Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent OratorsHubbard, Elbert
History
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators
Hubbard, Elbert
Orators
Clients are sure to come to the man who is not too anxious about
them--sure to come to a man like Phillips--a youth clothed with the
graces of a Greek--waiting on the threshold of manhood's morning.
Here is his career: a successful lawyer and leader in society; a member
of the Legislature; a United States Senator, and then if he cares for
it--well, well, well!
But in the meantime, there he sits, not with his feet in the window or
on a chair--he is a gentleman, I said, a Boston gentleman--the flower of
a gracile ancestry. In the lazy, hazy air is the hum of autumn birds and
beetles--the hectic beauty of the dying year is over all. The hum seems
to grow--it becomes a subdued roar.
You have sat behind the scenes waiting for the curtain to rise--a
thousand people are there just out of your sight--five hundred of them
are talking. It is one high-keyed, humming roar.
The roar of a mob is keyed lower--it is guttural and approaches a
growl--it seems to come in waves, a brazen roar rising and falling--but
a roar, full of menace, hate, deaf to reason, dead to appeal.
You have heard the roar of the mob in "Julius Caesar," and stay! once I
heard the genuine article. It was in Eighty-four--goodness gracious, I
am surely getting old!--it was in a town out West. I saw nothing but a
pushing, crowding mass of men, and all I heard was that deep guttural
roar of the beast. I could not make out what it was all about until I
saw a man climbing a telegraph-pole.
He was carrying a rope in one hand. As he climbed higher, the roar
subsided. The climber reached the arms that form the cross. He swung the
rope over the crossbeam and paid it out until the end was clutched by
the uplifted hands of those below.
The roar arose again like an angry sea, and I saw the figure of a human
being leap twenty feet into the air and swing and swirl at the end of
the rope.
The roar ceased.
The lawyer laid down the brand-new book, bound in sheep, and leaned out
of the window--men were running down the thoroughfare, some hatless, and
at Washington Street could be seen a black mass of human beings--beings
who had forsaken their reason and merged their personality into a mob.
The young lawyer arose, put on his hat, locked his office, followed down
the street. His tall and muscular form pushed its way through the mass.
Theodore Lyman, the Mayor, was standing on a barrel importuning the
crowd to disperse. His voice was lost in the roar of the mob.
From down a stairway came a procession of women, thirty or so, walking
by twos, very pale, but calm. The crowd gradually opened out on a stern
order from some unknown person. The young lawyer threw himself against
those who blocked the way. The women passed on, and the crowd closed in
as water closes over a pebble dropped into the river.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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