MEET ME ON THE BARRICADES

—I suppose men think like this when they’re car-
ried beyond themselves, when they’re swept beyond
the range of narrow, personal desire.

Something stirred within him; the legerdemain of
memory reduced a decade to a moment.

—Vanzetti, the poor fish-peddler. God, that was
ten years ago! What was it he said? I might have
die, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not
a failure. Never in our full life could we hope to do
such work for tolerance, for joostice, for man’s onder-
standing, as now we do by accident. An unknown
radical immigrant, barely able to speak English,
but when he had to cry out against infamy, strong
beautiful words came readily to his lips and to his
pen. And facing a felon’s death in "a Massachusetts
electric chair he said . . . Let me see. Oh, yes. That
last moment belongs to us——that agony is our
triumph .’

His mind leaped across the chasm of a decade and
returned to the present.

—-Betrayal. They spoke of it all night long. But
what assurance have we that today’s savior will not
be the renegade of tomorrow?

A burst of laughter by Darrell cut across his
thoughts for a moment. Then:

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