Copyright, 1922

By E. P. Dutton & Company

All Rights Reserved

First printing, September, 1922

Second printing, October, 1922

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CHAPTER I

PHANTASMA

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IT is Easter Sunday in the village of Massillon, Stark County, Ohio, fifty miles south by east from Cleveland. Fourth year of the soft Money Plague; 1894.

Time, about 10 o’clock.

CHAPTER II

THE FUNK IDOL

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“WHERE is one-hundred-and-thirty Broadway?” I asked the hotel porter the next morning.

“One-hundred-and-thirty Broadway? That’s in Wall Street,” he said. “Take the elevated down town and get off at Rector Street”

That was literal. Broadway is in Wall Street, as may be explained.

CHAPTER III

GALT

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CHAPTER IV

AN ECONOMIC NIGHTMARE

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YOU may define a mass delusion; you cannot explain it really. It is a malady of the imagination, incurable by reason, that apparently must run its course. If it does not lead people to self-destruction in a wild dilemma between two symbols of faith it will yield at last to the facts of experience.

CHAPTER V

VERA

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BY this time I had become a frequent visitor in the Galt household. A summer had passed since my first appearance there. The second time I came to dinner Vera presented herself, though tardily. As she entered the dining room Galt rose and made her an exaggerated bow, which she altogether disregarded.

CHAPTER VI

A GIANT IN BABY SWEAT

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STEADILY the American giant grew worse in his mind. There were yet lower depths of insolvency. The passion to touch them was like the impulse to collective suicide in the Dark Ages. Bankruptcy ceased to be a disgrace, there was so much of it. Hope of profit was abandoned. Optimism was believed to be an unsound mode of thought. All of this was a state of feeling, a delusion purely. The country was rich. The unemployed were fed on fine white bread and an unlaundered linen shirt cost fifty cents.

CHAPTER VII

DARING THE DARK

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CHAPTER VIII

LOW WATER

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CHAPTER IX

FORTH HE GOES

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