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[Illustration: "_THE FAIR AND SOMETIMES UNCERTAIN DAUGHTER OF THE HOUSE
OF MILBREY_." (See page 182.)]




THE SPENDERS

A TALE OF THE THIRD GENERATION

BY

HARRY LEON WILSON



_Illustrated by_ O'NEILL LATHAM

1902




To L. L. J.




FOREWORD

The wanderers of earth turned to her--outcast of the older lands--
With a promise and hope in their pleading, and she reached them pitying
  hands;
And she cried to the Old-World cities that drowse by the Eastern main:
"Send me your weary, house-worn broods and I'll send you Men again!
Lo, here in my wind-swept reaches, by my marshalled peaks of snow,
Is room for a larger reaping than your o'ertilled fields can grow.
Seed of the Main Seed springing to stature and strength in my sun,
Free with a limitless freedom no battles of men have won,"
For men, like the grain of the corn fields, grow small in the huddled
  crowd,
And weak for the breath of spaces where a soul may speak aloud;
For hills, like stairways to heaven, shaming the level track,
And sick with the clang of pavements and the marts of the trafficking
  pack.
Greatness is born of greatness, and breadth of a breadth profound;
The old Antaean fable of strength renewed from the ground
Was a human truth for the ages; since the hour of the Edenbirth
That man among men