These men all swore, and swore mightily on those occasions,
but their oaths were oaths indeed.
Liberty or tyranny, life or death, justice or infamy, hung in the
balance, and their oaths were prayers as earnest as ever ascended to
the Throne. But that is no example for you, young man. If you will
agree never to use an oath until you have the provocation of treason,
and your country thereby endangered, as Washington had at Monmouth,
there are a million chances to one that the Sacred Name will never
pass your lips in vain.
I knew a man in the logging-camps twenty-eight years ago. He there
acquired that lurid speech which was the language by which oxen,
horses, and men themselves were in those times driven in those rude
camps of rugged industry. My friend did not remain a logger. He became
a lawyer and achieved some distinction and success, but he could not
shake off the habit of swearing. He would find himself "ripping out an
oath," as the saying is, on the most surprising occasions--and they
were brilliant oaths, splendid, flashing, coruscating oaths. His talk
was a very tropic jungle of profanity.
So great were his abilities, so unceasing and intense his energies,
and so upright his life, that he succeeded in spite of this defect.
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