of the whole that each part should have its healthful life?  The whole exists but by the glow within its parts.  Shall we become dead members of a sickly soul?  God forbid! but sister planets revolving in their orbits about one central Idea, which is Freedom by Cooeperation.  To each her own life, varied, rich, complete, and her communal life, large with service rendered and received!  Each bound to other and to that central Thought by primal law, but each a sovereign orb, grave mistress of her own affairs!  Slavery!  Ay, I will give you that though you want it not!  Slavery is abominable.  There is a tree that grows in the tropics which they call the upas tree.  All who lie in the shadow of its branches fall asleep, and die sleeping.  To-day we lie under the upas tree—­would that we were awake!  I have heard that—­in the tropics—­the sons sometimes hew down that which the fathers have planted.  I would that it were so in Virginia!  Freedom of thought, of speech, and of pen.  I will away with this cope of lead, this Ancient Authority, which is too often an Ancient Iniquity.  Did it not have once a minority? was it not once a New Thought?  Is not a man’s thought to-day as potent, holy, and near the right as was his great-grandfather’s thought which was born in a like manner, of the brain of a man, in a modern time?  I will think freely and according to reason.  When it seems wise to tell my mind I will speak; and with judgment I will write down my thought; and fear no man’s censure.  Knowledge!  I was a poor boy, and I strove for learning, strove hard, and found it worth the striving.  I know the hunger, and I know the rage when one asks for knowledge and asks in vain.  Is it not a shameful thing that happy men, lodged warm and clear in the Interpreter’s house, should hear the groping in the dark without, know that their fellows are searching, in pain and with shortness of breath, for the key which let the fortunate in, and make no stir to aid those luckless ones?  Give of your abundance, or your abundance will decay in your hands and turn to that which shall cause you shuddering!

His words went on, magnetic as the man.  He spoke for an hour, coming at the last to a consideration of those particular questions which hung in Virginian air.  He dealt with these ably, and he subtly conciliated those of his audience who might differ with him.  None could have called him flatterer, but when he ceased to speak his hearers, feeling for themselves a higher esteem, had for him a reflex glow.  It was what he could always count upon, and it furthered his fortunes.  Now they crowded about him, and it was late before, pleading the fatigue of his journey, he could escape from their friendly importunity.  At last, it being towards midnight and the moon riding high, the neighbouring planters and their guests got to saddle and, after many and pressing offers of hospitality to Rand and his wife, galloped off to home and bed.  The commonalty and the hangers-on faded too into the darkness, and the folk who were sleeping at the inn took their candles and said good-night.  All was suddenly quiet,—­a moonlit crossroads in Virginia, tranquil as the shaven fields and the endless columns of the pine.