Mason And Dixon Quotes

The general public has long been divided into two parts; those who think that science can do anything and those who are afraid it will.

If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.

Southern girls are God's gift to the entire male population. There is absolutely no woman finer than one raised below the mason-dixon line and once you go southern may the good Lord help you - you never go back

Next worst thing to unrequited Love, isn't it? Insufficient hate.

I've barely said five words to you. What indication could you possibly have that I am a Yankee?" "Well, we could start with the words 'what indication.' Someone from south of the Mason-Dixon would have said, 'Who the hell are you calling a Yankee?' Then we would have fought.

These times are unfriendly toward Worlds alternative to this one

Mason glowers, shaking his head. "I've ascended, descended, even condescended, and the List's not ended,— but haven't yet trans-cended a blessed thing, thankee.

and men of science,' cries dixon, 'may be but the simple tools of others, with no more idea of what they are about, than a hammer knows of a house.

Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,- who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government.

Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream?-- in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow'd Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever 'tis not yet mapp'd, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen,-- serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that may yet be true,-- Earthly Paradise, Fountain of Youth, Realms of Prester John, Christ's Kingdom, ever behind the sunset, safe til the next Territory to the West be seen and recorded, measur'd and tied in, back into the Net-Work of Points already known, that slowly triangulates its Way into the Continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments,-- winning away from the realm of the Sacred, its Borderlands one by one, and assuming them unto the bare mortal World that is our home, and our Despair.

The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side—and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.

Some of us are Outlaws, and some Trespassers upon the very World.

What Machine is it that bears us along so relentlessly? We go rattling thro' another Day,- another Year,- as thro' an empty Town without a Name, in the Midnight...we have but Memories of some Pause at the Pleasure-Spas of our younger Day, the Maidens, the Cards, the Claret,- we seek to extend our stay, but now a silent Functionary in dark Livery indicates it is time to re-board the Coach, and resume the Journey. Long before the Destination, moreover, shall this Machine come abruptly to a Stop...gather'd dense with Fear, shall we open the Door to confer with the Driver, to discover that there is no Driver...no Horses,...only the Machine, fading as we stand, and a Prairie of desperate Immensity...

Acts have consequences, Dixon, they must. These Louts believe all's right now,-- that they are free to get on with Lives that to them are no doubt important,-- with no Glimmer at all of the Debt they have taken on. That is what I smell'd,-- Lethe-Water. One of the things the newly-born forget, is how terrible its Taste, and Smell. In Time, these People are able to forget ev'rything. Be willing but to wait a little, and ye may gull them again and again, however ye wish,-- even unto their own Dissolution. In America, as I apprehend, Time is the true River that runs 'round Hell.

The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side—and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.

Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,-- Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin... Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to Lawyers,-- nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other,-- her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom Wit,-- that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever,-- not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All,-- rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in common.

Why is it that we honor the Great Thieves of Whitehall, for Acts that in Whitechapel would merit hanging? Why admire one sort of Thief, and despise the other? I suggest, 'tis because of the Scale of the Crime.--What we of the Mobility love to watch, is any of the Great Motrices, Greed, Lust, Revenge, taken out of all measure, brought quite past the scale of the ev'ryday world, approaching what we always knew were the true Dimensions of Desire. Let Antony lose the world for Cleopatra, to be sure,--not Dick his Day's Wages, at the Tavern.

consider," replies the geomancer, "--adam and eve ate fruit from a tree, and were enlighten'd. the buddha sat beneath a tree, and he was enlighten'd. newton, also sitting beneath a tree, was hit by a falling apple,--and he was enlighten'd. a quick overview would suggest trees produce enlightenment. trees are not the problem. the forest is not an agent of darkness. but it may be your visto is.

When you gentlemen come to stand at the Boundary between the Settl'd and the Unpossess'd, just about to enter the Deep Woods, you will recognize the Sensation....

And even more bewildering, what malignant magic brought Americans on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line to the point where they could actually imagine the wholesale killing of one another?

The Line makes itself felt,-- thro' some Energy unknown, ever are we haunted by that Edge so precise, so near. In the Dark, one never knows. Of course I am seeking the Warrior Path, imagining myself as heroick Scout. We all feel it Looming, even when we're awake, out there ahead someplace, the way you come to feel a River or Creek ahead, before anything else,-- sound, sky, vegetation,-- may have announced it. Perhaps 'tis the very deep sub-audible Hum of its Traffic that we feel with an equally undiscover'd part of the Sensorium,-- does it lie but over the next Ridge? the one after that? We have mileage Estimates from Rangers and Runners, yet for as long as its Distance from the Post Mark'd West remains unmeasur'd, nor is yet recorded as Fact, may it remain, a-shimmer, among the few final Pages of its Life as Fiction.

The Business of the World is Trade and Death, and you must engage with that unpleasantness, as the price of your not-at-all-assur'd Moment of Purity.— Fool.

...so claim'd are the Surveyors in their contra-solar Return by Might-it-bes, and If-it-weres, - not to mention What-was-thats.

just hope it’s still living then. The trees don’t know your race or your gender identity or your sexuality. The trees don’t expel you

It turns out to be the new Planet, which, a decade and a half later, will be known first as the Georgian, and then as Herschel, after its official Discoverer, and more lately as Uranus.

To rule forever," continues the Chinaman, later, "it is necessary only to create, among the people one would rule, what we call...Bad History. Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,-- to create thus a Distinction betwixt 'em,-- 'tis the first stroke.-- All else will follow as if predestin'd, unto War and Devastation.

As ever, he is surpriz'd by the fierceness of their bodies, their inability to hold back, the purity of the not-yet-dishonest,— 'twould take a harder Case than Mason not to struggle with Tears of Sentiment.

It took me till I was lying among the Rats and Vermin, upon the freezing edge of a Future invisible, to understand that my name had never been my own,— rather belonging, all this time, to the Authorities, who forbade me to change it, or withhold it, as ’twere a Ring upon the Collar of a Beast, ever waiting for the Lead to be fasten’d on. . . .

if you think you see no slaves in pennsylvania," replies capt. zhang, his face as smooth as suet, "why, look again. they are not all african, nor do some of them even yet know,--may never know,--that they are slaves. slavery is very old upon these shores,--there is no innocence upon the practice anywhere, neither among the indians nor the spanish nor in the behavior of the rest of christendom, if it come to that.

When they happen across an Adventurer from Mexico, and the ancient City he has discover'd beneath the Earth, where thousands of Mummies occupy the Streets in attitudes of Living Business, embalm'd with Gold divided so finely it flows like Gum.

I mean only that in our Times, 'tis not a rare Dispute," Maskelyne assures him. "Reason, or any Vocation to it,-- the Pursuit of the Sciences,-- these are the hope of the Young, the new Music their Families cannot follow, occasionally not even listen to.

Yet is Dixon certain, as certain as the lightness he feels now, lightness premonitory of Flying, that far worse happen’d here, to these poor People, as the blood flew and the Children cried, - that at the end no one understood what they said as they died.

Philosophick Work, to proceed at all smartly, wouldn't you agree, requires a controll'd working-space.

Acting like you know everything and acting like you don't know how to be respectful will keep you ignorant. Be humble.

In the Forest,’ comments Mr. Crawfford, ‘ev’ryone comes ‘round in a Circle sooner or later. One day, your foot comes down in your own shit. There, as the Indians say, is the first Step upon the Trail to Wisdom.

It is a three-piece affair, everything quilted, long jacket, waistcoat, and trousers, which have Feet at the ends of them, all in striped silk, a double stripe of some acidick Rose upon Celadon for the Trousers and Waistcoat, and for the Jacket, whose hem touches the floor when, as now, he is seated, a single stripe of teal-blue upon the same color, which is also that of the Revers. . . . It is usually not wise to discuss matters of costume with people who dress like this, -- politics or religion being far safer topicks.

Nothing he had brought to it of his nearest comparison, Raby with its thatch'd and benevolent romance of serfdom, had at all prepar'd him for the iron Criminality of the Cape,-- the publick Executions and Whippings, the open'd flesh, the welling blood, the beefy contented faces of those whites.... Yet is Dixon certain, as certain as the lightness he feels now, lightness premonitory of Flying, that far worse happen'd here, to these poor People, as the blood flew and the Children cried,-- that at the end no one understood what they said as they died.

Earth, withal, is a Body, like our own, with its network of Points, dispos'd along its Meridians,— much as our medicine in China has identified, upon the Human body, a like set of Lines invisible, upon which, bead wise, are strung Points, where the Flow of Chee may be beneficially strengthen'd by insertions of Gold Needles.

What happens to men sometimes,' his father wants to tell Charlie, 'is that one day all at once they'll understand how much they love their children, as absolutely as a child gives away its own love, and the terrible terms that come with that,— and it proves too much to bear, and they'll not want it, any of it, and they'll back away in fear.

After years wasted,” the Revd commences, “at perfecting a parsonical Disguise,— grown old in the service of an Impersonation that never took more than a Handful of actor’s tricks,— past remembering those Yearnings for Danger, past all that ought to have been, but never had a Hope of becoming, have I beach’d upon these Republican Shores,— stoven, dismasted, imbécile with age,— an untrustworthy Remembrancer for whom the few events yet rattling within a broken memory must provide the only comfort now remaining to him,—

Love is a fickle bitch. Can’t pick and choose where your heart will lock in. If we could, life would run a helluva lot smoother. We’d all be goofy

I can't read Mason & Dixon, since my mind's so shitty, I can't process it!

She has assisted at more than one Birth, has endur'd a hard-drinking and quarrelsome troop of Men-Folk,— who is this unfamily'd man in a Frock to call her child?

They but appear a solemn People,— worshipping Laughter, rather, as a serious, indeed holy, Force in Nature, never to be invok'd idly.

The Stars are so close you won’t need a Telescope.” “The Fish jump into your Arms. The Indians know Magick.” “We’ll go there. We’ll live there.” “We’ll fish there. And you too.

He didn't know whether he was planning seduction, or combat,— these, at fourteen, being the only categories of Pleasure he recogniz'd.

And yes, slavery was abolished, Jim Crow is over, but the prisons, the persistence of poverty, are constant reminders of how the past made the present.

Duress is not an issue,— for life is a duress.

And Men of Science," cries Dixon, "may be but the simple Tools of others, with no more idea of what they are about, than a Hammer knows of a House.

Takes them less than a week to run the Line thro’ somebody’s House. About a mile and a half west of the Twelve-Mile Arc, twenty-four Chains beyond Little Christiana Creek, on Wednesday, April 10th, the Field-Book reports, “At 3 Miles 49 Chains, went through Mr. Price’s House.” “Just took a wild guess,” Mrs. Price quite amiable, “where we’d build it,— not as if my Husband’s a Surveyor or anything. Which side’s to be Pennsylvania, by the way?” A mischievous glint in her eyes that Barnes, Farlow, Moses McClean and others will later all recall. Mr. Price is in Town, in search of Partners for a Land Venture. “Would you Gentlemen mind coming in the House and showing me just where your Line does Run?” Mason and Dixon, already feeling awkward about it, oblige, Dixon up on the Roof with a long Plumb-line, Mason a-squint at the Snout of the Instrument. Mrs. Price meantime fills her Table with plates of sour-cherry fritters, Neat’s-Tongue Pies, a gigantick Indian Pudding, pitchers a-slosh with home-made Cider,— then producing some new-hackl’d Streaks of Hemp, and laying them down in a Right Line according to the Surveyors’ advice,— fixing them here and there with Tacks, across the room, up the stairs, straight down the middle of the Bed, of course, . . . which is about when Mr. Rhys Price happens to return from his Business in town, to find merry Axmen lounging beneath his Sassafras tree, Strange Stock mingling with his own and watering out of his Branch, his house invaded by Surveyors, and his wife giving away the Larder and waving her Tankard about, crying, “Husband, what Province were we married in? Ha! see him gape, for he cannot remember. ’Twas in Pennsylvania, my Tortoise. But never in Maryland. Hey? So from now on, when I am upon this side of the House, I am in Maryland, legally not your wife, and no longer subject to your Authority,— isn’t that right, Gents?” “Ask the Rev,” they reply together,

And over my head,” relates Squire Haligast, “it form’d an E-clipse, an emptiness in the Sky, with a Cloud-shap’d Line drawn all about it, wherein words might appear, and it read,— ‘No King . . .

Listen to me, Defecates-with-Pigeons. Long before any of you came here, we dream'd of you. All the people, even Nations far to the South and the West, dreamt you before ever we saw you,— we believ'd that you came from some other World, or the Sky. You had Powers and we respected them. Yet you never dream'd of us, and when at last you saw us, wish'd only to destroy us. Then the killing started,— some of you, some of us,— but not nearly as many as we'd been expecting. You could not be the Giants of long ago, who would simply have wip'd us away, and for less. Instead, you sold us your Powers,— your Rifles,— as if encouraging us to shoot at you,— and so we did, tho' not hitting as many of you, as you were expecting. Now you begin to believe that we have come from elsewhere, possessing Powers you do not— Those of us who knew how, have fled into Refuge in your Dreams, at last. Tho' we now pursue real lives no different at their Hearts from yours, we are also your Dreams.

Nobody here wants Competition,' Ives LeSpark re-entering, shaking his head gravely. 'All wish but to name their Price, and maintain it, without the extra work and worry all these damn'd Up-starts require.

Tis useful nonetheless, now and then, to regard Politics here, as the greater American Question in Miniature,— in the way that Chess represents war,— with Governor Penn a game-piece in the form of the King.

The Telescope, the Fluxions, the invention of Logarithms and the frenzy of multiplication, often for its own sake, that follow'd have for Emerson all been steps of an unarguable approach to God, a growing clarity,- Gravity, the pulse of time, the finite speed of Light present themselves to him as aspect of God's character. It's like becoming friendly with an erratic, powerful, potentially dangerous member of the Aristocracy. He holds no quarrel with the Creator's sovereignty, but is repeatedly appall'd at the lapses in Attention, the flaws in Design, the squand'rings of life and energy, the failures to be reasonable, or to exercise common sense,- first appall'd, then angry. We are taught,- we believe,- that it is love of the Creation which drives the Philosopher in his Studies. Emerson is driven, rather, by a passionate Resentment.

The Telescope, the Flaxions, the inventions of Logarithms and the frenzy of multiplication, often for its own sake, that follow'd have for Emerson all been steps of an unarguable approach to God, a growing clarity,— Gravity, the Pulse of time, the finite speed of Light present themselves to him as aspects of God's character. It's like becoming friendly with an erratic, powerful, potentially, dangerous member of the Aristocracy.

Projectors, Brokers of Capital, Insurancers, Peddlers upon the global Scale, Enterprisers and Quacks,— these are the last poor fallen and feckless inheritors of a knowledge they can never use, but in the service of Greed.

By 1860, two of every three of the relatively few Americans whose wealth surpassed $100,000 lived below the Mason-Dixon Line. New York at that time had fewer millionaires per capita than Mississippi. South Carolina was the richest state in the Union. The source of southern wealth was staple crops—particularly cotton—produced by enslaved men, women, and children for world markets. So matchless were the profits that more money was invested in slaves than in industry and railroads.

Soon the mercilessly even drumbeat fill'd the Day, replacing the accustom'd rhythms of country People with the controlling Pulse of military Clock-Time, announcing that all events would now occur at the army's Pleasure, upon the army's schedule.

There are no historic firsts, no grand gestures, no monuments or museums that undo generations of exclusions under law, policy, and practice, or that stop the expulsion. It makes me want to holler. Tell the truth. What is this symbolic republic?

Some poor creatures have been so brutalized by the lash that they will sneak out of the way to give their masters free access to their wives and daughters. Do you think this proves the black man to belong to an inferior order of beings? What would you be, if you had been born and brought up a slave, with generations of slaves for ancestors? I admit that the black man is inferior. But what is it that makes him so? It is the ignorance in which white men compel him to live; it is the torturing whip that lashes manhood out of him; it is the fierce bloodhounds of the South, and the scarcely less cruel human bloodhounds of the north, who enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. They do the work. Southern gentlemen indulge in the most contemptuous expressions about the Yankees, while they, on their part, consent to do the vilest work for them, such as the ferocious bloodhounds and the despised negro-hunters are employed to do at home. When southerners go to the north, they are proud to do them honor; but the northern man is not welcome south of Mason Dixon's line, unless he suppresses every thought and feeling at variance with their "peculiar institution." Nor is it enough to be silent. The masters are not pleased, unless they obtain a greater degree of subservience than that; and they are generally accommodated. Do they respect the northerner for this? I trow not. Even the slaves despise "a northern man with southern principles;" and that is the class they generally see. When northerners go to the south to reside, they prove very apt scholars. They soon imbibe the sentiments and disposition of their neighbors, and generally go beyond their teachers. Of the two, they are proverbially the hardest masters.

The Ascent to Christ is a struggle thro’ one heresy after another, River-wise up-country into a proliferation of Sects and Sects branching from Sects, unto Deism, faithless pretending to be holy, and beyond,— ever away from the Sea, from the Harbor, from all that was serene and certain, into an Interior unmapp’d, a Realm of Doubt. The Nights. The Storms and Beasts. The Falls, the Rapids, . . . the America of the Soul. Doubt is of the essence of Christ. Of the twelve Apostles, most true to him was ever Thomas,— indeed, in the Acta Thomæ they are said to be Twins. The final pure Christ is pure uncertainty. He is become the central subjunctive fact of a Faith, that risks ev’rything upon one bodily Resurrection. . . . Wouldn’t something less doubtable have done? a prophetic dream, a communication with a dead person? Some few tatters of evidence to wrap our poor naked spirits against the coldness of a World where Mortality and its Agents may bully their way, wherever they wish to go. . . . — The Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke, Undeliver’d Sermons

A Short Southern Screw? So I was right. You're craving something south ot the Mason-Dixon Line." He moved closer, crowding her even though there was still a good twelve inches between them. "I can assure you, though, I'm a man who isn't short in any sense of the word.

Where may one breathe?” demands one Continental Macaroni, in a yellow waistcoat, “— in New-York, Taverns have rooms where Smoke is prohibited.” “Tho’ clearly,” replies the itinerant Stove-Salesman Mr. Whitpot, drawing vigorously at his Pipe, “what’s needed is a No-Idiots Area.

Dixon, our, um, Lives? are in Danger?” “Hardly enough to interrupt a perfectly good—” Here he is silenc’d by an immense Thunder-Bolt from directly overhead, as their frail Prism is bleach’d in unholy Light. “— Saturday Night for, is it I ask you . . . ?” his Head emerging at last from beneath a Blanket, “Mason? Say, Mason,— are thee . . . ?” Mason, now outside, pushes aside the Tent-flap with his head, but does not enter. “Dixon. I will now seek Shelter beneath that Waggon out there, d’ye see it? If you wish to join me, there’s room.” “Bit too much Iron there for me, thanks all the same.

But out under the Moon, Chestnut Ridge and Cheat behind them, and Monongahela to cross, into an Overture of meadow to the Horizon, low-lands become to them a dream whilst under a Spell, the way it gives back the Light, the way it withholds its Shadows,— who might not come to believe in an Eternal West? In a Momentum that bears all away? “Men are remov’d by it, and women, from where they were,— as if surrender’d to a great current of Westering. You will hear of gold cities, marble cities, men that fly, women that fight, fantastickal creatures never dream’d in Europe,— something always to take and draw you that way,

Mason prefers to switch over to Tea, when it is Dixon’s turn to begin shaking his head. “Can’t understand how anyone abides that stuff.” “How so?” Mason unable not to react. “Well, it’s disgusting, isn’t it? Half-rotted Leaves, scalded with boiling Water and then left to lie, and soak, and bloat?” “Disgusting? this is Tea, Friend, Cha,— what all tasteful London drinks,— that,” pollicating the Coffee-Pot, “is what’s disgusting.” “Au contraire,” Dixon replies, “Coffee is an art, where precision is all,— Water-Temperature, mean particle diameter, ratio of Coffee to Water or as we say, CTW, and dozens more Variables I’d mention, were they not so clearly out of thy technical Grasp,— ” “How is it,” Mason pretending amiable curiosity, “that of each Pot of Coffee, only the first Cup is ever worth drinking,— and that, by the time I get to it, someone else has already drunk it?” Dixon shrugs. “You must improve your Speed . . . ? As to the other, why aye, only the first Cup’s any good, owing to Coffee’s Sacramental nature, the Sacrament being Penance, entirely absent from thy sunlit World of Tay,— whereby the remainder of the Pot, often dozens of cups deep, represents the Price for enjoying that first perfect Cup.” “Folly,” gapes Mason. “Why, ev’ry cup of Tea is perfect . . . ?” “For what? curing hides?

Once the solar parallax is known,' they told me, 'once the necessary Degrees are measur'd, and the size and weight and shape of the Earth are calculated inescapably at last, all this will vanish. We will have to seek another Space.' No one explain'd what that meant, however ...? 'Perhaps some of us will try living upon thy own Surface. I am not sure that everyone can adjust from a concave space to a convex one. Here have we been sheltered, nearly everywhere we look is no Sky, but only more Earth. -- How many of us, I wonder, could live the other way, the way you People do, so exposed to the Outer Darkness? Those terrible Lights, great and small? And wherever you may stand, given the Convexity, each of you is slight pointed away from everybody else, all the time, out into that Void that most of you seldom notice. Here in the Earth Concave, everyone is pointed at everyone else, -- ev'rybody's axes converge, -- forc'd at least thus to acknowledge one another,-- an entirely different set of rules for how to behave.

What’ll happen is,” Alex McClean advises, “is you’ll get hammer’d paying double taxes, visits all the time from Sheriffs of both provinces looking for their quitrents, tax collectors from Philadelphia and Annapolis, and sooner or later you’ll have to decide just to get it up on some Logs, and roll it, one way or the other. Depends how your Property runs, I’d guess.” “. . . as North is pretty much up-hill,” Mr. Price is reckoning,” ’twould certainly not be as easy, to roll her up into Pennsylvania, as down into Maryland.” “Where I am no longer your Wife,” she reminds him. “Aye, and there’s another reason,” he nods soberly. “Well then, let’s fetch the Boys and get to it,— ’tis Maryland, ho!

Julius rode the crest of a robust protest vote. In addition, to his great surprise, he immediately was embraced vigorously by virtually all the Jewish students, about 30 percent of the student body, who had heretofore kept a low, apolitical profile. They loved him, the love of the timid, hesitant, make-no-waves Mason-Dixon Yid for the gutsy, brash New York Jew.

Half a dozen years later, the Census Report of 1852 featured a dozen pages heralding the expansion of the telegraph, including a map of all the existing telegraph lines. North of the Mason-Dixon Line it looked like a spider’s web. South of that demarcation, however, were only two threads, one running down the east coast, and the other down the Mississippi Valley.

Mason is able to inspect the long Map, fragrant, elegantly cartouch’d with Indians and Instruments, at last. Ev’ry place they ran it, ev’ry House pass’d by, Road cross’d, the Ridge-lines and Creeks, Forests and Glades, Water ev’ry-where, and the Dragon nearly visible. “So,— so. This is the Line as all shall see it after its Copper-Plate ’Morphosis,— and all History remember? This is what ye expect me to sign off on?” “Not the worst I’ve handed in. And had they wish’d to pay for Coloring? Why, tha’d scarcely knaah the Place . . . ?” “This is beauteous Work. Emerson was right, Jeremiah. You were flying, all the time.” Dixon, his face darken’d by the Years of Weather, may be allowing himself to blush in safety. “Could have us’d a spot of Orpiment, all the same. Some Lapis . . . ?

Consider,” replies the Geomancer, “— Adam and Eve ate fruit from a Tree, and were enlighten’d. The Buddha sat beneath a Tree, and he was enlighten’d. Newton, also sitting beneath a Tree, was hit by a falling Apple,— and he was enlighten’d. A quick overview would suggest that Trees produce Enlightenment. Trees are not the Problem. The Forest is not an Agent of Darkness. But it may be your Visto is.

Tis fascinating, this belief among you Men of Science,” remarks Dr. J., “that Time is ever more simply transcended, the further one is willing to journey away from London, to observe it.” “Why, Mason here’s done the very thing,” cries Boswell. “In America. Ask him.” Mason glowers, shaking his head. “I’ve ascended, descended, even condescended, and the List’s not ended,— but haven’t yet trans-cended a blessèd thing, thankee.

The simpler explanation,' Emerson with a distinct uvular component in his Sigh, 'may be that none of you people has ever known a moment of Transcendence in his life, nor would recognize one did it walk up and bit yese in the Arse,— and in the long sorry Silence, grows the suspicion that Jesuits are but the latest instance of a true Christian passion evaporated away, leaving no more than the usual hollow desires for Authority and mindless O-bedience.

Out in the Field, Down by the Sea, The Hour has peal’d, Whoever ye be,   Daughter of Erin, Scotia’s Son, Let us be daring,— Let it be done.   It is time for The Choosing,— Americans all, No more refusing   The Cry, and the Call,— For the Grain to be sifted, For the Tyrants to fall, As the Low shall be lifted,— Americans all . . .   Till the end of the Story, Till the end of the Fight, Till the last craven Tory Has taken to Flight,   Let us go to the Wall, Let us march thro’ the Pain, Americans all, Slaves ne’er again.

The first day of the West Line, April 5th, falls upon a Friday,— the least auspicious day of the week to begin any enterprise, such as sailing from Spithead, for example. To stand at the Post Mark’d West, and turn to face West, can be a trial for those sentimentally inclin’d, as well as for ev’ryone nearby. It is possible to feel the combin’d force, in perfect Enfilade, of ev’ry future second unelaps’d, ev’ry Chain yet to be stretch’d, every unknown Event to be undergone,— the unmodified Terror of keeping one’s Latitude.

While the South lost the Civil War technically, White Southerners did not in fact lose the war substantively. After all, Jim Crow, convict labor, and lynching happened with near total impunity, and African Americans experienced decades of pernicious neglect from the federal courts and government. Exploitation ran amok. Inequality persists. And the nation turning a refusing eye, allowing the Southerners to work out their own business over the lives of Black people on the land of the Indigenous all across the region, gave the South their victory lap.

These times are unfriendly toward Worlds alternative to this one. Royal Society members and French Encyclopædists are in the Chariot, availing themselves whilst they may of any occasion to preach the Gospels of Reason, denouncing all that was once Magic, though too often in smirking tropes upon the Church of Rome,— visitations, bleeding statues, medical impossibilities,— no, no, far too foreign. One may be allowed an occasional Cock Lane Ghost,— otherwise, for any more in that Article, one must turn to Gothick Fictions, folded acceptably between the covers of Books.

Acts have consequences, Dixon, they must. These Louts believe all’s right now,— that they are free to get on with Lives that to them are no doubt important,— with no Glimmer at all of the Debt they have taken on. That is what I smell’d,— Lethe-Water. One of the things the newly-born forget, is how terrible its Taste, and Smell. In Time, these People are able to forget ev’rything. Be willing but to wait a little, and ye may gull them again and again, however ye wish,— even unto their own Dissolution. In America, as I apprehend, Time is the true River that runs ’round Hell.

As Planets do the Sun, we orbit ’round God according to Laws as elegant as Kepler’s. God is as sensible to us, as a Sun to a Planet. Tho’ we do not see Him, yet we know where in our Orbits we run,— when we are closer, when more distant,— when in His light and when in shadow of our own making. . . . We feel as components of Gravity His Love, His Need, whatever it be that keeps us circling. Surely if a Planet be a living Creature, then it knows, by something even more wondrous than Human Sight, where its Sun shines, however far it lie. — Revd Wicks Cherrycoke, Unpublished Sermons

To rule forever,” continues the Chinaman, later, “it is necessary only to create, among the people one would rule, what we call . . . Bad History. Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,— to create thus a Distinction betwixt ’em,— ’tis the first stroke.— All else will follow as if predestin’d, unto War and Devastation.” “Wait,” objects Mr. Dixon. “It’s as plain as pudding that Pennsylvania and Maryland are so different, that thy fatal Distinction was inflicted upon these Shores, long before we arriv’d,— ” “Poh, Sir,” goads Mason, “the Provinces are alike as Stacy and Tracy.” “Except for the Negro Slavery upon one side,” Dixon points out, less mildly than he might, “and not the other.” “If you think you see no Slaves in Pennsylvania,” replies Capt. Zhang, his face as smooth as Suet, “why, look again. They are not all African, nor do some of them even yet know,— may never know,— that they are Slaves. Slavery is very old upon these shores,— there is no Innocence upon the Practice anywhere, neither among the Indians nor the Spanish nor in the behavior of the rest of Christendom, if it come to that.

Mason prefers to switch over to Tea, when it is Dixon’s turn to begin shaking his head. “Can’t understand how anyone abides that stuff.” “How so?” Mason unable not to react. “Well, it’s disgusting, isn’t it? Half-rotted Leaves, scalded with boiling Water and then left to lie, and soak, and bloat?” “Disgusting? this is Tea, Friend, Cha,— what all tasteful London drinks,— that,” pollicating the Coffee-Pot, “is what’s disgusting.” “Au contraire,” Dixon replies, “Coffee is an art, where precision is all,— Water-Temperature, mean particle diameter, ratio of Coffee to Water or as we say, CTW, and dozens more Variables I’d mention, were they not so clearly out of thy technical Grasp,—

Mason bleakly exhales. “No Hell, then?” “Not inside the Earth, anyway.” “Nor any . . . Single Administrator of Evil.” “They did introduce me to some Functionary,— no telling,— We chatted, others came in. They ask’d if I’d take off as much of my Clothing as I’d feel comfortable with,— I stepp’d out of my Shoes, left my Hat on . . . ? They walk’d ’round me in Circles, now and then poking at me . . . ? Nothing too intrusive.” “Nothing you remember, anyway,” Mason can’t help putting in. “They peer’d into my Eyes and Ears, they look’d in my Mouth, they put me upon a Balance and weigh’d me. They conferr’d. ‘Are you quite sure, now,’ the Personage ask’d me at last, ‘that you wish to bet ev’ry-thing upon the Body?— this Body?— moreover, to rely helplessly upon the Daily Harvest your Sensorium brings in,— keeping in mind that both will decline, the one in Health as the other in Variety, growing less and less trustworthy till at last they are no more?’ Eeh. Well, what would thoo’ve said?” “So, did you— ” “We left it in abeyance. Arriv’d back at the Observatory, it seem’d but minutes, this time, in Transit, I sought my Bible, which I let fall open, and read, in Job, 26:5 through 7, ‘Dead things are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants thereof. “ ‘Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering. “ ‘He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.

Over the course of the next twenty-four hours, they would have to collect their belongings and change trains in Jackson, Tennessee, to board the Illinois Central Railroad, the legendary rail system that, for a great portion of the twentieth century, carried upward of a million colored people from the Deep South up the country’s central artery, across the Mason-Dixon Line, and into a new world called the Midwest. It carried so many southern blacks north that Chicago would go from 1.8 percent black at the start of the twentieth century to one-third black by the time the flow of people finally began to slow in 1970. Detroit’s black population would skyrocket from 1.4 percent to 44 percent during the era of the Migration.

I had my Boswell, once,” Mason tells Boswell, “Dixon and I. We had a joint Boswell. Preacher nam’d Cherrycoke. Scribbling ev’rything down, just like you, Sir. Have you,” twirling his Hand in Ellipses,— “you know, ever . . . had one yourself? If I’m not prying.” “Had one what?” “Hum . . . a Boswell, Sir,— I mean, of your own. Well you couldn’t very well call him that, being one yourself,— say, a sort of Shadow ever in the Room who has haunted you, preserving your ev’ry spoken remark,— ” “Which else would have been lost forever to the great Wind of Oblivion,— think,” armsweep south, “as all civiliz’d Britain gathers at this hour, how much shapely Expression, from the titl’d Gambler, the Barmaid’s Suitor, the offended Fopling, the gratified Toss-Pot, is simply fading away upon the Air, out under the Door, into the Evening and the Silence beyond. All those voices. Why not pluck a few words from the multitudes rushing toward the Void of forgetfulness?

They are examin’d skeptickally. “Not from the Press, are you?” “ ’Pon my Word,” cry both Surveyors at once. “Drummers of some kind’s my guess,” puts in a Countryman, his Rifle at his Side, “am I right, Gents?” “What’ll we say?” mutters Mason urgently to Dixon. “Oh, do allow me,” says Dixon to Mason. Adverting to the Room, “Why aye, Right as a Right Angle, we’re out here to ruffle up some business with any who may be in need of Surveying, London-Style,— Astronomickally precise, optickally up-to-the-Minute, surprisingly cheap. The Behavior of the Stars is the most perfect Motion there is, and we know how to read it all, just as you’d read a Clock-Face. We have Lenses that never lie, and Micrometers fine enough to subtend the Width of a Hair upon a Martian’s Eye-ball. This looks like a bustling Town, plenty of activity in the Land-Trades, where think yese’d be a good place to start?” with an amiability that Mason recognizes as peculiarly Quaker,— Friendly Business.

I’m talking to God here, be with ye as soon as we’re done,— Is Mason going to get angry and into a fight? Will he stand and announce, “This is none of God’s judgment,— to be offended as gravely by Calendar Reform as by Mortal Sin, requires a meanness of spirit quite out of the reach of any known Deity,— tho’ well within the resources of Stroud, it seems.” And walk out thro’ their stunn’d ranks to the Embrace of the Night, and never enter the place again? No.— He buys ev’ryone another Pint, instead, and resigns himself to seeking out his Family tomorrow,— tho’ sure Agents of Melancholy, they sooner or later feel regretful for it, whilst Regret is just the sort of Sentiment that regular life at The George depends on having no part of. The Landlord is kind and forthright, the Ale as good as any in Britain, the Defenestration of the Clothiers in ’56 has inscrib’d the place forever in Legend, and Good Eggs far outnumber Bad Hats,— yet so dismal have these late Hours in it been for Mason, as to make him actually look forward to meeting his Relations again.

Anyone who’s spent time below the Mason-Dixon line knows this truth: Southern women are anything but ordinary. Our unique, often unspoken code of conduct has allowed us to survive good times and bad, and never lose the sense of who we are. Margaret Mitchell, the belle of Southern female writers, got it right when she had Scarlett O’Hara come down the stairs in a dress made out of curtains: a Southern girl knows that pride and endurance always come before vanity. Our character is both created by, and essential to, the fabric of our society. Without the strength of the Southern girl, the South couldn’t have survived its rich and rocky history; without history, on the other hand, the Southern girl wouldn’t be who she is today. It’s sometimes suggested (by Yankees, we’d wager) that Grits are one-dimensional. This is not surprising: those who don’t understand us see only our outward devotion to femininity and charm. What they are missing is the fact that, like the magnolia tree, our beautiful blossoms are the outward expression of the strength that lies beneath.

For about 48 weeks of the year an asparagus plant is unrecognizable to anyone except an asparagus grower. Plenty of summer visitors to our garden have stood in the middle of the bed and asked, 'What is this stuff? It's beautiful!' We tell them its the asparagus patch, and they reply, 'No this, these feathery little trees.' An asparagus spear only looks like its picture for one day of its life, usually in April, give or take a month as you travel from the Mason-Dixon Line. The shoot emerges from the ground like a snub nose green snake headed for sunshine, rising so rapidly you can just about see it grow. If it doesn't get it's neck cut off at ground level as it emerges, it will keep growing. Each triangular scale on the spear rolls out into a branch until the snake becomes a four foot tree with delicate needles. Contrary to lore, fat spears are no more tender or mature than thin ones. Each shoot begins life with its own particular girth. In the hours after emergence, it lengthens but does not appreciably fatten. To step into another raging asparagus controversy, white spears are botanically no different from their green colleagues. White shoots have been deprived of sunlight by a heavy mulch pulled up over the plant's crown. European growers go to this trouble for consumers who prefer the stalks before they've had their first blush of photosynthesis. Most Americans prefer the more developed taste of green. Uncharacteristically, we're opting for the better nutritional deal here also. The same plant could produce white or green spears in alternate years, depending on how it is treated. If the spears are allowed to proceed beyond their first exploratory six inches, they'll green out and grow tall and feathery like the house plant known as asparagus fern, which is the next of kin. Older, healthier asparagus plants produce chunkier, more multiple shoots. Underneath lies an octopus-shaped affair of chubby roots called a crown that stores enough starch through the winter to arrange the phallic send-up when winter starts to break. The effect is rather sexy, if you're the type to see things that way. Europeans of the Renaissance swore by it as an aphrodisiac and the church banned it from nunneries.

Eeh, but whah’s the use, the fuckin’ use?” Dixon resting his head briefly tho’ audibly upon the Table. “It’s over . . . ? Nought left to us but Paper-work . . . ?” Their task has shifted, from Direct Traverse upon the Line to Pen-and-Paper Representation of it, in the sober Day-Light of Philadelphia, strain’d thro’ twelve-by-twelve Sash-work, as in the spectreless Light of the Candles in their Rooms, suffering but the fretful Shadows of Dixon at the Drafting Table, and Mason, seconding now, reading from Entries in the Field-Book, as Dixon once minded the Clock for him. Finally, one day, Dixon announces, “Well,— won’t thee at least have a look . . . ?” Mason eagerly rushes to inspect the Map of the Boundaries, almost instantly boggling, for there bold as a Pirate’s Flag is an eight-pointed Star, surmounted by a Fleur-de-Lis. “What’s this thing here? pointing North? Wasn’t the l’Grand flying one of these? Doth it not signify, England’s most inveterately hated Rival? France?” “All respect, Mason,— among Brother and Sister Needle-folk in ev’ry Land, ’tis known universally, as the ‘Flower-de-Luce.’ A Magnetickal Term.” “ ‘Flower of Light’? Light, hey? Sounds Encyclopedistick to me, perhaps even Masonick,” says Mason. A Surveyor’s North-Point, Dixon explains, by long Tradition, is his own, which he may draw, and embellish, in any way he pleases, so it point where North be. It becomes his Hall-Mark, personal as a Silver-Smith’s, representative of his Honesty and Good Name. Further, as with many Glyphs, ’tis important ever to keep Faith with it,— for an often enormous Investment of Faith, and Will, lies condens’d within, giving it a Potency in the World that the Agents of Reason care little for. “ ’Tis an ancient Shape, said to go back to the earliest Italian Wind-Roses,” says Dixon, “— originally, at the North, they put the Letter T, for Tramontane, the Wind that blew down from the Alps . . . ? Over the years, as ever befalls such frail Bric-a-Brack as Letters of the Alphabet, it was beaten into a kind of Spear-head,— tho’ the kinder-hearted will aver it a Lily, and clash thy Face, do tha deny it.” “Yet some, finding it upon a new Map, might also take it as a reassertion of French claims to Ohio,” Mason pretends to remind him. “Aye, tha’ve found me out, I confess,— ’tis a secret Message to all who conspire in the Dark! Eeh! The old Jesuit Canard again!

When they come to explain about the two Transits of Venus, and the American Work filling the Years between, “By Heaven, a ‘Sandwich,’” cries Mr. Edgewise. “Take good care, Sirs, that something don’t come along and eat it!” His pleasure at being able to utter a recently minted word, is at once much curtailed by the volatile Chef de Cuisine Armand Allègre, who rushes from the Kitchen screaming. “Sond-weech-uh! Sond-weech-uh!,” gesticulating as well, “To the Sacrament of the Eating, it is ever the grand Insult!” Cries of “Anti-Britannic!” and “Shame, Mounseer!” Mitzi clutches herself. “No Mercy! Oh, he’s so ’cute!” Young Dimdown may be seen working himself up to a level of indignation that will allow him at least to pull out his naked Hanger again, and wave it about a bit. “Where I come from,” he offers, “Lord Sandwich is as much respected for his nobility as admired for his Ingenuity, in creating the great modern Advance in Diet which bears his name, and I would suggest,— without of course wishing to offend,— that it ill behooves some bloody little toad-eating foreigner to speak his name in any but a respectful manner.” “Had I my batterie des couteaux,” replies the Frenchman, with more gallantry than sense, “before that ridiculous little blade is out of his sheath, I can bone you,— like the Veal!

I dreamt of a City to the West of here,” Dixon tries to recall, scrying in his Coffee-Mug, the wind blowing Wood-smoke in his eyes, “at some great Confluence of Rivers, or upon a Harbor in some inland Sea,— a large City,— busy, prospering, sacred.” “A Sylvan Philadelphia. . . .” “Well . . . well yes, now tha put it thah’ way,— ” “I hope you are prepar’d for the possibility, that waking Philadelphia is as sacred as anything over here will ever get, Dixon,— observe you not, as we move West, more and more of those Forces, which Cities upon Coasts have learn’d to push away, and leave to Back Inhabitants,— the Lightning, the Winter, an Indifference to Pain, not to mention Fire, Blood, and so forth, all measur’d upon a Scale far from Philadelphian,— whereunto we, and our Royal Commission, and our battery of costly Instruments, are but Fleas in the Flea Circus. We trespass, each day ever more deeply, into a world of less restraint in ev’rything,— no law, no convergence upon any idea of how life is to be,— an Interior that grows meanwhile ever more forested, more savage and perilous, until,— perhaps at the very Longitude of your ‘City,’— we must reach at last an Anti-City,— some concentration of Fate,— some final condition of Abandonment,— wherein all are unredeemably alone and at Hazard as deep as their souls may bear,— lost Creatures that make the very Seneca seem Christian and merciful.

Someone brings up “Sandwiches,” and someone else a Bottle, and as night comes down over New-York like a farmer’s Mulch, sprouting seeds of Light, some reflected in the River, the Company, Mason working on in its midst, becomes much exercis’d upon the Topick of Representation. “No taxation— ” “— without it, yesyes but Drogo, lad, can you not see, even thro’ the Republican fogs which ever hang about these parts, that ’tis all a moot issue, as America has long been perfectly and entirely represented in the House of Commons, thro’ the principle of Virtual Representation?” Cries of, “Aagghh!” and, “That again?” “If this be part of Britain here, then so must be Bengal! For we have ta’en both from the French. We purchas’d India many times over with the Night of the Black Hole alone,— as we have purchas’d North America with the lives of our own.” “Are even village Idiots taken in any more by that empty cant?” mutters the tiny Topman McNoise, “no more virtual than virtuous, and no more virtuous than the vilest of that narrow room-ful of shoving, beef-faced Louts, to which you refer,— their honor bought and sold so many times o’er that no one bothers more to keep count.— Suggest you, Sir, even in Play, that this giggling Rout of poxy half-wits, embody us? Embody us? America but some fairy Emanation, without substance, that hath pass’d, by Miracle, into them?— Damme, I think not,— Hell were a better Destiny.

I dreamt of a City to the West of here,” Dixon tries to recall, scrying in his Coffee-Mug, the wind blowing Wood-smoke in his eyes, “at some great Confluence of Rivers, or upon a Harbor in some inland Sea,— a large City,— busy, prospering, sacred.” “A Sylvan Philadelphia. . . .” “Well . . . well yes, now tha put it thah’ way,— ” “I hope you are prepar’d for the possibility, that waking Philadelphia is as sacred as anything over here will ever get, Dixon,— observe you not, as we move West, more and more of those Forces, which Cities upon Coasts have learn’d to push away, and leave to Back Inhabitants,— the Lightning, the Winter, an Indifference to Pain, not to mention Fire, Blood, and so forth, all measur’d upon a Scale far from Philadelphian,— whereunto we, and our Royal Commission, and our battery of costly Instruments, are but Fleas in the Flea Circus. We trespass, each day ever more deeply, into a world of less restraint in ev’rything,— no law, no convergence upon any idea of how life is to be,— an Interior that grows meanwhile ever more forested, more savage and perilous, until,— perhaps at the very Longitude of your ‘City,’— we must reach at last an Anti-City,— some concentration of Fate,— some final condition of Abandonment,— wherein all are unredeemably alone and at Hazard as deep as their souls may bear,— lost Creatures that make the very Seneca seem Christian and merciful.” “Eeh, chirpy today . . . ?

The Purveyor of Delusion confers upon his wife a certain expression or twist of Phiz I daresay as old as Holy Scripture,— a lengthy range of Sentiment, all comprest into a single melancholick swing of the eyes. From some personal stowage he produces another Flask, containing, not the Spruce Beer ubiquitous in these parts, but that favor’d stupefacient of the jump’d-up tradesman, French claret,— and without offering it to anyone else, including his Wife, begins to drink. “It goes back,” he might have begun, “to the second Day of Creation, when ‘G-d made the Firmament, and divided the Waters which were under the Firmament, from the Waters which were above the Firmament,’— thus the first Boundary Line. All else after that, in all History, is but Sub-Division.” “What Machine is it,” young Cherrycoke later bade himself goodnight, “that bears us along so relentlessly? We go rattling thro’ another Day,— another Year,— as thro’ an empty Town without a Name, in the Midnight . . . we have but Memories of some Pause at the Pleasure-Spas of our younger Day, the Maidens, the Cards, the Claret,— we seek to extend our stay, but now a silent Functionary in dark Livery indicates it is time to re-board the Coach, and resume the Journey. Long before the Destination, moreover, shall this Machine come abruptly to a Stop . . . gather’d dense with Fear, shall we open the Door to confer with the Driver, to discover that there is no Driver, . . . no Horses, . . . only the Machine, fading as we stand, and a Prairie of desperate Immensity. . . .

— ’tis flatten and fold, isn’t it, and flatten again, among the thicknesses of Hide, till presently you’ve these very thin Sheets of Gold-Leaf.” “Lamination,” Mason observes. “Lo, Lamination abounding,” contributes Squire Haligast, momentarily visible, “its purposes how dark, yet have we ever sought to produce these thin Sheets innumerable, to spread a given Volume as close to pure Surface as possible, whilst on route discovering various new forms, the Leyden Pile, decks of Playing-Cards, Contrivances which, like the Lever or Pulley, quite multiply the apparent forces, often unto disproportionate results. . . .” “The printed Book,” suggests the Revd, “— thin layers of pattern’d Ink, alternating with other thin layers of compress’d Paper, stack’d often by the Hundreds.” “Or an unbound Heap of Broadsides,” adds Mr. Dimdown, “dispers’d one by one, and multiplying their effect as they go.” The Macaroni is of course not what he seems, as which of us is?— the truth comes out weeks later, when he is discover’d running a clandestine printing Press, in a Cellar in Elkton. He looks up from the fragrant Sheets, so new that one might yet smell the Apprentices’ Urine in which the Ink-Swabs were left to soften, bearing, to sensitiz’d Nasalia, sub-Messages of youth and Longing,— all about him the word repeated in large Type, LIBERTY. One Civilian leads in a small band of Soldiers. “Last time you’ll be seeing that word.” “Don’t bet your Wife’s Reputation on it,” the Quarrelsome Fop might have replied. Philip Dimdown, return’d to himself, keeps his Silence.

Mason recalls well enough that autumn of ’56, when the celebrated future Martyr of Quebec, with six companies of Infantry, occupied that unhappy Town after wages were all cut in half, and the master weavers began to fiddle the Chain on the Bar, and a weaver was lucky to earn tuppence for eight hours’ work. Mason in those same Weeks was preparing to leave the Golden Valley, to begin his job as Bradley’s assistant, even as Soldiers were beating citizens and slaughtering sheep for their pleasure, fouling and making sick Streams once holy,— his father mean-times cursing his Son for a Coward, as Loaves by the Dozens were taken, with no payment but a Sergeant’s Smirk. Mason, seeing the Choices, had chosen Bradley, and Bradley’s world, when he should instead have stood by his father, and their small doom’d Paradise. “Who are they,” inquires the Revd in his Day-Book, “that will send violent young troops against their own people? Their mouths ever keeping up the same weary Rattle about Freedom, Toleration, and the rest, whilst their own Land is as Occupied as ever it was by Rome. These forces look like Englishmen, they were born in England, they speak the language of the People flawlessly, they cheerfully eat jellied Eels, joints of Mutton, Treacle-Tarts, all that vile unwholesome Diet which maketh the involuntary American more than once bless his Exile,— yet their intercourse with the Mass of the People is as cold with suspicion and contempt, as that of any foreign invader.” “We shall all of us learn, who they are,” Capt. V. with a melancholy Phiz, “and all too soon.

As they stand in the muck of the Cypress Swamp, black and thinly crusted, each Step breaking through to release a Smell of Generations of Deaths, something in it, some principle of untaught Mechanicks, tugging at their ankles, voiceless, importunate,— a moment arrives, when one of them smacks his Pate for something other than a Mosquitoe. “Ev’rywhere they’ve sent us,— the Cape, St. Helena, America,— what’s the Element common to all?” “Long Voyages by Sea,” replies Mason, blinking in Exhaustion by now chronick. “Was there anything else?” “Slaves. Ev’ry day at the Cape, we lived with Slavery in our faces,— more of it at St. Helena,— and now here we are again, in another Colony, this time having drawn them a Line between their Slave-Keepers, and their Wage-Payers, as if doom’d to re-encounter thro’ the World this public Secret, this shameful Core. . . . Pretending it to be ever somewhere else, with the Turks, the Russians, the Companies, down there, down where it smells like warm Brine and Gunpowder fumes, they’re murdering and dispossessing thousands untallied, the innocent of the World, passing daily into the Hands of Slave-owners and Torturers, but oh, never in Holland, nor in England, that Garden of Fools . . . ? Christ, Mason.” “Christ, what? What did I do?” “Huz. Didn’t we take the King’s money, as here we’re taking it again? whilst Slaves waited upon us, and we neither one objected, as little as we have here, in certain houses south of the Line,— Where does it end? No matter where in it we go, shall we find all the World Tyrants and Slaves? America was the one place we should not have found them.” “Yet we’re not Slaves, after all,— we’re Hirelings.” “I don’t trust this King, Mason. I don’t think anybody else does, either. Tha saw Lord Ferrers take the Drop at Tyburn. They execute their own. What may they be willing to do to huz?

The precise Geography of the Water-shed was now primary,— where Races might go, for Wheels to be driven and Workshops to be run from them . . . ’twas like coming before the Final Judge and discovering that good and useful Lives, innocence of Wrong-doing, purity of Character, count for far less, than what He really wishes of us, something we have no more suspected than anyone in the Valley had ever imagin’d that the Flow of Water through Nature, along a Gradient provided free by the same Deity, might be re-shap’d to drive a Row of Looms, each working thousands of Yarns in strictest right-angularity,— as far from Earthly forms as possible,— nor that ev’ry stage of the ’Morphosis, would have its equivalent in Pounds, Shillings, and Pence.

If he does not yet treasure, neither does he cast away, these Lesser Revelations, saving them one by mean, insufficient one,— some unbidden, some sought and earn'd, all gathering in a small pile inside the Casket of his Hopes, against an unknown Sum, intended to purchase his Salvation.

1764: Mason and Dixon begin the survey of the line determining the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Religion commandeered both sides of the slavery issue. Lincoln made this point in his Second Inaugural: “Both [sides] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.”8 The bloodshed might have been stemmed were it not for the unmovable certainty religion breeds in the faithful. We might say today that abolitionists motivated by religion were correct to be certain on such an obvious issue, but their brethren south of the Mason-Dixon Line were just as certain, and they had the stronger side of the biblical argument. As William Lloyd Garrison, a leading abolitionist, put it, “In this country, the Bible has been used to support slavery and capital punishment; while in the old countries, it has been quoted to sustain all manner of tyranny and persecution. All reforms are anti-Bible.

Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream?— in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow'd Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever 'tis not yet mapp'd, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen,— serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that may yet be true,— Earthly Paradise, Fountain of Youth, Realms of Prester John, Christ's Kingdom, ever behind the sunset, safe till the next Territory to the West be seen and recorded, measur'd and tied in, back into the Net-Work of Points already known, that slowly triangulates its Way into the Continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments,— winning away from the realm of the Sacred, its Borderlands one by one, and assuming them unto the bare mortal World that is our home, and our Despair.

And if it all were nought but Madmen's Sleep? The Years we all believ'd were real and deep As Lives, as Sorrows, bearing us each one Blindly along our Line's relentless Run....

What Machine is it," young Cherrycoke later bade himself goodnight, "that bears us along so relentlessly? We go rattling thro' another Day,— another Year,— as thro' an empty Town without a Name, in the Midnight. . .we have but Memories of some Pause at the Pleasure-Spas of our younger Day, the Maidens, the Cards, the Claret,— we seek to extend our stay, but now a silent Functionary in dark Livery indicates it is time to re-board the Coach, and resume the Journey. Long before the Destination, moreover, shall this Machine come abruptly to a Stop...gather'd dense with Fear, shall we open the Door to confer with the Driver, to discover that there is no Driver,... no Horses,... only the Machine, fading as we stand, and a Prairie of desperate Immensity

What Machine is it," young Cherrycoke later bade himself goodnight, "that bears us along so relentlessly? We go rattling thro' another Day,— another Year,— as thro' an empty Town without a Name, in the Midnight. . .we have but Memories of some Pause at the Pleasure-Spas of our younger Day, the Maidens, the Cards, the Claret,— we seek to extend our stay, but now a silent Functionary in dark Livery indicates it is time to re-board the Coach, and resume the Journey. Long before the Destination, moreover, shall this Machine come abruptly to a Stop...gather'd dense with Fear, shall we open the Door to confer with the Driver, to discover that there is no Driver,... no Horses,... only the Machine, fading as we stand, and a Prairie of desperate Immensity.

Tis our Duty to resist, tho' it take up all our Days, and Nights as well.

Exactly as the creatures Microscopic upon your skin believe you to be a Planet. They may be arguing even now about whether or not you are a form of Life. Each time you step into a Tub, there comes upon them another universal Flood, with its Animalcular Noah, and another Reinhabiting, another Chain of Generations, to them how timeless, till the next Wash.

To rule forever," continues the Chinaman, later, "it is necessary only to create, among the people one would rule, what we call... Bad History. Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,— to create thus a Distinction betwixt 'em,— 'tis the first stroke.— All else will follow as if predestin'd, unto War and Devastation.

Is it the Infinite that tempts us, or the Imp? Or is it merely our Vocational Habit, ancient as Kabbala, of seeking God there, among the Notation of these resonating Chains....

...Tis the Reciprocal of 'as above, so below,'... being only at the finer Scales, that we may find the truth about the Greater Heavens,... the exact value of a Solar Parallax of less than ten seconds can give us the size of the Solar system. The Parallax of Sirius, perhaps less than two seconds, can give us the size of Creation. May we not, in the Domain of Zero to One Second of Arc, find ways to measure even That Which we cannot,— may not,— see?

8

Once they crossed the Mason-Dixon Line, he’d have to move to the colored section, but for now he sat where he chose.

What is a village without village idiots ?

Stargazing in those parts was a young man's term for masturbating

there is ever a drop in the cup left, another Shot to be fir'd, another life to be taken off cruelly, in unmediated Hate, ev'ry day in this Forest Life, somewhere.

what fails to return, is ever a source of Sorrow.

Life's a gamble, just a day-and-night Pass Bank, isn't it? Why not look your best whilst the Dice yet tumble

what we were doing out in that Country together was brave, scientifick beyond my understanding, and ultimately meaningless,

At the heart of the story is a mystery that still confounds: How on earth did South Carolina, a primitive, scantily populated state in economic decline, become the fulcrum for America’s greatest tragedy? And even more bewildering, what malignant magic brought Americans on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line to the point where they could actually imagine the wholesale killing of one

Mason, hands in the dough, watch'd his father openly, feeling the pain in his arms, the pale mass seething with live resistance,— hungry peoples' invention to fill in for times of no Meat, and presently a Succedaneum for Our Lord's own Flesh...The baker's trade terrified the young man. He learn'd as much of it as would keep him going,— but when he began to see into it,— the smells, the unaccountable swelling of the dough, the oven door like a door before a Sacrament,— the daily repetitions of smell and ferment and some hidden Drama, as in the Mass,— was he fleeing to the repetitions of the Sky, believing them safer, not as saturated in life and death? If Christ's Body could enter Bread, then what else might?— might it not be as easily haunted by ghosts less welcome? Alone in the early empty mornings even for a few seconds with the mute white rows, he was overwhelmed by the ghostliness of Bread. In fact, young Mason nods all the time, more than once with a risen raw Loaf for a pillow, his ear flow'd into intimately by the living network of cells, which seems, just before he wakes,— he insists he wasn't dreaming,— to contrive in some wise, directly in his ear canal, to speak to him. It says, "Remember us to your Father.

Mason, hands in the dough, watch'd his father openly, feeling the pain in his arms, the pale mass seething with live resistance,— hungry peoples' invention to fill in for times of no Meat, and presently a Succedaneum for Our Lord's own Flesh...The baker's trade terrified the young man. He learn'd as much of it as would keep him going,— but when he began to see into it,— the smells, the unaccountable swelling of the dough, the oven door like a door before a Sacrament,— the daily repetitions of smell and ferment and some hidden Drama, as in the Mass,— was he fleeing to the repetitions of the Sky, believing them safer, not as saturated in life and death? If Christ's Body could enter Bread, then what else might?— might it not be as easily haunted by ghosts less welcome? Alone in the early empty mornings even for a few seconds with the mute white rows, he was overwhelmed by the ghostliness of Bread. In fact, young Mason nods all the time, more than once with a risen raw Load for a pillow, his ear flow'd into intimately by the living network of cells, which seems, just before he wakes,— he insists he wasn't dreaming,— to contrive in some wise, directly in his ear canal, to speak to him. It says, "Remember us to your Father.

prayed against the cruel violence of dominion and diminishment. And armed with the belief in things unseen and miracles alike, I prayed she might be swayed to love the God of slaves. That God is far more tender than the one she praises, even to women like her.

I prayed against the cruel violence of dominion and diminishment. And armed with the belief in things unseen and miracles alike, I prayed she might be swayed to love the God of slaves. That God is far more tender than the one she praises, even to women like her.

The under-lyinf Condition of their Lives is quickly establish’d as the Need to keep, as others a permanent address, a perfect Latitude,— no fix’d place, rather a fix’d Motion,— Westering. Whenever they do stop moving, like certain Stars in Chinese Astrology, they lose their Invisibility, and revert to the indignity of being observ’d and available again for earthly purposes.

The under-lying Condition of their Lives is quickly establish’d as the Need to keep, as others a permanent address, a perfect Latitude,— no fix’d place, rather a fix’d Motion,— Westering. Whenever they do stop moving, like certain Stars in Chinese Astrology, they lose their Invisibility, and revert to the indignity of being observ’d and available again for earthly purposes.

Twenty-nine’s Fell Shadow! O, inhospitably final year of any Pretense to Youth, its Dreams now, how wither’d away … tho’ styl’d a Prime, yet bid’st thou Adieu to the Prime of Life! … There,— there, in the Stygian Mists of Futurity, loometh the dread Thirty,— Transition unspeakable! Prime so soon fallen, thy Virtue so easily broken, into a Number divisible,— penetrable!- by six others![…] Fourth Decade of Life! thy Gates but a brief Year ahead,— tho’ in this place, a Year can seem a Century,— what hold’st thou for the superannuated?

Wisdom of the Ages: "Uppity" How Obama's new aggressive style is described below the Mason-Dixon line.

Caleb’s mind filled with an unbidden image of her in the parlor of the grand house in Fox Chapel, wearing silks and satins and graciously greeting his guests of an evening. He’d be the envy of every man north of the Mason-Dixon line. He shook off the idea. He was looking for another mistress, not a wife.

My colleague Michael Harris, a distinguished number theorist at the Institut de Mathematiques de Jussieu in Paris, has a theory that three of Thomas Pynchon's major novels are governed by the three conic sections: Gravity's Rainbow is about paraboloas (all those rockets, launching, dropping!), Mason & Dixon about ellipses, and Against the Day about hyperbolas. This seems as good to me as any other organizing theory of these novels I've encountered; certainly Pynchon, a former physics major who likes to drop references to Mobius strips and the quaternions in his novels, knows very well what the conic sections are.

up in a salon that’s meant for men the same way a tampon’s meant for men.

Wer die Wahrheit beansprucht, den verläßt sie. In Dienst genommen oder gezwungen wird die Historik stets nur von niedrigen Interessen. Sie ist zu unschuldig, als daß man sie in Griffweite irgendeines Machthabers lassen könnte-, der sie nur zu berühren braucht, und ihre ganze Glaubwürdigkeit ist in einem Augenblick dahin, als wäre sie nie gewesen. Sie muß vielmehr liebevoll und in allen Ehren umsorgt werden, und zwar von Fabulisten und Fälschern, Dichterlingen und Verrückten jeglicher Couleur, Meistern der Verlarvung, welche ihre Kleidung, Toilette, Haltung und eine Sprache schaffen, die gewandt genug ist, nicht die Begierden, ja nicht einmal die Neugier des Staates zu wecken. Aesop war gezwungen, Fabeln zu erzählen.

A close study of the southern newspapers fails to show that the bloomer craze has gained any decided hold south of the Mason and Dixon line. Indeed, the bicycle is a new thing, and the women who ride are as fearful of criticism as a woman in tight knickerbockers would be in some Northern places...South of Virginia the real southern women do not ride the bicycle much. The climate is against the exercise...A Tennessee paper so late as last week was wondering if any woman would have the temerity to introduce bloomers in that region. If any did, it said, they would surely bring on themselves such notoriety as must be exceedingly unpleasant to modest, womanly women...Some few women in New Orleans wear bloomers, but in almost every southern newspaper the appearance of a pair of bloomers is treated almost as would be the coming ashore of the sea serpent. - Los Angeles Herald, Sept. 15, 1895

Peculiarities in Delaware’s boundaries also beset the southern boundary, the so-called Transpeninsular Line. Early inaccuracies in maps and competing bids for land among European families left the issue confused until 1751, when an east-west line was drawn across the Delmarva Peninsula. The line later served as the southern end-point of the only north-south portion of the Mason-Dixon line (the Tangent). The political demarcation has resulted in some curiosities on the border, including the town of Delmar. Split between Delaware and Maryland, the town operates a single government and services, but requires two postal codes and tax systems. It has adopted the motto, “The Little Town Too Big for One State.

Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,- who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government. - Thomas Pynchon (Mason & Dixon)

bearing the old Pewter Coffee-Machine venting its Puffs of Vapor,

Print causes Civil Unrest,— Civil Unrest in any Ship at Sea is intolerable. Coffee as well. Where are newpapers found? In those damnable Whig Coffee-Houses. Eh? A Potion stimulating rebellion and immoderate desires.

Norris’s politics fit well with the Klan because he had a holistic view of how race, religion, morality, and politics fit together. Commenting on an interracial marriage that took place at a church in New York, Norris said, “I can name to you a people south of the Mason-Dixon Line that if a Negro should take a white girl’s hand in marriage that girl would be without a Negro husband before the sun arose the next morning.” Furthermore, said Norris, he would gladly perform the funeral. [100]

Astronomy is as soil'd at the hands of the Pelhamites as ev'ry other Business in this Kingdom,— and we ever at the mercy of Place-jobbery, as much as any Nincompoop at Court.

Remember, she who keepeth the Books runneth the Business.

I have look'd on Worlds far distant, their Beauty how pitiless.

Doubt is the essence of Christ.

Belief is proof and/or reasn.

You know what they say,' Suz had texted. 'Once you go geek, you never go back.

They say opposites attract. Nobody ever said opposites live happily ever after.

Your problem is a serious lack of imagination. You can’t imagine being different than you are.

On my first Sunday morning visiting Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, my family and I sat in front of a lovely family in the church balcony. I first noticed them because their young children sat attentively and patiently as they participated in the service. I then noticed their lovely, vigorous singing. But they really grabbed my attention when they greeted us warmly immediately after the service. The man of the family took me around and introduced me to many of the men in the church, and after about fifteen minutes or so invited my family to join his family at their home for lunch—right then. Honestly, the experience made me feel a little weirded out. First of all, his name was Jim, and literally the first three men he introduced me to were all named Jim. Strange, I thought. What kind of church is this? Will I have to change my name again? Then the quick invitation to lunch about knocked me down. It happened too fast. And with my Southern upbringing, it might have even been considered impolite. So I gave him my best polite Southern way of saying no: “That is mighty nice of you. Perhaps some other time.” Everybody down South knows that a sentence like that means no. Southerners know that that is how you must say no because saying no itself is impolite. Southerners are nothing if not polite. So I had clearly said no to this man’s kind but hasty offer of lunch. And wouldn’t you know it? The very next week, when we went to this strange church again, he insisted that we join them for lunch. I was North Carolina. He was New Jersey. There was a failure to communicate. He didn’t understand the rules of the South, but Washington, DC, apparently was too close to the Mason-Dixon Line to clearly establish which “Rome” we were in and what we should do. But I was wrong, and Jim was right. He was the godlier man. He was more hospitable than anyone I had ever met and remains more hospitable than I am today. He embodied Paul’s insistence that hospitable men lead Christ’s church. And rightly, he was a church elder.

Anyone who wonders what Imps look like in their Middle Years would be perhaps more than satisfied with Shelby's Phiz at the moment,— Malice undiminish'd, with a Daily Schedule that leaves him too little time to express it.

Look to the Southeast, where, as Taylor has noted, “colonial societies sustained a slave system more oppressive than anything practiced in Europe” and “the slave-owners relied on Indians to catch runaways.” There, too, the native groups, descended from Mississippian societies, were far more hierarchical and autocratically ruled than the Algonkian- and Iroquoian-speaking groups in the Northeast. As Gallay has documented, indigenous societies cooperated fully with the slave-trading system, sending war captives to colonists for sale overseas. In the Northeast, by contrast, the Wendat (Huron) and Haudenosaunee either killed or, more common, adopted captives; involuntary servitude, though it occurred, was strikingly rarer. On the map, the division line between slave and non-slave societies occurs in Virginia, broadly anticipating the Mason-Dixon line that later split slave states from free. The repeated pattern doubtless has to do with geography—southeastern climate and soil favor plantation crops like tobacco and cotton. And southern colonists’ preference for slavery presumably reflected their different ethnic, class, and religious backgrounds. But

This remarkable transformation can be seen in patterns of congressional representation, then and now. When the 91st Congress was seated in 1969, after Nixon defeated Humphrey, eighteen of the twenty-two senators from the South—the prototypical John Wayne region of the country—were Democrats. In the states stretching from Maine to the Mason-Dixon Line, Jane Fonda country, twelve of the eighteen senators were Republicans. These proportions are hard to conceive of today. In contrast, at the beginning of the 115th Congress, which began shortly after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to win the presidency in late 2016, John Wayne’s South was represented by nineteen Republicans and only three Democrats; New England and the Middle Atlantic states, meanwhile, had two lonely Republicans among their eighteen senators.

He must, if one day call'd upon, produce an over- head view of a World that never was, in truth-like detail, one he'd begun in silence to contrive,— a Map entirely within his mind, of a World he could escape to, if he had to. If he had to, he would enter it entirely but never get lost, for he would have this Map, and in it, spread below, would lie ev'rything,— Mountain of Glass, Sea of Sand, miraculous Springs, Volcanoes, Sacred Cities, mile- deep Chasm, Serpent's Cave, endless Prairie....another Chapbook-Fancy with each Deviation and Dip of the Needle.

He must, if one day call'd upon, produce an over-head view of a World that never was, in truth-like detail, one he'd begun in silence to contrive,— a Map entirely within his mind, of a World he could escape to, if he had to. If he had to, he would enter it entirely but never get lost, for he would have this Map, and in it, spread below, would lie ev'rything,— Mountain of Glass, Sea of Sand, miraculous Springs, Volcanoes, Sacred Cities, mile- deep Chasm, Serpent's Cave, endless Prairie....another Chapbook-Fancy with each Deviation and Dip of the Needle.

He must, if one day call'd upon, produce an over-head view of a World that never was, in truth-like detail, one he'd begun in silence to contrive,— a Map entirely within his mind, of a World he could escape to, if he had to. If he had to, he would enter it entirely but never get lost, for he would have this Map, and in it, spread below, would lie ev'rything,— Mountain of Glass, Sea of Sand, miraculous Springs, Volcanoes, Sacred Cities, mile-deep Chasm, Serpent's Cave, endless Prairie....another Chapbook-Fancy with each Deviation and Dip of the Needle.

Do you believe what you're saying? How has Getting On With It been working out for you, then? You expect me to live in the eternal Present, like some Hindoo? Wonderful,— my own Gooroo, ever here with a sage answer. Tell me, then,— what if I can't just lightly let her drop? What if I won't just leave her to the Weather, and Forgetfulness? What if I want to spend, even squander, my precious time trying to make it up to her? Somehow? Do you think anyone can simply let that all go?

My advisor in graduate school, Henry Louis Gates Jr., known as Skip, wrote about coming of age in a West Virginia mountain town in his memoir, Colored People. Like Albert Murray, he

Huz. Didn’t we take the King’s money, as here we’re taking it again? whilst Slaves waited upon us, and we neither one objected, as little as we have here, in certain houses south of the Line,— Where does it end? No matter where in it we go, shall we find all the World Tyrants and Slaves? America was the one place we should not have found them.

Charter'd Companies may indeed be the form the world has now increasingly begun to take.

When the crop that brought wealth under the banner of Christianity is found to destroy human lungs but trees older than Jesus breathe, it makes me think the meek shall inherit the earth.

The driver's gentility, despite the fact that he could have, could still, string me up without the world flinching? That toothless smile that could easily accompany either mirth or murderousness, depending on the eyes? This is what Black folks mean when we say we prefer the Southern White person's honest racism to the Northern liberal's subterfuge. It is not physically more benign, or more dependable. But it is transparent in the way it terrorizes. You never forget to have your shoulders hitched up a little and taut, even (and especially) when they call you 'sweetheart.' Cold comfort.

One reason Humans remain young so long, compar'd to other Creatures, is that the young are useful in many ways, among them in providing daily, by way of the evil Creatures and Slaughter they love, a Denial of Mortality clamorous enough to allow their Elders release, if only for moments at a time, from Its Claims upon the Attention.

On the one hand, the White Northerner often seeks to find sympathy and common ground with the White Southerner by disappearing the Black Southerner. On the other, the White Northerner seeks to express solidarity with the Black Southerner by turning the White Southerner into a caricatured demon in comparison to his own virtue.

Nope, that sounds good.” Feeling brave, I ask, “Why did you call me Sugar?” Zach tilts his head at my question, so I elaborate. “Back there,” I motion to where we were admiring the art, “when you first spoke, you called me "Sugar." That’s a common Southern term, but you don’t sound Southern.” “Indeed I am not. I like the cold too much to live below the Mason-Dixon line. I called you Sugar because you look sweet as candy.

the dividing line will not be Mason & Dixons but between patriotism, & intelligence on the one side & superstition, ambition & ignorance on the other.

What, by analogy, happens to the family of the university, or the town, or the state, or the Old Dominion, or the nation itself, given what has been built into its creation?

So I went deeper into an archive of historical memory, hoping to sort it out

He sees where blows with Rifle-Butts miss’d their Marks, and chipp’d the Walls. He sees blood in Corners never cleans’d. Thankful he is no longer a Child, else might he curse and weep, scattering his Anger to no Effect, Dixon now must be his own stern Uncle, and smack himelf upon the Pate at any sign of unfocusing. What in the Holy Names are these people about? Not even the Dutchmen at the Cape behav’d this way. Is it something in this Wilderness, something ancient, that waited for them, and infected their Souls when they came?

There is little doubt in my mind now that the prevailing sentiment of the South would have been opposed to secession in 1860 and 1861, if there had been a fair and calm expression of opinion, unbiased by threats, and if the ballot of one legal voter had counted for as much as that of any other. But there was no calm discussion of the question. Demagogues who were too old to enter the army if there should be a war, others who entertained so high an opinion of their own ability that they did not believe they could be spared from the direction of the affairs of state in such an event, declaimed vehemently and unceasingly against the North; against its aggressions upon the South; its interference with Southern rights, etc., etc. They denounced the Northerners as cowards, poltroons, negro-worshippers; claimed that one Southern man was equal to five Northern men in battle; that if the South would stand up for its rights the North would back down. Mr. Jefferson Davis said in a speech, delivered at La Grange, Mississippi, before the secession of that State, that he would agree to drink all the blood spilled south of Mason and Dixon's line if there should be a war. The young men who would have the fighting to do in case of war, believed all these statements, both in regard to the aggressiveness of the North and its cowardice. They, too, cried out for a separation from such people. The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre—what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation. Under the old regime they were looked down upon by those who controlled all the affairs in the interest of slave-owners, as poor white trash who were allowed the ballot so long as they cast it according to direction. I

With an unaccustomed rhetorical flourish, he affirmed that in the near future “the dividing line will not be Mason & Dixons but between patriotism, & intelligence on the one side & superstition, ambition & ignorance on the other.

If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason’s and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other. —Ulysses S Grant

What Machine is it that bears us along so relentlessly? We go rattling thro’ another Day,— another Year,— as thro’ an empty Town without a Name, in the Midnight…we have but Memories of some Pause at the Pleasure-Spas of our younger Day, the Maidens, the Cards, the Claret,— we seek to extend our stay, but now a silent Functionary in dark Livery indicates it is time to re-board the Coach, and resume the Journey. Long before the Destination, moreover, shall this Machine come abruptly to a Stop . . . gather’d dense with Fear, shall we open the Door to confer with the Driver, to discover that there is no Driver,…no Horses,…only the Machine, fading as we stand, and a Prairie of desperate Immensity….

Männern geschieht es zuweilen, daß sie eines Tages mit einemmal verstehen, wie sehr sie ihre Kinder lieben, nämlich so absolut, wie ein Kind selbst seine Liebe schenkt, und welche schrecklichen Bedingungen sich daran knüpfen - und das überfordert sie, und sie wollen es nicht, wollen es keinesfalls und scheuen davor zurück. So entstehen diese elenden Verhältnisse - zumal zwischen Vätern und Söhnen. Der Vater ist furchtsam, das Kind unschuldig. Doch wenn er nur den ersten Ansturm der Furcht überstehen könnte und mit genügend Zeit zum Nachdenken gesegnet wäre, könnte er einen Ausweg finden...

Never since the days of the Spartan Helots has history recorded such brutality as has been ever since the war and as is now being perpetrated upon the Negro in the South. How easy for us to go to Russia and drop a tear of sympathy over the persecuted Jew. But a step across Mason's and Dixon's line will bring us upon a scene of horrors before which those of Russia, bad as they are, pale into insignificance! No irresponsible, blood-thirsty mobs prowl over Russian territory, lashing and lynching its citizens.

Oh well, 'really'— it's like a woman isn't it, you look at each other, you think Of course not, she thinks Of course not,— yet the Alternatives hang about, don't they, like Wraiths.

Somewhat as his Neighbors each strenuous Sunday profess belief in the Great Struggle at the End of the World, so does Cornelius, inside his perimeter of Mauritian smoke at the hour when nothing is lawfully a-stir but the Rattle-Watch and the wind, find in his anxious meditations no Release from the coming Armageddon of the races,— this European settlement so precarious, facing an unknown Interior with the sea at their backs, forced, step after step, by the steadfast Gravity of all Africa, down into it at last.... It is another way of living where the Sea is ever higher than one’s Head, and kept out only provisionally.

But here is a Collective Ghost of more than household Scale,— the Wrongs committed Daily against the Slaves, petty and grave ones alike, going unrecorded, charm’d invisible to history, invisible yet possessing Mass, and Velocity, able not only to rattle Chains but to break them as well. The precariousness to Life here, the need to keep the Ghost propitiated, Day to Day, via the Company’s merciless Priesthoods and many-Volum’d Codes, brings all but the hardiest souls sooner or later to consider the Primary Questions more or less undiluted. Slaves here commit suicide at a frightening Rate,— but so do the Whites, for no reason, or for a Reason ubiquitous and unaddress’d, which may bear Acquaintance but a Moment at a Time.

The law was an extrajudicial exercise of tyranny. Blacks were denied legal counsel and could not testify on their own behalf. Commissioners had financial incentives to send Blacks back to slavery, as they received a direct financial reward: “If the commissioner decided against the claimant, he would receive a fee of five dollars; if in favor ten. This provision, supposedly justified by the paperwork needed to remand a fugitive to the South, became notorious among abolitionists as a bribe to commissioners.”45 The law was rigged to reenslave Blacks and imposed obligations considered evil by free state citizens. Frederick Douglass wrote about it in forceful terms: “By an act of the American Congress . . . slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason & Dixon’s line has been obliterated; . . . and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women, and children remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States.

denied legal counsel and could not testify on their own behalf. Commissioners had financial incentives to send Blacks back to slavery, as they received a direct financial reward: “If the commissioner decided against the claimant, he would receive a fee of five dollars; if in favor ten. This provision, supposedly justified by the paperwork needed to remand a fugitive to the South, became notorious among abolitionists as a bribe to commissioners.”45 The law was rigged to reenslave Blacks and imposed obligations considered evil by free state citizens. Frederick Douglass wrote about it in forceful terms: “By an act of the American Congress . . . slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason & Dixon’s line has been obliterated; . . . and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women, and children remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States.

From the beginning, this nation was experimental and innovative as well as invasive. Resourceful even. But any virtues were distorted by a greater driver: unapologetic greed, which legitimized violent conquest and captivity. This is the American habitus.

We are in awe at the sublime natural landscape and then use up its abundance into oblivion. We are primed to be destroyers with a disregard for the moral, human, and environmental costs of it all.

Among us, there are citizens, second-class citizens, noncitizens, and those who are cast so far beneath every other category that it is as though they are seen as nonpersons. Although these habits are not all directly about race, race remains the most dramatic light switch of the country and its sorting. And yet “racism,” despite all evidence of its ubiquity, is still commonly described as “belonging” to the South. I don’t just mean that other regions ignore their racism and poverty and project them onto the South, although that is certainly true. I also mean that the cruelest labor of sustaining the racial-class order was historically placed upon the South. Its legacy of racism then is of course bloodier than most. But other regions are also bloody in deed. Discrimination is everywhere, but collectively the country has leeched off the racialized exploitation of the South while also denying it.

clay pots or bowls made of clay “snakes” rolled out and

Latitudes and Departures

solitary US Route 15 skirts along the mountainsides, bisecting the Mason-Dixon Line at its midpoint, providing view after glorious view of the topography.

Over South Mountain, among the Springs that fall to Antietam Creek, on September 21st, they pause at 96 Miles, 3 Chains, near the House of Mr. Staphel Shockey, who tells them of a remarkable Cavern beneath the Earth, about six miles south of the Line. In the winter, English Church services are held in it. Mason’s Hat begins to move, as from some Agitation beneath it. Accordingly, the next day, Sunday, they pay a visit, in company with Mr. Shockey and his Children, whilst Mrs. Shockey remains at home with a thousand Chores that Sunday does not release her from. The entrance is an arch about 6 yards in length and four feet in height, when immediately there opens a room 45 yards in length, 40 in breadth and 7 or 8 in height. (Not one pillar to support nature’s arch) . . . On the Sidewalls are drawn by the Pencil of Time, with the tears of the Rocks: The imitation of Organ, Pillar, Columns and Monuments of a Temple; which, with the glimmering faint light; makes the whole an awful, solemn appearance: Striking its Visitants with a strong and melancholy reflection: that such is the abodes of the Dead: thy inevitable doom, O stranger; soon to be numbered as one of them.

Aye, some of us have never seen him, only heard his steps on the nights when there is no Moon, or his voice, speaking from above the only words he knows,— ‘Eyeh asher Eyeh,’ “—in on which, in Tones hush’d, though ominous, the others now join. “That is, ‘I am that which I am,’” helpfully translates a somehow nautical-looking Indiv. with gigantick Fore-Arms, and one Eye ever a-Squint from the Smoke of his Pipe.

Thus, as the Communication is a long sequence of Fortified remounting stations, so is the Line a long sequence of Taverns and Ordinaries, and absences of the same. One day, the Meridian having been closely enough establish’d, and with an hour or two of free time available to them, one heads north, one south, and ’tis Dixon’s luck to discover The Rabbi of Prague, headquarters of a Kabbalistick Faith, in Correspondence with the Elect Cohens of Paris, whose private Salute they now greet Dixon with, the Fingers spread two and two, and the Thumb held away from them likewise, said to represent the Hebrew letter Shin and to signify, “Live long and prosper.” The area just beyond the next Ridge is believ’d to harbor a giant Golem, or Jewish Automaton, taller than the most ancient of the Trees. As explain’d to Dixon, ’twas created by an Indian tribe widely suppos’d to be one of the famous Lost Tribes of Israel, who had somehow given up control of the Creature, sending it headlong into the Forest, where it would learn of its own gift of Mobile Invisibility.

Then what’s America’s excuse?” Dixon inquir’d, mild as Country Tea. “Unfortunately, young people,” recalls the Revd, “the word Liberty, so unreflectively sacred to us today, was taken in those Times to encompass even the darkest of Men’s rights,— to injure whomever we might wish,— unto extermination, were it possible,— Free of Royal advice or Proclamation Lines and such. This being, indeed and alas, one of the Liberties our late War was fought to secure.

They saw white Brutality enough, at the Cape of Good Hope. They can no better understand it now, than then. Something is eluding them. Whites in both places are become the very Savages of their own worst Dreams, far out of Measure to any Provocation.

He sees where blows with Rifle-Butts miss’d their Marks, and chipp’d the Walls. He sees blood in Corners never cleans’d. Thankful he is no longer a Child, else might he curse and weep, scattering his Anger to no Effect, Dixon now must be his own stern Uncle, and smack himelf upon the Pate at any sign of unfocusing. What in the Holy Names are these people about? Not even the Dutchmen at the Cape behav’d this way. Is it something in this Wilderness, something ancient, that waited for them, and infected their Souls when they came? Nothing he had brought to it of his nearest comparison, Raby with its thatch’d and benevolent romance of serfdom, had at all prepar’d him for the iron Criminality of the Cape,— the publick Executions and Whippings, the open’d flesh, the welling blood, the beefy contented faces of those whites. . . . Yet is Dixon certain, as certain as the lightness he feels now, lightness premonitory of Flying, that far worse happen’d here, to these poor People, as the blood flew and the Children cried,— that at the end no one understood what they said as they died. “I don’t pray enough,” Dixon subvocalizes, “and I can’t get upon my Knees just now because too many are watching,— yet could I kneel, and would I pray, ’twould be to ask, respectfully, that this be made right, that the Murderers meet appropriate Fates, that I be spar’d the awkwardness of seeking them out myself and slaying as many as I may, before they overwhelm me. Much better if that be handl’d some other way, by someone a bit more credible. . . .” He feels no better for this Out-pouring.

If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.” —Ulysses S. Grant

Migration is the story of America. It is foundational. From Pilgrims fleeing oppression in Europe, to the millions who took advantage of the Homestead Act to “go West,” to the erection of the Statue of Liberty in New York’s harbor, all the way up to the U.S. Congress tying Most Favored Nation status to the human right of Soviet Jews to emigrate, the movement of people fleeing tyranny, violence, and withered opportunities is sacrosanct to Americans. In fact, “freedom of movement” is a treasured right in the nation’s political lexicon. Yet, when more than 1.5 million African Americans left the land below the Mason-Dixon Line, white Southern elites raged with cool, calculated efficiency. This was no lynch mob seeking vengeance; rather, these were mayors, governors, legislators, business leaders, and police chiefs who bristled at “the first step … the nation’s servant class ever took without asking.”12 In the wood-paneled rooms of city halls, in the chambers of city councils, in the marbled state legislatures, and in sheriffs’ offices, white government officials, working hand in hand with plantation, lumber mill, and mine owners, devised an array of obstacles and laws to stop African Americans, as U.S. citizens, from exercising the right to find better jobs, to search for good schools, indeed simply to escape the ever-present terror of lynch mobs. In short, the powerful, respectable elements of the white South rose up, in the words of then-secretary of labor William B. Wilson, to stop the Great Migration and interfere with “the natural right of workers to move from place to place at their own discretion.

Who are they,” inquires the Revd in his Day-Book, “that will send violent young troops against their own people? Their mouths ever keeping up the same weary Rattle about Freedom, Toleration, and the rest, whilst their own Land is as Occupied as ever it was by Rome. These forces look like Englishmen, they were born in England, they speak the language of the People flawlessly, they cheerfully eat jellied Eels, joints of Mutton, Treacle-Tarts, all that vile unwholesome Diet which maketh the involuntary American more than once bless his Exile,— yet their intercourse with the Mass of the People is as cold with suspicion and contempt, as that of any foreign invader.” “We shall all of us learn, who they are,” Capt. V. with a melancholy Phiz, “and all too soon.

Dr. Franklin observes them, one at a time, through the tinted lenses of Spectacles of his own Invention, for moderating the Glare of the Sun, whose Elevation upon his Nose varies, according to the message it happens to be inflecting, giving over all the impression of a Visitor from very far away indeed. The Geometers have encounter’d the eminent Philadelphian quite by chance, in the pungent and dim back reaches of an Apothecary in Locust-Street, each Gentleman upon a distinct mission of chemical Necessity, as among these shelves and bins, the Godfrey’s Cordial and Bateman’s Drops, Hooper’s Female Pills and Smith’s Medicinal Snuff, hasty bargains are struck, Strings of numbers and letters and alchemists’ Signs whisper’d (and some never written down), whilst a quiet warm’d Narcosis, as of a drawing to evening far out in a Country of fields where drying herbal crops lie, just perceptibly breathing, possesses the Shop Interior, rendering it indistinct as to size, legality, or destiny.

He steers a Loxodrome for the cabinet where ardent Spirits are kept for Guests of the Wet Persuasion, and pretends to weigh his Choice.

Piss runneth downhill, and Pay-Day is Saturday, -now you're a qualified Fence-runner.

sight all that sounds?” Harry asked. “That’s why I take my fee up front,” Smith said. “No offense, Lou,” he added. “Harry’s right. It doesn’t make sense,” Blues said. “King was acquitted of the Byrnes murders. He could take out an ad on a billboard admitting he did it and never do a day in jail. A civil case is just money and he has enough to make that go away.” “Dixon, are you trying

,- watching his son in quick pulses of attention.

Their boats ride the lenient Current together, in and out of the Shadows, ever in easy reach of rescue, the Boy shepherding them with Willow Wands, no more obtrusive in this Naval History than Gods in a Myth.

He also saw at the Time a Great Finger reaching in from the Distance, pausing at Draco and,- gently for a Finger of its size,- stirring up into a small Vortex the Stars there.