Hughes went on: “I find it easier to forgive enmity than indifference; he who is not for us is against us in the worst sense. Our cause has a sacred claim upon all generous and enlightened spirits; they are recreant if they neglect it. But we must be patient, even with indifference; it is hard to bear, but we cannot fight it, and we must bear it. Nothing has astonished me more, since my return to the world, than to find the great mass of men living on, as when I left it, in besotted indifference to the vital interests of the hour. I find the politicians still talking of the tariff, just as they used to talk; low tariff and cheap clothes for the working-man; high tariff and large wages for the working-man. Whether we have high tariff or low, the working-man always wins. But he does not seem to prosper. He is poor; he is badly fed and housed; when he is out of work he starves in his den till he is evicted with a ruthlessness unknown in the history of Irish oppression. Neither party means to do anything for the working-man, and he hasn’t risen himself yet to the conception of anything more philosophical than more pay and fewer hours.” A sad-faced man spoke from a corner of the room. “We must have time to think, and something to eat to-day. We can’t wait till to-morrow.” “That is true,” Hughes answered. “Many must perish by the way. But we must have patience.” His son-in-law spoke up, and his gloomy face darkened. “I have no heart for patience. When I see people perishing by the way, I ask myself how they shall be saved, not some other time, but now. Some one is guilty of the wrong they suffer. How shall the sin be remitted?” His voice shook with fanatical passion. “We must have patience,” Hughes repeated. “We are all guilty.” “It would be a good thing,” said the man with a German accent, “if the low-tariff men would really cut off the duties. The high-tariff men don’t put wages up because they have protection, but they would surely put them down if they didn’t have it. Then you would see labor troubles everywhere.” “Yes,” said Hughes; “but such hopes as that would make me hate the cause, if anything could. Evil that good may come? Never! Always good, and good for evil, that the good may come more and more! We must have the true America in the true American way, by reasons, by votes, by laws, and not otherwise.” The spirit which he rebuked had unlocked the passions of those around him. Ray had a vision of them in the stormy dispute which followed, as waves beating and dashing upon the old man; the head of the bald man was like a buoy among the breakers, as it turned and bobbed about, in his eagerness to follow all that was said. Suddenly the impulses spent themselves, and a calm succeeded. One of the men looked at his watch; they all rose one after another to go.