came glowing, animated, and cheerful. I thought that,
by this time, the most formidable difficulties of my undertaking were
surmounted; and I could not believe that, after having effected so much,
I should find any thing invincible in what remained to be done. I
recollected the confinement I had undergone, and the fate that had
impended over me, with horror. Never did man feel more vividly, than I
felt at that moment, the sweets of liberty. Never did man more
strenuously prefer poverty with independence, to the artificial
allurements of a life of slavery. I stretched forth my arms with
rapture; I clapped my hands one upon the other, and exclaimed, "Ah, this
is indeed to be a man! These wrists were lately galled with fetters; all
my motions, whether I rose up or sat down, were echoed to with the
clanking of chains; I was tied down like a wild beast, and could not
move but in a circle of a few feet in circumference. Now I can run fleet
as a greyhound, and leap like a young roe upon the mountains. Oh, God!
(if God there be that condescends to record the lonely beatings of an
anxious heart) thou only canst tell with what delight a prisoner, just
broke forth from his dungeon, hugs the blessings of new-found liberty!
Sacred and indescribable moment, when man regains his rights! But lately
I held my life in jeopardy, because one man was unprincipled enough to
assert what he knew to be false; I was destined to suffer an early and
inexorable death from the hands of others, because none of them had
penetration enough to distinguish from falsehood, what I uttered with
the entire conviction of a full-fraught heart! Strange, that men, from
age to age, should consent to hold their lives at the breath of another,
merely that each in his turn may have a power of acting the tyrant
according to law! Oh, God! give me poverty! shower upon me all the
imaginary hardships of human life! I will receive them all with
thankfulness. Turn me a prey to the wild beasts of the desert, so I be
never again the victim of man, dressed in the gore-dripping robes of
authority! Suffer me at least to call life, and the pursuits of life, my
own! Let me hold it at the mercy of the elements, of the hunger of
beasts, or the revenge of barbarians, but not of the cold-blooded
prudence of monopolists and kings!"--How enviable was the enthusiasm
which could thus furnish me with energy, in the midst of hunger,
poverty, and universal desertion!

I had now walked at le