Come, out with it!" Gabriel's protests availed nothing.

The others overbore him.

And at last, unwillingly, he drew out the manuscript and spread it open on his knee.
"You really want to hear this ?" he demanded.

"If you can possibly spare me, I wish you would!" For all answer, Craig pushed a lamp over toward him.

The warm light on Gabriel's face, now slightly bearded, and on his strong, corded throat, made a striking picture as he cast his eyes on the manuscript and in vibrant and harmonious voice, read: _I SAW THE SOCIALIST_ I saw the Socialist sitting at a great Banquet of Men, Sitting with honored leaders of the blind, unwitting Multitude; I saw him there with the writers, editors, painters, men of letters, Legislators and judges, the Leaders of the People, Leaders flushed with the wines of price, eating costly and rare foods, Making loud talk, and boastful, of that marvel, American Liberty! Thinking were they no thought of hunger and pinching cold; Of the blue-lipped, skinny children, the thin-chested, coughing men, The dry-breasted mothers, the dirt, disease and ignorance, The mangled workmen, the tramps, drunkards, pickpockets, prostitutes, thieves, The mad-houses, jails, asylums and hospitals, the sores, the blood of war, And all the other wondrous blessings that attend our civilization-- That civilization through which the wines and foods were given them.
I saw the Socialist there, calm, unmoved, unsmiling, thoughtful, Sober, serious, full of dispassionate and prophetic vision, Not like the other men, the all-wise Leaders of the People.
The political economists, the professors, the militarists, heroes and statisticians; Not like the kings and presidents and emperors, the nobles and gold-crammed bankers, But mindful, more than they, of the cellars under the House of Life Where blind things crawl in the dark, things men and yet not human, Things whose toil makes possible the Banquets of the Leaders of Men, Things that live and yet are not alive; things that never taste of Life; Things that make the rich foods, themselves snatching filthy crumbs; Things that produce the wines of price, and must be content with lees; Things that shiver and cringe and whine, that snarl sometimes, That are men and women and children, and yet that know not Life! I saw the Socialist there; I sat at the banquet; beside him, Listened to the surging music, saw all the lights and flowers, Flowers and lights and crystal cups, whereof the price for each Might have brought back from Potter's Field some bloodless, starving baby.
I heard the Leaders' speeches, the turgid oratory, The well-turned phrases of the Captains, the rotund babble of prosperity, (Prosperity for whom?
Nay, ask not troublesome questions!) The Captains' vaunting I heard, their boasts of glory and victory, While red, red, red their hands dripped red with the blood of the butchered workers.
I heard the Judges' self-glorification, Quixotic fighting of windmills, Heard also the unclean jests that those respected Leaders told.
And as I looked and listened, I still observed the Socialist, Unmoved and patient and serious, calm, full of sober reflections.
Then there spake (among many others) an honored and full-paunched Bishop.
Rubicund he was, and of portly habit of body, Shepherd of a well-pastured flock, mightily content with God, Out of whose omnipotent Hand (no doubt) the blessings of his life descended.
I heard this exponent of Christ the Crucified, Christ the Carpenter, Christ the Leader of Workingmen, the Agitator, the Disturber, Christ the Labor-organizer, Christ the Archetypal Socialist, Friend of the dwellers in the pits of Life, Consoler of earth's exploited, Who once with the lash scourged from the Temple the unclean graft-brood of usurers.
And the rotund Bishop's words were as the crackling of dry thorns Under a pot, bubbling without use in the desert of dreary platitudes.
The story he told was spiced and garnished with profane words, Whereat the Leaders laughed in their cups, making great show of merriment, So that the banquet-hall rang, and wine was spilt on the linen.
Wine as red as blood--the blood of the shattered miner, Blood of the boy in the rifle-pits, blood of the coughing child-slave, Blood of the mangled trainman, blood that the Carpenter shed.
And still I watched the Socialist.