Below I publish some verses I wrote thirty years ago, and while I worked
as a common laborer in the lumber woods of Tioga County, Pennsylvania. In
a religious discussion with a pious comrade he quoted Scripture to prove
that the earth and sea shall ultimately give up their dead, and each
individual shall be punished, or blest, according to the deeds committed
while they lived. The more I thought over this horrible picture, the more
I doubted that a God of Love would be so revengeful toward any of his
poor creatures, who are born into ignorance and superstition, and must go
mentally creeping through a life of hunger and pain.