Roland Graeme: Knight. A Novel of Our Time

by Agnes Maule Machar

"Well, so far as I can see, it seems very like rolling a stone up hill, just to have it roll down again. Things seem to go on, as a rule, much the same, whatever you do," he answered.

"But what might it be if people were not doing something all the time?" she asked. "Don't you think it would be a good deal worse?"

"Oh, well, if people like to slave away on that principle—" he said, with a shrug and smile which Nora had learned to detest. "You see I'm not fond of slaving. Perhaps because I have enough of it in my office."

"But then, willing service isn't slaving. It's the greatest pleasure."

"So I've heard," he answered, drily. "But then, one must have the will. You see I haven't."

"Stuff and nonsense!" exclaimed Kitty. "You're not half so bad as you pretend to be, Mr. Archer. If you were, you wouldn't be taking us to this lecture."

"I—taking you!" he exclaimed. "I thought it was you who were taking me! Well, anyhow, we've got here. And it looks as if there was to be a fair audience, of men, at any rate. I expect you'll be the only ladies."

This expectation, however, was not realized, as there were a few others, some drawn by curiosity, some by genuine interest. There were evidently, some few wives of mechanics who had come with their husbands, and who looked really interested in the lecture as it proceeded. Some, Nora thought, must be young working-girls. There was a large gathering of men, evidently workingmen, who nearly filled the body of the hall. In the side seats, to which Mr. Archer led his party, were already seated Mr. Alden and Grace, with Mr. Dunlop, and two or three friends of his whom he had brought to hear his young friend's début as an orator.

At the precise hour appointed, Roland Graeme, and his friend Mr. Burnet, a slender, fair-haired, energetic looking man with spectacles, walked quickly up the platform, and the latter briefly introduced the lecturer. As it was Roland's first attempt of the kind, and as he spoke extemporaneously, from brief notes, he naturally felt somewhat nervous; not, however, so much on his own account, as lest he might not be able to do justice to his subject, and carry the interest of his auditors. Nora watched with sympathetic anxiety the evident effort, in the beginning of his lecture, to keep down his own nervousness, and fix the attention of his hearers on the points which he desired to make, in giving a brief survey of the marvellous achievements of science since the present century began. But soon she saw, with pleasure, that it was no longer an effort; that, as he warmed up to his subject, thought and expression seemed to flow more freely; till, when he reached the second part of his lecture, it seemed to carry him on, like a rapid stream, without conscious exertion. He had lost all thought, it seemed, of himself; and was conscious only of the enthusiasm of his subject. At the end of this first division of the lecture, he sat down for a brief rest to himself and the audience, while Waldberg, who had come in late, played a pretty fantasia, introducing a number of characteristic national airs, which greatly pleased the audience, and helped Roland to a little inspiration for the rest of the lecture.

The second part of the lecture was devoted to pointing out the reality of that great truth of the Brotherhood of Man, which underlies all human history. This principle, he said, was but another name for the inter-dependence, coöperation, mutual trust, which had been the root of all real human progress—without which human beings must have remained a race of selfish and warring savages, little better than beasts of prey. He showed how it had originated and bound together the community; how it had been the basis of commerce; how it had led up to all the discoveries and inventions which had, in turn, supplied it with the means of wider development; how it had practically transformed the whole globe into one great market—glut or famine in one quarter of it meaning low or high prices in another. The market was not yet as open as would be for the true interests of mankind, but he believed the day was not far distant, when protection-fences and custom-houses, with all their expensive machinery, would be things of the past.