that man of flesh and blood for whom he had sighed. That he himself
was within grasp of an opportunity to get beneath the jackets and into
the very hearts and souls of those boys, and make them feel that a
man of sins and virtues, of weaknesses and strength, a man who had
had much to conquer, and for whom the fight would never be finally
won, was standing before them stripped of his coat of conventions
and platitudes, and in nakedness of soul and sincerity of heart was
talking to them as a man who understood.

Almost with the inception of the idea was born the consciousness of
what it might cost. And as in answer to the silent, blunt question,
Is it worth it? there looked up at him three hundred pairs of
eyes--eyes behind which there was good as well as bad, eyes which
had burned with the fatal rush of passion, and had burned, too, with
the hot tears of remorse--eyes which had opened on a hostile world.

And then the eyes of Philip Grayson could not see the eyes which
were before him, and he put up his hand to break the mist--little
caring what the men upon the platform would think of him, little
thinking what effect the words which were crowding into his heart
would have upon his candidacy. But one thing was vital to him now:
to bring upon that ugly chasm the levelling forces of a common
humanity, and to make those boys who were of his clay feel that a
being who had fallen and risen again, a fellow being for whom life
would always mean a falling and a rising again, was standing before
them, and--not as the embodiment of a distant goodness, not as a
pattern, but as one among them, verily as man to man--was telling
them a few things which his own life had taught him were true.

It was his very consecration which made it hard to begin. He was