d of ice. Another such winter, and I shall die, as one
of my own humming-birds would die, did you cage him here, and prevent
him from fleeing home to the sunny South when the first leaves begin
to fall. Dear children of the sun! my heart goes forth to them; and
the whir of their wings is music to me, for it tells me of the South,
the glaring South, with its glorious flowers, and glorious woods, its
luxuriance, life, fierce enjoyments--let fierce sorrows come with
them, if it must be so! Let me take the evil with the good, and live
my rich wild life through bliss and agony, like a true daughter of the
sun, instead of crystallising slowly here into ice, amid countenances
rigid with respectability, sharpened by the lust of gain; without
taste, without emotion, without even sorrow! Let who will be the
stagnant mill-head, crawling in its ugly spade-cut ditch to turn the
mill. Let me be the wild mountain brook, which foams and flashes over
the rocks--what if they tear it?--it leaps them nevertheless, and goes
laughing on its way. Let me go thus, for weal or woe! And if I sleep
awhile, let it be like the brook, beneath the shade of fragrant
magnolias and luxuriant vines, and image, meanwhile, in my bosom
nothing but the beauty around.

"Yes, my friend, I can live no longer this dull chrysalid life, in
comparison with which, at times, even that past dark dream seems
tolerable--for amid its lurid smoke were flashes of brightness. A
slave? Well; I ask myself at times, and what were women meant for
but to be slaves? Free them, and they enslave themselves again, or
languish unsatisfied; for they must love. And what blame to them
if they love a white man, tyrant though he be, rather than a
fellow-slave? If the men of our own race will claim us, let them prove
themselves worthy of us! Let them rise, exterminate their tyrants, or,
failing that, show that they know how to die. Till then, those who are
the masters of their bodies will be the masters of our hearts. If they
crouch before the white like brutes, what wonder if we look up to him
as to a god? Woman must worship, or be wretched. Do I not know it?
Have I not had my dream--too beautiful for earth? Was there not one
whom you knew, to hear whom call me slave would have been rapture; to
whom I would have answered on my knees, Master, I have no will but
yours! But that is past--past. One happiness alone was possible for a
slave, and even that they tore from me; and now I have no tho