He was a humbug, he was a hypocrite, he wasn't even a good speaker, he was an ignoramus! Was he?
All right.

They might think so if they chose.

It hardly interested him.

He had been sitting drawing angels, and somehow their irrelevant voices had broken in upon him.
"Another was with me." Really, even for Jenny's sake, it seemed hardly worth while to fight so poor a world! Was the fame that such a world could give a distinction one would seek for Jenny?
Would not Jenny smile in heaven at the toy honours of such a world?
On the other hand, there was something repellent to his once ambitious soul, in the thought that such a world might seem to have the victory; and, therefore, when the first numbness had left him and the colours and sounds of things were once more coming back, he threw himself with galvanic vitality into the work that lay to his hand, and particularly into those political activities for which his gift of speech and his power of organisation fitted him.
Two months after Jenny's death, having spoken at a great meeting on some momentous question of the hour, he found himself the acknowledged leader of the Radical, rather forlorn, hope in Coalchester, and before long invitations were coming to him to help on the same hope in other towns.
Never in his life--and he used often to meditate on the fact with wonder--had he been so vital, so efficient, so brilliant.

His powers had acquired a firmness, an alertness, a force of influence and attraction, they had never possessed before.