A Yankee in Canada: With Anti-slavery and Reform Papers

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Ticknor and Fields, 1866 - 286 pages

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Page 126 - Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried ; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried. We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning ; By the struggling moonbeam's misty light And the lantern dimly burning. No useless coffin enclosed his breast...
Page 177 - Still roll ; where all the aspects of misery Predominate; whose strong effects are such As he must bear, being powerless to redress; And that unless above himself he can Erect himself, how poor a thing is man...
Page 136 - Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place to-day, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less...
Page 136 - I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name - if ten honest men only - ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America.
Page 140 - However, at the request of the selectmen, I condescended to make some such statement as this in writing: — "Know all men by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which I have not joined.
Page 126 - In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense ; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones ; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.
Page 151 - I please myself with imagining a state at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow men.
Page 143 - It was like travelling into a far country, such as I had never expected to behold, to lie there for one night. It seemed to me that I never had heard the town-clock strike before, nor the evening sounds of the village; for we slept with the windows open, which were inside the grating. It was to see my native village in the light of the Middle Ages, and our Concord was turned into a Rhine stream, and visions of knights and castles passed before me. They were the voices of old burghers that I heard...
Page 138 - Show me the tributemoney," said he;— and one took a penny out of his pocket;— if you use money which has the image of Caesar on it, and which he has made current and valuable, that is, if you are men of the State, and gladly enjoy the advantages of Caesar's government, then pay him back some of his own when he demands it. "Render therefore to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God those things which are God's"— leaving them no wiser than before as to which was which; for they did not wish...
Page 180 - Upon the Golden Rule. I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them: that is why I am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged, that are as good as you and as precious in the sight of God.

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