was oversuspicious. But how else could the facts be explained? Such deaths, he knew, did not occur to men in Pr...

The next morning Dr. Sommers took his successor through, the surgical ward. Dr. Raymond, whose place he had been holding for a month, was a young, carefully dressed man, fresh f...

The great strike was fast being forgotten, as a cause argued and lost or won as you looked at it. A commission was holding many meetings these months, and going over the debris,...

The Keystone Hotel was in full blast when the doctor and Alves returned from Wisconsin. Miss M'Gann met them and introduced them to the large, parlor-floor room she had engaged...

"I thought you'd give me the go-by," she exclaimed, as he entered. "Your kind is smooth enough, but they don't want to be bothered. But I came all the same--on the chance."

For reply Alves took from the drawer of the table the old leather purse that was their bank. The mute action made Sommers smile, but he opened the purse and counted the bills. T...

As they proceeded, more briskly now, she talked of her life in the Chicago schools. She had taken the work when nothing else offered in the day of her calamity. She described th...

Miss Hitchcock's wedding was extremely quiet. It was regarded by all but the two persons immediately concerned as an eccentric mistake. Even Colonel Hitchcock, to whom Louise wa...

"And I suppose they would not do, now, while he is apparently getting better. They would not help him, even if we should get him confined. His is one of those cases where the co...

The cars were still whirring up and down Stoney Island Avenue when Sommers left the cottage, but he did not think to stop one. Instead, he walked on heedlessly, mechanically, to...

The dinner at the Hitchcocks' was very simple. Parker had gone out "to enjoy his success in not getting to Cuba," as Colonel Hitchcock expressed it grimly. The old merchant's ma...