New England -- Fiction; New England -- Politics and government -- Fiction
It is pleasant to know that there were people in the world who could
snub Miss Sadler; and there could be no doubt, from the manner in which
she laid the letter down and took up the clippings, that Miss Sadler
felt snubbed: equally, there could be no doubt that the revenge
would fall on other shoulders than Mr. Duncan's. And when Miss Sadler
proceeded to read the clippings, her hair would have stood on end with
horror had it not been so efficiently plastered down. Miss Sadler seized
her pen, and began a letter to Mrs. Merrill. Miss Sadler's knowledge of
the proprieties--together with other qualifications--had made her school
what it was. No Cynthia Wetherells had ever before entered its sacred
portals, or should again.
The first of these clippings was the article containing the arraignment
of Jethro Bass which Mr. Merrill had shown to his wife, and which had
been the excuse for Miss Penniman's call. The second was one which Mr.
Duncan had clipped from the Newcastle Guardian of the day before,
and gave, from Mr. Worthington's side, a very graphic account of the
conflict which was to tear the state asunder. The railroads were tired
of paying toll to the chief of a band of thieves and cutthroats, to a
man who had long throttled the state which had nourished him, to--in
short,--to Jethro Bass. Miss Sadler was not much interested in the
figures and metaphors of political compositions. Right had found
a champion--the article continued--in Mr. Isaac D. Worthington of
Brampton, president of the Truro Road and owner of large holdings
elsewhere. Mr. Worthington, backed by other respectable property
interests, would fight this monster of iniquity to the death, and
release the state from his thraldom. Jethro Bass, the article alleged,
was already about his abominable work--had long been so--as in mockery
of that very vigilance which is said to be the price of liberty. His
agents were busy in every town of the state, seeing to it that the
slaves of Jethro Bass should be sent to the next legislature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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