“Well, it takes to do that thrick what most av us hevn’t got; ut takes brains, sor—ut takes brains!”
“Why don’t you have brains, then?”
He looked dumbly at me, and hung his head.
“I dunno—I dunno,” he muttered.
The men at the Bismarck needed no urging to attend the meeting the following Sunday. Grogan had told his story; they were anxious to hear mine. The room was crowded to suffocation. They stood on the benches; they sat on the window-sills—everywhere; from all directions, the eyes of that dull, heavy human mass were penetrating me.
I was frank and explicit in my analysis of the experiment. I had no idea that Grogan would speak, but he did, and his speech was pointed.
“Whin ye talk religion, mister,” he said, “ye’re O.K.; but whin ye say we’re lazy hobos, all av us, ye’re spakin’ round the rim av yer hat!”
Grogan made the crowd laugh when he told them how I had been turned away from shops and factories.
“Some av us poor divils hev done that same,” he said, “fur weeks—until, begobs, we wisht we wur dead or hung or anythin’!”
I was about to close the meeting, when an old man known as “Judge” shuffled out to the front and asked permission to speak. He was a man of education whom I had not hitherto been able to engage in conversation.