“They don’t want to go, that is a reason nobody can get round.”
He looked triumphant, as if he had settled the hull matter; but he hadn’t.
I sez, “I d’no whether they do or not; you say they don’t, somebody else may say they do. But anyway, I don’t know as that is much of a reason,” sez I; for my mind is such that as I hearn Col. Seybert’s big, swellin’ talk, my mind seemed to look at the matter from Genieve’s and Victor’s eyes more and more—I am made so, jest so sort o’ curius.
But I am all made now, and can’t help it; I have got to take myself as I am.
And I sez, “I don’t know as that is very much of a reason about their not wantin’ to go. I don’t believe there has ever been any blows struck for freedom and liberty sence the world begun but what there has been some that the blows wuz a bein’ dealt for, to hang onto the axe-helve and beg the choppers to stop.
“There has always been them who had, as Mr. Shakespeare sez, ‘Ruther endure the ills they have than fly round to others that they don’t know so much about,’ sort o’ oncertain.
“Strikin’ blows for freedom hain’t like cuttin’ down a tree. You know what you are a strikin’ when you hit into a maple or a ellum. The axe hits aginst sunthin’ solid, and the chips fly.
“But strikin’ out for freedom is sometimes a hittin’ out aginst emptiness in the dark. You know your cause is good, you know you are a fightin’ for the most precious thing in the world, but you can’t exactly see before you, and you don’t feel anything solid, and you don’t see the chips fly—it is sort o’ oncertain and resky.
“You can’t seem to see the immediate result of your blows. And so it hain’t no wonder to me that lots of weak ones, and skairt ones, and so-called prudent ones, cry out and hang onto the axe and try to stop the noble chopper’s hands. They don’t want a change. The old Torys in the Revolution didn’t want a change. It wuz strikin’ out in the darkness and bringin’ dangers and war onto their heads. They didn’t want to go away from English rule.
“But the noble band of choppers kep’ on a hackin’ the tree of tyranny till it crashed down and they walked over its prostrate trunk into freedom; and the weak ones wuz glad enough when the dangers wuz all past, and they sot down under the joy bells of 1776 and leaned their backs up aginst Bunker Hill, and enjoyed themselves first rate.