ion?--for this, that Time, the father of empires,
unbound the virgin zone of this youngest of his daughters, and gave her,
beautiful in the long veil of her forests, to the rude embrace of the
adventurous Colonist? All this is what we see around us, now, now while
we are actually fighting this great battle, and supporting this great
load of indebtedness. Wait till the diamonds go back to the Jews of
Amsterdam; till the plate-glass window bears the fatal announcement, For
Sale or to Let; till the voice of our Miriam is obeyed, as she sings,

"Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms!"

till the gold-dust is combed from the golden locks, and hoarded to buy
bread; till the fast-driving youth smokes his clay-pipe on the platform
of the horse-cars; till the music-grinders cease because none will pay
them; till there are no peaches in the windows at twenty-four dollars a
dozen, and no heaps of bananas and pine-apples selling at the
street-corners; till the ten-flounced dress has but three flounces, and
it is felony to drink champagne; wait till these changes show themselves,
the signs of deeper wants, the preludes of exhaustion and bankruptcy;
then let us talk of the Maelstrom;--but till then, let us not be cowards
with our purses, while brave men are emptying their hearts upon the earth
for us; let us not whine over our imaginary ruin, while the reversed
current of circling events is carrying us farther and farther, every
hour, out of the influence of the great failing which was born of our
wealth, and of the deadly sin which was our fatal inheritance!

Let us take a brief general glance at the wide field of discussion we are
just leaving.

On Friday, the twelfth day of the month of April, in the year of our Lord
eighteen hundred and sixty-one, at half-past four of the clock in the
morning, a cannon was aimed and fired by the authority of South Carolina
at the wall of a fortress belonging to the United States. Its ball
carried with it the hatreds, the rages of thirty years, shaped and cooled
in the mould of malignant deliberation. Its wad was the charter of our
national existence. Its muzzle was pointed at the stone which bore the
symbol of our national sovereignty. As the echoes of its thunder died
away, the telegraph clicked one word through every office of the land.
That word was WAR!

War is a child that devours its nurses one after another, until it is
claimed by its true parents. This war has eaten its way ba