Page:Meda - a tale of the future.djvu/215

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A TALE OF THE FUTURE.
211

he rubbed his hands with delight as he contemplated a huge pile of gold. In the distance was a transparent picture depicting the people this man had ruined. A grave-looking man was there with his wife and children starving in a miserable garret, and a poor widow with a weakly child at her breast, trying to support young life with the last drop of her own life's strength. There was the strong man struggling for life and battling for existence against the infamy of the unjust, and there was the weakly man, the woman and the child, crushed down and trampled to death by the weight of their miseries.

The next scene was this same schemer's last days. He had amassed great wealth during his miserable life—he had done so by grinding the poor to the very death. He had no soft place in that heart of stone, and now that hard conscience of his, when brought to face eternity, had no soft spot within that could give mercy to its own badness. Truly it is said that once awakened to its own badness, man's conscience