Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/382

Rh subject, and treat it with a power which should pierce through bone and marrow, should reduce all the prudential maxims of statesmen to dust and ashes, and create a revolution even in the old widely-praised constitution itself. It is the right of the woman; it is the right of the mother, which suffers most severely through slavery. And if the heart of the woman and the mother would throb warmly and strongly with maternal life's blood, I am convinced that the earth, the spiritual earth of the United States, must quake thereby and overthrow slavery!

Often when I have heard the adventures of fugitive slaves, their successful escape or their destruction, and have thought of the scenery of America, and of those occurrences which naturally suggest themselves on “the way of the North Star,” I have had a wish and a longing desire to write the history of a fugitive pair, so as it seems to me, it ought to be written, and I have been inclined to collect materials for that purpose. And if I lived by this river, and amid these scenes, I know for what object I should then live. But as it is I am deficient in local knowledge. I am not sufficiently acquainted with the particular detail of circumstances which would be indispensable for such a delineation, which ought to be true, and take a strong hold upon the reader. That office belongs to others beside myself. I will hope for and expect—the American mother.

Ohio is called “the Buck-eye State,” from the brown fruit of a kind of chesnut called the buck-eye, which is very general throughout the State. The State is said to possess a fertile soil, good for grain and the rearing of cattle, and pastorally beautiful scenery, although not of a magnificent character. Both this State and Kentucky are renowned for their fine trees. I regret that the season of the year does not permit of my seeing more of their beauty and of the country; of that rich country which