.. thicker and thicker and thicker... standing round the
speakers with their mouths open and their eyes wide, pushing and
jostling, but good-naturedly, like young dogs.
"Everywhere, you know, men were forming committees, committees for
social right, for a just Peace, for Women's Suffrage, for Finnish
Independence, for literature and the arts, for the better treatment of
prostitutes, for education, for the just division of the land. I had
crept into my corner, and soon as the soldiers came thicker and thicker,
the noise grew more and more deafening, the dust floated in hazy clouds.
The men had their kettles and they boiled tea, squatting down there,
sometimes little processions pushed their way through, soldiers shouting
and laughing with some white-faced policeman in their midst. Once I saw
an old man, his Shuba about his ears, stumbling with his eyes wide open,
and staring as though he were sleep-walking. That was Stuermer being
brought to judgement. Once I saw a man so terrified that he couldn't
move, but must be prodded along by the rifles of the soldiers. That was
Pitirim....
"And the shouting and screaming rose and rose like a flood.
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