Page 36 - SampleIssue

KING PELLINORE’S LITERARY MAGAZINE

child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred
to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names
very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is
what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is
against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all
opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral
but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to
badges and names, to large societies and dead
institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual
affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go
upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If
malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that
pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of
Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from
Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, 'Go love thy
infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and
modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard,
uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for
black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at
home.' Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but
truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your
goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. The
doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction
of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun
father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius
calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post,
Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but
we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to
show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then,
again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my
obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they
my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I
grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men
as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.
There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity
I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need
be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the
education at college of fools; the building of meeting-

36