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By Root 1837 0

my side. Poe. I paused to look, and he said, "I knew the poor fellow, can you imagine? They drove him from pillar to post, but indeed, he wasn’t himself sinless by any means." I looked in vain for Emerson, Hawthorne, Mr. Thoreau, Mrs. Stowe, the books Thomas could not be without, but in Papa’s library, it was as if they had never lived. The novelists and poets here were all English ones, except for Madame Sand, who reposed, in French, right beside Monsieur Hugo. I murmured, "I am sorry I don’t read French. But indeed, you have few American writers here!"

Papa flared up at once. "Who is there? Only those who spout treason and nonsense! Oh, my dear, you will be sorry you said such a thing, because you will find me unstoppable on the subject! Our nation is a rose-bud, blighted at its very opening by money and industry and all of what I call the iron ways! Boilers! Railroads! Steamboats! Armories! Coal dust, coal smoke, coal stink! We are being hammered willy-nilly into iron bonds! Where are you from?" His eyebrows shot upward, and without resisting, but quick enough to lie, I said, "Palmyra."

"You are fortunate! Vow never to go to Chicago or Cincinnati or New York’s inferno! Such places destroy your faith in the future!"

"I’ve never been to any of those cities. I’ve never been to a city."

"And you are better for it, young lady! Come with me!" Papa now grasped me by the elbow and hurried me out of the library, first into the hall and then out a door that turned out to open onto a rear veranda that was at ground level. The kitchen wing of the house enclosed us to the right. To the left, there was a prospect of two fields divided by a rail fence, one a pasture with cows and horses in it and the other a field of hemp, tall, leafy, and ready to be harvested. Several oaks dotted the pasture, and the animals grazed peacefully in their shade. To the right, partially hidden by the kitchen wing, was the stables and, behind them, a barn. Both were built of brick, like the house, but they were not whitewashed, as the house was. It was a pleasant prospect, and I was thinking I would like to get a better look at the horses sometime, when Papa seemed to leap into the air with excitement. He shouted, "Look at this—is this not the most divine vision you’ve ever seen?" He raised both arms, threw back his head, and spun around. "The fit and proper stewardship of the land! The useful verdure consecrated to our improvement by the Lord Himself on one side and the devoted beasts on the other, whose very contentment and low intelligence recommend them to our service! Who made that pasture? I did! Who built that fence? I did! Who planted that crop? I did, yes! But it wasn’t I! All I did was enter into a great preexistent circle and divide the plants from the beasts by a little fence, so that the beasts wouldn’t trample the tender shoots. Everything is perfection here! The rain falls from the sky, and beasts partake of the fruits of the soil and then themselves create the soil! There is a great flowering, beauty announcing itself, and then God’s messengers, the bees, go among the blossoms! All is given to us for our education and enjoyment, our nourishment and our contemplation! We hold out our hands, and what we need is placed in them!"

Papa took a few deep breaths, then came right up to me and looked up into my face. His bald head shone brightly in the morning sunlight. "To look at this, you wouldn’t know that we live in a fallen world, would you?" I didn’t have to respond, but I did think that his experience must have been considerably different from mine, if he supposed that I ever forgot that we lived in a fallen world. "Money!" he shouted. "Money, gold, cash, dollars! How does it get in everywhere, I ask you? How can it be that money has come between the land and its workers? Between a man and his dependents?" (Here one of the slaves happened to lead two horses, a mare and her half-grown colt, out of the stable area and toward the pasture.) "How can it be, this crime and this tragedy, that a man should have to pay money to purchase a fellowman