W. T. Stead

“ One time it would be, 'Georgie! It's me! Ah, Georgie!' Or, 'Georgie, are you in? Will you speak to Irwin?' Then a long pause, and at the end of, say, ten minutes, a most strange, unearthly sigh, or a cough—a perfectly intentional, forced cough, other times nothing but, 'Ah, Georgie!' On one night there was a dreadful fog. He called me so plain, I got up and said, 'Oh, really! that man must be here; he must be lodging somewhere near, as sure as life; if he is not outside I must be going mad in my mind or imagination.' I went and stood outside the hall door steps in the thick black fog. ”

“ The future of journalism depends almost entirely upon the journalist, and at present the outlook is not very hopeful. The very conception of journalism as an instrument of government is foreign to the mind of most journalists. Yet, if they could but think of it, the editorial pen is a sceptre of power, compared with which the sceptre of many a monarch is but a gilded lath. In a democratic age, in the midst of a population which is able to read, no position is comparable for permanent influence and far-reaching power to that of an editor who understands his vocation. ”

“ Peter, when he had left the hall of the high priest, went out into the street weeping bitterly and suffering anguish of soul. "Oh, my Master," he cried, "how deeply have I fallen! Oh, woe unto me, weak and wretched man! I have three times denied my dearest friend and teacher. I cannot understand how I could so forget myself. A curse upon my shameful faithlessness! How my heart will repent of it—this contemptible cowardice. My dearest Lord, hast thou still grace for me—grace for a faithless, one—oh! send it me! This once more hear the voice of my repentant heart. Alas! the sin is committed. ”

“ Of recent years nothing has so fascinated the imagination even of the least imaginative of men as the theory of disease which transforms every drop of blood in our bodies into the lists in which phagocyte and microbe wage the mortal strife on which our health depends. Every white corpuscle that swims in our veins is now declared to be the armed Knight of Life for ever on the look-out for the microbe Fiend of Death. Day and night, sleeping and waking, the white knights of life are constantly on the alert, for on their vigilance hangs our existence. ”

“ Nothing is more characteristic, both of the state of things in New York and the uncompromising directness of Dr. Parkhurst, than the fact that he had no sooner assumed the control of the Society for the Prevention of Crime than he adopted as his motto the significant watchword, “Down with the Police!” That fact alone speaks volumes as to how utterly New York City had fallen under the control of the Evil One. For a society for the prevention of crime to adopt “Down with the Police!” as its watchword, seems to us of the Old World absolutely inconceivable. ”

“ And Thomas added, "Therefore we believe that thou comest forth from God."
Jesus answered them saying, "Do ye now believe? Behold the hour cometh, yea, is already come, when ye shall be scattered every man to his own and leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. Yes, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son that thy Son also may glorify thee. I have finished the work which thou hast given me to do. I have manifested thy name to those thou gavest me out of the world. Holy Father, keep them in thy name; sanctify them in the truth. ”

“ There seems to be some faculty latent in the human mind, by which it can in some cases impress upon the eye and ear of a person at almost any distance the image and the voice. We may call it telepathy or what we please. It is a marvellous power, the mere hint of which indefinitely expands the horizon of the imagination. The telephone is but a mere child's toy compared with the gift to transmit not only the sound of the voice but the actual visible image of the speaker for hundreds of miles without any conductor known to man. ”

“ For the great city is to the rural population exactly what the Arabian loadstone mountain was to the heedless sailor who came within the range of its fascination. All the iron in the rural ship of State is attracted to the mighty Babylon. The men with iron in their blood, the girls whose pulses leap and tingle with the eager flush of adventure and ambition, desert the village and the farm to crowd the roaring mart and glaring street. ”

“ It is better that one man should die and the whole nation perish not. He must die!" And as the fatal words fell from the lips of Caiaphas the whole Sanhedrin was moved. Caiaphas continued: "Until he is dead there is no peace in Israel, no security for the law of Moses, and no quiet hours for us."
Hardly had Caiaphas ended than the rabbi sprang to his feet exclaiming in excited tones: "God has spoken through our high priest! Only by the death of Jesus of Nazareth can and must the people of Israel be delivered!" ”

“ What is our Ego? Is this Conscious Personality which receives impressions through the five senses, and through them alone, is it the only dweller in this mortal tabernacle? May there not be other personalities, or at least one other that is not conscious, when we are awake, and alert, and about, but which comes into semi-consciousness when we sleep, and can be developed into complete consciousness when the other personality is thrown into a state of hypnotic trance? ”

“ Of the system in New York there is only one good thing to be said. Bad as it was, it is infinitely better than the hideous abomination of the European system of tolerated houses with their police des mœurs and the compulsory weekly surgical examination of their unhappy inmates. Better a thousand times even the rude, irregular tyrannies of Hoch and Koch, and all the diabolical gang of blackmailers, than elaborate all these infamies into a legalised system stamped with the seal of the approval of the State and enforced by the dread penalties of the law. ”

“ Balfour's land, on the brow of Hindhead, is enclosed but not yet built upon, although a whole archipelago of cottages and villas is springing up amid the heather as the ground slopes towards Selborne—White's Selborne—that can dimly be descried to the westward beyond Liphook Common. Memories there are, enough and to spare, of the famous days of old, and of the not less famous men of our own time; but the ghosts have fled. "There used to be a ghost in the mill," said my driver, "and another in a comparatively new house over in Lord Tennyson's direction, but we hear nothing about them now." ”

“ The cross, the nails, the lance, have been built into the architecture of the world, often by the descendants of the men who crucified their Redeemer—not knowing what they did. For centuries art was but an endless repetition in color or in stone of the scenes we witnessed yesterday, or of incidents in lives which had been transformed by these scenes. The more utterly we strip the story of the Passion of all supernatural significance the more irresistibly comes back upon the mind the overwhelming significance of the transformation which it has affected in the world. ”

“ There is graver danger to the republic in the failure of good government in our cities than arises from the moral corruption which accompanies that failure. The misgovernment of our cities means the break-down of one of the two fundamental principles upon which our political fabric rests. It is the failure of local self-government in a most vital part. It is as great a peril to the republic as the revolt against the Union. ”

“ But Jesus rebuked him sternly, saying: "Get thee behind me, tempter. Thou savorest not of the things that are of God, but those that be of men. Can the reaper tarry in the shade while the ripe harvest awaits him? The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many."
Then the dark-browed Judas spoke, uttering this time the thought of all. "But, master, what will become of us if thou givest up thy life?"
A chorus of approval burst from all the disciples, "Ah, all our hopes would then be destroyed." ”

“ It is extraordinary how close is the analogy when we come to work it out. The impressions stored up by the Conscious Personality and entrusted to the care of the Unconscious are often, much to our disgust, not forthcoming when wanted. It is as if we had given a memorandum to our wife and we could not discover where she had put it. But night comes; our Conscious Self sleeps, our Unconscious Housewife wakes, and turning over her stores produces the missing impression; and when our other self wakes it finds the mislaid memorandum, so to speak, ready to its hand. ”

“ Yet an editor is the uncrowned king of an educated democracy. The range of his power is limited only by the extent of his knowledge, the quality rather than the quantity of his circulation, and the faculty and force which he can bring to the work of government.
An extraordinary idea seems to prevail with the eunuchs of the craft that leadership, guidance, governance, are alien to the calling of a journalist. Those conceptions of what is a journalist’s duty, if indeed they recognise that imperious word as having any bearing upon their profession, is hid in mystery. ”

“ The priests and Pharisees said, "We will keep this Passover with joy, as did our fathers in Egypt."
"Now," said Caiaphas, "let our triumphal procession go through the midst of Jerusalem."
"Where," asked the rabbi, "are his disciples? They are invited to cry Hosanna!"
Then rushed the multitude away, crying, "Up and away off to Golgotha! Come and see him perish on the cross! O delightful day, the enemy of Moses is overthrown! Ha! now he has his reward! So be it done to everyone who despises the law! He deserves the death on the cross! O happy Passover! Now joy will return to Israel! ”

“ To put it briefly, I would respectfully ask those who are in despair over the corruption that eats like a canker into the hearts of American cities, why not give statutory authority to American journalism to create, maintain and carry on a Lexow Committee en permanence, with extended powers for the purpose of discovering and handing over for punishment all those who are preying upon the public?
There is no remedy like the light of day. These evils exist in the midst of our communities because they can be done in secret. The crook in office relies upon the cloak of darkness. ”

“ If death is foreshadowed, the circumstances preceding and following the event pass as in dramatic scene before the eyes of the seer. It is much as if the seers had access to a camera obscura which enabled them not only to see that which was occurring at the same moment in various parts of the world, but in its magic mirror could reflect events which have not yet been as if they were already existent.
The phenomena of premonition, combined with the faculties of clairvoyance by which the percipient is able to reproduce the past, make a great breach in our conceptions of both time and space. ”

“ Then coming to the grotto again, he cried, "My Father!" and falling down he prayed, "If it is not possible that this hour pass away from me, thy will be done! Thy holiest will! Father! Thy son! Hear him!"
Then from out of the darkness a bright and shining angel in white apparel and with radiant wings descended upon him. And out of the silence were heard these words, "O, Son of Man, sanctify the Father's will! Look upon the blessedness which will proceed from thy struggles. The Father has laid it upon thee to become the sacrifice for sinful man. ”

“ So the great city pulses with strenuous power, and in the multitudinous uproar of its streets we hear the sound of the friction of the two-million manpower engine which has made even Lesser New York one of the greatest driving forces of the American Republic.
It is a dynamo of the first order. And like the dynamo it is instinct with magnetic power. All great cities are great magnets, and New York is the greatest—but one—in the world. ”