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Show 96 THE GOLDEN IlOUR. as a snake its skin, this integument, whose spots were galaxies. As long as the skin is alive and adjusted to its move-ment, the snake tears it onward; but when a newer one has been formed underneath, the snake pauses, contracts, and the olcl skin shrivels; one full-length stretch, and it is left in the path. Onward by the perfect law the living essence of Society moves al o : the customs, creeds, institutions, of any age are the spots of its V"aricgated skin. Bright and beautiful arc these scales 'vhen vital and necessary. Presently they get rusty, and must be shed. Then all the living forces contract, and the old is cast. Nothing not dead can ever be sloughed off. Revolutions such as Christianity, Protestantism, that which secured American Independence, that which is now abolishing Slavery, are the successive shrivellings of the rusty cuticle, as the living body of Society moves onwaru. The former status of this country can never be restored, more than a snake can creep back into and inhabit the skin it has shed on the way-side. But, reader, have you not in your life found some poor snake still partially fettered to its " body of death," -snake in motionless distress, which, having stretched out from its shrivelled skin, must needs stretch back and wait? The last state of that snake is 'vorse than the first for a time. In this revolution we may got free. But if we do not, before any truce comes, cast the old Slavery-skin A POSSIBLE BABYLON. 97 of this nation, we shall O'O bacl D . • . . b t c or a wlnlc lnto a stat of thu1gs winch oven the De mocrats would huddoer to behold. If, now that laYer d F ~ Y an 1 recdon1 arc b the nc\v power opened for the :fi ·t . ' Y . ' Ir tJ nlc left to the chOice of the A1nerican people ' tll ey s1 l a 1I dch.b cratcly selccL Slavery, Slavery they will O'Ot .tl . c Wl l a vcn()"cancc ' For tlnngs would have to be \vorsc t b b b • . o c otter. We should ·w1tness a rule of SlaverY so gaI I.I ng and fear-ful, that the North would be scou , d . t .. 1 go In o a revolution Th. ere i. no t. Patrick who can ··d 1 . · 11 t us land of old-hne Dc1nocrats. N O\v a no the tl . . n 1cre IS a cry that the Den1ocraL1c party i.· dcn.cl . a d ·r .t . ( ' 11 1 l were not in league \VILh the Devil ' if bullet· cou ld k.11 1 I. t I.t would have been dead Ion o- ao-o 1 1 ' V ,. " tl ~ b . n a p ay called " The d anlpJ I e, . lC voracwus sucker in humall sl 1 apc, w1 10 raws the hfe out of fair vir()'ins wl ·r t tl . • . • . b u s 1cy sleep, Is Iepeatcdly sla1n, but 111 dyino· he 1 . b a ways makes a p1a thetic request to have hi corlJSC put at s.o me certai. n pace,- a place where the Inoonlio·ht w'll I k f: 11 · o 1 , 1c nows, a upon. It. Whenever tho Inooulight touches this Vha. mpyro In. hu.m an shape ' he revive~... . No w, tlu .s moon-s l~le- ~Inch IS a coin promise between night and day -. ls a fair symbol of that which never fails to rcsus~ Itate Democracy. No matter how dead you may fancy lt, you h_ave only to heed its last dying request for a c.omp.ro~nse, and under that moonshine its resuscitatiOn 1s 1nevitable. Th: very delay in dealing with Sla\cry has furnished sufficlCnt Inoon hine, not to say lunacy, to stir the 5 G |