[i]

THE
Barton Experiment

BY THE AUTHOR OF “HELEN’S BABIES”

NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
182 Fifth Avenue
1877

[ii]

Copyright
By G. P. Putnam’s Sons
1876

[iii]

PREFACE.

This book is not offered to the public as a finishedromance, or even as an attempt at one;the persons who appear on its pages are not onlynot those who inspire pretty stories, but they areso literally the representatives of individuals whohave lived that they cannot well be separated fromtheir natural surroundings. It has seemed to theauthor that if American people could behold someof the men who have astonished themselves andothers by their success as reformers, individualeffort would not be so rare in communities whereorganization is not so easily effected, and whereunfortunates are ruined in the midst of their neighbors,while organization is being hoped for. It ismore than possible, too, that the accepted businessprinciple that the pocket is the source of power, isnot as clearly recognized as it should be in reformmovements, and that the struggles of some of the[iv]characters outlined herein may throw some lightupon this unwelcome but absolute fact.

The ideal reformer, the man of great principles andeloquent arguments, fails to appear in these pages,not because of any doubts as to his existence, butbecause his is a mental condition to which menattain without much stimulus from without, whileit need not be feared that in the direction of individualeffort and self-denial, the greatest amount ofsuggestion will ever urge any one too far.

[v]

CONTENTS.