"Such," said the Showman, as the curtain fell,

"Is the new Canaan of our Israel, The land of promise to the swarming North,

Which, hive-like, sends its annual surplus forth,

To the poor Southron on his worn-out soil,

Scathed by the curses of unnatural toil; To Europe's exiles seeking home and rest,

And the lank nomads of the wandering West,

Who, asking neither, in their love of change

And the free bison's amplitude of range, Rear the log hut, for present shelter

meant,

The brook bank whitening in the grist

mill's storm,

The painted farm house shining through the leaves

Of fruited orchards bending at its eaves, Where live again, around the Western hearth,

The homely old-time virtues of the North;

Where the blithe housewife rises with the day,

And well-paid labor counts his task a play.

And, grateful tokens of a Bible free,
And the free Gospel of Humanity,
Of diverse sects and differing names
the shrines,

One in their faith, whate'er their out

217

A village straggling in loose disarray Of vulgar newness, premature decay; A tavern, crazy with its whiskey brawls, With "Slaves at Auction!" garnishing its walls.

Without, surrounded by a motley crowd, The shrewd-eyed salesman, garrulous and loud,

A squire or colonel in his pride of place, Known at free fights, the caucus, and the race,

Prompt to proclaim his honor without blot,

And silence doubters with a ten-pace shot,

Mingling the negro-driving bully's rant With pious phrase and democratic cant, Yet never scrupling, with a filthy jest, To sell the infant from its mother's breast,

Break through all ties of wedlock, home, and kin,

Yield shrinking girlhood up to gray

beard sin;

Sell all the virtues with his human stock, The Christian graces on his auctionblock,

And coolly count on shrewdest bargains driven

In hearts regenerate, and in souls forgiven!

Look once again! The moving canvas shows

A slave plantation's slovenly repose, Where, in rude cabins rotting midst their weeds,

The human chattel eats, and sleeps, and breeds;

And, held a brute, in practice, as in law, Becomes in fact the thing he's taken for. There, early summoned to the hemp and

corn,

The nursing mother leaves her child new-born;

There haggard sickness, weak and deathly faint,

Crawls to his task, and fears to make complaint;