Then he turned to Jabez Stone and showed him as he was — an ordinary man who'd had hard luck and wanted to change it. And, because he'd wanted to cha… - Stephen Vincent Benét
" "Then he turned to Jabez Stone and showed him as he was — an ordinary man who'd had hard luck and wanted to change it. And, because he'd wanted to change it, now he was going to be punished for all eternity. And yet there was good in Jabez Stone, and he showed that good. He was hard and mean, in some ways, but he was a man. There was sadness in being a man, but it was a proud thing too. And he showed what the pride of it was till you couldn't help feeling it. Yes, even in hell, if a man was a man, you'd know it. And he wasn't pleading for any one person any more, though his voice rang like an organ. He was telling the story and the failures and the endless journey of mankind. They got tricked and trapped and bamboozled, but it was a great journey. And no demon that was ever foaled could know the inwardness of it — it took a man to do that. The fire began to die on the hearth and the wind before morning to blow. The light was getting gray in the room when Dan'l Webster finished. And his words came back at the end to New Hampshire ground, and the one spot of land that each man loves and clings to. He painted a picture of that, and to each one of that jury he spoke of things long forgotten. For his voice could search the heart, and that was his gift and his strength. And to one, his voice was like the forest and its secrecy, and to another like the sea and the storms of the sea; and one heard the cry of his lost nation in it, and another saw a little harmless scene he hadn't remembered for years. But each saw something. And when Dan'l Webster finished he didn't know whether or not he'd saved Jabez Stone. But he knew he'd done a miracle. For the glitter was gone from the eyes of the judge and jury, and, for the moment, they were men again, and knew they were men.
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About Stephen Vincent Benét
Stephen Vincent Benét (22 July 1898 – 13 March 1943) was an American author, poet, short story writer and novelist.
Biography information from Wikiquote
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Stephen Vincent Benet
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Additional quotes by Stephen Vincent Benét
American muse, whose strong and diverse heart
So many men have tried to understand
But only made it smaller with their art,
Because you are as various as your land,
As mountainous-deep, as flowered with blue rivers,
Thirsty with deserts, buried under snows,
As native as the shape of Navajo quivers,
And native, too, as the sea-voyaged rose.
For the man crucified on the crossed machine guns Without name, without resurrection, without stars, His dark head heavy with death and his flesh long sour With the smell of his many prisons — John Smith, John Doe, John Nobody — oh, crack your mind for his name! Faceless as water, naked as the dust, Dishonored as the earth the gas-shells poison And barbarous with portent. This is he. This is the man they ate at the green table Putting their gloves on ere they touched the meat. This is the fruit of war, the fruit of peace, The ripeness of invention, the new lamb, The answer to the wisdom of the wise. And still he hangs, and still he will not die And still, on the steel city of our years The light falls and the terrible blood streams down.
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Of course, often enough, the people in books are poor. But then they're so darn poor, it's crazy. And, often enough, just when everything's at its worst, some handy little legacy comes along and the new life opens out before them right away, like a great big tulip. Well, I only had one legacy in my life and I know what I did with that. It darn near ruined me.
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