me; and ever since they have redoubled their kindness:
but it is intolerable, this dependence, and on you,
too, who have a father to support in his darkness.
Oh, how I feel for you! But to tell you the truth,
I pay a price for this dependence. I must needs
be staid and sober; I must needs dress like any Quakeress;
I must not read this book nor that; and my Shelley—taken
from me, I suppose, because it spoke too much ‘Liberty,’
though, of course, the reason given was its infidel
opinions—is replaced by ‘Law’s
Serious Call.’ ’Tis all right and
good, I doubt not: but it is very dreary; as dreary
as these black fir-forests, and brown snake fences,
and that dreadful, dreadful Canadian winter which
is past, which went to my very heart, day after day,
like a sword of ice. Another such winter, and
I shall die, as one of my own humming-birds would
die, did you cage him here, and prevent him from fleeing
home to the sunny South when the first leaves begin
to fall. Dear children of the sun! my heart goes
forth to them; and the whir of their wings is music
to me, for it tells me of the South, the glaring South,
with its glorious flowers, and glorious woods, its
luxuriance, life, fierce enjoyments—let
fierce sorrows come with them, if it must be so!
Let me take the evil with the good, and live my rich
wild life through bliss and agony, like a true daughter
of the sun, instead of crystallising slowly here into
ice, amid countenances rigid with respectability,
sharpened by the lust of gain; without taste, without
emotion, without even sorrow! Let who will be
the stagnant mill-head, crawling in its ugly spade-cut
ditch to turn the mill. Let me be the wild mountain
brook, which foams and flashes over the rocks—what
if they tear it?—it leaps them nevertheless,
and goes laughing on its way. Let me go thus,
for weal or woe! And if I sleep awhile, let it
be like the brook, beneath the shade of fragrant magnolias
and luxuriant vines, and image, meanwhile, in my bosom
nothing but the beauty around.
“Yes, my friend, I can live no longer this dull
chrysalid life, in comparison with which, at times,
even that past dark dream seems tolerable—for
amid its lurid smoke were flashes of brightness.
A slave? Well; I ask myself at times, and what
were women meant for but to be slaves? Free them,
and they enslave themselves again, or languish unsatisfied;
for they must love. And what blame to them if
they love a white man, tyrant though he be, rather
than a fellow-slave? If the men of our own race
will claim us, let them prove themselves worthy of
us! Let them rise, exterminate their tyrants,
or, failing that, show that they know how to die.
Till then, those who are the masters of their bodies
will be the masters of our hearts. If they crouch
before the white like brutes, what wonder if we look
up to him as to a god? Woman must worship, or
be wretched. Do I not know it? Have I not
had my dream—too beautiful for earth?
Was there not one whom you knew, to hear whom call
me slave would have been rapture; to whom I would
have answered on my knees, Master, I have no will but
yours! But that is past—past.
One happiness alone was possible for a slave, and
even that they tore from me; and now I have no thought,
no purpose, save revenge.