Great Throughts Treasury

"We are the earth his word must sow like wheat and, if it finds no earth, it cannot grow. We are his earth, the mortal and the dying, led by no star ? the sullen and the slut, the thief, the selfish man, the barren woman, who have betrayed him once and will betray him, forget his words, be great a moment's space under the strokes of chance, and then sink back into our small affairs. And yet, unless we go, his message fails."

"We heard the shots in the night but nobody knew next day what the trouble was and a man must go to his work. So I didn't see him for three days, then, and me near out of my mind and all the patrols on the streets with their dirty guns and when he came back, he looked drunk, and the blood was on him."

"When gods war with gods, they use weapons we do not know. It was fire falling out of the sky and a mist that poisoned. It was the time of the Great Burning and the Destruction. They ran about like ants in the streets of their city ? poor gods, poor gods!"

"When the first wrong was done to the first Indian, I was there. When the first slaver put out for the Congo, I stood on her deck. Am I not in your books and stories and beliefs, from the first settlements on? Am I not spoken of, still, in every church in New England? 'Tis true the North claims me for a Southerner and the South for a Northerner, but I am neither. I am merely an honest American like yourself ? and of the best descent ? for, to tell the truth, Mr. Webster, though I don't like to boast of it, my name is older in this country than yours."

"Where first two men spread wings for flight and dared the hawk afar."

"Why should I lie about it? I am a priest and the son of a priest. If there are spirits, as they say, in the small Dead Places near us, what spirits must there not be in that great Place of the Gods? And would not they wish to speak? After such long years? I know that I felt myself drawn as a fish is drawn on a line. I had stepped out of my body ? I could see my body asleep in front of the cold fire, but it was not I. I was drawn to look out upon the city of the gods."

"You will have money and all that money can buy."