r. We will try to
avert it. We will invent compromises, at which the South will laugh; at
last, we will fight, Mark. But we are a quiet commercial people and will
not fight if we can avoid it. They believe nothing will make us fight.
The average, every-day Northerner thinks the threat of secession is
mere bluff."

"Do you recall, Squire, what Thucydides said of the Greeks at the time of
the Peloponnesian War?"

"I--how the deuce should I?--what did he say?"

"He said the Greeks did not understand each other any longer, although
they spoke the same language. The same words in Boston and in Charleston
have different meanings."

"But," said Penhallow, "we never did understand one another."

"No, never. War--even war--is better than to keep up a partnership in
slavery--a sleeping partnership. Oh, I would let them go--or accept the
gage of battle."

"Pretty well that, for a clergyman, Mark. As for me, having seen war, I
want never to see it again. This may please you." As he spoke, he
extracted a slip of paper from his pocket-book, where to Leila's
amusement queer bits of all kinds of matters were collected. Now it was
verse. "Read that. You might have written it. I kept it for you. There is
Ann on the porch. Don't read it now."

Late that evening Rivers sat down to think over the sermon of the next
Sunday. The Squire had once said to him, "War brings out all that is best
and all that is worst in a nation." He read the verses, and then read
them aloud.

"They say that war is hell, the great accursed,
The sin impossible to be forgiven;
Yet I can look beyond it at its worst
And still find blue in Heaven.

"And as I note how nobly natures form
Under the war's red reign, I deem it true
That He who made the earthquake and the storm
Perchance makes battles too.

"The life He loves is not the life of span
Abbreviated by each passing breath;
It is the true humanity of man
Victorious over death."

"No great thing in the way of poetry--but--a thought--a thought. Oh, I
should like to preach of men's duty to their country just now. I envy
Grace his freedom. If I preached as he does, people would say it was none
of a preacher's business to apply Christ's creed of conduct to a question
like slavery. Mrs. Penhallow would walk out of the church. But before
long men will blame the preacher who does not say, 'Thou shalt love thy
country as thyself'--ah, and better, yes, and preach it too."

During the early sum