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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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well allow the smallpox to run among them, and think our children would not take it, as to let them be uninstructed and vicious, and think our children will not be affected by that. Yet our laws positively and utterly forbid any efficient general educational system, and they do it wisely, too; for, just begin and thoroughly edu- cate one generation, and the whole thing would be blown sky high. If we did not give them liberty, they would take it.” “And what do you think will be the end of this?” said Miss Ophelia. “I don’t know. One thing is certain,- that there is a mustering among the masses, the world over; and there is a dies iroe coming on, sooner or later. The same thing is working in Europe, in England, and in this country. My mother used to tell me of a millenium that was coming, when Christ should reign, and all men should be free and happy. And she taught me, when I was a boy, to pray, ‘Thy kingdom come.’ Sometimes I think all this sighing, and groaning, and stir- ring among the dry bones foretells what she used to tell me was coming. But who may abide the day of His appearing?” “Augustine, sometimes I think you are not far from the kingdom,” said Miss Ophelia, laying down her knitting, and looking anxiously at her cousin. “Thank you for your good opinion; but it’s up and down with me,- up to heaven’s gate in theory, down in earth’s dust in practice. But there’s the tea-bell,- do let’s go,- and don’t say, now, I haven’t had one downright serious talk, for once in my life.” |
