The Swarm Spirit 



possessed, I should say, not by exorcised demons, 

 but by the hysteria received directly from some 

 man or woman of the excited crowd in the im- 

 mediate neighborhood. Panic is more infectious 

 than any fever, and knows no barriers between 

 brute and human. Indeed, in a frightened crowd 

 in the Subway, in a theater where smoke appears, 

 or in any other scene of emotional excitement, you 

 may in a few minutes observe actions more pan- 

 icky, more suggestive of a herd impulse (if there be 

 such a fantastic thing in orderly nature), than 

 can be seen in a whole lifetime of watching wild 

 animals. 



In my head at this moment is the vivid impres- 

 sion of a night when I was caught and carried away 

 by a crowd of Italian socialists, twenty thousand 

 frenzied men and a few ferocious women, that first 

 eddied like a storm-tide about the great square 

 under the cathedral at Milan, howling, shriek- 

 ing, imprecating, and then poured tumultuously 

 through choked streets to hurl paving-blocks at 

 the innocent roof of the railroad station, as at a 

 symbol of government. The roof was of glass, 

 and the clattering smash of it seemed to get on the 

 nerves of men, like the cry of sick-em! to an ex- 

 cited dog, rousing them to a senseless fury of 

 destruction. Clear and thrilling above the tumult 

 a bugle sang, like a note from heaven, and into 



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