Page:Anti-slavery and reform papers by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/23

12 went off with the smoke." So, too, of the time-serving journals, which, in the heat of this contest between freedom and slavery, could deliberately subordinate the claims of justice to the claims of expediency. "When I have taken up this paper," says Thoreau, in reference to a Boston publication, "I have heard the gurgling of the sewer through every column."

Philosophical indifferentism, it will be seen, finds little place in these "Anti-Slavery Papers." Could the following passage, for example, have possibly been written by one who was selfishly indifferent to the duties of citizenship and humanity? "I have lived for the last month—and I think that every man in Massachusetts capable of the sentiment of patriotism must have had a similar experience—with the sense of having suffered a vast and indefinite loss. I did not know at first what ailed me. At last it occurred to me that what I had lost was a country. I had never respected the Government near to which I lived; but I had foolishly thought that I might manage to live here, minding my private affairs, and forget it. For my own part, my old and worthiest pursuits have lost I cannot say how much of their attraction; and I feel that my investment in life here is worth many per cent, less since Massachusetts last deliberately sent back an innocent man, Anthony Burns, to slavery."

It has been said by more than one critic that Thoreau was devoid of pity. It is instructive, in this connection, to read the words of one who happened to be present in the house of Thoreau's father on an occasion when a fugitive slave was in concealment there. "I sat and