Part 19 (1/2)
_To the South_
”The world has ned you, And should be quick to make honest amends; Let me then speak of you just as I find you, Humbly and heartily, cousins and friends!
Let us res and your trials, Slander'd and plunder'd and crush'd to the dust, Draining adversity's bitterest vials, Patient in courage and strong in good trust
”You fought for Liberty, rather than Slavery!
Well ht you wish to be quit of that ill, But you were sold by political knavery, Meshed in diplomacy's spider-like skill: And you rejoice to see Slavery banished, While the free servant works well as before, Confident, though many fortunes have vanished, Soon to recover all--rich as before!
”Doubtless, there had been some hardshi+ps and cruelties, Cases exceptional, evil and rare, But to tell truth--and truly _the_ jewel 'tis-- Kindliness ruled, as a rule, everywhere!
Servants, if slaves, were your wealth and inheritance, Born with your children, and grown on your ground, And it was quite as much interest as merit hence Still to make friends of dependents all round
”Yes, it is slander to say you oppressed them; Does a man squander the price of his pelf?
Was it not often that he who possessed the for all, as in health so in sicknesses, He was their father, their patriarch chief; Age's infir on him for repose and relief
”When you went forth in your pluck and your bravery, Selling for freedom both fortunes and lives, Where was that prophesied outburst of slavery Wreaking revenge on your children and wives?
Nowhere! you left all to servile safe keeping, And this was faithful and true to your trust; Master and servant thus ood and the just?
”Generous Southerners! I who address you Shared with too many belief in your sins; But I recant it,--thus, let e is victor and every ins: For I have seen, I have heard, and a, Paying all Slavery's cost, and the cure of it,-- And the great world shall repent of its wrong”
I need not say what a riot that honest bit of verse raised a the enthusiasts on both sides I spoke froment: for I next paid a visit on my old Brook Green school-friend, Middleton, at his burnt and ruined mansion near Summerville: once a wealthy and benevolent patriarch, surrounded by a negro population who adored hi been sold by hi to him, that violent ereat farm of happy dependants was destroyed, the inhabitants all dead through disease and starvation, a vast estate once well tilled reverted to le, and himself and his reduced to utter poverty,--all erated isolated facts as if they were general, and because North and South quarrelled about politics and protection Mrs Stowe, I hear, has learnt wisdom, as I did,--and now like me does justice to both sides There is no end to extracts from my journals, if I choose to make theave to Willia together past and present:--
”Ancient schoolo (Nay, the years that roll between Count soht or so),-- Oh, the scenes 'twixt Now and Then, Life in all its grief and joys,-- Meeting Now as aged men Since the Then that saw us boys!
”There's a chareless in the e Mind and spirit as of yore; Even face and forether burned At school-tales we had to tell
”Mostly dead, forgotten, gone,-- Few old Railtonites of fame (Here and there we noted one), Yet we find ourselves the same!
Sons of either hemisphere We can never stand apart, With to land in your heart
”You, of good old English stock,-- I--some kindred of mine own Pound theone; So, I come at sixty-six, All across the Atlantic ain!”
I may here record that, accoator's hole with a rifle, but the beast would not come out, perhaps luckily for me, if Idown a carrion vulture, it being illegal to kill those useful scavengers; that I caught sos; that I noted how the rice-fields had becouano and fossil bone pits, securing soon's teeth, and with theestive of man's antiquity; that I lamented over the desolation of my friend's eously the Federals had destroyed his fa the sacred relics of his ancestors all round and about This was sinate, and had owned patriarchally a h two centuries He and his kind brother, the Adton,--have joined the majority elsewhere; but I heard from him and others down South the truth about American slavery
For remainder rapid notice Paul Hayne the poet is rehty-six descendants of uration of President Hayes, an account whereof I wrote to the English papers; and hospitalities at the White House, and records of plenty ar Poe at Baltimore, and my acquaintance with Henry Ward Beecher, and my final New York hospitalities, and my pamphlet ”America Revisited,”
written on board the return steamer the _Batavia_,--and so an end hurriedly
This was my last farewell to my million friends, published in Bryant's paper;--
_Valete!_
”A last Farewell--O many friends!
I leave your love with saddened heart; And solove before we part: I thank you tenderly each one, I praise your goodness, dear to tell, And, well-reone, Alike will yearn on you as well