He was called by Nature for a far different purpose. It was his business to attack
social wrongs, to drag away purple garments and expose to our shivering gaze the
rottenness of vice — to take tyranny by the throat and strangle it to death. It was no
dainty task. It was not to be approached with the mincing step and mouthing
compliments of a carpet knight. He needed weapons for the work, and he found them
without hunting. The same head which furnished the ideas furnished just the very words
to print them in. The idea was the sovereign; the word but subject. He sat down to paper
because he had something to say. He wrote from his fullness — not from his emptiness.
His mind was a reservoir – always running over. He did not have to pump it full — by
the slow cudgeling of the brain — before others could be supplied. His words were only
the grooves and channels in which his thoughts found their way to the great popular heart
— not the fertilizing streams themselves.