hrieks. Guttural sounds of cheering in
snatchy fragments were mingled with terms of approval and of
endearment and of affection uttered in English, in German, in Russian,
in Yiddish and in Finnish.

Afterward Captain Bull Hargis said that never in his recollection of
New York crowds had there been a crowd so hard to contend against or
one so difficult to penetrate; he said this between gasps for breath
while nursing a badly sprained thumb. The men under him agreed with
him. The thing overpassed anything in their professional experiences.
Several of them were veterans of the force too.

It was a dramatic entrance which Congressman Mallard made before his
audience within the hall, packed as the hall was, with its air all hot
and sticky with the animal heat of thousands of closely bestowed human
bodies. Hardly could it have been a more dramatic entrance. From
somewhere in the back he suddenly came out upon the stage. He was
bareheaded and bare-throated. Outside in that living whirlpool his
soft black hat had been plucked from his head and was gone. His
collar, tie and all, had been torn from about his neck, and the same
rudely affectionate hand that wrested the collar away had ripped his
linen shirt open so that the white flesh of his chest showed through
the gap of the tear. His great disorderly mop of bright red hair stood
erect on his scalp like an oriflamme. His overcoat was half on and
half off his back.

At sight of him the place rose at him, howling out its devotion. He
flung off his overcoat, letting it fall upon the floor, and he strode
forward almost to the trough of the footlights; and then for a space
he stood there on the rounded apron of the platform, staring out into
the troubled, tossing pool of contorted faces and tossing arms below
him and about him. Demagogue he may have been; demigod he looked in
that, his moment of supreme triumph, biding his time to play upon the
passions and the prejudices of this multitude as a master organist
would play upon the pipes of an organ. Here was clay, plastic to his
supple fingers--here in this seething conglomerate of half-baked
intellectuals, of emotional rebels against constituted authority, of
alien enemies of malcontents and malingerers, of parlour anarchists
from the studios of Bohemianism and authentic anarchists from the
slums.

Ten blaring, exultant minutes passed before the ex-clergyman, who
acted as chairman, could secure a measure of comparative quiet. A