“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,”

from the steps of the monument at midnight, the police might take another view of the performance.  He began to see, however, that beneath much that was whimsical and sentimental the young fellow was sincerely interested in the trend of things in what, during this Whitman period, he called “these states.”  Sometimes Allen’s remarks on current events struck Harwood by their wisdom:  the boy was wholesomely provocative and stimulating.  He began to feel that he understood him, and in his own homelessness Allen became a resource.

Allen was a creature of moods, and vanished often for days or weeks.  He labored fitfully in his carpenter shop at home or with equal irregularity at a bench in the shop of Lueders, a cabinetmaker.  Dan sometimes sought him at the shop, which was a headquarters for radicals of all sorts.  The workmen showed a great fondness for Allen, who had been much in Germany and spoke their language well.  He carried to the shop quantities of German books and periodicals for their enlightenment.  The shop’s visitors included several young Americans, among them a newspaper artist, a violinist in a theatre orchestra, and a linotype expert.  They all wore large black scarfs and called each other “comrade.”  Allen earnestly protested that he still believed in the American Idea, the Great Experiment; but if democracy should fail he was ready to take up socialism.  He talked of his heroes; he said they all owed it to the men who had made and preserved the Union to give the existing government a chance.  These discussions were entirely good-humored and Harwood enjoyed them.  Sometimes they met in the evening at a saloon in the neighborhood of the shop where Allen, the son of Edward Thatcher, whom everybody knew, was an object of special interest.  He would sit on a table and lecture the saloon loungers in German, and at the end of a long debate made a point of paying the score.  He was most temperate himself, sipping a glass of wine or beer in the deliberate German fashion.

Allen was a friendly soul and every one liked him.  It was impossible not to like a lad whose ways were so gentle, whose smile was so appealing.  He liked dancing and went to most of the parties—­our capital has not outgrown its homely provincial habit of calling all social entertainments “parties.”  He was unfailingly courteous, with a manner toward women slightly elaborate and reminiscent of other times.  There was no question of his social acceptance; mothers of daughters, who declined to speak to his father, welcomed him to their houses.