our cities life is different. There the disorder and aimlessness of
our American lives becomes a crime for which men pay heavily. Losing
step with one another, men lose also a sense of their own
individuality so that a thousand of them may be driven in a disorderly
mass in at the door of a Chicago factory morning after morning and
year after year with never an epigram from the lips of one of them.

In Coal Creek when men got drunk they staggered in silence through the
street. Did one of them, in a moment of stupid animal sportiveness,
execute a clumsy dance upon the barroom floor, his fellow--labourers
looked at him dumbly, or turning away left him to finish without
witnesses his clumsy hilarity.

Standing in the doorway and looking up and down the bleak village
street, some dim realisation of the disorganised ineffectiveness of
life as he knew it came into the mind of the McGregor boy. It seemed
to him right and natural that he should hate men. With a sneer on his
lips, he thought of Barney Butterlips, the town socialist, who was
forever talking of a day coming when men would march shoulder to
shoulder and life in Coal Creek, life everywhere, should cease being
aimless and become definite and full of meaning.

"They will never do that and who wants them to," mused the McGregor
boy. A blast of wind bearing snow beat upon him and he turned into the
shop and slammed the door behind him. Another thought stirred in his
head and brought a flush to his cheeks. He turned and stood in the
silence of the empty shop shaking with emotion. "If I could form the
men of this place into an army I would lead them to the mouth of the
old Shumway cut and push them in," he threatened, shaking his fist
toward the door. "I would stand aside and see the whole town struggle