The Jungle, Upton Sinclair [good e books to read .TXT] 📗

about a thousand of them were on hand that evening. The “pitchfork senator” stood their fusillade of questions for about an hour, and then went home in disgust, and the balance of the meeting was a strictly party affair. Jurgis, who had insisted upon coming, had the time of his life that night; he danced about and waved his arms in his excitement⁠—and at the very climax he broke loose from his friends, and got out into the aisle, and proceeded to make a speech himself! The senator had been denying that the Democratic party was corrupt; it was always the Republicans who bought the votes, he said⁠—and here was Jurgis shouting furiously, “It’s a lie! It’s a lie!” After which he went on to tell them how he knew it⁠—that he knew it because he had bought them himself! And he would have told the “pitchfork senator” all his experiences, had not Harry Adams and a friend grabbed him about the neck and shoved him into a seat. XXXI

One of the first things that Jurgis had done after he got a job was to go and see Marija. She came down into the basement of the house to meet him, and he stood by the door with his hat in his hand, saying, “I’ve got work now, and so you can leave here.”

But Marija only shook her head. There was nothing else for her to do, she said, and nobody to employ her. She could not keep her past a secret⁠—girls had tried it, and they were always found out. There were thousands of men who came to this place, and sooner or later she would meet one of them. “And besides,” Marija added, “I can’t do anything, I’m no good⁠—I take dope. What could you do with me?”

“Can’t you stop?” Jurgis cried.

“No,” she answered, “I’ll never stop. What’s the use of talking about it⁠—I’ll stay here till I die, I guess. It’s all I’m fit for.” And that was all that he could get her to say⁠—there was no use trying. When he told her he would not let Elzbieta take her money, she answered indifferently: “Then it’ll be wasted here⁠—that’s all.” Her eyelids looked heavy and her face was red and swollen; he saw that he was annoying her, that she only wanted him to go away. So he went, disappointed and sad.

Poor Jurgis was not very happy in his home-life. Elzbieta was sick a good deal now, and the boys were wild and unruly, and very much the worse for their life upon the streets. But he stuck by the family nevertheless, for they reminded him of his old happiness; and when things went wrong he could solace himself with a plunge into the Socialist movement. Since his life had been caught up into the current of this great stream, things which had before been the whole of life to him came to seem of relatively slight importance; his interests were elsewhere, in the world of ideas. His outward life was commonplace and uninteresting; he was just a hotel-porter, and expected to remain one while he lived; but meantime, in the realm of thought, his life was a perpetual adventure. There was so much to know⁠—so many wonders to be discovered! Never in all his life did Jurgis forget the day before election, when there came a telephone message from a friend of Harry Adams, asking him to bring Jurgis to see him that night; and Jurgis went, and met one of the minds of the movement.

The invitation was from a man named Fisher, a Chicago millionnaire who had given up his life to settlement-work, and had a little home in the heart of the city’s slums. He did not belong to the party, but he was in sympathy with it; and he said that he was to have as his guest that night the editor of a big Eastern magazine, who wrote against Socialism, but really did not know what it was. The millionaire suggested that Adams bring Jurgis along, and then start up the subject of “pure food,” in which the editor was interested.

Young Fisher’s home was a little two-story brick house, dingy and weather-beaten outside, but attractive within. The room that Jurgis saw was half lined with books, and upon the walls were many pictures, dimly visible in the soft, yellow light; it was a cold, rainy night, so a log-fire was crackling in the open hearth. Seven or eight people were gathered about it when Adams and his friend arrived, and Jurgis saw to his dismay that three of them were ladies. He had never talked to people of this sort before, and he fell into an agony of embarrassment. He stood in the doorway clutching his hat tightly in his hands, and made a deep bow to each of the persons as he was introduced; then, when he was asked to have a seat, he took a chair in a dark corner, and sat down upon the edge of it, and wiped the perspiration off his forehead with his sleeve. He was terrified lest they should expect him to talk.

There was the host himself, a tall, athletic young man, clad in evening dress, as also was the editor, a dyspeptic-looking gentleman named Maynard. There was the former’s frail young wife, and also an elderly lady, who taught kindergarten in the settlement, and a young college student, a beautiful girl with an intense and earnest face. She only spoke once or twice while Jurgis was there⁠—the rest of the time she sat by the table in the centre of the room, resting her chin in her hands and drinking in the conversation. There were two other men, whom young Fisher had introduced to Jurgis as Mr. Lucas and Mr. Schliemann; he heard them address Adams as “Comrade,” and so he knew that they were Socialists.

The one called Lucas was a mild and meek-looking little gentleman of clerical aspect; he