By Jove, Sir, till common sense is
well mixed up with medicine, and common manhood with theology, and
common honesty with law, _We the people_, Sir, some of us with
nutcrackers, and some of us with trip-hammers, and some of us with
pile-drivers, and some of us coming with a whish! like air-stones out
of a lunar volcano, will crash down on the lumps of nonsense in all of
them till we have made powder of them like Aaron's calf!
If to be a conservative is to let all the drains of thought choke up
and keep all the soul's windows down,--to shut out the sun from the
east and the wind from the west,--to let the rats run free in the
cellar, and the moths feed their fill in the chambers, and the spiders
weave their lace before the mirrors, till the soul's typhus is bred out
of our neglect, and we begin to snore in its coma or rave in its
delirium,--I, Sir, am a _bonnet-rouge_, a red-cap of the barricades, my
friends, rather than a conservative.
----Were you born in Boston, Sir?--said the little man,--looking eager
and excited.
I was not,--I replied.
It's a pity,--it's a pity,--said the little man;--it's the place to be
born in. But if you can't fix it so as to be born here, you can come
and live here.
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