lf-defense. Neither side had any sure law to coerce the other.
Upon the simple right and wrong of it each was able to establish a case
convincing to itself. Thus the War of Sections, fought to a finish so
gallantly by the soldiers of both sides, was in its origination largely
a game of party politics.

The extremists and doctrinaires who started the agitation that brought
it about were relatively few in number. The South was at least defending
its own. That what it considered its rights in the Union and the
Territories being assailed it should fight for aggressively lay in the
nature of the situation and the character of the people. Aggression
begot aggression, the unoffending negro, the provoking cause, a passive
agent. Slavery is gone. The negro we still have with us. To what end?

Life indeed is a mystery--a hopelessly unsolved problem. Could there be
a stronger argument in favor of a world to come than may be found in the
brevity and incertitude of the world that is? Where this side of heaven
shall we look for the court of last resort? Who this side of the grave
shall be sure of anything?

At this moment the world having reached what seems the apex of human
achievement is topsy-turvy and all agog. Yet have we the record of any
moment when it was not so? That to keep what we call the middle of the
road is safest most of us believe. But which among us keeps or has ever
kept the middle of the road? What else and what next? It is with nations
as with men. Are we on the way to another terrestrial collapse, and so
on ad infinitum to the end of time?

VI

The home which I pictured in my dreams and projected in my hopes came to
me at last. It arrived with my marriage. Then children to bless it. But
it was not made complete and final--a veritable Kentucky home--until the
all-round, all-night work which had kept my nose to the grindstone
had been shifted to younger shoulders I was able to buy a few acres of
arable land far out in the county--the County of Jefferson!--and some
ancient brick walls, which the feminine genius to which I owe so much
could convert to itself and tear apart and make over again. Here "the
sun shines bright" as in the song, and--

_The corn tops ripe and the meadows in the bloom
The birds make music all the day._

They waken with the dawn--a feathered orchestra--incessant,
fearless--for each of its pieces--from the sweet trombone of the dove
to the shrill clarionet of the jay--knows t