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The plump hand of the lady with the Roman nose still rested on her lap; it had been recased in its black glove with large white stitching. Her frowning gaze was fixed on him suspiciously, as if he had outraged her sense of decency. "He did n't get anything from me," said the voice of the red-faced man, ending a talk on tax-gatherers. The train whistled loudly, and Shelton reverted to his paper.
The city of New York will cling to the Union to the last; while she will look upon the last hour of its existence as we would upon the setting sun if we were never to see it more, yet when the call for force comes let it come when it may no man will ever pass the boundaries of the city of New York for the purpose of waging war against any State of this Union which, through its constituted authorities and sustained by the voice of its people, solemnly declares its rights, its interests, and its honor demand that it should seek safety in a separate existence.... The city of New York is now a subjugated dependency of a fanatical and puritanical State government that never thinks of the city except to send its tax-gatherers among us or to impose upon us hateful officials, alien to our interests and sympathies, to eat up the substance of the people by their legalized extortions.... Nothing has prevented the city of New York from asserting her right to govern herself, except that provision of the Federal Constitution which prohibits a State from being divided without its own consent.... When that restraint shall no longer exist, when the obligation of those constitutional provisions, which forbid the division of a State without its own consent, shall be suspended, then I tell you that imperial city will throw off the odious government to which she now yields a reluctant allegiance; she will repel the hateful cabal at Albany, which has so long abused its power over her, and with her own flag sustained by the courage and devotion of her own gallant sons, she will, as a free city, open wide her gates to the civilization and commerce of the world.
Born to a throne; weak, stupid, ignorant, almost, as his meanest slave; chief of a vast royalty, yet the puppet of his Premier and the obedient child of a tyrannical mother; a man who sits upon a throne the beck of whose finger moves navies and armies who holds in his hands the power of life and death over millions yet who sleeps, sleeps, eats, eats, idles with his eight hundred concubines, and when he is surfeited with eating and sleeping and idling, and would rouse up and take the reins of government and threaten to be a sultan, is charmed from his purpose by wary Fuad Pacha with a pretty plan for a new palace or a new ship charmed away with a new toy, like any other restless child; a man who sees his people robbed and oppressed by soulless tax-gatherers, but speaks no word to save them; who believes in gnomes and genii and the wild fables of The Arabian Nights, but has small regard for the mighty magicians of to-day, and is nervous in the presence of their mysterious railroads and steamboats and telegraphs; who would see undone in Egypt all that great Mehemet Ali achieved, and would prefer rather to forget than emulate him; a man who found his great empire a blot upon the earth a degraded, poverty-stricken, miserable, infamous agglomeration of ignorance, crime, and brutality and will idle away the allotted days of his trivial life and then pass to the dust and the worms and leave it so!
There were many inhabitants who were earnest and sincere Catholics, and who therefore considered themselves safe from the hangman's hands, while there were none who could hope to escape the gripe of the new tax-gatherers. Yet the Governor was not the man to be daunted by the probable unpopularity of the measure. Courage he possessed in more than mortal proportion.
Snagsby are in her eyes as achievements of Raphael or Titian. Guster has some recompenses for her many privations. Mr. Snagsby refers everything not in the practical mysteries of the business to Mrs. Snagsby. She manages the money, reproaches the tax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on Sundays, licenses Mr. Snagsby's.
Many cahiers ask for elective municipal or village authorities. Many would sweep away the old officers of the crown, the intendants and military governors, the farmers general, and the very clerks. These men were hated as tax-gatherers, and distrusted as members of the old ring which had misgoverned the country.
He consorted with centurions and tax-gatherers, and advised the Jews to render unto Roman Caesar the things which were his: which meant, chiefly, the tribute. Instead of supporting the national religion, as anyone with half an eye to his interests would have done, he did surprising things in the temple with a whip of small cords. "Here," said they, "let us crucify this damned fellow!"
He caused the Cacique of Cempoalla a man so fat and gross, that, like "the little round belly" of Santa Claus, he "shook like a jelly" so that the Spaniards called him "The Trembler" actually to raise his hand against the tax-gatherers and imprison them.
To enjoy nature the soul must be free—free not only from tax-gatherers, but from sin; for every wrongful act awakes, out of the mysterious bosom of Nature herself, its own peculiar serpent, having its own peculiar stare, but always hungry and bloody-fanged, which follows the delinquent’s feet whithersoever they go, gliding through the dewy grass on the brightest morning, dodging round the trees on the calmest eve, wriggling across the brook where the wrongdoer would fain linger on the stepping-stones to soothe his soul with the sight of the happy minnows shooting between the water-weeds—following him everywhere, in short, till at last, in sheer desperation, he must needs stop and turn, and bare his breast to the fangs; when, having yielded up to the thing its fill of atoning blood, Nature breaks into her old smile again, and he goes on his way in peace.
Because of it, Abdalla's command to the crowd to leave had been easier of acceptance. Their hunger had made them dangerous. Danger was in the air. The tax-gatherers had lately gone their rounds, and the agents of the Mouffetish had wielded the kourbash without mercy and to some purpose.
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