and the work of generations. When any man, North or
South, in a public place takes occasion to talk in a mellow and mawkish
way of the great love he now has for his old enemy, watch him. He is
getting ready to ask a favor. There is a beautiful, poetic idea in the
reunion of two contending and shattered elements of a great nation.
There is something beautifully pathetic in the picture of the North and
the South clasped in each other's arms and shedding a torrent of hot
tears down each other's backs as it is done in a play, but do you
believe that the aged mothers on either side have learned to love the
foe with much violence yet? Do you believe that the crippled veteran,
North or South, now passionately loves the adversary who robbed him of
his glorious youth, made him a feeble ruin, and mowed down his comrades
with swift death? Do you believe that either warrior is so fickle that
he has entirely deserted the cause for which he fought? Even the victor
cannot ask that.

"Let the gentle finger of time undo, so far as may be, the devastation
wrought by the war, and let succeeding generations seek through natural
methods to reunite the business and the traffic that were interrupted by
the war. Let the South guarantee to the Northern investor security to
himself and his investment, and he will not ask for the love which we
read of in speeches but do not expect and do not find in the South.

"Two warring parents on the verge of divorce have been saved the
disgrace of separation and agreed to maintain their household for the
sake of their children. Their love has been questioned by the world, and
their relations strained. Is it not bad taste for them to pose in public
and make a cheap Romeo and Juliet tableau of themselves?

"Let time and merciful silence obliterate the scars of war, and
succeeding generations, fostered by the smiles of national prosperity,
soften the bitterness of the past and mellow the memory of a mighty
struggle in which each contending host called upon Almighty God to
sustain the cause which it honestly believed to be just."

Let us be contented during this generation with the assurance that
geographically the Union has been preserved, and that each contending
warrior has once more taken up the peaceful struggle for bettering and
beautifying the home so bravely fought for.

CHAPTER XXX.

RECONSTRUCTION WITHOUT PAIN--ADMINISTRATIONS OF JOHNSON AND GRANT.

It was feared that the return of a m