_"Tom Paine, Infidel."_
... These are the times that try men's souls. The summer
soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis,
shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands
it _now_, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman....
I have as little superstition in me as any man living; but
my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God
Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction,
or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly
and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by
every decent method which wisdom could invent.--"The
Crisis."
I want you to note carefully the title of this chapter. And then I
want you to note still more carefully the quotation with which it
opens. It was the man known far and wide as "the infidel,"--the man
who was denounced by church-goers, and persecuted for his unorthodox
doctrines,--who wrote with such high and happy confidence of a fair, a
just and a merciful God Almighty.
Before me lies a letter from W.M. van der Weyde, the president of the
Thomas Paine National Historical Association. One paragraph meets my
eyes at this moment:
"Paine was, without doubt, the very biggest figure that ever
lived in 'Greenwich Village.' I think, on investigation, you
will realise the truth of this statement."
I have realised it. And that is why I conceive no book on Greenwich
complete without a chapter devoted to him who came to be known as "the
great Commoner of Mankind." He spoke of himself as a "citizen of the
world," and there are many quarters of the globe that can claim a
share in his memory, so we will claim it, too!
It is true that Thomas Paine lived but a short time in Greenwich, and
that the long play of his full and colourful career was enacted before
he came to spend his last days in the Village. But he is none the less
an essential part of Greenwich; his illustrious memory is so signal a
source of pride to the neighbourhood, his personality seems still so
vividly present, that his life and acts must have a place there, too.
The street that was named "Reason" because of him, suggests the
persecutions abroad and at home which followed the writing of that
extraordinary and daring book "The Age of Reason." The name of Mme. de
Bonneville, who chose for him the little frame house on the site which
is now about at 59 Grove Street, recalls his dramatic life chapter in
Paris, where he first met the De Bonnevilles. So, you see, one cannot
write of Thomas Paine in Greenwich, without writing of Thomas Paine in
the great world--working, fighting, pleading, suffering, lighting a
million fires of courage and of inspiration, living so hard and fast
and strenuously, that to read over his experiences, his experiments
and his achievements, is like reading the biographies of a score of
different busy men!
He was born of Quaker parentage, at Thetford, Norfolk, in England, on
January 29, 1737, and pursued many avocations before he found his true
vocation--that of a world liberator, and apostle of freedom and human
rights. One of his most sympathetic commentators, H.M. Brailsford,
says of him:
"His writing is of the age of enlightenment; his actions
belong to romance.... In his spirit of adventure, in his
passion for movement and combat, there Paine is romantic.
Paine thought in prose and acted epics. He drew horizons on
paper and pursued the infinite in deeds."
Let us see where this impulse of romance and adventure led him; it was
into strange enough paths at first!
He was a mere boy--fifteen or sixteen, if I remember accurately--when
the lure of the sea seized him. It is reported that he signed up on a
privateer (the Captain of which was appropriately called Death!),
putting out from England, and sailed with her piratical crew for a
year. This was doubtless adventurous enough, but young Thomas already
wanted adventure of a different and a higher order. He came back and
went into his Quaker father's business--which was that of a staymaker,
of all things! He got his excitement by studying _astronomy_!
Then he became an exciseman--what was sometimes called "gauger"--and
was speedily cashiered for negligence. Anyone may have three guesses
as to his reported next ambition. More than one historian has declared
that he wished to take orders in the Church of England. This is,
however, extremely unlikely. In any case, he changed his mind in time,
and was again taken on as exciseman. Likewise, he was again dismissed.
This time they fired him for advocating higher wages and writing a
pamphlet on the subject. The reform fever had caught him, you
perceive, and he was nevermore free from it, to the day of his death.
He was a brilliant mathematician and an ingenious inventor. Brailsford
says that his inventions were "partly useful, partly whimsical." They
would be, of course. They included a crane, a planing-machine, a
smokeless candle and a gunpowder motor--besides his really big and
notable invention of the first iron bridge.
[Illustration: 59, GROVE STREET. On the site of the house where Thomas
Paine died.]
But that came later. Before leaving England, in addition to his other
and varied occupations, he ran a "tobacco mill," and was twice
married. One wife died, and from the other he was separated. At all
events, at thirty-seven, alone and friendless, with empty pockets and
a letter from Benjamin Franklin as his sole asset, he set sail for
America in the year 1774.
Of course he went to the Quaker City, and speedily became the editor
of the _Pennsylvania Magazine_, through the pages of which he cried a
new message of liberty and justice to the troubled Colonies. He, an
Englishman, urged America to break away from England; he, of Quaker
birth and by heredity and training opposed to fighting, advocated the
most stringent steps for the consummation of national freedom. In that
clear-eyed and disinterested band of men who conceived and cradled our
Republic, Paine stands a giant even among giants.
Many persons believe that it was he who actually composed and wrote
the Declaration of Independence; it is certain that he is more than
half responsible for it. The very soul and fibre and living spirit of
the United States was the soul and fibre and living spirit of Thomas
Paine, and, in the highest American standards and traditions, remains
the same today.
In 1775 he wrote "Common Sense"--the book which was, as one historian
declares, the "clarion call for separation from England," and which
swept the country. Edmund Randolph drily ascribes American
independence first to George III and second to Paine. Five hundred
thousand copies of the pamphlet were sold, and he might easily have
grown rich on the proceeds, but he could never find it in his
conscience to make money out of patriotism, and he gave every cent to
the war fund.
This splendid fire-eating Quaker--is there anything stauncher than a
fighting Quaker?--proceeded to enlist in the Pennsylvania division of
the Flying Camp under General Roberdeau; then he went as aide-de-camp
to General Greene. It was in 1776 that he started his "Crisis," a
series of stirring and patriotic addresses in pamphlet form. General
Washington ordered the first copy read aloud to every regiment in the
Continental Army, and its effect is now history.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox has written of this:
"... Many of the soldiers were shoeless and left bloody
footprints on the snow-covered line of march. All were but
half-hearted at this time and many utterly discouraged.
Washington wrote most apprehensively concerning the
situation to the Congress. Paine, in the meantime (himself a
soldier, with General Greene's army on the retreat from Fort
Lee, New Jersey, to Newark), realising the necessity of at
once instilling renewed hope and courage in the soldiers if
the cause of liberty was to be saved, wrote by campfire at
night the first number of his soul-stirring 'Crisis.'"
It was before Trenton that those weary and disheartened
soldiers,--ragged, barefoot, half frozen and more than half
starved--first heard the words that have echoed down the years:
_"These are the times that try men's souls!"_
They answered that call; every man of them answered Paine's heart cry,
as they took up their muskets again. It was with that immortal
sentence as a war slogan, that the Battle of Trenton was won.
Is it any wonder that in England the "Crisis" was ordered to be burned
by the hangman? It was a more formidable enemy than anything ever
devised in the shape of steel or powder!
A list of Paine's services to this country would be too long to set
down here. The Association dedicated to his memory and honour cites
twenty-four important reasons why he stands among the very first and
noblest figures in American history. And there are dozens more that
they don't cite. He did things that were against possibility. When the
patriot cause was weak for lack of money he gave a year's salary to
start a bank to finance the army, and coaxed, commanded and hypnotised
other people into subscribing enough to carry it. He went to Paris and
induced the French King to give $6,000,000 to American independence.
He wrote "Rights of Man" and the "Age of Reason,"--and, incidentally,
was outlawed in England and imprisoned in France! He did more and
received less compensation for what he did, either in worldly goods or
in gratitude, than any figure in relatively recent history.
America, though--I hear you say!--America, for whom he fought and
laboured and sacrificed himself: she surely appreciated his efforts?
Listen. On his return from Europe, America disfranchised him,
ostracised him and repudiated him, refusing, among other indignities,
to let him ride in public coaches.
So be it. He is not the first great man who has found the world
thankless. Oddly enough, it troubled him little in comparison with the
satisfaction he felt in seeing his exalted projects meet with success.
So that good things were effectually accomplished, he cared not a whit
who got the credit.
In reference to the charges against him of being "an infidel," or
guilty of "infidelity," he himself, with that straightforward and
happy confidence which made some men call him a braggart, wrote:
"They have not yet accused Providence of Infidelity. Yet,
according to their outrageous piety, she (Providence) must
be as bad as Thomas Paine; she has protected him in all his
dangers, patronised him in all his undertakings, encouraged
him in all his ways...."
It is true, as Mr. van der Weyde points out in an article in _The
Truth Seeker_ (N.Y.), that a most extraordinary and beneficent
luck,--or was it rather a guardian angel?--stood guard over Paine. His
narrow escapes from death would make a small book in themselves. I
will only mention one here.
During his imprisonment in the Luxembourg Prison in Paris, Thomas
Paine was one of the many who were sentenced to be guillotined at
that period when the moral temperature of France was many degrees
above the normal mark, and men doled out death more freely than
_sous_. It was the custom among the jailers to make a chalk mark upon
the door of each cell that held a man condemned. Paine was one of a
"consignment" of one hundred and sixty-eight prisoners sentenced to be
beheaded at dawn, and the jailer made the fateful chalk mark upon his
door along with the others, that the guards would know he was destined
for the tumbrel that rolled away from the prison hour by hour all
through the night. _But his door chanced to be open_, so that the
mark, hastily made, turned out to be on the wrong side! When the door
was closed it was inside, and no one knew of it; so the guard passed
on, and Paine lived.
It is interesting but difficult to write about Thomas Paine.
The trouble about him is that his personality is too overwhelming to
be cut and measured in proper lengths by any writer. He does not lend
himself, like lesser historical figures, to continuous or
disinterested narrative. The authors who have been rash enough to try
to tell something about him can no more pick and choose the incidents
of his career that will make the most effective "stuff" than they
could reduce the phenomena of a cyclone or the aurora borealis to a
consistent narrative form.
Thus: One starts to speak of Paine's experiences in Paris, and brings
up in New Rochelle; one endeavours to anchor him in Greenwich, only to
find oneself trailing his weary but stubborn footsteps in the war! And
always and forever, Paine himself persists in crowding out the
legitimate sequence of his adventures. No one can soberly write the
story of his life; one can, at best, only achieve a diatribe or an
apotheosis!
Said he:
"The sun needs no inscription to distinguish him from
darkness."
This quotation might almost serve as a text for the life of Paine,
might it not? And yet--there are people in the world who wear smoked
glasses, through which, I imagine, the sun himself looks not unlike a
muddy splash of yellow paint upon the heavens!
This is a book about Greenwich Village and not a defence of Thomas
Paine. Yet, since the reader has come with me thus far, I am going to
take advantage of his courteous attention for just another moment of
digression. Here is my promise: that it shall take up a small, small
space.
Small insects sting dangerously; and on occasion, a very trivial and
ill-considered word or phrase will cling closer and longer than a
serious or thoughtful judgment. When Theodore Roosevelt called Thomas
Paine "a filthy little Atheist" (or was the adjective "dirty"? I
really forget!) he was very young,--only twenty-eight,--and doubtless
had accepted his viewpoint of the great reformer-patriot from that
"hearsay upon hearsay" against which Paine himself has so urgently
warned us. Of course Mr. Roosevelt, who is both intellectual and
broad-minded, knows better than that today. But it is astonishing how
that ridiculous and unsuitable epithet--(a "trinity of lies" as one
historian has styled it)--has stuck to a memory which I am sure is
sacred to any angels who may be in heaven!
"Atheist" is a word which could be applied to few men less suitably
than to Paine. From first to last, he preached the goodness of God,
the power of God, the justice and mercy and infallibility of God; and
he lived in a profound trust in and love for God, and a hopeful and
courageous effort to carry out such principles of moral and national
right-doing as he believed to be the will of his beloved Creator.
"If this," as one indignant enthusiast exclaimed, "is to be an
Atheist, then Jesus Christ must have been an Atheist!"
As incongruous as anything else, in the judgment of Paine, is the fact
that he has, apparently, been adopted by the pacifists. The pacifists
and--Paine!--Paine who never in all his seventy years was out of a
scrap! They could scarcely have chosen a less singularly unfit guiding
star, for Paine was a confirmed fighter for anything and everything he
held right. And his militancy was not merely of action but of the
soul, not only of policy or necessity but of spiritual conviction.
When even Washington was inclined to submit patiently a bit longer, it
was Paine who lashed America into righteous war. He fought for the
freedom of the country, for the abolition of slavery, for the rights
of women; he fought for old-age pensions, for free public schools, for
the protection of dumb animals, for international copyright; for a
hundred and one ideals of equity and humanity which today are
legislature. And he fought with his body and his brain; with his
"flaming eloquence" and also with a gun! Once let him perceive the
cause to be a just one, and--I know of no more magnificently
belligerent a figure in all history.
And yet note here the splendid, the illuminating paradox: Paine
abhorred war. Every truly great fighter has abhorred war, else he were
not truly great. In 1778, in the very thick of the Revolution, he
wrote solemnly:
"If there is a sin superior to every other, it is that of wilful and
offensive war.... He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole
contagion of hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death." (A
copy of this, together with the President's recent message, might
advantageously be sent to a certain well-known address on the other
side of the world!) Yet did Paine, with this solemn horror of war,
suggest that the United States stop fighting? No more than he had
suggested that they keep out of trouble in the first place. Paine
hated war in itself; but he held war a proper and righteous means to
noble ends.
Consistency is not only the bugbear of little minds; it is also the
trade-mark of them. Paine also detested monarchies. "Some talent is
required to be a simple workman," he wrote; "to be a king there is
need to have only the human shape." Of Burke, he said: "Mr. Burke's
mind is above the homely sorrows of the vulgar. He can feel only for a
king or a queen.... He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying
bird."
Yet when he was a member of that French Assembly that voted King
Louis to death, he fought the others fiercely,--even though unable to
speak French,--persistently opposing them, with a passionate
determination and courage which came near to costing him his life.
For, as Brailsford says, "The Terror made mercy a traitor."
Are these things truly paradoxes, or are they rather manifestations of
that God-given reason which can clearly see things as they are as well
as things as they should be, and see both to good and helpful purpose?
In 1802 Paine returned to America, just sixty-five years old. He had
suffered terribly, had rendered great services and it was at least
reasonable that he should expect a welcome. What happened is tersely
told by Rufus Rockwell Wilson:
"When, at the age of sixty-five, he came again to the nation
he had helped to create, he was met by the new faces of a
generation that knew him not, and by the cold shoulders,
instead of the outstretched hands, of old friends. This was
the bitter fruit of his 'Age of Reason,' which remains of
all epoch-making books the one most persistently misquoted
and misunderstood; for even now there are those who rate it
as scoffing and scurrilous, whereas its tone throughout is
noble and reverent, and some of the doctrines which it
teaches are now recognised as not inimical to religion."
Brailsford, of a more picturesque turn of phrase, says that
"slave-owners, ex-royalists, and the fanatics of orthodoxy" were
against him, and adds:
"... The grandsons of the Puritan Colonists who had flogged
Quaker women as witches denied him a place on the
stage-coach, lest an offended God should strike it with
lightning."
The state of New York, in a really surprising burst of generosity,
presented him a farm in New Rochelle, and then, lest he imagine the
Government too grateful, took away his right to vote there. They
offered the flimsy excuse that he was a French citizen,--which, of
course, he wasn't,--but it was all part of the persecution inspired by
organised bigotry and the resentful conservative interests which he
had so long and so unflaggingly attacked.
And so at last to Greenwich Village! Though I cannot engage that we
shall not step out of it before we are through.
Thomas Paine was old and weary with his arduous and honourable years
when he came to live in the little frame house on Herring Street, kept
by one Mrs. Ryder.
John Randel, Jr., engineer to the Commissioners who were at work
re-cutting New York, has given us this picture of Paine:
"I boarded in the city, and in going to the office almost
daily passed the house in Herring Street" [now No. 309
Bleecker Street] "where Thomas Paine resided, and frequently
in fair weather saw him sitting at the south window of the
first-story room of that house. The sash was raised, and a
small table or stand was placed before him with an open book
upon it which he appeared to be reading. He had his
spectacles on, his left elbow rested upon the table or
stand, and his chin rested between thumb and fingers of his
hand; his right hand lay upon his book, and a decanter next
his book or beyond it. I never saw Thomas Paine at any other
place or in any other position."
In this house Paine was at one time desperately ill. It was said that
the collapse was partly due to his too sudden abstinence from
stimulants. He was an old man then, and had lived with every ounce of
energy that was in him. The stimulants were resumed, and he grew
somewhat better. This naturally brings us to the question of Paine as
an excessive drinker. Of course people said he was; but then people
said he was a great many things that he was not. When his enemies grew
tired of the monotony of crying "Tom Paine, the infidel," they cried
"Tom Paine, the drunkard" instead.
Which recalls a story which is an old one but too applicable not to be
quoted here.
It is said that some official--and officious--mischief-maker once came
to Lincoln with the report that one of the greatest and most
distinguished of Federal generals was in the habit of drinking too
much.
"Indeed?" said Lincoln drily. "If that is true, I should like to send
a barrel of the same spirits to some of my other generals."
If Thomas Paine did drink to excess--which seems extremely
doubtful--it's a frightful and solemn argument against Prohibition!
Mrs. Ryder's house where Paine lived was close to that occupied by his
faithful friend Mme. de Bonneville and her two sons. Paine was devoted
to the boys, indeed the younger was named for him, and their visits
were among his greatest pleasures. And, by the bye, while we are on
the subject, the most scurrilous and unjust report ever circulated
against this great man was that which cast a reflection upon the
honourable and kindly relations existing between him and Mme. de
Bonneville.
In the first place, Paine had never been a man of light or loose
morals, and it is scarcely likely that he should have changed his
entire character at the age of three score and ten. Mme. de
Bonneville's husband, Nicholas, was a close friend of Paine in Paris,
and had originally intended to come to America with Paine and his
family. But, as the publisher of a highly Radical paper--the _Bien
Informe_--De Bonneville was under espionage, and when the time came he
was not permitted to leave France. He confided his wife and children
to his friend, and they set sail with his promise to follow later. He
did follow, when he could--Washington Irving tells of chatting with
him in Battery Park--but it was too late for him to see the man who
had proved himself so true a friend to him and his.
The older De Bonneville boy was Benjamin, known affectionately by his
parents and Paine as "Bebia." He was destined to become distinguished
in the Civil War--Gen. Benjamin de Bonneville, of high military and
patriotic honours.
I said we couldn't keep to Greenwich--we have travelled to France and
back again already!
You may find the house if you care to look for it--the very same house
kept by Mrs. Ryder, where Thomas Paine lived more than a century ago.
So humble and shabby it is you might pass it by with no more notice
than you would pass a humble and shabby wayfarer. Its age and
picturesqueness do not arrest the eye; for it isn't the sort of old
house which by quaint lines and old-world atmosphere tempt the average
artist or lure the casual poet to its praise. It is just a little old
wooden building of another day, where people of modest means were wont
to live.
The caretaker there probably does not know anything about the august
memory that with him inhabits the dilapidated rooms. He doubtless
fails to appreciate the honour of placing his hand upon the selfsame
polished mahogany stair rail which our immortal "infidel's" hand once
pressed, or the rare distinction of reading his evening paper at the
selfsame window where, with his head upon his hand, that Other was
wont to read too, once upon a time.
Ugly, dingy rooms they are in that house, but glorified by
association. There is, incidentally, a mantelpiece which anyone might
envy, though now buried in barbarian paint. There are gable windows
peering out from the shingled roof. [Illustration: GROVE COURT]
Some day the Thomas Paine Association will probably buy it, undertake
the long-forgotten national obligation, and prevent it from crumbling
to dust as long as ever they can.
The caretaker keeps pets--cats and kittens and dogs and puppies. Once
he kept pigeons too, but the authorities disapproved, he told me.
"Ah, well," I said, "the authorities never have approved of things in
this house."
He thought me quite mad.
Let us walk down the street toward that delicious splash of
green--like a verdant spray thrown up from some unseen river of trees.
There is, in reality, no river of trees; it is only Christopher Street
Triangle, elbowing Sheridan Square. Subway construction is going on
around us, but there clings still an old-world feeling. Ah, here we
are--59 Grove Street. It is a modest but a charming little red-brick
house with a brass knocker and an air of unpretentious, small-scale
prosperity. It has only been built during the last half-century, but
it stands on the identical plot of ground where Paine's other
Greenwich residence once stood. It wasn't Grove Street then; in fact,
it wasn't a street at all, but an open lot with one lone frame house
in the middle of it. Here Mme. de Bonneville brought Thomas Paine when
his age and ill health necessitated greater comforts than Mrs.
Ryder's lodgings could afford.
Here he spent some peaceful months with only a few visitors; but those
were faithful ones. One was Willett Hicks, the Quaker preacher, always
a staunch friend; another was John Wesley Jarvis, the American
painter--the same artist who later made the great man's death mask.
It was Jarvis who said: "He devoted his whole life to the attainment
of two objects--rights of man and freedom of conscience."
And, by the bye, Dr. Conway has declared that "his 'Rights of Man' is
now the political constitution of England, his 'Age of Reason' is the
growing constitution of its Church."
In passing I must once again quote Mr. van der Weyde, who once said to
me: "I often wonder just what share Mary Wollstonecraft had with her
'Rights of Women'--in the inspiration of Paine's 'Rights of Man.' He
and she, you know, were close friends."
Another friend was Robert Fulton of steamboat fame. I have truly heard
Paine enthusiasts declare that our "infidel" was the authentic
inventor of the steamboat! In any case, he is known to have "palled"
with Fulton, and certainly gave him many ideas.
There were, to be sure, annoyances. He was, in spite of Mme. de
Bonneville's affectionate protection, still an object of persecution.
Two clergymen were especially tireless in their desire to reform this
sterling reformer. I believe their names were Milledollar and
Cunningham. Janvier tells this anecdote:
"It was during Paine's last days in the little house in
Greenwich that two worthy divines, the Rev. Mr. Milledollar
and the Rev. Mr. Cunningham, sought to bring him to a
realising sense of the error of his ways. Their visitation
was not a success. 'Don't let 'em come here again,' he said,
curtly, to his housekeeper, Mrs. Hedden, when they had
departed; and added: 'They trouble me.' In pursuance of this
order, when they returned to the attack, Mrs. Hedden denied
them admission--saying with a good deal of piety, and with
even more common-sense: 'If God does not change his mind,
I'm sure no man can!'"
Apropos of the two houses occupied by Paine in our city Mr. van der
Weyde has pointed out most interestingly the striking and almost
miraculous way in which they have just escaped destruction. Paine's
"Providence" has seemed to stand guard over the places sacred to him,
just as it stood guard over his invaluable life. A dozen times 309
Bleecker Street and 59 Grove Street have almost gone in the relentless
constructive demolition of metropolitan growth and progress. But--they
have not gone yet!
I have said that the Grove Street house stood in an open lot, the
centre of a block at that time. Just after Paine's death a street was
cut through, called Cozine Street. Names were fleeting affairs in
early and fast-growing New York, and the one street from Cozine became
Columbia, then Burrows, and last of all Grove, which it remains today.
Here let us make a note of one more indignity which the officially
wise and virtuous ones were able to bestow upon their unassumingly
wise and virtuous victim.
The Commissioners replanning New York desired to pay Paine's memory a
compliment and on opening up the street parallel with Grove, they
called it Reason Street, for the "Age of Reason." This was objected to
by many bigots (who had never read the book) and some tactful diplomat
suggested giving it the French twist--_Raison_ Street. Already they
had the notion that French could cover a multitude of sins. Even this
was too closely suggestive of Tom Paine, "the infidel," so it was
shamelessly corrupted to Raisin! Consider the street named originally
in honour of the author of the "Age of Reason," eventually called for
a dried grape!
This too passed, and if you go down there now you will find it called
Barrow Street.
On the 8th of June, 1809, Thomas Paine died.
The New York _Advertiser_ said:
"With heart-felt sorrow and poignant regret, we are compelled
to announce to the world that Thomas Paine is no more. This
distinguished philanthropist, whose life was devoted to the
cause of humanity, departed this life yesterday morning; and,
if any man's memory deserves a place in the breast of a
freeman, it is that of the deceased, for,
_"'Take him for all in all,
We ne'er shall look upon his like again.'"_
The funeral party consisted of Hicks, Mme. de Bonneville and two
negroes, who loyally walked twenty-two miles to New Rochelle to see
the last of the man who had always defended and pleaded for the rights
of their pitifully misunderstood and ill-treated race.
To the end he was active for public service. His actual last act was
to pen a letter to the Federal faction, conveying a warning as to the
then unsettled situation in American and French commerce. Just before
he had made his will.
It is in itself a composition worth copying and preserving. Paine
could not even execute a legal document without putting into it
something of the beauty of spirit and distinction of phrase for which
he was remarkable. He had not much to leave, since he had given all to
his country and his country had forgotten him in making up the
balance; but what he had went to Mme. de Bonneville, for her children,
that she,--let me quote his own words, "... might bring them well up,
give them good and useful learning and instruct them in their duty to
God and the practice of morality."
It continues thus:
"I herewith take my final leave of them and the world. I
have lived an honest and useful life to mankind; my time has
been spent in doing good and I die in perfect composure and
resignation to the will of my Creator God."
Such was the last will and testament of "Tom Paine, Infidel."