Poor dull Concord. Nothing colorful has come through here since the Redcoats.
Louisa May AlcottTags: new-england concord massachusetts redcoats
We think ourselves possessed, or at least we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact. There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny, or to doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel. In England itself, it is punished by boring through the tongue with a red-hot poker. In America it is not much better; even in our Massachusetts, which, I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemies upon any book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any arguments for investigation into the divine authority of those books? Who would run the risk of translating Volney's Recherches Nouvelles? Who would run the risk of translating Dupuis? But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws... but as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed.
{Letter to Thomas Jefferson, January 23, 1825}
Tags: america intolerance persecution religious-violence divine-inspiration new-testament europe england genesis old-testament blasphemy massachusetts stake charles-francois-dupuis charles-françois-dupuis christian-world dupuis examination recherches-nouvelles revelations volney
At least when I get on the Boston train I have a good chance of landing in the South Station
And not in that part of the daily press which is reserved for victims of aviation.
Tags: flight new-england flying airplanes trains train massachusetts boston mbta south-station the-train
There was a young lady from Gloucester
Who complained that her parents both bossed her,
So she ran off to Maine.
Did her parents complain?
Not at all -- they were glad to have lost her.
Tags: new-england massachusetts maine gloucester
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