And Now a Few Words

"It is manifest that the church is sunk down into a low and backslidden state, when you see Christians conform to the world in dress, equipage, parties, seeking worldly amusements, reading novels, and other books such as the world read."

"Katya collected Barley at ten o'clock on the Sunday morning from the forecourt of the immense Mezhdu narodnaya, which was where Henzinger had insisted they stay. Westerners know it familiarly as "the Mezhd." Both Wicklow and Henzinger, seated in the hotel's preposterous great hall, contrived to witness their happy reunion and departure."

"As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man."

"The Quakers are the only people who retain a fondness for their own mode of worship; for be they ever so far separated from each other, they hold a sort of communion with the society, and seldom depart from its rules, at least in this country.  Thus all sects are mixed as well as all nations; thus religious indifference is imperceptible disseminated from one end of the continent to the other; which is at present one of the strongest characteristics of the Americans."

"My swoon was, I believe, of no great duration, and I awoke from it a new man, as well as an old one.  Yes, I was changed, and with a vengeance; and into such a miserable creature, that had I justly conceived what I was to become in entering Goldfist's body, I doubt whether even the extremity in which I was placed would have forced me upon the transformation."

"The Names of Virtues with their Precepts were...
...
12. Chastity.  Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspring; Never to Dullness, Weakness, or the Injury of your own or another's Peace or Reputation.
13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates."

"That Felicity, when I reflected on it, has induc'd me sometimes to say, that were it offer'd to my Choice, I should have no Objection to a Repetition of the same Life from it's Beginning, only asking the Advantage of Authors have in a second Edition to correct some Faults of the first."

"A slave, by escaping to a free state, acquires certain important rights and privileges. When he reaches our territory, we regard him as a man and not as property."

"Margaret Perd and another said they smelt brimstone; I and others said we did not smell any; then they said they did not know what it was: This Margaret said, she wish'd she had been here when Mr. Mather was here; and another attendant said, if you had been here you might not have been permitted in, for her own mother was not suffered to be present."

"More familiar is Cole's Oxbow (The Connecticut River near Northampton), painted in 1836 and viewed from the top of Mount Holyoke.  Holyoke was one of the first of the mountaintops to be frequented by tourists; a hut to accommodate travelers was erected there as early as 1821.  As in the previous work, Cole organizes the main axis of the composition along a diagonal line of sight starting from the left foreground and culminating in the right middle ground.  Cole again deploys the left foreground in a repoussoir fashion, standing for the wilderness past with its desolate blasted trees, while beyond this darkened zone lies the sun-filled valley of the Connecticut River with its fertile meadow and terraced fields leading 'to one of the most sunny and cheerful villages in Massachusetts.'"

"Inevitably the seeds of destruction are present even at the moment of the empire's triumph.  The returning victor's subjugation of neighbouring states indicates an empire acquired through territorial aggression (in contrast, perhaps, to the expansion of the United States at least in part by treaties and by financial transactions such as the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, but prefiguring the Mexican-American War of the 1840s, which Cole abhorred) and liable to future rebellion."

"The alternatives of summer do not remove
us from this place. The fainting into skies
from a diving board, the express train to
Detroit's damp bars, the excess of affection
on the couch near an open window or a Bauhaus
fire escape, the lazy regions of stars, all
are strangers. Like Mayakovsky read on steps
of cool marble, or Yeats danced in a theatre
of polite music. The classroon day of dozing
and grammar, the partial eclipse of the head
in the row in front of the head of poplars,
sweet Syrinx! last out the summer in a stay
of iron. Workmen loiter before urinals, stare
out windows at girders tightly strapped to clouds.
And in the morning we whimper as we cook
an egg, so far from fluttering sands and azure!"

"Buffalo Bill 's
defunct
           who used to
           ride a watersmooth-silver
                                                 stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
                                                                          Jesus
he was a handsome man
                                     and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death"

"Unfortunately, there were men in the new world, of a sterner faith than these May-Pole worshippers. Not far from Merry Mount was a settlement of Puritans, most dismal wretches, who said their prayers before daylight, and then wrought in the forest or the cornfield, till evening made it prayer time again. Their weapons were always at hand, to shoot down the straggling savage. When they met in conclave, it was never to keep up the old English mirth, but to hear sermons three hours long, or to proclaim bounties on the heads of wolves and the scalps of Indians. Their festivals were fast-days, and their chief pastime the singing of psalms. Woe to the youth or maiden, who did but dream of a dance! The selectman nodded to the constable; and there sat the light-heeled reprobate in the stocks; or if he danced, it was round the whipping-post, which might be termed the Puritan May-Pole."

"Yet the state is nothing artificial, nothing made, that may or may not be adopted. It is necessary, and therefore natural, grown, and indispensable. It is a necessary manifestation of society. If we now call right, that which indicates man's relation to the state, or that which is the necessary consequence of his relations founded on the just, toward others, that which the state is bound to grant him, punishment is the right between society and the offender, or, however paradoxical it may appear at first glance, the right both of the society and the offender. But why is it so? Merely because it is necessary, and farther we cannot go? By no means. In order to prove that punishment be what we have asserted it to be, we have to show first that it be just, secondly that it be necessary. All idea of the just is essentially founded upon equality; without it, as its first foundation, justice cannot be imagined. Every individual in the state must grant to others the right he claims for himself: if he interferes with the rightful state of others, he grants them the abstract right to interfere with his."

"But I shall no longer detain my reader from his expected entertainment in the a brief account of the trials which have passed upon some of the malefactors lately executed at Salem, for the witchcrafts whereof they stood convicted."

"Bjurman hesitated.  he disliked intensely the idea of having to be at the mercy of a stranger.  But it was a necessity.  He reminded himself that he was not alone in having a grudge against Salander.  It was a question of recruiting allies.  In a low voice he explained his business."

"...Mr. Cotton Mather dined with us, and was with me in the new Kitchen when this was; He had just been mentioning that more Minister Houses that others proportionably had been smitten with Lightening; enquiring what the meaning of God should be in it."

"Now here comes the sad part of the story, at least my family says it's sad, but I don't think it's so sad myself."

"Notwithstanding the good offices of the Doctor, and the strenuous exertions of the association to get itself into notice, it met with no very great success until I joined it. The truth is, the members indulged in too flippant a tone of discussion. The papers read every Saturday evening were characterized less by depth than buffoonery. They were all whipped syllabub. There was no investigation of first causes, first principles. There was no investigation of any thing at all. There was no attention paid to that great point, the "fitness of things." In short there was no fine writing like this. It was all low--very! No profundity, no reading, no metaphysics--nothing which the learned call "spirituality," and which the unlearned choose to stigmatize as "cant." (Dr. M. says I ought to spell "cant" with a capital "K"--but I know better.)"

"What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening!  I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days.  I chafed against the work of school.  At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read."

"He can be very agreeable companion, of course, but there times when he shows that particularly beefy arrogant English insensibility...and there is certainly one thing that jars on me—his great eagerness for prizes.  The sloop's discipline is more like that of a starving privateer than a King's ship."

"Very likely more than half the population of the plantation is gathered together. Let it be the evening, and a light-wood fire burns red before the door of the house and on the hearth. For some time one can hear, though at a good distance, the vociferous exhortation or prayer of the presiding elder or of the brother who has a gift that way, and who is not 'on the back seat,'--a phrase, the interpretation of which is, 'under the censure of the church authorities for bad behavior;'--and at regular intervals one bears the elder 'deaconing' a hymn-book hymn, which is sung two lines at a time, and whose wailing cadences, borne on the night air, are indescribably melancholy"

"These are the songs that are still heard upon the Mississippi steamboats--wild and strangely fascinating--one of which we have been so fortunate as to secure for this collection. This, too, is no doubt the music of the colored firemen of Savannah, graphically described by Mr. Kane O'Donnel, in a letter to the Philadelphia Press, and one of which he was able to contribute for our use. Mr. E. S. Philbrick was struck with the resemblance of some of the rowing tunes at Port-Royal to the boatmen's songs he had heard upon the Nile."

Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain.
Who after birth didst by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad, exposed to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call,
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
The visage was so irksome in my sight;
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot still made a flaw.
I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet;
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save homespun cloth i' th' house I find.
In this array 'mongst vulgars may'st thou roam.
In critic's hands beware thou dost not come,
And take thy way where yet thou art not known;
If for thy father asked, say thou hadst none;
And for thy mother, she alas is poor,
Which caused her thus to send thee out of door."

This is His honor, not Dishonor; nay,
     No Habeas-Corpus against His Clients came.
For all their Fines His Purse doth make down pay.
     He Non-Suits Satan's Suit or Casts the Same.
     He'll plead thy Case, and not accept a Fee.
     He'll plead Sub Forma Pauperis for thee.

"The Boston Post made it official: 'The two most popular characters in the world at the present time [1838] are Victoria and Jim Crow.'"

I kenning through Astronomy Divine
     The World's bright Battlement, wherein I spy
A Golden Path my Pencil cannot line,
     From that bright Throne onto my Threshold lie.
     And while mt puzzled thought about it pour,
     I find the bread of Life in't at my door.

"'It is a cant expression we have in the Navy. The swab is this' - patting his epaulette - 'and when we first ship it, we wet it: that is to say, we drink a bottle or two of wine.'"

"Was not Christ crucified. And by signs in the heavens that it would make known to me when I should commence the great work—and until the sign appeared, I should conceal it from the knowledge of men—And in the appearance of the sign, (the eclipse of the sun last February) I should arise and prepare myself, and slay my enemies with their own weapons."

"God is unity, for He is the truth, which is one. The world is many, because it is in error. We should turn away from all the sights of nature, even those which appear the most innocent. Their diversity renders them pleasant, which is a sign that they are evil."

"This was written in much sickness and weakness, and is very weakly and imperfectly done, but if you can pick any benefit out of it, it is the mark which I aimed at."

"By nature trees do rot when they are grown
And plums and apples thoroughly ripe do fall,
And corn and grass are in their season mown,
And time brings down what is both strong and tall.
But plants new set to be eradicate,
And buds new blown to have so short a date,
Is by His hand alone that guides nature and fate."

"Each column knows its destination. Each assistant knows her customers. Justin steals a glance at Lorbeer as one by one each woman gives her name, grabs a bag by the throat, chucks it in the air and settles it delicately on her head. And he sees that Lorbeer's eyes are now filled with tragic disbelief, as if he were the author of the women's plight, not of the their salvation."

"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!"

"Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. The measure of success attained by Wall Street, regarded as an institution of which the proper social purpose is to direct new investment into the most profitable channels in terms of future yield, cannot be claimed as one of the outstanding triumphs of laissez-faire capitalism — which is not surprising, if I am right in thinking that the best brains of Wall Street have been in fact directed towards a different object."

"The pearl fishers dive into the sea at a depth of five fathoms, and do this from sunrise to sunset, and remain for many minutes without breathing, tearing the oysters out of their rocky beds where the pearls are formed. They come to the surface with a netted bag of these oysters where a Spanish torturer is waiting in a canoe or skiff, and if the pearl diver shows signs of wanting to rest, he is showered with blows, his hair is pulled, and he is thrown back into the water, obliged to continue the hard work of tearing out oysters and bringing them again to the surface."

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
   Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
   That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
   Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

     The thin-lipped armorer,
        Hephaestos, hobbled away,
     Thetis of the shining breasts
        Cried out in dismay
     At what the god had wrought
        To please her son, the strong
     Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
        Who would not live long.

"Religious peoples and trading nations entertain peculiarly serious notions of marriage: the former consider the regularity of woman's life as the best pledge and most certain sign of the purity of her morals; the latter regard it as the highest security for the order and prosperity of the household. The Americans are at the same time a puritanical people and a commercial nation: their religious opinions, as well as their trading habits, consequently lead them to require much abnegation on the part of woman, and a constant sacrifice of her pleasures to her duties which is seldom demanded of her in Europe. Thus in the United States the inexorable opinion of the public carefully circumscribes woman within the narrow circle of domestic interests and duties, and forbids her to step beyond it."