With dizzy steps, I led him in to Mary. God! 'Twas true! Then the bitterest pangs of misery, unspeakable, I knew. 10. Frozen with deadly horror, she stared with eyes of stone, And from her quivering lips there broke one wild, de spairing moan. 'Twas he! the husband of her youth, now risen from the dead, But all too late; and, with bitter cry, her senses fled. 11. What could be done? He was reported dead. On his return He strove in vain some tidings of his absent wife to learn. 'Twas well that he was innocent! Else I'd have killed him, too, So dead he never would have riz till Gabriel's trumpet blew! 12. It was agreed that Mary then between us should decide, And each by her decision would sacredly abide. No sinner, at the judgment-seat, waiting eternal doom, room. 13. Rigid and breathless, there we stood, with nerves as tense as steel, While Mary's eyes sought each white face, in piteous ap peal. God! could not woman's duty be less hardly reconciled 14. Ah, how my heart was chilled to ice, when she knelt down and said, "Forgive me, John! He is my husband! Here! Alive! not dead!" I raised her tenderly, and tried to tell her she was right, But somehow, in my aching breast, the prisoned words stuck tight! 15. "But, John, I can't leave baby."-"What! wife and child!" cried I; “Must I yield all! Ah, cruel fate! Better that I should die. Think of the long, sad, lonely hours, waiting in gloom for No wife to cheer me with her love,—no babe to climb my knee! 16. And yet you are her mother, and the sacred mother-love Is still the purest, tenderest tie that Heaven ever wove. Take her; but promise, Mary, -for that will bring no shame,― My little girl shall bear, and learn to lisp, her father's name!" 17. It may be, in the life to come, I'll meet my child and wife; But yonder, by my cottage gate, we parted for this life; One long hand-clasp from Mary, and my dream of love was done! One long embrace from baby, and my happiness was gone! Toussaint L'Ouverture. WENDELL PHILLIPS. If I were to tell you the story of Napoleon, I should take it from the lips of Frenchmen, who find no language rich enough to paint the great captain of the nineteenth century. Were I to tell you the story of Washington, I should take it from your hearts-you who think no marble white enough on which to carve the name of the father of his country. But I am to tell you the story of a Negro, Toussaint L'Ouverture, who has left hardly one written line. I am to glean it from the reluctant testimony of his enemies, men who despised him because he was a Negro and a slave, hated him because he had beaten them in battle. Cromwell manufactured his own army. Napoleon, at the age of twenty-seven, was placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever saw. Cromwell never saw an army till he was forty; this man never saw a soldier till he was fifty. Cromwell manufactured his own army-out of what? Englishmen -the best blood in Europe. Out of the middle class of Englishmen the best blood of the island. And with it he conquered what? Englishmen their equals. This man manufactured his army out of what? Out of what you call the despicable race of Negroes, debased, demoralized by two hundred years of slavery, one hundred thousand of them imported into the island within four years, unable to speak a dialect intelligible even to each other. Yet out of this mixed, and, as you say, despicable mass he forged a thunder-bolt and hurled it at what? At the proudest blood in Europe, the Spaniard, and sent him home conquered; at the most warlike blood in Europe, the French, and put them under his feet; at the pluckiest blood in Europe, the English, and they skulked home to Jamaica. Now, if Cromwell was a general, at least this man was a soldier. Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go back with me to the commencement of the century, and select what statesman you please. Let him be either American or European ; let him have a brain the result of six generations of culture; let him have the ripest training of university routine; let him add to it the better education of practical life; crown his temple with the silver locks of seventy years, and show me the man of Saxon lineage for whom his most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel rich as embittered foes have placed on the brow of this Negro-rare military skill, profound knowledge of human nature, content to blot out all party distinctions, and trust a State to the blood of its sons-anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, and taking his station by the side of Roger Williams before any Englishman or American had won the right; and yet this is the record which the history of rival States makes up for this inspired black of St. Domingo. Some doubt the courage of the Negro. Go to Hayti, and stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had, and ask them what they think of the Negro's sword. I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of blood. This man never broke his word. I would call him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the State he founded went down with him into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great Virginian held slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the slave-trade in the humblest village of his dominions. You think me a fanatic, for you read history, not with your eyes but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of history will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. The Merchant of Venice. Scene i. Act iii. SHAKESPEARE. Sol. How now, Shylock; what news among the merchants? Shy. You knew, none so well, none so well as you, of my daughter's flight. Sol. That's certain; I, for my part, knew the tailor that made the wings she flew withal. Sala. And Shylock, for his own part, knew the bird was fledged; and then it is the complexion of them all to leave the dam. Shy. She is damned for it. Sol. That's certain, if the devil may be her judge. Shy. My own flesh and blood to rebel! Sala. But tell us, do you hear whether Antonio have had any loss at sea or no? Let Shy. There I have made another bad match: a bankrupt, a prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the Rialto; a beggar, that was used to come so smug upon the mart. him look to his bond: he was wont to call me usurer;-let him look to his bond: he was wont to lend money for a Christian courtesy-let him look to his bond. Sol. Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh; what's that good for? Shy. To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same discases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is ? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? if we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. Sala. Here comes another of the tribe; a third cannot be matched, unless the devil himself turn Jew. Shy. How now, Tubal, what news from Genoa? hast thou found my daughter? Tub. I often came where I did hear of her, but cannot find her. Shy. Why, there, there, there, there! a diamond gone, cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfort! The curse never fell upon our nation till now; I never felt it till now:-two thousand ducats in that; and other precious, precious jewels.-I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear! would she was hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin! No news of them ?-Why, so:-and I know not what's spent in the search. Why, thou loss upon loss! the thief gone with so much, and so much to find the thief; and no satisfaction, no revenge; nor no ill luck stirring but what lights o' my shoulders; no sighs but o' my breathing; no tears but o' my shedding. Tub. Yes, other men have ill luck too; Antonio, as I heard in Genoa,― Shy, What, what, what? ill luck, ill luck, ill luck ? |