Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/321

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THE FAIRY ISLAND.
311

have contributed something towards solving a vexed social problem, and towards reconciling, by combining them, the interests of capital and labour. Life need no longer be a hopeless drudgery for any of our people, while the thrifty secure the due reward of their self-denial."


Dr. Courtenay did not witness the fuller developments of his "New Order."

"It shall increase, I must decrease," he was wont to say. "My life is spent. My work is done." Ere twelve months had elapsed, he prepared to bid farewell to the scenes of his disinterested labours.

The distrust of him, when he was on his trial, the domestic bereavement he had suffered, the conviction that his communities should now learn to govern themselves, rendered him impervious to all requests that he should remain.

"I have forgiven them," he would gently but firmly say, "but those curses poured ignorantly on my head ring in my ears, and will do so to my dying day. I do not blame you. I accept the inevitable. No man ever yet served the people without dying, or being prepared to do so, for them—perhaps by them. I shall return to the palm groves that sheltered me when man had cast me off, and was hurling anathemas on my head. I want you to know that you cannot distrust a friend and retain him; that to foster love is of more worth than to win wealth. Ah! escape as you can from the spirit of selfishness, greed, and distrust that has marked and doomed the 'Old System.' Go forth to welcome the spirit of trust and love that must characterize the new."


Elms served the ten years to which he was sentenced, then disappeared.