faced death in the mountain passes of Afghanistan, with a stern welcome that would have called forth the applause of Leonidas.

Rank at home gave rank at school, in the South as much as in England. Not moneyed rank, but that which came of distinction by the parents, in arms, in eloquence, in mastering the poll, in field sports, that give muscle, nerve and manly beauty. The debating societies were and are as much a part of a liberal education as the curriculum proper. The fights are more often over the "sweethearts" than is common in higher latitudes. A favorite school game is "shinney" (polo on foot), when well played, worthy in its rashness of Donnybrook fair. Courage is, among all school-boys, the one thing to lack which constitutes the unpardonable sin. Among us its displays were called forth, not commonly, but on occasions only when honor seemed involved, and its possession was conceded rather than sought for and tested in every new-comer.

The excellence in bruising faces—prize fighting in miniature -of which West Point and Annapolis give us accounts now, would, I am sorry to believe, have been thought worthy of being met by Mr. James Bowie's knife or Mr. Samuel Colt's revolving pistol; for while these implements of death were really not a part of every Southern boy's outfit, as has been darkly hinted in certain enlightened quarters, such could and would in such case have been borrowed from the few cowards (generally city boys) who kept them.

This schooling, which it is understood I am in no sense undertaking to describe, produced the race of men who, for sixty years-all the while in a steadily increasing minority-swayed the home and foreign policy of America absolutely and without reproof.

They trebled our territory, whipped the troops of Wellington, (terrible to all other people,) marched into Mexico over the route of Cortez, with all of his complacent decision, and with none of his savage religionism.

Maine and Michigan were made to vote their ticket; while it

was at home-in Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana,-that they found their staunchest political opponents.

Any trading necessary to secure the votes of New York and Pennsylvania they turned over to the Van Burens and Buchanans, with all the contempt with which Pitt tossed the offal of patronage to Newcastle. Men like Jere Black, Wm. B. Reed and the Seymours, they valued even too highly. Those of them who became judges showed that reverence for the constitution which the Rabbi gives to the Talmud, or the Hindoo bestows upon the sacred books of Brahma.

It was second in their love to the Bible alone. Under the already declining influence of such a system Archie passed that period of life which lies between youth and manhood, visiting his Alabama home in vacation time, and finally graduating with brilliant distinction in the presence of his dear mother and his Renfrew friends.

Miss Cornelia, now a full-grown lady, carried off a brilliant society regalia which he wore on that occasion, and with it, I fear, the foolish fellow's heart, if one of his age can be said to have any heart, in the best use of that sacred but badly-bandied word. For does not the heart show "the metal of its keeping" only when suffering and neglect and the world's ill-usage have grown commonplace? and what, pray, of these things did Archie know at this time ? Young, light, heedless, he took shipping for life as if going on a picnic excursion. The ocean in front seemed a land-locked lake, and imagination (miserable moonlight that it is "in the teens ") showed islands of rest where, in truth, billows were gathering strength from deep and unappreciated currents.

Archie, like many of his fellows, early imbibed a love for political discussion, and school-boy bets had been freely taken on Grant and Seymour the fall before his graduation. Every such boy has his idol, either living or dead, before which to offer the incense of an exact, exclusive and unreasoning worship.

Archie's father had been a prominent Whig of the States' Rights school (not called an anomaly in the South), and owing

to his reverence, perhaps, for his deceased sire, he adopted Mr. Webster for his hero.

The letters and public speeches of that statesman had been the inexhaustible store from which he had drawn the materials for all his college debates, and the Giant's perorations had constituted the selections for his college declamation.

In this manner it came about that, unconsciously to himself, he had drifted into the habit of spelling nation with a big N, and his young mind, allured by the charm of reflecting on the great example set the old world and South America by the Federal experiment of government, dismissed Mr. Calhoun's speculations, which he faithfully and from a noble prejudice tried to appreciate, as hide-bound and out of date, if at any time worthy of being propagated. Now on this subject professors and students were alike against him, and nothing save his ancestry and the place of his birth saved him from being opprobriously dubbed a young Radical. Even in the half-ashamed communication of his views made to Colonel Renfrew upon his graduation, in a general conversation on politics carried on by that gentleman and a number of the college trustees, it was more than hinted by all present, and with grave but kindly looks, that he needed to be looked after." His girl friend, whose eyes were as black as ever, and decidedly more intelligent and penetrating of purpose, heard of this conversation, and declared quickly but with force, in a circle where she knew it would be told, that she never would speak to him again if he dared to avow any such opinions.

Now the fact was that neither Cornelia nor her father nor the professors nor his school-mates knew what the difference of political opinion between them and Moran was, if, indeed, he knew himself. He could really go no farther than this, that he believed Mr. Webster to have been a greater man than Mr. Calhoun, his opinion about the Constitution a more correct one, his tariff views more patriotic, and, as he said in his graduating speech, devoted to the praises of his idol, his denunciation of nullification and disunion were worthy of being worn as a front

let on the brow of every Southern man who had his face to the front instead of to the rear-all of which was not bad for an eighteen-year old.

Now the real value of Mr. Calhoun's fears regarding centralization, and with it tyranny (for where was power ever massed afar from the source of responsibility and not illy used?), his thorough acquaintance with Puritan unscrupulousness (those Jesuits of a colder zone), the evils of rapidly fusing diverse races, the cancerous tendencies of large cities of mushroom growth, the exorbitant and irritant life of those artificial persons called corporations,—about the composition of which, and their capacity for mischief, the average citizen knows as little as the simple Mexicans did of the bearded monsters, half-man and half-horse, controlling the thunder and lightning, who composed the army of Cortez-all this was a sealed book to Archie at the time of which I am now writing.

He loved freedom with a fierce French heat, and never having travelled, was content to believe all the world (his own country and England excepted) more or less given over to personal oppression and public robbery. So that, compared with his imagination of what the larger part of the globe was at that moment suffering, the condition of the South he did not think relatively a hard one. But the experienced heads of the South, at that time menaced by the suddenly acquired political power of their former slaves, and reading history through very different spectacles from Archie's, were in no humor to brook diverse opinions from one on whom they had a right to count for unquestioning loyal support to whatever line of political warfare the party chiefs might lay down.

The military spirit of superior and inferior subordination, it must be known, was still existent and interwoven in the warp and woof of Southern life and thought. From time immemorial all our civil divisions of territory had been framed on the military divisions. There were captain's "beats" instead of townships, and in the early days, regimental muster grounds where now are county sites. A major-general's division was a

better known classification of counties than a congressional district. The war of secession, while it resulted in putting the old leaders of the South under a temporary proscription, raised up in their stead a class of younger politicians, who fully shared the opinions of their elders and lacked their caution of expression. To such as these the feeble, hesitating, half-hearted allegiance of such a youth as Archie was neither more nor less than concealed treachery, and as such, was at once, and with vindictive, insolent language, denounced. The prejudices of the young were taken for granted, and commended as their most proper guides in the Reconstruction Conflict; for of what use was it to bring reason to bear in the discussion as to whether it were better the Saxon or the Ethiopian should dominate the politics of the Southern States.

Reason could aid nothing in deciding it. A steady, steel front of implacable, never-resting hostility could and did decide it in a way which reason approves.

66

Archie Moran was born with a rough stock of pride not given to stooping postures, but on this, to reverse the olive tree metaphor of the Epistles, might have been graffed many kind and social virtues. The treatment now given him, because of temperately expressed views on all political questions, angered the young man, and soured his temper to a degree which surprised no one so much as himself. There was indeed no direct cutting" of his acquaintance, either at college, at Brookwood (where he spent a day with his mother on their return to Alabama), nor at home (where the news of his being "shaky" on the political question was given with exaggeration by one of his college-mates, resident of the same county, by the name of Holt); but he could not but perceive that the hearty confidence he had always felt in people was gone, and that a feeling was upon him that he was being "shadowed by some unseen and prejudiced police.

Governor Moran, who died before Archie was ten years of age, left directions with his wife to devote the boy to his own profession, the law. The senior year at W- College had been