“Reflect a moment,” said his visitor. “Do you not know as well as I that it is the privilege of us to know everything?”
“True, true! But in what manner has one so obscure as myself been brought to your notice?”
“Every Sunday afternoon for a year past I have been a member of the audience your oratory has enchanted in Hyde Park.”
“How comes it, sir, that one of your condition can bring himself to listen to a mob orator?”
“How comes it that one of a like condition can bring himself to preach to the mob?”
“Primarily, I suppose, that my powers may develop. One day I shall hope to turn them—that is, if it is given to me to survive the present snap of cold weather—to higher things and larger issues.”
“And I, my friend,” said his visitor, “who by no human possibility can survive the present snap of cold weather, I come to tell the young Demosthenes that he can seek no higher thing, no larger issue than to preach to the mob. All the great movements the world ever saw began from below. The power of the sea lies in its depths. Jesus was able to invent a religion by preaching to the mob.”
“There are some who think,” said the young man, “that for one who was ambitious the career of Jesus was a partial failure.”
“The age is crying out for another such failure,” said his visitor.
“Because the old has betrayed them?” said the young man, with fear in his voice.