I thought I would crawl slyly up to him, and
spring suddenly on him, and frighten him. I did so, but Jim was not
asleep at all, but lifted up his head with such a look of unutterable
woe that I was frightened myself, and said: 'Why, Jim, what is the
matter?' Jim cried out: 'O, my boys! my boys! Massa sold my boys!'"
Bro. Kirkham said: "_I_ have vowed everlasting enmity to an institution
that will legalize such treatment of a human being."
But while these ominous mutterings were heard in so many of the Kansas
squatter cabins, little did the high and mighty Atchison Town Company,
or the editorial staff of the _Squatter Sovereign_, or the puissant
Territorial Legislature, reck that so soon they must take up the sad
refrain of Cardinal Woolsey:
Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: To-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And--when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening--nips his root;
And then he falls, as I do.
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