mself. I almost fear that I may yet hear of his deliverance,
doubting if a prolonged life, if any life, can do as much good as his
death.

"'Misguided! Garrulous! Insane! Vindictive!' So you write in your
easy chairs, and thus he, wounded, responds from the floor of the
Armory--clear as a cloudless sky, true as the voice of Nature is! 'No
man sent me here. It was my own promptings and that of my Maker. I
acknowledge no master in human form.'

"And in what a sweet and noble strain he proceeds, addressing his
captors, who stand over him.

"'I think, my friends, you are guilty of a great wrong against God and
humanity, and it would be perfectly right for any one to interfere with
you so far as to free those you willfully and wickedly hold in bondage.
I have yet to learn that God is any respecter of persons.

"'I pity the poor in bondage, who have none to help them; that is why I
am here, not to gratify personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive
spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged that are
as good as you are, and as precious in the sight of God.

"'I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all of you people at
the South, prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question, that
must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. The
sooner you are prepared the better. You may dispose of me now very
easily--I am nearly disposed of already,--but this question is still to
be settled, this negro question, I mean; the end of that is not yet.'"

"I foresee the time," said Thoreau, "when the painter will paint that
scene, no longer going to Rome for his subject. The poet will sing it;
the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the
Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future
national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no
more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown.
Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge."

A few years ago, while on a tramp through the North Woods, I came out
through the forests of North Elba, to the old "John Brown Farm." Here
John Brown lived for many years, and here he tried to establish a
colony of freed slaves in the pure air of the mountains. Here, too,
his family remained through the stirring times when he took part in the
bloody struggles that made and kept Kansas free.

The little old brown farmhouse stands on the edge of the great wo