Citizen Tom Paine by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page B

words.” He was holding out at the Ridgeway Coffee Shop with Clare Benton, the printer, Judah Perez, the Jewish fur trader, Anthony Bent, a smith, and Captain Isaac Lee of the Philadelphia militia.
    â€œThis is a new thing here,” Paine said. “That’s why no one knows what to do.”
    â€œWhen the time comes to fight, we’ll know what to do,” Captain Lee insisted, giving stubborn emphasis to a theme he had repeated over and over.
    â€œNo, we have to know what to do first. It’s no use to fight if you don’t know what you’re fighting for. Even if you win, it’s no good.”
    â€œAnd I think,” Perez put in, “that if you know what you’re fighting for, it doesn’t make too much difference if you win or lose.”
    â€œYou don’t lose,” Paine said heatedly. “This is like no other thing the world has seen; it’s new; it’s a beginning, and it has to be explained. We have something here, and yet we haven’t got it, and suppose we lose it and it slips through our fingers?”
    â€œThen we’re as well off,” Bent grinned.
    â€œAre we? You don’t know; you’re American! I came from back there!”
    â€œWhat does that mean?” Benton demanded. “You shook the king’s hand?”
    â€œI didn’t even spit in his face,” Paine said sourly.
    â€œThat kind of talk is still treason.”
    â€œIs it? Treason’s a word for a lot of things.”
    â€œEasy, easy,” the smith said.
    â€œI go easy,” Paine said. “Believe me, I hate no man for what he is, not even that fat German bastard, George the Third. But I’ve seen man nailed to a cross, nailed there for God knows how many thousands of years, nailed with lies, oppression, gunpowder, swords. Now someone puts an ax in my hand, and I have a chance to help cut down that cross. I don’t pass that chance by.” Paine’s voice was loud; his words rang out, and by the time he had finished speaking, half the men in the coffee house were gathered about the table. Someone put in, “Is it Independence you’re talking?”
    â€œIndependence is a word.”
    â€œYou seem almighty fond of words.”
    â€œAnd not afraid of them!” Paine roared. “I come into a land of free men and find them afraid of the one word that would bind their freedom! This is a land of promise, and there is no other on earth!”
    He was quieter on paper than vocally. All his life he had wanted to write, and now he had a whole magazine at his disposal. The more writing he did on his pound a week, the better pleased Aitken was, and Paine could see a good deal of reason in his desire to keep the magazine on the fence. His writing wasn’t good, but he poured it onto paper—essays, bad poems, scientific research, even a letter or two to the great Benjamin Franklin. Fortunately for him, the literary taste of the Pennsylvania people was sufficiently untutored for them to accept Paine and the magazine and the dozen pen names he used—and even to be somewhat enthralled by the breathless pace of his energy. All at once Paine was a theologian, a historian, and a scientist, and he brought into the magazine the wide knowledge of a staymaker, a cobbler, a weaver, and an exciseman. The combination was good, and the circulation went up steadily.
    But Paine couldn’t stay quiet; he had too many memories, too many sleepless nights, too many dreams. Looking out of his windows, he would see the white chattel slaves being sold in the market. And there were other things he would see as, pen poised, he remembered all the years before now.
    â€œI’ll be raising yer wages,” Aitken said to him one day.
    He had respectability, position, a job—and yet he had nothing. His torments drove him to the brothels where were kept the limp-eyed, half-foolish bondwomen, brought over from England and Scotland by regular