[
478]
rights, yet not radical enough to please that reform party who stand where the Socialists of
France do, and are for tearing up all creation generally.
Lastly, he has had the misfortune of a popularity which is perfectly phenomenal.
I cannot give you any idea of the love, worship, idolatry, with which he has been overwhelmed.
He has something magnetic about him that makes everybody crave his society,--that makes men follow and worship him. I remember being at his house one evening in the time of early flowers, and in that one evening came a box. of flowers from
Maine, another from
New Jersey, another from
Connecticut,all from people with whom he had no personal acquaintance, who had read something of his and wanted to send him some token.
I said, “One would think you were a
prima donna. What does make people go on so about you?”
My brother is hopelessly generous and confiding.
His inability to believe evil is something incredible, and so has come all this suffering.
You said you hoped I should be at rest when the first investigating committee and Plymouth Church cleared my brother almost by acclamation.
Not so. The enemy have so committed themselves that either they or he must die, and there has followed two years of the most dreadful struggle.
First, a legal trial of six months, the expenses of which on his side were one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars, and in which he and his brave wife sat side by side in the court-room, and heard all that these plotters, who had been weaving their webs for three years, could bring.
The foreman of the jury was offered a bribe of ten thousand dollars to decide
