Some years ago, when I first visited the State of Washington, I was informed that it rains thirteen months in the year on Puget Sound. I wonder if that accounts for the muddy state of mind of some of its people. At any rate, everything looked muddy, felt muddy, and was muddy in the State of Washington.
…It was only when we reached Everett and Bellingham that we were made to feel the full consequences of the Seattle experience. In Everett the Chief of Police so frightened the city fathers with ghost stories of danger that they decreed I should not speak. Of course, the Chief meant only “my safety”, bless his mud-soul. He informed me that I would be thrown into the river, tarred and feathered, lynched and quartered. I assured him that I should enjoy such gracious treatment, but he would not listen to me. Of course the meeting could not take place.
Emma Goldman, January 1909
(pp. XXIV – XXV, Anarchy!: An Anthology of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth, ed., Peter Glassgold, Counterpoint Press, 2001)
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