g over
the door and the purple grapes growing red in the amorous kisses of the
autumn sun--I would rather have been that poor French peasant, to sit
in my door, with my wife knitting by my side and my children upon my
knees with their arms around my neck--I would rather have lived and
died unnoticed and unknown except by those who loved me, and gone down
to the voiceless silence of the dreamless dust--I would rather have
been that French peasant than to have been that imperial impersonation
of force and murder who covered Europe with blood and tears."

I tell you I had rather make somebody happy, I would rather have the
love of somebody; I would rather go to the forest, far away, and build
me a little cabin--build it myself and daub it with mud, and live there
with my wife and children; I had rather go there and live by
myself--our little family--and have a little path that led down to the
spring, where the water bubbled out day and night like a little poem
from the heart of the earth; a little hut with some hollyhocks at the
corner, with their bannered bosoms open to the sun, and with the thrush
in the air, like a song of joy in the morning; I would rather live
there and have some lattice work across the window, so that the
sunlight would fall checkered on the baby in the cradle; I would rather
live there and have my soul erect and free, than to live in a palace of
gold and wear the crown of imperial power and know that my soul was
slimy with hypocrisy. It is not necessary to be rich and great and
powerful in order to be happy. If you will treat your wife like a
splendid flower, she will fill your life with a perfume and with joy.

I believe in the democracy of the fireside, I believe in the
republicism of home, in the equality of man and woman, in the equality
of husband and wife, and for this I am denounced by the sentinels upon
the walls of Zion.

They say there must be a head to the family. I say no--equal rights
for man and wife, and where there is really love there is liberty, and
where the idea of authority comes in you will find that love has spread
its pinions and flown forever. It is a splendid thing for me to think
that when a woman really loves a man he never grows old in her eyes;
she always sees the gallant gentleman that won her hand and heart; and
when a man really and truly loves a woman she does not grow old to him;
through the wrinkles of years he sees the face he loved and won. That
is all t