If I loved you not, I would laugh at you, and see you / Run your neck into the noose, and cry, A woodcock!

It is not impossible that this bold attempt to wrest from this State and Nation, so large and important a frontier territory; with the insidious arts, and unblushing finesse and chicanery, with which the British pretensions have been managed, may yet awaken the American people from their apathy on the subject— […]

“Go,” cried the Mayor, “and get long poles! Poke out the nests and block up the holes!

The book embraces a wide range of subjects, ontological, cosmical, theological, spiritual, and social, which are presented in the aspect of a unitary system, the pervading animus of which is a kind of attenuated and semi-spiritual naturalism, which ignores and repudiates any special divinity or sacredness attaching to the teachings of the Bible.