Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/145

 of humor that he laughed at nearly everything—even his enemies, whom he never would call enemies. I can see him now—climbing down out of the buggy, carefully blanketing old Molly against the raw blasts, then brushing the white hairs from his front with his enormous hands, and running like a boy up the stairway to the dim little hall in the Polish quarter where the crowd had gathered. The men set up a shout when they saw him, and he leaped on the stage and, without waiting for the chairman to introduce him,—he scorned every convention that obtruded itself,—he leaned over the front of the platform and said:

"What is the Polish word for liberty?"

The crowd of Poles, huddling about a stove in the middle of the hall, their caps on, their pipes going furiously, their bodies covered with the strange garments they had brought with them across the sea, shouted in reply.

"Wolno['s]['c]!"

And Jones paused and listened, cocked his head, wrinkled his brows, and said:

"What was that? Say it again!"

Again they shouted it.

"Say it again—once more!" he demanded. And again they shouted it in a splendid chorus. And then

"Well," said Golden Rule Jones, "I can't pronounce it, but it sounds good, and that is what we are after in this campaign."

Now that I have written it down, I have a feeling that I have utterly failed to give an adequate sense