y of fancy; and whether he was inventing a
plough or forecasting the destinies of a great Democracy, imagination
qualified the performance.

One of the most effective forms in which imagination displays itself in
prose is by the use of a common word in such a manner and context that it
conveys an uncommon meaning. There are many examples of this rhetorical
art in Jefferson's writings, but the most notable one occurs in the noble
first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: "When, in the course
of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the
political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume
among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the
Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the separation."

Upon this paragraph Mr. Parton eloquently observes: "The noblest utterance
of the whole composition is the reason given for making the
Declaration,--'_A decent __respect for the opinions of mankind_.' This
touches the heart. Among the best emotions that human nature knows is the
veneration of man for man. This recognition of the public opinion of the
world--the sum of human sense--as the final arbiter in all such
controversies is the single phrase of the document which Jefferson alone,
perhaps, of all the Congress, could have originated; and in point of merit
it was worth all the rest."

Franklin and John Adams, who were on the committee with Jefferson, made a
few verbal changes in his draught of the Declaration, and it was then
discussed and reviewed by Congress for three days. Congress made eighteen
suppressions, six additions, and ten alterations; and it must be admitted
that most of these were improvements. For example, Jefferson had framed a
paragraph in which the king was severely censured for opposing certain
measures looking to the suppression of the slave trade. This would have
come with an ill grace from the Americans, since for a century New England
had been enriching herself by that trade, and the southern colonies had
subsisted upon the labor which it brought them. Congress wisely struck out
the paragraph.

The Declaration of Independence was received with rapture throughout the
country. Everywhere it was read aloud to the people who gathered to hear
it, amid the booming of guns, the ringing of bells, and the display of
firew