The anarchists are beginning to take the place in our fiction which was formerly held by the gypsy. Half a dozen novels of the last few years have had such types as their heroes. It is hard to resist the romantic charm of a person who is utterly unattached. The vagabond who, in a land of conventional dwelling houses, sleeps out under the stars, casts a spell over us. These anarchists are intellectual nomads. In order that they may be free to wander according to their fancy in the realm of thought, to stroll at will in the pleasant valleys of poesy, to climb at times up onto the great white peaks of dreams, that in the winter days they may trek south to meet their friend, the sun, they have foresworn the clumsier impedimenta of our traditional ideas. As the Beduoin and the tramp despise the "Cit" who is kept at home by his business engagements, by the cares of his family and of his lands and goods, so these anarchists look down on us who are held stationary in the world of thought.
I remember a young Russian exile, who spoke English so faultlessly, after the manner of Macaulay’s Essays, that it seemed queer, saying that he was "a cynic of the material." It struck me as a wonderfully apt phrase to distinguish their way of thinking from the more usual. Of all the "kitchenside of life,"—the meals we eat, the clothes we wear, the beds we sleep in, bankbooks, and property deeds, of vested rights and established institutions, of the applause and approbation of the mob—which most of us consider important, they were cynical. I, for instance, must admit to a certain unreasoning respect for clean linen. It is hard for me, even in the face of ocular demonstration, to separate it from clean straight thinking. But this group which gathered at Mrs. Barton’s was certainly indifferent in the matter. Ann’s bacteriological training had made her a fervent apostle of cleanliness. "Germs," she would say, "are only filth." But as often as not, some of the guests were evidently unafraid of microbes. Some of the dirtiest of them were the cleanest, straightest thinkers.
I have never met any other group of people who so sympathetically understood how I felt about life. In one way or another they had come to see life as I did—as I believe anyone, having the energy to avoid hardening, would see it, if they worked long in the Tombs. Try it yourself. Go into the Tombs—there is one in every town—if you have any love of justice and rectitude in your being you will come out in violent revolt against the smug complacency of our social machine. You will find anarchists pleasant people to talk with.