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THE WHISPERERS

(NEW YORK, 1905)
In the House of State at Albany,—in shadowy corridors and corners,—the whisperers whispered together.
In sumptuous palaces in the great city men talked intently, with mouth to ear.
Year in and year out they whispered, and talked, and no one heard save those who listened close.
Now in the Hall of the City the whisperers again are whispering, the talkers are talking.
They who once conversed so quietly, secretly, with shrugs and winks and finger laid beside nose—what has happened to their throats?
For speak they never so low, their voices are as the voices of trumpets; whisper they never so close, their words are like alarm bells rung in the night.
Every whisper is a shout, and the noise of their speech goes forth like thunders.
They cry as from the housetops—their voices resound up and down the streets; they echo from village to village and from city to city.
Over prairies and mountains and across the salt sea their whispers go hissing and shouting.
They say the thing they would not say, and quickly the shameful thing clamors back and forth over the round world;
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And when they would fain cease their saying, they may not, for a clear-voiced Questioner is as the finger of fate and the crack of doom.
What they would hide they reveal, what they would cover they make plain;
What they feared to speak aloud to one another, unwilling they publish to all mankind;
And the people listen with bowed heads, wondering and in grief;
And wise men, and they who love their country, turn pale and ask: “What new shame will come upon us?”
And again they ask, “Are these they in whose keep are the substance and hope of the widow and the fatherless?”
And the poor man, plodding home with his scant earnings from his hard week's work, hears the voices, with bitterness in his soul.
And thieves, lurking in dark places and furtively seizing that which is not their own; and the petty and cowardly briber, and he who is bribed, nudge one another;
And the anarch and the thrower of bombs clap hands together, and cry out: “Behold these our allies!”
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