Whatever Jefferson’s remark was, there has been added to the spectacle at Harper’s Ferry, since his day, a new feature, which, could he have but seen it, must have struck him forcibly, and might perhaps have caused him to say more.

At a lofty point upon the steep wall of Maryland Heights, across the Potomac from the town, far, far up upon the side of the cliff, commanding a view not only of both rivers, but of their meeting place and their joint course below, and of the lovely contours of the Blue Ridge Mountains, fading to smoky coloring in the remote distance, there has, of late years, appeared the outline of a gigantic face, which looks out from its emplacement like some Teutonic god in vast effigy, its huge luxuriant mustaches pointing East and West as though in symbolism of the conquest of a continent.  A blue and yellow background, tempered somewhat by the elements, serves to attract attention to the face and to the legend which accompanies it, but the thing one sees above all else, the thing one recognizes, is the face itself, with its look half tragic, half resigned, yet always so inscrutable:  for it is none other than the beautiful brooding countenance of Gerhard Mennen, the talcum-powder gentleman.

* * * * *

The great story of Harper’s Ferry is of course the John Brown story.  Joseph I.C.  Clarke, writing in the New York “Sun” of Sir Roger Casement’s execution for treason in connection with the Irish rebellion, compared him with John Brown and also with Don Quixote.  The spiritual likeness between these three bearded figures is striking enough.  All were idealists; all were fanatics.  Brown’s ideal was a noble one—­that of freedom—­but his manner of attempting to translate it into actuality was that of a madman.  He believed not only that the slaves should be freed, but that the blood of slaveholders should be shed in atonement.  In “bleeding Kansas” he led the Ossawatomie massacre, and committed cold-blooded murders under the delusion that the sword of the Lord was in his hand.

In October, 1859, Brown, who had for some time been living under an assumed name in the neighborhood of Harper’s Ferry, led a score of his followers, some of them negroes, in a surprise attack upon the Government arsenal at this place, capturing the watchmen and taking possession of the buildings.  It was his idea to get the weapons the arsenal contained and give them to the slaves that they might rise and free themselves.  Before this plan could be executed, however, Brown and his men were besieged in the armory, and here, after a day or two of bloody fighting, with a number of deaths on both sides, he was captured with his few surviving men, by Colonel (later General) Robert E. Lee, whose aide, upon this occasion, was J.E.B.  Stuart, later the Confederate cavalry leader.  Stuart had been in Kansas, and it was he who recognized the leader of the raid as Brown of Ossawatomie.