and good principles? Abner disdained him too as a public speaker;--what
could a man hope to accomplish by a few quiet colloquial remarks
delivered in his ordinary voice? The man who expected to get attention
should claim it by the strident shrillness of his tones, should be able
to bend his two knees in eloquent unison, and send one clenched hand with
a driving swoop into the palm of the other--and repeat as often as
necessary. Abner questioned as well his mental powers, his quality of
brain-fibre, his breadth of view. The feeble creature rested in no degree
upon the great, broad, fundamental principles--principles whose adoption
and enforcement would reshape and glorify human society as nothing else
ever had done or ever could do. No, he fell back on mere expediency, mere
practicability, weakly acquiescing in acknowledged and long-established
evils, and trying for nothing more than fairness and justice on a
foundation utterly unjust and vicious to begin with.

"Let me get out of this," said Abner.

But a few of his own intimates detained him at the door, and presently
Whyland, who had ended his remarks and was on his way to other matters,
overtook him. An officious bystander made the two acquainted, and
Whyland, who identified Abner with the author of _This Weary World_,
paused for a few smiling and good-humoured remarks.

"Glad to see you here," he said, with a kind of bright buoyancy. "It's a
complicated question, but we shall straighten it out one way or another."

Abner stared at him sternly. The question was not complicated, but it
_was_ vital--too vital for smiles.

"There is only one way," he said: "our way."