"But not to everyone is granted the happiness of cementing a great cause
with his heart's blood. We must each work in the appointed way--some of
us in the full light of day; others in obscure corners, at work that can
never be seen, putting in the stones of the foundation painfully one by
one, but never destined to share in the glory of building the roof of
the edifice.

"Sometimes, in your letters to me, especially when those letters
contained any disheartening news, I have detected a tone of despondency,
a latent doubt as to whether the cause to which both of us are so firmly
bound was really progressing; whether it was not fighting against hope
to continue the battle any longer; whether it would not be wiser to
retreat to the few caves and fastnesses that were left us, and leaving
Liberty still languishing in chains, and Tyranny still rampant in the
high places of the world, to wage no longer a useless war against the
irresistible Fates. Happily, with you such moods were of the rarest: you
would have been more than mortal had not your soul at times sat in
sackcloth and ashes.

"Such seasons of doubt and gloom have come to me also; but I know that
in our secret hearts we both of us have felt that there was a
self-sustaining power, a latent vitality in our cause that nothing could
crush out utterly; that the more it was trampled on the more dangerous
it would become, and the faster it would spread. Certain great events
that have happened during the last twelve months have done more towards
the propagation of the ideas we have so much at heart than in our
wildest dreams we dare have hoped only three short years ago. Gravely
considering these things, it seems to me that the time cannot be far
distant when the contingent plan of operations as agreed upon by the