es, was as inevitable as it was irrepressible.
It was fought out to its bitter and logical conclusion at Appomattox.
It found us a huddle of petty sovereignties, held together by a rope of
sand. It made and it left us a Nation.

Chapter the Thirty-Second

A War Episode--I Meet my Fater--I Marry and Make a Home--The Ups and
Downs of Life Lead to a Happy Old Age

I

In bringing these desultory--perhaps too fragmentary--recollections to a
close the writer may not be denied his final word. This shall neither be
self-confident nor overstated; the rather a confession of faith
somewhat in rejection of political and religious pragmatism. In both his
experience has been ample if not exhaustive. During the period of their
serial publication he has received many letters--suggestive, informatory
and critical--now and again querulous--which he has not failed to
consider, and, where occasion seemed to require, to pursue to original
sources in quest of accuracy. In no instance has he found any essential
error in his narrative. Sometimes he has been charged with omissions--as
if he were writing a history of his own times--whereas he has been
only, and he fears, most imperfectly, relating his immediate personal
experience.

I was born in the Presbyterian Church, baptized in the Roman Catholic
Church, educated in the Church of England in America and married into
the Church of the Disciples. The Roman Catholic baptism happened in
this way: It was my second summer; my parents were sojourning in the
household of a devout Catholic family; my nurse was a fond, affectionate
Irish Catholic; the little life was almost despaired of, so one sunny
day, to rescue me from that form of theologic controversy known as
infant damnation, the baby carriage was trundled round the corner to
Saint Matthew's Church--it was in the national capital--and the baby
brow was touched with holy water out of a font blessed of the Virgin
Mary. Surely I have never felt or been the worse for it.

Whilst I was yet too young to understand I witnessed an old-fashioned
baptism of the countryside. A person who had borne a very bad character
in the neighborhood was being immersed. Some one, more humorous than
reverent, standing near me, said as the man came to the surface, "There
go his sins, men and brethren, there go his sins"; and having but poor
eyesight I thought I saw them passing down the stream never to trouble
him, or anybody, more. I can see