Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/204

194 gray hair and rigid muscle of inveterate depravity;" and partly, he declares, it was due to the thirst for kindness planted in himself, in that "me, who," he says, "from my childhood have had no avarice, no ambition, whose very vanity in my vainest moments was nine tenths of it the desire and delight and necessity of loving and of being beloved,"—needs which he found satisfied in the welcome and company of "the Democrats." So he fell among evil companions. On becoming an agitator upon the platform he succumbed to the temptations of the fluent speaker, gifted "with an ebullient fancy, a flowing utterance, a light and dancing heart, and a disposition to catch time by the very rapidity of my own motion, and to speak vehemently from mere verbal associations; choosing sentences and sentiments for the very reason which would have made me recoil with a dying away of the heart and unutterable horror from the actions expressed in such sentiments and sentences, namely, because they were wild and original, and vehement and fantastic." Here is a choice specimen of his eloquence, on the occasion of a supper by some Lord, to commemorate an Austrian victory: "This is a