to Janet, with its nine
or ten nationalities and interpreters, was indeed a triumph over the
obstacles of race and language, a Babel made successful; in a community
of Anglo-Saxon traditions, an amazing anomaly. The habiliments of the
west, the sack coats and sweaters, the slouch hats and caps, the
so-called Derbies pulled down over dark brows and flashing eyes lent to
these peasant types an incongruity that had the air of ferocity. The
faces of most of them were covered with a blue-black stubble of beard.
Some slouched in their chairs, others stood and talked in groups,
gesticulating with cigars and pipes; yet a keen spectator, after watching
them awhile through the smoke, might have been able to pick out striking
personalities among them. He would surely have noticed Froment, the
stout, limping man under whose white eyebrows flashed a pair of livid
blue and peculiarly Gallic eyes; he held the Belgians in his hand:
Lindtzki, the Pole, with his zealot's face; Radeau, the big Canadian in
the checked Mackinaw; and Findley, the young American-less by any
arresting quality of feature than by an expression suggestive of
practical wisdom.

Imagine then, on an afternoon in the middle phase of the strike, some
half dozen of the law-makers of a sovereign state, top-hatted and
conventionally garbed in black, accustomed to authority, to conferring
favours instead of requesting them, climbing the steep stairs and pausing
on the threshold of that hall, fingering their watch chains, awaiting
recognition by the representatives of the new and bewildering force that
had arisen in an historic commonwealth. A "debate" was in progress. Some
of the debaters, indeed, looked over their shoulders, but the leader, who
sat above them framed in the sylvan setting of the stage, never so much
as deigned to glance up from his newspaper. A half-burned cigar rolled
between his mobile lips, he sat on the back of his neck, and yet he had
an air Napoleonic; Nietzschean, it might better be said--although it is
safe to assert that these moulders of American institutions knew little
about that terrible philosopher who had raised his voice against the
"slave morals of Christianity." It was their first experience with the
superman.... It remained for the Canadian, Radeau, when a lull arrived in
the turmoil, to suggest that the gentlemen be given chairs.

"Sure, give them chairs," assented Antonelli in a voice hoarse from
speech-making. Breath-taking audacit