Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester · 1852 pamphlet, p. 13

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy a child's share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. This truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago,

Frederick Douglass · 5 July 1852
Lee, Mann & Co., Rochester, 1852. Reading text from Literature in Context (University of Virginia), checked against the Rochester pamphlet where corrections are recorded; verse and source pagination retained.
Literature in Context TEI: CC BY-SA 4.0
Literature in Context; Students and Staff of the University of Virginia; Humzah Syed (transcription, correction, editorial commentary, markup); John O’Brien (editor). Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Based on the HathiTrust/Google digitization of an Indiana University Library copy.
The TEI file expressly identifies this license. Original 1852 words are public domain; modern editorial commentary is excluded. Gloss distributes this adapted transcription under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Gloss paragraph segmentation, whitespace and line-end hyphen normalization, source page addresses, and separately listed scan-verified corrections.
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.