Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 [First Part]

Philadelphia

Hugh Maxwell

1799

Certain beliefs cannot be "outrooted" from the mind

When questioned as to the course of life which he meant to pursue, upon his recovery, he professed himself without any precise object. He was willing to be guided by the advice of others, and by the lights which experience should furnish. The country was open to him, and he supposed that there was no part of it in which food could not be purchased by his labour. He was unqualified, by his education, for any liberal profession. His poverty was likewise an insuperable impediment. He could afford to spend no time in the acquisition of a trade. He must labour not for future emolument but for immediate subsistence. The only pursuit which his present circumstances would allow him to adopt was that which, he was inclined to believe, was likewise the most eligible. Without doubt, his experience was slender, and it seemed absurd to pronounce concerning that of which he had no direct knowledge; but so it was, he could not outroot from his mind the persuasion that to plow, to sow, and to reap were employments most befitting a reasonable creature, and from which the truest pleasure and the least pollution should flow.
(Part I, chapter 1, p. 237)

Plant::Roots

Reading

First part published in 1799; second in 1800. Reading and transcribing text from Charles Brockden Brown, Three Gothic Novels. New York: Library of America,1998.

07/16/2003