Yet, somehow, he does not convince. He himself is carried away
by his own earnestness, but he does not carry away with him his
hearers. His remarks are interesting. People listen to him from
first to last closely. Yet his arguing does not, somehow, convince.
His pathos does not, somehow, melt. He is the sort of man that
people think of for the Legislature. No man ever thinks of him in
connexion with the Supreme Bench or Senate.
Wherein lies the defect? Arthur Leland is well read, a gentleman of
spotless character, of earnest application, of popular manners. Why
is not this man a man of more weight, power, standing? Why, you
answer, the man is just what he is. He fills just the position up to
which his force of mind raises him. Did he have more talent, he
would be more. No, sir. Every acquaintance he has known, he himself
knows, that he is capable of being much more than he is--somehow,
somehow he does not attain to it! It is this singular impression
Leland makes upon you. It is this singular, uneasy, unsatisfied
feeling he himself is preyed upon by. "He might be, but he is not,"
say his neighbours. "I am not, yet I might be," worries him as an
incessant and eternal truth.
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