"Other folks being like himself," said the father.
That, no doubt, was succinct and true; nevertheless, the
articles had competence as well as confidence. The writer
treated facts with restraint and conditions with sympathy.
He summoned ideas from the obscurity of men's minds, and
marshalled them in the light, so that many recognized
what they had been trying to think. He wrote with homeliness
as well as force, wishing much more to make the issue
recognizable than to create fine phrases, with the result
that one or two of his sentences passed into the language
of the discussion which, as any of its standard-bearers
would have told you, had little use for rhetoric. The
articles were competent: if you listened to Horace Williams
you would have been obliged to accept them as the last,
or latest, word of economic truth, though it must be left
to history to endorse Mr Williams. It was their enthusiasm,
however, that gave them the wing on which they travelled.
People naturally took different views, even of this
quality. "Young Murchison's working the imperial idea
for all it's worth," was Walter Winter's; and Octavius
Milburn humorously summed up the series as "tall talk."
Alfred Hesketh came, it was felt, rather opportunely into
the midst of this. Plenty of people, the whole of Market
Square and East Elgin, a good part, too, probably, of
the Town Ward, were unaware of his arrival; but for the
little world he penetrated he was clothed with all the
interest of the great contingency.
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