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; others paused, see