"
"Oh, do not mistake me! Have I not confessed my own weakness? But if I have
one healthy nerve left in me, soul or body, it will retain its strength
only as long as it thrills with devotion to the people's cause. If I live,
I must live among them, for them. If I die, I must die at my post. I could
not rest, except in labour. I dare not fly, like Jonah, from the call of
God. In the deepest shade of the virgin forests, on the loneliest peak of
the Cordilleras, He would find me out; and I should hear His still small
voice reproving me, as it reproved the fugitive patriot-seer of old--What
doest thou here, Elijah?"
I was excited, and spoke, I am afraid, after my custom, somewhat too
magniloquently. But she answered only with a quiet smile:
"So you are a Chartist still?"
"If by a Chartist you mean one who fancies that a change in mere political
circumstances will bring about a millennium, I am no longer one. That dream
is gone--with others. But if to be a Chartist is to love my brothers with
every faculty of my soul--to wish to live and die struggling for their
rights, endeavouring to make them, not electors merely, but fit to be
electors, senators, kings, and priests to God and to His Christ--if that
be the Chartism of the future, then am I sevenfold a Chartist, and ready
to confess it before men, though I were thrust forth from every door in
England.
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