Fifteen feet in front of me two men staggered.  It seemed to me that one of them had been ripped in twain.  He fell and the other fell on top of him.  Instantly the policemen around me seemed crazed:  as I staggered to my feet one of them struck me a terrific blow with his club.  The blow landed between my shoulders, but glanced upward, striking me on the back of the head.  I tumbled over, dazed, but the thought that his next blow would murder me seemed to give me superhuman strength and I ran.  As I turned he attacked another man and I thought I was free.  I was mistaken, however, for he gave chase and if I had not escaped into the crowd I would have fared badly at his hands.

My nerves were so badly shattered that on the way to my room I fell several times.  The following Sunday night the Civic Federation packed our meeting with their speakers.

Mr. Gompers’s representative in New York was the first man put up.  He was furnished with quotations from alleged Socialist writers on the question of religion.  Then a woman from Boston who had once been a Socialist, sent a note to me—­I was presiding—­asking for extended time.  I was the only Socialist in the place who knew what was going on.

The newspapers had all been “tipped off,” as the Herald reporter told me later.  The discussion waxed so warm that fifty people were on their feet at once, shouting for recognition.

Humour in such a situation is a tremendous relief.  I managed to inject some into the discussion and it was like grease to a cartwheel.  In a humorous way I turned the light on the Civic Federation and the audience laughed.  Next day every newspaper in New York had an account of the meeting.  From that time until the end of the first year of the meeting the papers reported not only what happened but much that never happened.  Most of them were humorous in their treatment.  The Marceline of the press gave us much space in its characteristic style.

The result was that we were forced to have policemen guard the door so that when the chapel was full the crowd unable to gain admittance could be dispersed.  We admitted by ticket for some weeks, but the plan didn’t work well.  Of course, many who came were moved solely by curiosity, but for two years the chapel has been filled at every meeting.  On the wildest winter nights it looked sometimes as if the choir was to be my only audience, yet when the after-meeting opened, the place was as full as usual.

The Sunday evening service is designed to be of special helpfulness to working people; it is an extra service permitted by the canons of the church, and in this instance directed to helpful and constructive social criticism.  The discourses have not been theological in any sense, but I have seen men and women converted, experiencing a change of heart in exactly the same manner as people are converted in revival meetings.  The same energies of the soul were released and the same results obtained with this extra consideration, that the change was a new attitude toward society as well as a change of heart.