I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy with a voice which I took to be that of a child, which complained it could not get out. I looked up and down the passage, and, seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out without further attention.
In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over; and, looking up, I saw it was a starling, hung in a little cage. “I can’t get out—I can’t get out,” said the starling.
I stood looking at the bird; and to every person who came through the passage it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approached it, with the same lamentation of its captivity. “I can’t get out,” said the starling. “God help thee!” said I; “but I’ll let thee out, cost what it will.” So I turned about the cage to get the door. It was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it.
The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and, thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it, as if impatient. “I fear, poor creature,” said I, “I cannot set thee at liberty.” “No,” said the starling; “I can’t get out—I can’t get out.”
I never had my affections more tenderly awakened, nor do I remember an incident in my life where the dissipated spirits to which my reason had been a bubble were so suddenly called home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment they overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastille; and I heavily walked upstairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down them.
“Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery,” said I, “still thou art a bitter draught; and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. ’Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess,”—addressing myself to Liberty,—“whom all, in public or in private, worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till Nature herself shall change. No tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, nor chymic power turn thy scepter into iron. With thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious Heaven!” cried I, kneeling down upon the last step but one in my ascent, “grant me but health, thou great Bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion, and shower down thy miters, if it seem good unto thy divine providence, upon those heads which are aching for them.”
The bird in his cage pursued me into my room. I sat down close by my table, and, leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and so I gave full scope to my imagination.
I was going to begin with the millions of my fellow-creatures born to no inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me, I took a single captive, and, having first shut him up in his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door to take his picture.
I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish. In thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood. He had seen no sun, no moon in all that time, nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice. His children!—
But here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait.