“If, then,” resumed Massingbred, “they who by the accidents of fortune, or the meritorious services of their forefathers, represent rather in their elevation the gratitude of their country than--”
“I 'm sorry to interrupt you, sir,--indeed, I'm ashamed of myself for doing it,--for your remarks are beautiful, downright eloquent; but the truth is, this is a case touches me too closely to make me care for a grand speech about it. I 'd rather have just a few words--to the evidence, as one might say,--or a simple answer to a plain question, Can this thing be done?”
“There's where you beat us, Scanlan. There's where we cannot approach you. You are practical. You reduce a matter at once to the simple dimension of efficacy first, then possibility, and with these two conditions before you you reject the fifty extraneous considerations, outlying contingencies, that distract and embarrass such fellows as me.
“I have no pretension to abilities like yours, Mr. Massingbred,” said Scanlan, with unassumed modesty.
“Ah, Scanlan, yours are the true gifts, take my word for it!--the recognized currency by which a man obtains what he seeks for; and there never was an era in which such qualities bore a higher value. Our statesmen, our diplomatists, our essay-writers,--nay, our very poets, addressing themselves as they do to the correction of social wrongs and class inequalities,--they are all 'practical'! That is the type of our time, and future historians will talk of this as the 'Age of Fact'!”
If one were to judge from Maurice Scanlan's face during the delivery of this peroration, it might be possibly inferred that he scarcely accepted the speech as an illustration in point, since anything less practical he had never listened to.
“When I think,” resumed he, “what a different effect I should have produced in the 'House' had I possessed this requisite! You, possibly, may be under the impression that I achieved a great success?”
“Well, I did hear as much,” said Scanlan, half doggedly.
“Perhaps it was so. A first speech, you are aware, is always listened to indulgently; not so a second, especially if a man rises soon after his first effort. They begin to suspect they have got a talkative fellow, eager and ready to speak on every question; they dread that, and even if he be clever, they 'll vote him a bore!”