The largest crowd of all was close packed about a swarthy young chap whose bushy hair waved in response to the violence of his oratory.  He, too, was perspiring with his ideas.  He had a marvellous staccato method of question and answer.  He would shoot a question like a rifle bullet at the heads of his audience, and then stiffen back like a wary boxer, both clenched hands poised in a tremulous gesticulation, and before any one could answer his bullet-like question, he was answering it himself.  As I edged my way nearer to him I discovered that he, also, had a little pile of books at his feet which a keen-eyed assistant was busily selling.  How well-established the technic of this art of the city eddies!  How well-studied the psychology!

I thought this example the most perfect of them all, and watched with eagerness the play of the argument as it was mirrored in the intent faces all about me.  And gradually I grew interested in what the man was saying, and thought of many good answers I could give to his questionings if he were not so cunning with answers of his own.  Finally, in the midst of one of his loftiest flights, he demanded, hotly: 

“Are you not, every one of you, a slave of the capitalist class?”

It was perfectly still for a second after he spoke, and before I knew what I was doing, I responded: 

“Why, no, I’m not.”

It seemed to astonish the group around me:  white faces turned my way.

But it would have been difficult to dash that swarthy young man.  He was as full of questions as a porcupine is full of quills.

“Well, sir,” said he, “if I can prove to you that you are a slave, will you believe it?”

“No,” I said, “unless you make me feel like a slave, too!  No man is a slave who does not feel slavish.”

But I was no match for that astonishing young orator; and he had the advantage over me of a soap box!  Moreover, at that moment, the keen-eyed assistant, never missing an opportunity, offered me one of his little red books.

“If you can read this without feeling a slave,” he remarked, “you’re John D. himself in disguise.”

I bought his little red book and put it with the pamphlet of the freethinker, and the tract of the God-fearing man, and stepped out of that group, feeling no more servile than when I went in.  And I said to myself: 

“This, surely, is a curious place to be in.”

For I was now strangely interested in these men of the eddy.

“There are more gods preached here,” I said, “than ever were known on the Acropolis.”