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Poems and Songs by Bj?rnstjerne Bj?rnson

Chapter 1 SUCCESS.

[Published in "A Masque of Poets"

at the request of "H.H.," the author's

fellow-townswoman and friend.]

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne'er succeed.

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host

Who took the flag to-day

Can tell the definition,

So clear, of victory,

As he, defeated, dying,

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph

Break, agonized and clear!

* * *

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Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands

Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands

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<p> <i>Cannibals All!<\/i> got more attention in William Lloyd Garrison's <i>Liberator<\/i> than any other book in the history of that abolitionist journal. And Lincoln is said to have been more angered by George Fitzhugh than by any other pro-slavery writer, yet he unconsciously paraphrased <i>Cannibals All!<\/i> in his House Divided speech. <\/p><p> <\/p><p> Fitzhugh was provocative because of his stinging attack on free society, laissez-faire economy, and wage slavery, along with their philosophical underpinnings. He used socialist doctrine to defend slavery and drew upon the same evidence Marx used in his indictment of capitalism. Socialism, he held, was only \"the new fashionable name for slavery,\" though slavery was far more humane and responsible, \"the best and most common form of socialism.\" <\/p><p> <\/p><p> His most effective testimony was furnished by the abolitionists themselves. He combed the diatribes of their friends, the reformers, transcendentalists, and utopians, against the social evils of the North. \"Why all this,\" he asked, \"except that free society is a failure?\" <\/p><p> <\/p><p> The trouble all started, according to Fitzhugh, with John Locke, \"a presumptuous charlatan,\" and with the heresies of the Enlightenment. In the great Lockean consensus that makes up American thought from Benjamin Franklin to Franklin Roosevelt, Fitzhugh therefore stands out as a lone dissenter who makes the conventional polarities between Jefferson and Hamilton, or Hoover and Roosevelt, seem insignificant. Beside him Taylor, Randolph, and Calhoun blend inconspicuously into the American consensus, all being apostles of John Locke in some degree. An intellectual tradition that suffers from uniformity--even if it is virtuous, liberal conformity--could stand a bit of contrast, and George Fitzhugh can supply more of it than any other American thinker. <\/p>

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I sat on the cold tile floor of our Upper East Side penthouse, staring at the two pink lines until my vision blurred. After ten years of loving Julian Sterling and three years of a hollow marriage, I finally had the one thing that could bridge the distance between us. I was pregnant. But Julian didn't come home with flowers for our anniversary. He tossed a thick manila envelope onto the marble coffee table with a heavy thud. Fiona, the woman he'd truly loved for years, was back in New York, and he told me our "business deal" was officially over. "Sign it," He said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. He looked at me with the cold detachment of a man selling a piece of unwanted furniture. When I hesitated, he told me to add a zero to the alimony if the money wasn't enough. I realized in that moment that if he knew about the baby, he wouldn't love me; he would simply take my child and give it to Fiona to raise. I shoved the pregnancy test into my pocket, signed the papers with a shaking hand, and lied through my teeth. When my morning sickness hit, I slumped to the floor to hide the truth. "It's just cramps," I gasped, watching him recoil as if I were contagious. To make him stay away, I invented a man named Jack-a fake boyfriend who supposedly gave me the kindness Julian never could. Suddenly, the man who wanted me gone became a monster of possessiveness. He threatened to "bury" a man who didn't exist while leaving me humiliated at his family's dinner to rush to Fiona's side. I was so broken that I even ate a cake I was deathly allergic to, then had to refuse life-saving steroids at the hospital because they would harm the fetus. Julian thinks he's stalling the divorce for two months to protect the family's reputation for his father's Jubilee. He thinks he's keeping his "property" on a short leash until the press dies down. He has no idea I'm using those sixty days to build a fortress for my child. By the time he realizes the truth, I'll be gone, and the Sterling heir will be far beyond his reach.

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