“You might as well say that you could gather as good grain down in your old swamp that has never been tilled sence the memory of man, as you can in your best wheat field, that has been ploughed, and harrowed, and enriched for year after year. “The old swamp can be made to yield good grain, Josiah Allen, but it has got to be burned over, and drained, and ploughed, and sown with good grain. “There is a Hand that is able to do this, Josiah Allen. And,” sez I, lookin’ off some distance beyend him and Jonesville, “there is a Hand that I believe is a dealin’ with that precious soil in which saints and heroes are made, and where the beauteous flower of freedom blows out. “Has not the South been ploughed with the deep plough of God’s purpose—burned with the lightnin’ of His own meanin’, enriched with the blood of martyrs and heroes? Has not the cries of His afflicted ones rose to the heavens while onbeknown to ’em the chariot of Freedom wuz marchin’ down towards the Red Sea, to go ahead on ’em through the dretful sea of bloodshed and tribulations, while the black clouds of battle riz up and hid the armies of Slavery and Freedom, hid the oppressors and the oppressed? “But the sea opened before ’em, and they passed through on dry land. “Now they are encamped in the wilderness, and the tall, dark shapes of Ignorance and Hereditary Weakness and Vice are a stalkin’ along by their sides, and coverin’ ’em with their black shadows. The stumps are thick in their way. The old trees of Custom and Habit, though their haughty tops may have been cut off a little by the lightnin’ of war, yet the black, solid, onbroken stumps stand thick in their way—so thick they can’t force their way through ’em—and the black mud of Open Enmity, and Arrogance, and Prejudice is on one side of ’em, and on the other the shiftin’, treacherous quicksands of Mistaken Counsel. “Their way is blocked up, and the light is dim over their heads. Religion and Education is the light that is goin’ ahead on ’em; but that piller of fire is some ways ahead of ’em, and its rays are hindered by the branchin’ shadows over their heads. And who will be the Moses to lead ’em out of this wilderness into their own land?” I wuz almost entirely by the side of myself with deep emotions of pity and sympathy and a desire to help ’em, and I felt riz up, too, in my mind—awful riz up—and I spoke out agin, entirely onbeknown to myself: “Who will be the Moses to lead ’em into the Promised Land?” “Wall, it won’t be me,” sez Josiah. “I am goin’ out to bed down the horses.” I wuz took aback, and brung down too sudden from the Mount of Eloquence I had been standin’ on. And I put on my nightcap and went to bed. Now, I don’t spoze you would believe it—most anybody wouldn’t—but the very next mornin’ Josiah Allen resoomed and took up that conversation agin, that I fondly hoped he had thrown down for good when he so suddenly departed to the horse barn.