worthier of his strong young manhood than any brooding over misfortune
could be, or any leading of the old aristocratic, half-idle planter
life, if that had been possible.

In connection with this thought came another. He had recently read Owen
Meredith's "Lucille," and as he journeyed he recalled the case there
described of the French nobleman who for a time wasted his life and
neglected his splendid opportunities in brooding over the downfall of
the Bourbon dynasty, and in an obstinate refusal to reconcile himself to
the new order of things. Duncan remembered how, after a while, when the
new France became involved in the Crimean war, the Frenchman saw a
clearer light; how he learned to feel that, under one regime or another,
it was still France that he loved, and to France that his best service
was due.

"That," thought Guilford Duncan, "was a new birth of patriotism. Why
should not a similar new birth come to those of us who have fought in
the Confederate Army? After all, the restored Union will be the only
representative left of those principles for which we have so manfully
battled during the last four years--the principles of liberty and equal
rights and local self-government. We Confederates believe, and will
always believe, that our cause was just and right, that it represented
the fundamentals of that American system which our forefathers sealed
and cemented with their blood. But our effort has failed. The
Confederacy is eternally dead. The Union survives. What choice is left
to us who followed Lee, except to reconcile ourselves with our new
environment and help with all our might to preserve and perpetuate
within the Union and by means of it, all of liberty and self-government,
and human rights, that we have tried to maintain by the establishment of
the Confederacy? We must either join heart and soul in that work, or we
must idly sulk, living in the dead past and leaving it to our
adversaries to do, without our help, the great good that, if we do not
sulk, we can so mightily help in doing."

He paused in his thinking long enough to let his emotions have their
word of protest against a reconciliation which sentiment resented as a
surrender of principle.

Then, with a resolute determination that was final, he ended the debate
in his own mind between futilely reactionary sentiment and hopeful,
constructive, common sense.

"I for one, shall live in the future and not in the past. I shall make
the best and