36. A Solemn Satire on Whipping Children
If there is one of you here that ever expect to whip your child again, let me ask you something. Have your photograph taken at the time, and let it show your face red with vulgar anger, and the face of the little one with eyes swimming in tears. If that little child should die I cannot think of a sweeter way to spend an Autumn afternoon than to take that photograph and go to the cemetery, where the maples are clad in tender gold, and when little scarlet runners are coming, like poems of regret, from the sad heart of the earth; and sit down upon that mound, I look upon that photograph, and think of the flesh, made dust, that you beat. Just think of it. I could not bear to die in the arms of a child that I had whipped. I could not bear to feel upon my lips, when they were withering beneath the touch of death, the kiss of one that I had struck.
37. The Whips and Gods are Gone!
Children are better treated than they used to be; the old whips and gods are out of the schools, and they are governing children by love and sense. The world is getting better; it is getting better in Maine. It has got better in Maine, in Vermont. It is getting better in every State of the North.
INDIVIDUALITY
38. Absolute Independence of the Individual
What we want to-day is what our fathers wrote. They did not attain to their ideal; we approach it nearer, but have not yet reached it. We want, not only the independence of a state, not only the independence of a nation, but something far more glorious—the absolute independence of the individual. That is what we want. I want it so that I, one of the children of Nature, can stand on an equality with the rest; that I can say this is my air, my sunshine, my earth, and I have a right to live, and hope, and aspire, and labor, and enjoy the fruit of that labor, as much as any individual, or any nation on the face of the globe.