"See, yonder is a plain, miles in extent. In its centre there stands an obelisk. Go, Ministers of State, and plant on its top a banner, upon which shall be emblazoned this magic sentence: 'Freedom—Personal, Political, and Social, to the Black man—and protection of his Rights forever,' and there will be more magnetic power in it than in ten thousand Ministers, with their little whims; ten thousand 'Fancy Generals,' with their 'pretty little games,'—and such would be History's record when she handed you down the ages. If you would live in the sacred page, and have your names shine brightly, act, act at once, cut the cords that now bind the Black man. Say to him: 'Come as a man, not as a chattel! Come with me to Enfranchisement and Victory! Let us save the Nation!' and the swift-winged winds will bear the sound from pole to pole, from sea to sea, and from continent, island, and floating barks, from hills, valleys, and mountains, from hut, hovel, and dismal swamps, will come a vast and fearful host, in numbers like unto the leaves of the forest; and they will gather in that plain around that obelisk, rallying around that banner, and before their victorious march Rebellion will go down as brick walls before the storm of iron; and if France, or England, or Austria, or all, combine against them—they, too, will go out of the battle, nevermore to enter it again.
"This is possible destiny! Think of it, O Ministers of State!
"And so the fearful spectre in Tom Clark's room had its origin then and there—had been created by the morning's wicked thought—a creature fashioned by their human wills, and drawing its vitality from their life and pulses—drawing its very soul from out those two beating human hearts. Tell me not that I am painting a picture, limning the creature of a distorted fancy. I know better, you know better, we all know that just such hideous creatures, just such monstrosities, move, viewless, daily, up and down the crowded streets of Santa Blarneeo, up and down the streets of the Empire City and Puritanic Boston; but there are crowds of them in Pennsylvania Avenue, and they wear phantom epaulettes upon their spectral shoulders! You and I know that just such and other
"'Monstrous, horrid things that creep
From out a slimy sea,'
exist all over the land—but principally in high places begotten of Treason and lust of Gold.
"Soon the lips began to move; it spoke: 'Father! mother! I am yet weak; be quick; make me strong! feed me; I am hungry; give me blood—hot streams—great gouts of blood! It is well. Kill, poison, die; it is well! Ha! ha! It is well; ho! ho!' and then the Thing began to dissolve into a filmy mist, until at last only the weight of its presence was felt, for it floated invisibly but heavily through the room, and, except the gleam—the fiery gleam of its solitary eye—nothing else of it was discernible.
"Ten minutes elapsed after it had found voice, and faded away, when suddenly a fleecy cloud that had for some time past obscured the sky in the direction of Hesper, shutting out her silvery smiles, broke away, and permitted her beams and those of the moon to once more enter the chamber and flood it with a sheeted silver glory—the room where still lingered the hateful Thing, and where still slept the woman and the man.
"Simultaneously with this auspicious event there came sighing over the landscape, the musical notes of such a song as only seraphs sing—came over the wastes like the mystical bells that I have heard at sunset often while sailing on the Nile—mystical bells which thousands have heard and marvelled at—soft bells, silvery bells, church bells—bells, however, not rung by human hands. I have often heard them chiming over Egypt's yellow, arid sands, and I believe they are rung by angel hands on the other side of Time. And such a sound, only sweeter, came floating o'er the lea, and through the still air into the little chamber. Was it a call to the angels to join in prayer—midnight prayer, for the sinful souls of men? But it came. Low it was, and clear; pure it was, and full of saintly pity, like unto the dying cadence of the prayer that was prayed by the Sufferer on the stony heights of Calvary; that same Calvary where I have stood within a year, 'midst devout lovers of their Lord, and the jeering scoffs of Mussulmans! And the music came—so sweetly, as if 'twould melt the stony heart of Crime itself. And it proclaimed itself the overture of another act of the eventful drama then and there performing. And see! look there! the curtain rises. Woman, Man, behold! Alas! they slumber insensibly on. Gaze steadily at that upper sash—above it—for it is down; see, the clear space is again obscured by a cloud; but this time it is one of silver, lined with burnished gold, and flecked and edged with amethyst and purple. Look again! What is that at the window? It is a visible music—a glorious sheet of silvery vapor, bright, clear, and glittering as an angel's conscience! It is a broad and glowing mantle of woven gossamer, suffused with rose-blushes, and sprinkled with star-beams; and it flows through the space, and streams into the chamber, bathing all things in holy tremulous light, soft, sweet, balmy, and pure as the tears of virgin innocence weeping for the early dead! That light! It was just such a light as beamed from your eyes, Woman—beamed from out your soul, when, after your agony, your eye first fell upon the angel you had borne—the man-child whom God gave to your heart a little while ago; just such a light as flashed fitfully from your soul, and fell upon the cradle, O father of the strong and hopeful heart, wherein the little stranger lay; just such light as beamed from your eyes, in pride, and hope, and strange, deep prophecies, as you bent over her languishing form, heartfully pressing her first-born to her dear woman's bosom, when you looked so tenderly, kindly, lovingly down through her eyes into her spirit—the true heart beating for you and it, beneath folded—contentedly folded, arms—contented, too, through all the deep anguish, such, O man, as only a woman and a mother can undergo. That light! It was like that which fell upon the babe she had given you, and the great Man-wanting world—given first for its coming uses, and then to Him who doeth all things very well—well, even when He taketh the best part of our souls away, and transplants the slips in His eternal and infinite gardens, across the deep dark gulfs that hide the dead; just such a light as gleamed from her eyes and thine own, when your hearts felt calm and trustful once more, after the great, deep grief billows had rolled over them—grief for the loss of one who stayed but a little while on earth—all too coarse and rough for her—some little, cooing Winnie—like mine—whose soul nestles afar off, on His breast, in the blue sky, and whose body they laid in the cold grave, there in Utica, after they—he—had let her starve, perish sadly for want of proper food and medicine, while I was on the deep—winsome Winnie! child of my soul, gone, lost, but not forever!—just such a light played in that little room as streams from angel eyes when God takes back at the hands of Azrael and Sandalphon, the beautiful angels of Death and of Prayer, the things you had learned to love too well—to forgetfulness of God and all true human duty. But they will give back what they took: they will give back all, more in the clear sunshine of a brighter and a purer day, than these earthly ones of ours!
"And the light streamed through and into the chamber where lay the woman and the man; and it radiated around, and bathed every object in a crystalline luminescence; and it carried a sadness with it—just such a sadness as we feel when parting from those who love us very well; as I felt on the day I parted from ——, Brother of my soul! when we parted at the proud ship's side—the ocean courser, destined to bear me over the steaming seas to Egypt's hoary shrines. It bore a sadness with it like unto that which welled up from my soul, tapping the fountains of friendship—and tears upon its way, in the memorable hour wherein I left the Golden Gate, and began my perilous journey to the distant Orient—across the bounding seas. What an hour!—that wherein our bodies move away, but leave our sorrowing souls behind!