So I put it in the office and was about to say good-bye, when my friend said to me:
“Come in, partner, and have a drink before you go”—and he pointed to a nearby saloon.
“Thank you,” I answered heartily, for I knew it was as fine a bit of hospitality as he could offer me, “thank you, but I must find my friend before it gets too late.”
“Aw, come on now,” he cried, taking my arm. “Sure you'll be better off for a bit o' warmth inside.”
I had hard work to get away from them, and I am as sure as can be that they would have found supper and a bed for me if they had known I needed either.
“Come agin,” Healy shouted after me, “we're glad to see a farmer any toime.”
My way led me quickly out of the well-groomed and glittering main streets of the town. I passed first through several blocks of quiet residences, and then came to a street near the river which was garishly lighted, and crowded with small, poor shops and stores, with a saloon on nearly every corner. I passed a huge, dark, silent box of a mill, and I saw what I never saw before in a city, armed men guarding the streets.
Although it was growing late—it was after nine o'clock—crowds of people were still parading the streets, and there was something intangibly restless, something tense, in the very atmosphere of the neighbourhood. It was very plain that I had reached the strike district. I was about to make some further inquiries for the headquarters of the mill men or for Bill Hahn personally, when I saw, not far ahead of me, a black crowd of people reaching out into the street. Drawing nearer I saw that an open space or block between two rows of houses was literally black with human beings, and in the centre on a raised platform, under a gasolene flare, I beheld my friend of the road, Bill Hahn. The overcoat and the hat with the furry ears had disappeared, and the little man stood there bare-headed, before that great audience.
My experience in the world is limited, but I have never heard anything like that speech for sheer power. It was as unruly and powerful and resistless as life itself. It was not like any other speech I ever heard, for it was no mere giving out by the orator of ideas and thoughts and feelings of his own. It seemed rather—how shall I describe it?—as though the speaker was looking into the very hearts of that vast gathering of poor men and poor women and merely telling them what they themselves felt, but could not tell. And I shall never forget the breathless hush of the people or the quality of their responses to the orator's words. It was as though they said, “Yes, yes” with a feeling of vast relief—“Yes, yes—at last our own hopes and fears and desires are being uttered—yes, yes.”
As for the orator himself, he held up one maimed hand and leaned over the edge of the platform, and his undistinguished face glowed with the white light of a great passion within. The man had utterly forgotten himself.