ttling
month by month, and whatever he may have lost at any moment by the turn
of an argument, he recovered immediately afterwards by the force of
personality, and of a single-mindedness in which there was never a trace
of personal grasping.

Week by week the lecture became more absorbing to him, the men more
pliant, his hold on them firmer. His disinterestedness, his brightness
and resource, perhaps, too, the signs about him of a light and frail
physical organisation, the novelty of his position, the inventiveness of
his method, gave him little by little an immense power in the place.
After the first two lectures Murray Edwardes became his constant and
enthusiastic hearer on Sunday afternoons, and, catching some of Robert's
ways and spirit, he gradually brought his own chapel and teaching more
and more into line with the Elgood Street undertaking. So that the
venture of the two men began to take ever larger proportions; and,
kindled by the growing interest and feeling about him, dreams began to
rise in Elsmere's mind which as yet he hardly dared to cherish; which
came and went, however, weaving a substance for themselves out of each
successive incident and effort.

Meanwhile he was at work on an average three evenings in the week
besides the Sunday. In West End drawing-rooms his personal gift had
begun to tell no less than in this crowded, squalid East; and as his
aims became known, other men, finding the thoughts of their own hearts
revealed in him, or touched with that social compunction which is one of
the notes of our time, came down and became his helpers. Of all the
social projects of which that Elgood Street room became the centre,
Elsmere was, in some sense, the life and inspiration. But it was not
these projects themselves which made this period of his life remarkable.
London at the present moment, if it be honeycombed with vice and misery,
is also honeycombed with the labour of an ever-expanding charity. Week
by week men and women of like gifts and energies with Elsmere spend
themselves, as he did, in the constant effort to serve and to alleviate.
What _was_ noticeable, what _was_ remarkable in this work of his, was
the spirit, the religious passion which, radiating from him, began after
a while, to kindle the whole body of men about him. It was from his
Sunday lectures and his talks with the children, boys and girls, who
came in after the lecture to spend a happy hour and a half with him on
Sunday afternoo