HE (taking her hand and dropping it). 'No use. It doesn't bite. SHE. I thought it wouldn't, and now I know. All things are finished, there is no more fire, no more life, only the pretending, and the pain, that is all. This is part of the punishment. God help us both. HE. He can't. But I hoped somehow that we might pick up some pieces sometime. SHE. We could, if you could tell me one oath that I have not heard from his lips, or I could give you one promise that you had not heard from hers. And yet you were prepared to risk it? HE. I am still-because you understand. SHE. I think I understand too well. But you shall enlighten me. Suppose, for a minute, that you really love me. HE. I have supposed that for some minutes already. SHE. Then say it in a loud and cheerful voice. Can you ? HE. Yes. I love you. SHE (quietly). Do you know anything of the state of Mickey's hocks? (aside.) I know if you put your hand behind the cantle he rears on end. HE. Damn Mickey's hocks ! SHE. No, something quite different. (puts hand behind cantle-Mickey_rears.) Now recant quickly. Swear by the holiest thing you know-swear by her lifeup, Mickey-that you'd let me and this dear beast-doesn't he stand up beautifully and snort?-drown or die, if you could get her back for half a minute. Quick! recant, or I'll pull Mickey over backward. HE (wearily). Let him down. You needn't have thrown in the circus. It's true. SHE. By Her life, is it true? SHE (as Mickey drops on his forelegs). Then you are— HE. I am what I am. For pity's sake, let me be. Let's go back. (Oulthorp and Miss Massing trot past in the fog.) SHE. Very good. Keep behind these two and contemplate the rewards of virtue. We'll go slowly in order that we may appreciate the things we have lost. HE. Indeed we won't. We're going to ride as fast as we can. SHE. You have no spur? HE. He'll answer to the whip, and you can rowel enough for both. Take him up and we'll go. (They go.) SHE. We mustn't turn into the Deeleys' grounds at this rate. Pull up, and I promise not to say another word till we get in. HE. On your honor? SHE. You swear by strange gods—yes, if it will please you. (She keeps the promise till they are coming up the carriage-drive.) SHE. Oh, the girls have been singing all the afternoon. I wish I'd stayed in to assist. Listen! (They rein up by the shrubbery.) (Contralto VOICE from the music-room; piano and violin accompaniment.) "I am lost to faith, I am lost to hope, I am lost to all that should make me fainI have lost my way in the light of day, God send that I find it soon again!" HE (taking her hand). Then there is one chance after all? SHE. No; (aside) you threw it away by the fire. (aloud.) Listen for the next verse. I know the song. It's a new setting. VOICE: "The sun went down an hour ago, SHE (dropping from her horse). Think! And-go on thinking.-Fortnightly Review. A MORAL CRUSADER.* BY GOLDWIN SMITH. WE have not yet quite done with slavery, much less have we done with the leg * William Lloyd Garrison: [1805-1879] the Story of his Life told by his Children. Vols. III. and IV. [1841-1879]. New York. acies of slavery. The life of the great anti-slavery leader therefore has still a practical interest. But Garrison's life has an interest apart from the particular movement. The history of moral crusades hardly presents a higher example of brave, single-hearted, unambitious and self-sacrificing devotion to a cause. He had as much as he could do, he said, to save men from the slavery of intemperance without attempting the overthrow of any other kind of slavery. When reminded of the Irish address, he spoke as if the act had passed from his memory, and when forced to recall it could only say that it subjected him to a good deal of odium. Not a syllable fell from his lips expressive of sympathy with American effort on behalf of the negro or of joy at the emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies. It is with great sorrow of heart," says Garrison in giving an account of the interview, "that I lay these facts before America, Ireland and the world." About the year 1841, with which the last two volumes open, national morality on the subject of slavery was about at its nadir. This was marked by the apostasy of Webster, the greatest and meanest of Americans, as Garrison bitterly called him, though by nature he was not mean, and fell from grace only when exposed to the fatal temptations of the presidency. Not society only but the churches had succumbed to the monster. Boston, which flatters itself that it is the centre of morality as well as of intelligence, had shared the general lot. If you raised your voice Kossuth was another disappointment. against the "institution" there, you were From him, the great champion of liberty, assaulted and put in danger of your life by the Abolitionists expected thrilling eloa most respectable mob. Slavery had left quence in favor of the liberation of the far behind the period when it was content slave. But his first words on landing at to exist as tolerated evil, which only begged New York showed that he meant to be for a short respite that it might quiet neutral or worse. "I take it," he said, ly take itself away. By the life of Cal-"to be the duty of honor and principle houn it had declared itself a positively beneficial institution, and the best relation that could exist between the white race and the negro. It was not far from declaring itself the best relation that could exist between capital and labor in general. It aspired to indefinite extension, annexed Texas, and trampled morality under its victorious feet by dragging the country into the Mexican War. So mephitic was the atmosphere, now and for some time afterward, that it even quenched the light of great foreign luminaries of philanthropy and liberty when they were let down into it. Father Mathew, the apostle of temperance, visited the United States in 1849. He had signed in Ireland, in company with Daniel O'Connell and sixty thousand other Irishinen, an address from the people in Ireland to their countrymen and country women in America declaring that slavery was a sin against God and man, and adjuring the American Irish by all the honor of Ireland and their fealty to freedom to treat the colored people as their equals and as brethren, to hate slavery and to cleave to Abolition. Naturally the Abolitionists hailed the advent of Father Mathew. Mr. Garrison waited on him with an invitation to participate in that glorious event-the abolition of slavery in British West India. But it soon appeared that the object of the visit was far from agreeable to Father Mathew. 66 not to meddle with any party question of and equivocal. The strong part of the Hungarian cause was the protest against Russian intervention, and the moment for pressing this in the United States was not a very happy one, since it was the morrow of the Mexican War especially was zealous in the support of the war. The Anglican Church showed its superior consistency, if not its superior Christianity, by remaining generally Cop Pt, in fact, became a religious Another case of backsliding was that of the Free Church of Scotland, which after its secession had taken measures for an Ecumenical Council, including a contingent from the slave-owning States. This called down Garrison's anathema in t the shape of a vote of thanks, passed on his motion by the Massachusetts' Anti-Slavery Society: "To our untiring coadjutor, Henry C. Wright, for the fidelity with C.TW which he has unmasked the vaunted Free Church of Scotland for conniving at the great iniquity of American Slavery by soficiting and receiving its pecuniary assistance and religious co operation." In re sponse to the resolution the Scotch emancipationists raised a loud cry of "Send the money back." The Free Kirk was ultraBiblical and probably took a Mosaic view of the destiny of the children of Ham. Stonewall Jackson, not less devout in his Calvinistic way than he was brave, is understood to have been impelled teation by that conviction. Send us, " cries Garrison to his English friends, "no more Baptist clerical delegates or Methodists or Presbyterian or Quaker delegates; they have all played into the hands of slavery against the Abolitionists. From Dr. C. down to the last delegation they have all done evil work and strengthened slavery against us. Like the Priest and the Levite, they have passed us by and gone on the other side. They found the cause of Abolitionism unpopular. The mass of society were pro-slavery, so they went with them and we have gone to the wall." was та The American Churches by their conduct during these years brought, we fear, a stain on Christianity. They ought to remember this when they cast a stone at an Established Church. If a Church is under political and social influence, and allows itself to be seduced by it from her allegiance to Gospel morality, it signifies little whether the influence takes the form of a royal supremacy or that of the pressure to which the conscience of the American Churches succumbed. When the rupture with slavery came, the Protestant Churches generally wheeled over to the anti-slavery side the Methodist Church asylum of Copperheads, one of whom is 13 As a matter of course the Churches charged Garrison with infidelity, and not only with infidelity "but with blasphe mous atheism. Some of of his associates, undoubtedly, were decided freethinkers. His opinions, as the battle went on, evidently became, to say the least, less orthodox; though he certainly remained a firm believer not only in God but in Christ, as the pattern of character and as having spoken the words of eternal life, whatever he night think about the creeds. He asserted the right of free inquiry, saying with evident justice that the more divine the Bible was the better it would bear examination. To him the slave law of the Pentateuch must have been a great stumbling block, and he does not appear to have known how to answer Bishop Hughes, when that prelate proved from the Old Testament that slavery was a divine ordinance, any be better, than Voltaire knew how to answer the defenders of Genesis who pointed to fossil shells as proofs of the deluge. He probably was little versed in history, certainly in the philosophy of history, and therefore could not see that slavery as a primeval institution might have been consistent with morality in its day, while its revival in a civilized age was a hideous anachronism. Like many other sceptics who try to make up in another way for what they have lost, Garrison was fascinated by spiritualism. 13 At a meeting at New York there was this lively scene. Mr. Garrison said: "Shall we look to the Episcopal Church for hope? It was the boast of John C. Calhoun, shortly before his death, that that Church was impregnable to anti-slavery. That vaunt was founded on truth, for the episcopal clergy and laity are buyers and sellers of human flesh. We cannot therefore look to them. Shall we look to the Presbyterian Church? The whole 2 weight of it is on the side of oppression. Ministers and people buy and sell slaves, apparently without any compunctious visitings of conscience. We cannot therefore look to them, nor to the Baptists, nor to the Methodists; for they, too, are against the slave; and all the sects are combined to prevent that jubilee which it is the will of God should come. Be not startled when I say that a belief in Jesus is no evidence of goodness (hisses); no, friends "stumgeoz dos VOICE. "Yes, it is." God MR GARRISON. "Our friend says yes; my position is 'no." It is worth less as a test, for the reason I have already assigned in that the slaves in the South MR. GARRISON. "Not a slave-holding or a slave-breeding Jesus. (Sensation.) The slaves believe in a Jesus that strikes off chains. In this country Jesus has become obsolete. A profession in Him is no longer a test. W Who objects to His course in Judea? The old Pharisees are extinct, and may safely be denounced. Jesus is the most respectable person in the United States. (Great sensation and murmurs of disapprobation.) Jesus sits in the President's 's chair in the United States. (A thrill of horror here seemed to run through the assembly.) Zachary Taylor sits there, which is is the same thing, for he believes in Jesus. He believes in war, and the Jesus that gave the Mexicans hell." (Uproar and confusion.)" bas All this time The Liberator continued to appear though it barely paid its way, and Garrison continued to go his mission ary rounds. He was travelling with Frederick Douglas (a half-breed, it will be remembered, and a man of education and distinction) in Pennsylvania when Douglas, having humbly taken his seat in the niggers's" carriage, was ordered by a white passenger to give up his seat, and having declined to do so unless he were asked in a civil manner was summarily dragged out. Douglas was not allowed to sit down at the eating-table, and for two days was almost without food. So far was the moral poison of slavery from being confined to the South. Garrison's biographers say of him, with general justice, that there was nothing Utopian or extravagant in his views of life, that he sympathized with every honest effort for the improvement of mankind, could make allowance for aberration, and while his movement, like other fervid movements, unavoidably drew to itself the insane, the unbalanced, and the blindly enthusiastic, he himself remained calm and steadfast. He happily steered clear of the sinister prophet of Perfectionism, Mr. Noyes, and his religious community. On the other hand, he took up with some movements which to the unenthusiastic might seem doubtful, such as Prohibition ism, which he extended to tobacco, and Woman's Rights, into which he was drawn after some hesitation, probably by the sympathy which women showed for his own movement. He thought it right, as he said himself, to be anti-devil all round, or as the scoffers said, a monomaniac on every subject." The most equivocal association into which he lapsed was Irish repeal. Evidently he had not studied the question, but, following too closely for an apostle the example of the politicians, called himself a Repealer in expectation of attracting the support of the Irish, for which he had some reason to hope after the highly praiseworthy utterances of O'Connell. He was utterly disappointed. O'Connell's anti slavery address, with its sixty thousand signatures, was received by the Irish Press with sneers and denuncia. tions. The Roman Catholic bishop, Hughes, of New York, impugned its genuineness and called upon all naturalized Irishmen to resist and repudiate it as emanating from a foreign source. The naturalized Irishmen responded to the bishop's call with a vengeance. "The instinct of this, the lowest class of the white population of the North," the biographers remark, taught it that to acknowledge the brotherhood of the negro was to take away the sole social superiority that remained to it,' " to say nothing of the forfeiture of the political power and plunder which it enjoyed through its alliance with the Democratic Party. The Irish rabble of Philadelphia made their reply by murderous rioting directed in the first instance against a peaceable First of August procession, and ending with the burning of a beneficial hall built for moral purposes by one of the more prosperous of the persecuted race-a foretaste this of the anti-draft riot, which in the third year of the war filled New York with blood and havoc and which the Americans repressed by a short and sharp Coercion Act, shooting down in a few hours a great many more Irish than have suffered under British Coercion Acts for political or agrarian crimes since the Union. In 1850 a memorable ally appeared upon the scene. Mrs. Stowe brought out in a collected form Uncle Tom's Cabin, which had previously been published by instalments in the Washington National Era. Garrison gave it a rapturous notice in The Liberator. It does not seem, however, that the book produced any very strong demonstration against the Fugitive Slave law, which was then the burning issue, or that it materially strengthened the steady work of the Abolitionists. The Fugitive Slave law remained repealed till Secession. Wendell Phillips speaks of the effect as a passing spasm. Perhaps there is a moral in this. It may be that we overrate altogether the effect produced by controversial or propagandist novels. People feel that what they have been reading belongs to the domain of fiction; and when they get into the domain of reality think of it little more. It is certain that in England the book was eagerly read, praised, and perhaps wept over by numbers of people who, when the day of action came, passed to the other side. The apparent hopelessness of the political outlook, combined, as we may suppose, with the workings of Garrison's own mind, led him to take up what seems a pretty desperate position. He declared for the repeal of the Union. At a meeting in Faneuil Hall he passed a resolution to the effect that the union of liberty and slavery was as impossible as the amalgamation of fire and gunpowder; that the American union was a hollow mockery instead of a glorious reality; and that the time was rapidly approaching when it would be dissolved in form as it was in fact. "" No union with slave-owners!" henceforth became his cry. His followers, when they celebrated West Indian Emancipation, bore as the tokens of the new crusade banners inscribed with disunion sentiments. Violently denounced and warming under the denunciations, he proceeded to anathematize the Constitution and to declare it "A covenant with death and an agreement with hell." He derided as sophisms all attempts to show that it did not countenance slavery, because it avoided the name slave, pointing to the facts that it gave the South proportional representation for its slaves, that it legalized the slave trade for twenty years, and that it embraced the Fugitive Slave law. "The framers," he said with considerable truth, "" were intent on securing liberty to themselves without being very scrupulous as to the means. They were not actuated by the spirit of universal philanthropy, though in words they recognized the brotherhood of the race but in practice they denied it. They enslaved their fellow-men and sold |