He, too, was but one of that innumerable multitude who, in
more exalted or in humbler stations, freely gave their exertions, their
wealth, their comfort, and their lives for freedom and right. It is
possible so to linger by the grave of the past as to forget the living
present; but the grateful memory of those who have in their times
contended for truth with self-denial should be ever animating to those
now laboring in the holy warfare, to which, in every age, whether the
outward signs be of peace or strife, God calls the noble of mankind.
"Therefore bring violets! Yet, if we,
self-balked,
Stand still a-strewing violets all the while,
These had as well not moved, ourselves not
talked
Of these."
* * * * *
IN THE PINES.
If I were a crow, or, at least, had the faculty of flying with that
swift directness which is proverbially attributed to the corvine tribe,
and were to wing a southwesterly course from the truck of the flag-staff
which rises from the Battery at New York, I should find myself, within a
very short time, about fifty miles from the turbulent city, and hovering
over a region of country as little like the civilized emporium just
quitted as it is well possible to conceive.
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