halcyon days
"before the war."

The Northern dame, she of New York or Boston or of those dwelling in the
rural districts, knew little of such luxuries as these. Between the
Southern lady and the Northern there was one radical point of difference
in those days which was more effective to separate their ideas and
ideals than might be thought: the former was a dweller in the country,
the latter in cities. Type is here spoken of. The typical Southern lady
was found on the plantation, the typical Northern lady in the heart of
the city. This condition was imposed upon the wealthiest and most
cultured of each section by the variant conditions under which they
lived; it was in her own home that the Southern woman found the most
power for her wealth, in the city that the Northern woman alone found
avenues for her money to buy for her the best things of culture,
material or mental. And this severance made for certain results. The
Southern woman held to isolation of rule as the best that she knew; the
Northern woman believed that in segregation and community of interests
alone came hope of the best. These theories were unrecognized; but they
were inherent and dominant.

Moreover, there still existed in the North, especially in the further
removed sections, a strong leaven of the old Puritan spirit; and this
could neither understand nor tolerate the spirit of luxury that reigned
in the South. Each section misunderstood and unjustly contemned the
other. To the Northern woman, she of the South was a pampered aristocrat
of the most ignoble kind, caring for nothing but the gratification of
her luxurious tastes, battening on the sufferings of a humanity which
she bought and sold as cattle, an Augusta in her luxuries and love of
self; to the Southern woman, she of the North was cold, hard,
uncultured, unrefined, plebeian in tastes and existence, and generally
on a lower plane than the daughter of the Cavaliers. The Southern woman
despised her sister of the North; the Northern woman hated her sister of
the South. Where there was meeting and blending on the contiguous limits
of the sections there was more of understanding and therefore of
toleration for the points of severance of ideas; but even here there was
cause of strife in the heated politics which had for some time been
appealing to the passions of our statesmen. With the quick enthusiasm in
such matters that is an attribute of their sex and which blinds women
even more than men t