 times are dangerous and troubled. Read this carefully,
keep it clean, and drop it somewhere else. For King and Country. Union.«
    »More seed, more seed,« said Gashford as he closed the window. »When will
the harvest come!«
 

                                 Chapter XXXVII

To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with an air of mystery,
is to invest it with a secret charm, and power of attraction which to the crowd
is irresistible. False priests, false prophets, false doctors, false patriots,
fake prodigies of every kind, veiling their proceedings in mystery, have always
addressed themselves at an immense advantage to the popular credulity, and have
been, perhaps, more indebted to that resource in gaining and keeping for a time
the upper hand of Truth and Common Sense, than to any half-dozen items in the
whole catalogue of imposture. Curiosity is, and has been from the creation of
the world, a master-passion. To awaken it, to gratify it by slight degrees, and
yet leave something always in suspense, is to establish the surest hold that can
be had, in wrong, on the unthinking portion of mankind.
    If a man had stood on London Bridge, calling till he was hoarse, upon the
passers-by, to join with Lord George Gordon, although for an object which no man
understood, and which in that very incident had a charm of its own, - the
probability is, that he might have influenced a score of people in a month. If
all zealous Protestants had been publicly urged to join an association for the
avowed purpose of singing a hymn or two occasionally, and hearing some
indifferent speeches made, and ultimately of petitioning Parliament not to pass
an act for abolishing the penal laws against Roman Catholic priests, the penalty
of perpetual imprisonment denounced against those who educated children in that
persuasion, and the disqualification of all members of the Romish church to
inherit real property in the United Kingdom by right of purchase or descent, -
matters so far removed from the business and bosoms of the mass, might perhaps
have called together a hundred people. But when vague rumours got abroad, that
in this Protestant association a secret power was mustering against the
government for undefined and mighty purposes; when the air was filled with
whispers of a confederacy among the Popish powers to degrade and enslave
England, establish an inquisition in London, and turn the pens of Smithfield
market into stakes and cauldrons; when terrors and alarms which no man
understood were perpetually broached, both in and out of Parliament, by one
enthusiast who did not understand himself, and
