McGregor sat by the wall looking at his guests and
wondering what he would say. He was a little
amused and half hurt and felt like a man who has had
a Sunday School scholar stop him on the street to ask
him about the welfare of his soul. He thought
of Edith Carson waiting for him in her store on Monroe
Street, of the angry miners standing in the saloon
in Coal Creek plotting to break into the restaurant
while he sat with the hammer in his hands waiting
for battle, of old Mother Misery walking at the heels
of the soldiers’ horses through the streets
of the mining village, and last of all of the terrible
certainty that these bright-eyed boys would be destroyed,
swallowed up by the huge commercial city in which
they were to live.
“It means a lot to be one of us when a chap
gets out into the world,” the curly-haired youth
said. “It helps you get on, get in with
the right people. You can’t go on without
men you know. You ought to get in with the best
fellows.” He hesitated and looked at the
floor. “I don’t mind telling you,”
he said with an outburst of frankness, “that
one of our stronger men—Whiteside, the mathematician—wanted
us to have you. He said you were worth while.
He thought you ought to see us and get to know us
and that we ought to see and get to know you.”
McGregor got up and took his hat from a nail on the
wall. He felt the utter futility of trying to
express what was in his mind and walked down the stairs
to the street with the file of boys following in embarrassed
silence and stumbling in the darkness of the hallway
at his heels. At the street door he stopped and
faced them, struggling to put his thoughts into words.
“I can’t do what you ask,” he said.
“I like you and like your asking me to come
in with you, but I’m going to quit the University.”
His voice softened. “I would like to have
you for friends,” he added. “You
say a man needs to know people after awhile. Well,
I would like to know you while you are what you are
now. I don’t want to know you after you
become what you will become.”
McGregor turned and ran down the remaining steps to
the stone sidewalk and went rapidly up the street.
A stern hard look was in his face and he knew he would
spend a silent night thinking of what had happened.
“I hate hitting boys,” he thought as he
hurried away to his evening’s work at the restaurant.
CHAPTER III
When McGregor was admitted to the bar and ready to
take his place among the thousands of young lawyers
scattered over the Chicago loop district he half drew
back from beginning the practice of his profession.
To spend his life quibbling over trifles with other
lawyers was not what he wanted. To have his place
in life fixed by his ability in quibbling seemed to
him hideous.
Night after night he walked alone in the streets thinking
of the matter. He grew angry and swore.
Sometimes he was so stirred by the meaninglessness
of whatever way of life offered itself that he was
tempted to leave the city and become a tramp, one of
the hordes of adventurous dissatisfied souls who spend
their lives drifting back and forth along the American
railroads.
Copyrights
Marching Men from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
