ee, a never-ending source of wonder 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