Peculiar: A Tale of the Great Transition

It is a small and somewhat faded room in an unpretending brick house in one of the streets that intersect Broadway, somewhere between Canal Street and the Park. A woman sits at...

DEAR HENRY: You kindly left word for me to write you. I have little of a cheering nature to say in regard to myself. We have moved from the house in Fourteenth Street into a sma...

The poor little lady! First sold by a needy parent to an old man, and then betrayed by her own uncalculating affections to a young one, whose nature had the torpor without the v...

“The providential trust of the South is to perpetuate the institution of domestic slavery as now existing, with freest scope for its natural development. We should at once lift...

“Any slave refusing obedience to any command may be flogged till he submits or dies. Not by occasional abuses alone, but by the universal law of the Southern Confederacy, the ex...

The conversation between the English traveller and the Virginia Doctor of Divinity was brought to a close, and Peek jumped down from the table on which he had been listening, re...

“She is coming, my dove, my dear; She is coming, my life, my fate; The red rose cries, ‘She is near, she is near’; And the white rose weeps, ‘She is late’; The larkspur listens,...

“Pride of race, pride in an ancestry of gentlemen, pride in all those habitudes and instincts which separated us so immeasurably from the peddling and swindling Yankee nation,—a...

“There is a law above all the enactments of human codes,—the same throughout the world, the same in all times: it is the law written by the finger of God on the heart of man; an...

The Pontiac had passed New Madrid on the Mississippi. She was advertised as a first-class high-pressure boat, bound to beat any other on the river in the long run, but with a ca...

“Quite the contrary. I am aware that the enthusiastic Mr. Ruskin maintains that slavery is ‘not a political institution at all, but an inherent, natural, and eternal inheritance...

“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair, Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn-fields And...

“What is the end and essence of life? It is to expand all our faculties and affections. It is to grow, to gain by exercise new energy, new intellect, new love. It is to hope, to...

“So every spirit, as it is more pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure, To habit in, and it more fairly dight With cheerful grace an...

“I care not, Fortune, what you me deny, You cannot rob me of free Nature’s grace; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face.” _Thom...

“Slavery gratifies at once the love of power, the love of money, and the love of ease; it finds a victim for anger who cannot smite back his oppressor, and it offers to all, wit...

The question as to the inheritance of the Aylesford-Berwick property was not decided without a lawsuit. The case was put into the courts, and kept there many months. The heavy l...

“Blessed, are they who see, and yet believe not! Yea, blest are they who look on graves, and still Believe none dead; who see proud tyrants ruling, And yet believe not in the st...

“Because immortal, therefore is indulged This strange regard of deities to dust! Hence, Heaven looks down on Earth with all her eyes; Hence, the soul’s mighty moment in her sigh...

“Hail, year of God’s farming! Hail, summer of an emancipated continent, which shall lay up in storehouse and barn the great truths that were worth the costly dressing of a peopl...

Mrs. Gentry had attired herself in her new spring costume, a feuillemorte silk, with a bonnet trimmed to match, of the frightful coal-hod shape, with sable roses and a bristling...

Children are quick to detect flaws in the genealogy of their associates. School-girls are quite as exclusive in their notions as our grown-up leaders of society. Woe to the cand...

“Sing again the song you sung When we were together young; When there were but you and I Underneath the summer sky. Sing the song, and o’er and o’er, Though I know that nevermor...

“Throw thyself on thy God, nor mock him with feeble denial; Sure of his love, and O, sure of his mercy at last; Bitter and deep though the draught, yet drain thou the cup of thy...

It being too late to take the boat for Natchez, Vance proceeded to the St. Charles. The gong for the fire o’clock ordinary had sounded. Entering the dining-hall, he was about ta...

“Allow slavery to be ever so humane. Grant that the man who owns me is ever so kind. The wrong of him who presumes to talk of owning me is too unmeasured to be softened by kindn...

“According to our living here, we shall hereafter, by a hidden concatenation of causes, be drawn to a condition answerable to the purity or impurity of our souls in this life: t...

“This war’s duration can be more surely calculated from the moral progress of the North than from the result of campaigns in the field. Were the whole North to-day as one man on...

“Loud wind, strong wind, sweeping o’er the mountains, Fresh wind, free wind, blowing from the sea, Pour forth thy vials like streams from airy fountains, Draughts of life to me....

The quadroon made no reply, but gently retired, dressed, and glided out of the house into the open air. On through the yet deserted streets she swiftly passed. A white fog brood...

On being bought at the auction-block by Ratcliff, and introduced into his household, Josephine Volney, the quadroon, had devoted herself to the health of his wife from purely se...

“Whence it is manifest that the soul, speaking in a natural sense, loseth nothing by Death, but is a very considerable gainer thereby. For she does not only possess as much body...

“We can die; And, dying nobly, though we leave behind us These clods of flesh, that are too massy burdens, Our living souls fly crowned with living conquests.” _Beaumont and Fle...

Kenrick found Onslow seated at one of the tables of the large dining-hall and expecting his coming. The chair on his right was tipped over on its fore legs against the table as...

Vance’s plan was to escape down the river in his little steam-tug, and join some one of the blockading fleet of the United States, either at Pass à l’Outre or at the Balize. The...

“They forbore to break the chain Which bound the dusky tribe, Checked by the owner’s fierce disdain, Lured by ‘Union’ as the bribe. Destiny sat by and said, ‘Pang for pang your...

“But thou art fled,... Like some frail exhalation which the dawn Robes in its golden beams,—ah! thou hast fled; The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful, The child of grace and...

Peek’s apprehensions in regard to Ratcliff’s agent, Semmes, were not imaginary. Semmes was of the school in politics and policy of old Mr. Slidell. He did not believe in the vit...

“It is a very obvious principle, although often forgotten in the pride of prejudice and of controversy, that what has been seen _by one pair of human eyes_ is of force to counte...

Yes, Ratcliff had escaped. His temper had not been sweetened by his forced visit to the North. In Fort Lafayette he had for a while given way to the sulks. Then he changed his t...

Three days after his interview with the “remarkable man,” Ratcliff was at Montgomery, Ala. There he telegraphed to Semmes, and received these words in reply: “All safe. On your...

“From Thee is all that soothes the life of man, His high endeavor and his glad success, His strength to suffer and his will to serve: But O, thou bounteous Giver of all good, Th...

The scenes move,—they dispart. The Crescent City, with its squares and gardens filled with verdure, its stately steeples, and its streets lying lower than the river, and protect...

“O Spirit of the Summer time! Bring back the roses to the dells; The swallow from her distant clime, The honey-bee from drowsy cells. Bring back the singing and the scent Of mea...

“Those flashes of marvellous light point to the existence of dormant faculties, which, unless God can be supposed to have _over-furnished_ the soul for its appointed field of ac...

On the evening of the day of the encounter in Charlton’s library, some of the principal persons of our story were assembled in one of the private parlors of the Astor House in N...

The defunct having left no will, administrators of his estate were appointed. These deemed it proper to be guided by the wishes of the widow and the daughter, notwithstanding th...

”_Socrates._ Bury me in any way you please, if you can catch me to bury. Crito obstinately thinks, my friends, I am that which he shall shortly behold dead. Say rather, Crito,—s...

It was that Fourth of July, 1863, when every sincere friend of the Great Republic felt his heart beat high with mingled hope and apprehension. Tremendous issues, which must affe...