"I do, and I came back to remind you of the unrighteousness of your laws, and to warn you to repent!" "Are you still a Quaker?" "I am still reproachfully so called." "Tomorrow at nine o'clock I order that you shall be hanged." "This sounds like something you said before!" "Lead her away--away, I say!" At nine the next morning a vast crowd covered the Common, the shops and stores being closed, by order, for a holiday. Mr. Wilson again attended the culprit. "Mary Dyer, Mary Dyer!" he called in a loud voice as they stood together on the scaffold. "Mary Dyer, repent, oh, repent, and renounce your heresies!" And Mary Dyer answered, "Nay, man; I am not now to repent, knowing nothing to repent of!" "Shall I have the men of God pray for you?" She looked about curiously, half-smiled, and said, "I see none here." "Will you have the people pray for you?" "Yes; I want all the people to pray for me!" Again the light was shut out from her eyes, this time forever. Her hands were bound behind her with thongs that cut into her wrists, her feet were tied. She reeled, and the Reverend Mr. Wilson kindly supported her. The noose was adjusted. "Let us all pray!" said the Reverend Mr. Wilson. So they hanged Mary Dyer in the morning. JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU When the service of the public ceases to be the principal concern of the citizens, and they would rather discharge it by their purses than their persons, the State is already far on the way to ruin. When they should march to fight, they pay troops to fight for them and stay at home; when they should go to council, they send deputies and remain away; thus, in consequence of their indolence and wealth, they in the end employ soldiers to enslave their country, and representatives to sell it. So soon as a citizen says, What are State Affairs to me? the State may be given up for lost. --_Rousseau_ [Illustration] Who is the great man? Listen, and I will tell you: He is great who feeds other minds. He is great who inspires others to think for themselves. He is great who tells you the things you already know, but which you did not know you knew until he told you. He is great who shocks you, irritates you, affronts you, so that you are jostled out of your wonted ways, pulled out of your mental ruts, lifted out of the mire of the commonplace. That writer is great whom you alternately love and hate. That writer is great whom you can not forget. Certainly, yes, the man in his private life may be proud, irritable, rude, crude, coarse, faulty, absurd, ignorant, immoral--grant it all, and yes be great. He is not great on account of these things, but in spite of them. The seeming inconsistencies and inequalities of his nature may contribute to his strength, as the mountains and valleys, the rocks and woods, make up the picturesqueness of the landscape.