For such a character to make a vital decision
rightly is a career. On the night of the Tap Day which had so
shaken him, he had struck the key-note. He had resolved to use
his life as if it were a tool in his hand to do work, and he
had so used it. The habit of bigness, once caught, possesses one
as quickly as the habit of drink; Johnny McLean was as unhampered
by the net of smallnesses which tangle most of us as a hermit;
the freedom gave him a power which was fast making a marked man
of him.
There was dissatisfaction among the miners; a strike was probable;
the popularity of the new superintendent warded it off from month
to month, which counted unto him for righteousness in the mind
of the president, of which Johnny himself was unaware. Yet the
cobwebs grew; there was an element not reached by, resentful of,
the atmosphere of Johnny's friendliness--"Terence O'Hara's gang."
By the old road of music he had found his way to the hearts of
many. There were good voices among the thousand odd workmen,
and Johnny McLean could not well live without music. He heard
Dennis Mulligan's lovely baritone and Jack Dennison's rolling
bass, as they sang at work in the dim tunnels of the coal-mine,
and it seemed quite simple to him that they and he and others
should meet when work hours were over and do some singing.
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