Various

“ It is not the North, but the South, that forever agitates the question of Slavery. The seeming prosperity of the cotton-growing States is based on a great mistake and a great wrong; and it is no wonder that they are irritable and scent accusation in the very air. It is the stars in their courses that fight against their system, and there are those who propose to make everything comfortable by Act of Congress.
It is almost incredible to what a pitch of absurdity the Slave-holding party have been brought by the weak habit of concession which has been the vice of the Free States. ”

“ A long, low flat-boat, without visible sails, steam-pipes, or oars,—a narrow river-craft, with a box-like cabin at one end, the whole rude in its ensemble, and uncivilized in its details,—is the object that meets the gaze of those who would curiously inspect the means by which the adventurous novelty-seeking portion of our party are to be conveyed up this Ontonagon river to the great copper-mines that form the inestimable wealth of that region. For the metallic attraction has proved magnetic to the fancies of a few. A mine is a mystery; and mysteries, to the female mind, are delights. ”

“ Grasping his ponderous tools, he flits by like a phantom; even in the momentary glance, we can perceive how livid his sunless labor has left him; he is blanched as a ghoul, and moves as noiselessly, with feather-light step. Each with a motion salutes the Captain; but they do not heed the little group of strangers who have braved so many dangers to behold the wonders which to them are as commonplace as the forge to a blacksmith, or to a carpenter his work-bench.
Still farther below us we hear the clink and clatter of real work. Down we plunge,—another ladder, "long drawn out." ”

“ Following the blood-track, the two men entered the parlor, with suspended breath and hearts that almost ceased to beat. There they found the dead body of James Blount,—his clothes half torn off, in the violence of the strife that could end only in murder. A long, deep cut on the throat had terminated that awful struggle, though many other less dangerous wounds showed how desperate it had been. He lay just as he fell,—his features still contracted with a look of defiance and hatred, and in his right hand still clasped a long, sharp knife. ”

“ A traceable line of affinity unites these outcast children with the renowned historic races of the world: the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Ethiopian, the Jew,—the beautiful Greek, the strong Roman, the keen Arab, the passionate Italian, the stately Spaniard, the sad Portuguese, the brilliant Frenchman, the frank Northman, the wise German, the firm Englishman, and that last-born heir of Time, the American, inventor of many new things, but himself, by his temperament, the greatest novelty of all,—the American, with his cold, clear eye, his skin made of ice, and his veins filled with lava. ”

“ And so, with thank-yous that were not only from the lip, we toil on some distance yet, to the shaft by which we are to ascend,—one quite remote from that by which we began our trip.
Halting at the foot of the ladder, we pour forth the "Star-spangled Banner" with the full strength of lungs inflated by patriotism, until the stirring staves ring and resound through those dim caves. The miners, who hold the superstition, that to whisper bodes ill-luck, must have imagined we were exorcising evil spirits with an incantation. ”

“ Creeping behind another shaft, we reach still another chasm, above which piles of dark rocks lie heaped in such confusion as might result from a great convulsion. There is a narrow path along its edge, and here the stones are small; but, as we look up, the mighty masses frown down upon us with threatening grandeur. Along this path, treading lightly, as if gifted with wings, the Captain passes; then the Agent (for we had slightly altered our order of march) ; Mon Amie follows. She is half-way past the danger, when an ominous pause,—we are ordered to stop. ”

“ Had the peace of Europe not been broken by France, the Austrian power in Italy would have been unbroken at this moment, and Naples have been still under the dominion of that mad tyrant whose supreme delight it was to offend the moral sense of the world, and who found even in the remonstrances of his brother-despots occasion for increasing the weight of the chains of his victims, and of adding to the intensity and the exquisiteness of their tortures. ”

“ So, amid the whirl and roar of winter-life in Washington, when one has no time to read, write, or think, and scarcely time to eat, drink, and sleep, when the days fly by like hours, and the brain reels under the excitement of the protracted debauch, life becomes an intolerable bore. Yet the place has an intense fascination for those who suffer most acutely from the tedium vitae to which every one is more or less a prey; and men and women who have lived in Washington are seldom contented elsewhere. ”

“ Shall a coat be synonymous with cowardice? No,—we rise superior to the occasion; we pant to be free; we in-breathe the spirit of liberty, as we don our blouses. We loop our long tresses under such head-coverings as would drive any artist hatter to despair; to us they prove a weighty argument against hats in general, as we feel their heavy rims press on our tender brain-roofs. However, when the saucy eyes of Mon Amie look out sparkling from under her begrimed helmet, the effect is not bad ”

“ A desolate stillness reigns here; no sound reaches us, either of labor or the steps of passing workmen. A cold stream of water trickles from a cleft rock behind us; we bathe our foreheads in it, and betake ourselves to the ladder again.
From our next resting-place we proceed through a gallery, an exhausted vein, kept open as a passage from one shaft to another. As we turn a corner, we seem to plunge into a rocky cavern; our feet tread on roughly imbedded rocks; the sides of the cave jut out in refuse boulders,—harsh, dark-colored, ashen ”

“ The question, whether we are a Government or an Indian Council, we do not propose to discuss here; whether there be a right of secession tempered by a right of coercion, like a despotism by assassination, and whether it be expedient to put the latter in practice, we shall not consider: for it is not always the part of wisdom to attempt a settlement of what the progress of events will soon settle for us. Mr. Buchanan seems to have no opinion, or, if he has one, it is a halting between two, a bat-like cross of sparrow and mouse that gives timidity its choice between flight and skulking. ”

“ They have succeeded in establishing among themselves a fatal unanimity on the question of Slavery,—fatal because it makes the office of spy and informer honorable, makes the caprice of a mob the arbiter of thought, speech, and action, and debases public opinion to a muddy mixture of fear and prejudice. In peace, the majority of their population will be always looked on as conspirators; in war, they would become rebels. ”

“ We live rapidly in this age, when nations are breaking up all around us, when unions are dissolving, when dynasties disappear before the light like ghosts at cock-crowing, and when emperors and kings rely upon universal suffrage, once so terrible a bugbear in their eyes, for the titles to their crowns. Opinion is rapidly formed, and is as rapidly dismissed. We may be as much astonished now at the peace of Villafranca as we were on the day when first it was announced, and while looking upon it only as a piece of diplomacy intended to put an end to a contest costly in blood and gold ”

“ Civilization is cultivation, whole cultivation; and even in its present imperfect state, it not only permits physical training, but promotes it. The traditional glory of the savage body is yielding before medical statistics: it is becoming evident that the average barbarian, observed from the cradle to the grave, does not know enough and is not rich enough to keep his body in its highest condition, but, on the contrary, is small and sickly and short-lived and weak, compared with the man of civilization. The great athletes of the world have been civilized; the long-lived men have been civilized ”

“ Not color; for the most degraded races seem never to be the blackest, and the builders of the Pyramids were far darker than the dwellers in the Aleutian Islands. Not unmixed purity of blood; since the Circassians, the purest type of the supreme Caucasian race, have given nothing to history but the courage of their men and the degradation of their women. Not religion; for enlightened nations have arisen under each great historic faith, while even Christianity has its Abyssinia and Arkansas. Not climate; for each quarter of the globe has witnessed both extremes. ”

“ Bernard's heart.
"He loved that horse, no doubt," he said,—"and no wonder. A beautiful, wild-looking creature! Take off those things that are on him, Abel, and have them carried to Mr. Dudley Venner's. If he does not want them, you may keep them yourself, for all that I have to say. One thing more. I hope nobody will lift his hand against this noble creature to mutilate him in any way. After you have taken off the saddle and bridle, Abel, bury him just as he is. Under that old beech-tree will be a good place. You'll see to it,—won't you, Abel?" ”

“ Presently, at the top, a low village comes in sight; yelping curs start from wayside cabins; coarse, dull-featured women gape at half-opened doors or sit idly on rude steps; and the men we chance to meet wear that cadaverous pallor inseparable from the mere idea of a miner. We do not regret that the pert dogs have imparted speed to our horses' heels;—a swift, exhilarating gallop brings us in sight of a large, comfortable house, perched like a bird-box in the hills; then others are discerned; and in a few more bounds, we are at the gate. ”

“ Seeing the multitude of boarding-houses, oyster-cellars, and ivory-banks, you may suppose there are no hotels in Washington. You are mistaken. There are plenty of hotels, many of them got up on the scale of magnificent distances that prevails everywhere, and somewhat on the maritime plan of the Departments. Outwardly, they look like colossal docks, erected for the benefit of hacks, large fleets of which you will always find moored under their lee, safe from the monsoon that prevails on the open sea of the Avenue. ”

“ We have presence of mind; we are passable gymnastes.
In fact, viewing Mon Amie and me from our own point of view, than ourselves never did there exist two mortals more manifestly fashioned straight from the hand of Nature, and educated by previous physical culture and mental discipline for the performance of a feat at once perilous and daring, one unknown to the members of "our set," and which might have been thought impracticable by all who had known us only in the gas-light glare of Society, and the circumspection of crinoline's confining circle. ”