of the hopeful, helpful calm to come, finding even in these
poor sweet-peas, thrusting their tendrils through the brown mould, a
deeper, more healthful lesson for the eye and soul than warring evils or
truths. Do not call me a traitor, if I dare weakly to hint that there
are yet other characters besides that of Patriot in which a man may
appear creditably in the great masquerade, and not blush when it is
over; or if I tell you a story of To-Day, in which there shall be none
of the red glare of war,--only those homelier, subtler lights which we
have overlooked. If it prove to you that the sun of old times still
shines, and the God of old times still lives, is not that enough?

My story is very crude and homely, as I said,--only a rough sketch of
one or two of those people whom you see every day, and call "dregs"
sometimes,--a dull, plain bit of prose, such as you might pick for
yourself out of any of these warehouses or back-streets. I expect you to
call it stale and plebeian, for I know the glimpses of life it
pleases you best to find here: New England idyls delicately tinted;
passion-veined hearts, cut bare for curious eyes; prophetic utterances,
concrete and clear; or some word of pathos or fun from the old friends
who have indenizened themselves in everybody's home. You want something,
in fact, to lift you out of this crowded, tobacco-stained commonplace,
to kindle and chafe and glow in you. I want you to dig into this
commonplace, this vulgar American life, and see what is in it. Sometimes
I think it has a new and awful significance that we do not see.

Your ears are openest to the war-trumpet now. Ha! that is
spirit-stirring!--that wakes up the old Revolutionary blood! Your
manlier nature had been smothered under drudgery, the poor daily
necessity for bread and butter. I want you to go down into this common,
every-day drudgery, and consider if there might not be in it also a
great warfare. Not a serfish war; not altogether ignoble, though even
its only end may appear to be your daily food. A great warfare, I think,
with a history as old as the world, and not without its pathos. It has
its slain. Men and women, lean-jawed, crippled in the slow, silent
battle, are in your alleys, sit beside you at your table; its martyrs
sleep under every green hill-side.

You must fight in it; money will buy you no discharge from that war.
There is room in it, believe me, whether your post be on a judge's
bench, or over a wash-tub