The Weavers: a tale of England and Egypt of fifty years ago - Volume 5 — John Shaqi
The Weavers: a tale of England and Egypt of fifty years ago - Volume 5Parker, Gilbert
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The Weavers: a tale of England and Egypt of fifty years ago - Volume 5
Parker, Gilbert
Society of Friends -- Fiction
His speech began almost stumblingly, his h's ran loose, and his grammar
became involved, but it was seen that he meant business, that he had that
to say which would give anxiety to the Government, that he had a case
wherein were the elements of popular interest and appeal, and that he was
thinking and speaking as thousands outside the House would think and
speak.
He had waited for this hour. Indirectly he owed to Claridge Pasha all
that he had become. The day in which David knocked him down saw the
depths of his degradation reached, and, when he got up, it was to start
on a new life uncertainly, vaguely at first, but a new life for all that.
He knew, from a true source, of Eglington's personal hatred of Claridge
Pasha, though he did not guess their relationship; and all his interest
was enlisted for the man who had, as he knew, urged Kate Heaver to marry
himself--and Kate was his great ambition now. Above and beyond these
personal considerations was a real sense of England's duty to the man who
was weaving the destiny of a new land.
"It isn't England's business?" he retorted, in answer to an interjection
from a faithful soul behind the ministerial Front Bench. "Well, it
wasn't the business of the Good Samaritan to help the man that had been
robbed and left for dead by the wayside; but he did it. As to David
Claridge's work, some have said that--I've no doubt it's been said in the
Cabinet, and it is the thing the Under-Secretary would say as naturally
as he would flick a fly from his boots--that it's a generation too soon.
Who knows that? I suppose there was those that thought John the Baptist
was baptising too soon, that Luther preached too soon, and Savonarola was
in too great a hurry, all because he met his death and his enemies
triumphed--and Galileo and Hampden and Cromwell and John Howard were all
too soon. Who's to be judge of that? God Almighty puts it into some
men's minds to work for a thing that's a great, and maybe an impossible,
thing, so far as the success of the moment is concerned. Well, for a
thing that has got to be done some time, the seed has to be sown, and
it's always sown by men like Claridge Pasha, who has shown millions of
people--barbarians and half-civilised alike--what a true lover of the
world can do. God knows, I think he might have stayed and found a cause
in England, but he elected to go to the ravaging Soudan, and he is
England there, the best of it. And I know Claridge Pasha--from his youth
up I have seen him, and I stand here to bear witness of what the working
men of England will say to-morrow. Right well the noble lord yonder
knows that what I say is true. He has known it for years. Claridge
Pasha would never have been in his present position, if the noble lord
had not listened to the enemies of Claridge Pasha and of this country, in
preference to those who know and hold the truth as I tell it here to-day.
I don't know whether the noble lord has repented or not; but I do say
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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