While still a very young girl, I found by chance among some old books tumbled together in a chest in my aunt’s library, a copy of Botta’s History of the American Revolution…From that moment I awoke, as it were, to a new existence…There existed a country consecrated to freedom, in which man might wake to the full knowledge and full exercise of his powers. To see that country was, now at the age of sixteen, my fixed but secret determination…I had absolutely devoured the Italian historian and was in the full tide of ecstasy when a sudden apprehension seized me. Was the whole thing a romance? What had become of the country and the nation? I had never heard of either. A panic terror seized upon me. I flew to examine every atlas in the library. The first was not of recent date and showed no trace of the United States. I opened with trembling hands another and another. At last I saw ‘United States’ marked along the Atlantic coastline of North America. Still, after all, was the story I had read a true one? I now sought carefully among the more modern authors in the library, and found Belsham’s History of George III. Its perusal quieted my apprehensions. My heroes were true men and my land of promise had a local habitation and a name. Francis Wright
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 16:47:47 +0000
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