As I have said, at the outset of his career he modestly confined his
energies to stewarding—to the sale of what propagandist bodies insist on
describing as "literature," the taking of tickets, ushering to seats and
the like; but in a short time ambition fired him and the fighting spirit
thereby engendered led him to opposition meetings where, on Faraday’s
advice, he tried heckling the enemy speakers. His first and flustered
attempts were not over-successful, but, sustained by revolutionary
enthusiasm, he refused to be crushed by failure and accompanying jeers
and held doggedly on to his purpose. Repeated efforts brought their
measure of success, and he began to be marked by his comrades as a
willing and valuable member.
Within a year, he had found his feet and was a busy and full-blown
speaker—of the species that can be relied on to turn on, at any moment,
a glib, excited stream of partisan fact and sentiment. His services
were in constant demand, since he spoke for anything and
everything—provided only the promoters of the meeting were sufficiently
violent in their efforts to upset the prevailing order. He had
developed and was pleased with himself; Faraday, though still a great
man in his eyes, was more of an equal than an idol. He was wonderfully
happy in his new, unrestful existence; it was not only that he knew he
was doing great good and that applause uplifted him and went to his head
like wine; as a member of an organization and swayed by its collective
passion, he attained to, and was conscious of, an emotional (and, as he
thought, intellectual) activity of which as an individual he would have
been entirely incapable. As a deceased statesman was intoxicated with
the exuberance of his own verbosity, so William was intoxicated with the
exuberance of his own emotions. There were moments when he looked back
on his old life and could hardly believe he was the same William Tully
who once, without thought of the Social Revolution, went daily from
Camberwell to the City and back from the City to Camberwell.... As time
went on, he was entrusted with "campaigns" and the stirring up of
revolt; and it was a proud day for him when a Conservative evening
paper, in connection with his share in a mining agitation, referred to
him as a dangerous man. He wondered, with pity for her blindness, what
his mother would have thought if any one had told her in her lifetime
that her son would turn out dangerous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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