He is a coward who dare not stand up to beauty
and is afraid of me."
When the Marching Men Movement began to make a stir in Chicago
Margaret went on a visit to New York. For a month she lived with two
women friends at a big hotel near the sea and then hurried home. "I
will see the man and hear him talk," she told herself. "I cannot cure
myself of the consciousness of him by running away. Perhaps I am
myself a coward. I shall go into his presence. When I hear his brutal
words and see again the hard gleam that sometimes comes into his eyes
I shall be cured."
Margaret went to hear McGregor talk to a gathering of workingmen in a
West Side hall and came away more alive to him than ever. In the hall
she sat concealed in deep shadows by the door and waited with
trembling eagerness.
On all sides of her were men crowded together. Their faces were washed
but the grime of the shops was not quite effaced. Men from the steel
mills with the cooked look that follows long exposure to intense
artificial heat, men of the building trades with their broad hands,
big men and small men, misshapen and straight, labouring men, all sat
at attention, waiting.
Margaret noticed that as McGregor talked the lips of the working men
moved. Fists were clenched. Applause came quick and sharp like the
report of guns.
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