The corn-cutting machine factory was very busy and
had put on a night shift. When the night was still, or when there was a
slight breeze blowing up the hill from town, there was a low rumbling sound
coming from many machines working in wood and steel, followed at regular
intervals by the steady breathing of a steam engine.
The woman at the window, like every one else in her town and in all the
towns of the mid-western country, became touched with the idea of the
romance of industry. The dreams of the Missouri boy that he had fought, had
by the strength of his persistency twisted into new channels so that they
had expressed themselves in definite things, in corn-cutting machines and
in machines for unloading coal cars and for gathering hay out of a field
and loading it on wagons without aid of human hands, were still dreams and
capable of arousing dreams in others. They awoke dreams in the mind of the
woman. The figures of other men that had been playing through her mind
slipped away and but the one figure remained. Her mind made up stories
concerning Hugh. She had read the absurd tale that had been printed in the
Cleveland paper and her fancy took hold of it. Like every other citizen
of America she believed in heroes. In books and magazines she had read
of heroic men who had come up out of poverty by some strange alchemy to
combine in their stout persons all of the virtues.
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