with it, which minister to it, are worth less. Suppose you have a
small library, with pictures to adorn the walls- a garden laid out
around- and contemplate scientific and literary pursuits and
discover all at once that your villa, with all its contents is located
in hell, and that the justice of the peace has a cloven foot and a
forked tail- do not these things suddenly lose their value in your
eyes?

  I feel that, to some extent, the State has fatally interfered with
my lawful business. It has not only interrupted me in my passage
through Court Street on errands of trade, but it has interrupted me
and every man on his onward and upward path, on which he had trusted
soon to leave Court Street far behind. What right had it to remind
me of Court Street? I have found that hollow which even I had relied
on for solid.

  I am surprised to see men going about their business as if nothing
had happened. I say to myself, "Unfortunates! they have not heard
the news." I am surprised that the man whom I just met on horseback
should be so earnest to overtake his newly bought cows running away-
since all property is insecure, and if they do not run away again,
they may be taken away from him when he gets them. Fool! does he not
know that his seed-corn is worth less this year- that all beneficent
harvests fail as you approach the empire of hell? No prudent man
will build a stone house under these circumstances, or engage in any
peaceful enterprise which it requires a long time to accomplish. Art
is as long as ever, but life is more interrupted and less available
for a man's proper pursuits. It is not an era of repose. We have
used up all our inherited freedom. If we would save our lives, we must
fight for them.

  I walk toward one of our ponds; but what signifies the beauty of
nature when men are base? We walk to lakes to see our serenity
reflected in them; when we are not serene, we go not to them. Who
can be serene in a country where both the rulers and the ruled are
without principle? The remembrance of my country spoils my walk. My
thoughts are murder to the State, and involuntarily go plotting
against her.

  But it chanced the other day that I scented a white water-lily,
and a season I had waited for had arrived. It is the emblem of purity.
It bursts up so pure and fair to the eye, and so sweet to the scent,
as if to show us what purity and sweetness reside in, and can be
extracted from, the slime and muck of earth. I think I have plucked
the first one that has opened for a mile. What confirmation of our
hopes is in the fragrance of this flower! I shall not so soon
despair of the world for it, notwithstanding slavery, and the
cowardice and want of principle of Northern men. It suggests what kind
of laws have prevailed longest and widest, and still prevail, and that
the time may come when man's deeds will smell as sweet. Such is the
odor which the plant emits. If Nature can compound this fragrance
still annually, I shall believe her still young and full of vigor, her
integrity and genius unimpaired, and that there is virtue even in man,
too, who is fitted to perceive and love it. It reminds me that
Nature has been partner to no Missouri Compromise. I scent no
compromise in the fragrance of the water-lily. It is not a Nymphaea
Douglasii. In it, the sweet, and pure, and innocent are wholly
sundered from the obscene and baleful. I do not scent in this the
time-serving irresolution of a Massachusetts Governor, nor of a Boston
Mayor. So behave that the odor of your actions may enhance the general
sweetness of the atmosphere, that when we behold or scent a flower, we
may not be reminded how inconsistent your deeds are with it; for all
odor is but one form of advertisement of a moral quality, and if
fair actions had not been performed, the lily would not smell sweet.
The foul slime stands for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of
humanity; the fragrant flower that springs from it, for the purity and
courage which are immortal.

  Slavery and servility have produced no sweet-scented flower
annually, to charm the senses of men, for they have no real life: they
are merely a decaying and a death, offensive to all healthy
nostrils. We do not complain that they live, but that they do not
get buried. Let the living bury them: even they are good for manure.

                                    THE END
.