Page:Revolution and Other Essays.djvu/81

 he stood there drearily, he became reproach incarnate. "Unstable as water," he said (I am sure he did), — "unstable as water, thou shalt not excel. Man, where are your cabbages?"

I shrank back. Then I waxed rebellious. I refused to answer the question. He had no right to ask it, and his presence was an affront upon the landscape. And a dignity entered into me, and my neck was stiffened, my head poised. I gathered together certain certificates of goods and chattels, pointed my heels toward him and his cabbages, and journeyed townward. I was yet a man. There was naught in those certificates to be ashamed of. But alack-a-day! While my heels thrust the cabbageman beyond the horizon, my toes were drawing me, faltering, like a timid old beggar, into a roaring spate of humanity — men, women, and children without end. They had no concern with me, nor I with them. I knew it; I felt it. Like She, after her fire-bath in the womb of the world, 1 dwindled in my own sight. My feet were uncertain and heavy, and my soul became as a meal sack, limp with emptiness and tied in the middle. People looked upon me scornfully, pitifully, reproachfully. (