lready on the way--in a sailing
ship of course, I believe, and not in a steamer. We are poor. My mother
and sisters will follow so soon as their health permits.

I felt the duty to help them in their first establishment here. For this
I had to work, having no means of my own.

Some generous friends advised me to try a lecture for this purpose, and
I did it. I will not act the part of crying complainants about our
misfortunes; we will bear them. Let me at once go to my task.

* * * * *

There is a stirring vitality of busy life about this your city of New
York, striking with astonishment the stranger's mind. How great is the
progress of Humanity! Its steps are counted by centuries, and yet while
countless millions stand almost at the same point where they stood, and
some even have declined since America first emerged out of an unexplored
darkness which had covered her for thousands of years, like the gem in
the sea; while it is but yesterday a few pilgrims landed on the wild
coast of Plymouth, flying from causeless oppression, seeking but for a
place of refuge and of rest, and for a free spot in the wilderness to
adore the Almighty in their own way; still, in such a brief time,
shorter than the recorded genealogy of the noble horse of the wandering
Arab; yes, almost within the turn of the hand, out of the unknown
wilderness a mighty empire arose, broad as an ocean, solid as a
mountain-rock, and upon the scarcely rotted roots of the primitive
forest, proud cities stand, teeming with boundless life, growing like
the prairie's grass in spring, advancing like the steam-engine, baffling
time and distance like the telegraph, and spreading the pulsation of
their life-tide to the remotest parts of the world; and in those cities
and on that broad land a nation, free as the mountain air, independent
as the soaring eagle, active as nature, and powerful as the giant
strength of millions of freemen.

How wonderful! What a present--and what a future yet!

Future?--then let me stop at this mysterious word--the veil of
unrevealed eternity!

The shadow of that dark word passed across my mind, and amid the bustle
of this gigantic bee-hive, there I stood with meditation alone.

And the spirit of the immovable Past rose before my eyes, unfolding the
misty picture-rolls of vanished greatness, and of the fragility of human
things.

And among their dissolving views, there I saw the scorched soil of
Afr