nd the multitude of fair faces faded like a vision of heaven from
our views.
"O beautiful Mizora!" cried the voice of my heart. "Shall I ever again
see a land so fair, where natures so noble and aims so lofty have their
abiding place? Memory will return to you though my feet may never again
tread your delightful shores. Farewell, sweet ideal land of my Soul, of
Humanity, farewell!"
My thoughts turned to that other world from which I had journeyed so
long. Would the time ever come when it, too, would be a land of
universal intelligence and happiness? When the difference of nations
would be settled by argument instead of battle? When disease, deformity
and premature death would be unknown? When locks, and bolts and bars
would be useless?
I hoped so much from the personal influence of Wauna. So noble, so
utterly unconscious of wrong, she must surely revolutionize human nature
whenever it came in contact with her own.
I pictured to myself my own dear land--dear, despite its many phases of
wretchedness--smiling in universal comfort and health. I imagined its
political prisons yawning with emptiness, while their haggard and
decrepit and sorrowful occupants hobbled out into the sunshine of
liberty, and the new life we were bringing to them. Fancy flew abroad on
the wings of hope, dropping the seeds of progress wherever it passed.
The poor should be given work, and justly paid for it, instead of being
supported by charity. The charity that had fostered indolence in its
mistaken efforts to do good, should be employed to train poverty to
skillful labor and economy in living. And what a world of good that one
measure would produce! The poor should possess exactly the same
educational advantages that were supplied to the rich. In this _one_
measure, if I could only make it popular, I would see the golden promise
of the future of my country. "Educate your poor and they will work out
their own salvation. Educated Labor can dictate its rights to Capital."
How easy of accomplishment it all seemed to me, who had seen the
practical benefits arising to a commonwealth that had adopted these
mottoes. I doubted not that the wiser and better of my own people would
aid and encourage me. Free education would lead to other results.
Riches should be accumulated only by vast and generous industries that
reached a helping hand to thousands of industrious poor, instead of
grinding them out of a few hundred of poorly-paid and over-worke
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