"
"Would you have me hide myself?" said Gerard, "just because
something is going on besides talk."
"Besides talk!" exclaimed Sybil. "O! my father, what thoughts
are these! It may be that words are vain to save us; but
feeble deeds are vainer far than words."
"I do not see that the deeds, though I have nothing to do with
them, are so feeble," said Gerard; "their boasted police are
beaten, and by the isolated movement of an unorganized mass.
What if the outbreak had not been a solitary one? What if the
people had been disciplined?"
"What if everything were changed, if everything were contrary
to what it is?" said Sybil. "The people are not disciplined;
their action will not be, cannot be, coherent and uniform;
these are riots in which you are involved, not revolutions;
and you will be a victim, and not a sacrifice."
Gerard looked thoughtful, but not anxious: after a momentary
pause, he said, "We must not he scared at a few arrests,
Sybil. These are hap-hazard pranks of a government that wants
to terrify, but is itself frightened. I have not counselled,
none of us have counselled, this stir at Birmingham. It is a
casualty. We were none of us prepared for it. But great
things spring from casualties.
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