rits, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so
suddenly called home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in
tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment they overthrew
all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile; and I heavily walked
up-stairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down them.

"Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery," said I, "still thou
art a bitter draft; and tho thousands in all ages have been made to
drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. 'Tis thou,
thrice sweet and gracious goddess," addressing myself to liberty,
"whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful,
and ever will be so, till Nature herself shall change; no tint of
words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chemic power turn thy scepter into
iron; with thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is
happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious
Heaven!" cried I, kneeling down upon the last step but one in my
ascent, "grant me but health, thou great bestower of it, and give me
but this fair goddess as my companion, and shower down thy miters, if
it seem good unto thy divine providence, upon those heads which are
aching for them."

The bird in his cage pursued me into my room. I sat down close to my
table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself
the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and so I
gave full scope to my imagination. I was going to begin with the
millions of my fellow creatures born to no inheritance but slavery;
but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring
it near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but
distract me, I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in
his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door to
take his picture. I beheld his body half-wasted away with long
expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the
heart it was which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer I
saw him pale and feverish; in thirty years the western breeze had not
once fanned his blood; he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time,
nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice;
his children--but here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go
on with another part of the portrait. He was sitting upon the ground
upon a little straw, in the furthest corner of his dungeon, which was
alternat