Life of Albert Parsons

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the morning of that fateful day, when August Spies stood already within the shadow of his doom, he said to one near him, holding up his hand in witness of the fact:

"This hand is as steady as when, in the old days,
It plucked the already ripe fruit from life's tree;
The apple that weighted the bough in the gold days
When blazed the great sun of promise for me.
Yes, perfectly steady, with no trace of trembling,
Though all is near ready to meet my death here I
Pray observe! There is nothing remotely resembling
The outward expression of commonplace fear.

"To such men death had, and could have, no terrors, and their execution, which was self-immolation, could have no touch of shame. Whatever else may be said of these dead, it will not be denied that they were loyal and true to the convictions which had taken captive, years ago, their hearts, and to what they believed to be the welfare of the people, whom they loved.

"I must not keep you long, and yet there is one thing that I specially want to say, because doubtless in this great throng there stand many who misapprehended their position and their views. They were called Anarchists. They were painted and presented to the world as men loving violence, riot, and bloodshed for their own sake; as men full of an unextinguishable and causeless hatred against existing order. Nothing could be further from the truth. They were men who loved peace, men of gentle instincts, men of gracious tenderness of heart, loved by those who knew them, trusted by those who came to understand the loyalty and purity of their lives. And the Anarchy of which they spoke and taught-what was it, but an attempt to answer the question, "After the revolution, what?" They believed-ah! I would that there were no grounds for this belief that there was that of wrong and hardship in the existing order which pointed to conflict, because they believed that greed and selfishness would not surrender, of their own volition, unto righteousness. But their creed had to do with the to-morrow of the possible revolution, and the whole of their thought and their philosophy, as Anar-