FOOTNOTES:
[1] In almost every town and village in New England may be found a coterie or “fraternity” of old women and elderly spinsters, who seem to have retained all the characteristics of the early Puritans, and who cling pertinaciously to the superstitious notions and puritanical bigotry which distinguished the early settlers of the country. They are firm and sincere believers in all the hobgoblin stories and supernatural omens which have been handed down by a former generation. They give full credence to tales of prophetic warnings given to mortals in dreams, and profess to interpret the meaning of remarkable visions, whether for good or for evil. This sisterhood also keep a general supervision of the conduct of the good people of their immediate neighborhood. They can inform you of the age, personal appearance, present circumstances, and future prospects of every male and female within their circuit. No stranger can remain in the place twenty-four hours without having his character, and the nature of his business, thoroughly investigated, and duly reported to the people of the neighborhood. They are the constant attendants of protracted religious gatherings, sowing societies, and tea parties, and good pious souls, they will attend to every body’s business but their own. They are the fountain from whence springs all the scandal of the place, and the active agents for its circulation—and wo be to him or her who is, perhaps innocently, the subject of their regards. The members of this sisterhood are peculiar for the suavity of their hearing—for elongated visages, sharp noses, thin lips—and for usually wearing “spectacles on nose.”
[2] Let those remarks by no means be understood as reflecting censure upon the sincere worship of God, as taught and practised by the meek and lowly Jesus. All honor, and praise, and glory to such religion. But a system of pretence at present usurps dominion over the human soul. In the place of true piety sits a monster not less hideous than damnable: this is the thousand faced giant, Hypocrisy. There is a market for all religion now-a-days—and men preach and pray, with the love of God on their lips and the love of Mammon in their hearts. The pulpit has become an engine for increasing in riches. How long is it since the sainted and gifted Pierpont was thrust from the Hollis Street Church, in Boston, for opposing the devilish traffic of the bloated rum-seller? Pouring honied phrases into the ears of heartless capitalists, at the rate of $4000 a year, has grown into a trade! Raising a breeze to extort enormous sums of money from the credulous, to be lavished on the construction of immense piles of stone, each surmounted by a bell and weathercock, is but another mode of swindling. Not less than twelve hundred millions of dollars have been filched from the earnings of the poor, to rear the churches now standing in the United States. Were this amount expended in the amelioration of plundered humanity, how much joy and peace would reign where now are hideous want, dark crime, and hopeless death!
The church establishment is at this time the bulwark of Slavery in the United States.
Oh, not for the organization of such a wicked machinery came our Savior into the world! Not so did he teach by example! By the sea-shore he made disciples, among the rude fishermen; by the water fount he taught the maiden to draw from the well of immortality; out on the hill-top he proclaimed his mission of love and salvation. But now the money-changers are again in the temple. Civilisation has practically set at naught the maxims of Christ, and made the house of God a “den of thieves.” The modern church is the mother of more of the privations daily experienced by the poor and destitute (from which is born the Mystery of Iniquity) than any other extorting invention of Mammon. Privations, did we say? No. “Privation” (in the language of Sue) “poorly expresses that continuous and terrible destitution—the want of every thing which is necessary to clothe that life which God has given, with common comfort. Mortification would more suitably express the total absence of that security which society, equitably organized, owes—yes, actually owes—to every honest laborer, inasmuch as poverty, through civilization, has deprived these of any right to that soil which God made a free legacy to all. The savage does not enjoy the benefits of civilization—but he has at least the beasts of the forest, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, whereon to feed—and the great woods to warm and shelter him. The civilized poor man, whom civilization has disinherited of these gifts of God, has a right to demand, in return for the hard labor by which he enriches the world, a remuneration which will procure the permanent comforts of life.”
[3] This mysterious paper is now in the Author’s possession. Much curiosity has been manifested to examine it, and the enterprising proprietors of the Boston Museum have recently offered a liberal amount for its purchase. The author returns his grateful acknowledgements for the flattering compliment intended for him in their note, but he is, and ever will be, unwilling that this document, (sacred, no less than singular,) containing, as it does, most wonderfully verified predictions, should be exposed to the vulgar curiosity of the mob.
[4] Speaking of things suavitous, it strikes us that the following, clipped from a late number of the Daily Mail, is something rich in the way of squash luxuriance:
“Mr. Robert Hamilton.—To the enterprise, tact, and discretion of this gentleman, the efficient stage-manager of the National Theatre, much of the success of this favorite establishment is to be ascribed. His well-known literary fame, and his merits as an actor, have acquired for him a deserved popularity.”
Bear always in mind that the game of a literary quack is to sound the trumpet of his own fame, since no one else will. There is potency in a free ticket, a beef steak, or a gin-sling! Either of these will at any time secure plenty of space in the columns of such an ephemeral, penny concern as the Mail. It is not surprising that the corporation which contains the ‘immortal part’ of Mr. Robert Hamilton should swell with the self-complacency of its tenant! Of a truth, Oh Fame, thy trumpet is of ‘sounding brass,’ and, though thou makest ‘the judicious grieve,’ yet, with thine every blast, thou givest fresh occasion for the open-mouthed wonder of ‘the groundlings!’ When is this self-puffing surfeit to have an end?
[5] It is no unusual thing at the South to see the son of a slaveholder going to a slave-auction, for the purpose of buying a beautiful and accomplished female, (whom slavery condemns to the shambles of vice,) to be appropriated to his sensual gratification. Many of these young men are not more than sixteen years old when their parents allow them to begin these hellish practices. Nay, more than this: Young men often go into the cotton and rice fields, in the open day, and commit acts of the most revolting libertinism on the helpless girls, who are compelled to labor fifteen hours a day, under the rays of a Southern sun. One of the “noblest mothers of Virginia,” in 1844, purchased three attractive mulatto females, and placed them in a cottage near the family mansion, for the exclusive use of an only son—assigning as a reason why she did it, that it would “make Charley steady!” Is there a God in heaven?