I did not approve of these cruel acts,
though provoked by the tyranny of the government; but now there
is a tendency to reproach all Intelligents with the memory of them.
This is very unfortunate for Intelligents.
"It was when the railway strike was almost over, and a few trains
came through at long intervals, that I stood one day watching
a train that had come in. Only one person got out of the train,
far away up at the other end of it, for it was a very long train.
It was evening, with a cold, greenish sky. A little snow had fallen,
but not enough to whiten the plain, which stretched away a sort
of sad purple in all directions, save where the flat tops
of some distant tablelands caught the evening light like lakes.
As the solitary man came stamping along on the thin snow by the train
he grew larger and larger; I thought I had never seen so large a man.
But he looked even taller than he was, I think, because his
shoulders were very big and his head comparatively little.
From the big shoulders hung a tattered old jacket, striped dull
red and dirty white, very thin for the winter, and one hand rested
on a huge pole such as peasants rake in weeds with to burn them.
"Before he had traversed the full length of the train he was entangled in one
of those knots of rowdies that were the embers of the extinct revolution,
though they mostly disgraced themselves upon the government side.
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