The anarchists are beginning to take the place in our fiction which was
formerly held by the gypsy. Half a dozen novels of the last few years
have had such types as their heroes. It is hard to resist the romantic
charm of a person who is utterly unattached. The vagabond who, in a
land of conventional dwelling houses, sleeps out under the stars, casts
a spell over us. These anarchists are intellectual nomads. In order
that they may be free to wander according to their fancy in the realm of
thought, to stroll at will in the pleasant valleys of poesy, to climb at
times up onto the great white peaks of dreams, that in the winter days
they may trek south to meet their friend, the sun, they have foresworn
the clumsier impedimenta of our traditional ideas. As the Beduoin and
the tramp despise the "Cit" who is kept at home by his business
engagements, by the cares of his family and of his lands and goods, so
these anarchists look down on us who are held stationary in the world of
thought.
I remember a young Russian exile, who spoke English so faultlessly,
after the manner of Macaulay’s Essays, that it seemed queer, saying that
he was "a cynic of the material." It struck me as a wonderfully apt
phrase to distinguish their way of thinking from the more usual. Of all
the "kitchenside of life,"—the meals we eat, the clothes we wear, the
beds we sleep in, bankbooks, and property deeds, of vested rights and
established institutions, of the applause and approbation of the
mob—which most of us consider important, they were cynical. I, for
instance, must admit to a certain unreasoning respect for clean linen.
It is hard for me, even in the face of ocular demonstration, to separate
it from clean straight thinking. But this group which gathered at Mrs.
Barton’s was certainly indifferent in the matter. Ann’s bacteriological
training had made her a fervent apostle of cleanliness. "Germs," she
would say, "are only filth." But as often as not, some of the guests
were evidently unafraid of microbes. Some of the dirtiest of them were
the cleanest, straightest thinkers.
I have never met any other group of people who so sympathetically
understood how I felt about life. In one way or another they had come to
see life as I did—as I believe anyone, having the energy to avoid
hardening, would see it, if they worked long in the Tombs. Try it
yourself. Go into the Tombs—there is one in every town—if you have any
love of justice and rectitude in your being you will come out in violent
revolt against the smug complacency of our social machine. You will
find anarchists pleasant people to talk with.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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