The Transgressors eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 268 pages of information about The Transgressors.

The Transgressors eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 268 pages of information about The Transgressors.

“Men of Wilkes-Barre, again I tell you, to-day you have been delivered from serfdom.  Act as men, not as brutes.

“Choose some one to be your leader and let him direct you until to each of you is given the opportunity to vote for the laws that you may desire.

  “With blare of trumpet and with tap of drum
  Barbaric nations pay to Mars his due,
  When victory crowns their arms.  To him they sue
  For privilege to war, though Mercy’s thumb
  Bids them as victors, rather to be mum,
  And show a noble spirit to the foe;
  To vaunt not at their fellow-creature’s woe: 
  O’er victory only doth the savage thrum! 
  They conquer twice who from excess abstain;
  The gentle nation that is forced to war,
  In triumph seeks to hide, and put afar
  All vestiges of carnage, and restore
  Peace in the land, that men may turn again
  To worthy toil, as they were wont before.

“Labour is your heritage; return to it.”

He ends in a tumult of enthusiasm.

The multitude has been led from one emotion to another with such rapidity that they are fairly bewildered.

Two things only are clear in all minds.  Trueman, the man who has become their most faithful champion, assures them that now they are to be free; that they are to be made the sharers in the wealth they create; he also tells them to select a leader.

By a spontaneous decision Trueman is the name that comes to every lip.

“Trueman!  Trueman!  You are the man to lead us.”

The cry “Trueman!” sweeps through the crowd.  It rises in an acclaim the like of which has never been heard before.

Men rush toward the orator and pick him off his feet.  He is placed on the shoulders of the stalwart miners whom his eloquence and logic has won, and is borne in triumph at the head of the procession that goes to bury Carl Metz.

The millionaire’s corpse lies on the steps of his late mansion.  Clinging to it in the desperation of outraged womanhood, is Ethel.  She had crept from the house while the eloquence of Trueman’s words held the mob enraptured.

As Trueman is being borne in triumph down the steps his eyes rest on the terrible picture presented by the dead magnate and his daughter.  In an instant the champion of justice forms a resolve.  His heart and mind have a common impulse—­Purdy’s body must be saved from desecration; it must be buried with that of Metz.

“Pick up that body,” he orders of the men who surround him.  “It must be buried with Metz.”

In his voice there is a ring of command that none dares to question.  As the miners stoop to lift the corpse Ethel utters a cry of anguish that pierces the hearts of even the most hardened men.  It is the wail of humanity protesting against anarchy.

By a vigorous effort Trueman frees himself from the miners who are carrying him on their shoulders.  He is at the side of Ethel in a moment.

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Project Gutenberg
The Transgressors from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.