Page:Peter Whiffle (1922).djvu/124

 mode, and faded wall-paper of rose and grey, depicting Victorian Greek females, taller than the damsels drawn by Du Maurier and C. D. Gibson, languishing in the shadows of broken columns and weeping willow trees. Upon this paper were fastened with pins a number of covers from radical periodicals, native and foreign, some in vivid colours, the cover of The Masses for March, 1912, Charles A. Winter's Enlightenment versus Violence, the handsome head of a workman, his right hand bearing a torch, printed in green, several cartoons by Art Young, usually depicting the rich man as an octopus or hog, and posters announcing meetings of various radical groups. Gigantic letters, cut from sheets of newspaper, formed the legend, I. W. W., over the door.

The room was almost devoid of furniture. There was an iron bed, with tossed bed-clothing, a table on which lay a few books, including, I noted, one by Karl Marx, another by English Walling, Frank Harris's The Bomb, together with a number of copies of Piet Vlag's new journal. The Masses, and Jack Marinoff's Yiddish comic weekly, The Big Stick. There was also a pail on the table, such a pail as that in which a workman carries his mid-day meal. There were exactly two chairs and a wardrobe of polished oak in the best Grand Rapids manner stood in one corner. All this was sufficiently bewildering but I must confess that the appearance of the lovely head of a Persian cat, issuing from