councils! To you, whose lot it is to sow that others may
reap, to labor and obey, and ask no more than the wages of
a beast of burden, the food and shelter to keep you alive
from day to day. It is to you that I come with my mes~
sage of salvation, it is to you that I appeal. I know how
much it is to ask of you -- I know, for I have been in your
place, I have lived your life, and there is no man before me
here tonight who knows it better. I have known what it
is to be a street-waif, a bootblack, living upon a crust of
bread and sleeping in cellar-stairways and under empty
wagons. I have known what it is to dare and to aspire, to
dream mighty dreams and to see them perish -- to see all
the fair flowers of my spirit trampled into the mire by the
wild-beast powers of life. I know what is the price that a
working-man pays for knowledge -- I have paid for it with
food and sleep, with agony of body and mind, with health,
almost with life itself; and so, when I come to you with a
story of hope and freedom, with the vision of a new earth
to be created, of a new labor to be dared, I am not sur~
prised that I find you sordid and material, sluggish and in~
credulous. That I do not despair is because I know also
the forces that are driving behind you -- because I know
the raging lash of poverty, the sting of contempt and mas~
tership, 'the insolence of office and the spurns.' Because
I feel sure that in the crowd that has come to me tonight,
no matter how many may be dull and heedless, no matter
how many may have come out of idle curiosity, or in order
to ridicule -- there will be some one man whom pain and
suffering have made desperate, whom some chance vision
of wrong and horror has startled and shocked into atten~
tion. And to him my words will come like a sudden flash
of lightning to one who travels in darkness -- revealing the
way before him, the perils and the obstacles -- solving all
problems, making all difficulties clear! The scales will fall
from his eyes, the shackles will be torn from his limbs -- he
will leap up with a cry of thankfulness, he will stride forth a
free man at last! A man delivered from his self-created
slavery! A man who will never more be trapped -- whom
no blandishments will cajole, whom no threats will frighten;

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v?