Before I go on I want to say a word for this comrade, John Carlson, a
humble figure of the Revolution, one of the countless faithful ones in
the ranks. He worked for Wickson, in the stables near the hunting lodge.
In fact, it was on Wickson's horses that we had ridden over Sonoma
Mountain. For nearly twenty years now John Carlson has been custodian
of the refuge. No thought of disloyalty, I am sure, has ever entered his
mind during all that time. To betray his trust would have been in his
mind a thing undreamed. He was phlegmatic, stolid to such a degree that
one could not but wonder how the Revolution had any meaning to him at
all. And yet love of freedom glowed sombrely and steadily in his
dim soul. In ways it was indeed good that he was not flighty and
imaginative. He never lost his head. He could obey orders, and he was
neither curious nor garrulous. Once I asked how it was that he was a
revolutionist.

"When I was a young man I was a soldier," was his answer. "It was in
Germany. There all young men must be in the army. So I was in the army.
There was another soldier there, a young man, too. His father was what
you call an agitator, and his father was in jail for lese majesty--what
you call speaking the truth about the Emperor. And the young man, the
son, talked with me much about people, and work, and the robbery of
the people by the capitalists. He made me see things in new ways, and
I became a socialist. His talk was very true and good, and I have never
forgotten. When I came to the United States I hunted up the socialists.
I became a member of a section--that was in the day of the S. L. P.
Then later, when the split came, I joined the local of the S. P. I was
working in a livery stable in San Francisco then. That was before the
Earthquake. I have paid my dues for twenty-two years. I am yet a member,
and I yet pay my dues, though it is very secret now. I will always pay