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pure, their standard lofty, and by the very supposition raised for
a time the most abject of his hearers, inspired them with his own
enthusiasm.
Presently, when he felt secure enough to venture it, when the crowd
was hanging on his words with breathless attention, he appealed no
longer directly to the people, but drew, in graphic language, the
picture of the desolations brought by war. The simplicity of his
phrases, his entire absence of showiness or bombast, made his
influence indescribably deep and powerful. A mere ranter, a frothy
mob orator, would have been silenced long before.
But this man had somehow got hold of the great assembly, had
conquered them by sheer force of will; in a battle of one will
against thousands the one had conquered, and would hold its own
till it had administered the hard homethrust which would make the
thousands wince and retaliate.
Now, under the power of that sledgehammer Saxon, that
marvelously graphic picture of misery and bereavement, hardheaded,
and hitherto hard hearted men were crying like children. Then came
the rugged unvarnished statement shouted forth in the speaker's
sternest voice.
All this is being done in your name, men of England! Not only in
your name, but at your cost! You are responsible for this
bloodshed, this misery! How long is it to go on? How long are you
free men going to allow yourselves to be bloody executioners? How
long are you to be slavish followers of that grasping ambition
which veils its foulness under the fair name of patriotism?
Loud murmurs began to arise at this, and the orator knew that the
ground swell betokened the coming storm. He proceeded with tenfold
energy, his words came down like hailstones, with a fiery
indignation he delivered his mighty philippic, in a torrent of
forceful words he launched out the most tremendous denunciation he
had ever uttered.
The string had been gradually worked up to its highest possible
tension; at length when the strain was the greatest it suddenly
snapped. Raeburn's will had held all those thousands in check; he
had kept his bitterest enemies hanging on his words; he had lashed
them into fury, and still kept his grip over them; he had worked
them up, gaining more and more power over them, till at length, as
he shouted forth the last words of a grand peroration, the
bitterness and truth of his accusations proved keener than his
restraining influence.
He had foreseen that the spell would break, and he knew the instant
it was broken. A moment before, and he had been able to sway that
huge crowd as he pleased; now he was at their mercy. No will
power, no force of language, no strength of earnestness or truth

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