They Say | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 20, 1863

They Say.

Who are "they?" Who are the cowled monks, the hooded friars, who glide with shrouded faces in the procession of life, murmuring in an unknown tongue, words of strange import; who are they? The midnight assassins of reputation, who lurk in the by-ways of society, with tongues sharpened by invention, and envenomed by malice; to draw the blood of innocence, and hyena-like, to banquet on the dead. Who are they? They are a multitude no man can number—black, stolid, familiar with the inquisition of slander, searching for victims in every city, town, and village, wherever humanity throbs, or the ashes of mortality find rest.

Give me the bold brigand, who thunders along the highways with flashing weapons, that cut the sunbeams as well as the shades. Give me the pirate who unfurls the black flag, and shows the plank which your doomed feet must tread; but save me from the "They-sayers" of society, whose knives are hidden in a velvet sheath, whose bridge of death is woven in flowers, and who spread with invisible poison even the spotless whiteness of the winding-sheet.