t?

I tried several times to write a letter to Dorothy. I could not find the
exact thing I wanted to say, or the words with which to express it. What
should I say? Should I urge Dorothy to a marriage with me? Should I
attempt to argue down her misgivings? Should I tell her that I would
return to Jacksonville and send Zoe away? Should I write Dorothy that I
relinquished any hope of making her my wife? I wrote letters of these
various imports and then destroyed them. A kind of paralysis was upon my
thinking. And then I would leave my room and wander into the streets,
visit the cafes, and find temporary forgetfulness in lively scenes and
gay faces.

And one night when I was in the French quarter at dinner I became alert
to the conversation of two men sitting at a near table. They spoke
familiarly to each other, almost as brothers. But I sensed that they had
been separated for some time. At last one of them made references to
France and England, and I concluded that he had been abroad. Both were
typical planters, with goatees and broad hats, coats of elegant material
but widely and loosely tailored. As I followed their words almost the
whole condition of America unfolded itself to my understanding.

The tenor of the talk was concerning cotton, the demand for it abroad
and at home, and the effect that that demand had upon the South and the
whole social and political life of America. Within thirty years past all
the Northern States but Delaware had abolished slavery. What would have
kept slavery alive after all except for the cotton gin and Eli Whitney,
what but England's great machinery development for spinning and weaving,
which made the demand for cotton more and more?

The demand! Where there is a demand it must be supplied, and everything
must give way to the processes of furnishing that supply: land, slavery,
what not. Then there are general references to life and to labor. After
all, all labor is slavery they say. Apprentices, farm hands, factory
workers are slaves. All this struggling mass of toilers must, in the
fate of life, be consumed in the great drama of furnishing clothes and
food and roofs for those who can pay. But cotton needs more land. And is
not the territory of the United States, the great commons and domains of
all the states, North and South, to be used by them for their several
and common benefit, for the intromission of property: slaves or cattle
or utensils? It seems to me, now that I hear these