pamphlets he had brought with him, the less clear seemed the way before
him. He was struck with admiration when he read of those who had
forfeited life or liberty in this or the other cause; and too often with
despair when he came to analyze their aims. Once or twice, indeed, he
was so moved by the passionate eloquence of some socialist writer that
he was ready to say, "Well, the poor devils have toiled long enough;
give them their turn, let the revolution cost what it may!" And then
immediately afterward: "What! Stir up the unhappy wretches to throw
themselves on the bayonets of the standing armies of Europe? There is no
emancipation for them that way."

But when he turned from the declamation and the impracticable designs of
this impassioned literature to the vast scheme of co-operation that had
been suggested rather than described to him, there seemed more hope. If
all these various forces that were at work could be directed into one
channel, what might they not accomplish? Weed out the visionary, the
impracticable, the anarchical from their aims; and then what might not
be done by this convergence of all these eager social movements? Lind,
he argued with himself, was not at all a man likely to devote himself to
optimistic dreams. Further than that--and here he was answering a
suspicion that again and again recurred to him--what if, in such a great
social movement, men were to be found who were only playing for their
own hand? That was the case in every such combination. But false or
self-seeking agents neither destroyed the nobleness of the work nor
could defeat it in the end if it were worthy to live. They might try to
make for themselves what use they could of the current, but they too
were swept onward to the sea.

So he argued, and communed, and doubted, and tried to believe. And all
through it--whether he paced up and down by the sea in the blustering