Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/243

 interest which the thieves and pick-pockets of a great city always have in civil tumult and confusion, may now and then succeed in exciting the young, the ignorant, the thoughtless, and the depraved, to acts of violence in favor of tyranny. But so congenial to the human heart is the love of freedom, that it bums not brighter in the souls of sages and of heroes, than in the bosoms even of the most ignorant and thoughtless, when not quenched by some excited prejudice, base passion, or sinister influence.

In my previous wanderings about the town, I had discovered the road that led northwardly out of it; and I soon turned in that direction, determined to shake off from my feet, the very dust of a city, where I had been so near falling back again into the wretched condition of servitude.

I travelled all that day, — and at night, the inn-keeper, at whose house I lodged, told me that I was in the state of Connecticut. I now pursued my flight for several days, through a fine hilly and mountainous country, such as I had never seen before. The nobleness of the prospect, the craggy rocks, and rugged hills, contrasted finely with the excellent cultivation of the valleys, and the universal thrift and industry of the inhabitants. Where freedom nerves the arm, it is in vain that rocks and hills of granite, oppose the labors of the cultivator. Industrious liberty teaches him the art to extract comfort, competence, and wealth from a soil the most unwilling and ungrateful.

I knew that Boston was the great sea-port of New England; and thither I directed my steps, resolved to leave a land however otherwise inviting, whose laws would not acknowledge me a freeman. As I approached the town, the country lost much of its picturesque and hilly grandeur; but this was made up for by the greater beauty of its smoother and better cultivated fields; and by the pretty dwellings scattered so numerously along the road, that the environs of the town seemed almost a continued village. The city itself, seated on hills, and seen for a considerable distance, gave a noble termination to the prospect.

I crossed a broad river, by a long bridge, and soon entered the town; but I did not stop to examine it. Liberty was too precious to be sacrificed to the gratification of an