the mothers who, standing by the slaughtered first-born, gave his sword
to the next son, and bade him go at his country's call. There was the
spirit of heroism not surpassed by the heroes of the sterner sex. They
suffered privations and terrors without a murmur.

To visit one of these ante-bellum homes was a privilege indeed. And
something of the spirit of the canaille of the French revolution must
have animated the foreign hordes, who, not content with confiscating
these captured palaces, ruthlessly cut and destroyed the richness and
elegance they were beholding for the first time in their commonplace
lives. It was not the spirit of conquest, but of vandalism, that
animated them. Wanton destruction and not spoliation, common in war
tactics, was their watchword. A domain fairer than Elysium opened to
their astonished gaze, whenever they penetrated some sylvan grove where
stood the plantation manor house.

Alas! for the old plantation days! Alas! for the easygoing spirit that
marked the times! The long, pitiless, hot sun-days were not inspirers of
extraordinary energy. Yankee thrift was as pigmy play to these owners of
bursting coffers. The hurry and bustle of our Northern neighbors was an
unknown quantity in their economy. It is to the forcible wresting from
the South of their inherited institutions, of the machinery which made
their social order possible, that the land of Dixie owes the prosperity
and thrift of to-day. Evil was done and good came therefrom. Years of
wasted substance and enforced poverty were groped through, till at
last the day-star rose upon new industries. Hands and feet and awakened
faculties spring to the keynote of progress, and "Our days are marching
on."

* * * * *

(Here were inserted in the manuscript twenty pages from the diary of the
Historian, written when, as a school girl, she visited with her parents
some of the sugar plantations of Louisiana. They give the picture by an
eye-witness of the social and commercial life in the South; but while,
perhaps, interesting in the reading of a paper, are not necessary, in
print, to the theme.)

Future generations may hug to themselves the consolation that we were
pulled down only to be built up again in greater prosperity, under a
different order of things. The tears and woes of the old South may
change into smiles and good cheer, forgetting the glory that once
encircled us like a radiant halo. But many there are