There must always remain the memory of those throngs in the meetings,
those workingmen who came pouring out of the shops and factories at
noon, glad as school boys to be released for a little while from
toil, laughing, whistling, engaging in rude pleasantries, jostling,
teasing and joking each other, and then, suddenly, pausing, gathering
about the motor car, drawing closer, pressing up to the foot-board,
and listening, with eager, intent faces, in which there was such
instant appreciation of a joke, a pleasantry, anything to make them
laugh, and yet somehow the adumbration of a yearning and a hope. Lyman
Wachenheimer--who as judge of the police court once had fined Jones
for contempt of court, but had come later to agree with him and now
was candidate for prosecuting attorney of the county--would stand up
in the car, lean over, and speak to them out of the splendid new faith
in democracy that had come to him, and the rest of us in our turn
would speak. We did not ask them to vote for us; our message was at
least higher than that old foolish and selfish appeal. First of all we
wished them to vote for themselves, we wished them to vote their own
convictions, and not merely to follow with the old partizan blindness
the boss or the employer or someone else who told them how to vote.
And all too soon for the orators warming to their work--they must
speak rapidly, they must speak simply and come to the point, for the
demands of the street meeting are obdurate and out under the open sky
there is short shrift for insincerity or any of the old pretense and
buncombe--the whistle blows, the men turn and scatter, the crowd melts
away, a few linger to the last minute to catch the last word, and then
they turn and run, and as they go they lift high the perpendicular
hand--Walt Whitman’s sign of democracy.... Do you know it? Sometimes
one of the section gang working on the railroad, pausing in his labor
while the Limited sweeps by, looks up and to the idle one on the rear
platform of the observation car, going for his long holiday, he waves
his hand in a gesture instinct with grace and the sincere greeting
of a fellow human being, and perhaps because--alas!--the moment of
their swift and instantly passing communication is isolated from all
the complexities of our civilized life, because it is to vanish too
soon for the differences men have made between themselves to assert
their distinction, there is that one instant of perfect understanding.
Sometimes a man in a boat sailing by will hail you with this gesture
from his passing craft; he is safe from long contact, he can run a
risk and for that little moment yield to the adventure of picking up
an acquaintance. Sometimes it is the engineer of a locomotive leaning
out of his cab window, giving you perhaps a droll wink, and there are
tramps who from a box car will exchange a friendly greeting. And I
shall never forget the little Irish sailor up on the boat deck with
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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