238 ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS
John Brown Goes to His Reward
HE stepped out of gaol with a bright serene countenance, holding
his head like a victorious hero going to his reward. Close to the
door stood a Negro woman with a child in her arms.
Good-bye, Captain, said his cell companion, I know you are going
to a better land.
I know I am, said Brown.
As his eye fell on the soldiers he straightened himself up proudly,
As they ascended a little eminence the scaffold broke upon his sight]
but it did not cause him even a nutter of fear. His eye roamed over
the landscape tracing the dim outline of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
" This is a beautiful country," he said. At the foot of the scaffold he
was assisted out of the waggon, and turning to the mayor and others,
he said, " Gentlemen, good-bye," and walked with firm step and erect
frame up the scaffold steps.
The sheriff asked, Shall I give you a handkerchief and let you
drop it as a signal ? and he said No ; I am ready at any time, hut do
not keep me needlessly waiting.
Virginia refused this last request of John Brown, and for ten
minutes he was kept while the military, among them John Wilkes
Booth, the murderer of Lincoln, went through a series of aimless
evolutions until the civilians began to cry Shame.
John Brown was buried at the foot of a rock about fifteen yards
from his door. " Blow ye the trumpet, blow," the hymn with which
he lulled his little ones to sleep, was sung around his grave. Then
Wendell Phillips spoke :
How feeble words seem here ! How can I hope to utter what your
hearts are full of! I fear to disturb the harmony which his life
breathes round this home. One and another of you, his neighbours,
say, " I have known him five years," " I have known him ten years."
It seems to me as if we had none of us known him. How our
admiring, loving wonder has grown, day by day, as he has unfolded
trait after trait of earnest, brave, and tender Christian life ! We see
him walking with radiant, serene face to the scaffold, and think what
an iron heart, what a devoted faith ! We take up his letters and
this iron heart seems all tenderness. Marvellous old man ! Your
neighbour farmer went, surrounded by his household, to tell the
slaves there were still hearts and right arms ready and nerved for
their service.
He has abolished slavery in Virginia. History will date Virginian
Emancipation from Harper's Ferry.
True, the slave is still there. So, when the tempest uproots a
pine on our hills, it looks green for months, a year or two. Still, it is