And our daughters fair ye have prisoned in the reeking
brothel’s pen!
And so for the sign of our murdered hopes our blood-red
banner see—
We come in the right of our new-born might to set
the people free!
Tremble, oh masters—tremble all who live
by others’ toil—
We come your dungeon walls to raze, your citadel to
spoil!
Yours is the power of club and jail, yours is the
axe and fire—
But ours is the hope of human hearts and the strength
of the soul’s desire!
Ours is the blazing banner, sweeping the sky along!
Ours the host, the marching host—hark to
our battle song!
Chanting of brotherhood, chanting of freedom, dreaming
the world to be—
We come in the right of our new-born might to set
the people free!
While the other members of the local scattered to
distribute the circulars, Everley and Friedrich escorted
Samuel home, and saw him safely in, and the door locked.
They had supplied him with some Socialist papers and
pamphlets, and he spent most of the next day devouring
these. They spread a picture of the whole wonderful
movement before him; they explained to him all the
mechanism of the cruel system, in the cogs of which
he had been caught.
It was all so very obvious that Samuel found himself
in a state of exasperation with the people who did
not yet understand it, and spent his time wrestling
in imagination with all those he had ever known:
with his brothers, and with Finnegan, and with Charlie
Swift, with Master Albert and Mr. Wygant, with Professor
Stewart and Dr. Vince. Most of all he labored
with Miss Gladys; and he pictured how it would be
after the Revolution, when he would be famous and she
would be poor, and he might magnanimously forgive
her!
And when Sophie came home, he explained it all to
her. It did not take much to make a revolutionist
out of Sophie. She had become quite thoroughly
what the Socialists called “class-conscious.”
The members of the local had been anxious about Samuel
all day. Everley had come in twice in the afternoon,
to make sure that he was safe; and he came over again
after supper, and said that Beggs and Lippman and
the Bartons and himself were coming to act as a body
guard to take Samuel to the meeting. The circulars
had created a tremendous sensation—the
whole town was talking about it, and the police were
furious at the way they had been outwitted.
So the hour of the meeting drew near. It was
as if a great shadow were gathering over them.
They were nervous and restless—Samuel pacing
the room, wandering about here and there.
His speech was seething within him. He saw before
him the eager multitude, and he was laying bare to
them the picture of their wrongs. So much depended
upon this speech! If he failed now, he failed
in everything—all that he had done before
has gone for nothing! Ah! if only one had a voice
that could reach the whole world—that could
shout these things into the ears of the oppressed!
