An' yit I love th' unhighschooled way Ol' farmers hed when I wuz younger; While book-froth seems to whet your hunger, 'Twixt Humbug's eyes, ther' 's few can match it, But when I can't, I can't, thet 's all, Like a druv pig a'n't wuth a mullein; Feel thet the airth is wheelin' sunwards. 502 Mr. Hosea Biglow to the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly. [April, Time wuz, the rhymes come crowdin' thick Ez office-seekers arter 'lection, An' into ary place 'ould stick Without no bother nor objection; But sence the war my thoughts hang back Where's Peace? I start, some clear-blown night, Walk the col' starlight into summer; Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer I hev ben gladder o' sech things Than cocks o' spring or bees o' clover, Peaceful ez eyes o' pastur'd cattle, Jes' coz they be so, seem to me To rile me more with thoughts o' battle. In-doors an' out by spells I try; Ma'am Natur' keeps her spin-wheel goin', Ez fiel's o' clover arter mowin'; An' her jes' keepin' on the same, Calmer than clock-work, an' not carin', An' findin' nary thing to blame, Is wus than ef she took to swearin'. Snow-flakes come whisperin' on the pane The chimbleys shudder in the gale, Thet lulls, then suddin takes to flappin' Like a shot hawk, but all 's ez stale 'Ta'n't right to hev the young go fust, All throbbin' full o' gifts an' graces, To try an' make b'lieve fill their places: Ther''s gaps our lives can't never fay in, My eyes cloud up for rain; my mouth I pity mothers, tu, down South, For all they sot among the scorners : At Jedgment where your meanest slave is, Ez drippin' red ez your'n, Jeff Davis ! Come, Peace! not like a mourner bowed With eyes thet tell o' triumph tasted! An' step thet proves ye Victory's daughter! Like shipwrecked men's on raf's for water! Come, while our country feels the lift An' knows thet freedom a'n't a gift Thet tarries long in hans' o' cowards! Come, sech ez mothers prayed for, when They kissed their cross with lips thet quivered, An' bring fair wages for brave men, A nation saved, a race delivered! "IF MASSA PUT GUNS INTO OUR HAN'S." TH HE record of any one American who has grown up in the nurture of Abolitionism has but little value by itself considered; but as a representative experience, capable of explaining all enthusiasms for liberty which have created "fanatics" and martyrs in our time, let me recall how I myself came to hate Slavery. unborn. A few months before I saw the light, my father, mother, and sister were driven from their house in New York by a furious mob. When they came cautiously back, their home was quiet as a fortress the day after it has been blown up. The front-parlor was full of paving-stones; the carpets were cut to pieces; the pictures, the furniture, and The training began while I was a babe the chandelier lay in one common wreck; and the walls were covered with inscriptions of mingled insult and glory. Over the mantel-piece had been charcoaled "Rascal"; over the pier-table, "Abolitionist." We did not fare as badly as several others who rejoiced in the spoiling of their goods. Mr. Tappan, in Rose Street, saw a bonfire made of all he had in the world that could make a home or ornament it. Among the earliest stories which were told me in the nursery, I recollect the martyrdom of Nat Turner, how Lovejoy, by night, but in light, was sent quite beyond the reach of human pelting,--and all the things which Toussaint did, with no white man, but with the whitest spirit of all, to help him. As to minor sufferers for the cause of Freedom, I should know that we must have entertained Abolitionists at our house largely, since even at this day I find it hard to rid myself of an instinctive impression that the common way of testifying disapprobation of a lecturer in a small country-town is to bombard him with obsolete eggs, carried by the audience for that purpose. I saw many at my father's table who had enjoyed the honors of that ovation. I was four years old when I learned that my father combined the two functions of preaching in a New England college town and ticket-agency on the Underground Railroad. Four years old has a sort of literal mindedness about it. Most little boys that I knew had an idea that professors of religion and professors in college were the same, and that a real Christian always had to wear black and speak Greek. So I could be pardoned for going down cellar and watching behind old hogsheads by the hour to see where the cars came in. A year after that I casually saw my first passenger, but regretted not also to have seen whether he came up by the coal-bin or the meat-safe. His name was Isidore Smith,; so, to protect him from Smith, my father, being a conscientious man, baptized him into a liberty to say that his name was John Peterson. I held the blue bowl which served for font. To this day I feel a sort of semiaccountability for John Peterson. I have asked after him every time I have crossed the Suspension Bridge since I grew up. In holding that baptismal bowl I suppose I am, in a sense, his godfather. Half a godfather is better than none, and in spite of my size I was a very earnest one. There are few godchildren for whom I should have had to renounce fewer sins than for thee, brave John Peterson! John Peterson had been baptized before. No sprinkling that, but an immersion in hell! He had to strip to show it to us. All down his back were welts in which my father might lay his finger; and one gash healed with a scar into which I could put my small, boyish fist. The former were made by the whip and branding-irons of a Virginia planter, the latter by the teeth of his bloodhounds. When I saw that black back, I cried; and my father might have chosen the place to baptize in, even as John Baptist did Ænon, "because there was much water there." John stayed with us three or four weeks and then got moody. Nobody in the town twitted him as a runaway. He was inexhaustibly strong in health, and never tired of doing us service as gardener, porter, errand-boy, and, on occasion, cook. In few places could his hard-won freedom be less imperilled than with us. At last the secret of his melancholy came out. He burst into tears, one morning, as he stood with the fresh-polished boots at the door of my father's study, and sobbed, — "Massa, I 's got to go an' fetch dat yer gal 'n' little Pompey, 'r I's be done dead afore de yeah 's out!" As always, a woman in the case! Had it been his own case, I think I know my father well enough to believe that he would have started directly South for "dat yer gal 'n' little Pompey," though he had to face a frowning world. But being John's counsellor, his rôle was to counsel moderation, and his duty to put before him the immense improbability of his ever making a second passage |