uth? or on
the part of the South concerning the North?"

"Oh, by all odds," he replied, instantly, "we understand you best. We
send fifty thousand travellers, more or less, North every summer to
your watering-places. Hot down in Mobile,"--his style taking somewhat
unpleasantly the intonation as well as the negligence of the
bar-room,--"can't live in Mobile in the summer. Then your papers
circulate more among us than ours among you. Our daughters are educated
at Northern boarding-schools, our sons at Northern colleges: both my
colleague and myself were educated at Northern colleges. For these
reasons, by all odds, we have a better opportunity for understanding you
than you have for understanding us."

"In case of general secession and war," the writer ventured next to
inquire, "would there probably, in your opinion, be danger of a slave
insurrection?"

"None at all. Certainly far less than of 'Bread or Blood' riots at the
North."

The writer was surprised to find, notwithstanding Mr. Toombs's eulogy of
Southern opportunities, his understanding of the North so imperfect, and
still more surprised at the political and social principles involved in
the spirit of what followed.

"Your poor population can hold ward-meetings, and can vote. But _we_
know better how to take care of ours. They are in the fields, and
under the eye of their overseers. There can be little danger of an
insurrection under our system."

The subject and the manner of the man, in spite of his better qualities,
were becoming painful, and the writer ventured only one more remark.

"An ugly time, certainly, if war comes between North and South."

"Ugly time? _Oh, no!_"

The writer will never forget the tone of utter carelessness and
_nonchalance_ with which the last round-toned exclamation was uttered.

"Oh, no! War is nothing. Never more than a tenth part of the adult
population of a country in the field. We have four million voters. Say
a tenth of them, or four hundred thousand men, are in the field on both
sides. A tenth of them would be killed or die of camp diseases. But
_they_ would die, _any way_. War is nothing."

The tone perfectly proved this belief, not badinage.

"Some property would be destroyed, towns injured, fences overturned, and
the Devil raised generally; but then all that would have a good effect.
Only yaller-covered-literature men and editors make a noise about war.
Wars are to history what storms are to the atmosphere,--p