



Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team










PHILISTIA

BY

GRANT ALLEN





CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

      I. CHILDREN OF LIGHT
     II. THE COASTS OF THE GENTILES
    III. MAGDALEN QUAD
     IV. A LITTLE MUSIC
      V. ASKELON VILLA, GATH
     VI. DOWN THE RIVER
    VII. GHOSTLY COUNSEL
   VIII. IN THE CAMP OF THE PHILISTINES
     IX. THE WOMEN OF THE LAND
      X. THE DAUGHTERS OF CANAAN
     XI. CULTURE AND CULTURE
    XII. THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY
   XIII. YE MOUNTAINS OF GILBOA
    XIV. WHAT DO THESE HEBREWS HERE
     XV. EVIL TIDINGS
    XVI. FLAT REBELLION
   XVII. COME YE OUT AND BE YE SEPARATE!
  XVIII. A QUIET WEDDING
    XIX. INTO THE FIRE
     XX. LITERATURE, MUSIC, AND THE DRAMA
    XXI. OFF WITH THE OLD LOVE
   XXII. THE PHILISTINES TRIUMPH
  XXIII. THE STREETS OF ASKELON
   XXIV. THE CLOUDS BEGIN TO BREAK
    XXV. HARD PRESSED
   XXVI. IRRECLAIMABLE
  XXVII. RONALD COMES OF AGE
 XXVIII. TELL IT NOT IN GATH
   XXIX. A MAN AND A MAID
    XXX. THE ENVIRONMENT FINALLY TRIUMPHS
   XXXI. DE PROFUNDIS
  XXXII. PRECONTRACT OF MARRIAGE
 XXXIII. A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE
  XXXIV. HOPE
   XXXV. THE TIDE TURNS
  XXXVI. OUT OF THE HAND OF THE PHILISTINES
 XXXVII. LAND AT LAST: BUT WHAT LAND?




CHAPTER I.

CHILDREN OF LIGHT.


It was Sunday evening, and on Sundays Max Schurz, the chief of the
London Socialists, always held his weekly receptions. That night
his cosmopolitan refugee friends were all at liberty; his French
disciples could pour in from the little lanes and courts in Soho,
where, since the  Commune, they had plied their peaceful trades as
engravers, picture-framers, artists'-colourmen, models, pointers,
and so forth--for most of them were hangers-on in one way or another
of the artistic world; his German adherents could stroll round,
pipe in mouth, from their printing-houses, their ham-and-beef shops,
or their naturalists' chambers, where they stuffed birds or set up
exotic butterflies in little cabinets--for most of them were more
or less literary or scientific in their pursuits; and his few English
sympathisers,  chiefly dissatisfied philosophical Radicals of the
upper classes, could drop in casually for a chat and a smoke, on
their way home from the churches to which they had been dutifully
escorting their un-emancipated wives and sisters. Max Schurz kept
open house for all on Sunday evenings, and there was not a drawing-room
in London better filled than his with the very advanced and not
undistinguished set who alone had the much-prized entree of his
exclusive salon.

The salon itself did not form any component part of Max Schurz's
own private residence in any way. The great Socialist, the man whose
mandates shook the thrones of Russia and Austria, whose movements
spread terror in Paris and Berlin, whose dictates were even obeyed
in Kerry and in Chicago, occupied for his own use two small rooms
at the top of a shabby composite tenement in a doubtful district
of Marylebone. The little parlour where he carried on his trade of
a microscope-lens grinder would not have sufficed to hold one-tenth
of the eager half-washed crowd that pressed itself enthusiastically
upon him every Sunday. But a large room on the ground floor of the
tenement, opening towards the main street, was used during the
week by one of his French refugee friends as a dancing-saloon;
and in this room on every Sunday evening the uncrowned king of the
proletariate  Socialists was permitted to hold his royal levees.
Thither all that was best and truest in the socially rebellions
classes domiciled in London used to make its way; and there men
calmly talked over the ultimate chances of social revolutions which
would have made the hair of respectable Philistine Marylebone stand
stiffly on end, had it only known the rank political heresies that
were quietly hatching in its unconscious midst.

While Max Schurz's hall was rapidly filling with the polyglot crowd
of democratic solidarists, Ernest Le Breton and his brother were
waiting in the chilly little drawing-room