atform, under a
gasolene flare, I beheld my friend of the road, Bill Hahn. The overcoat
and the hat with the furry ears had disappeared, and the little man
stood there bare-headed, before that great audience.

My experience in the world is limited, but I have never heard anything
like that speech for sheer power. It was as unruly and powerful and
resistless as life itself. It was not like any other speech I ever
heard, for it was no mere giving out by the orator of ideas and thoughts
and feelings of his own. It seemed rather--how shall I describe it?--as
though the speaker was looking into the very hearts of that vast
gathering of poor men and poor women and merely telling them what
they themselves felt, but could not tell. And I shall never forget the
breathless hush of the people or the quality of their responses to the
orator's words. It was as though they said, "Yes, yes" with a feeling of
vast relief--"Yes, yes--at last our own hopes and fears and desires are
being uttered--yes, yes."

As for the orator himself, he held up one maimed hand and leaned over
the edge of the platform, and his undistinguished face glowed with the
white light of a great passion within. The man had utterly forgotten
himself.

I confess, among those eager working people, clad in their poor
garments, I confess I was profoundly moved. Faith is not so bounteous a
commodity in this world that we can afford to treat even its unfamiliar
manifestations with contempt. And when a movement is hot with life, when
it stirs common men to their depths, look out! look out!

Up to that time I had never known much of the practical workings of
Socialism; and the main contention of its philosophy has never accorded
wholly with my experience in life.

But the Socialism of to-day is no mere abstraction--as it was, perhaps,
in the days of Brook Farm. It is a mode of action. Men whose view of
life is perfectly balanced rarely soil themselves with the dust of
battle. The heat necessary to produce social conflict (and social
progress--who knows?) is generated by a supreme faith that certain
principles are universal in their application when in reality they are
only local or temporary.

Thus while one may not accept the philosophy of Socialism as a final
explanation of human life, he may yet look upon Socialism in action as
a powerful method of stimulating human progress. The world has been
lagging behind in its sense of brotherhood, and we now have the
Soci