"God help the Roman people!" he exclaimed; "God confound the schemes of the tyrants, who now plot the murder of the Roman people! At last, after five hundred years of wrong, the Nightmare of Priesthood is lifted from the breast of Italy. Italy has heard at last, the voice of God, calling upon her sons to arise—to cast these priestly idlers from their thrones—to assert the Democracy of the Gospel in face of tyrants of all shapes, whether dressed in military gear, in solemn black, or in Borgian scarlet. Italy has risen!"
And turning from the window, he paced the floor again,—
"My work is done in Rome. The Pope and the church in the hands of crowned and mitred miscreants, who having crushed the last spark of liberty in the Old World, will not be long ere they open their trenches before her last altar in the New World! Away to the New World then; if the battle must come, let us, let the friends of humanity, strike the first blow!"
Away from the eternal city,—to the New World,—to the boundless horizon and ocean-like expanse of the prairies. The sun is setting over one of those vast prairies, which stretch between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains. The monotony of that vast expanse, covered with grass that rolls and swells, like the wave of old ocean, is broken by a gentle knoll, crowned by a single giant oak. The setting sun flings the shadow of that solitary tree, black and long, over the prairie. Far, far in the west, a white peak rises like an altar from the horizon, into the sky—it is a peak of the Rocky Mountains. And gazing to the east, you behold nothing save the prairie and the sky,—yes! a herd of buffalo are grazing yonder, and a long caravan of wagons, drawn by mules, and flanked by armed men who ride or go afoot, winds like an immense serpent, far over the plain.
Three hundred emigrants, mechanics, their wives and little ones, who have left the savage civilization of the Atlantic cities, for a free home beyond the Rocky Mountains—such is the band which now moves on in the light of the fading day.
The leader of the band, a man in the prime of young manhood, dressed in the garb of a hunter, with a rifle on his shoulder, stands beneath the solitary oak, gazing upon the caravan as it comes on. His face bears traces of much thought,—perchance of many a dark hour,—but now his eyes shine clear and strong, with the enthusiasm which springs from deep convictions:
"Thus far toward freedom! Here they come,—three hundred serfs of the Atlantic cities, rescued from poverty, from wages-slavery, from the war of competition, from the grip of the landlord! Thus far toward a soil which they can call their own; thus far toward a free home. And thou, O! Christ, who didst live and die, so that all men might be brothers, bless us, and be with us, and march by our side, in this our exodus."
The speaker was the Socialist,—Arthur Dermoyne.
And let us all, as we survey the masses of the human race, attempting their exodus from thraldom of all kinds,—of the body,—of the soul,—from the tyranny which crushes man by the iron hand of brute force, or slowly kills him by the lawful operation of capital, labor-saving machinery, or monied enterprise,—let us, too, send up our prayer, "O! Thou of Nazareth, go with the People in this their exodus, dwell with them in their tents, beacon with light, their hard way to the Promised Land!"