they had it. All mobs believe
alike in filth and fire, whether antique slaves free for their day's
Saturnalia, or the Paris crowds of '93. Their ideas of happiness are
pillage, bloodshed, drunkenness, revenge. Every popular uprising sinks
the _people_ deeper in their misery. Every bomb thrown discredits the
cause of liberty."

Astonished by this concession, Arthur wondered how she had ever earned
her reputation as the Russian "Red Virgin," as an unequivocal terrorist.
Thus he had heard her hailed at all the meetings which she addressed.
But she did not notice his perturbation, she was following another
train.

"You Americans do not love money as much as the Europeans--who hoard it
away, who worship it on their naked knees; but you do something
worse--you love it for the sake of the sport, a cruel sport for the
poor. You go into speculation as the English go after big game. It is a
sport. This sport involves food--and you gamble with wheat and meat for
counters, while starving men and women pay for the game. America is yet
rich enough to afford this sport, but some day it will become crowded
like Europe, and then, beware! Wasn't it James Hinton who said that
'Overthrowing society means an inverted pyramid getting straight'?

"And America," she continued, "bribes us with the gilded sentimental
phrases of Rousseau, Mirabeau, and Thomas Paine woven into your national
constitution, with its presumptuous declaration that all men are born
free and equal--shades of Darwin and Nietzsche!--and that universal
suffrage is a panacea for all evils. In no country boasting itself
Christian is there a system so artfully devised for keeping the _poor_
free and unequal, no country where so-called public opinion, as
expressed in the press, is used to club the majority into submission.
And you are all proud of this liberty--a liberty at which the despised
serf in Russia or the man of the street in London sneers--there is
to-day more _individual_ liberty in England and Germany than in the
United States. Don't smile! I can prove it. As for France or Italy--they
are a hundred years ahead of you in municipal government. But I shan't
talk blue-books at you, Arthur!"

"Why not, why not?" he quickly interposed. "You always impress me by
your easy handling of facts. And why won't my money be of use to the
social revolution?" Scornfully she started up again and began walking.

"Why? Because convictions can't be bought with cash! Why! Because