She watches me whenever I go out,and sees that I start straight for this office."Fulkerson laughed and said:"Well,it's probably the only thing that's saved your life.Have you seen anything of Beaton lately?""No.You don't mean to say he's killed!""Not if he knows it.But I don't know--What do you say,March?What's the reason you couldn't get us up a paper on the strike?""I knew it would fetch round to 'Every Other Week,'somehow.""No,but seriously.There 'll be plenty of news paper accounts.But you could treat it in the historical spirit--like something that happened several centuries ago;De Foe's Plague of London style.Heigh?What made me think of it was Beaton.If I could get hold of him,you two could go round together and take down its aesthetic aspects.It's a big thing,March,this strike is.I tell you it's imposing to have a private war,as you say,fought out this way,in the heart of New York,and New York not minding,it a bit.See?Might take that view of it.With your deions and Beaton's sketches--well,it would just be the greatest card!Come!What do you say?""Will you undertake to make it right with Mrs.March if I'm killed and she and the children are not killed with me?""Well,it would be difficult.I wonder how it would do to get Kendricks to do the literary part?""I've no doubt he'd jump at the chance.I've yet to see the form of literature that Kendricks wouldn't lay down his life for.""Say!"March perceived that Fulkerson was about to vent another inspiration,and smiled patiently."Look here!What's the reason we couldn't get one of the strikers to write it up for us?""Might have a symposium of strikers and presidents,"March suggested.
"No;I'm in earnest.They say some of those fellows-especially the foreigners--are educated men.I know one fellow--a Bohemian--that used to edit a Bohemian newspaper here.He could write it out in his kind of Dutch,and we could get Lindau to translate it.""I guess not,"said March,dryly.
"Why not?He'd do it for the cause,wouldn't he?Suppose you put it up on him the next time you see him.""I don't see Lindau any more,"said March.He added,"I guess he's renounced me along with Mr.Dryfoos's money.""Pshaw!You don't mean he hasn't been round since?""He came for a while,but he's left off coming now.I don't feel particularly gay about it,"March said,with some resentment of Fulkerson's grin."He's left me in debt to him for lessons to the children."Fulkerson laughed out."Well,he is the greatest old fool!Who'd 'a'thought he'd 'a'been in earnest with those 'brincibles'of his?But Isuppose there have to be just such cranks;it takes all kinds to make a world.""There has to be one such crank,it seems,"March partially assented.
"One's enough for me."
"I reckon this thing is nuts for Lindau,too,"said Fulkerson."Why,it must act like a schooner of beer on him all the while,to see 'gabidal'embarrassed like it is by this strike.It must make old Lindau feel like he was back behind those barricades at Berlin.Well,he's a splendid old fellow;pity he drinks,as I remarked once before."When March left the office he did not go home so directly as he came,perhaps because Mrs.March's eye was not on him.He was very curious about some aspects of the strike,whose importance,as a great social convulsion,he felt people did not recognize;and,with his temperance in everything,he found its negative expressions as significant as its more violent phases.He had promised his wife solemnly that he would keep away ,from these,and he had a natural inclination to keep his promise;he had no wish to be that peaceful spectator who always gets shot when there is any firing on a mob.He interested himself in the apparent indifference of the mighty city,which kept on about its business as tranquilly as if the private war being fought out in its midst were a vague rumor of Indian troubles on the frontier;and he realized how there might once have been a street feud of forty years in Florence without interfering materially with the industry and prosperity of the city.
On Broadway there was a silence where a jangle and clatter of horse-car bells and hoofs had been,but it was not very noticeable;and on the avenues,roofed by the elevated roads,this silence of the surface tracks was not noticeable at all in the roar of the trains overhead.Some of the cross-town cars were beginning to run again,with a policeman on the rear of each;on the Third Avenge line,operated by non-union men,who had not struck,there were two policemen beside the driver of every car,and two beside the conductor,to protect them from the strikers.But there were no strikers in sight,and on Second Avenue they stood quietly about in groups on the corners.While March watched them at a safe distance,a car laden with policemen came down the track,but none of the strikers offered to molest it.In their simple Sunday best,March thought them very quiet,decent-looking people,and he could well believe that they had nothing to do with the riotous outbreaks in other parts of the city.He could hardly believe that there were any such outbreaks;he began more and more to think them mere newspaper exaggerations in the absence of any disturbance,or the disposition to it,that he could see.
He walked on to the East River Avenues A,B,and C presented the same quiet aspect as Second Avenue;groups of men stood on the corners,and now and then a police-laden car was brought unmolested down the tracks before them;they looked at it and talked together,and some laughed,but there was no trouble.
March got a cross-town car,and came back to the West Side.A policeman,looking very sleepy and tired,lounged on the platform.
"I suppose you'll be glad when this cruel war is over,"March suggested,as he got in.
The officer gave him a surly glance and made him no answer.
