nd, _their tongues hanging
out of their mouths_, like those of dogs after a chase." One rout is as
much like another as the scamper of one flock of sheep like that of all
others.

A pleasing consequence of this war we are engaged in has hardly
been enough thought of. It is a rough way of introducing distant
fellow-citizens of the same land to each other's acquaintance. Next to
the intimacy of love is that of enmity. Nay,

"Love itself could never pant
For all that beauty sighs to grant
With half the fervor hate bestows
Upon the last embrace of foes,
When, grappling in the fight, they fold
Those arms that ne'er shall lose their hold."

"We shall learn to respect each other," as one of our conservative
friends said long ago. It is a great mistake to try to prove our own
countrymen cowards and degenerate from the old stock. It is worth the
price of some hard fighting to show the contrary to the satisfaction of
both parties. The Scotch and English called each other all possible hard
names in the time of their international warfare; but the day has come
for them, as it will surely come for us, when the rivals and enemies
must stand side by side and shoulder to shoulder, each proud of the
other's bravery.

* * * * *

For three-quarters of a century we have been melting our several
destinies in one common crucible, to mould a new and mighty empire such
as the world has never seen. Our partners cannot expect to be allowed
to break the crucible or the mould, or to carry away the once separate
portions now flowing in a single incandescent flood. We cannot sell and
they cannot buy our past. Our nation has pledged itself to unity by the
whole course of its united action. There is one debt alone that all
the cotton-fields of the South could never pay: it is the price of
our voluntary humiliation for the sake of keeping peace with the
slaveholders. We may be robbed of our inalienable nationality, if
treason is strong enough, but we are trustees of the life of three
generations for the benefit of all that are yet to be. We cannot sell.
We dare not break the entail of freedom and disinherit the first-born of
half a continent.

When the Plebeians seceded to the Mons Sacer, some five hundred years
before the Christian era, the Consul Menenius Agrippa brought them back
by his well-known fable of the Belly and the Members. Perhaps it would
be too much to expect to call back our seceders