"We've been figuring out this proposition of Mr. Vedder's. Your idea is all right, and it would be a fine thing if we could really get together as you suggest upon terms of common understanding and friendship."
"Just what Mr. Vedder said," I exclaimed.
"Yes," he continued, "it's all right in theory; but in this case it simply won't work. Don't you see it's got to be war? Your friend and I could probably understand each other--but this is a class war. It's all or nothing with us, and your friend Vedder knows it as well as we do."
After some further argument and explanation, I said:
"I see: and this is Socialism."
"Yes," said the great R--- D---, "this is Socialism."
"And it's force you would use," I said.
"It's force THEY use," he replied.
After I left the strike headquarters that evening--for it was almost dark before I parted with the committee--I walked straight out through the crowded streets, so absorbed in my thoughts that I did not know in the least where I was going. The street lights came out, the crowds began to thin away, I heard a strident song from a phonograph at the entrance to a picture show, and as I passed again in front of the great, dark, many-windowed mill which had made my friend Vedder a rich man I saw a sentinel turn slowly at the corner. The light glinted on the steel of his bayonet. He had a fresh, fine, boyish face.
"We have some distance yet to go in this world," I said to myself, "no man need repine for lack of good work ahead."
It was only a little way beyond this mill that an incident occurred which occupied probably not ten minutes of time, and yet I have thought about it since I came home as much as I have thought about any other incident of my pilgrimage. I have thought how I might have acted differently under the circumstances, how I could have said this or how I ought to have done that--all, of course, now to no purpose whatever. But I shall not attempt to tell what I ought to have done or said, but what I actually did do and say on the spur of the moment.
It was in a narrow, dark street which opened off the brightly lighted main thoroughfare of that mill neighbourhood. A girl standing in the shadows between two buildings said to me as I passed:
"Good evening."
I stopped instantly, it was such a pleasant, friendly voice.
"Good evening," I said, lifting my hat and wondering that there should be any one here in this back street who knew me.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
I stepped over quickly toward her, hat in hand. She was a mere slip of a girl, rather comely, I thought, with small childish features and a half-timid, half-bold look in her eyes. I could not remember having seen her before.
She smiled at me--and then I knew!
Well, if some one had struck me a brutal blow in the face I could not have been more astonished.
We know of things!--and yet how little we know until they are presented to us in concrete form. Just such a little school girl as I have seen a thousand times in the country, the pathetic childish curve of the chin, a small rebellious curl hanging low on her temple.
I could not say a word. The girl evidently saw in my face that something was the matter, for she turned and began to move quickly away. Such a wave of compassion (and anger, too) swept over me as I cannot well describe. I stepped after her and asked in a low voice:
"Do you work in the mills?"
"Yes, when there's work."
"What is your name?"
"Maggie--"
"Well, Maggie," I said, "let's be friends."
