A Girl Among the Anarchists

opagandist organ; but I doubt whether the most imaginative among them in their wildest moments have ever conceived any region so far removed from

eared to be a magnetic attraction about the place to tramps, désoeuvrés cranks, argumentative people with time on their hands, and even downright lunatics. Foreigners of all tongues assembled in the office-Russians, Italians, French, Spaniards, D

f Shakespearian recitation. In winter the old fellow was positively snowed up in the office, where he crouched shivering over the fire until the advent of spring revived him. On the first warm sunny day he suddenly flung down his tools, and rushing out into the courtyard amazed and terrified Mrs. Wattles and her colleagues by shouting at the top of hi

ure a remarkable new kind of artificial flower with which they traded when opportunity permitted. Small plaster-casts of Queen Victoria and Marat were also manufactured here. When the influx of starving Italians necessitated it, a kind of soup-kitchen was inaugurated over which Beppe presided, and very busy he was kept too, manufacturing minestras a

adings, the hammerings on this side, the hangings on that, the feeding, and M'Dermott's Shakespearian recitations, I find

s which had made of him a Socialist-envy and sloth. So deeply was he imbued with envy that he was quite unable to rest so long as anyone else was better off than himself; and although he did not care one jot for "humanity" of which he prated so freely, and was incapable of reg

n the right mood to appreciate it. His envy of the superiority which h

wrath and envy on the world. If he could get hold of some unoccupied person to whom he could retail all the latest bits of Anarchist scandal, or from whom he could ferret out some little private secrets, he was contented enough, or, leaning out of the office window he would deliver a short autobiographica

title of a booklet which he had written under the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost, a sort of interpretation of the Apocalypse, wherein was foretold a rapid termination of the un

red and prophetic in his eye was overcast by a certain diffident and deprecating look. He was the victim, poor man, of a twofold persec

ng in the way, and tripping up himself and others. His hands too had a flabby and inefficient expression, and his knees were set at a wrong angle. H

ed relieved, and gradually, as he became more and more reassured, he would warm to his subject of the coming cataclysm, and launch out into prophecy. "Ah," he exclaimed to me one day after a long discourse on the universal destruction at hand, "won't Queen Victoria just shiver in her shoes when she receives the revised edition of the 'Bleeding Lamb.' Little does she dream at this moment of what is in store for her." I recollec

Lamb-whom he treated with undisguised contempt-and affected a tall hat and Wellington boots. The Lamb, on his side, denounced the Messiah as a fraud, and went so far as to suggest that he had only taken to prophecy when the alteration in the fashion of ladies' pockets compelled him to abandon his origina

y and reproachful bleating of the Lamb no less than the sad, stern rebukes and potential Wellington boots of the Messiah. Into no single item of the day's programme did he put so

out of breath, rapidly followed by a lugubrious individual, talking volubly in a

saw the necessity for suppressing the Christian factions. He was among the

the seven-headed beast in the Apocalypse," r

ppeared capable. "The seven-headed beast can't alter history, and my case is conclusively proved in the course of this little work, to the producti

dressed as Gresham, deposited on the floor a huge and shapeless brown-paper parcel, under whose weight he was staggering, and sitting down by its side he ca

that they were persecuted by the just emperors and protected by the unjust; that, consequently, they were wrong; that Christianity is wrong, and the Deity a palpable

he foregoing sentence, I was at some loss to determine wheth

adings from the "short treatise," which were carried on at intervals for some weeks. Minute after minute and hour after hour Gresham drawled on from one tedious reiteration to another, never raising his voice nor altering its key, till a sense of dizziness overcame his audience, and his voice became as the singing in one's ears which accompanies high fever or heralds a faint. Indeed I have never suffered from

cratic refinement about Voblinsky's features, last ghastly traces of his ancient nobility. He vaguely recalled to my mind a long-ago Continental trip of my childhood, and an unfortunate elephant in the Marseilles Jardin des Plantes who, from long inactivity in the corner of his cage, had become overgrown with moss. There was the same incongruous touch of erstwhile nobility, the same decay, the same earthy smell. By what shady and circuitous paths had the unfortunate count reached this unhappy pass? Perhaps his wife was responsible; for if ever woman was calculated not to lead her mate on to higher and better things it was the Countess Voblinska. The countess was worse than slovenly: she was downright dirty. Her tumbled, frowsy hair, with patches of golden dye in it, was surmounted by an app

ple, the hopeless dreariness of their confined, narrow lives, the total lack of interest and excitement. This is not the case in revolutionary circles, where not only are there plenty of ideas afloa

in a dissipated appearance for the purpose of complaining of the ill-usage to which his wife's tongue subjected him. He looked forward to the So

eproachable shirt front. He was a doctor by profession, who succeeded in maintaining a certain reputation in polite circles, but an alcoholic so

ould not be surrounded solely by scum. But besides this motive he had some pretensions to being a man of advanced views, and was a purchaser of "advanced" literature. The introduction of this into the precincts of his home was a great trial to his better half, who had no kind of sympathy with such leanings. New-fangled ideas of any description were tabooed by her, and all preachers and holder

o Did," and neglected to conceal it. It was fo

he 'Private Meditations and Prayers of the Rev. Bagge,'" Mrs. Crawley confided to her Aunt Elizabeth, "but i

, some outlet for her outraged feelings; it was long in coming, but come it did at last. The "Man Who Didn't" followed in the footsteps of his irregular mate, and in a fourpenny-halfpenny edition. This was more than the worthy matron could stand, and eith

e 'Man Who Didn't,' that-er-well, that disgusting 'Man Who Didn't'-and how am I to know that he di

ir of tongs, carried in solemn procession to the remotest room in the

devoted himself heroically to dirt; it was not at all his natural tendency, and the more disagreeable he found it the more strenuous was he in its pursuit. Being by nature punctual, he made it an absolute point of honour never to keep a

"It is our duty to remain in Europe to carry on the work of Anarchist propaganda here. The Cuban revolution is a race struggle, and no concern of ours." Others said: "We Anarchists are internationalists, and in whatsoever part of the world there is revolt against oppression, and wherever the revolutionary forces are at work, there is our o

volutionary enthusiasm, to journey to the assistance of the insurgent island. Only one of their number ever returned alive to Europe to tell of the horro

had several times displayed when under the influence of liquor. He waved an old belt appertaining to those times, and would, I believe, have sung something about the Union Jack and the beer of old England, had not his friend recalled him to a better sense of his duty as an Anarchist and Internationalist. It appeared that Carter had come into a small sum of money consequent o

l. The good lady was very deeply affected, and with tears in her eyes she begged them to think again before betaking themselves to "them furrin' parts" where she

, perhaps in anticipation of the dreary prospect which Mrs. Wattles's words had opened before them. When several hours later Short returned from his accustomed evening stroll round the neighbourhood, he described with great relish the pitiable termination of

a ragging when he gets home. He'll give hi

terer to their material needs on the journey. Before a fortnight had elapsed, they also were back at the office, Beppe bearing the poor old Irishman on his shoulders in a quite crippled and exhausted condition. He had to be put to bed, and remained there several weeks, before he was in a fit state to get about again. They all complained bitterly of the inhospitality

velled, her clothes uncared for. I can hear the wonderful ring of her tragic voice as she pleaded the misery of the poor and suffering, of the oppressed, the outcast, the criminal, the rejected, and as it rose higher and higher to invoke fire and sword and bloodshed in expiation. Then I seem to hear its magic and inspired ring as her wonderful faith conjured up visions of the future when the whole of humanity shall live in peace and brot

tches, under the lamps, where the work of the night was being carried on. Some dozen voices, more or less musical, are chanting Anarchist war-songs, and the Inno di Caserio and the Marseillaise ring out through the open windows to the dormant or drunken denizens of Lysander Grove. The Reincarnation is patiently turning the wheel of the printing machine, and rolling out fresh Tocsins, thinking, no doubt, of that tocsin which, at no distant date, shall ring o

t his reincarnated rival at the wheel with undisguised contempt, he whispe

e. And Short, shivering discontentedly at the cold, or swearing amid much perspiration at the heat, would smoke his pipe and eat his unattractive pastry, whil

isconcerted mews were rapidly ended by a dexterous twist of the neck, and whose plump person was before long stewing in wine an

Much stamping and gesticulation accompanied, I remember, the soliloquy of Hamlet, and our flesh crept at the witches' incantations from "Macbeth." The old cobbler delighted in Shakespeare and dictionaries, between the perusal of which he spent most of his time. "Like Autolycus in the 'Winter's Tale

brief phrenological séance, and nothing afforded the comrades more satisfacti

ndaunted to the fray, whilst others, less energetic, curled up on the floor in varying uncomfortable attitudes about the office-inside the dormitory shed