ing -- of resolution, crushed out of weakness -- of joy and
courage, born in the bottomless pit of anguish and despair!
The voice of Labor, despised and outraged; a mighty
giant, lying prostrate -- mountainous, colossal, but blinded,
bound, and ignorant of his strength. And now a dream
of resistance haunts him, hope battling with fear; until
suddenly he stirs, and a fetter snaps -- and a thrill shoots
through him, to the farthest ends of his huge body, and in
a flash the dream becomes an act! He starts, he lifts him~
self; and the bands are shattered, the burdens roll off him;
he rises -- towering, gigantic; he springs to his feet, he
shouts in his new-born exultation--"

And the speaker's voice broke suddenly, with the stress
of his feelings; he stood with his arms stretched out above
him, and the power of his vision seemed to lift him from
the floor. The audience came to its feet with a yell; men
waved their arms, laughing aloud in their excitement.
And Jurgis was with them, he was shouting to tear his
throat; shouting because he could not help it, because the
stress of his feeling was more than he could bear. It was
not merely the man's words, the torrent of his eloquence.
It was his presence, it was his voice: a voice with strange
intonations that rang through the chambers of the soul like
the clanging of a bell -- that gripped the listener like a
mighty hand about his body, that shook him and startled
him with sudden fright, with a sense of things not of earth,
of mysteries never spoken before, of presences of awe and
terror! There was an unfolding of vistas before him, a
breaking of the ground beneath him, an upheaving, a stir~
ring, a trembling; he felt himself suddenly a mere man no
longer -- there were powers within him undreamed of, there
were demon forces contending, age-long wonders struggling
to be born; and he sat oppressed with pain and joy, while a
tingling stole down into his finger-tips, and his breath came
hard and fast. The sentences of this man were to Jurgis like
the crashing of thunder in his soul; a flood of emotion surged
up in him -- all his old hopes and longings, his old griefs
and rages and despairs. All that he had ever felt in his
whole life seemed to come back to him at once, and with

[[366]]

p365 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p366w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p367

v?