Henry A. Murray

“ You close your eyes, the better to realize the dream which fancy is painting. When they open upon the reality again, the illusion is dispelled by the sight of a brawny negro, with a grin on his face which threatens to split his ears, jogging merrily along the street with a huge piece of sturgeon for his Sunday feast. My friends, however, left me little time to indulge in a contemplative mood, for good old Madeira, a hearty welcome, and a stroll about and around the place, filled up the day; while the fragrant weed and the social circle occupied no small portion of the evening. ”

“ We could not suffer ourselves to be deceived by the Filibustero Press, nor by the accounts we read of vessels laden with arms carrying them to Russia. Those were no more proofs of the national feeling, than the building of slave-clippers every year at Baltimore is a proof that the nation wishes to encourage the slave-trade. The true feeling of a nation must be sought for far deeper than in the superficial clamour of political demagogues, backed though it be by the applause of gaping crowds whose worst passions are pandered to for the sake of a transient breath of popularity. ”

“ Spitting on ordinary occasions may be regarded by a portion of my countrymen as a luxury: it becomes a duty in the presence of an Englishman. Let us spit around him—above him—beneath him—everywhere but on him, that he may become perfectly familiar with the habit in all its phases. I would make it the first law of hospitality to an Englishman, that every tobacco-twist should be called into requisition, and every spittoon be flooded, in order thoroughly to initiate him into the mysteries of chewing. Leave no room for imagination to work. ”

“ We now summon all our energies, determined that defeat shall but nerve us to greater exertion. We go lower down, so as to obtain greater initial velocity; the fires are made to glow one spotless mass of living heat. Again the charge is sounded: on we rush, our little boat throbbing from stem to stern; again the angry waters roar defiance—again the deadly struggle—again for a moment we tremble in the balance of victory. Suddenly a universal shout of triumph is heard, and as the joyous cheers die in echoes through the forest, we are breasting the smoother waters of the Ottawa above the rapids. ”

“ The next proposal I have to make is one which I cannot but hope that all Americans will fell the propriety of, inasmuch as the present system is, in my estimation, one of the blackest features of the institution we are considering. I allude to the slavery of Americans themselves. In nearly every civilized nation in the world, blood is considered to run in the father's line, and although illegitimacy forfeits inheritance, it never forfeits citizenship. How is it in the United States? There the white man's offspring is to be seen in fetters—the blood of the free in the market of the slave. ”

“ Scarce was my half-smashed box landed at the hotel, when my young American friend, who came from England with our party, appeared to welcome me—perhaps to atone for the lion's share of champagne he had enjoyed at our table on board the steamer. Then he introduced me to another, and another introduced me to another another, and another another introduced me to another another another, and so on, till I began to feel I must know the élite of Boston. Club-doors flew open, champagne-corks flew out, cicerones, pedal and vehicular, were ever ready to guide me by day and feed me by night ”

“ When slaves are brought here by our cruisers, Spain is bound by treaty to apprentice them out for three years, so as to teach them how to earn a living, and then to free them. My dear John Bull, you will be sorry to hear, that despite the activity of our squadron for the suppression of slavery, that faithless country which owes a national existence to oceans of British treasure, and the blood of the finest army the great Wellington ever led, has the unparalleled audacity to make us slave carriers to Cuba. ”

“ These were the sturdy champions of liberty of conscience, from whom the New Englanders may be said to have sprung, and who have leavened the whole community with their energy and indomitable spirit: such men knew how to appreciate education, as the leveller of oppression and the bulwark of freedom; and it is, therefore, no wonder that the American Republic recognises them as the worthy pioneers of that noble feature in their institutions—free education, supplied to all by the State. ”

“ I felt as if I could have lingered on and on in this charming spot, and amid such warm hospitality, an indefinite period; it was indeed with sincere regret I was obliged to bid adieu to my agreeable hosts, and once more embark on board the steamer.
The river James lacks entirely those features that give grandeur to scenery; the river, it is true, by its tortuous windings, every now and then presents a broad sheet of water; the banks are also prettily wooded; but there is a great sameness, and a total absence of that mountain scenery so indispensable to grandeur. ”

“ With the imagination thus forcibly filled with home and its associations, you involuntarily feel disposed to take a stroll on the lawn; but on reaching the door, your ears are assailed by wild shouts of infantine laughter, and, raising your eyes, you behold a dozen little black imps skylarking about in every direction, their fat faces, bright eyes, and sunny smiles beaming forth joyousness and health. Home and its varying visions fly at the sight, giving place to the reality that you are on a slave plantation. ”

“ Reader, I have now done with the question of the gradual improvement and ultimate emancipation of the slave. The public institutions of any country are legitimate subjects of comment for the traveller, and in proportion as his own countrymen feel an interest in them, so is it natural he should comment on them at greater or less length. I have, therefore, dwelt at large upon this subject, from the conviction that it is one in which the deepest interest is felt at home; and I trust that I have so treated it as to give no just cause of offence to any one, whether English or American. ”

“ No beast is seen in the forest, no bird in the air, except from time to time a flight of water-fowl. At times the eye is gratified by a convocation of wild swans, geese, and ducks, assembled in conclave upon the edge of some bank; or, if perchance at sunrise or sunset you happen to come to some broad bend of the river, the gorgeous rays light up its surface till it appears a lake of liquid fire, rendered brighter by the surrounding darkness of the dense and leafless forest. Occasionally the trumpet-toned pipe of the engine—fit music for the woods—bursts forth ”

“ If a man propose to go to Niagara for mere beauty, he had better stay at home and look at a lily through a microscope; if to hear a mighty noise, he had better go where the anchors are forged in Portsmouth dockyard; if to see a mighty struggle of waters, he had better take a cruise, on board a pilot-boat, in the Bay of Biscay, during an equinoctial gale; but, if he be content to see the most glorious cataract his Maker has placed upon our globe; if, in a stupendous work of Nature, he have a soul to recognise the Almighty Workman ”

“ The extremes of this charming view were bounded, either by the venerable mansion over whose roof the patriarchal elms of which we have been speaking threw their cool and welcome shade, or by the broad stream whose bosom was ever and anon enlivened with some trim barque or rapid-gliding steamer, and whose farther shore was wooded to the water's edge. There is one of the finest China rose-trees here I ever beheld; it covers a space of forty feet square, being led over on trellis-work, and it might extend much beyond that distance: it is one mass of flowers every year. ”

“ The fulsome adulation with which the Press bespatters its readers, throughout the length and breadth of the Union, wherever any comparisons are drawn with other nations, is so great that the masses have become perfectly deluded; and being so far removed from the nations of the Old World, and knowing, consequently, nothing of them except through the columns of a vanity-feeding Press, they receive the most exaggerated statements as though they were Gospel truths—little aware how supremely ridiculous the vaunting which they read with delight makes them appear in the eyes of other people. ”

“ A faithful nurse stands at the door; a young lady about twelve is mounting; a groom is on another horse, with a leading-rein strong enough to hold a line-of-battle ship in a gale of wind. The old nurse takes as long packing the young lady as if she were about to make a tour of the globe; sundry whispers are going on all the time, the purport of which is easily guessed. ”

“ It is as absurd to judge of the condition of the slave by visiting an amiable planter and his lady, as it would be to judge of the clothing, feeding, and comfort of our labouring population by calling at the town-house of the Duke of Well-to-do and carefully noting the worthy who fills an arm-chair like a sentry-box, and is yclept the porter. ”

“ Irresistible testimony is borne to their appreciation of the value of education, not merely by the multitudes of schools of all kinds, and by the numbers that attend them, but also by that arrangement of which they may be so justly proud, and which opens the door to every branch of study to their poorest citizens free of expense. No praise is too high for such a noble national institution as the school system of the Republic. ”

“ The tribe meet, the block is prepared, the captive's neck is laid ready, the upraised tomahawk, held by a brawny Indian arm, whose every muscle quivers with revenge, glitters in the sunbeams; swarthy figures around, thirsting for blood, anxiously await the sacrifice of the victim, already too long delayed. Hope has fled from the captive's breast, and he is communing in earnest with the Great Spirit into whose presence he is about to be so sadly and speedily ushered. ”

“ Truly it is nought but sameness on a gigantic scale. What there is of grand is all in the imagination, or rather the reflection, that you are on the bosom of the largest artery of commerce in the world. What meets the eye is an average breadth of from half a mile to a mile of muddy water, tenanted by uprooted trees, and bristling with formidable snags. On either side a continuous forest confines the view, thus depriving the scene of that solemn grandeur which the horizonless desert or the boundless main is calculated to inspire. ”

“ Pleasant indeed were the hours I passed here; lovely was the climate, beautiful was the landscape, hearty was the welcome: every day found some little plan prepared to make their hospitality more pleasant to the stranger; nature herself seemed to delight in aiding their efforts, for though I arrived in a deluge, I scarce ever saw a cloud afterwards. As the morning light stole through my open window in undimmed transparency, the robin, the blue-bird, the mocking-bird, the hosts of choral warblers, held their early oratorio in the patriarchal elms. ”

“ If you hold slavery so damnable a sin, why do you so greedily covet the fruits of the wages of that sin? The demand of your markets for slave produce enhances the value of the slave, and in so doing clenches another nail in the coffin, of his hopes." I confess I can give no reply, except the humiliating confession which, if the feeling of the nation is to be read in its Parliamentary acts, amounts to this—"We have removed slavery from our own soil, and we don't care a farthing if all the rest of the world are slaves, provided only we can get cheap cotton and sugar, &c. ”

“ In the Free States many feel strongly the degradation of being forced to aid in the capture of the fugitive slave; and the aversion to the repulsive task is increasing rather than decreasing. The citizens have on many occasions risen in masses against those who were executing the law, and the military have been brought into collision with them in defending the authorities. The dread of breaking up the Union alone prevents that clause being struck out from the Constitution, by which they are compelled not merely to restore but to hunt up the fugitive. ”

“ To any admirer of the race, the inside of the pound must be a most painful and revolting spectacle: there may be seen, lying side by side, "dignity and impudence," the fearless bull and the timid spaniel, the bloated pug and the friendly Newfoundland, the woolly lap-dog and the whining cur; some growling in defiance, some whimpering in misery, some looking imploringly—their intelligent eyes challenging present sympathy on the ground of past fidelity—all, all in vain: the hour that summons the Mussulman to prayer, equally silently tolls their death-knell ”

“ A small coin removed all difficulty about embarking luggage, cigars, &c.; the kettle was boiling, hands shook violently, bells rang rapidly, non-passengers flew down to shore-boats; round go the wheels, waving go the kerchiefs, and down fall the tears. The "Isabel" bounds o'er the ripp'less waters; forts and dungeons, as we gaze astern, fade from the view; an indistinct shade is all by which the eye can recal the lovely isle of Cuba; and, lest memory should fail, the piles of oranges, about four feet square, all round the upper-deck, are ready to refresh it. ”

“ Could they really place confidence in the philanthropic professions of those who treat the negro as an outcast, and force on him a life of wretchedness instead of striving to raise him in the social scale? If a negro had the intellect of a Newton—if he were clothed in purple and fine linen, and if he came fresh from an Oriental bath, and fragrant as "Araby's spices," a Northerner would prefer sitting down with a pole-cat—he would rather pluck a living coal from the fire than grasp the hand of the worthiest negro that ever stepped. ”

“ To hold a slave is one thing, but to employ the labour of one who is a slave, and over whose hopes of freedom you have no control, is quite another thing; and I hold that, under the actual circumstances, the employment of another's slave could never he so distorted in argument as to bring home a charge of connivance in a system we so thoroughly repudiate. ”