From six o'clock in the evening until two in the morning McGregor now
worked as night-cashier in a restaurant on South State Street below
Van Buren and from two until seven in the morning he slept in a room
whose windows looked down into Michigan Boulevard. On Thursday he was
free, his place being taken for the evening by the man who owned the
restaurant, a small excitable Irishman by the name of Tom O'Toole.
McGregor got his chance to become a student through the bank account
belonging to Edith Carson. The opportunity arose in this way. On a
summer evening after his return from Pennsylvania he sat with her in
the darkened store back of the closed screen door. McGregor was morose
and silent. On the evening before he had tried to talk to several men
at the warehouse about the Marching Men and they had not understood.
He blamed his inability with words and sat in the half darkness with
his face in his hands and looked up the street saying nothing and
thinking bitter thoughts.
The idea that had come to him made him half drunk with its
possibilities and he knew that he must not let it make him drunk. He
wanted to begin forcing men to do the simple thing full of meaning
rather than the disorganised ineffective things and he had an ever-
present inclination to arise, to stretch himself, to run into the
streets and with his great arms see if he could not sweep the people
before him, starting them on the long purposeful march that was to be
the beginning of the rebirth of the world and that was to fill with
meaning the lives of men.
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