This document summarizes Angelina Grimke's 1836 appeal to Christian women of the South regarding slavery. In the 3-sentence summary: Grimke, a Christian abolitionist from the South, writes an appeal asking southern Christian women to reconsider their support for slavery and argues they have a moral duty to help abolish the institution. She acknowledges telling them uncomfortable truths but urges them to read about slavery in the Bible and consider prayer, speech, and action to end slavery, as they have influence as wives, mothers, and daughters of lawmakers.

1. Collection 6.1
Angelina Grimke, "Appeal to the Christian Women of the
South" (1836) "Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther,
Think not within thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's
house more than all the Jews. For if thou altogether holdest thy
peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance
arise to the Jews from another place: but thou and thy father's
house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art
come to the kingdom for such a time as this. And Esther bade
them return Mordecai this answer:-and so will I go in unto the
king, which is not according to law, and if I perish, I perish."
Esther IV. 13-16. Respected Friends, It is because I feel a deep
and tender interest in your present and eternal welfare that I am
willing thus publicly to address you. Some of you have loved
me as a relative, and some have felt bound to me in Christian
sympathy, and Gospel fellowship; and even when compelled by
a strong sense of duty, to break those outward bonds of union
which bound us together as members of the same community,
and members of the same religious denomination, you were
generous enough to give me credit, for sincerity as a Christian,
though you believed I had been most strangely deceived. I
thanked you then for your kindness, and I ask you now, for the
sake of former confidence, and former friendship, to read the
following pages in the spirit of calm investigation and fervent
prayer. It is because you have known me, that I write thus unto
you. But there are other Christian women scattered over the
Southern States, a very large number of whom have never seen
me, and never heard my name, and who feel no interest
whatever in me. But I feel an interest in you, as branches of the
same vine from whose root I daily draw the principle of
spiritual vitality-Yes! Sisters in Christ I feel an interest in you,
and often has the secret prayer arisen on your behalf, Lord
"open thou their eyes that they may see wondrous things out of
thy Law"-It is then, because I do feel and do pray for you, that I

2. thus address you upon a subject about which of all others,
perhaps you would rather not hear anything; but, "would to God
ye could bear with me a little in my folly, and indeed bear with
me, for I am jealous over you with godly jealousy." Be not
afraid then to read my appeal; it is not written in the heat of
passion or prejudice, but in that solemn calmness which is the
result of conviction and duty. It is true, I am going to tell you
unwelcome truths, but I mean to speak those truths in love, and
remember Solomon says, "faithful are the wounds of a friend." I
do not believe the time has yet come when Christian women
"will not endure sound doctrine," even on the subject of
Slavery, if it is spoken to them in tenderness and love, therefore
I now address you... ...But perhaps you will be ready to query,
why appeal to women on this subject? We do not make the laws
which perpetuate slavery. No legislative power is vested in us;
we can do nothing to overthrow the system, even if we wished
to do so. To this I reply, I know you do not make the laws, but I
also know that you are the wives and mothers, the sisters and
daughters of those who do; and if you really suppose you can do
nothing to overthrow slavery, you are greatly mistaken. You can
do much in every way: four things I will name. 1st. You can
read on this subject. 2d. You can pray over this subject. 3d. You
can speak on this subject. 4th. You can act on this subject. I
have not placed reading before praying because I regard it more
important, but because, in order to pray aright, we must
understand what we are praying for; it is only then we can "pray
with the understanding and the spirit also." 1. Read then on the
subject of slavery. Search the Scriptures daily, whether the
things I have told you are true. Other books and papers might be
a great help to you in this investigation, but they are not
necessary, and it is hardly probable that your Committees of
Vigilance will allow you to have any other. The Bible then is
the book I want you to read in the spirit of inquiry, and the
spirit of prayer. Even the enemies of Abolitionists, acknowledge
that their doctrines are drawn from it. In the great mob in
Boston, last autumn, when the books and papers of the Anti-

3. Slavery Society, were thrown out of the windows of their office,
one individual laid hold of the Bible and was about tossing it
out to the ground, when another reminded him that it was the
Bible he had in his hand. "O! 'tis all one," he replied, and out
went the sacred volume, along with the rest. We thank him for
the acknowledgment. Yes, "it is all one," for our books and
papers are mostly commentaries on the Bible, and the
Declaration. Read the Bible then, it contains the words of Jesus,
and they are spirit and life. Judge for yourselves whether he
sanctioned such a system of oppression and crime.
Collection 6.2
William Lloyd Garrison, "Declaration of Sentiments of the
American Anti-Slavery Convention" (1833)
Done at Philadelphia, December 6th, A. D. 1833.
The Convention assembled in the city of Philadelphia, to
organize a National Anti-Slavery Society, promptly seize the
opportunity to promulgate the following Declaration of
Sentiments, as cherished by them in relation to the enslavement
of one-sixth portion of the American people.
More than fifty-seven years have elapsed, since a band of
patriots convened in this place, to devise measures for the
deliverance of this country from a foreign yoke. The corner-
stone upon which they founded the Temple of Freedom was
broadly this-'that all men are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that
among these are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness.'
At the sound of their trumpet-call, three millions of people rose
up as from the sleep of death, and rushed to the strife of blood;
deeming it more glorious to die instantly as freemen, than
desirable to live one hour as slaves. They were few in number-
poor in resources; but the honest conviction that Truth, Justice
and Right were on their side, made them invincible.
We have met together for the achievement of an enterprise,

4. without which that of our fathers is incomplete; and which, for
its magnitude, solemnity, and probable results upon the destiny
of the world, as far transcends theirs as moral truth does
physical force.
In purity of motive, in earnestness of zeal, in decision of
purpose, in intrepidity of action, in steadfastness of faith, in
sincerity of spirit, we would not be inferior to them.
Their principles led them to wage war against their oppressors,
and to spill human blood like water, in order to be free.
Ours forbid the doing of evil that good may come, and lead us
to reject, and to entreat the oppressed to reject, the use of all
carnal weapons for deliverance from bondage; relying solely
upon those which are spiritual, and mighty through God to the
pulling down of strong holds.
Their measures were physical resistance-the marshalling in
arms-the hostile array-the mortal encounter. Ours shall be such
only as the opposition of moral purity to moral corruption-the
destruction of error by the potency of truth-the overthrow of
prejudice by the power of love-and the abolition of slavery by
the spirit of repentance.
Their grievances, great as they were, were trifling in
comparison with the wrongs and sufferings of those for whom
we plead. Our fathers were never slaves-never bought and sold
like cattle-never shut out from the light of knowledge and
religion-never subjected to the lash of brutal taskmasters.
But those, for whose emancipation we are striving-constituting
at the present time at least one-sixth part of our countrymen-are
recognized by law, and treated by their fellow-beings, as
marketable commodities, as goods and chattels, as brute beasts;
are plundered daily of the fruits of their toil without redress;

5. really enjoy no constitutional nor legal protection from
licentious and murderous outrages upon their persons; and are
ruthlessly torn asunder-the tender babe from the arms of its
frantic mother-the heart-broken wife from her weeping husband-
at the caprice or pleasure of irresponsible tyrants. For the crime
of having a dark complexion, they suffer the pangs of hunger,
the infliction of stripes, the ignominy of brutal servitude. They
are kept in heathenish darkness by laws expressly enacted to
make their instruction a criminal offence.
These are the prominent circumstances in the condition of more
than two millions of our people, the proof of which may be
found in thousands of indisputable facts, and in the laws of the
slaveholding States.
Hence we maintain-that, in view of the civil and religious
privileges of this nation, the guilt of its oppression is
unequalled by any other on the face of the earth; and, therefore,
that it is bound to repent instantly, to undo the heavy burdens,
and to let the oppressed go free.
We further maintain-that no man has a right to enslave or
imbrute his brother-to hold or acknowledge him, for one
moment, as a piece of merchandise-to keep back his hire by
fraud-or to brutalize his mind, by denying him the means of
intellectual, social and moral improvement.
Collection 6.3
William Lloyd Garrison, Inaugural Editorial to The Liberator
(1831)
TO THE PUBLIC
In the month of August, I issued proposals for publishing "The
Liberator" in Washington City; but the enterprise, though hailed
in different sections of the country, was palsied by public
indifference. Since that time, the removal of the Genius of
Universal Emancipation to the Seat of Government has rendered

6. less imperious the establishment of a similar periodical in that
quarter.
During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting the minds of
the people by a series of discourses on the subject of slavery,
every place that I visited gave fresh evidence of the fact, that a
greater revolution in public sentiment was to be effected in the
free States -- and particularly in New-England -- than at the
South. I found contempt more bitter, opposition more active,
detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn, and apathy
more frozen, than among slave-owners themselves. Of course,
there were individual exceptions to the contrary. This state of
things afflicted, but did not dishearten me. I determined, at
every hazard, to lift up the standard of emancipation in the eyes
of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill and in the birthplace
of liberty. That standard is now unfurled; and long may it float,
unhurt by the spoliations of time or the missiles of a desperate
foe -- yea, till every chain be broken, and every bondman set
free! Let Southern oppressors tremble -- let their secret
abettors tremble -- let their Northern apologists tremble -- let
all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble.
I deem the publication of my original Prospectus unnecessary,
as it has obtained a wide circulation. The principles therein
inculcated will be steadily pursued in this paper, excepting that
I shall not array myself as the political partisan of any man. In
defending the great cause of human rights, I wish to derive the
assistance of all religions and of all parties.
Assenting to the "self-evident truth" maintained in the American
Declaration of Independence, "that all men are created equal,
and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights --
among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," I
shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of
our slave population. In Park-Street Church, on the Fourth of
July, 1829, I unreflectingly assented to the popular but

7. pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this moment to
make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to
ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren the
poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity,
injustice, and absurdity. A similar recantation, from my pen,
was published in the Genius of Universal Emancipation at
Baltimore, in September, 1829. My conscience is now satisfied.
I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but
is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and
as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to
think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a
man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to
moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell
the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into
which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a
cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -
- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I
WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make
every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the
resurrection of the dead.
Collection 6.4
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1782)
From Query 14 ("Laws")
Many of the laws which were in force during the monarchy
being relative merely to that form of government, or inculcating
principles inconsistent with republicanism, the first assembly
which met after the establishment of the commonwealth
appointed a committee to revise the whole code, to reduce it
into proper form and volume, and report it to the assembly. This
work has been executed by three gentlemen, and reported; but
probably will not be taken up till a restoration of peace shall
leave to the legislature leisure to go through such a work.

8. The plan of the revisal was this. The common law of England,
by which is meant, that part of the English law which was
anterior to the date of the oldest statutes extant, is made the
basis of the work. It was thought dangerous to attempt to reduce
it to a text: it was therefore left to be collected from the usual
monuments of it. Necessary alterations in that, and so much of
the whole body of the British statutes, and of acts of assembly,
as were thought proper to be retained, were digested into 126
new acts, in which simplicity of style was aimed at, as far as
was safe. The following are the most remarkable alterations
proposed:...
...To emancipate all slaves born after passing the act. The bill
reported by the revisors does not itself contain this proposition;
but an amendment containing it was prepared, to be offered to
the legislature whenever the bill should be taken up, and further
directing, that they should continue with their parents to a
certain age, then be brought up, at the public expense, to tillage,
arts or sciences, according to their geniuses, till the females
should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age,
when they should be colonized to such place as the
circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending
them out with arms, implements of household and of the
handicraft arts, feeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, &c.
to declare them a free and independent people, and extend to
them our alliance and protection, till they shall have acquired
strength; and to send vessels at the same time to other parts of
the world for an equal number of white inhabitants; to induce
whom to migrate hither, proper encouragements were to be
proposed. It will probably be asked, Why not retain and
incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expense
of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies
they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the
whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries
they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions
which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will

9. divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will
probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the
other race. -- To these objections, which are political, may be
added others, which are physical and moral. The first difference
which strikes us is that of colour. Whether the black of the
negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and
scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from
the color of the blood, the color of the bile, or from that of
some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as
real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this
difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a
greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine
mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by
greater or less suffusions of color in the one, preferable to that
eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that
immoveable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the
other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry
of form, their own judgment in favor of the whites, declared by
their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of
the Orangutan for the black women over those of his own
species. The circumstance of superior beauty, is thought worthy
attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other
domestic animals; why not in that of man? Besides those of
color, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions
proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and
body. They secrete less by the kidneys, and more by the glands
of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable
odor.
Collection 6.5
David Walker, "Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World"
(1829)
My dearly beloved Brethren and Fellow Citizens:
Having travelled over a considerable portion of these United

10. States, and having, in the course of my travels taken the most
accurate observations of things as they exist-the result of my
observations has warranted the full and unshakened conviction,
that we, (colored people of these United States) are the most
degraded, wretched, and abject set of beings that ever lived
since the world began, and I pray God, that none like us ever
may live again until time shall be no more. They tell us of the
Israelites in Egypt, the Helots in Sparta, and of the Roman
Slaves, which last, were made up from almost every nation
under heaven, whose sufferings under those ancient and heathen
nations were, in comparison with ours, under this enlightened
and Christian nation, no more than a cypher-or in other words,
those heathen nations of antiquity, had but little more among
them than the name and form of slavery, while wretchedness
and endless miseries were reserved, apparently in a phial, to be
poured out upon our fathers, ourselves and our children by
Christian Americans!
These positions, I shall endeavor, by the help of the Lord, to
demonstrate in the course of this appeal, to the satisfaction of
the most incredulous mind-and may God Almighty who is the
father of our Lord Jesus Christ, open your hearts to understand
and believe the truth.
The causes, my brethren, which produce our wretchedness and
miseries, are so very numerous and aggravating, that I believe
the pen only of a Josephus or a Plutarch, can well enumerate
and explain them. Upon subjects, then, of such
incomprehensible magnitude, so impenetrable, and so notorious,
I shall be obliged to omit a large class of, and content myself
with giving you an exposition of a few of those, which do
indeed rage to such an alarming pitch, that they cannot but be a
perpetual source of terror and dismay to every reflecting mind.
Collection 7.1
Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (1863)

11. Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to
the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that
nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long
endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have
come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It
is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not
consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men,
living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far
above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little
note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never
forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be
dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought
here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be
here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from
these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for
which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we
here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain --
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom --
and that government of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth.
Collection 7.2
Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (1865)
Fellow-Countrymen:
AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential
office there is less occasion for an extended address than there
was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course

12. to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration
of four years, during which public declarations have been
constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great
contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the
energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The
progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as
well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust,
reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope
for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all
thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All
dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address
was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to
saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city
seeking to destroy it without war-seeking to dissolve the Union
and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war,
but one of them would make war rather than let the nation
survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish,
and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not
distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the
southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and
powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the
cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this
interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the
Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to
do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither
party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which
it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the
conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself
should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result
less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and
pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the
other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a

13. just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of
other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.
The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has
been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe
unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that
offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense
cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of
those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs
come, but which, having continued through His appointed time,
He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and
South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the
offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those
divine attributes which the believers in a living God always
ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that
this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God
wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the
bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall
be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall
be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three
thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of
the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
Collection 7.3
Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?
July 5, 1852
Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens:
He who could address this audience without a quailing
sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember
ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more
shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do
this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the
exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is
one which requires much previous thought and study for its
proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are

14. generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that
mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my
appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I
have had in addressing public meetings, in country
schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.
The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July
oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common
way, for it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in
this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with
their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect
gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from
embarrassment.
The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this
platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is
considerable-and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from
the latter to the former, are by no means slight. That I am here
to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of
gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I
have to say. I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my
speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience
and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts
hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient
and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you.
This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is
the birthday of your National Independence, and of your
political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the
emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the
day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs,
and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This
celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your
national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is
now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is
so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man,

15. is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and
ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number
their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even
now, only in the beginning of your national career, still
lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is
so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed,
under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye
of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous
times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that
America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage
of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom,
of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny?
Were the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and
the reformer's brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in
gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is
consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams
are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of
ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and
inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their
mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury,
and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of
years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back
to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But,
while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and
leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly
rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of
departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.
Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the
associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it is
that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British
subjects. The style and title of your "sovereign people" (in
which you now glory) was not then born. You were under the
British Crown . Your fathers esteemed the English Government
as the home government; and England as the fatherland. This
home government, you know, although a considerable distance

16. from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental
prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints,
burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed
wise, right and proper.
But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of
this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute
character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home
government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of
those burdens and restraints. They went so far in their
excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust,
unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not
to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens,
that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of
your fathers. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would
not be worth much to anybody. It would, certainly, prove
nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during
the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was
right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can
say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly
discant on the tyranny of England towards the American
Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when
to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the
colonies, tried men's souls. They who did so were accounted in
their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous
men. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak
against the strong, and with the oppressed against the
oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others,
seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may be
stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But,
to proceed.
Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home
government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of
spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and
remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal

17. manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This,
however, did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves
treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet
they persevered. They were not the men to look back.
As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed
by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger, as
it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest
and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the
loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. But,
with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying
characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were
drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the
exactions complained of.
The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even
by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present
ruler.
Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise
men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this
treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs,
wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men
there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a
total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was
a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time,
regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of
that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.
Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably,
ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to
any great change, (no matter how great the good to be attained,
or the wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as
much precision as can be the course of the stars. They hate all
changes, but silver, gold and copper change! Of this sort of
change they are always strongly in favor.

18. These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers; and
the appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is meant
by a more modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term,
which we often find in our papers, applied to some of our old
politicians.
Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and
powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations
against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and
the country with it.
On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the
dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property,
clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national
sanction. They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we
seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day whose
transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds
and help my story if I read it. "Resolved, That these united
colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent
States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British
Crown; and that all political connection between them and the
State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved."
Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They
succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The
freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly
celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact
in your nation's history-the very ring-bolt in the chain of your
yet undeveloped destiny.
Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to
celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said
that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the
chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The
principles contained in that instrument are saving principles.
Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in
all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

19. From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening
clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the
distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks!
That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this
day-cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-
tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.
The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an
interesting event. But, besides general considerations, there
were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this
republic an event of special attractiveness.
The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and
sublime.
The population of the country, at the time, stood at the
insignificant number of three millions. The country was poor in
the munitions of war. The population was weak and scattered,
and the country a wilderness unsubdued. There were then no
means of concert and combination, such as exist now. Neither
steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and
discipline. From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of
many days. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages,
your fathers declared for liberty and independence and
triumphed.
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of
this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence
were brave men. They were great men too-great enough to give
fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to
raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point
from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the
most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds
with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and
heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they
contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.

20. Collection 7.4
PREFACE BY WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
In the month of August, 1841, I attended an anti-slavery
convention in Nantucket, at which it was my happiness to
become acquainted with FREDERICK DOUGLASS, the writer
of the following Narrative. He was a stranger to nearly every
member of that body; but, having recently made his escape from
the southern prison-house of bondage, and feeling his curiosity
excited to ascertain the principles and measures of the
abolitionists,-of whom he had heard a somewhat vague
description while he was a slave,-he was induced to give his
attendance, on the occasion alluded to, though at that time a
resident in New Bedford.
Fortunate, most fortunate occurrence!-fortunate for the millions
of his manacled brethren, yet panting for deliverance from their
awful thraldom!-fortunate for the cause of negro emancipation,
and of universal liberty!-fortunate for the land of his birth,
which he has already done so much to save and bless!-fortunate
for a large circle of friends and acquaintances, whose sympathy
and affection he has strongly secured by the many sufferings he
has endured, by his virtuous traits of character, by his ever-
abiding remembrance of those who are in bonds, as being bound
with them!-fortunate for the multitudes, in various parts of our
republic, whose minds he has enlightened on the subject of
slavery, and who have been melted to tears by his pathos, or
roused to virtuous indignation by his stirring eloquence against
the enslavers of men!-fortunate for himself, as it at once
brought him into the field of public usefulness, "gave the world
assurance of a MAN," quickened the slumbering energies of his
soul, and consecrated him to the great work of breaking the rod
of the oppressor, and letting the oppressed go free!
I shall never forget his first speech at the convention-the
extraordinary emotion it excited in my own mind-the powerful
impression it created upon a crowded auditory, completely

21. taken by surprise-the applause which followed from the
beginning to the end of his felicitous remarks. I think I never
hated slavery so intensely as at that moment; certainly, my
perception of the enormous outrage which is inflicted by it, on
the godlike nature of its victims, was rendered far more clear
than ever. There stood one, in physical proportion and stature
commanding and exact-in intellect richly endowed-in natural
eloquence a prodigy-in soul manifestly "created but a little
lower than the angels"-yet a slave, ay, a fugitive slave,-
trembling for his safety, hardly daring to believe that on the
American soil, a single white person could be found who would
befriend him at all hazards, for the love of God and humanity!
Capable of high attainments as an intellectual and moral being-
needing nothing but a comparatively small amount of
cultivation to make him an ornament to society and a blessing to
his race-by the law of the land, by the voice of the people, by
the terms of the slave code, he was only a piece of property, a
beast of burden, a chattel personal, nevertheless!
A beloved friend from New Bedford prevailed on Mr.
DOUGLASS to address the convention: He came forward to the
platform with a hesitancy and embarrassment, necessarily the
attendants of a sensitive mind in such a novel position. After
apologizing for his ignorance, and reminding the audience that
slavery was a poor school for the human intellect and heart, he
proceeded to narrate some of the facts in his own history as a
slave, and in the course of his speech gave utterance to many
noble thoughts and thrilling reflections. As soon as he had taken
his seat, filled with hope and admiration, I rose, and declared
that PATRICK HENRY, of revolutionary fame, never made a
speech more eloquent in the cause of liberty, than the one we
had just listened to from the lips of that hunted fugitive. So I
believed at that time-such is my belief now. I reminded the
audience of the peril which surrounded this self-emancipated
young man at the North,-even in Massachusetts, on the soil of
the Pilgrim Fathers, among the descendants of revolutionary

22. sires; and I appealed to them, whether they would ever allow
him to be carried back into slavery,-law or no law, constitution
or no constitution. The response was unanimous and in thunder-
tones-"NO!" "Will you succor and protect him as a brother-man-
a resident of the old Bay State?" "YES!" shouted the whole
mass, with an energy so startling, that the ruthless tyrants south
of Mason and Dixon's line might almost have heard the mighty
burst of feeling, and recognized it as the pledge of an invincible
determination, on the part of those who gave it, never to betray
him that wanders, but to hide the outcast, and firmly to abide
the consequences.
It was at once deeply impressed upon my mind, that, if Mr.
DOUGLASS could be persuaded to consecrate his time and
talents to the promotion of the anti-slavery enterprise, a
powerful impetus would be given to it, and a stunning blow at
the same time inflicted on northern prejudice against a colored
complexion. I therefore endeavored to instil hope and courage
into his mind, in order that he might dare to engage in a
vocation so anomalous and responsible for a person in his
situation; and I was seconded in this effort by warm-hearted
friends, especially by the late General Agent of the
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. JOHN A. COLLINS,
whose judgment in this instance entirely coincided with my
own. At first, he could give no encouragement; with unfeigned
diffidence, he expressed his conviction that he was not adequate
to the performance of so great a task; the path marked out was
wholly an untrodden one; he was sincerely apprehensive that he
should do more harm than good. After much deliberation,
however, he consented to make a trial; and ever since that
period, he has acted as a lecturing agent, under the auspices
either of the American or the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
Society. In labors he has been most abundant; and his success in
combating prejudice, in gaining proselytes, in agitating the
public mind, has far surpassed the most sanguine expectations
that were raised at the commencement of his brilliant career. He

23. has borne himself with gentleness and meekness, yet with true
manliness of character. As a public speaker, he excels in pathos,
wit, comparison, imitation, strength of reasoning, and fluency
of language. There is in him that union of head and heart, which
is indispensable to an enlightenment of the heads and a winning
of the hearts of others. May his strength continue to be equal to
his day! May he continue to "grow in grace, and in the
knowledge of God," that he may be increasingly serviceable in
the cause of bleeding humanity, whether at home or abroad!
It is certainly a very remarkable fact, that one of the most
efficient advocates of the slave population, now before the
public, is a fugitive slave, in the person of FREDERICK
DOUGLASS; and that the free colored population of the United
States are as ably represented by one of their own number, in
the person of CHARLES LENOX REMOND, whose eloquent
appeals have extorted the highest applause of multitudes on
both sides of the Atlantic. Let the calumniators of the colored
race despise themselves for their baseness and illiberality of
spirit, and henceforth cease to talk of the natural inferiority of
those who require nothing but time and opportunity to attain to
the highest point of human excellence.
It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other portion
of the population of the earth could have endured the privations,
sufferings and horrors of slavery, without having become more
degraded in the scale of humanity than the slaves of African
descent. Nothing has been left undone to cripple their intellects,
darken their minds, debase their moral nature, obliterate all
traces of their relationship to mankind; and yet how wonderfully
they have sustained the mighty load of a most frightful bondage,
under which they have been groaning for centuries! To illustrate
the effect of slavery on the white man,-to show that he has no
powers of endurance, in such a condition, superior to those of
his black brother,-DANIEL O'CONNELL, the distinguished
advocate of universal emancipation, and the mightiest champion

24. of prostrate but not conquered Ireland, relates the following
anecdote in a speech delivered by him in the Conciliation Hall,
Dublin, before the Loyal National Repeal Association, March
31, 1845. "No matter," said Mr. O'CONNELL, "under what
specious term it may disguise itself, slavery is still hideous. It
has a natural, an inevitable tendency to brutalize every noble
faculty of man. An American sailor, who was cast away on the
shore of Africa, where he was kept in slavery for three years,
was, at the expiration of that period, found to be imbruted and
stultified-he had lost all reasoning power; and having forgotten
his native language, could only utter some savage gibberish
between Arabic and English, which nobody could understand,
and which even he himself found difficulty in pronouncing. So
much for the humanizing influence of THE DOMESTIC
INSTITUTION!" Admitting this to have been an extraordinary
case of mental deterioration, it proves at least that the white
slave can sink as low in the scale of humanity as the black one.
Mr. DOUGLASS has very properly chosen to write his own
Narrative, in his own style, and according to the best of his
ability, rather than to employ some one else. It is, therefore,
entirely his own production; and, considering how long and dark
was the career he had to run as a slave,-how few have been his
opportunities to improve his mind since he broke his iron
fetters,-it is, in my judgment, highly creditable to his head and
heart. He who can peruse it without a tearful eye, a heaving
breast, an afflicted spirit,-without being filled with an
unutterable abhorrence of slavery and all its abettors, and
animated with a determination to seek the immediate overthrow
of that execrable system,-without trembling for the fate of this
country in the hands of a righteous God, who is ever on the side
of the oppressed, and whose arm is not shortened that it cannot
save,-must have a flinty heart, and be qualified to act the part of
a trafficker "in slaves and the souls of men." I am confident that
it is essentially true in all its statements; that nothing has been
set down in malice, nothing exaggerated, nothing drawn from

25. the imagination; that it comes short of the reality, rather than
overstates a single fact in regard to SLAVERY AS IT IS. The
experience of FREDERICK DOUGLASS, as a slave, was not a
peculiar one; his lot was not especially a hard one; his case may
be regarded as a very fair specimen of the treatment of slaves in
Maryland, in which State it is conceded that they are better fed
and less cruelly treated than in Georgia, Alabama, or Louisiana.
Many have suffered incomparably more, while very few on the
plantations have suffered less, than himself. Yet how deplorable
was his situation! what terrible chastisements were inflicted
upon his person! what still more shocking outrages were
perpetrated upon his mind! with all his noble powers and
sublime aspirations, how like a brute was he treated, even by
those professing to have the same mind in them that was in
Christ Jesus! to what dreadful liabilities was he continually
subjected! how destitute of friendly counsel and aid, even in his
greatest extremities! how heavy was the midnight of woe which
shrouded in blackness the last ray of hope, and filled the future
with terror and gloom! what longings after freedom took
possession of his breast, and how his misery augmented, in
proportion as he grew reflective and intelligent,-thus
demonstrating that a happy slave is an extinct man! how he
thought, reasoned, felt, under the lash of the driver, with the
chains upon his limbs! what perils he encountered in his
endeavors to escape from his horrible doom! and how signal
have been his deliverance and preservation in the midst of a
nation of pitiless enemies!
Collection 8.1
Emerson, "Self-Reliance" (1835)
"Ne te quaesiveris extra."
"Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.

26. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."
Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's
Fortune
Cast the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat;
Wintered with the hawk and fox,
Power and speed be hands and feet.
I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter
which were original and not conventional. The soul always
hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it
may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any
thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to
believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for
all men, - that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it
shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes
the outmost,-- and our first thought is rendered back to us by
the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the
mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato,
and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and
spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn
to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his
mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of
bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought,
because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own
rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated
majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us
than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression
with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry
of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will
say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought
and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame
our own opinion from another.

27. There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the
conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that
he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that
though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of
nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed
on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power
which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows
what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has
tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes
much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in
the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was
placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that
particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed
of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely
trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully
imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by
cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart
into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done
otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which
does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse
befriends; no invention, no hope.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the
place the divine providence has found for you, the society of
your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have
always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius
of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely
trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their
hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men,
and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent
destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not
cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and
benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on
Chaos and the Dark.

28. What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and
behaviour of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and
rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic
has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose,
these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet
unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are
disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so
that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults
who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty
and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and
made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if
it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force,
because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room
his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows
how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he
will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary.
The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would
disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is
the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlour
what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible,
looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by,
he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift,
summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent,
troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences,
about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You
must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it
were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has
once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person,
watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose
affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe
for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who
can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again
from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted
innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter opinions
on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but

29. necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put
them in fear.
These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow
faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society
everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one
of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the
members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each
shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater.
The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its
aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and
customs.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would
gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of
goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last
sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to
yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I
remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to
make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with
the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I
to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from
within? my friend suggested, - "But these impulses may be from
below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to
be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the
Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good
and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this;
the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong
what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of
all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but
he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges
and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent
and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is
right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in
all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy,
shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause

30. of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from
Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, 'Go love thy infant;
love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have that
grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with
this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off.
Thy love afar is spite at home.' Rough and graceless would be
such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of
love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, - else it is none.
The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of
the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father
and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I
would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is
somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day
in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why
I exclude company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man
did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good
situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish
philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I
give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not
belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual
affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if
need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education
at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain
end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the
thousandfold Relief Societies; - though I confess with shame I
sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar
which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.
Collection 8.2
Thoreau, "Resistance to Civil Government" (1849)
I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which
governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more
rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to
this, which also I believe - "That government is best which
governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will
be the kind of government which the will have. Government is

31. at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and
all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections
which have been brought against a standing army, and they are
many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be
brought against a standing government. The standing army is
only an arm of the standing government. The government itself,
which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute
their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before
the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war,
the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing
government as their tool; for in the outset, the people would not
have consented to this measure.
This American government - what is it but a tradition, though a
recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to
posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has
not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single
man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the
people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for
the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and
hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have.
Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed
upon, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is
excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself
furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got
out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not
settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in
the American people has done all that has been accomplished;
and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had
not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient,
by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone;
and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed
are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not
made of india-rubber, would never manage to bounce over
obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way;
and if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of

32. their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would
deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievious
persons who put obstructions on the railroads.
But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call
themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at one no
government, but at once a better government. Let every man
make known what kind of government would command his
respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
Collection 8.3
Thoreau, Walden (Chapter 2: Where I Lived and What I Lived
For)
AT A CERTAIN season of our life we are accustomed to
consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus
surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of
where I live. In imagination I have bought all the farms in
succession, for all were to be bought, and I knew their price. I
walked over each farmer's premises, tasted his wild apples,
discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at
any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a higher
price on it - took everything but a deed of it - took his word for
his deed, for I dearly love to talk - cultivated it, and him too to
some extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed it long
enough, leaving him to carry it on. This experience entitled me
to be regarded as a sort of real-estate broker by my friends.
Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated
from me accordingly. What is a house but a sedes, a seat? -
better if a country seat. I discovered many a site for a house not
likely to be soon improved, which some might have thought too
far from the village, but to my eyes the village was too far from
it. Well, there I might live, I said; and there I did live, for an
hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I could let the years
run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring come in.
The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place
their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. An

33. afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, wood-lot,
and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left
to stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be
seen to the best advantage; and then I let it lie, fallow,
perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of
things which he can afford to let alone.
My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of
several farms - the refusal was all I wanted - but I never got my
fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to
actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell place, and
had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which
to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the
owner gave me a deed of it, his wife - every man has such a
wife - changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered
me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but
ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if
I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten
dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars
and the farm too, for I had carried it far enough; or rather, to be
generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as
he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and
still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a
wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich man
without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape,
and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a
wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,
"I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute."
I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most
valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that
he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not
know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme,
the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly

34. impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and
left the farmer only the skimmed milk.
The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were: its
complete retirement, being, about two miles from the village,
half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the
highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the
owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring,
though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state
of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put
such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow
and lichen-covered apple trees, nawed by rabbits, showing what
kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the recollection I
had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house
was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through
which I heard the house-dog bark. I was in haste to buy it,
before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting
down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young
birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had
made any more of his improvements. To enjoy these advantages
I was ready to carry it on; like Atlas, to take the world on my
shoulders - I never heard what compensation he received for
that - and do all those things which had no other motive or
excuse but that I might pay for it and be unmolested in my
possession of it; for I knew all the while that it would yield the
most abundant crop of the kind I wanted, if I could only afford
to let it alone. But it turned out as I have said.
All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large
scale - I have always cultivated a garden - was, that I had had
my seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve with age. I have
no doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad;
and when at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to be
disappointed. But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As
long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little
difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county

35. jail.
Old Cato, whose "De Re Rusticâ" is my "Cultivator," says - and
the only translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the
passage - "When you think of getting a farm turn it thus in your
mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and
do not think it enough to go round it once. The oftener you go
there the more it will please you, if it is good." I think I shall
not buy greedily, but go round and round it as long as I live,
and be buried in it first, that it may please me the more at last.
The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I
purpose to describe more at length, for convenience putting the
experience of two years into one. As I have said, I do not
propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as
chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to
wake my neighbors up.
When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to
spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was
on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house
was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against
the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of
rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it
cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed
door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look,
especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with
dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would
exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the
day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a
certain house on a mountain which I had visited a year before.
This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a
travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments.
The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep

36. over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or
celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind
forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few
are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth
everywhere.
The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a
boat, was a tent, which I used occasionally when making
excursions in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my
garret; but the boat, after passing from hand to hand, has gone
down the stream of time. With this more substantial shelter
about me, I had made some progress toward settling in the
world. This frame, so slightly clad, was a sort of crystallization
around me, and reacted on the builder. It was suggestive
somewhat as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go outdoors
to take the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its
freshness. It was not so much within doors as behind a door
where I sat, even in the rainiest weather. The Harivansa says,
"An abode without birds is like a meat without seasoning." Such
was not my abode, for I found myself suddenly neighbor to the
birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself
near them. I was not only nearer to some of those which
commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those
smaller and more thrilling songsters of the forest which never,
or rarely, serenade a villager - the wood thrush, the veery, the
scarlet tanager, the field sparrow, the whip-poor-will, and many
others.
I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a
half south of the village of Concord and somewhat higher than
it, in the midst of an extensive wood between that town and
Lincoln, and about two miles south of that our only field known
to fame, Concord Battle Ground; but I was so low in the woods
that the opposite shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered
with wood, was my most distant horizon. For the first week,
whenever I looked out on the pond it impressed me like a tarn

37. high up on the side of a mountain, its bottom far above the
surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw it throwing
off its nightly clothing of mist, and here and there, by degrees,
its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed,
while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in
every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some
nocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed to hang upon the
trees later into the day than usual, as on the sides of mountains.
This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals
of a gentle rain-storm in August, when, both air and water being
perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the
serenity of evening, and the wood thrush sang around, and was
heard from shore to shore. A lake like this is never smoother
than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it
being, shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light
and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more
important. From a hill-top near by, where the wood had been
recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the
pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form the
shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each
other suggested a stream flowing out in that direction through a
wooded valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked
between and over the near green hills to some distant and higher
ones in the horizon, tinged with blue. Indeed, by standing on
tiptoe I could catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still
bluer and more distant mountain ranges in the northwest, those
true-blue coins from heaven's own mint, and also of some
portion of the village. But in other directions, even from this
point, I could not see over or beyond the woods which
surrounded me. It is well to have some water in your
neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth. One
value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into it
you see that earth is not continent but insular. This is as
important as that it keeps butter cool. When I looked across the
pond from this peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which in

38. time of flood I distinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in
their seething valley, like a coin in a basin, all the earth beyond
the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated and floated even by
this small sheet of interverting water, and I was reminded that
this on which I dwelt was but dry land.
Though the view from my door was still more contracted, I did
not feel crowded or confined in the least. There was pasture
enough for my imagination. The low shrub oak plateau to which
the opposite shore arose stretched away toward the prairies of
the West and the steppes of Tartary, affording ample room for
all the roving families of men. "There are none happy in the
world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon" - said
Damodara, when his herds required new and larger pastures.
Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those
parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most
attracted me. Where I lived was as far off as many a region
viewed nightly by astronomers. We are wont to imagine rare
and delectable places in some remote and more celestial corner
of the system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia's Chair,
far from noise and disturbance. I discovered that my house
actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but forever new and
unprofaned, part of the universe. If it were worth the while to
settle in those parts near to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to
Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal
remoteness from the life which I had left behind, dwindled and
twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be
seen only in moonless nights by him. Such was that part of
creation where I had squatted, -
"There was a shepherd that did live,
And held his thoughts as high
As were the mounts whereon his flocks
Did hourly feed him by."

39. What should we think of the shepherd's life if his flocks always
wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts?
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of
equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.
I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I
got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious
exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that
characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching
Thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it
again, and again, and forever again." I can understand that.
Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by
the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and
unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when
I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any
trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer's requiem; itself
an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and
wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a standing
advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and
fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most
memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there
is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of
us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night.
Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to
which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the
mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our
own newly acquired force and aspirations from within,
accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of
factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air - to a higher life
than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit,
and prove itself to be good, no less than the light. That man who
does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred,
and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life,
and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. After a partial
cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organs
rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries again

40. what noble life it can make. All memorable events, I should say,
transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The
Vedas say, "All intelligences awake with the morning." Poetry
and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of
men, date from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like
Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and emit their music at
sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace
with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what
the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is
when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the
effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an
account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are
not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with
drowsiness, they would have performed something. The millions
are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million
is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in
a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to
be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How
could I have looked him in the face?
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by
mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn,
which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no
more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to
elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be
able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to
make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve
and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we
look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day,
that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life,
even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most
elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such
paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly
inform us how this might be done.
Collection 9.1
Washington Irving, "Rip Van Winkle" (1819)

41. A Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker
The following Tale was found among the papers of the late
Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old gentleman of New York, who
was very curious in the Dutch history of the province, and the
manners of the descendants from its primitive settlers. His
historical researches, however, did not lie so much among books
as among men; for the former are lamentably scanty on his
favorite topics; whereas he found the old burghers, and still
more their wives, rich in that legendary lore, so invaluable to
true history. Whenever, therefore, he happened upon a genuine
Dutch family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed farmhouse, under
a spreading sycamore, he looked upon it as a little clasped
volume of black-letter, and studied it with the zeal of a book-
worm.
The result of all these researches was a history of the
province during the reign of the Dutch governors, which he
published some years since. There have been various opinions
as to the literary character of his work, and, to tell the truth, it
is not a whit better than it should be. Its chief merit is its
scrupulous accuracy, which indeed was a little questioned on its
first appearance, but has since been completely established; and
it is now admitted into all historical collections, as a book of
unquestionable authority.
The old gentleman died shortly after the publication of his
work, and now that he is dead and gone, it cannot do much harm
to his memory to say that his time might have been better
employed in weightier labors. He, however, was apt to ride his
hobby his own way; and though it did now and then kick up the
dust a little in the eyes of his neighbors, and grieve the spirit of
some friends, for whom he felt the truest deference and
affection; yet his errors and follies are remembered "more in
sorrow than in anger," and it begins to be suspected, that he

42. never intended to injure or offend. But however his memory
may be appreciated by critics, it is still held dear by many folks,
whose good opinion is well worth having; particularly by
certain biscuit-bakers, who have gone so far as to imprint his
likeness on their new-year cakes; and have thus given him a
chance for immortality, almost equal to the being stamped on a
Waterloo Medal, or a Queen Anne's Farthing.
Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the
Kaatskill mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the
great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the
river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the
surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of
weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change
in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are
regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect
barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are
clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the
clear evening sky, but, sometimes, when the rest of the
landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors
about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun,
will glow and light up like a crown of glory.
At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have
descried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose
shingle-roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of
the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer
landscape. It is a little village of great antiquity, having been
founded by some of the Dutch colonists, in the early times of
the province, just about the beginning of the government of the
good Peter Stuyvesant, (may he rest in peace!) and there were
some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few
years, built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland,
having latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with
weather-cocks.

43. In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which,
to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-
beaten), there lived many years since, while the country was yet
a province of Great Britain, a simple good-natured fellow of the
name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van
Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter
Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina.
He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of his
ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple good-natured
man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient hen-
pecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be
owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal
popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and
conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at
home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and
malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a
curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching
the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife
may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable
blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.
Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among all the good
wives of the village, who, as usual, with the amiable sex, took
his part in all family squabbles; and never failed, whenever they
talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all
the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village,
too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted
at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites
and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts,
witches, and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the
village, he was surrounded by a troop of them, hanging on his
skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on
him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout
the neighborhood.
The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable

44. aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the
want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet
rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish
all day without a murmur, even though he should not be
encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece
on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and
swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or
wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even
in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country
frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone-fences; the
women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their
errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging
husbands would not do for them. In a word Rip was ready to
attend to anybody's business but his own; but as to doing family
duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible.
In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it
was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole
country; every thing about it went wrong, and would go wrong,
in spite of him. His fences were continually falling to pieces;
his cow would either go astray, or get among the cabbages;
weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere
else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as he had
some out-door work to do; so that though his patrimonial estate
had dwindled away under his management, acre by acre, until
there was little more left than a mere patch of Indian corn and
potatoes, yet it was the worst conditioned farm in the
neighborhood.
His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they
belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own
likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes of
his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his
mother's heels, equipped in a pair of his father's cast-off
galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand,
as a fine lady does her train in bad weather.

45. Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals,
of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat
white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought
or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a
pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in
perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his
ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was
bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue
was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to
produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way
of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use,
had grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his
head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always
provoked a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was fain to
draw off his forces, and take to the outside of the house - the
only side which, in truth, belongs to a hen-pecked husband.
Collection 9.2
Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-
street" (1853)
I AM a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the
last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact
with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set
of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been
written:-I mean the law-copyists or scriveners. I have known
very many of them, professionally and privately, and if I
pleased, could relate divers histories, at which good-natured
gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep. But I
waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages
in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener the strangest I ever
saw or heard of. While of other law-copyists I might write the
complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. I
believe that no materials exist for a full and satisfactory
biography of this man. It is an irreparable loss to literature.

46. Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is
ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his case
those are very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of
Bartleby, that is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague
report which will appear in the sequel.
Ere introducing the scrivener, as he first appeared to me, it is
fit I make some mention of myself, my employées, my business,
my chambers, and general surroundings; because some such
description is indispensable to an adequate understanding of the
chief character about to be presented.
Imprimis: I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been
filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is
the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially
energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing
of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of
those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any
way draws down public applause; but in the cool tranquillity of
a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men's bonds and
mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me consider me an
eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage
little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in
pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next,
method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact,
that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John
Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath
a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion.
I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob
Astor's good opinion.
Collection 9.3
Edgar Allan Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846)
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could,
but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so
well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however,

47. that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged;
this was a point definitely settled - but the very definitiveness
with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not
only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed
when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally
unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such
to him who has done the wrong.
It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I
given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as
was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that
my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.
He had a weak point - this Fortunato - although in other
regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He
prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians
have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm
is adopted to suit the time and opportunity, to practise
imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In
painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a
quack, but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this
respect I did not differ from him materially; - I was skilful in
the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I
could.
It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness
of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He
accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking
much. The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-
striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap
and bells. I was so pleased to see him that I thought I should
never have done wringing his hand.
I said to him - 'My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How
remarkably well you are looking today. But I have received a
pipe of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my doubts.'

48. 'How?' said he. 'Amontillado? A pipe? Impossible! And in
the middle of the carnival!'
'I have my doubts,' I replied; 'and I was silly enough to pay
the full Amontillado price without consulting you in the matter.
You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain.'
'Amontillado!'
'I have my doubts.'
'Amontillado!'
'And I must satisfy them.'
'Amontillado!'
'As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchresi. If any one
has a critical turn it is he. He will tell me -'
'Luchresi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry.'
'And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for
your own.'
'Come, let us go.'
'Whither?'
'To your vaults.'
'My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I
perceive you have an engagement. Luchresi -'
'I have no engagement; - come.'

49. 'My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold
with which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are
insufferably damp. They are encrusted with nitre.'
'Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing.
Amontillado! You have been imposed upon. And as for
Luchresi, he cannot distinguish Sherry from Amontillado.'
Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm; and
putting on a mask of black silk and drawing a roquelaire closely
about my person, I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo.
There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to
make merry in hour of the time. I had told them that I should
not return until the morning, and had given them explicitly
orders not to stir from the house. These orders were sufficient, I
well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance, one and all,
as soon as my back was turned.
I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to
Fortunato, bowed him through several suites of rooms to the
archway that led into the vaults. I passed down a long and
winding staircase, requesting him to be cautious as he followed.
We came at length to the foot of the descent, and stood together
upon the damp ground of the catacombs of the Montresors.
The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his
cap jingled as he strode.
'The pipe,' he said.
'It is farther on,' said I; 'but observe the white web-work
which gleams from these cavern walls.'
He turned towards me, and looked onto my eyes with two

50. filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication.
'Nitre?' he asked, at length.
'Nitre,' I replied. 'How long have you had that cough?'
'Ugh! ugh! ugh! - ugh! ugh! ugh! - ugh! ugh! ugh! - ugh!
ugh! ugh! - ugh! ugh! ugh!'
'My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many
minutes.
'It is nothing,' he said, at last.
'Come,' I said, with decision, 'we will go back; your health
is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are
happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is
no matter. We will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot be
responsible. Besides, there is Luchresi -'
'Enough,' he said; 'the cough is a mere nothing; it will not
kill me. I shall not die of a cough.'
'True - true,' I replied; 'and, indeed, I had no intention of
alarming you unnecessarily - but you should use all proper
caution. A draught of this Medoc will defend us from the
damps.'
Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a
long row of its fellows that lay upon the mould.
'Drink,' I said, presenting him the wine.
'He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to
me familiarly, while his bells jingled.

51. 'I drink,' he said, 'to the buried that repose around us.'
'And I to your long life'
He again took my arm, and we proceeded.
'These vaults,' he said, 'are extensive.'
'The Montresors,' I replied, 'were a great and numerous
family.'
'I forget your arms.'
'A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a
serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel.'
'And the motto?'
'Nemo me impune lacessit.'
'Good!' he said.
'The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own
fancy grew warm with the Medoc. We had passed through long
walls of piled skeletons, with casks and puncheons
intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs. I
paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunato by an
arm above the elbow.
'The nitre!' I said; 'see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon
the vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisture
trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too
late. Your cough -'
'It is nothing,' he said; 'let us go on. But first, another
draught of the Medoc.'

52. I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it
at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and
threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not
understand.
I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement - a
grotesque one.
'You do not comprehend?' he said.
'Not I,' I replied.
'Then you are not of the brotherhood.'
'How?'
'You are not of the masons.'
'Yes, yes,' I said; 'yes, yes.'
'You? Impossible! A mason?'
'A mason,' I replied.
'A sign,' he said, 'a sign'
'It is this,' I answered, producing from beneath the folds of
my roquelaire a trowel.
'You jest,' he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. 'But let us
proceed to the Amontillado.'
'Be it so,' I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak and
again offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We
continued our route in search of the Amontillado. We passed