J. T. Trowbridge

“ It drew near. It was a female figure, shadowy, noiseless; the right hand raised with piteous entreaty; the countenance pale to whiteness,—its fresh and youthful beauty clothed with sadness and compassion as with a veil.
It was Virginia. All the way through the dismal galleries of the cave, and down Cudjo's stairs, she had followed the executioner and his victim, in order to plead at the last moment for that mercy for which Penn had pleaded in vain.
Struck with amazement, Pomp gazed at her for a moment as if she had been really a spirit. ”

“ The peculiar wild scent of the prairie, which seems to increase as the cool evening comes on, filled all the air. The shadows of the forest were stretching in a vast, uneven belt over summit and hollow; while far away beyond, in seemingly limitless expanse, swept the golden-green undulations of the sunlit hills.
Jack—for I trust we shall also be entitled to call him so—kept his eye out for game, as he drove leisurely along; stopped once or twice for a rabbit on the edge of the woods; and, finally, pulled up sharply, as a prairie-hen shot whirring out, almost from under his wheels. ”

“ A strong current of public feeling was turning in his favor. Such a sacrifice of himself set many to thinking on the subject who never thought before; many who had to acknowledge in their hearts that slavery was wrong and that old John Brown was right. I speak what I know, for I was here at the time. I have lived in Harper’s Ferry fifteen years. I was born and bred in a slave State, but I never let my love of the institution blind me to everything else. Slavery has been the curse of this country, and she is now beginning to bless the day she was delivered from it. ”

“ The fleet had come to anchor in the Roads. The bands were playing, and the troops cheering from deck to deck. The moonlight glittered on the water, and whitened the dim ships riding at anchor, and lay mistily upon the bastions of the great slumbering fortress. At a late hour, Frank, with his eyes full of beauty and his ears full of music, went below, crept into his berth, and thought of home, and of the great world he was beginning to see, until he fell asleep. ”

“ All, who are not masters, are, or ought to be, slaves: black or white, it makes no difference; and the slave has no rights. This is the first principle of human slavery. This every slave society tends directly to develop. It may be kept carefully out of sight, but there it lurks, in the hardened hearts of men, like water within rocks. It is forever gushing up in little springs of despotism. Once it burst forth in a vast convulsive flood, and that was the Rebellion.
Although Lysander had never owned a slave, he had all his life breathed the atmosphere of the institution, and imbibed its spirit. ”

“ To have the faintest idea of the emotions that agitated the squire at sight of Jack and the shoes full of coin,—the wrath, the surprise, the avarice,—one must have seen him as he stood there, or have heard Jack (as I have heard him many times) describe the grim and frowning figure that met his eyes.
“What’s this, what’s this, eh?” cried Peternot, taking a stride forwards. “Money! on my land!” and the gray eyes glittered. “Ha! ha! This, then, is the meaning of all that talk about treasure-trove the other day!” ”

“ It is but a little time, at the longest, that the immortal soul thou art will animate this bone; but the hour comes quickly when to have been a good soldier of the truth on any field, whether resounding with arms, or silent with the calm strong struggle of love and patience, and to have given thy life to the cause, will be sweeter to thee than the fatness of the earth and length of days. ”

“ Link exclaimed, growing excited. "It looks like an elephant's trunk! By sixty, it's growing!"
"It's moving this way," said Jack. "Fast, too! and roaring,—hear it? There's an awful storm coming!"
"Oh!" cried Link, "see the lightning-forks! It will be here in a jiffy."
The "elephant's trunk," which had seemed to be feeling its way up the valley, now swung toward the line of timber; the roar which accompanied it became deafening; and suddenly the cloud, and all the air about it, seemed filled with whirling and flying objects, like the broken boughs and limbs of trees. ”

“ Hepsy got ready, and returned with Mr. Royden in the afternoon. Father Brighthopes preached, and his sermon was just such a one as the poor girl needed, to cheer her hopeless, doubting heart. In listening to it, she quite forgot how many eyes regarded her deformed figure and plain face with scorn and dislike; she remembered not the pangs which had shot through and through her sensitive heart, when Chester told her of his intended marriage; the world faded, with its selfishness, pride and envy, and heaven opened, with its angels of peace and love. ”

“ Now it is the quickening of the spirit at the sight of God's beautiful universe—a rapture of love awakened by a morning in spring, by the blue infinity of the sky, by the eternal loneliness and sublimity of the sea. Or, in some moment of susceptibility, the smiles of dear home faces, the tender trill of a voice, a surge of solemn music, may have power over the young heart to change its entire future. ”

“ Penn was alone, in that subterranean solitude. There burned the fire, the shadows flickered, the smoke floated away into the depths of the dark cavern, in such loneliness and silence as he had never experienced before. He would have thought himself in some grotto of the gnomes, or some awful cell of enchantment, whose supernatural fire never went out, and whose smoke rolled away into darkness the same perpetually,—but for the sound of the crackling flames, and the sight of piles of wood on the floor, so strongly suggestive of human agency. ”

“ What a portico for a statesman to walk under,—so lofty, so spacious, and affording such views of the river and its shores, and the sky over all! Once more I saw the venerable figure of him, the first in war and the first in peace, pacing to and fro on those pavements of flat stone, solitary, rapt in thought, glancing ever and anon up the Potomac towards the site of the now great capital bearing his name, contemplating the revolution accomplished, and dreaming of his country’s future. ”

“ I have seen more pure and perfect happiness, nestled in poverty, in a laborer's cottage, than I ever met with in the houses of the rich."
"Then the fault lies with me," said Mr. Royden, thoughtfully, "whenever my home appears less agreeable and attractive than it might, I suppose."
"In a great measure, the fault is yours, undoubtedly. Do you not think that an established habit of preserving a serene temper, in the midst of the most trying scenes, would produce blessed results?"
"But the power is not in me."
"It is in every man," said Father Brighthopes. "Only exercise it." ”