To go down through the
social system as had Susan from her original place well up
among the classes is like descending from the beautiful dining
room of the palace where the meat is served in taste and
refinement upon costly dishes by well mannered servants to
attractively dressed people--descending along the various stages
of the preparation of the meat, at each stage less of
refinement and more of coarseness, until one at last arrives at
the slaughter pen. The shambles, stinking and reeking blood
and filth! The shambles, with hideous groan or shriek, or more
hideous silent look of agony! The shambles of society where
the beauty and grace and charm of civilization are created out
of noisome sweat and savage toil, out of the health and
strength of men and women and children, out of their ground up
bodies, out of their ground up souls. Susan knew those regions
well. She had no theories about them, no resentment against
the fortunate classes, no notion that any other or better
system might be possible, any other or better life for the
masses. She simply accepted life as she found it, lived it as
best she could.
Throughout the masses of mankind life is sustained by
illusions--illusions of a better lot tomorrow, illusions of a
heaven beyond a grave, where the nightmare, life in the body,
will end and the reality, life in the spirit, will begin. She
could not join the throngs moving toward church and synagogue
to indulge in their dream that the present was a dream from
which death would be a joyful awakening.
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