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Updated: June 6, 2025
When he thought of her he felt strong enough to go back, but when he thought of his tormentors and what he would be obliged to endure from them, he shivered and shrank back into despondency. He was still fighting his battle, when a slow step came down the stairs ending in a sharp rap upon the door. He said, "Come in," and Radbourn, the most powerful and most popular senior, entered the room.
Radbourn looked back after a while, but the bare white hive had absorbed its little group, and was standing bleak as a tombstone and hot as a furnace on the naked plain in the blazing sun. "America's pitiful boast!" said the young radical, looking back at it. "Only a miserable hint of what it might be."
He had not the courage to go back to the private gallery into which Radbourn had penetrated, but went into the common gallery, which was full of negroes, unweariedly listening to the dry and almost unintelligible speeches below. He sat there the whole afternoon and went back to his hotel meek and very tired. Radbourn introduced him to a few of the members the next day.
He was suspicious of his power because he no longer felt it. He was like a man who had dreamed of flying and woke to find himself paralyzed. After his triumph he was the same great, awkward, country hired-man. "Say, look here, Talcott," said Radbourn, as they met at the door of the chapel going out, "I'm going to propose you as a member of the Delta; come up Monday, and I'll put you through."
In the midst of the growing tumult a one-armed man entered the speaker's desk and called out in snappy tenor "Gentlemen, I am requested by the door-keeper to ask all persons not entitled to the floor to please retire." Bradley started, but Radbourn said, "No hurry, you have fifteen minutes yet. As a member-elect you have the courtesy of the floor anyway. Do you want to meet anybody?"
"I don't mind. How are you, anyway?" "Oh, I'm all right. Say! that beard of yours makes you look as funny as old fun." "Does it?" he said. "You bet! It makes you look old enough to go to Congress. Say! heard from Radbourn lately?" Bradley shook his head. "Well, I haven't, but Lily has. He's writing writing for the newspapers, she said." "Is that so? I haven't heard it." "E-huh!
He observed that many of the negroes were splashed with orange-colored clay. Members began to take their seats and to call pages by clapping their hands. The cloak-rooms and barber-shop resounded with laughter. Newspaper men sauntered by, addressing Radbourn and asking for news. And here and there others, like Radbourn, were acting as guides to groups of visitors.
Rouse these people for one thing; preach discontent, a noble discontent." "It will only make them unhappy." "No, it won't; not if you show them the way out. If it does, it's better to be unhappy striving for higher things, like a man, than to be content in a wallow like swine." "But what is the way out?" This was sufficient to set Radbourn upon his hobbyhorse.
He was a good deal of an autocrat in the town and in the school, and took pleasure in exercising his power on behalf of some poor devil like Bradley Talcott. "Jennings tells me you're going to give it up," he said, without preliminary conversation. Bradley nodded sullenly. "What's the use, anyhow? I might as well. I'm too old, anyhow." Radbourn looked at him a moment in silence.
I want to talk about my case," pursued the preacher, with a curious hesitancy. "I want to ask a few questions on things." "Very well; sail in. I'll do the best I can," said Radbourn. "I've been thinking a good deal since that night. I've come to the conclusion that I don't believe what I've been preaching. I thought I did, but I didn't. I don't know what I believe.
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