anic thrill ran through the crowd, an impulse
that turned their faces and started their steps down East Street toward
the canal, and Janet was irresistibly carried along. Nay, it seemed as if
the force that second by second gained momentum was in her, that she
herself had released and was guiding it! Her feet were wet as she
ploughed through the trampled snow, but she gave no thought to that. The
odour of humanity was in her nostrils. On the left a gaunt Jew pressed
against her, on the right a solid Ruthenian woman, one hand clasping her
shawl, the other holding aloft a miniature emblem of New World liberty.
Her eyes were fixed on the grey skies, and from time to time her lips
were parted in some strange, ancestral chant that could be heard above
the shouting. All about Janet were dark, awakening faces....

It chanced that an American, a college graduate, stood gazing down from a
point of vantage upon this scene. He was ignorant of anthropology,
psychology, and the phenomena of environment; but bits of "knowledge"
--which he embodied in a newspaper article composed that evening stuck
wax-like in his brain. Not thus, he deplored, was the Anglo-Saxon wont to
conduct his rebellions. These Czechs and Slavs, Hebrews and Latins and
Huns might have appropriately been clad in the skins worn by the hordes
of Attila. Had they not been drawn hither by the renown of the Republic's
wealth? And how essentially did they differ from those other barbarians
before whose bewildered, lustful gaze had risen the glittering palaces on
the hills of the Tiber? The spoils of Rome! The spoils of America! They
appeared to him ferocious, atavistic beasts as they broke into the
lumberyard beneath his window to tear the cord-wood from the piles and
rush out again, armed with billets....

Janet, in the main stream sweeping irresistibly down the middle of the
street, was carried beyond the lumberyard into the narrow roadway beside
the canal--presently to find herself packed in the congested mass in
front of the bridge that led to the gates of the Chippering Mill. Across
the water, above the angry hum of human voices could be heard the
whirring of the looms, rousing the mob to a higher pitch of fury. The
halt was for a moment only. The bridge rocked beneath the weight of their
charge, they battered at the great gates, they ran along the snow-filled
tracks by the wall of the mill. Some, in a frenzy of passion, hurled
their logs against the windows; other