threaten now, when, his task done, she seems to be
opening the eastern gates of the earth with a gesture that seems to
say--"Enter, reclaim, and dwell therein!"

One little race of that race in the New World, and one only, has she
kept flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone--to that race only did she
give no outside aid. She shut it in with gray hill and shining river.
She shut it off from the mother state and the mother nation and left it
to fight its own fight with savage nature, savage beast, and savage
man. And thus she gave the little race strength of heart and body and
brain, and taught it to stand together as she taught each man of the
race to stand alone, protect his women, mind his own business, and
meddle not at all; to think his own thoughts and die for them if need
be, though he divided his own house against itself; taught the man to
cleave to one woman, with the penalty of death if he strayed elsewhere;
to keep her--and even himself--in dark ignorance of the sins against
Herself for which she has slain other nations, and in that happy
ignorance keeps them to-day, even while she is slaying elsewhere still.

And Nature holds the Kentuckians close even to-day--suckling at her
breasts and living after her simple laws. What further use she may have
for them is hid by the darkness of to-morrow, but before the Great War
came she could look upon her work and say with a smile that it was
good. The land was a great series of wooded parks such as one might
have found in Merry England, except that worm fence and stone wall took
the place of hedge along the highways. It was a land of peace and of a
plenty that was close to easy luxury--for all. Poor whites were few,
the beggar was unknown, and throughout the region there was no man,
woman, or child, perhaps, who did not have enough to eat and to wear
and a roof to cover his head, whether it was his own roof or not. If
slavery had to be--then the fetters were forged light and hung loosely.
And, broadcast, through the people, was the upright sturdiness of the
Scotch-Irishman, without his narrowness and bigotry; the grace and
chivalry of the Cavalier without his Quixotic sentiment and his
weakness; the jovial good-nature of the English squire and the
leavening spirit of a simple yeomanry that bore itself with unconscious
tenacity to traditions that seeped from the very earth. And the wings
of the eagle hovered over all.

For that land it was the flowering time of the age