Page:William Wells Brown - The Escape Or, A Leap for Freedom; a Drama in Five Acts.pdf/51

 White. Yes, I am a stranger here.

2d Loun. Where mout you come from, ef it's a far question?

White. I am from Massachusetts.

3d Loun. I say, cuss Massachusetts!

1st Loun. I say so too. There is where the fanatics live; cussed traitors. The President ought to hang 'em all.

White. I say, landlord, if this is the language that I am to hear, I would like to go into a private room.

Barkeeper. We ain't got no private room empty.

1st Loun. Maybe you're mad 'bout what I said 'bout your State. Ef you is, I've only to say that this is a free country, and people talks what they please; an' ef you don't like it, you can better yourself.

White. Sir, if this is a free country, why do you have slaves here? I saw a gang at the door, as I came in.

2d Loun. He didn't mean that this was a free country for niggers. He meant that it's free for white people. And another thing, ef you get to talking 'bout freedom for niggers, you'll catch what you won't like, mister. It's right for niggers to be slaves.

White. But I saw some white slaves.

1st Loun. Well, they're white niggers.

White. Well, sir, I am from a free State, and I thank God for it; for the worst act that a man can commit upon his fellow-man, is to make him a slave. Conceive of a mind, a living soul, with the germs of faculties which infinity cannot exhaust, as it first beams upon you in its glad morning of existence, quivering with life and joy, exulting in the glorious sense of its developing energies, beautiful, and brave, and generous, and joyous, and free,—the clear pure spirit bathed in the auroral light of its unconscious immortality,—and then follow it in its dark and dreary passage through slavery, until oppression stifles and kills, one by one, every inspiration and aspiration of its being, until it becomes a dead soul entombed in a living frame!

3d Loun. Stop that; stop that, I say. That's treason to the country; that's downright rebellion.

Barkeeper. Yes, it is. And another thing,—this is not a meeting-house.

1st Loun. Yes, if you talk such stuff as that, you'll get a chunk of cold lead in you, that you will.