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[265] winds, coils, progresses, now gleaming and flashing beneath the surface, now emerging above the surface of social and political life in America, like a great golden serpent,--a mysterious all-pervading influence, supernal, mythological,--typifying the regeneration of a people.

The Legend is so vast, and moves at such a pace from beginning to end, that no two minds can agree about its details. Yet that Legend is at all points illuminated with the inner light of poetry and religion. It has an artistic unity, it moves like a very complicated sonata; so that we who regard it, somehow see our own souls in it, and draw out of it only what we put into it. The Anti-slavery Legend will reflect the spiritual history of any mind that looks into it; it is a mirror of the soul. It is a sort of thesaurus of moral illustration. The reason is that we were deeply diseased; we were in immense danger; we were covered with scales, and our mind was threatened. Our whole civilization was iridescent with the same poison. But we were healed, we were saved. And in the course of our cure every process and function of health was revealed.

To talk about the present is always difficult.

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