Chapter IV (14)

"The time will come when you will wish you had reserved that kiss for some other foot. Some one to whom it will all be new, who will shudder with the joy of it, who will meet you half way, who will believe all that you say, and say like things in fullness of heart. And I perhaps will see you, and know that in your heart you are sorry you gave something to me that you would have ungiven if you could."

He buried his face in his hands. "You do not love me at all," he said. "You do not believe me."

A curious softness came into the answer: "Oh, yes, dear, I believe you. Years ago I believed myself when I said the same sort of thing. But I told you I am getting old. I can not unmake what the years have made, nor bring back what they have stolen. I love you _for your face_", the words had a sting in them, "and for your soul too. And I am glad to be loved by you. But, do you know what I am thinking?"

He did not answer.

"I am thinking that as I sit here, beloved by you and others who are young and beautiful--it is no lie--in a--well, in a triumph I have not sought, but which I am human enough to be glad of, envied no doubt by those young girls,--I am thinking how the remorseless feet of Youth will tramp on me soon, and carry you away. And"--very slowly--"in my day of pain, you will not be near, nor the others. I shall be alone; age and pain are unlovely."

"You won't let me come near you," he said wildly. "I would do anything for you. I always want to do things for you to spare you, and you never let me. When you are in pain you will push me away."

A fairly exultant glitter flashed in her face. "Yes," she said, "I know my secret. That is how I have stayed young so long. See," she said, stretching out her arms, "other women at my age are past the love of men. Their affections have gone to children. And I have broken the law of nature and prolonged the love of youth because--I have been strong and stood alone. But there is an end. Things change, seasons change, you, I, all change; what's the use of saying 'Never--forever, forever--never,' like the old clock on the stairs? It's a big lie."

"I won't talk any more," he said, "but when the time comes you will see."

She nodded: "Yes, I will see."

"Do you think all people alike?"

"As like as ants. People are vessels which life fills and breaks, as it does trees and bees and other sorts of vessels. They play when they are little, and then they love and then they have children and then they die. Ants do the same."

"To be sure. But I don't deceive myself as to the scope of it."

The crowd were returning now, and by tacit consent they arose and joined the group. Down the road they jumped a fence into a field and had to cross a little stream. "Where is our bridge?" called the boys. "We made a bridge. Some one has stolen our bridge."

"Oh, come on," cried Davy, "let's jump it." Three ran and sprang; they landed laughing and taunting the rest. Bernard sought out his beloved. "Shall I help you over?" he asked.

"No," she said shortly, "help the girls," and brushing past him she jumped, falling a little short and muddying a foot, but scrambling up unaided. The rest debated seeking an advantageous point. At last they found a big stone in the middle, and pulling off his shoes, Bernard waded in the creek, helping the girls across. The smallest one, large-eyed and timid, clung to his arm and let him almost carry her over.

"He does it real natural," observed Davy, who was whisking about in the daisy field like some flashing butterfly.

They gathered daisies and laughed and sang and chattered till the sun went low. Then they gathered under a big tree and spread their lunch on the ground. And after they had eaten, the conversation lay between the sallow-faced woman and one of the older men, a clever conversation filled with quaint observations and curious sidelights. The boys sat all about the woman questioning her eagerly, but behind in the shadow of the drooping branches sat the girls, silent, unobtrusive, holding each other's hands. Now and then the talker cast a furtive glance from Bernard's rather withdrawn face to the faces in the shadow, and the enigmatic smile hovered and flitted over her lips.

* * * * *

Three years later on the anniversary of that summer day the woman sat at an upstairs window in the house on the little farm that was a reality now, the little co-operative farm where ten free men and women labored and loved. She had come with the others and done her best, but the cost of it, hard labor and merciless pain, was stamped on the face that looked from the window. She was watching Bernard's figure as it came swinging through the orchard. Presently he came in and up the stairs. His feet went past her door, then turned back irresolutely, and a low knock followed. Her eyebrows bent together almost sternly as she answered, "Come in."

He entered with a smile: "Can I do anything for you this morning?"

"No," she said quietly, "you know I like my own cranky ways. I--I'd rather do things myself." He nodded: "I know. I always get the same answer. Shall you go to the picnic? You surely will keep our foundation-day picnic?"

"Perhaps--later. And perhaps not." There was a curious tone of repression in the words.

"Well," he answered good-naturedly, "if you won't let me do anything for you, I'll have to find some one who will. Is Bella ready to go?"

"This half hour. Bella. Here is Bernard." And Bella came in. Bella, the timid girl with the brilliant complexion and gazelle soft eyes, Bella radiant in her youth and feminine daintiness, more lovely than she had been three years before.

She gave Bernard a lunch basket to carry and a shawl and a workbag and a sun umbrella, and when they went out she clung to his arm besides. She stopped near one of their own rose bushes and told him to choose a bud for her, and she put it coquettishly in her dark hair. The woman watched them till they disappeared down the lane; he had never once looked back. Then her mouth settled in a quiet sneer and she murmured: "How long is 'forever'? Three years." After a while she rose and crossed to an old mirror that hung on the opposite wall. Staring at the reflection it gave back, she whispered drearily: "You are ugly, you are eaten with pain! Do you still expect the due of youth and beauty? Did you not know it all long ago?" Then something flashed in the image, something as if the features had caught fire and burned. "I will not," she said hoarsely, her fingers clenching. "I will not surrender. Was it he I loved? It was his youth, his beauty, his life. And younger youth shall love me still, stronger life. I will not, I will not die alive." She turned away and ran down into the yard and out into the fields. She would not go on the common highway where all went, she would find a hard way through woods and over hills, and she would come there before them and sit and wait for them where the ways met. Bareheaded, ill-dressed and careless she ran along, finding a fierce pleasure in trampling and breaking the brush that impeded her. There was the road at last, and right ahead of her an old, old man hobbling along with bent back and eyes upon the ground. Just before him was a bad hole in the road; he stopped, irresolute, and looked around like a crippled insect stretching its antenna to find a way for its mangled feet. She called cheerily, "Let me help you." He looked up with dim blue eyes helplessly seeking. She led him slowly around the dangerous place, and then they sat down together on the little covered wooden bridge beyond.

"Ah!" murmured the old man, shaking his head, "it is good to be young." And there was the ghost of admiration in his watery eyes, as he looked at her tall straight figure.

"Yes," she answered sadly, looking away down the road where she saw Bella's white dress fluttering, "it is good to be young."

The lovers passed without noticing them, absorbed in each other. Presently the old man hobbled away. "It will come to that too," she muttered looking after him. "The husks of life!"

The Old Shoemaker

He had lived a long time there, in the house at the end of the alley, and no one had ever known that he was a great man. He was lean and palsied and had a crooked back; his beard was grey and ragged and his eyebrows came too far forward; there were seams and flaps in the empty, yellow old skin, and he gasped horribly when he breathed, taking hold of the lintel of the door to steady himself when he stepped out on the broken bricks of the alley. He lived with a frightful old woman who scrubbed the floors of the rag-shop, and drank beer, and growled at the children who poked fun at her. He had lived with her eighteen years, she said, stroking the furry little kitten that curled up in her neck as if she had been beautiful.

Eighteen years they had been drinking and quarreling together--and suffering. She had seen the flesh sucking away from the bones, and the skin falling in upon them, and the long, lean fingers growing more lean and trembling, as they crooked round his shoemaking tools.

It was very strange she had not grown thin; the beer had bloated her, and rolls of weak, shaking flesh lapped over the ridges of her uncouth figure. Her pale, lack-lustre blue eyes wandered aimlessly about as she talked: No--he had never told her, not even in their quarrels, not even when they were drunken together, of the great Visitor who had come up the little alley, yesterday, walking so stately over the sun-beaten bricks, taking no note of the others, and coming in at the door without asking. She had not expected such an one; how could she? But the Old Shoemaker had shown no surprise at the Mighty One. He smiled and set down the teacup he was holding, and entered into communion with the Stranger. He noticed no others, but continued to smile; and the infinite dignity of the Unknown fell upon him, and covered the wasted old limbs and the hard, wizened face, so that all we who entered, bowed, and went out, and did not speak.

But we understood, for the Mighty One gave understanding without words. We had been in the presence of Freedom! We had stood at the foot of Tabor, and seen this worn, old, world-soiled soul lose all its dross and commonplace, and pass upward smiling, to the Transfiguration. In the hands of the Mighty One the crust had crumbled, and dropped away in impalpable powder. Souls should be mixed of it no more. Only that which passed upward, the fine white playing flame, the heart of the long, life-long watches of patience, should rekindle there in the perennial ascension of the great Soul of Man.

Where the White Rose Died

It was late at night, a raw, rough-shouldering night, that shoved men in corners as having no business in the street, and the few people in the northbound car drew themselves into themselves, radiating hedgehog quills of feeling at their neighbors. Presently there came in a curious figure, clothed in the drapery of its country's honor, the blue flannel flapping very much about its legs. I looked at its feet first, because they were so very small and girlish, and because the owner of them adjusted the flapping pants with the coquetry of a maiden switching her skirts. Then I glanced at the hands: they also were small and womanish, and constantly in motion. At last, the face, expecting a fresh young boy's, not long away from some country village. It was the sunk, seamed face of a man of forty-five, seared, and with iron-gray eyebrows, but lit by twinkling young eyes, that gleamed at everything good-humoredly. The sailor's pancake with its official lettering was pushed rakishly down and forward, and looking at hat and wearer, one instinctively turned milliner and decorated the "shape" with aigrette and bows,--they would nod so accordant with the flirting head. Presently the restless hands went up and gave the hat another tilt, went down and straightened the "divided skirt," folded themselves an instant while the little feet began tattooing the car floor, and the scintillant eyes looked general invitation all round the car. No perceptible shrinkage of quills, however, so the eyes wandered over to their image in the plate glass, and directly the hat got another coquettish dip, and the skirts another flirt and settle.

The conductor came in: some one to talk to at last! "Will you let me off at Ninth and Race?"

The dim chill of a smile shivered over the other faces in the car. Ninth and Race! Who ever heard a defender of his country's glory ask a conductor on a street car in Philadelphia for any other point than Ninth and Race!

The conductor nodded appreciatively. "Just come to the city, I suppose," he said interlocutively.

The sailor plucked off his hat, exhibiting his label with child-like vanity: "S. S. Alabama. Here for three days just. Been over in New York."

"Like it?" remarked the conductor, prolonging his stay inside the car.

The hat went on again, proudly. "Sixteen years in the service. Yes, sir. _Six_-teen years. The service is all right. The service is good enough for me. Live there. Expect to die there. Sixteen years. You won't forget to let me off at Ninth and Race."

"No. Going to see Chinatown?"

"Sure. Chinatown's all right. Seen it in Hong Kong. Want to see it in Philadelphia."

O cradle of my country's freedom! These are your defenders,--these to whom your chief delight is your stews and your brothels, your fantans and your opium dens, your sinks of filth and your cesspools of slime! Let them only be as they were "at Hong Kong"--or worse--and "the service" asks no more. He will live in it and die in it, and it's good enough for him. Oh, not your old-time patriotic legends, nor the halls of the great Rebel Birth, nor the solemn, silent Bell that once proclaimed liberty throughout the land, nor the piteous relics of your dead wise men, nor any dream of your bright, pure young days when yet you were "a fair greene country towne," swims up in the vision of "the service" when he sets his foot within your borders, filling him with devotion to Our Lady Liberty, and drawing him to New World pilgrim shrines. Not these, oh no, not these. But your leper spot, your Old World plague-house, your breeding-ground of pest-begotten human vermin! So there is Chinatown, and electric glare enough upon it, and rat-holes enough within it, "the service" is good enough for him,--he will shoot to order in your defense till he dies!

Rat-tat-tat went the little feet upon the floor, and the pancake got another rakish pull. Presently the active figure squared sharply about and faced the door. The car had stopped, and a drunken man was staggering in. The sailor caught him good-humoredly in his arms, swung him about, and seated him beside himself with a comforting "Now you're all right, sir; sit right here, my friend."

The drunkard had a sodden, stupid face and bleary eyes from which the alcohol was oozing. In his shaking hand he held a bunch of delicate half-opened roses, hothouse roses, cream and pink; the odor of them drifted faintly through the car like a whiff of summer. Something like a sigh of relaxation exhaled from the hedge-hogs, and a dozen commiserating eyes were fastened on the ill-fated flowers,--so fragile, so sweet, so inoffensive, so wantonly sacrificed. The hot, unsteady, clutching hand had already burned the stems, and the pale, helpless faces of the roses drooped heavily.

The drunkard, full of beery effervescence, cast a bubbling look over the car, and spying a young lady opposite, suddenly stood up and offered the bouquet to her. She stared resolutely through him, seeing and hearing nothing, not even the piteous child-blossoms, with their pleading, downbent heads, and with a confused muttering of "No offense, no offense, you know," the man sank back again. As he did so the uncertain fingers released one stem, and a cream-white bloom went fluttering down, like a butterfly with broken wings. There it lay, jolting back and forth on the dirty floor, and no one dared to pick it up.

Presently the drunkard sopped over comfortably on the sailor's shoulder, who, with a generally directed wink of bonhomie, settled him easily, bestowing a sympathetic pat upon the bloated cheek. The conductor disturbed the situation by asking for his fare. The drunkard stupidly rubbed his eyes and offered his flowers in place of the nickel. Again they were refused; and after a fluctuant search in his pockets between intervals of nodding, the dirty, over-fingered bit of metal was produced, accepted--and still the dying blossoms shivered in the torturer's hands.

He was drowsing off again, when, by some sudden turn of the obstructed machinery in his skull, his lids opened and he struggled up; the image of myself must have swum suddenly across the momentarily acting eye-nerve, and with gurgling deference, at the immanent risk of losing his equilibrium once more, he proffered the bouquet to me, grabbing the heads and presenting them stem-end towards. A smothered snuffle went round the car.

I wanted them, Oh, how I wanted them! My heart beat suffocatingly with the sense of baffled pity and rage and cowardice. Who was he, that drunken sot, with his smirching, wabbling hand, that I should fear to take the roses from him? Why must I grind my teeth and sit there helpless, while those beautiful things were crushed and blasted and torn in living fragments? I could take them home, I could give them drink, they would lift up their heads, they would open wide, for days they would make the room sweet, and the pale, soft glory of their inimitable petals would shine like a luminous promise across the winter. Nobody wanted them, nobody cared; this sodden beast in the flare-up of his consciousness wished to be quit of them. _Why_ might I not take them? Something sharp bit and burned my eyelids as I glanced at the one on the floor. The conductor had stepped on it and crushed it open; and there lay the marvelous creamy leaves, curled at their edges like kiss-seeking lips, each with its glory greater than Solomon's, all fouled and ruined in the human reek.

And I dared not save the others! Miserable coward!

I forced my hands tighter in my pockets and turned my head away towards the outside night and the backward slipping street. Between me and it, a dim reflection wavered, the image of the thing that stood there before me; and somewhere, like a far-off, dulled bell, I heard the words, "And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him." The sailor, no doubt with the kindly intention of relieving me from annoyance, and not averse to play with anything, made pretence of seizing the roses. Then the drunkard, in an abandon of generosity, began tearing off the blossoms by the heads, scrutinizing, and casting each away as unfit for the exalted service of his "friend," till the latter reaching out managed to get hold of a white one with a stem. He trimmed its sheltering green carefully, brought out a long black pin, stuck it through the stalk, and fastened the pale shining head against his dark blue blouse. All hedgehoggery smiled. We had thrust the roses through with our forbidding quills,--what matter that a barbarian nail crucified this last one? The drunkard slept again, limply holding his scattering bunch of headless stems and torn foliage. Pink and cream the petals strewed the floor. Where was the loving hand that had nursed them to bloom in this hard, unwonted weather; loved and nursed and--_sold_ them?

"Ninth and Race," sang out the conductor. The sailor sprang up with a merry grin, bowed gaily to everyone, twinkled his fingers in the air with a blithe "Ta ta; I'm off for Chinatown," as he slid through the door, and was away in a trice, tripping down to the pestiferous sink that was awaiting him somewhere. And on his breast he wore the pallid flower that had offered its stainless beauty to me, that I had loved,--and had not loved enough to save. The rest were dead; but that one--somewhere down there in a den where even the gas-choked lights were leering like prostitutes' eyes, down there in that trough of swill and swine, that pure, still thing had yet to die.

_An Important Human Document_

PRISON MEMOIRS
OF
AN ANARCHIST

By
ALEXANDER BERKMAN

An earnest portrayal of the revolutionary psychology of the author, as manifested by his _Attentat_ during the great labor struggle of Homestead, in 1892.

The whole truth about prisons has never before been told as this book tells it. The MEMOIRS deal frankly and intimately with prison life in its various phases.

$1.25, BY MAIL $1.40

MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION
74 WEST 119TH STREET
NEW YORK

ANARCHISM
_=And Other Essays=_

By EMMA GOLDMAN

Including a biographic SKETCH of the author's interesting career, a splendid PORTRAIT, and twelve of her most important lectures, some of which have been suppressed by the police authorities of various cities. This book expresses the most advanced ideas on social questions--economics, politics, education and sex.

_Second Revised Edition_

Emma Goldman--the notorious, insistent, rebellious, enigmatical Emma Goldman--has published her first book, "Anarchism and Other Essays." In it she records "the mental and soul struggles of twenty-one years," and recites all the articles of that strange and subversive creed in behalf of which she has suffered imprisonment, contumely and every kind of persecution. The book is a vivid revelation of a unique personality. It appears at a time when Anarchistic ideas are undoubtedly is the ascendant throughout the world.--_Current Literature._

Emma Goldman's book on "Anarchism and Other Essays" ought to be read by all so-called respectable women, and adopted as a test-book by women's clubs throughout the country.... For courage, persistency, self-effacement, self-sacrifice in the pursuit of her object, she has hitherto been unsurpassed among the world's women.... Repudiating as she does practically every tenet of what the modern State holds good, she stands for some of the noblest traits in human nature.--_Life._

Every thoughtful person ought to read this volume of papers by the foremost American Anarchist. In whatever way the book may modify or strengthen the opinion already held by its readers, there is no doubt that a careful reading of it will tend to bring about greater social sympathy. It will help the public to understand a group of serious-minded and morally strenuous individuals, and also to feel the spirit that underlies the most radical tendencies of the great labor movement of our day.--Hutchins Hapgood in _The Bookman._

Price $1.00 By Mail $1.10

_ORDER THROUGH YOUR BOOK DEALER OR SEND TO_

Mother Earth Publishing Association
74 WEST 119th STREET, NEW YORK

The Modern Drama
_Its Social and Revolutionary Significance_

By
EMMA GOLDMAN

This volume contains a critical analysis of the Modern Drama, in its relation to the social and revolutionary tendencies of the age. It embraces fifty plays of twenty-four of the foremost dramatists of six different countries, dealing with them not from the technical point of view, but from the standpoint of their universal and dynamic appeal to the human race.

CONTENTS
PREFACE
THE SCANDINAVIAN DRAMA: Ibsen, Strindberg, Björnson
THE GERMAN DRAMA: Hauptmann, Sudermann, Wedekind
THE ENGLISH DRAMA: Shaw, Pinero, Galsworthy, Kennedy, Sowerby
THE IRISH DRAMA: Yeats, Lady Gregory, Robinson
THE RUSSIAN DRAMA: Tolstoy, Tchekhov, Gorki, Tchirikov, Andreyev
INDEX

Price $1.00 net. By mail $1.15

Mother Earth Publishing Association
74 West 119th Street
NEW YORK

WORKS BY PETER KROPOTKIN

The Great French Revolution, 1789-1793 . . $2.00
Mutual Aid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.00
Memoirs of a Revolutionist . . . . . . . . 2.00
Russian Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.00
Conquest of Bread . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.00
Fields, Factories and Workshops (cloth) . .75
Modern Science and Anarchism (new enlarged
edition) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
The Terror in Russia . . . . . . . . . . . .15
The State: Its Historic Rôle . . . . . . . .10
Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal . . . .05
Anarchist Communism . . . . . . . . . . . .05
The Place of Anarchism in Social Evolution .05
The Commune of Paris . . . . . . . . . . . .05
The Wage System . . . . . . . . . . . . . .05
Expropriation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .05
Law and Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . .05
War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .05
An Appeal to the Young . . . . . . . . . . .05

The First Five Books, 10 Cents Postage Extra
The Complete Set, $9.00

MOTHER EARTH SERIES

Free Speech for Radicals
Theodore Schroeder .25

Psychology of Political Violence
Emma Goldman .10

Anarchism: What It Really Stands For
Emma Goldman .10

Syndicalism: The Modern Menace to Capitalism
Emma Goldman .05

Marriage and Love Emma Goldman .10

Patriotism Emma Goldman .05

Victims of Morality and the Failure of Christianity
Emma Goldman .10

Anarchy Versus Socialism Emma Goldman .10

Anarchism and Malthus C. L. James .05

The Modern School Francisco Ferrer .05

A Talk About Anarchist Communism Between
Two Workers Enrico Malatesta .05

Syndicalism E. C. Ford and Wm. Z. Foster .10

MISCELLANEOUS

The Life, Trial and Death of Francisco Ferrer
William Archer $1.50

Anarchism--An able and impartial exposition
of Anarchism Paul Eltzbacher 1.50

What Is Property?--A brilliant arraignment
of property and the State
Pierre Proudhon 2.00

The Ego and His Own Max Stirner .75

The Life of Albert Parsons 1.50

Speeches of the Chicago Anarchists Cloth, .75
Paper cover, .30

God and the State Michael Bakunin .25

Francisco Ferrer: His Life, Work and
Martyrdom .15

The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School
Francisco Ferrer .75

News From Nowhere William Morris .50

Useful Work Versus Useless Toil
William Morris .05

Monopoly William Morris .05

Evolution and Revolution Elisée Reclus .05

The Bomb--A novel vividly portraying the
Chicago Haymarket Events of 1887
Frank Harris .75

The Ballad of Reading Gaol Oscar Wilde .10

The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Oscar Wilde .10

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
H. D. Thoreau .15

By
Price Mail
Liberty and the Great Libertarians
Compiled by C. T. Sprading 1.50 1.60

The Science of Society
Stephen Pearl Andrews 1.50 1.65

England's Ideal Edward Carpenter 1.00 1.10

Love's Coming of Age Edward Carpenter 1.00 1.10

Syndicalism and the Co-Operative
Commonwealth
E. Pataud and E. Pouget (cloth) 1.00 1.10
Paper, .75 .80

My Life in Prison Donald Lowrie 1.25 1.40

Free Political Institutions L. Spooner .50 .55

Message of Anarchy Jethro Brown .25 .27

On Liberty of the Press James Mill .15 .17

Political Socialism B. E. Nillson .10 .12

Land and Liberty W. C. Owen .10 .12

The Social Evil Dr. J. H. Greer .10 .12

A Vindication of Natural Society (cloth)
Edmund Burke .50

Non-Governmental Society Edward Carpenter .15

Concentration of Capital W. Tcherkesoff .05

The Pyramid of Tyranny
F. Domela Nieuwenhuis .05

Anarchy Enrico Malatesta .05

The Basis of Trades Unionism Emile Pouget .05

FREE SPEECH SERIES

Obscene Literature and Compulsory Law
(_Sold only to libraries and persons
known to belong to the learned
professions._)
Theodore Schroeder $5.00

Free Press Anthology Theodore Schroeder 2.00

Due Process of Law Theodore Schroeder .25

Freedom of the Press and Obscene
Literature
Theodore Schroeder .25

In Defense of Free Speech
Theodore Schroeder .10

Liberal Opponents and Conservative
Friends of Unabridged Freedom of
Speech
Theodore Schroeder .10

Paternal Legislation Theodore Schroeder .05

Our Vanishing Liberty of the Press
Theodore Schroeder .05

Law-Breaking by the Police Alden Freeman .05

The Fight for Free Speech Alden Freeman .05

THE ONLY ANARCHIST MONTHLY
IN AMERICA

MOTHER
EARTH

A revolutionary literary magazine devoted to Anarchist thought in sociology, economics, education, and life.

Articles by leading Anarchists and radical thinkers.--International Notes giving a summary of the revolutionary activities in various countries.--Reviews of modern books and the drama.

TEN CENTS A COPY
ONE DOLLAR A YEAR

EMMA GOLDMAN _Publisher_
ALEXANDER BERKMAN _Editor_

74 West 119th Street
NEW YORK

Bound Volumes 1906-1914, Two Dollars Per Volume