is an agreeable thing to them to kiss all the fresh young lips they
encounter, it must be just as agreeable to the fresh young lips to
receive it; reminding me of a wise saying I encountered somewhere
lately, that, 'although age sees a charm in youth, youth sees no charm
in age.'

But father Bull was not malicious; he only said that 'he guessed I
wasn't used to country ways;' and after that little brush we became very
good friends.

I took to _Mrs._ Bull at once; and, following her into a neat little
room, where there was a stove, a rag carpet, and a table laid for one, I
was informed that this was the dining room, sitting room, and room in
ordinary. Tea was over long ago; indeed, as it was eight o'clock, they
had begun to think of going to bed. Cars in which I travel are always
behindhand; and they had almost given me up.

Having introduced me to my host and hostess, Mr. Summers took his leave,
for he did not board there, and went to see that my trunk was speedily
forwarded to its destination.

I sat down at the neat table, and tried what Mr. Bull denominated
'presarved squinches'--which might have passed for fragments of granite,
and were a trifle sour in addition; the apple pie, which, had it been
large enough, would have been a splendid foundation for a quadrille; the
bread, which looked like rye, but wasn't; and the tea, which neither
cheered nor inebriated. This is what good, honest city people eulogize
under the name of 'a real country tea;' and half an hour after I had
left the festive board, I could not positively have sworn whether I had
had any tea or not.

Mr. and Mrs. Bull were very hospitable, and pressed me continually to
eat, remarking that 'I had an awful small appetite;' but I considered it
awful under the circumstances, without being small. They had one other
boarder, they said, 'a single lady, who was very quiet, and didn't
disturb any one.' They evidently intended this as an eulogy for Miss
Friggs, but I should have preferred an inmate with more life about her.

At nine o'clock I concluded, from various signs, that it was time to
turn my steps bedward; and producing a fresh tallow candle, Mrs. Bull
placed it in another brass candlestick, and led the way up stairs. The
stairs were narrow, crooked, and winding, and the doors opened with
latches. My sanctum was of moderate size, with a comfortable-looking
bed, covered with a white counterpane (I had dreaded patchwork), a white
curtain to the window, and a white cover on the table,--a pleasant
harmony, I thought, with the snow that would soon cover the ground; and
feeling chilled through, in spite of the fire that burned in the funny
little stove, I wondered that so many people never think of providing
for but one kind of hunger.

Mrs. Bull helped me to arrange my things, and kissed me good-night in a
way that went to my heart at once. I did not treat her on this occasion
as I had treated Mr. Bull.

'I suspect,' said she, kindly, 'that you've been used to things very
different from what you'll find here; but we'll do all in our power to
make it pleasant for you, and I dare say that, before long, you'll feel
quite at home in Peppersville.'

People 'dare say' anything, and many things appeared more probable than
that I should ever feel at home in Peppersville.

One thing I thoroughly congratulated myself upon, and that was that Mr.
Summers boarded elsewhere. It is a dreadful thing to be housed under the
same roof, in a place where there is a total want of all excitement,
with any sort of a man--people have even become attached to spiders when
shut up alone with them--and when the man is young, good-looking, and
poor, the danger is increased. I did not come to Peppersville to fall in
love with the principal of the Academy; and I was glad that _one_ road,
at least, to that undesirable end was cut off.

I found the evening psalms and lessons, and then climbed into my
nest--where I sank down, down, down into the feathery depths, in a
manner peculiarly terrifying to one whose nights had all been spent on
hair mattresses. A few hours' ride had transplanted me into a new
region, among an entirely different race of people, and I fell asleep to
dream that a whole army of intricate sums were charging upon me with
fixed bayonets.

Morning came, and I was under the painful necessity of getting up--which
is always an unnatural wrench under the most favorable auspices. The
first bell had rung at an unearthly hour, and I paid no attention to it,
but the second bell was not much more civilized; and as I failed to
appear, Mrs. Bull came to the door to see if I had made way with myself.

I told her not to wait--I would be down as soon as I could get dressed;
and I plunged desperately into a basin of cold water. Thankful for the
institution of nets, I hastily packed my hair into what Artemus Ward
calls 'a mosquito bar,' and with a final shake-out of my
hurriedly-thrown-on drapery, I descended, with the expectation of
finding the family in the full enjoyment of their morning meal.

But Mrs. Bull stood at the head of the table, Mr. Bull at the foot, and
Miss Friggs at the side, all with their hands on their respective
chairs. If they had stood in that position ever since Mrs. Bull's visit
to my door, they had enjoyed it for at least half an hour.

This was very embarrassing; but the only answer that I received to my
remonstrances was that 'they knew what manners was.' After that, I
always managed to be down in time.

I found Miss Friggs just as she had been represented, with the addition
of being very kindly disposed toward me; but between her and Mr. Bull
there existed a sort of chronic squabble that led to frequent passages
of wit. Mr. Bull opened the ball, that morning, by observing, with a
half wink at me, that 'he see she hadn't been kerried off yet,' which
referred to a previously expressed objection on the part of Miss Friggs
to sleep without some secure fastening on the door of her room; and
people in the country can never understand why you should want anything
different from the existing state of things. Then Mr. Bull remarked that
Miss Friggs had better sleep in a bandbox or an old stocking, as folks
packed away valuables in such things, because they were seldom looked
into by housebreakers.

Suddenly, Miss Friggs asked her tormentor if he had seen any robbers
lately--when he turned around and handed me the butter. This referred to
a tradition that Mr. Bull had come running home one evening, entirely
out of breath, under the firm belief that he was pursued by a robber,
and nearly shut the door in Mr. Summers's face, who had been in vain
hallooing to him to stop, in order to apprise him of my expected
arrival, and make some provision for my accommodation.

These things were all explained to me by degrees; and in the uneventful
routine upon which I had entered, I learned to consider them quite spicy
and champagne-ish.

Mr. Summers called at fifteen minutes before nine, according to
agreement, and we set out together for the Academy. It was a one-storied
edifice, after a Grecian model, which probably looked well in marble,
with classical surroundings, but which, repeated in dingy wood, with no
surroundings at all, grated on an eye that studied the fitness of
things. But, unfortunately, my business was with the inside; and I felt
uneasy when I saw the formidable rows of desks.

'And now, Miss Wade,' said my companion, with admirable seriousness,
'you see your field of action. You will have charge of about thirty
girls; and when they behave badly, so that you have any difficulty with
them, just send them in to me.'

This sounded as though they were in the habit of behaving very badly
indeed; but I doubted if sending them in to him would have been much of
a punishment for any over fifteen.

There was one scholar there when I arrived--a tall, awkward-looking
girl, somewhat my senior--whom Mr. Summers introduced as 'Helen Legram.'
Her only beauty was a pair of very clear eyes, that seemed to comprehend
me at a glance; for the rest, her face was oddly shaped, her figure bad;
and a narrow merino scarf, tied around her throat, was not a becoming
article of dress.

But scarcely had I made these observations when the Philistines were
upon me--arriving by twos, threes, and fours, and pouring through the
open door like overwhelming hordes of barbarians. Of course, every pair
of eyes that entered was immediately fixed upon me; and, although I
endeavored to keep up my dignity under the infliction, I could not help
wishing that it were possible to be suddenly taken up and dropped into
the middle of next week, when my _mauvaise honte_ would have had a
reasonable chance to wear off by several days' contact.

This _beginning_ is a terrible lion blocking up the way of every
undertaking, and never does he appear so formidable as at the outset of
school teaching, unless it is in writing a story. I cast about in my
mind for various models, as a sort of guide; but the only spirits that
emerged from the vasty deep were Dr. Blimber and Cornelia. With an
inconvenient perversity, they refused to be laid, and kept dancing
before me all day. In entering upon my career, I was firmly impressed
with two convictions: one was that I didn't know anything, and the other
was that my pupils would speedily find it out.

The day began, as all sorts of days do; and through the open door of the
adjoining apartment I watched Mr. Summers, and endeavored to follow all
his proceedings. When he rang his bell, I rang mine; and, by dint of
looking as wise and sober as I possibly could, I contrived to begin with
a tolerable degree of success.

But a pair of clear eyes, that never seemed to be removed from my face,
embarrassed me beyond expression. Their owner was a perfect bugbear.
Such a formidable memory I never encountered; and in her recitations,
which were long and frequent, I do not think she ever misplaced a
letter. That girl had algebra written on her face; and when, in a slow,
deliberate way, she approached me with slate, pencil, and book, I felt
sure that this would prove my Manassas. I was inexpressibly relieved to
discover that the problems, complicated enough to bring on a slow fever,
were all unravelled; indeed, my feelings bore no small resemblance to
those of a criminal at the gallows just presented with a reprieve.

All that I had to do was to say, 'Very well, indeed, Miss Legram; are
you fond of algebra?' To which she replied, 'Very,' and went back to her
seat.

Going in to Mr. Summers for some private instructions, I found his desk
covered with votive offerings, as though it had been the shrine of some
deity to be propitiated. There were large winter apples; hard winter
pears; bunches of chrysanthemum; bags of chestnuts, and even popped
corn; but the parcel that received the most honorable treatment was a
paper of black-walnut kernels, carefully arranged and presented by a
little, mild-eyed lame girl. I made a note of that.

With the dignity of a professor, Mr. Summers solved my difficulties;
while I meekly listened, and wondered if this could be the half-boyish
individual who had lifted me from the cars. He did not look over
twenty-three, though, and, if not strictly handsome, had had a very
narrow escape of it. His hair had a way of getting into his eyes, and he
had a way of tossing it back as horses toss their manes; and this motion
invariably brings up a train of associations connected with Mr. Summers.

The day's session was over, and the pupils had departed. I thought that
Mr. Summers had departed also; and, nervous and wearied out with the
unwonted strain upon my patience and equanimity, I applied myself
dejectedly to the fascinating columns of 'Davies' Arithmetic,' for
unless I speedily added to my small stock of knowledge, a mortifying
_exposé_ would be the inevitable consequence. Why, thought I, with all
the ills that man is naturally heir to, must some restless genius invent
figures? The people in those examples have such an insane way of
transacting business, I could make nothing of them; my answers never
agreed with the key, but I fully agreed with the poor man who said so
despairingly, 'Wat wi' faeth, and wat wi' the earth goin' round the sun,
and wat wi' the railways all a whuzzin' and a buzzin', I'm clean
muddled, confoozled, and bet!' and flinging the book out of sight, I
gave myself up to the luxury of a good cry.

I had not been enjoying myself long, though, before I was interrupted;
and as the crying was not intended for effect, the interruption was an
unpleasant one. Of course, I had to answer that original question, 'What
is the matter?' but instead of replying, after the most approved fashion
in such cases, 'Nothing,' I went directly to the fountain head, and
said, abruptly, 'Davies' Arithmetic.'

Mr. Summers quietly picked up the book, and I saw that he understood the
matter at once--for the dimples in his cheeks deepened perceptibly, and
beneath the dark mustache there was a gleam of white teeth. My face grew
hot as I noted these signs, and I exclaimed desperately:

'Mr. Summers, I should like, if you please, to resign my situation. I am
aware that I must seem to you like an impostor, for I cannot do anything
at all with figures; and I thought'--

Here I broke down, and cried again, and Mr. Summers finished the
sentence by saying:

'You thought that you would not be called upon to teach arithmetic? A
very natural conclusion, and there is no reason why you should. I prefer
taking charge of these classes myself--but no one can supply your place
in French and music.'

'A sugar plum for the baby,' thought I, and kept silence.

'I think, though,' continued my mentor, 'that anything as dry and
practical as figures is a very good exercise for an imaginative turn of
mind, by supplying a sort of balancing principle; and, if you would like
to improve yourself in this branch, I should take great pleasure in
assisting you.'

Very kindly done, certainly, and I accepted the offer with eagerness. I
was to rest that evening, he said--I had had enough for one day; but it
was understood that on other evenings generally he was to come to Mr.
Bull's and instruct his assistant teacher in the A B C of mathematics. I
could not help thinking that few employers would have taken this
trouble.

Mr. Bull appeared to be of no earthly use in the household except to go
to the door, which, in Peppersville, was not an onerous duty; and had I
not so frequently seen the same thing, I should have wondered what Mrs.
Bull ever married him for. From frequent references to the time 'when
Mr. Bull was in the store,' I came to the conclusion that he had once
dealt in the heterogeneous collection of articles usually found in such
places. I was not informed whether Mr. Bull had 'given up the store,' or
whether 'the store' had given up Mr. Bull; but I was disposed to
entertain the latter idea.

There was no servant in the establishment except an old Indian woman,
who amused herself by preparing vegetables and washing dishes in the
kitchen--not being at all active, in consequence of having lost part of
her feet from indulging in a fancy for a couch of snow on one of the
coldest nights of the preceding winter, when, to use a charitable
phrase, 'she was not quite herself.' I believe that, even after this
melancholy warning, that eccentric person was frequently somebody else.
'However,' as Mrs. Bull said, 'she didn't disturb any one'--and although
I could not exactly see the force of this reasoning, I treated it with
respectful silence for Mrs. Bull's sake.

Miss Friggs, who was 'quite one of the family,' and had lived in it so
long that I believe she almost persuaded herself that she had been born
in it, 'did' her own room--which was perfectly appalling with its
fearful neatness. There was not a thread on the carpet, nor a particle
of dust in the corners; and the bed, when made up, was as accurately
proportioned as though it had all been scientifically measured off. I
have caught glimpses of Miss Friggs going about this business with her
head carefully tied up, as though it might burst with the immensity of
her ideas on the subject; and when she had finished, you might have
eaten off the floor--that is, if you preferred it to a table. This was
her one occupation in life, and she did it thoroughly; but it seemed
too sad to have so few occupations that any could be accomplished in so
faultless a manner.

Fired with honest but misguided zeal, I one morning entered the lists
against Miss Friggs in a vain attempt to make my own bed; but those
horrid feathers acted like the things in the Philosopher's Scales, for
when some were up, others were down; neither north nor south, east nor
west would agree to terms of equality, and it was impossible to bring
them to any sort of compromise.

I related my experience to Mrs. Bull; and when I assured her that I had
crawled all over the bed in the vain attempt to bring some order out of
chaos, she was more amused, in her quiet way, than I had ever known her
to be. She desired me, however, to leave the room, to her in future, as
she enjoyed it, and I could not be expected to do everything. I did not
interfere with her measures again.

A lesson had been given me to look over; and on Mr. Summers's first
visit to me, in Mrs. Bull's parlor, I felt as if he had been a dentist
with evil designs on my largest grinder. He was as cool as though he had
been fifty and I five, and behaved himself generally as though it were a
very common thing for youthful principals to give private lessons to
their young lady-teachers.

Mr. Bull had made a fire, which was another talent that I discovered in
him; and Mrs. Bull had given the room as much of a look of comfort as a
room can have that is very seldom used. The good woman had even placed a
dish of apples and doughnuts on a table in the corner--which, she said,
were always on hand when Mr. Bull was paying his addresses to her; but
the family did not appear to put any such construction on Mr. Summer's
visits to me. I had told them that we had a great deal of school
business in common; and they seemed to think it quite natural that we
should have.

And to business Mr. Summers proceeded immediately on his arrival,
throwing me into a state of complete confusion by asking me questions
not definitely set down in the book, and calmly allowing me to blunder
through to something like an end without the least interruption or
assistance. I, whose childhood had for some time been made miserable by
the question of a sharp schoolmate, 'Which is the heaviest--a pound of
lead or a pound of feathers?' and her calm persistence that they were
both alike, in spite of my passionate denial in favor of lead, was not
likely to distinguish myself at these sittings; and whatever I had
hitherto admired in Mr. Summers was now eclipsed by my appreciation of
his extraordinary patience.

'You must think me a perfect fool!' I exclaimed, unguardedly.

'No,' replied my imperturbable companion, 'I consider you a very fair
average.'

I bit my lip in anger at myself, and turned assiduously to my slate and
pencil.

'You will take that for next time,' said my preceptor, rising at the end
of an hour, and calling my attention to a portion that he had marked in
pencil, 'when I shall be more particular about your recitations. Good
evening.'

'Very romantic,' thought I, as I walked rather discontentedly into the
sitting room, and I wondered what sort of stuff Mr. Summers was made of.
I began to be afraid that I might be piqued into flirting with him.

He seemed to have the talent, though, of winning golden opinions from
all sorts of people. Mr. Bull pronounced him 'a cute chap,' and 'real
clever, too,' for he did not consider the terms synonymous. Mrs. Bull
said that he was just the right person in the right place; and Miss
Friggs declared that he was 'a young man among a thousand.' Not at
Peppersville, certainly, for there were but five others in the place;
but, to use the phraseology most in vogue there, they could not hold a
candle to him.

That quiet, overgrown girl, with her faultless recitations and steady
pursuance of one idea, interested me exceedingly, and I determined to
find out her history. I spoke of her to Mr. Summers, and he replied:

'Oh, yes; Helen Legram is quite an original. 'Born of poor, but
respectable parents,' I have little doubt that she will turn out like
the heroes of all biographies that commence in a similar manner. Her
father is a very plain farmer, living somewhere among the mountains,
with a large family to provide for; and Helen, in consequence, has
hitherto enjoyed no advantages in the way of education beyond those
obtained from an occasional quarter at the district school. In the
intervals she had to wash, bake, mend, and make, with untiring industry,
with short snatches of reading, her only indulgence; until, last summer,
a relative, well to do in the world, spent some months at the mountain
farm, and presented Helen with the means of obtaining her heart's
desire--a thorough education. To that end she is now assiduously
devoting herself in the spirit of Milton, who 'cared not how late he
came into life, only that he came fit.' Helen Legram is a plain,
unformed country girl; but she has those three handmaids of talent who
so frequently eclipse their mistress: industry, patience, and
perseverance; and I prophesy that not only will she succeed in her
present undertaking, but win for herself a name among the Hannah Mores
and Corinnes of posterity. What a wife such a woman would make!'

I wondered if he was engaged to her? They were about the same age, and
being entirely opposite in every respect, it was quite natural that they
should fall in love with each other.

I had some trouble with my tall pupil in French, as she had not quite
the Parisian accent, and at her time of life it was not easy to acquire
it. She persevered, though, with unparalleled firmness; and as she
wished to study Latin, I was obliged to learn it myself, from Mr.
Summers. I pitied that man when I began to stumble through the
declensions. Virgil would have torn his hair in frenzy at such rendering
of his lines, and I should have been very sorry to encounter him alone.
There we sat, hour after hour, in Mrs. Bull's parlor, scarcely a word
passing between us except on the subject of Latin or arithmetic. Mr.
Summers was an excellent teacher; and it was worth my sojourn in
Peppersville to learn what I did.

One evening, however, we were rather more sociable; and in answer to
some remark of mine, Mr. Summers asked me where I supposed he was born!

Beginning with Maine, I went regularly through the Eastern States, with
a strong desire to leave him in Massachusetts; but, very much to my
surprise, he denied them all.

'New York, then, or New Jersey,' I persisted.

Mr. Summers only smiled; and then I tried the Hoosier States, where they
are 'half horse and half alligator;' his figure was somewhat in the
backwoodsman style. But none of these would do.

'Then,' said I, out of all patience, 'you could not have been born
anywhere. I give it up.'

'Well,' was the reply, 'I think you might as well, for you would never
guess.'

And here the matter ended. But frequently afterward did I find myself
wondering what portion of the globe Mr. Summers could claim as his own,
his native land; for I had come to the conclusion that he might not be
an American at all.

Skating season arrived; and all Peppersville took to the lake like a
colony of ducks. It was splendidly exhilarating, and my crotchet needle
had for some time previous been flying through tangled mazes of crimson
worsted, to the great admiration of the household, in the manufacture of
a skating cap.

I must have been built expressly for going on ice, for it seemed like my
native element. Those beautiful moonlight nights, with the cold blue sky
above and the glittering crystal beneath, were like glimpses of
fairyland. Mr. Summers taught me how to skate, for which I was
sufficiently grateful; but I had no idea of being handed over to him
exclusively for the benefit of Peppersville, so I seized upon 'big
boys,' or staid, married men, or anything that came handy in the way of
support, until I was sufficiently experienced to go alone.

Helen Legram did not skate. Nothing could induce her to venture; and
probably, while we were cultivating our heels on the ice, she was
cultivating her head in milder latitudes. I thought, _then_, that she
was to be pitied; but, two weeks later, I would have given all that I
possessed to have followed her example in the beginning.

It was intensely cold that night, and somehow my skates were very
troublesome. Mr. Summers bent down to arrange them, and I declined
making use of his shoulder as a support. I never knew how I did it, but
ice is slippery; I performed an extraordinary slide--kicked Mr. Summers
directly in the mouth, thereby knocking out one of his front teeth, as
though I had been a vicious horse--and went backward into the arms of
the oldest male pupil of the Peppersville Academy, while my unfortunate
victim, knocked into a state of insensibility, fell prostrate on the
ice.

A crowd gathered, of course, and raised their venerable preceptor, and
brought him to his senses, while I was congratulated on my escape. I
looked upon this as the most awkward predicament I had ever been placed
in, and was completely nonplussed as to the course of action to be
pursued under the circumstances. Had I been in love with Mr. Summers, or
he with me, the case would have been different; as it was, I would have
given much to have changed places with him. He declared, however, that
it was nothing, laughed about the accident, and said that one tooth more
or less made very little difference. Had he been a woman, he never would
have forgiven me.

The next morning, Mr. Summers was not at school, and Helen Legram took
his place. They boarded in the same house; and from her I learned that
his mouth was so much swollen he could scarcely speak. It was very
disagreeable, certainly; but, having weighed the matter all the morning,
I came to the conclusion by afternoon, that it was decidedly my duty to
go and see after Mr. Summers.

I found him in the parlor, considerably disfigured; and Helen Legram was
making him some pap--that being the only style of sustenance upon which
he could venture. His mouth was very sore, for the sharp runner of a
skate is rather a formidable weapon; but he laughed with his eyes when I
presented myself, and seemed to enjoy my embarrassment.

'I do not see how it happened,' said I, very much annoyed.

'All that I know of the case,' replied Mr. Summers, quite as though it
had been somebody else's case, 'is that, while engaged in the discharge
of my duty, a cloud of dimity suddenly floated before my eyes--a
stunning shock ensued--I saw stars--and then exit into the region of
know-nothingdom.'

Rather awkwardly, I suppose, I offered myself as head nurse, having been
the cause of the mischief; but Mr. Summers, with many thanks for the
offer, did not think there would be any necessity for availing himself
of it. I felt very sorry for him, and quite as sorry for myself.

In a few days the principal returned to his school duties. He possessed
a remarkable degree of reticence; and, owing to this blessed quality,
no one but ourselves and Helen Legram ever knew of my share in that
unfortunate accident. I felt rather guilty whenever allusion was made to
it by some well-meaning person; but I noticed that Mr. Summers always
turned the conversation as soon as possible. We were on more social
terms after that disaster; and somehow the evenings spent over Latin and
arithmetic became less practical, and decidedly more interesting. Mr.
Summers, however, was very cautious, and so was I. He never seemed to be
swayed by impulse; and I should have nipped anything like tenderness in
the bud.

One evening, however, I was considerably astonished at him, and not a
little indignant. The 'faculty' of the Peppersville Academy were invited
to a small party at the house of one of its wealthiest patrons, who
lived some miles out of town.

They sent a covered wagon for us, and a 'boy,' that indispensable
article in the country, to drive us.

The boy seemed to drive with his eyes shut; suddenly, there was a
terrific jolt, and I screamed and clung to Mr. Summers for protection.
Under the circumstances this was unavoidable; but, as he seemed disposed
to retain my hand, I tried to disengage it.

It was held in a firm grasp; and I said, in a tone that could not be
mistaken: 'Mr. Summers!'

My hand was immediately released; and neither of us spoke another word
during the drive.

I did not enjoy that party. I was angry at Mr. Summers, and I let him
see it; but I had no patience with any other man in the room. In driving
back, Mr. Summers 'thought that he would sit outside, to get a little
fresh air,'--which, as the thermometer stood at twenty, must have been
exhilarating. I was handed out in silence, and went to bed in as bad a
humor as that in which many a belle comes from the ball room.

There was a coolness between us for several days, which gradually thawed
into a more genial state of things, but it did not seem to me that it
ever became quite as it was before.

All winter there were rumblings deep and continual in the political
sky--sometimes the sun broke out, and people said that it was going to
clear; but usually the weathercocks predicted a long, southerly storm. I
never saw a man so full of prophecy as Mr. Bull. One would have supposed
that every hour brought him telegraphic despatches both from the real
and the spurious Congress; and that President Lincoln and Jeff. Davis
were both convinced of their utter inability to take any steps without
the cognizance and approval of Mr. Bull.

Mrs. Bull said mildly that 'she hoped it would blow over;' but Mr. Bull
exclaimed indignantly that 'he didn't want it to blow over--he wanted it
to blow out and done with it, if it was goin' to, and not keep a
threatenin' all to no purpose. It was high time that things was settled,
and people knew what was what. If we was goin' to hev a rumpus, he hoped
we'd _hev_ it.'

If the old man had not been really good-natured and inoffensive, I
should have taken him in hand; but these disconnected remarks appeared
to give him so much pleasure that it would have been cruel to deprive
him of it.

Helen Legram had a reverential way of speaking of Mr. Summers that
provoked me; but she told me one day, when I laughed at this, that no
one who knew his life could do otherwise. And how did _she_ 'know his
life'? He had never disclosed it to _me_--and I could not see what there
was in Helen Legram to entitle her to this confidence. They certainly
were engaged--everything went to prove it; and, if I had been at all in
love with Mr. Summers, I should have classed the feeling that pervaded
me under the head of jealousy.

Mr. Bull 'guessed that Mr. Summers and that tall gal were goin' to make
a match of it;' and, when I assented to the proposition, he added that
'she didn't _pretty_ much, but he kalkilated she'd make a good, stirrin'
wife for a young man who had his livin' to get. Should hev kind o'
thought,' continued Mr. Bull, who seemed to love the subject, 'that he'd
hev fancied _you_; but there's no accountin' for tastes.'

I glided out of the room unperceived, and the old gentleman probably
talked confidentially to the four walls for some time afterward.

Sumter had fallen; and the whole school broke out in badges.
Peppersville was on fire, and burning, of course, in red, white, and
blue flames. No one bought a dress even that had not the loyal colors
displayed _somewhere_ in it; and a man who did not wear a cockade was
rather looked askance upon.

Mr. Bull was in his element, and spent his time principally in going to
the post office in search of news, and asking everybody's political
shibboleth. The subject was discussed at every meal. Mr. Bull thought
that half the members of Congress ought to have been hung long ago. Miss
Friggs, who sometimes attempted the poetical, said that it made her
heart bleed to think of the glorious figure of Liberty wandering
desolate and forsaken, with her costly robe of stars and stripes
trailing in the dust; and Mrs. Bull, who was one of the wisest women I
ever knew, prudently said nothing on a subject which she did not quite
understand.

The militia of Peppersville began to turn out in rusty regimentals, and
cut up queer antics in the street; and Mr. Summers, who appeared to have
a talent for everything, took them in hand to drill.

'Do you understand military tactics?' I inquired in surprise.

'Somewhat,' was the reply. He had been captain of a company of boy
soldiers; and, now that I came to think of it, there was something
decidedly military in his bearing.

'If I were only a _man!_' I exclaimed, discontentedly, 'I would be off
to the war and distinguish myself; but a woman is good for nothing but
to be insignificant.'

'The works of a watch are 'insignificant,' in one sense,' observed my
companion; 'but what would the watch he without them?'

'I do not see any application in this case,' I replied, indifferently.

'A woman,' said he, bending down to adjust some papers, 'is often the
Miriam and Aaron of some Moses whose hands need holding up. Many a
bullet that finds the heart of an enemy is sent, not by the hand that
pulls the trigger, but by a softer hand miles away. Something, or rather
some _one_, to work for, is an incentive to great deeds.'

Mr. Summers's face was flushed; and he looked suddenly up when he had
done speaking.

I withdrew my eyes in confusion, and, with the careless remark, 'Mrs.
Partington would tell you that you were speaking paregorically,' I left
a place that was getting entirely too hot to hold me.

A few days after, Mr. Summers started for the seat of war, with the
commission of first lieutenant, and Helen Legram became principal of the
Peppersville Academy. I think that bright spring days are disagreeable,
glaring things, when some one whom you like and have been accustomed to
see in certain places, is seen there no more; and the day that Mr.
Summers left, I was out of all patience with the April sunshine.

He had said no more: a friendly pressure of the hand from him, and a
sincerely expressed hope on my part that he would return unharmed--a
request from Mr. Bull to 'give it to 'em well'--a caution from Mrs. Bull
not to expose himself, if he could help it, to the night air--a
pincushion from Miss Friggs, because men never have conveniences-and he
was gone, with, no reasonable prospect of his return.

I said this to myself a great many times; but I also said that I did not
go to Peppersville to fall in love with the principal of the Academy.

Those everlasting recitations began to be unendurable; the walks about
Peppersville were totally uninteresting, and I did not know what to do
with myself. I cultivated Helen Legram; and, during the vacation, she
took me home with her to the farm.

It seemed like a new life, that three weeks' visit, and I enjoyed it
extremely. We went on expeditions up the mountains, and lived a sort of
vagrant life that was just what we both needed. The roar of cannon could
not reach us there; the sight of bleeding, dying men was far away; and
we almost forgot that the teeth of the children whom she had nourished
at her breast were tugging at the vitals of the Union.

One afternoon, amid the fragrant odor of pine trees, Helen Legram told
me the story of Mr. Summers's life.

He was born and educated in Florida, much to my astonishment, and had
entailed upon him the misery of a worthless, dissipated father. His
mother, after dragging out a saddened existence, sank into the grave
when her youngest boy was just entering upon the years of boyhood.
Finally, the elder Summers, who had always boasted of his patrician
blood, killed a man in a fit of mingled passion and intemperance, and
then cheated the gallows of its due by putting an end to his own life.
His property was quite exhausted; and the two sons who survived him
could only look upon his death as a release from continued mortification
and disgrace. An uncle's house was open to receive them; but, before
many years had elapsed, Arthur Summers, who was described as a miracle
of manly beauty, changed his name for that of a rich heiress who
bestowed herself and her lands upon him, and requested his brother to
follow his example in the matter of the name at once, and in the matter
of the heiress as soon as convenient.

Elihu Summers, however, persisted in retaining the name that his father
had disgraced; he said that he would redeem it, and declared that no
wife of his should furnish him with bread while his brain and hands were
in working order. His brother looked upon him as a harmless lunatic; but
Elihu was firm, and took up his abode at the North, as better calculated
to further his design. After a series of adventures he became principal
of the Peppersville Academy, with the view of ultimately studying a
profession; and there he had been for two years when I came in contact
with him.

I had been studying Helen Legram's face during this recital; and at its
conclusion I asked her if she was engaged to Mr. Summers.

'No, I am not engaged to him,' she replied, with a vivid blush; 'I have
good reason to suppose that he is attached to some one else.'

'Well,' thought I, as I noted the blush, 'if not engaged to him, you are
certainly in love with him;' and I felt sorry for her if it was not
returned.

I did not go back to Peppersville that summer--I had had enough of
school teaching; and I returned to the relatives with whom I had become
disgusted, on promises of better behavior from them for the future. They
were not _near_ relatives--I had none; and I had rebelled at being
tutored and watched like a child. Having fully asserted my independence,
I was treated with more respect; but, while they supposed that I was
nestling down in quiet content, I was busily casting about in my mind
the practicability of another venture.

I burned to do something for my country; I could not do as meek women
did, and sit down and sew for it; the monotonous motion of the needle,
which some people call so soothing, fairly distracted me; and, in spite
of the low diet of Latin and mathematics on which I had been kept all
winter, I entertained vague visions of myself, in cropped hair and army
blue, following the drum.

Just at this critical juncture, when common sense was spreading her
pinions for flight, I received a letter from a darling Mentor of a
friend, who was spending the golden sunshine of her life as her Saviour
spent His, in doing good; and she ordered me to the hospitals.

'You have youth and health,' she wrote; 'spend them in the service of
your country. Many a brave soldier lies stiffening in his gore on the
bloody field of Manassas; many as brave are writhing in agony in the
hospitals that received the wounded of that disastrous day; go among
them with words of comfort, and smooth the pillow of those brave
defenders whose blood has been freely poured out to enable _you_ to
sleep in peace.'

I could wait no longer; in spite of protestation, I put my chattels in
order, and was off with a noble band of women, who were all bent on the
same errand.

I had heard nothing from Mr. Summers since his departure: he might have
been killed at Manassas, or have fallen, side by side with the noble
Winthrop, at Big Bethel, or have perished, as the lamented Ellsworth
perished, by the hand of the assassin. I never expected to behold him
again in _this_ world; and I began to think that I had not appreciated
him.

I cannot describe my life as hospital nurse: it was just passing from
one scene of suffering to another; and I had not realized that there
_could_ be so much misery in this bright, beautiful world. At first I
used to tremble and faint; but finally the intense desire to _do_
something for these poor, mutilated wrecks of humanity conquered the
weakness; and I even wondered at my own self-control.

There were pleasant gleams, too, in this life, of utter
self-abandonment; blessings from fever-parched lips; grateful looks from
dying eyes; pleased attention to holy words; and, wrapping all like a
halo, the thought that I was working in very deed, ay, and battling,
too, for the glorious flag that floated over my head.

They were constantly bringing in fresh patients, and the sight roused no
curiosity; but one day, such a ghastly face was upturned to view, as
they placed the shattered body tenderly on a cot, that, involuntarily, I
bent closer.

'Awful things, those Minié wounds,' observed a young surgeon who stood
near me; and then, as he went on to describe how the horrible ball
revolves in the lacerated flesh, I suddenly caught a full view of the
features, over which the shadow of death seemed to have settled, and
fainted dead away.

It was a long time, I believe, before I regained my senses; but as soon
as I did, I went to work. Mr. Summers was stretched before me on that
cot, with a gaping wound in his shoulder, that had not been attended to
in proper time. He opened his eyes once, and smiled, as he seemed to
recognize me bending over him; but a fainting fit ensued, and then he
became delirious.

I could not bear to have any one else attend to him, and I watched him
faithfully day and night. That dreadful Minié wound seemed as if it
never would heal, and I think that the doctors scarcely expected him to
get up again. I almost felt as if I had been brought to the hospital for
this one purpose; and without his ever having told me in plain words
that he loved me--in spite of all my wise resolutions to the
contrary--during silent watches beside that couch of suffering, I became
convinced that I loved him with all the strength of which I was capable.
Yes, I who had nominally devoted myself to the service of my country,
had ignominiously closed my career by falling in love with the first
good-looking patient that had been brought into my ward!

If any stupid man, though (a woman would know better), supposes that I
informed Mr. Summers of this, either by word or look, in his first lucid
moment, he is entirely mistaken. On the contrary to punish myself for
this humiliating weakness, I was more severe than ever; and when the
patient became well enough to thank me for my kind attention, etc., I
told him, as coldly as I could, that it was no more than I would have
done for the commonest soldier--(which was not strict truth)--that my
labors were given to my country, and not to individuals--with much more
to the same purpose.

Mr. Summers sighed deeply, and turned over on his pillow; and he did not
imagine how I felt.

He said no more on the subject then; but, one evening, when he had been
moved from his bed to an easy chair, he spoke out like a man, and a
pretty determined one, too, in plain terms, and asked me if I would ever
marry him?

In just as plain terms I told him that I never would--I had resolved to
devote my life in this manner; and, with an expression of utter
hopelessness, he replied that he took back all his thanks for the
miserable life I had saved; he was weary of it, and would hasten to
throw it away on the next battle field.

This was very dreadful, of course; but that winter's practice had given
me quite a turn for arithmetic, and I fell to calculating how many
battles would probably transpire before that crippled shoulder would let
him take the field again.

'You will not get out under three months,' said I, confidently.

He looked at me for a moment; and then, bending closer, he whispered,
'You do not really mean it, Isabel?'

My face flushed uncomfortably at this address, but, making a last
struggle, I inquired carelessly, 'And why not, pray?'

'Because,' he replied, with a steady voice, 'you have too kind a heart
to consign to a disappointed life one who loves you so devotedly.'

I suppose I had; for, after that, he had the impudence to assure me that
I was engaged to him.

'Providence seems to smile upon us,' observed my convalescing patient,
the next morning; 'read this, Isabel.'

The formidable looking document was placed in my hand, and I learned
that Lieutenant Elihu Summers, for gallant conduct at the battle of Bull
Run, was promoted to the rank of colonel.

'Mrs. Colonel Summers,' said he, with the old mischief beaming in his
eye; 'isn't that tempting?'

I immediately punished him by reading an article that happened to be on
hand, which proved conclusively that army and navy officers were a
worthless, dissipated set. Nevertheless, it was a satisfaction to think
that my wish of entering the army was about to be gratified--although in
such an unexpected way.

I could never definitely ascertain whether Helen Legram loved Mr.
Summers or not; but I am under the impression that she did, and that she
will never marry. She makes a splendid principal for the Peppersville
Academy; and, when we have a house of our own, she will be the first
invited guest.

I am afraid that I have no 'mission.' I spoiled my school teaching by
falling in love with the principal, and my hospital nursing by becoming
infatuated with my most troublesome patient. I do not feel disposed,
therefore, to try another field.

LETTER WRITING.

To Atossa, a Persian queen, the daughter of Cyrus and the mother of
Xerxes, has been ascribed the invention of letter writing. She, although
a royal barbarian, was, like her prototype of Sheba, not only an admirer
of wisdom in others, but wise herself. She first composed epistles. So
testifies Hellanicus, a general historian of the ancient states, and so
insists Tatian in his celebrated oration against the Greeks. In that
oration he contends that none of the institutions of which the Greeks
were so boastful had their origin with them, but were all invented by
the barbarians.

It may be doubted, however, whether to any known person in the domains
of olden time can be truly attributed the high honor of such an
invention. Indeed, the views that may justly be entertained as to what
constitutes an invention may be various and diverse. Perhaps, in a
qualified sense, any signal addition or improvement deserves to be so
distinguished. What was precisely the subject matter of Atossa's
invention is not told, nor is anything recorded to lead to the
conclusion that she invented any new material; but, if she discovered
any way of committing the communications between persons, separated or
at a distance from each other, to paper--whether composed of the
interior bark of trees, or of the Egyptian papyrus, or other flexible
substance--and making it into a roll or volume, to be sent by some
carrier, that Persian queen may be accredited as the inventress of
epistolary composition.

It has been conjectured that letter writing was an art existing in the
days of Homer; because one of that great poet's characters, named
Pretus, gives a folded tablet to another personage, Bellerophontes, to
deliver to a third individual, Jobates. But the learned commentators,
both German and English, agree in the fact that the Iliad and the
Odyssey were never written, but recited to various audiences by

  'The grand old bard of Scio's rocky isle.'

Writing, however, was in use throughout Greece before the time of Homer,
if not in ordinary intercourse, certainly for memorials and
inscriptions. The age of Homer may be regarded as preceding the
Christian era by about one thousand years. It synchronizes with the time
of Solomon. Thus the greatest of poets and the wisest of kings
coexisted--truly a noticeable fact, a theme for the imagination.

But the Holy Scriptures afford instances of letter writing, in some form
or other, at a period considerably anterior to the age of Solomon. David
wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah: 'And he wrote
in the letter, saying.' (2 Samuel xi, 14, 15.) And, about one hundred
and forty years afterward, Jezebel wrote letters in Ahab's name (1 Kings
xxi, 8, 9), and 'sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto
the elders and to the nobles that were in the city, dwelling with
Naboth, and she wrote in the letters, saying, (2 Kings v, 5, 6, 7; 2
Kings x, 1, 2, 6, 7.) The king of Syria wrote a letter to the king of
Israel, and therewith sent Naaman, his servant, to be cured of his
leprosy: 'And it came to pass when the king of Israel read the letter,
that he rent his clothes.'

Now this occurred about nine hundred years before the Christian era;
and, about twenty years later, we are told that Jehu wrote letters and
sent them to Samaria. A second time he transmitted other letters of a
similar import, which were cruelly obeyed.

Then there is the threatening letter of the king of Assyria to Hezekiah,
set forth in the second book of Kings, and also the complimentary
letter from Berodach-Baladan to the same king of Judah after his
sickness; a king who subsequently appears himself to have written
letters to the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, to summon them to
Jerusalem. (2 Kings xix, 14; xx, 12; 2 Chron. xxx, 1-6.)

Cyrus, after publishing his decree giving liberty to the Jews to return
to their own country and rebuild the house of the Lord at Jerusalem,
wrote letters recommendatory to the governors of several provinces to
assist the Jews in their undertaking; one of which letters Josephus has
recorded as being addressed to the governors of Syria, and commencing
with the regular epistolary salutation, 'Cyrus, the king, to Sysina and
Sarabasan sendeth a greeting.' And while the children of the captivity
were rebuilding their temple (and this was five hundred and twenty-two
years before Christ), there was a frequent correspondence by letters
between, their adversaries and Artaxerxes, king of Persia. Now,
supposing the invention, in any modified sense, of letter writing _on
paper_, or what may answer to the idea conveyed by that term, is in any
measure attributable to the daughter of Cyrus, this was quite a matter
of course and in accordance with the general practice.

Still, let us not be disposed to take away from the royal lady the honor
of having invented an art which her sex have, in modern years, carried
to a perfection scarcely attainable by the male sex; for it may be set
down as an axiom that one woman's letter is worth a dozen letters by
men.

After all, the instances of communication by means of letter writing to
which allusions have thus been made are plainly no specimens of that use
of the invention which constitutes it the medium of free thought and
intelligence, or even the simple vehicle of domestic intercourse. Those
letters or missives were either formal announcements of authoritative
mandates and despatches, or, at best, only the conveyancers of certain
information, to be the motive to some act or understanding, or to
determine or direct some course of proceeding. There are no examples of
what can properly be called _familiar letters_ before the time of
Cicero, whose correspondence may justly be regarded as among the most
precious remains of ancient literature which have survived to our own
day. In connection with this remark, we may be permitted to observe
that, as with the greatest of ancient, so with the greatest of modern
orators, he was distinguished for the beauty, power, and brilliancy of
his letters. There are few instances of English style more charming in
themselves than the epistles, whether published or still in manuscript,
written by that versatile and wonderful person, Daniel Webster.
(_Nunquam tetigit quod non ornavit._) How copious is their expression!
How facile and felicitous their illustrations! What grace! What beauty
of diction! What simplicity, elevated by a matchless elegance! Nothing
more clearly proves the various talents of both the Roman and the
American statesman than that they should no more have excelled in their
forensic achievements on grand occasions than in those common and
trivial affairs of every-day life, so unaffected and so effortless as
the writing of letters to their friends.

All the letters of Greek and Roman origin which have come down to us
seem to be doubtful, except those of Plato and Isocrates, until the days
of Cicero. Under his genius the mind of the Roman nation took a sudden
spring, and the polite literature of the world was embellished by
epistolary composition. As the rules and illustrations of poetic writing
were borrowed by Aristotle from the example of Homer, so the practice
and authority of Cicero appear to have furnished precepts best entitled
to determine the character and merits of the epistolary style. He
esteemed it as a species of composition enjoying the privilege of great
ease and familiarity, as well in its diction as in its treatment of its
subject, and also in its employment of the weapons of wit and humor. The
general style most suitable to its spirit and character he considered to
be that most in use in the ordinary and daily intercourse of society. He
admired a simple and playful use of language, and he affected, as he
asserts, a common and almost plebeian manner of writing, using words of
every-day stamp in his correspondence. In his view of letter writing,
its style and manner ought to vary with the complexion of its subject
matter, and be subjected to no abstract system of rules. Ho propounds
three principal kinds of epistles: first, that which merely conveys
interesting intelligence, being, as he says, the very object for which
the thing itself came into existence; second, the jocose letter; third,
the serious and solemn letter. And it was besides the opinion of the
great orator--an opinion sanctioned and ratified by all honorable
persons then and in our own day--that there is something sacred in the
contents of a letter which gives it the strongest claims to be withheld
from third persons. 'For who,' he exclaims, in his second Philippic,
'who that is at all influenced by good habits and feelings, has ever
allowed himself to resent an affront or injury by exposing to others any
letters received from the offending persons during their intercourse of
friendship?' 'What else,' he eloquently exclaims, 'would be the tendency
of such conduct but to rob the very life of life of its social charms!
How many pleasantries find their way into letters, as amusing to the
correspondents as they are insipid to others; and how many subjects of
serious interest, which are entirely unfit to be brought before the
public!'

Truly is it gratifying, in our treatment of this topic, to be able to
adduce such high, classical authority concerning the sacred and
inviolable character of all private correspondence. In our humble view,
not only is the seal of a letter a lock more impregnable to the hand of
honor than the strongest bank safe which the expert Mr. Hobbs might
vainly have tried to open; but even when that seal has already been
rightfully broken and the contents of the letter exposed, those contents
are to the eye of delicacy as unreadable as if written in that _Bass_
language which Adam and Eve are said to have spoken while in the garden
of Eden, and which, since the fall, none but angels have ever been able
to comprehend. Now, if Cicero thought it base for a third party to read
a private letter, what eloquent thunder would he not have hurled at the
head of that wretch who not only read, but printed and published it!
There is an epithet, which, in certain parts of New England, the folks
apply to the poorest of poor scamps--'mean.' Now who, in this round
world, of all that dwell therein, can be found one half so 'mean' as the
betrayer and revealer of another's secrets? A whip should be placed in
every honest hand to lash the rascal naked through the world. He should
be fastened in an air-tight mail bag, and sent jolting and bouncing,
amid innumerable letters and packages and ponderous franked documents of
members of Congress, over all the roughest roads of our Northwestern
country!

To return to what a letter should be. It seems, upon the whole, to have
been Cicero's opinion--and in this we shall fain agree as well as in his
view of the secrecy of letters--that, whether the subject be solemn or
familiar, learned or colloquial, general or particular, political or
domestic, an easy, vivacious, unaffected diction gives to epistolary
writing its proper grace and perfection.

In very truth, good letter writing is little else than conversation upon
paper, carried on between parties personally separate, with this
especial advantage, that it brings the minds of the interlocutors into
reciprocal action, with more room for reflection, and with, fewer
disturbances than can usually consist with personal conversation.

We have thus made mention of Cicero as the greatest of authorities with
regard to this subject, because he was himself the greatest of letter
writers. The epistle was the shape in which his versatile and beautiful
mind most gracefully ran and moulded itself. His fluctuating and
unstable character no less than his vanity and love of distinction,
seemed to minister occasion to those varied forms of diction and
expression in which the genius of animated letter writing may be said to
delight. Read his 'Familiar Letters,' if not in Latin, yet in
translation, if you wish to study the most perfect specimens of this
style--a style which has not been equalled or approached since his day.

Next to the letters of the great Roman orator, merit points to those of
the philosopher Seneca. He, too, cultivates and enjoins an easy and
unstudied diction. So great is the excellence of his letters; so nearly
is their beauty allied to the beauty of our Holy Scriptures; so does he
seem to anticipate the morals and teachings of our Christian
dispensation, that it is almost reprehensible to speak of them at all,
without setting forth their extraordinary charms of style and thought,
even in a larger space than the present article can be allowed to
occupy.

After Seneca, the next most noted of the ancient letter writers was
Pliny the younger. And now we are brought down to the days of the
Apostles and their Epistles. With a simple reverential allusion to the
letters of St. Paul and the other immediate followers of our Lord,
letters that teach men the way of salvation--we pass to a more modern
consideration of our topic.

Letters can hardly be classified. They are of various sorts. Most of
them, as schoolboys say, end in t-i-o-n, _tion_. There are Letters of
Introduction; Letters of Congratulation; Letters of Consolation; Letters
of Invitation; Letters of Recommendation; Letters of Administration.
There are, moreover, letters of friendship, business letters, letters of
diplomacy, letters of credit, letters patent, letters of marque (apt
also to be letters of mark), and love letters--the last being by no
means least.

Let not the gentle reader imagine from this enumeration than we are
going to be so tedious as to divide the remainder of this article into
heads, and to treat of each one of these kinds of letters in its turn.
No; our object is, by indicating thus the number of sorts, to elucidate
the importance of letters, and to prove that, if their writing be not,
like that of poetry, ranked among the fine arts, it well deserves to be.
For what more admirable accomplishment can there be--what is of more
importance often than the proper composing of letters? Many a reputation
is made or marred by a single epistle. Great consequences follow in the
train of a single epistle. The pen is mightier than the sword. How well
may our readers remember one brief letter of Henry Clay (_clarum et
venerabile nomen!_), who, when a candidate for the Presidency, wrote
many excellent letters, and too many--so many, indeed, that his
adversaries indulged in pointless ridicule, and called him 'The Complete
Letter Writer.' We allude, of course, to that brief letter to certain
importunate individuals in Alabama, which lost for him the decisive and
final vote of New York, and made Mr. Polk President--its consequences
being the war with Mexico, the acquisition and annexation of California,
the discovery of the gold mines--working an utter change in the
political and commercial fortunes of the world, which would probably
never have taken place, or, at least, not in our century, but for that
one brief Alabama letter! It is, we believe, fully conceded that the
safest rule for becoming Chief Magistrate of our country is never to
write a letter.

Many a man and woman, who has written a letter and posted it, wishes
ardently that it could be recalled; and many a one who has something
disagreeable to say, and is obliged to say it in a letter because he has
promised to write, wishes that he could send the letter in blank--like
Larry O'Branigan to his wife Judy, when he was constrained to inform her
that he had been dismissed from his place, thus done into verse by the
bard of Erin:

  'As it was but last week that I sent you a letter,
    You'll wonder, dear Judy, what this is about,
  And, troth, it's a letter myself would like better,
    Could I manage to leave the contents of it out.'

Excellent, by the way, as this Hibernicism is, it is not so perfect as
the following, which it would be difficult for the most accomplished of
Paddies to surpass. A man, dying, wrote an epistle, in which, stating
that he was near death, he took an affectionate farewell of his friends.
He left the letter open on a table near him, and expired before he had
time to complete it. His attendant, just after his demise, taking up the
defunct's pen, in which the ink was scarcely yet dry, added, by way of
postcript, or rather _post-mortem-script_: 'Since writing the foregoing,
I have died.'

There is more philosophy than one would at first imagine in the apology
of him who said that his pen was so bad it could not spell correctly. To
write a letter as it should be in all respects, to be what it ought to
be, orthographically, grammatically, rhetorically right, there should be
a good pen, good paper, good ink. Many a pleasant correspondence has
been marred by want of these adjuncts; many an agreeable thought
arrested; many a composition, happily begun, hurried to an abrupt
conclusion. And how many delightful letters have been omitted or
neglected to be written by their want! We are not jesting. These
concomitants, together with nice envelopes, are as requisite to a
respectable epistle as becoming costume is to a lady. When we see a
scrawling hand on coarse paper, ill folded, worse directed, and ending,
'Yours in haste,' we think but little of the writer. Such a one may
complain of being in a hurry, but ladies and gentlemen should always
take time to do well whatsoever they do at all. No letters should be
written 'in haste' except angry ones, and the faster they are 'committed
to paper' the better. We have found it a capital plan, when in hot
wrath, to sit directly down and scratch off a furious letter, and then,
having thus committed our ire to the paper, to commit that to the
flames. The process is highly refrigerant, in any state of the weather.

Nothing can be more false than the phraseology of most letters. Many a
letter is commenced with 'dear,' when the writer, if he dared express
his real sentiment, would use a very opposite word. But, be the
sentiments of a letter what they may, true or false, real or affected,
it is the desire of the present writer to insist upon the indispensable
neatness of letters--that they should be externally faultless, however
defective inside. We regret to record the unpleasant fact that our
American ladies seldom write good hands, whereas a fair chirography is
properly considered as among the very first accomplishments for a
well-educated girl in England. Who ever saw a letter from a true English
lady that was not faultless in its details? What nice, legible
penmanship! How happily expressed! How trim and pretty a cover! How
beautiful and classic a seal! Very different these from the concomitants
of half a sheet of ruled paper, scrawled over as if chickens had been
walking upon it, and folded slopingly, and held loosely together by a
wafer!

It is an affectation of many lawyers and most literary people to write
ill, probably to create an impression that such is the vast importance
of their occupations and lucubrations that they have not time to attend
to so minor a matter as penmanship. A certain highly distinguished
counsellor of Massachusetts was said to have written so badly that he
could not comprehend his own legal opinions after he had put them on
paper. Now such affectation is in very poor taste. Those who cannot
write fairly and legibly had better go to school and practise until they
can. Incomprehensible writing is as bad as incomprehensible speaking. A
clear enunciation is scarcely more important than a plain hand. A
lawyer, in speaking, may as well jumble his words so together that not
one in fifty can be understood, as in writing to scrawl and run them
about so that not one in fifty can be read.

What a world of content or of unhappiness lies within the little fold of
a letter! Hark! There is the postman's ring at the door, sharp, quick,
imperative; as much as to say, 'Don't, keep me standing here; I'm in a
hurry.' How your heart beats! It has come at length--the long-expected
letter; an answer to a proposal of marriage, perhaps; a reply to an
urgent inquiry concerning a matter of business; information with regard
to some near and dear relative; a bulletin from the field of battle;
what the heart sighs for, hopes for--fears, yet welcomes--desires, yet
dreads. You seize the letter. Has it a black seal? Yes? The blood leaves
your cheeks and rushes to its citadel, frozen with fear, and in your ear
sounds the knell of a departed joy. No? Then you heave a long sigh of
relief, and gaze for a moment at the missive, wondering from whom it can
be. Your doubts are soon resolved, and you rest satisfied or you are
disappointed. Recall the emotions which you have experienced in opening
and reading many a letter, and you will acknowledge that fate and
fortune often announce their happiest or sternest decrees through a
little sheet of folded paper. Have you not thought so, wife, when came
the long looked-for, long hoped-for, long prayed-for--with so many sighs
and tears, such throbbing, and such sinking of the heart--letter from
your husband, telling the fruition of his schemes, and the prospect of
his speedy return? Have you not thought so, mother, when your son's
letter came, assuring you that your early teachings had been blessed to
him; and, though perchance surrounded by the temptations of a great city
or a great camp, he had found that 'peace which passeth understanding?'
Have you not thought so, O happy damsel--yes! that blush tells how
deeply--when _his_ letter came at last, that letter which told you you
were beloved, and that all his future felicity depended upon your reply?
And that soft reply--how covered with kisses, how worn in that pocket of
the coat in which it can feel the beatings of the precordial region! And
not of you alone, ye refined and accomplished lovers--but of swains and
sweethearts are the letters dear. Nothing more prized than such
epistles, commencing with: 'This comes to inform you that I am well,
saving a bad cold, and hope you enjoy the same blessing,' and ending:

  'My pen is poor, my ink is pale,
  My love for you shall never fail.'

Assuredly, if there can be unalloyed happiness in this world, it
appertains to those dear and distant friends, parted from one another by
intervening ocean or continent, at those moments of mental communion
which are vouchsafed by long and loving letters. Ah, how would the bands
of friendship weaken and drop apart if it were not for them! They
brighten the links of our social affections; they freshen the verdure of
kind thoughts; they are like the morning dew and the evening rain to
filial, conjugal, fraternal, paternal and parental love!

Let us now pass on to say something concerning those different kinds of
letters that we named. Letters of diplomacy are affairs in which words
are used for the purpose of concealing or obscuring the author's
meaning, and which always conclude: 'Yours, with distinguished
consideration.' To this species of epistle, the 'non-committal style,'
of which the late Martin Van Buren was reputed to be a perfect master,
is best adapted. Diplomatists seldom desire to be comprehended; but
occasionally, when they do, how luminously plain they can be! Witness
that celebrated letter which Mr. Webster dictated to Edward Everett, and
the latter put on paper to be sent to Austria's minister, the Chevalier
Hulsemann. The 'distinguished consideration' of that discomfited
official was exercised to an unpleasant extent; and the result is that
Austria has ceased to instruct this republic.

Nothing is more difficult to compose than a letter of consolation or
condolence. The more earnestly you desire to express sympathy and impart
solace, the more impossible it seems to find gentle and appropriate
terms. You would shun commonplaces and avoid sermonizing. You wish to
say something simple, kind, soothing. And yet the reflection of how far
short of the exigencies of the grief you would mitigate, fails your best
and most effectual efforts, oppresses and restrains your pen.

Of letters of business, it is quite well to say as little as they say
themselves: 'Yours received; contents noted. Yours, &c.' As brevity is
the soul of wit, so is it the soul of a business letter--the argument of
which should be _ad rem_, to the matter; _cum punctu_, with point.

Letters of invitation and congratulation are often mere formalities,
although there is a way of infusing kindness, courtesy, and sincerity
into them, especially into the latter, which ought at least to seem to
be in cordial earnest.

Letters of introduction and recommendation are very difficult to write,
because most people endeavor to give an original turn to their
expressions. After all, it is judicious, in the composition of such
affairs, to follow the briefest and most usual formulas, unless, indeed,
you desire to introduce and recommend some particular person in
downright reality, and then the farther you deviate from mere customary
expressions the better. And if you are truly in earnest, you need be at
no loss what to say: the words will suggest themselves.

Letters of friendship may be divided into two sorts--real and pretended.
A real letter of friendship commends itself directly to the heart. There
is a warm, genial glow about it, as welcome as the blaze of a hickory or
sea-coal fire to one coming in from the cold, bitter breeze of a
December night. It makes one philanthropic and a believer in human
goodness. What cheer--what ardent cheer is there in a letter
unexpectedly received from an old friend between whom and one's self
roll years of absence, or stretch lands and seas of distance! It is like
a boon from the very heaven of memory. But a pretended letter of
friendship--how easily detected! how transparent its falsity! The
loadstone of love touches it, and finds it mere brass. Its influence is
icy and bleak, like the rays of the moon, from which all the lenses on
earth cannot extract one particle of heat.

And what can be said of love letters--those flowers of feeling, those
redundant roses of recapitulation? There is one strain running through
their first parts, and then--_da capo_. They are the same thing, over
and over and over again, and then--repeat. Yet are they never wearisome
to those who write or to those who acceptably receive. They are like the
interviews of their writers, excessively stupid to everybody else, but
exquisitely charming to themselves; that is, _real_ love letters; not
those absurd things--amusing from their very absurdity--which novelists
palm off upon innocent readers as the correspondence of heroes and
heroines. Verily is there a distinction between letters written by
lovers and love letters. The former may be deeply interesting to
uninterested readers, while the latter are the very quintessence of
egotistical selfishness; for, indeed, lovers may sometimes write about
other matters besides love, as, for example, in the famous epistles of
Abelard and Héloïse.

  'Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
  Some banish'd lover or some captive maid;
  They live, they breathe, they speak what love inspires,
  Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires;
  The virgin's wish without her fears impart,
  Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart;
  Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
  And waft a sigh from Indus to the pole.'

About the other kinds of letters which have been enumerated, we shall
have nothing to say; because they are letters rather in name than in
reality.

The fashion prevalent in modern days, to publish on the demise of an
author pretty much all his private correspondence, proves the general
interest which is felt in mere letters. Many of these are utterly
worthless, vastly inferior to those which constantly pass between
friends on the topics of the hour or their own affairs. It is charitable
to conjecture that their writers never imagined that they could be
exposed in print, or would not be burned as soon as read. And yet, with
what avidity are they conned and discussed! Look at the letters of Lord
Byron, Moore, and Campbell. How much brainless twattle do they contain,
amid a few grains of wit and humor. What mere commonplace! Editors may
as well publish every word a man says, as what he writes familiarly in
his dressing gown and slippers. We have not a doubt that by far the best
letters ever written still remain unpublished. There are many printed
volumes of travels very inferior to those which could be made up from
the letters of private persons abroad, composed purely for the
delectation of friends. There is hardly anything so difficult in writing
as to write with ease. They who write letters on purpose to be
published, feel and show a constraint which a mere private correspondent
never entertains nor exhibits.

The war in which we are engaged has brought forth whole hosts of
correspondents. They come not single spies, but in battalions. None of
these letters, so far as we have read, can boast of any striking or
peculiar excellence. Their great fault is their immense prolixity. Their
words far outnumber their facts. An editor having once complained to a
writer of the inordinate length of his composition, the writer replied
that he had not had time to make it _shorter_. This is doubtless the
trouble with our army letter writers. They are forced to write _currente
calamo_--sometimes on the heads of drums, and not unfrequently are such
epistles as full of sound and fury and as empty as the things on which
they are written. The best of these correspondents so far is the
somewhat ignominious Mr. Russell, of the London _Times_; the only one,
indeed, who has achieved a reputation. Mr. Charles Mackay, his successor
(_heu! quantum mutatus ab illo_), writes letters that are poorer, if
possible, than his poems; he has just sufficient imagination to be
indebted to it for his facts. As for his opinions, he seems to gather
them, like a ragpicker, from political stews, reeking with the filth of
treason and foul with the garbage of secession.

So far as _literary_ merit goes, we regret to give our verdict in favor
of correspondents for the Southern journals. They write with greater
facility, greater elegance, and greater force than our own too
voluminous reporters. But, as much as they have figured, it is not
probable that they will live in print. They are like exhalations over a
battle field--touched briefly by the hues of sunlight, then fading,
rolling off, and vanishing in the distance.

Of all the methods of acquiring a good English style, there is no
practice so beneficial as that of frequent and familiar letter writing.
Because your object in writing to a friend is to make yourself perfectly
clear to him, therefore you make use of the simplest, plainest, readiest
words--and such are ever the best for an essay, sermon, lecture, or even
oration. This practice imparts ease and perspicuity, and it teaches that
writing ought to be and may be as little difficult as conversation. It
teaches every one not to say anything till he shall have something to
say. A want of something to say is generally not felt in writing
letters, especially by ladies; but it would seem to be a great pity that
there are so many words in our language; for, whenever one desires to
say anything, three or four ways of saying it run in one's head
together, and it is hard to choose the best! It is quite as puzzling to
a lady as the choice of a ribbon or a--husband. But let us earnestly
advise all fair letter writers to lessen their perplexity by restricting
themselves to words of home manufacture. They may perhaps think it looks
prettily to garnish their correspondence with such phrases as _de tout
mon coeur_. Now, _with all my heart_ is really better English; the
only advantage on the side of the former expression is that it is far
less sincere. French silks and French laces may be superior, but it is
much better to make use of the English language. Whenever there is any
doubt between two words or expressions, choose the plainest, the
commonest, the most idiomatic. Let ladies eschew fine phrases as they
would _rouge_; let them love simple words as they do native roses on
their cheeks. A true lady should be emulous to deserve that praise which
the old poet Chaucer bestows on his Virginia:

  'Though she were wise as Pallas, dare I sain
  Her faconde eke full womanly and plain,
  No contrefeted terms hadde she
  To semen wise; but after her degree
  She spake; and all her wordes more or less
  Sounding in virtue and in gentilesse.'

Exquisite examples of this pure, mother English are to be found in the
speeches put by Shakspeare into the mouths of his female characters.

  'No fountain from its rocky cave
  E'er tripped with foot more free;'

never were its waters clearer, more translucent, or more musical. This
is indeed the peculiar beauty of a feminine style--choice and elegant
words, but such as are familiar in well-bred conversation; words, not
used scientifically, but according to their customary signification. It
is from being guided wholly by usage, undisturbed by extraneous
considerations, and from their characteristic fineness of discernment
with regard to what is fit and appropriate, as well as from their being
much less influenced by the vanity of fine writing, that sensible,
educated women have a grace of style so rarely attainable by men. What
are called the graces of composition are often its blemishes. There is
no better test of beauties or defects of style than to judge them by the
standard of letter writing. An expression, a phrase, a figure of speech,
thought to be very splendid in itself, would often appear perfectly
ridiculous if introduced in a letter. The rule of the cynic is a pretty
good one, after all: _In writing, when you think you have done something
particularly brilliant, strike it out._

We are pretty well persuaded that authors are but poor judges of their
own productions. They pride themselves on what they did with most labor.
It is not good praise of any work to say that it is 'elaborate.' An
author's letters are not apt to be labored, 'to smell of the lamp;' and
they are, therefore, in general, his best specimens. In letter writing
there will be found a facility, a freedom from constraint, a
simplicity, and a directness, which are the capital traits of a good
style. Of Shakspeare it is said, in the preface to the first edition of
his works: 'His mind and hand went together, and what he thought he
uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot
in his papers.' Shakspeare did not, therefore,

  'Write with fury, and correct with phlegm;'

but he wrote straightforwardly and naturally, as they do who assiduously
practise letter writing.

THE YEAR.

  Come, gentle Snowdrop, come; we welcome thee:
    Shine, fiery Crocus, through that dewy tear!
  That thou, arrayed in burnished gold, may'st be
    A morning star to hail the dawning year.

  Now Winter hath ta'en Summer by the hand,
   And kissed her on her cheek so fair and clear;
  While Spring strews bridal blossoms o'er the land
    To grace the marriage of the youthful year.

  The blackbird sings upon the budding spray,
    I hear the clarion tones of chanticleer,
  And robins chirp about from break of day,--
    All pipe their carols to the opening year.

  The butterfly mounts up on jewelled wing,
    Risen to new life from out her prison drear:
  All Nature smileth;--every living thing
    Breaks forth in praises of the gladsome year.

  Down in the sheltered valley, Mayflowers blow,--
    Their small, sweet, odorous cups in beauty peer
  Forth from their mother's breast in softened glow,
    To deck the vestments of the princely year.

  And splendid flowers in richly-colored dress
    Will bloom when warm winds from the south shall veer:
  And clustering roses in their gorgeousness
    Shall form a coronet for the regal year.

  Rejoice, O beauteous Earth--O shining Sea!
    Rejoice, calm Summer sky, and all things dear:
  Give thanks, and let your joyful singing be
    An anthem for the glories of the year.

THE GREAT AMERICAN CRISIS.

_PART ONE._

The American crisis, actual and impending; the causes which have led to
it through the years that have passed; the consequences which must flow
from it; the new responsibilities which it devolves on us as a people in
the practical sphere; the new theoretical problems which it forces upon
our consideration--everything, in fine, which concerns it, constitutes
it a subject of the most momentous importance. The greatest experiment
ever yet instituted to bring the progress of humanity to a higher plane
of development is being worked out on this continent and in this age;
and the war now progressing between the Northern and the Southern States
is, in a marked sense, the acme and critical ordeal to which that
experiment is brought.

First in order, in any methodical consideration of the subject, is the
question of the causes which have led to this open outburst of collision
and antagonism between the two great sections of a common country, whose
institutions have hitherto been--with one remarkable exception--so
similar as to be almost identical. Look at the subject as we will, the
fact reveals itself more and more that the one exception alluded to is
the 'head and front of this offending,' the heart and core of this
gigantic difficulty, the one and sole cause of the desperate attempt now
being waged to disturb and break up the process of experiment, otherwise
so peacefully and harmoniously progressing, in favor of the freedom of
man. There is no possibility of grappling rightly with the difficulty
itself, unless we understand to the bottom the nature of the disease.

When the question is considered of the causes of the present war, the
superficial and incidental features of the subject--the mere symptoms of
the development of the deep-seated affection in the central constitution
of our national life--are firstly observed. Some men perceive that the
South were disaffected by the election of Abraham Lincoln and the
success of the Republican party, and see no farther than this. Some see
that the Northern philanthropists had persisted in the agitation of the
subject of slavery, and that this persistency had so provoked and
agitated the minds of Southern man that their feelings had become heated
and irritated, and that they were ready for any rash and unadvised step.
Others see the causes of the war in the prevalence of ignorance among
the masses of the Southern people, the exclusion of the ordinary sources
of information from their minds, the facility with which they have been
imposed on by false and malignant reports of the intentions of the
Northern people, or a portion of the Northern people. Others find the
same causes in the unfortunate prevalence at the South of certain
political heresies, as Nullification, Secession, and the exaggerated
theory of State Rights.

A member of President Lincoln's cabinet, speaking of its causes, near
the commencement of the war, says:

     'For the last ten years an angry controversy has existed upon this
     question of Slavery. The minds of the people of the South have been
     deceived by the artful representations of demagogues, who have
     assured them that the people of the North were determined to bring
     the power of this Government to bear upon them for the purpose of
     crushing out this institution of slavery. I ask you, is there any
     truth in this charge? _Has the Government of the United States, in
     any single instance, by any one solitary act, interfered with the
     institutions of the South? No, not in one._'

But let us go behind the symptoms--let us dive deeper than the
superficial manifestations--let us ask why is it that the South were so
specially disaffected by the election of a given individual, or the
success of a given political party, to an extent and with an expression
given to that disaffection wholly disproportionate to any such cause,
and wholly unknown to the political usages of the land? Why is the South
susceptible to this intense degree of offence at the ordinary
contingency of defeat in a political encounter? Why, again, does the
persistent discussion or agitation of _any_ subject tend so specially to
inflame the Southern mind beyond all the ordinary limits of
moderation--to the denial of the freedom of speech, the freedom of the
press, and finally of the right of national existence itself to the
North--except in conformity with preconceived opinions and theories of
its own? Why were they of the South standing ready, as to their mental
posture, for any or every rash and unadvised step? Why, again, are the
Southern people uneducated and ignorant, as the predominant fact
respecting a majority of their population? Why is the state of popular
information in that whole region of a nominally free country, such as to
make it an easy thing to impose upon their credulity and instruct them
into a full belief in the most absurd and monstrous fabrications, or
falsifications of the truth? Why were the ordinary sources of
information excluded from their minds, more than from ours, or from the
population of any other country? Why this fatal facility on the part of
the Southern public for being misled by the designing purposes of
ambitious demagogues; imbued with unjust prejudices; deluded into a
murderous assault upon their best friends, and into the infliction of
the most serious political injury upon themselves? Why, as a people, are
they prompt to rush from the pursuits of peace into all the horrors and
contingencies of war?--from the enjoyment of political freedom, at least
nominal and apparent, into the arms of a military despotism, the natural
and necessary ultimatum of the course which they have chosen to adopt?

The one and sole answer to all these questions is, Slavery. Some one has
said, in speaking of the present crisis, that the sentiment of loyalty
has never been prevalent at the South. This is a grand mistake. No
people on the surface of the planet have more sincerely felt or more
invariably and unflinchingly demonstrated loyalty than they. But it is
not loyalty to the American Government, nor indeed to any political
institutions whatsoever. It is loyalty to slavery and to cotton. No
other ideas exist, with any marked prominence, at the South. The
Northern people have never understood the South, and their greatest
danger in the present collision results from that ignorance. The
difference between the two peoples is indeed so wide that it is not
equalled by that which exists between any two nations of Europe--if we
except, perhaps, the Western nations and the Turks. The single
institution of slavery has, for the last sixty or seventy years, taken
absolute possession of the Southern mind, and moulded it in all ways to
its own will. Everything is tolerated which does not interfere with it;
nothing whatsoever is tolerated which does. No system of despotism was
ever established on earth so thorough, so efficient, so all-seeing, so
watchful, so permeating, so unscrupulous, and so determined.

The inherent, vital principle of slavery is irresponsible, despotic
rule. The child is born into the exercise of that right; his whole
mental constitution is imbued with its exercise. Hence for twenty or
thirty years--not by virtue of law, but against law--the mails have been
searched throughout the South for incendiary matter, with a strictness
of censorship unknown to any Government of Europe. Northern men and
Europeans immigrating to the South have uniformly been quietly dragooned
and terrorized into the acceptance of theories and usages wholly unknown
to any free country;--quietly, only because the occasion for doing the
same thing violently and barbarously had not yet arrived.

The two civilizations, North and South, are wholly unlike. Without the
slavery of four millions of men, to be kept in subjection by a
conspiracy to that effect, on the part of the whole free population--the
lack of fidelity to which conspiracy is the only treason known in those
regions--the existence of a people like the inhabitants of the Southern
States would be a riddle incapable of solution. Slavery itself, is _a
remnant of barbarism overlapping the period of civilization_; but,
unlike the slaveries of the barbaric ages, American slavery has been
stimulated into all the enterprising and audacious energy of this
advanced and progressive age. It is an engine of ancient barbarism
worked by the steam of modern intelligence. The character of the people
which has been created under this rare and anomalous state of things is
alike rare and anomalous. No other people ever so commingled in
themselves the elements of barbarous and even savage life with traits of
the highest civilization. No other community were ever so instinct with
the life of the worst ages of the past, and so endowed with the physical
and intellectual potencies of the present. The national character of the
South is that of the gentlemanly blackleg, bully, and desperado.
Courteous when polished, but always overbearing; pretentious of a
conventional sense of honor--which consists solely in a readiness to
fight in the duel, the brawl, or the regular campaign, and to take
offence on every occasion; with no trace of that modesty or delicacy of
sentiment which constitutes the soul of true honor; ambitious,
unscrupulous, bold; dashing and expert; with absolutely no restrictions
from conscience, routine, or the ordinary suggestions of prudence; false
and, like all braggarts, cowardly when beaten; confident of their own
strength until brought to the severest tests; capable of endurance and
shifts of all kinds; awaiting none of the usual conditions of
success--the Southern man and the Southern people are neither
comfortable neighbors in a state of peace, nor enemies to be slightly
considered or despised in war.

The anomalous character of Southern society, it cannot be too often
repeated, is not understood and cannot be understood by the people of
the North, or of Europe, otherwise than through the sharp experience of
hostile and actual contact; nor otherwise than in the light of the
inherent tendency and necessary educational influences of the one
institution of slavery. Of the whole South, in degree, and of the
Southwestern States preëminently, it may be said as a whole description
in a single form of expression: _They know no other virtue than brute
physical courage, and no other crime than abolitionism or
negro-stealing._

All this is said, not for the purpose of blackening the South, not from
partisan rancor or local prejudice, or exaggerated patriotic zeal, but
because it is true. It is not true, however, of the whole population of
the South, nor true, perhaps, in the absolute sense of any portion. It
is impossible to characterize any people without a portion of individual
injustice, or to state the drift of an individual character even,
without a like injustice to better traits, adverse to the general drift,
and which, to constitute a complete inventory of national or personal
attributes, should be enumerated. There is at the South a large
counterpoise, therefore, of adverse statement, which might be, and
should be made if the object of the present writing were a complete
analysis of the subject. It is, however, not so, but a statement of the
preponderance of public character and opinion in those States. As a
people they have their countervailing side of advantage--a great deal of
amiability and refinement in certain neighborhoods, so long as their
inherent right of domination is not disputed. Men and women are found,
all over the South, who as individuals are better than the institution
by which their characters are affected, and whose native goodness could
not be wholly spoiled by its adverse operation. Slavery, too, offers
certain advantages for some special kinds of culture. We of the North,
on the other hand, have our own vices of a kind not to be disguised nor
denied; so that the present statement should not be mistaken for an
attempt to characterize in full either population. It is simply
perceived that the grand distinctive drift of Southern society is
directly away from the democratic moorings of our favorite republican
institutions; is rapid in its current and irresistible in its momentum;
and that already the divergency attained between the political and
popular character of the people at the North and the South is immense;
that these constantly widening tendencies--one in behalf of more and
more practical enlargement of the liberty of the individual; the other
backward and downward toward the despotic political dogmas and practices
of the ignorant and benighted past--have proceeded altogether beyond
anything which has been seen and recognized by the people of the North;
and that, consequently, the whole North has been acting under a
misapprehension.

The spirit of the South is and has been belligerent, rancorous, and
unscrupulous. The idea of settling any question by the discussion of
principles, by mutual concessions, by the understanding, admission, and
defence of the rights of each, is not in all their thoughts. They are
inherently and essentially invaders and conquerors, in disposition, and
so far as it might chance to prove for them feasible, would ever be so
in fact. War with them is therefore no matter of child's play, no matter
of courtesy or chivalry toward enemies, except from a pompous and
theatrical show of a knightly character, which they do not possess;--it
is simply a question of pillaging and enslaving, without let or
hindrance from moral or humanitary considerations, to any extent to
which they may find, by the experiment now inaugurated, their physical
power to extend. The North, let it be repeated, entered into this war
under a misapprehension of the whole state of the case. It is at the
present hour, to a fearful extent, under the same misapprehension. There
is still a belief prevailing that the South only needs to be coaxed or
treated kindly or magnanimously to be convinced that she has mistaken
the North; that she has not the grievances to complain of which she
supposes she has, and that she can yet obtain just and equitable
treatment from us. There is a tacit assumption in the minds of men that
she _must_ be content to receive the usage at our hands which we are
conscious that we are ready to bestow, and which has in it no touch of
aggressive and unjust intention. It is not realized that the spirit of
the South, in respect to the North, in respect to Mexico, in respect to
the islands of the sea, and--should their power prove proportionate to
their unscrupulous piratical aspirations--in respect to all the nations
of the earth, is that of the burglar and the highwayman. It is not
realized that the institution of slavery--itself essential robbery of
the rights of man; covering the area of half a continent, and the number
of four millions of subjects; planted in the midst of an intellectually
enlightened people, whose moral sense it has utterly sapped--is
essentially a great educational system, as all-pervading and influential
over the minds of the whole population as the common schools of New
England; and that this grand educational force tends toward and
culminates in this same tendency toward robbery and the suppression of
human rights or the individual and national rights of all other
people--expressed _in a collective and belligerent way_. It is not, as
said before, that all men at the South are of this filibustering cast;
but the bold, enterprising, and leading class of the population are so,
and the remainder are passive in their hands. Virtually and practically,
therefore, the South are a nation of people having far more relationship
in thought and purpose with the old Romans during the period of the
republic and the empire, or with the more modern Goths and Vandals and
Huns, than they have with the England or New England of to-day.

It is such a people, planted on our borders and aroused for the first
time to an exhibition on a large scale of those abiding and augmenting
national attributes and propensities which have thus been indicated,
with whom we are now brought into hostile array. They are at present
trying their hand at the collective and organic activities of a national
cutthroatism which, in an individual and sporadic way, has for many
years past constituted the national life of that people. Who at the
North, at the commencement of the war, impressively understood these
facts? Who even now sees and knows, as the fact is, that the military
success of Jefferson Davis; that his triumphant march on Philadelphia,
New York, and Boston--as they of the South threaten, and intend if they
have the power, and have already twice unsuccessfully attempted--would
terminate not, in a separation of these States by a permanent disruption
of the old Union; nor in new compromises of any kind whatsoever; but in
the absolute conquest of the whole North--not conquest even in any sense
now understood among civilized people; but conquest with more than all
the horrors which fourteen centuries ago were visited on Southern Europe
by the overwhelming avalanche of Northern barbarian invasion?--that in
that event, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of
locomotion without question, freedom in any sense which makes life
valuable to the man once educated into the conception of freedom, is
lost?--that the whole progress of modern civilization and development,
as it has been working itself out in the Northern American States, would
not only be diverted from its course, but positively reversed and made
to contribute all its accumulations of power to the building up, not of
the temple of Freedom for the blessing of the nations, but of an
infernal pantheon of Despotism and human oppression?

The North was forced, reluctantly and unwillingly, into this war: with
her as yet it has hardly become a matter of earnest. She has endeavored
to carry it on considerately and tenderly, for the well-being of the
South as well as of the North, much in the spirit of a quiet Quaker
gentleman unexpectedly set upon by a drunken rowdy, 'spoiling for a
fight,' and whom in his benevolence and surprise, he is anxious indeed
to restrain, but without inflicting on him serious injury. In an
especial degree was this tenderness felt on the part of the Government
and people of the North toward that peculiar institution of the South
which is distinctively known to be, in some way, fundamentally related
to this unprovoked and unreasonable attack. While the South was
attributing to the whole North a rabid abolitionism; while the North
itself was half suspecting that it had committed some wrong in the
excess of its devotion to human rights; the simple fact on the contrary
was, that the whole North had been and was still 'psychologized' into a
positive respect for slavery, and for slaves as property, which we feel
for no other species of property whatsoever. The existence of this
sentiment of veneration for what our Abolition apostles have for some
years been denominating the 'sum of all villanies,' is a curious fact
in the spiritual history of our people, which had very generally escaped
critical observation.

At the South, the individual planter, owning and possessing ten slaves,
of an aggregate value, it may be, of ten thousand dollars, ranks higher,
socially, is regarded indeed, in some subtile way, as a richer man, than
the merchant or banker who may be worth his hundred thousand or half
million of dollars, provided he has no slaves. To come to be the owner
of negroes, and of more and more negroes, is the social ambition, the
aristocratic purpose and pretension of the whole Southern people. It is
by virtue of this mystical _prestige_ of the institution itself; which
couples the charms of wealth with the exercise of authority, or a
certain show of official supremacy on the part of the master; which
begins by subjugating the imagination of the poorer classes, the whites
throughout the South, whose direct interests are wholly opposed to those
of the slaveholding class, and ends by subjecting them, morally and
spiritually, and binding them in the bonds of the most abject allegiance
to the oligarchy of slaveholders. It is in this way that the South is
made a unit out of elements seemingly the most incongruous and radically
opposed. For a series of years past, the South has sent forth its annual
caravan of wealthy planters to visit the watering places, and inhabit
the great hotels of the North. Coming in intimate contact with the
superior classes of our own population; floating up in the atmosphere of
serene self-complacency; radiating, shedding down upon those with whom
they chanced to associate, the ineffable consciousness of their own
unquestionable superiority; they have communicated without effort on
their part, and without suspicion on the part of those who were
inoculated by their presence, the exact mould and pressure of their own
slaveholding opinion. To this extent, and in this subtile and ethereal
way, the North had imposed upon it, unconsciously, a certain respect,
amounting to veneration, for what may be called the sanctity of slavery,
as it rests in and constitutes the aromal emanation from every Southern
mind. Hence not only did we begin this war with the feeling of
tenderness toward the Southern man and the Southern woman as brother and
sister in the common heritage of patriotism, but, superadded to this,
with a _special_ sentiment of tenderness toward that _special_
institution for which it is known that they, our brethren, entertain
such _special_ regard.

Now all this is rapidly changing; the outrages inflicted on citizens of
the North residing at the South at the opening of the war--hardly
paralleled in the most barbarous ages in any other land;--their reckless
and bloodthirsty methods of war; their bullying arrogance and
presumption; the true exposition, in fine, of the Southern character as
it is, in the place of a high-toned chivalry which they have claimed for
themselves, and which the people of the North have been tacitly inclined
to accord--are all awakening the Government and the people to some
growing sense of the real state of the case. Still, however, we are so
far dominated by these influences of the past, that we are not fighting
the South upon anything like a fair approximation to equal terms. They
have no other thought than to inflict on us of the North the greatest
amount of evil; the _animus_ of deadly war. We, on the other hand, fight
an unwilling fight, with a constant _arrière pensée_ to the best
interests of the people whom we oppose--not even as _we_ might construe
those interests, but, by a curious tenderness and refinement of
delicacy, for those interests as _they_, from their point of view,
conceive them to be. We forbear from striking the South in their most
vital and defenceless point, while they forbear _in nothing_, and have
no purpose of forbearance.

Who doubts for a moment that a thousand mounted men, acting with the
freedom which characterized the movements of the detachment of Garibaldi
in the Italian war, acting with the authorization of the Government,
actuated by the spirit of a John Brown or a Nat Turner, sent, or rather
let go, into the mountains of Virginia, North Carolina, or Georgia, with
the authority to assemble and arm the slaves, retreating whenever
assailed to the fastnesses of the mountains, would cause more terror in
those States; would do more, in a word, toward the actual conquest in
three months' time of those rebel commonwealths, than fifty or a hundred
times their number organized in the regular forms of modern warfare,
operating against the whites only, and half-committed to the coöperative
protection of the institution of slavery, would accomplish in a year?
Who doubts for a moment that, if the South could find a like vulnerable
point in the openings of our armor, she would make, with no hesitation,
the most fearful and tremendous use of her advantage? The whole North is
aware of its possession, in its own hands, of this immense engine of
destructive power over its enemy. The whole civilized world stands by,
beholding us possessed of it, and expecting, as a simple matter of
course, that we shall not fail to employ it--standing by indeed,
perplexed and confused at the seeming lack of any significance in the
war itself, unless we make use of the power at our command in this
fortuitous struggle, not only to inflict the greatest injury upon our
enemy, but to extinguish forever the cause of the whole strife. Still we
forbear to make the most efficient use of our advantage. We for a long
time embarrassed and partially crippled ourselves in all our movements
by an almost unconscious sense of responsibility for the protection of
this very institution of slavery from the disastrous consequences which
were liable to fall upon it as the results of the war.

True, we are slowly and gradually recovering from this perversion of
opinion. The Emancipation Proclamation was probably issued as soon, or
nearly as soon, as the Northern sentiment was prepared to give it even a
moral support. Another term had to expire to accustom the same public
mind to appropriate the spirit of that document as matter of earnest; to
come to regard it as anything more than a mere _brutum fulmen_, a Pope's
bull, as President Lincoln once called it himself, against the comet. Up
to this hour, its effect on the war has been far more as a moral
influence preparing for a great change of opinion and of conduct, than
as a charter of efficient operations. General Thomas's action at the
South, just previous to the capture of Vicksburg, began experimentally
to inaugurate, on something like an adequate scale, the new programme of
practical work in the conduct of the war. Even a month earlier his
movement would hardly have been tolerated by the same army, which, just
then beginning to appreciate the tremendous difficulty of the enterprise
of conquering the South, were ready to accept anything new which
promised to augment their own strength and to weaken that of the enemy.
Still another term of waiting and suffering is requisite to change the
habit of mind which has so long despised and maltreated the negro,
before he will be put, in all respects, upon the footing of his own
merit as a patriot and a soldier; and before all of his uses as the
severest goad in the sides of the hostile South will be fairly
appreciated.

Thus in all ways we are only now in the midst of a revolution of
opinion, which, when it is accomplished, will be seen to be the greatest
triumph of the war. Though we have spoken of this change as slowly and
gradually occurring, yet, viewed with reference to the long periods of a
nation's life, it is an immense revolution almost instantly effected. We
are perhaps already one half prepared adequately to use our tremendous
advantage. New disasters may be providentially requisite to quicken our
education in the right direction; more punishment for our complicity in
the crimes of the South; new incentives to a more perfect love of
justice as a people; but every indication points to the early
achievement of these substantial victories over ourselves, while, at the
same time, we conquer the powerful array of Southern intrepidity and
desperation, in behalf of their bad cause, upon the external battle
field.

To resume the question of causes. Why is there, and why has there always
been at the South this unfortunate prevalence of certain political
heresies, as Nullification, Secession, and the exaggerated theory of
State Rights?

The answer is still, slavery. The cause of causes, lying back of the
whole wide gulf of difference in Northern and Southern politics is
still, slavery. From the date of our Constitution, opinion has divided
into two great currents, North and South, in behalf of paramount
allegiance to the General Government at the North, and paramount
allegiance to the several State Governments at the South. The
resolutions of '98 and '99 began the public expression of a political
heresy, which has gone on augmenting at the South from that day to this.
At the North, the Government of the United States was never feared as
likely to become injurious in any sense to the inhabitants of the
States. Each State fell quietly and harmoniously into its true
subordinate orbit, acknowledging gladly and without question the
supremacy of the new Government, representative of the whole of the
people, in simple accord with the spirit and intention of the
Constitution and the Government which the people had formed. At the
South, on the contrary, the United States Government was, from the
first, looked upon with a suspicion plainly expressed in the speech, for
example, of Patrick Henry, in the Virginia convention, which consented
reluctantly that the State should come into the Union, lest the National
Government might, in some unforeseen contingency, interfere with the
interests of the institution of slavery. That fear, the determination to
have it otherwise, to make the General Government, on the contrary, the
engine and supporter of slavery, the propagandist of slavery, in fine;
has been always, since, the animating spirit of Southern political
doctrine. A doctrine so inaugurated and developed has endeavored to
engraft itself by partisan alliance upon the Democratic party of the
North, but always hitherto with an imperfect success. State Rights, as
affirmed at the North, has never been a dogma of any considerable power,
because it has rested on no substratum of suspicion against the General
Government, nor of conspiracy to employ its enginery for special or
local designs. At the South it has been vital and significant from the
first, and it has grown more mischievous to the last. President Lincoln,
in his first message, discussed, ably enough, the right of secession as
a mere constitutional or legal right. Others have done the same before
and since. The opinion of the lawyer is all very well, but it has no
special potency to restrain the nocturnal activities of the burglar. All
such discussions are, for the present behalf, utterly puerile.
Secession, revolution, the bloody destruction and extinction of the
whole nation, were for years before the war foregone determinations in
the Southern mind, to be resorted to at any instant at which such
extreme measures might become necessary; not merely to prevent any
interference with the holy institution; but equally to secure that
absolute predominance of the slaveholding interest over the whole
political concerns of the country which should protect it from
interference, and give to it all the expansion and potency which it
might see fit to claim. So long as that absolute domination could be
maintained within the administration of the Government, slavery and
slaveholders were content to remain nominally republican and
democratic--actually despots and unlimited rulers. But a contingency
threatened them in the future. The numerical growth of population at the
North, the moral convictions of the North--both of these united, or some
other unforeseen circumstance, might withdraw the operations of the
General Government from their exclusive control. To provide for that
possible contingency, the doctrine of paramount allegiance to the
individual States, and secondary allegiance merely to the General
Government--a perpetual indoctrination of incipient treason--was
invented, and has been sedulously taught at the South from the very
inception of the Government. Hardly a child in attendance upon his
lessons in an 'old-field' schoolhouse throughout that region but has
been imbued with this primary devotion to the interests of his State;
certainly, not a young lawyer commencing to acquire his profession, and
riding the circuit from county court-house to court-house, but has had
the doctrine drummed into his ears, of allegiance to his State; and when
the meaning and importance of that teaching was inquired for, he was
impressively and confidentially informed that the occasion might arise
of collision between the South and the General Government on the subject
of slavery; and that then it would be of the last importance that every
Southern man should be true to his section. Thus the way has been
prepared through three generations of instruction, for the precise event
which is now upon us, flaunting its pretensions as a new and accidental
occurrence.

Meantime, the North has suspected nothing of all this. Her own devotion
and loyalty to the General Government have been constantly on the
increase, and she has taken it for granted that the same sentiments
prevailed throughout the South. Hence the utter surprise felt at the
enormous dimensions which the revolt so suddenly took on, and at the
unaccountable defection of such numbers of Southern men from the army
and the navy at the first call upon sectional loyalty. The question is
not one of legal or constitutional rights in accordance with the literal
understanding of any parchment or document whatsoever. The most
triumphant arguments of President Lincoln or of anybody else have had in
the past, and have now, no actual relevancy to the question at the
South, and might as well be totally spared. It is purely and simply that
the South are in dead earnest to have their own way, unchecked by any
considerations of justice or right, or any other considerations of any
kind whatsoever--less than the positive demonstration of their physical
inability to accomplish their most cherished designs. Even in a
technical way, the question is not most intelligibly stated as one of
the right of secession; it is the bald question of Paramount Allegiance;
it is so understood at the South. The whole action of the South is based
upon a thorough indoctrination into a political dogma never so much as
fairly conceived of at the North as existing anywhere, until events now
developing themselves have revealed it, and which is not now even well
understood among us. Back of this indoctrination again, and the sole
cause of it, is the existence of the institution of slavery; its own
instinct from the first that it had no other ground of defence or hope
of perpetuation but physical force; its fears of invasion and its
obstinate determination to invade.

The supposition has, until quite recently, extensively prevailed in the
Northern mind that slavery is or was regarded at the South as a
necessary evil, borne because it was inherited from the past and because
its removal had become now next to impossible. A certain school of
Northern philanthropists, headed, we believe, by Elihu Burritt, had gone
so far, previous to the war, as to form a society and appeal to the
Northern people for aid to enable their Southern brethren, through such
aid, and finally, perhaps, through the interposition of the General
Government, to rid themselves of this monster evil. This handful of
kindly individuals must soon have discovered, had they come into actual
contact with the prevailing sentiment of the South, that their whole
movement was based upon a misapprehension of that sentiment. Thirty-five
years ago, and before the Northern abolition movement had taken root in
the land, it was a pleasant fiction for the Southern mind to speak
deprecatingly of the blame which they otherwise might seem to incur in
the mind of mankind for adhering to their barbarous institution; to
plead their own conviction of its entire wrongfulness, and to
commiserate themselves for their utter inability to free themselves from
its weight. A certain considerable freedom of discussion in relation to
its abstract merits was allowed, with the tacit condition imposed,
however, just as really though not as consciously as now, that slavery
itself must not be disturbed. Talk which had in it any touch of genuine
feeling in favor of active exertion to rid the country of the
institution as an evil, was then as effectually tabooed as it is to-day,
with some minor exceptions on the borders of the slaveholding region, in
Baltimore, North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee, etc., and with the further
exception when Virginia was terrified for a few weeks or months by the
results of a desperate insurrection. On the strength of these few
exceptions, it has been claimed at the South, and still more
persistently by Southern sympathizers at the North, that the whole drift
and tendency of things at the South prior to the commencement of the
abolition agitation at the North were toward gradual emancipation, and
that they would have ultimated at an early day in that result. This,
too, is a pleasant fiction with the least possible percentage of truth
at the bottom of it.

The institution of slavery, under the stimulus given to it by the
invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, and the consequent
development of the cotton-growing industry--aided, curiously enough, in
a certain sense, by the prohibition of the African slave trade, giving
rise to the slave-rearing business in Virginia and Maryland--has all
along been exhibiting a steady, sturdy, and rapid growth. By the
alliance, accidentally as it were, resulting from the prohibition of the
slave trade, between the Southern and the Northern slaveholding States,
a robustness and consistency were given to the whole slaveholding
interest which possibly it might never have had under a different
policy. If the foreign importation of slaves had continued, that species
of population would gradually have overrun the cotton-raising border of
States--would have overrun them to an extent threatening the safety of
the institution there by its own plethora--while from the southern line
of North Carolina and Tennessee northward, where this extra-profitable
industry could not readily be extended, the temptation to the
importation of slaves would have been slight, no market existing for the
home increase. The hold of the institution would have been constantly
weakened there in the affections of the white population; and, in those
States, there is a seeming probability that white labor and free labor
would have taken the place of the present system, as it did in the
States farther north. This would have deprived the Southern belt of
cotton-raising and negro-holding States of that sympathy which, under
existing circumstances, they have steadily had from their more northern
sisters, and favored an early extinction of the system. However this
might have been, as things are and have been actually, it is certain
that at no period has the growth of the slaveholding institution
exhibited any weakness or defect of vitality. Like an infant giant, it
has steadily waxed stronger and stronger, and more and more arrogant
and aggressive.

When the anti-slavery agitation commenced at the North, the parties who
engaged in it had no consciousness of the immense magnitude and potent
vitality of the institution against which they proposed to carry on a
moral warfare. They supposed that, as a matter of course, they would
find a universal sympathy throughout the North with doctrines in behalf
of freedom, where freedom was the basis of all our institutions, and
where, apparently, there was no alliance of interest, no possible reason
for a sympathy with slavery or the denial of freedom to man. They were
met unexpectedly by a powerful current of semi-slaveholding opinion
pervading the whole area of the Free States, and ready to deny to them
free speech or the rightfulness of any effort to arouse the people to a
consideration of the subject. When, after some years of contest, this
current of prejudgment was partially reversed, and their new thought
began to find audience by the Northern ear; when, strengthened by
numbers and the better comprehension of the subject by themselves; the
increased determination and enthusiasm which arose from the _esprit du
corps_; and the assurance--satisfactory to themselves at least--that
they were engaged in a good cause; they began to grapple more directly
with intensified and genuine pro-slavery sentiment at the South itself,
they were astonished to find that, instead of battling with a weak
thing, they had engaged in moral strife with one of the most mighty
institutions of the earth.

Pro-slavery sentiment at the South, inherently arrogant and aggressive,
as already said, was, at the same time and from the same causes, aroused
to the consciousness of its own strength. Called on to answer for the
unseemly fact of its existence in the midst of these modern centuries,
when the world boasts of human freedom and progression, it began by
blushing for its hideous aspect and uttering feeble and deprecative
apologies. Not that it was at bottom ashamed of its existence, for
slavery, like despotism of all sorts, is characteristically
self-confident and proud; but because it had been allowed to grow up
under protest in the midst of free institutions, and among a people
conscious of the incongruity of the relationship existing between them
and it; and had so contracted the habit of apology, and the hypocritical
profession of regret for its own inherent wrongfulness. Provoked,
however, to try its strength against the feeble assaults of the new
friends of freedom, finding all its demands readily yielded to, and
itself victorious in every conflict, it soon threw off its false
professions of modesty, pronounced itself free from every taint of
wrong-doing, claimed to be the very corner stone and basis of free
institutions themselves, the condition _sine qua non_ of all successful
experiment in republican and democratic organizations, and became boldly
and openly the assailant and propagandist, instead of occupying any
longer the position of defence. Then followed the various attempts to
overthrow and extinguish free speech in the capital of the nation by the
use of the bludgeon, to extend slavery by illegal and bloodthirsty means
over the soil of Kansas, to strengthen the enactments of the fugitive
slave law by new and more offensive provisions, and to cause the
authority of the Slave Power to be openly and confessedly recognized
throughout the whole land, as it had been for years secretly and warily
predominant. The opposition to these measures of aggression ceased to be
wholly confined to the mere handful of technical abolitionists, and to
spread and to take possession of the minds of the whole people, exciting
surprise and alarm, and arousing them to some slight efforts at
resistance. With this rising tendency to resist arose in like measure
the tendency of the slaveholding power to invade. The alternative was
quietly but resolutely chosen in the minds of the leading politicians
of the South to 'rule or ruin.' Preparation was made for retaining the
absolute control of the General Government at Washington, and for
extending the influence of the peculiar institution over the whole North
and all adjacent countries, so long as that policy should prove
practicable; and, if by any contingency defeated in it, to break up the
Union as it existed, and reconstruct it upon terms which should place
the slaveholding aristocracy in that front rank of authority without
question, to which, as a settled conviction, ever present and dominant
in their minds, they alone, of all men, are preëminently entitled.

Accordingly they imposed their weight more and more heavily upon the
successive administrations from Van Buren down to Buchanan, and were
encouraged to find that, in proportion as they pressed harder in their
demands, proportionate concessions seldom failed to be made. The
reaction at the North was nevertheless steadily progressing. Wisely
perceiving that the first part of their _programme_ of action had nearly
served its day; that preparation must be made for entering on the second
and more desperate part of their conspiracy against free government;
they forced on the crisis at the Democratic Convention in Charleston, by
demanding terms which, with the fire in the rear now regularly organized
and steadily operative at the North, that party could not accede to,
without consenting to its own death. A disruption ensued of the
unnatural alliance between the Southern oligarchy and the Northern
Democracy, and the Southern leaders from that hour availed themselves of
their sole remaining lease of power under the administration of Mr.
Buchanan to strengthen their position by all means, honorable and
dishonorable, for the coming conflict, which by them had been long
planned or at least looked forward to, as the probable contingency.
Having virtually the entire control of the General Government, they used
their power for sending South the arms of the common country, for
disposing the army and navy in such ways as to leave them in the least
degree effective for opposing their designs; and with all the quietness
and deliberation of a dying millionaire making his will, they prepared
to begin the conflict which the lazy and confiding North had not even
begun to suspect as among the possibilities of the future; and to begin
it absolutely upon their own terms.

Enough has now been said, perhaps, in relation to the causes of the
present war. The present stage of its development is such as might have
been fairly anticipated from such a commencement. The South has had the
advantage of earnestness and concentration of purpose; of a warlike and
aggressive spirit; of prior preparation, and of a full knowledge from
the first of the desperate nature of the enterprise upon which they were
about to enter, with a readiness to meet all its contingencies, and,
since the great uprising, with no anticipation of easy work. The North
was hurried into a war for which it had no preparation, to which it had
never looked as a serious probability, and for which it had been
stripped in a great measure, through the pilfering policy of the South,
of the ordinary means at its command. A peaceable and highly civilized
people, among whom actual war upon its own soil had been unknown for
nearly fifty years, and among whom the spirit of war, always so rife at
the South, was opposed and neutralized by a thousand industrial and
peaceful propensities, was suddenly called into the field. Uninstructed
at first in the real nature of the conflict, regarding it as an
unreasonable disaffection, and therefore necessarily limited in extent,
not aroused even yet to a full consciousness of the momentous
consequences involved in the struggle and its gigantic proportions, they
have come to the work, in a great measure, unprepared. Their condition