Another mood comes. It may be the right mood. I see sparrows jumping
about in an ordinary roadway as I walk to my office. From the maple
trees the little winged seeds come fluttering down before my eyes. A
boy goes past sitting in a grocery wagon and over-driving a rather
bony horse. As I walk I overtake two workmen shuffling along. They
remind me of those other workers and I say to myself that thus men
have always shuffled, that never did they swing forward into that
world-wide rhythmical march of the workers.
"You were drunk with youth and a kind of world madness," says my
normal self as I go forward again, striving to think things out.
Chicago is still here--Chicago after McGregor and the Marching Men.
The elevated trains still clatter over the frogs at the turning into
Wabash Avenue; the surface cars clang their bells; the crowds pour up
in the morning from the runway leading to the Illinois Central trains;
life goes on. And men in their offices sit in their chairs and say
that the thing that happened was abortive, a brain storm, a wild
outbreak of the rebellious the disorderly and the hunger in the minds
of men.
What begging of the question. The very soul of the Marching Men was a
sense of order. That was the message of it, the thing that the world
has not come up to yet.
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