hey've no minds left to get
out of their holes!"

And yet--as now on every dock, that "strike feeling" in the air kept
growing tenser, tenser--its tensity crept into me. What was it that lay
just ahead? I felt like a man starting out on a journey--a journey from
which when he comes back he will find nothing quite the same.

I had a talk about the strike one day with Eleanore's father. I can
still see the affectionate smile on his face, he looked as though he
were seeing me off.

"My dear boy," he said, in his kind quiet voice, "don't forget for even
a minute that the men who stand behind my work are going to stamp out
this strike. This modern world is too complex to allow brute force and
violence to wreck all that civilization has done. I'm sorry you've gone
into this--but so long as you have, as Eleanore's father, I want you now
to promise you won't write a line until the strike is over and you have
had plenty of time to get clear. Don't let yourself get swamped in
this--remember that you have a wife and a small son to think of."

My father had put it more sharply. He was out of bed now and he seemed
to take strength from the news reports that he eagerly read of the
struggle so fast approaching.

"At sea," he said, "when stokers try to quit their jobs and force their
way on deck, they're either put in irons or shot down as mutineers.
You'll see your friend Kramer dead or in jail. No danger to your sister
now. Only see that _you_ keep out of it!"

I did not tell him of my work, for I knew it would only excite him
again, and excitement would be dangerous.

"Now you and Eleanore must go home," said Sue that night. "You'll have
enough to think of. I'll be all right with father--he knows there's
nothing to do but wait, and he's so kind to me now that it hurts. Poor
old Dad--how well he means. But he's the old and we're the new--and
that's the whole trouble between us." A sudden light came in her eyes.
"The new are bound to win!" she said.

But I was not so sure of the new. To me it was still very vague and
chaotic. After we had moved back to New York, at the times when I came
home to sleep, Eleanore was silent or quietly casual in her remarks, but
I felt her always watching me. One night when I came in very late and
thought her asleep, being too tired to sleep myself, I went to our
bedroom window and stood looking off down, into the distant expanse of
the harbor. How quiet and cool it seemed down there. But present