And now we are as one in our hopes
and endeavours, and the years make little disparity between us. He
was twenty-two when I was but fifteen,--but now that I am twenty-six
and he thirty-three we are far better matched associates. From him I
learnt much of the discontents,--ethical and religious,--of the
world; from him I learnt how to speak in public. He was then an
actor, a sort of wandering 'Bohemian,'--but he soon tired of the
sordidness of the stage and aspired to higher platforms of work, and
he had already begun to lead the people by his powers of oratory, as
he leads them now. I heard him speak in French as fluently as in
English; and I resolved on my part to speak likewise in English as
easily as he did in French. And when we parted it was with a mutual
resolve TO LEAD!--to lead--and ever still to lead!--we would starve
on our theories, we said, but we would speak out if it cost us our
very lives. To earn daily bread I managed to obtain steady
employment as a labourer in the fields,--and I soon gained
sufficient to keep my mother and myself. My friend Aubrey had imbued
me thoroughly with the love of incessant hard work; there was no
disgrace, he said, in digging the soil, if the brain were kept
working as well as the hands.
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