education practiced by girls and boys, and even by men and women with
families, as would pass the limits of belief to the ordinary mind. Cold,
starvation, self-isolation, all endured for years in order to obtain the
means for study; and, worse than all, exhaustion of body even to
emaciation--this is common. Yet in the midst of all this, so fervent is
the social imagination of the young that most of them find time besides
to visit the various clubs and societies where radical thought is
discussed, and sooner or later ally themselves either with the Socialist
Sections, the Liberal Leagues, the Single Tax Clubs, or the Anarchist
Groups. The greatest Socialist daily in America is the Jewish
_Vorwaerts_, and the most active and competent practical workers are
Jews. So they are among the Anarchists.
I am no propagandist at all costs, or I would leave the story here; but
the truth compels me to add that as the years pass and the gradual
filtration and absorption of American commercial life goes on, my
students become successful professionals, the golden mist of enthusiasm
vanishes, and the old teacher must turn for comradeship to the new
youth, who still press forward with burning eyes, seeing what is lost
forever to those whom common success has satisfied and stupified. It
brings tears sometimes, but as Kropotkin says, "Let them go; we have had
the best of them." After all, who are the really old? Those who wear out
in faith and energy, and take to easy chairs and soft living; not
Kropotkin, with his sixty years upon him, who has bright eyes and the
eager interest of a little child; not fiery John Most, "the old
war-horse of the revolution," unbroken after his ten years of
imprisonment in Europe and America; not grey-haired Louise Michel, with
the aurora of the morning still shining in her keen look which peers
from behind the barred memories of New Caledonia; not Dyer D. Lum, who
still smiles in his grave, I think; nor Tucker, nor Turner, nor Theresa
Clairmunt, nor Jean Grave--not these. I have met them all, and felt the
springing life pulsating through heart and hand, joyous, ardent, leaping
into action. Not such are the old, but your young heart that goes
bankrupt in social hope, dry-rotting in this stale and purposeless
society. Would you be always young? Then be an Anarchist, and live with
the faith of hope, though you be old.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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