orture for losing her. And I could see that he
might have suffered these pangs again; that over and over again,
perhaps, he might have poured out his passion in the endless search for
beauty and faith, and in the search for realization and glimpses of
eternal things through them, and that he would have never found them,
through woman; and so thinking I could look back upon his death at
twelve years of age with complacency, and almost with gladness.

But also if he had lived through as many years as I have lived, he would
have passed through the chaos, the dust, the hate, the untruth that
followed the Civil War. He would have seen an army organization
exercising a control in the affairs of the republic beyond its right,
and ideas that were dead and were never rightfully alive, keeping the
people of his country from pulling themselves out of poverties and
injustices, and from planting themselves upon the new soil of each
succeeding year and its needs. He would have seen wealth amass through
legalized privilege into the hands of treasure hunters; and he would
have seen these treasure hunters make and interpret the laws their own
way, and in behalf of the treasure they had and were seeking. He would
have seen his country go forth to free an island people, and then turn
and subjugate another island people as a part of the same war, and then
depart from the old ways into paths of world adventure and plunder. And
he would have seen his country spend ten times what it spent in the
Civil War and lose in battles or disease half as many young men as it
lost in the Civil War in the crusade of making the world safe for
democracy; and he would have seen democracy throttled and almost
destroyed at home, and democracy abroad helped no whit by this terrible
war. He would have seen that all these things happen for treasure--for
gold which cares nothing for laws, nothing for liberties, nothing for
beauty, nothing for human life, but always seeks its own everywhere and
always, which is its own increase and its own conservation. He would
have seen men jailed for nothing and sacred rights swept away by the
sneers of judges, and written safeguards of the people's liberties by
those very judges sworn to support, overthrown by them, at the bidding
of treasure hunters who stand back of hired orators, hired newspapers,
hired clergymen, hired lawyers, and hired officials. He would have seen
congresses uttering and acting upon lies, and his country