Children of the Market Place by Edgar Lee Masters
page 13 of 363 (03%)
page 13 of 363 (03%)
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Sometimes I get tired of the boat. Then I go on land and run along the
path behind the horses. A young woman on her way to Michigan to teach school joins me in these reliefs from the tedium of the boat. We exchange a few words. But I see that I am not old enough for her. I have already observed her in confiding conversation with a man about the age of Yarnell. And soon they go together to trot along the path, to stray off a little into the meadows, or at the base of the picturesque hills.... I am interested in the talk of the passengers, and cannot choose but follow it at times.... One man has been reading the _New Yorker_, printed by H. Greeley and Company. I learn that Horace Greeley is his full name, and he comes in for a berating at the hands of a man with one of the characteristic goatees that I first observed at Castle Garden. The Whigs! I had always associated this party with latitudinarian principles. Now I hear it called a centralist party, a monarchist party. A voluble man, who chews tobacco, curses it as a mask for the old Federalist party, which tried to corrupt America with the British system, after it had failed as a combination of Loyalists to keep America under the dominion of Great Britain.... This is all a maze to me, at least so far as the American application is concerned. Then the man with the goatee assails New England, and calls her the devotee of the soured gospel of envy which covers its wolf face of hate with the lamb's decapitated head of universal brotherhood and slavery abolition. Surely there is much strife in America.... Also again President Jackson, the tariff, and the force bill! And will South Carolina secede from the Union on account of the unjust and lawless tariff? New England tried to secede once when the run of affairs did not suit her. Why not South Carolina, then, if she chooses? Another man is reading a book of poems and talking at intervals to a companion. I hear him say that a Mr. Willis is one of the world's greatest poets. I glance at the book and see the name Nathaniel Parker Willis. Also it seems Willis is the editor |
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