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Anderson, Sherwood, 1876-1941

"Marching Men"

Under his hand the work in the warehouse had begun to
take on order and the little grey-haired superintendent who had
employed him rubbed his hands with delight.
In a corner by a window stood McGregor wondering why he also did not
want to devote his life to being the father of children. In the dim
light across the face of the window a fat old spider crawled slowly.
In the hideous body of the insect there was something that suggested
to the mind of the struggling thinker the sloth of the world. Vaguely
his mind groped about trying to get hold of words and ideas to express
what was in his brain. "Ugly crawling things that look at the floor,"
he muttered. "If they have children it is without order or orderly
purpose. It is an accident like the accident of the fly that falls
into the net built by the insect here. The coming of the children is
like the coming of the flies, it feeds a kind of cowardice in men. In
the children men hope vainly to see done what they have not the
courage to try to do."
With an oath McGregor smashed with his heavy leather glove the fat
thing wandering aimlessly across the light. "I must not be confused by
little things. There is still going on the attempt to force me into
the hole in the ground. There is a hole here in which men live and
work just as there is in the mining town from which I came.


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