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abolitionists admirable afterwards Alcott American AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT anti-slavery appeared Boston brother called Cambridge career Charles Sumner Child criticism daughter death early Emerson England English entomology fact fame Faneuil Hall father favorite friends Garrison gave Grant habit Harper's Ferry Harris Harvard insects instance intellectual John Brown John Holmes John Holmes's knew labor Lanier later lectures less letter literary literature live look Lowell meeting ment military mind moral mother natural history never North Elba once orator perhaps period poems poet poetic poetry published RALPH WALDO EMERSON reform remember seemed simple slavery slaves Society sometimes soon speech spirit Stephen Foster Sumner Theodore Parker thing thought tion took verse volume Wendell Phillips Whitman whole wife William Lloyd Garrison woman words write wrote young
Popular passages
Page 193 - You'd scarce expect one of my age, To speak in public on the stage ; And if I chance to fall below Demosthenes or Cicero, Don't view me with a critic's eye, But pass my imperfections by. Large streams from little fountains flow; Tall oaks from little acorns grow...
Page 10 - The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?
Page 79 - ONE'S-SELF I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. Of physiology from top to toe I sing, Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far, The Female equally with the Male I sing. Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power, Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine, The...
Page 224 - ... amenable to the pains and penalties of the Fugitive Slave Act, for BLACK MEN HAVE NO RIGHTS WHICH WHITE MEN ARE BOUND TO RESPECT.
Page 310 - I SAID, I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not with my tongue.
Page 230 - she had always prayed that her husband might be killed in fight rather than fall alive into the hands of slaveholders ; but she could not regret it now, in view of the noble words of freedom which it had been his privilege to utter.
Page 265 - The keynote to the oratory of Wendell Phillips lay in this: that it was essentially conversational — the conversational raised to its highest power. Perhaps no orator ever spoke with so little apparent effort, or began so entirely on the plane of his average hearers. It was as if he simply repeated, in a little louder tone, what he had just been WENDELL PHILLIPS saying to some familiar friend at his elbow. The effect was absolutely disarming.
Page 122 - I am fully aware of the unpopularity of the task I have undertaken ; but though I expect ridicule and censure, I do not fear them. A few years hence, the opinion of the world will be a matter in which I have not even the most transient interest ; but this book will be abroad on its mission of humanity long after the hand that wrote it is mingling with the dust. Should it be the means of advancing, even one single hour, the inevitable progress of truth and justice, I would not exchange the consciousness...
Page 129 - There comes Philothea, her face all aglow, She has just been dividing some poor creature's woe, And can't tell which pleases her most, to relieve His want, or his story to hear and believe ; No doubt against many deep griefs she prevails, For her ear is the refuge of destitute tales ; She knows well that silence is sorrow's best food, And that talking draws off from the heart its black blood...
Page 324 - ... when it reached North Carolina. Johnston's army was demoralized by constant defeat and would hardly have made an offensive movement, even if they could have been induced to remain on duty. The men of both Lee's and Johnston's armies were, like their brethren of the North, as brave as men can be ; but no man is so brave that he may not meet such defeats and disasters as to discourage him and dampen his ardor for any cause, no matter how just he deems it.