All the world over, the man who has not got the thing, obtains it,
on one pretense or another, of the man who has--and, in nine cases out
of ten, the pretense is a false one. What! your pockets are full, and
my pockets are empty; and you refuse to help me? Sordid wretch! do you
think I will allow you to violate the sacred obligations of charity
in my person? I won't allow you--I say, distinctly, I won't allow you.
Those are my principles as a moral agriculturist. Principles which admit
of trickery? Certainly. Am I to blame if the field of human sympathy
can't be cultivated in any other way? Consult my brother agriculturists
in the mere farming line--do they get their crops for the asking? No!
they must circumvent arid Nature exactly as I circumvent sordid
Man. They must plow, and sow, and top-dress, and bottom-dress, and
deep-drain, and surface-drain, and all the rest of it. Why am I to be
checked in the vast occupation of deep-draining mankind? Why am I to be
persecuted for habitually exciting the noblest feelings of our common
nature? Infamous!--I can characterize it by no other word--infamous! If
I hadn't confidence in the future, I should despair of humanity--but I
have confidence in the future.
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