"Do you know what it is to be so broken of spirit, so weary of the cringing and the fawning, as to feel, each morning, that if death had come to you in the night, and so spared you this waking, you had counted it a happy release?
"I do, and so do tens of thousands in this London to-day.
"And, more terrible still, do you know what it is to be so abject a thing, so infamous a creature, that you are content to play the cut-throat to your fellow-slave, to pry and spy and carry tales, in the hope that you may be appointed to replace him, and so put another shilling a week in your own pocket, and another sovereign in that of the tyrant and blood-sucker, to curry favour with whom you are ready to do this infamous thing?
"Again I say I do; again I say, and so do tens of thousands in this city of London to-day.
"For me those days of slavery and infamy are gone. For millions of my fellow-men and fellow-women those days of slavery and infamy remain; but a man who has once been through what I have, who has lived and starved and eaten his heart out among the poor in their squalid, sordid surroundings, can never forget it so long as he lives. Their cry is ever in my ears; the cry of men whom these monsters have made less than men, breaking the man's heart in them, turning them into curs and cravens, robbing them of the very birthright of their manhood, that, like bullocks and steers, they may be broken to bow themselves to the yoke and lash, and meekly to obey their tyrant's bidding. The cry of wan-faced, hollow-eyed women, working a week of winter days and nights in a fireless garret till their chilled fingers can scarce hold the needle, and for a wage, that on the streets to which—small wonder!—such women are, by starvation and despair, too often driven, can be earned at so light a cost. But most of all, the cry of little children—little hollow-eyed children, crying silently because they are hungry and cold, stretching wan hands for the bread——My God! I cannot bear to think of it; I shall go mad. I sometimes think I am mad when I brood over their sufferings and their wrongs. A great writer has put it on record that when he looks upon his fellow-men and fellow-women, and remembers that pain and sorrow and disease, for themselves and their dear ones, are the inevitable lot of all, and death the only certainty—when he sees them smiling, flirting, posturing, grimacing on the very edge of Eternity, he is filled with amazement and contempt.
"Contempt! To me the sight of haggard, careworn men, of weary-faced and unlovely women, leading starved and joyless lives, out of which all hope and beauty and poetry are irretrievably crushed and gone, yet forcing themselves, in face of such terrible odds, to smile and laugh and take life lightly—is a sight for gods to wonder at, is magnificent, is heroic, is sublime.
"And me, God has upraised to right the wrongs of the poor. The love that I bear to these my people, of whom I am one, burns more steadily than ever within me; but side by side with it there has sprung up a fiercer flame—the fires of fierce and relentless hate of their oppressors. Me, God has marked out to be the avenger of the poor.
"As God sent the rainbow as a sign to his servant Noah, so to me by a sign has He signified His will. To me, as I walked the streets of this great city, a message came, bidding me turn my steps to the nation's museum, there to seek the sign. And in the Egyptian court of the museum I found it. There, stretching half the length of that great hall, where stand the sarcophagi of Israel's taskmasters, the Pharaohs, is a clenched arm and fist, of solid granite, and of such giant proportions, that one single blow from it would make to fall the side of a house, and bring to death and destruction all who dwell therein.
"And as I looked the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 'Behold, I make of thee My fist and arm of granite, that thou mayest strike and slay without mercy My enemies and thy enemies, them that oppress and grind down My people. Strike then, slay and spare not, else shall it be to thee as to Saul, who, when bidden by Me utterly to destroy the Amalekites, spared many, bringing thereby upon himself and upon his house the just and heavy vengeance of God.'"
The man was mad—mad as it is possible for a man to be; but there was method in his madness. In all that had been said, no single word had been dropped which afforded any clue in regard to the crimes he had committed or meant to commit. Passionate as had been his outpourings in the cause of the poor and of the oppressed, and vehement as had been his declaration of war against the oppressor, he had given me no inkling of the means at his command for the carrying on of the war he was waging, no clue in regard to his associates, their methods, or their meeting-places. Not one word of all he had said could be adduced against him in court, as evidence in connection with any crime with which he might be charged.