Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/128

Rh first given to the world! It is a terrible crime to be by God constituted differently from those who see light in the same thought you do, yet feel the pulses of manhood throbbing in your veins;—and sure to be hated on that account. I am a ; and not less than twelve strains of blood rush through my veins, yet have I ever met insult all the way along of life, because I dared to be myself! But triumphantly have I done that same thing, "and all despite my good Lords Cardinal," from the early days till now,—Selah! For the fault of the Infinite, if fault it was, to make me of an unfashionable cast, have I been almost crucified, and have suffered, as it were, a thousand deaths. For the Madagascan tinge on my cheek, not its volcanic fires in my soul—Fires which held the cowards at bay for five and thirty years—have I been doubly wronged, by these and them and those, who, when help was needed, gladly availed them of my brain and speech and pen, to devoutly damn me when the fights were won! Driven by the flaming sword of mean prejudice from all noble occupation and employment, by those whose pallor, alone, not Soul, or Honor or Manhood, or nobility of character, made them strong, and gave them warrant to invade my rights, and darkly slander me,—and invariably behind my back! lacking manly courage to do it to my face,—cowards, all, whom I felt and feel were, and are, as far beneath me as the floor of space is below the loftiest Turret of the Immeasurable Temple wherein God resides! Attacked with bitter and envious malignity, ever without the chance of reply,—by tongue and pen,—still I survived; and—despite them all. Treated more like a beast of the jungle than a human being; they exhausted all logic trying to prove me a nobody,—themselves the only real thinkers; and in seeking to justify their own outrage, really vindicated me! They thought it better to denounce and slay me, than to afford me a fair, free field to contest in the matter of Mind!—heaping abuse and contumely on me all the while, yet what availed it all? I became a Power in the world! What are they? I took to Mirrorology, and they did not like it, because it enabled me to laugh their isms and practice to utter scorn!—just where and as, I hold them to and in this hour! But their hostilities—in all these years