In none of these efforts did she avow herself. She
shrank from the honors which solicited her, though the world knew that
they came from her just as the world knows that moon and planets shine
with the reflected light of a hidden sun. But now, when thus assailed,
she resolved to speak personally and for herself. And so, sitting in her
cell, she wrote in concealment and sent out by trusty hands, in cantos,
that autobiography in which she appealed to posterity, and by which
posterity has been convinced. She traced her career from earliest
childhood down to the very brink of the grave into which she was
looking. Her intellectual, affectional and mental history are all there
written with a hand as steady and a mind as serene as though she were at
home, with her baby sleeping in its cradle by her side. Here are found
history, philosophy, political science, poetry, and ethics as they were
received and given out again by one of the most receptive and imparting
minds ever possessed by woman. She knew that husband, home, child, and
friends were not for her any more, and that very soon she was to see the
last of earth from beside the headsman and from the block, and yet she
turned from all regret and fear, and summoned the great assize of
posterity, "of foreign nations and the next ages," to do her justice.
There was no sign of fear. She looked as calmly on what she knew she
must soon undergo as the spirit released into never-ending bliss looks
back upon the corporeal trammels from which it has just earned its
escape.
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