Joe—dark, sloppy, beautiful, and young—is busyopening a packing case in the centre of the stage. His back is turned upon the door.]
Joe
[As he works, he half sings, half mutters to himself the words of “Remember,” an I. W. W. song, to the tune of “Hold the Fort.”]
“We speak to you from jail to-day,
Two hundred union men,
We’re here because the bosses’ laws
Bring slavery again.”
[Through this the curtain rises and Father McKee is seen climbing the porch steps. He wears the sober garb of a Catholic priest, not over clean, what with dust, spots, and all. He nods to Ah Gee and comes into the doorway. He stands a moment to mop his large, pale face with a red bandana. Then he lowers lugubrious disapproval upon everything in sight. Then he yawns.
He is one of those clerics who can never mention anything except to denounce it. And his technique of denunciation is quite special to himself. It consists in a long, throaty abstention from inflexion of any kind which culminates in a vocal explosion when he reaches the accented syllable of the word upon which
