23–29 April 1838

This tragic Cherokee business which we stirred at a meeting in the church yesterday will look to me degrading and injurious, do what I can. It is like dead cats around one's neck. It is like school committees and Sunday School classes and teachers' meetings and the Warren Street Chapel and all the other holy hurrahs. I stir in it for the sad reason that no other mortal will move, and if I do not, — why it is left undone. The amount of it, be sure, is merely a Scream, but sometimes a scream is bet- ter than a thesis.