His splendid vitality, that had been wont to express itself in so many attractive ways, now found its chief vent in talk--inexpensive, inordinate, meddlesome discourse--wherever two or three were gathered together in the name of idleness and discontent. The members of these congregations were pessimists to a man. They disbelieved in everybody and everything except themselves, and secretly, at times, they were even a little shaken on that head; but all the louder they exclaimed upon the world that had refused them the chance to be the great and successful characters nature had intended them to be. It need hardly be said that when Henniker raved about the inequalities of class, the helplessness of poverty, the tyranny of wealth, and the curse of labor; and devoted in eloquent phrases the remainder of a blighted existence to the cause of the Poor Man, he was thinking of but one poor man, namely, himself. He classed himself with Labor only that he might feel his superiority to the laboring masses. There were few situations in which he could taste his superiority, in these days. The "ego" in his Cosmos was very hungry; his memories were bitter, his hopes unsatisfied; his vanity and artistic sense were crucified through poverty, lameness, and bad clothes. Now all that was left him was the conquests of the mind. For the smiles of women, give him the hoarse plaudits of men. The dandy of the garrison began to shine in saloon coteries and primaries of the most primary order. He was the star of sidewalk convocations and vacant-lot meetings of the Unemployed. But he despised the mob that echoed his perorations and paid for his drinks, and was at heart the aristocrat that his old uniform had made him. * * * * * In the summer of 1894, a little black-eyed boy with chestnut curls used to swing on the gate of the Meadows cottage that opens upon the common, and chant some verses of domestic doggerel about Coxey's army, which was then begging and bullying its way eastward, and demanding transportation at the expense of the railroads and of the people at large. He sang his song to the well-marked tune of Pharaoh's Army, and thus the verses ran:-- "The Coxeyites they gathered, The Coxeyites they gathered, And stole a train of freight-cars in the morn, And stole a train of freight-cars in the morning, And stole a train of freight-cars in the morn. "The engine left them standing, The engine left them standing, On the railroad-track at Caldwell in the morn. Very sad it was for Caldwell in the morning To feed that hungry army in the morn. "Where are all the U. S. marshals, The deputy U. S. marshals, To jail that Coxey army in the morn, That 'industrious, law-abiding' Coxey's army That stole a train of freight-cars in the morn?"