, for God and man, and get
nothing for it from either? A people never yet did a good stroke of work
in this world without getting a fair day's wages for the job. The old
two-fisted Romans, in their day, did a good deal of hard work in the way
of road and bridge building, and the like of that, across the sea, and
did it well, and they got paid for it by several centuries of mastery
over Europe. We rather think, high as the pay was, and little as the
late Romans seem to have deserved it, it was, on the whole, a profitable
bargain for Europe. The truth is, our race has, like all other great
creating races, been building wiser than it knew. It is not necessary
that such a race should be conscious of its mission. In its own
intention it may work for itself. By the guiding of the Great Master, it
does work for all humanity and all time. If a race comes on the earth
mere fighters, brigands, and thieves, living by force, fraud, and
oppression, even then it serves a purpose. It destroys something that
needs destroying. In its own turn, however, it must perish. But an
honest race, that undertakes to earn its honest living on the earth, and
in the main does earn it, honestly and industriously, by planting and
building, like our own, never works merely for itself. It plants and
builds to stand forever. The results of patient toil never perish. They
are so much clear gain to humanity.

To many, the _conscious_ end of the existence of the Yankee nation may
have been a small affair indeed. That end is only what they make it. Its
_unconscious_ end is, however, another matter. That end God has made. To
one man, the nation exists that he may make wooden clocks and sell them.
To another, the chief end of the nation's existence is that he may get a
good crop of wheat to market during rising quotations. To another, that
he may do a good stroke of business in the boot and shoe line. To
another, that he may make a good thing in stocks. To some in the past,
this nation existed solely that men might breed negroes in Virginia, and
work them in Alabama! This great nation was worth the blacks it owned,
and the cotton it raised! Actually that was all. The _conscious_ end to
thousands amounted to about this. Men looked at the nation from their
own small place. They dwarfed its purposes. They made them small and
mean and low. They did this three years ago more commonly, we think,
than they do now. The war has taught us many things. It has certainly
t