The Norton Anthology of American Literature

1. Piecing together or guessing about someone else's life by the things they leave behind is an intriguing business. The removal of the first volume from the bookcase revealed numerous blue and yellow tags attached to the pages of the book. Opening the tagged pages, one could see copious written notes as well as the text. Was it the master or the mistress of the house who studied American Literature and where? Interesting.

2. The page fell open on the beginning of a narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, who had made his escape from a southern prison-house of bondage. He was asked to speak at an Abolitionist meeting. He apologised for his ignorance and reminded the audience that slavery was a poor school for the human intellect and heart. When he had finished the writer rose and declared that Patrick Henry of revolutionary fame, never made a speech more eloquent in the cause of liberty, than the one the audience had just listened to from the lips of that hunted fugitive.

3. Another page falls upon letters from an American Farmer, letter 3 What is an American? He begins 'I wish I could be acquainted with the feelings and thoughts which must agitate the heart and present themselves to the mind of an enlightened Englishman, when he first lands on this continent. He must greatly rejoice that he lived at a time to see this fair country discovered and settledl he must necessarily feel a share of national pride. when he views the chain of settlements which embellishes these extended shores. When he says to himself this is the work of my countrymen, who, when convulsed by factions, afflicted by a variety of miseries and wants, restless and impatient, took refuge here. They brought along their national genius'.

4. And the reminder of the Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The cruel penal punishment in those harsh days. 'On one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threhold was a wild rose-bush, covered in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him'.

5. Walt Whitman 'When I read the book' There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. They may wait awhile... perhaps a generation or two ...dropping off in degrees. A superior breed shall take their place ... the gangs of kosmos and prophets en masse shall take their place.
A new order shall arise, and they shall be the priest of man, and every man shall be his own priest. The churches built under their umbrage shall be the churches of men and women.'