"A MODERN HERCULES."
CHAPTER I.
"THE NUDE IN ART."
Two things caused the great heart of New York society to throb with unusual excitement. One was a marvelous work of sculptural art, where boldness in design and utter fearlessness in execution had almost affronted, and yet had won the plaudits of the cultivated of the Metropolis. Ouida Angelo, a woman in "A Grecian Temptress," had dared to wring from men an absolute tribute to and acknowledgement of her genius and power. The second event was the announcement that Horatio Nugent, the great pulpit orator, would preach a sermon on "The Nude in Art."
The wealth and fashion of the city sat spell-bound beneath the eloquent tongue of the great divine. The sad face of the Madonna, in the painted window of Geneva, grew sadder still as she looked down upon the favored multitude. There were present there, men who headed every published list of charity, who paid thousands for pew rental, in this great official residence of God, yet who had no compunction about wrecking a railroad and thereby indirectly spreading ruin among hundreds. In the front row sat a bank president, who knew that on the morrow his financial institution would be in irretrievable ruin, yet who for months had been a pillar of the church and had some of the congregational funds in his rapacious clutch. A poor wash woman or window
