Part 67 (1/2)

”I ran all the way,” her voice is soft and low; ”I was afraid I o in so to me, she adds, ”She ran to see--you”

How peculiar the Girl should conceive such an idea! It is absurd Why should Alice be anxious to see uid, unsteady Bitter thoughts fill o

”You are sad,” the Girl relad?”

”You are mistaken,” I reply

”I'm sure of it,” the Girl persists ”Shall I ask her?”

She turns to Alice

”Oh, I like you so much, Sasha,” Alice whispers I look up ti toward reat joy steals over me, as I read in her eyes frank affection

VII

New York looks unexpectedly fah I miss many old landmarks

It is torture to be indoors, and I roa a thrill of kinshi+p when I locate one of e reet me back into the world Yet I am conscious of some curiosity about the couard have remained Some dropped from the ranks; others died John Most will not be there I cherished the hope of ain, but he died a few months before my release

He had been unjust to e of time has mellowed the bitterness of my resentment, and I think of him, my first teacher of Anarchy, with old-ti relief upon the flat background of his tiedy of the ever unpopular pioneer A social Lear, his whitening years brought only increasing isolation and greater lack of understanding, even within his own circle He had struggled and suffered ave his whole life to advance the Cause, only to find at the last that he who crosses the threshold must leave all behind, even friendshi+p, even coone, and Brady, the big Austrian

Few of the coeneration seems different, unsatisfactory The Ghetto I had known has also disappeared Pris, has conformed to business respectability; the historic lecture hall, that rang with the breaking chains of the awakening people, has been turned into a dancing-school; the little cafe ”around the corner,”

the intellectual arena of for-house The fervid enthusiasm of the past, the spontaneous comradeshi+p in the co zeal--all are gone with the days of my youth I sense the spirit of cold deliberation in the new set, and a tone of disillusioned wisdoed The little Sailor, my companion of the days that thrilled with the approach of the Social Revolution, has become a woman of the world Her onize my old revolutionary traditions that inspired every day and colored our every act with the direct perception of the reat upheaval I feel an instinctive disapproval of ible and elude n eleathered about her, and feelthem Her friends and admirers crowd her home, and turn it into a sort of salon They talk art and literature; discuss science and philosophize over the dishar echo there The Girl is the most revolutionary of them all; but even she has been infected by the air of intellectual aloofness, false tolerance and everlasting pessimism I resent the situation, the more I become conscious of the chaseable; we cannot recover the intimate note of our former comradeshi+p With pain I witness her evidentin her care and affection; the whole circle lavishes on h it all I feel the co tolerance toward a sick child I shun the atmosphere of the house, and flee to seek the solitude of the crowded streets and the companionshi+p of the plain, untutored underworld

In a Bowery resort I co my last year in the penitentiary

”hello, Aleck,” he says, taking ht?”

”So, so, Dan And you?”

”Rotten, Aleck, rotten You knoas ain Well, they turned me out with a five-spot, after four years' steady work,my head off on a loom Then they handed me a pair of Kentucky jeans, that any fly-cop could spot a mile off My friends went back on o a long way

Liberty ain't what it looks to a fellow through the bars, Aleck, but it's hell to go back I don't knohat to do”