Unfenced, unguarded, open
to all comers and goers, stood that city of the beggars,--no wall
or paling between the ragged cabins to remind one of the jealous
distinctions of property. The great idea of its founders seemed visible
in its unappropriated freedom. Was not the whole round world their own?
and should they haggle about boundaries and title-deeds? For them, on
distant plains, ripened golden harvests; for them, in far-off workshops,
busy hands were toiling; for them, if they had but the grace to note it,
the broad earth put on her garniture of beauty, and over them hung the
silent mystery of heaven and its stars. That comfortable philosophy
which modern transcendentalism has but dimly shadowed forth--that poetic
agrarianism, which gives all to each and each to all--is the real life
of this city of unwork. To each of its dingy dwellers might be not
unaptly applied the language of one who, I trust, will pardon me for
quoting her beautiful poem in this connection:--

"Other hands may grasp the field and forest,
Proud proprietors in pomp may shine,
. . . . . . .
Thou art wealthier,--all the world is thine."(2)

(1) Alexander Gordon Laing was a major in the British army,
who served on the west coast of Africa and made journeys into
the interior in the attempt to establish commercial relations
with the natives, and especially to discover the sources of the
Niger. He was treacherously murdered in 1826 by the guard
that was attending him on his return from Timbuctoo to the
coast. His travels excited great interest in their day in England
and America.
(2) From a poem, _Why Thus Longing?_ by Mrs. Harriet
Winslow Sewall, preserved in Whittier's _Songs of Three
Centuries._

But look! the clouds are breaking. "Fair weather cometh out of the
north." The wind has blown away the mists; on the gilded spire of John
Street glimmers a beam of sunshine; and there is the sky again, hard,
blue, and cold in its eternal purity, not a whit the worse for the
storm. In the beautiful present the past is no longer needed. Reverently
and gratefully let its volume be laid aside; and when again the shadows
of the outward world fall upon the spirit may I not lack a good angel to
remind me of its solace, even if he comes in the shape of a Barrington
beggar.

End of Project Gutenberg's Yankee Gypsies, by John Greenleaf Whittier

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