"Шервуд Андерсен. Марширующие люди (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

mass in at the door of a Chicago factory morning after morning and
year after year with never an epigram from the lips of one of them.

In Coal Creek when men got drunk they staggered in silence through the
street. Did one of them, in a moment of stupid animal sportiveness,
execute a clumsy dance upon the barroom floor, his fellow--labourers
looked at him dumbly, or turning away left him to finish without
witnesses his clumsy hilarity.

Standing in the doorway and looking up and down the bleak village
street, some dim realisation of the disorganised ineffectiveness of
life as he knew it came into the mind of the McGregor boy. It seemed
to him right and natural that he should hate men. With a sneer on his
lips, he thought of Barney Butterlips, the town socialist, who was
forever talking of a day coming when men would march shoulder to
shoulder and life in Coal Creek, life everywhere, should cease being
aimless and become definite and full of meaning.

"They will never do that and who wants them to," mused the McGregor
boy. A blast of wind bearing snow beat upon him and he turned into the
shop and slammed the door behind him. Another thought stirred in his
head and brought a flush to his cheeks. He turned and stood in the
silence of the empty shop shaking with emotion. "If I could form the
men of this place into an army I would lead them to the mouth of the
old Shumway cut and push them in," he threatened, shaking his fist
toward the door. "I would stand aside and see the whole town struggle
and drown in the black water as untouched as though I watched the
drowning of a litter of dirty little kittens."

* * * * *

The next morning when Beaut McGregor pushed his baker's cart along the
street and began climbing the hill toward the miners' cottages, he
went, not as Norman McGregor, the town baker boy, only product of the
loins of Cracked McGregor of Coal Creek, but as a personage, a being,
the object of an art. The name given him by Uncle Charlie Wheeler had
made him a marked man. He was as the hero of a popular romance,
galvanised into life and striding in the flesh before the people. Men
looked at him with new interest, inventorying anew the huge mouth and
nose and the flaming hair. The bartender, sweeping the snow from
before the door of the saloon, shouted at him. "Hey, Norman!" he
called. "Sweet Norman! Norman is too pretty a name. Beaut is the name
for you! Oh you Beaut!"

The tall boy pushed the cart silently along the street. Again he hated
Coal Creek. He hated the bakery and the bakery cart. With a burning
satisfying hate he hated Uncle Charlie Wheeler and the Reverend Minot
Weeks. "Fat old fools," he muttered as he shook the snow off his hat
and paused to breathe in the struggle up the hill. He had something
new to hate. He hated his own name. It did sound ridiculous. He had