Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; City and town life -- Fiction; Coal mines and mining -- Pennsylvania -- Fiction; Labor leaders -- Fiction
One day he got into disfavour with the professor in one of the classes.
He sat in a room among other students, his mind busy with thoughts of
the future and of how he might get his movement of the marching men
under way. In a chair beside him sat a large girl with blue eyes and
hair like yellow wheat. She like McGregor was unconscious of what was
going on about her and sat with half-closed eyes watching him. In the
corners of her eyes lurked a gleam of amusement. She drew sketches of
his huge mouth and nose on a pad of Paper.
At McGregor's left with his legs sprawled into the aisle sat a youth who
was thinking of the yellow-haired girl and planning a campaign against
her. His father was a manufacturer of berry boxes in a brick building on
the West Side and he wished he were in school in another city so that
it would not be necessary to live at home. All day he thought of the
evening meal and of the coming of his father, nervous and tired, to
quarrel with his mother about the management of the servants. Now he was
trying to evolve a plan for getting money from his mother with which to
enjoy a dinner at a downtown restaurant. With delight he contemplated
such an evening with a box of cigarettes on the table and the
yellow-haired girl sitting opposite him under red lights. He was
a typical American youth of the upper middle class and was in the
University only because he was in no hurry to begin his life in the
commercial world.
In front of McGregor sat another typical student, a pale nervous young
man who drummed with his fingers on the back of a book. He was very
serious about acquiring learning and when the professor paused in his
talk he threw up his hands and asked a question. When the professor
smiled he laughed loudly. He was like an instrument on which the
professor struck chords.
The professor, a short man with a bushy black beard, heavy shoulders
and large powerful eye-glasses, spoke in a shrill voice surcharged with
excitement.
“The world is full of unrest,” he said; “men are struggling like chicks
in the shell. In the hinterland of every man's mind uneasy thoughts
stir. I call your attention to what is going on in the Universities of
Germany.”
The professor paused and glared about. McGregor was so irritated by
what he took to be the wordiness of the man that he could not restrain
himself. He felt as he had felt when the socialist orator talked on the
streets of Coal Creek. With an oath he arose and kicked out his foot to
push his chair away. The pad of paper fell out of the large girl's lap
and scattered its leaves about the floor. A light burned in McGregor's
blue eyes. As he stood in the classroom before the startled class his
head, big and red, had something of nobility about it like the head of
a fine beast. His voice rumbled out of his throat and the girl looked at
him, her mouth standing open.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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