Progressive Woman from Girard, Kansas • 3

3 The Little Lords of Love THE PROGRESSIVE WOMAN. The children are to me a perpetual source I 1 1 EUGENE V. DEBS They are the heirs of the social filth and disease of capitalism and death marks them at what should be the dewy dawn of birth, and they wither and die without having been born. Their cradle is their coffin and their birth robe their winding sheet. The Socialist movement is the first in all history to come to the rescue of childhood and to set free the millions of little captives.

And they realize it and incarnate the very spirit of the movement and shout aloud their joy as it marches on to victory. The little revolutionists in Socialist parades know what they are there for, and in our audiences they are wide awake to the very last word. They know, too, when to applaud, and the speaker who fails to enthuse them is surely lacking in some vital element of his speech. At the close of a recent meeting in a western state the stage was crowded with eager comrades shaking hands and offering congratulations. My hand was suddenly gripped from below.

I glanced down and a little comrade just about big enough to stand alone looked straight up into my eyes and said with all the frankness and sincerity of a child: "That was a great speech you made and I love you; keep this to remember me by." And he handed me a little nickle-plated whistle, his sole tangible possession, and with it all the wealth of his pure and unpolluted child-love, which filled my heart and moved me to tears. In just that moment that tiny proletaire filled my measure to overflowing and consecrated me with increased strength and devotion to the great movement that is destined to rescue the countless millions of disinherited babes and give them the earh and all the fulness thereof as their patrimony forever. The sweetest, tenderest, most pregnant words uttered by the proletaire of Galilee were "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me for of such is the kingdom of heaven." of wonder and delight. How keen they are, how alert, and how comprehending! The sweet children of the Socialist movementthe little lords of light and love keep my heart warm and my purpose true. The raggedest and dirtiest of them all is to me an angel of light.

I have seen them, the proletarian little folks, swarming up out of the sub-cellars and down from the garrets of the tenements and I have watched them with my heart filled with pity and my eyes overflowing with tears. Their very glee seemed tragic beyond words. Born within the roar of the ocean their tiny feet are never kissed by the eager surf, nor their wan cheeks made ruddy by the vitalizing breezes of the sea. Not for them the floatsam and jetsam upon the social tides are the rosy hours of babyhood, the sweet, sweet joys of childhood. My Father and I A Christmas Experience PETER ROSECGER (Translated by M.

E. K. and L. E'. for The Vineyard.) On the whole I not a bad bringing up, rather I had none at all.

When I was a good, devout, obedient, apt child, my parents praised me; when I was the reverse they gave me a downright scolding. Praise almost always did me good and made me feel inches taller; for some children like plants shoot up only in sunshine. But my father was of the opinion that I ought not to grow in height only, but also in breadth, and to this end reserve and austerity were good. My mother was love itself. My father had been the same by nature, but he did not know how to express his warm and loving heart.

With all his gentleness this care and labor-laden man had a taciturn, serious bearing; only later when he judged me man enough to appreciate it, did he ever give his rich humor free play before me. During those years when I was tearing my first dozen pairs of breeches, he concerned himself with me but little except when I had done something naughty; then he allowed his severity full play. His harshness and my punishment generally consisted in his standing over me, and in loud angry tones, holding up my sin before me and pointing out the punishment I deserved. When such an outburst occurred, it was my habit to plant myself in front of my father and remain standing before him as if petrified, with my arms hanging down and looking steadily in his angry face throughout the vehement rebuke. In my inmost heart I always repented my wrong doing and had the clearest sense of guilt; but I also remember another feeling that used to come over me during those 1 a cf rfH from V1 1 re cineo to be lying in the manger the priest said so; and I must see about that now.

I bent the legs of the leaden Christus back and the arms over the breast then laid Him reverently in my mother's work basket, and so set my crib upon the house altar; while I hid the cross on the straw of my parent's bed for getting that the basket would betray the taking down from the cross. Fate swiftly overtook me. My mother was first to observe how absurdly the work basket had got up among the saints today. "Who can have found the crucifix in his way up there?" asked my father at the very same moment. I was standing a little away apart, and I felt like a creature thirsting for strong wine to drink.

But at the same time a strange fear warned me to get still farther into the background if possible. My father approached me, asking almost humbly if I did not know where the crucifix had got to? I stood bolt upright and looked him in the face. He repeated his question. I pointed toward the bed-straw; tears came, but I believe there was no quiver of my lips. My father searched for and found it, and was not angry only surprised when he saw the mishandling of the sacred relic.

My craving for the strong bitter wine grew apace. My father put the bare cross on the table. "I can see," he said, speaking with perfect calmness, and he took his hat down from the nail, "I can see he'll have to be thoroughly punished at last. When even the Lord Christ Himself is not safe! Mind you stay in the room, boy!" he bade me darkly, and then went out the door. "Run after him and beg for pardon!" cried my mother to me, "He's gone to cut a birch rod." I was as if welded to the floor.

With horrible clearness I saw what would befall me, but was quite incapable of faking Continued on page ii sense of well-being, that increased mightily the louder and longer he thundered. When after such a scene weeks went by without my concocting mischief, and my father, kind and silent as ever, went about his business without taking notice of me, the longing to devise something to put him in a rage gradually began to expand and ripened in me again. This was not for the sake of vexing for I loved him passionately; nor yet from malice; but from another cause which I did not understand at that time. Thus it once happened on the sacred eve of Christmas. In the previous summer in Maria Zell (a place of pilgrimage in Syria) my father had bought a little black cross on which hung a Christus in cast lead, and all the instruments of the Passion of the same material.

This treasure had been put safely away until Christmas eve, when my father brought it out of his press and set it on the little house-altar. I profited by the time when my parents and the rest of our people were still busy on -the farm outside and in the kitchen making ready for the great festival, and, not with out endangering my sound limbs, I reached the crucifix down from the wall, and crouched down behind the stove with it, and began taking it to pieces. It was a rare joy to me when with the aid of my little pocket-knife I loosened the first ladder, then the pincers and hammer, then Peter's cock, and at last the dear Christ himself from the cross. The separated parts seemed to me more interesting now than before as a whole; but when I had finished and -wanted to put the things together again and could not; I began to grow hot inside and thought I was choking. Would it stop at a mere scolding this time? To be sure, 1 told myself; the black cross is much finer than before; there is a black cross with nothing on it in the chapel in Hohen-wang, too, and people go there to pray.

Besides, who wants a crucified Lord at Christmas time? At tite He ought charm and ecstacy when the storm burst over my head. Tears came to my eyes and trickled down my cheeks; but I stood rooted there like a little tree, gazing up at my father, and was filled with an inexplicable.