Who
can be serene in a country where both the rulers and the ruled are
without principle? The remembrance of my country spoils my walk. My
thoughts are murder to the State, and involuntarily go plotting
against her.
But it chanced the other day that I scented a white water-lily,
and a season I had waited for had arrived. It is the emblem of purity.
It bursts up so pure and fair to the eye, and so sweet to the scent,
as if to show us what purity and sweetness reside in, and can be
extracted from, the slime and muck of earth. I think I have plucked
the first one that has opened for a mile. What confirmation of our
hopes is in the fragrance of this flower! I shall not so soon
despair of the world for it, notwithstanding slavery, and the
cowardice and want of principle of Northern men. It suggests what kind
of laws have prevailed longest and widest, and still prevail, and that
the time may come when man's deeds will smell as sweet. Such is the
odor which the plant emits. If Nature can compound this fragrance
still annually, I shall believe her still young and full of vigor, her
integrity and genius unimpaired, and that there is virtue even in man,
too, who is fitted to perceive and love it. It reminds me that
Nature has been partner to no Missouri Compromise. I scent no
compromise in the fragrance of the water-lily. It is not a Nymphaea
Douglasii. In it, the sweet, and pure, and innocent are wholly
sundered from the obscene and baleful.
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