Explore "Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet" by Charles Kingsley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I never shall forget one evening's walk, as Crossthwaite and I strode back together from the Convention. We had walked on some way arm in arm in silence, under the crushing and embittering sense of having something to conceal -- something, which if those who passed us so carelessly in the street had known -- ! It makes a villain and a savage of a man, that consciousness of a dark, hateful secret. And it was a hateful one! -- a dark and desperate necessity, which we tried to call by noble names, that faltered on our lips as we pronounced them; for the spirit of God was not in us; and instead of bright hope, and the clear fixed lodestar of duty, weltered in our imaginations a wild possible future of tumult, and flame, and blood.
"It must be done! -- it shall be done! -- it will be done! " burst out John, at last, in that positive, excited tone, which indicated a half disbelief of his own words. "I've been reading Macerone on street-warfare; and I see the way as clear as day."