At this point in the tirade, my old friend the ex-centre-rush, who was standing in the wings with me, turned and whispered:  “For God’s sake, Billy, what kind of a Goddamn Bolshevik stunt is this, anyhow?”

I answered:  “Hush, you dub!  He’s quoting from the Bible!”

XXXIV

President Brown of the Western City Labor Council arose to perform his next duty as chairman.  Said he: 

“The next speaker is a stranger to most of you, and he is also a stranger to me.  I do not know what his doctrine is, and I assume no responsibility for it.  But he is a man who has proven his friendship for labor, not by words, but by very unusual deeds.  He is a man of remarkable personality, and we have asked him to make what suggestions he can as to our problems.  I have pleasure in introducing Mr. Carpenter.”

Whereupon the prophet fresh from God arose from his chair, and come slowly to the front of the platform.  There was no applause, but a silence made part of curiosity and part of amazement.  His figure, standing thus apart, was majestic; and I noted a curious thing—­a shining as of light about his head.  It was so clear and so beautiful that I whispered to Old Joe:  “Do you see that halo?”

“Go on, Billy!” said the ex-centre-rush.  “You’re getting nutty!”

“But it’s plain as day, man!”

I felt some one touch my arm, and saw the little lady of the anti-vivisection tracts peering past me.  “Do you see his aura?” she whispered, excitedly.

“Is that what it is?”

“Yes.  It’s purple.  That denotes spirituality.”

I thought to myself, “Good Lord, am I getting to be that sort?”

Carpenter began to speak, quietly, in his grave, measured voice.  “My brothers!” He waited for some time, as if that were enough; as if all the problems of life would be solved, if only men would understand those two words.  “My brothers:  I am, as your chairman says, a stranger to this world of yours.  I do not understand your vast machines and your complex arts.  But I know the souls of men and women; when I meet greed, and pride, and cruelty, the enslavements of the flesh, they cannot lie to me.  And I have walked about the streets of your city, and I know myself in the presence of a people wandering in a wilderness.  My children!—­broken-hearted, desolate, and betrayed—­poorest when you are rich, loneliest when you throng together, proudest when you are most ignorant—­my people, I call you into the way of salvation!”

He stretched out his arms to them, and on his face and in his whole look was such anguish, that I think there was no man in that whole great throng so rooted in self-esteem that he was not shaken with sudden awe.  The prophet raised his hands in invocation:  “Let us pray!” He bowed his head, and many in the audience did the same.  Others stared at him in bewilderment, having long ago forgotten how to pray.  Here and there some one snickered.