It seemed to astonish the group around me: white faces turned my way.
But it would have been difficult to dash that swarthy young man. He was as full of questions as a porcupine is full of quills.
“Well, sir,” said he, “if I can prove to you that you are a slave, will you believe it?”
“No,” I said, “unless you make me feel like a slave, too! No man is a slave who does not feel slavish.”
But I was no match for that astonishing young orator; and he had the advantage over me of a soap box! Moreover, at that moment, the keen-eyed assistant, never missing an opportunity, offered me one of his little red books.
“If you can read this without feeling a slave,” he remarked, “you're John D. himself in disguise.”
I bought his little red book and put it with the pamphlet of the freethinker, and the tract of the God-fearing man, and stepped out of that group, feeling no more servile than when I went in. And I said to myself:
“This, surely, is a curious place to be in.”
For I was now strangely interested in these men of the eddy.
“There are more gods preached here,” I said, “than ever were known on the Acropolis.”