its traditions and dislikes, that
whatever may have been his institutions or his race quarrels, the moving
influence of his life hereafter will be the "Spirit of '76."

What is this naturalization, however, but a sort of parable of human
life? Are we not always trying to adjust ourselves to new relations, to
get naturalized into a new family? Does one ever do it entirely? And how
much of the lonesomeness of life comes from the failure to do it! It is a
tremendous experiment, we all admit, to separate a person from his race,
from his country, from his climate, and the habits of his part of the
country, by marriage; it is only an experiment differing in degree to
introduce him by marriage into a new circle of kinsfolk. Is he ever
anything but a sort of tolerated, criticised, or admired alien? Does the
time ever come when the distinction ceases between his family and hers?
They say love is stronger than death. It may also be stronger than
family--while it lasts; but was there ever a woman yet whose most
ineradicable feeling was not the sentiment of family and blood, a sort of
base-line in life upon which trouble and disaster always throw her back?
Does she ever lose the instinct of it? We used to say in jest that a
patriotic man was always willing to sacrifice his wife's relations in
war; but his wife took a different view of it; and when it becomes a
question of office, is it not the wife's relations who get them? To be
sure, Ruth said, thy people shall be my people, and where thou goest I
will go, and all that, and this beautiful sentiment has touched all time,
and man has got the historic notion that he is the head of things. But is
it true that a woman is ever really naturalized? Is it in her nature to
be? Love will carry her a great way, and to far countries, and to many
endurances, and her capacity of self-sacrifice is greater than man's; but
would she ever be entirely happy torn from her kindred, transplanted from
the associations and interlacings of her family life? Does anything
really take the place of that entire ease and confidence that one has in
kin, or the inborn longing for their sympathy and society? There are two
theories about life, as about naturalization: one is that love is enough,
that intention is enough; the other is that the whole circle of human
relations and attachments is to be considered in a marriage, and that in
the long-run the question of family is a preponderating one. Does the
gate of di