One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
the storm and deluge. He did this:—and the mystery puzzling
the suspicious was nothing wonderful: in addition to a
transparent benevolence, he spread a sort of assurance about
him, that he thought the better of the people for their thinking
well of themselves. It came first from the workmen at his
house. ‘The right sort, and no humbug: likes you to be men.’
Such a report made tropical soil for any new seed.
Now, it is a postulate, to strengthen all poor commoners,
that not even in comparison with the highest need we be
small unless we yield to think it of ourselves. Do but stretch
a hand to the touch of earth in you, and you spring upon
combative manhood again, from the basis where all are equal.
Humanity’s historians, however, tell us, that the exhilaration
bringing us consciousness of a stature, is gas which too frequently
has to be administered. Certes the cocks among men
do not require the process; they get it off the sight of the sun
arising or a simple hen submissive: but we have our hibernating
bears among men, our yoked oxen, cab horses, beaten
dogs; we have on large patches of these Islands, a Saxon population,
much wanting assistance, if they are not to feel themselves
beaten, driven, caught by the neck, yoked and
heavyheaded. Blest, then, is he who gives them a sense of the
pride of standing on legs. Beer, ordinarily their solitary helper
beneath the iron canopy of wealth, is known to them as a
bitter usurer; it knocks them flat in their persons and their
fortunes, for the short spell of recreative exaltation. They
send up their rough glory round the name of the gentleman—a
stranger, but their friend: and never is friend to be
thought of as a stranger—who manages to get the holiday
for Wrensham and thereabout, that they may hurl away for
one jolly day the old hat of a doddered humbleness, and trip
to the strains of the internal music he has unwound.
Says he: Is it a Charity Concert? Charity begins at home,
says he: and if I welcome you gentry on behalf of the poor of
London, why, it follows you grant me the right to make a
beginning with the poor of our parts down here. He puts it
so, no master nor mistress neither could refuse him. Why,
the workmen at his house were nigh pitching the contractors
all sprawling on a strike, and Mr. Radnor takes train,
harangues ‘em and rubs ‘em smooth; ten minutes by the clock,
they say; and return train to his business in town; by reason
of good sense and feeling, it was; poor men don’t ask for
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