his brow! Bloody and brief the fight. "He has it!" cried the people: "habet! habet!" But still he lowered not his arm, until, at length, I held him, gashed and fainting, in my power. I looked around upon the Podium, where sat your senators and men of state, to catch the signal of release or mercy. But not a thumb was reversed. To crown your sport, the vanquished man must die! Obedient brute that I was, I was about to slay him, when a few hurried words— rather a welcome to death than a plea for life—told me he was a Thracian. I stood transfixed. The arena vanished. I was in Thrace, upon my native hills! The sword dropped from my hands. I raised the dying youth tenderly in my arms. O, the magnanimity of Rome! Your haughty leaders, enraged at being cheated of their death-show, hissed their disappointment, and shouted, "Kill!" I heeded them as I would heed the howl of wolves. Kill him?—They might have better asked the mother to kill the babe, smiling in her face. Ah! he was already wounded unto death; and, amid the angry yells of the spectators, he died. That night I was scourged for disobedience. Should memory fail, there are scars here to quicken it. I shall not forget it. Well; do not grow impatient. Some hours after, finding myself, with seventy fellow gladiators, alone in the amphitheater, the laboring thought broke forth in words. I said -I know not what. I only knew that, when I ceased, my comrades looked each other in the face and then burst forth the simultaneous cry-" Lead on! Lead on, O Spartacus!" Forth we rushed, -seized what rude weapons chance threw in our way, and to the mountains speeded. There, day by day, our little band increased. Disdainful Rome sent after us a handful of her troops, with a scourge for the slave Spartacus. Their weapons soon were ours. She sent an army; and down from Old Vesuvius we poured, and slew three thousand. Now it was Spartacus the dreadful rebel! A larger army, headed by the Prætor, was sent, and routed; then another still. And always I remembered that In And now fierce cry, riving my heart, and calling me to kill! three pitched battles have I not obeyed it? affrighted Rome sends her two consuls, and puts forth all her strength by land and sea, as if a Pyrrhus or a Hannibal were on her borders! Envoys of Rome! To Lentulus and Gellius bear this message: "Their graves are measured!"' Look on that narrow stream, a silver thread, high on the mountain's side! Slenderly it winds, but soon is swelled by others meeting it, until a torrent, terrible and strong, it sweeps to the abyss, where all is ruin! So Spartacus comes on! So swells his force,―small and despised at first, but now resistless! On, on to Rome we come! The gladiators come! Let Opulence tremble in all his palaces! Let Oppression shudder to think the oppressed may have their turn! Let Cruelty turn pale at thought of redder hands than his! O! we shall not forget Rome's many lessons. She shall not find her training was all wasted upon indocile pupils. the Eternal City for our games! Now, begone! Prepare AGAINST THE FUGITIVE-SLAVE LAW Born By THEODORE PARKER, Preacher, Reformer, Lecturer, Author. at Lexington, Mass., 1810; died at Florence, Italy, 1860. From a sermon preached in Boston, Mass., November 28, 1850. See Parker's "Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons," published in 1852 by Wm. Crosby and H. P. Nichols, Boston, Mass. Come with me, my friends, a moment more, pass over this Golgotha of human history, treading reverent as you go, for our feet are on our mothers' graves, and our shoes defile our fathers' hallowed bones. Let us not talk of them; go farther on, look and pass by. Come with me into the inferno of the nations, with such poor guidance as my lamp can lend. Let us disquiet and bring up the awful shadows of empires buried long ago, and learn a lesson from the tomb. Come, old Assyria, with the Ninevitish dove upon 66 "I fell by my thy emerald crown! what laid thee low?” cwn injustice. Thereby Nineveh and Babylon came with me also to the ground."-" O, queenly Persia, flame of the nations, wherefore art thou so fallen, who troddest the people under thee, bridgedst the Hellespont with ships, and pouredst thy temple-wasting millions on the world?" Because I trod the people under me, and bridged the Hellespont with ships, and poured my temple-wasting millions on the western world, I fell by my own misdeeds. —“Thou muse-like Grecian queen, fairest of all thy classic sisterhood of states, enchanting yet the world with thy sweet witchery, speaking in art and most seductive song, why liest thou there, with beauteous yet dishonored brow, reposing on thy broken harp ?" "I scorned the law of God; banished and poisoned wisest, justest men; I loved the loveliness of thought, and treasured that in more than Parian speech. But the beauty of justice, the loveliness of love, I trod them down to earth! Lo, therefore have I become as those barbarian states-as one of them! "O, manly and majestic Rome, thy sevenfold mural crown all broken at thy feet, why art thou here? It was not injustice brought thee low; for thy great book of law is prefaced with these words-justice is the unchanged, everlasting will to give each man his right! It was not the saint's ideal; it was the hypocrite's pretense. I made iniquity my law. I trod the nations under me. Their wealth gilded my palaces— where thou mayest see the fox and hear the owl-it fed my courtiers and my courtesans. Wicked men were my cabinet counselors, the flatterer breathed his poison in my ear. Millions of bondsmen wet the soil with tears and blood. Do you not hear it crying yet to God? Lo, here have I my recompense, tormented with such downfall as you see! Go back and tell the new-born child who sitteth on the Alleghanies, laying his either hand upon a tributary sea, a crown of thirty stars upon his youthful brow-tell him that there are rights which States must keep, or they shall suffer wrongs! Tell him there is a God who keeps the black man and the white, and hurls to earth the loftiest realm that breaks his just, eternal law! Warn the young empire, that he come not down dim and dishonored to my shameful tomb! Tell him that justice is the unchanging, everlasting will to give each man his right. I knew it, broke it, and am lost. Bid him know it, keep it, and be safe." A MESSAGE FROM THE SOUTH By BOOKER TALIAFERRO WASHINGTON, Educator, Principal of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Born a slave near Hale's Ford, Va., in 1857 or 1858. From an address delivered at the unveiling of the Shaw Monument, Boston, Mass., May 31, 1897. See Harvard Graduates' Magazine, Sept. 1897. If that heart could throb and if those lips could speak, what would be the sentiment and words that Robert Gould Shaw would have us feel and speak at this hour? He would not have us dwell long on the mistakes, the injustice, the criticisms of the days "Of storm and cloud, of doubt and fears That 'cross the eternal sky must lower, He would have us bind up with his own undying fame and memory, and retain by the side of his monument, the name of John A. Andrew, who, with clear vision and strong arm, helped make the existence of the Fifty-fourth Regiment possible; and that of George L. Stearns, who, with hidden generosity and a great, sweet heart, helped to turn the darkest hour into day, and in doing so freely gave service, fortune, and life itself to the cause which this day commemorates. Nor would he have us forget those brother officers, living and dead, who, by their baptism in blood and fire, in defense of Union and freedom, gave us an example of the highest and purest patriotism. But an occasion like this is too great, too sacred for mere individual eulogy. The individual is the instrument, national virtue the end. That which was three hundred years being woven into the warp and woof of our democratic institutions could not be effaced by a single battle, magnificent as was that battle; that which for three centuries had bound master and slave, yea, North and South, to a body of death, could not be blotted out by four years of war, could not be atoned for by shot and sword nor by blood and tears. Not many days ago, in the heart of the South, in a large gathering of the people of my race, there were heard from ¡many lips praises and thanksgiving to God for His goodness in setting them free from physical slavery. In the midst of that assembly a Southern white man arose, with gray hair and trembling hands, the former owner of many slaves, and from his quivering lips there came the words: "My friends, you forget in your rejoicing that in setting you free God was also good to me and my race in setting us free." But there is a higher and deeper sense in which both races must be free than that represented by the bill of sale. The black man who cannot let love and sympathy go out to the white man is but half free. The white man who would close the shop or factory against a black man seeking an opportunity to earn an honest living is but half free. The white man who retards his own development by opposing a black man is but half free. The full measure of the fruit of Fort Wagner and all that this monument stands for will not be realized until every man covered by a black skin shall, by patience and natural effort, grow to that height in industry, property, intelligence, and moral responsibility where no man in all our land will be tempted to degrade himself by withholding from his black brother any opportunity which he himself would possess. Until that time comes this monument will stand for effort, not victory complete. What these heroic souls of the Fiftyfourth Regiment began we must complete. It must be completed not in malice, not narrowness; nor artificial progress, nor in efforts at mere temporary political gain, nor in abuse |