And yet it took but five weeks to reach the lowest round
of this tall ladder!
Oh, moralists, who treat of happiness and self-respect, innate in every
sphere of life, and shedding light on every grain of dust in God's
highway, so smooth below your carriage-wheels, so rough beneath the
tread of naked feet, bethink yourselves in looking on the swift descent
of men who HAVE lived in their own esteem, that there are scores of
thousands breathing now, and breathing thick with painful toil, who in
that high respect have never lived at all, nor had a chance of life! Go
ye, who rest so placidly upon the sacred Bard who had been young,
and when he strung his harp was old, and had never seen the righteous
forsaken, or his seed begging their bread; go, Teachers of content and
honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the forge, the squalid depths of
deepest ignorance, and uttermost abyss of man's neglect, and say can any
hopeful plant spring up in air so foul that it extinguishes the soul's
bright torch as fast as it is kindled! And, oh! ye Pharisees of the
nineteen hundredth year of Christian Knowledge, who soundingly appeal
to human nature, see that it be human first.
Pages:
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439