, &c. How he got a clue to the scandal I cannot
conceive. Mackaye and Crossthwaite, I had thought, were the only souls to
whom I had ever breathed the secret, and they denied indignantly the having
ever betrayed my weakness. How it came out, I say again, I cannot conceive;
except because it is a great everlasting law, and sure to fulfil itself
sooner or later, as we may see by the histories of every remarkable, and
many an unremarkable, man--"There is nothing secret, but it shall be made
manifest; and whatsoever ye have spoken in the closet, shall be proclaimed
upon the house-tops."
For some time after that last exposure, I was thoroughly crest-fallen--and
not without reason. I had been giving a few lectures among the working men,
on various literary and social subjects. I found my audience decrease--and
those who remained seemed more inclined to hiss than to applaud me. In
vain I ranted and quoted poetry, often more violently than my own opinions
justified. My words touched no responsive chord in my hearers' hearts; they
had lost faith in me.
At last, in the middle of a lecture on Shelley, I was indulging, and
honestly too, in some very glowing and passionate praise of the true
nobleness of a man, whom neither birth nor education could blind to the
evils of society; who, for the sake of the suffering many, could trample
under foot his hereditary pride, and become an outcast for the People's
Cause.
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