Part 30

How often human nature seeking its bent prefers the crooked to the straight way ahead! The North, having in its ships brought the negroes from Africa and sold them to the planters of the South, putting the money it got for them in its pocket, turned philanthropist. The South, having bought its slaves from the slave traders of the North under the belief that slave labor was requisite to the profitable production of sugar, rice and cotton, stood by property-rights lawfully acquired, recognized and guaranteed by the Constitution. Thence arose an irrepressible conflict of economic forces and moral ideas whose doubtful adjustment was scarcely worth what it cost the two sections in treasure and blood.

On the Northern side the issue was made to read freedom, on the Southern side, self-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 that it is safe. There are no guns about. We have with us, and have had for five and twenty years, a family of colored people who know our ways and meet them intelligently and faithfully. When we go away—as we do each winter and sometimes during the other seasons—and come again—dinner is on the table, and everybody—even to Tigue and Bijou, the dogs—is glad to see us. Could mortal ask for more? And so let me close with the wish of my father’s old song come true—the words sufficiently descriptive of the reality:

_In the downhill of life when I find I’m declining, May my fate no less fortunate be Than a snug elbow chair can afford for reclining And a cot that o’erlooks the wide sea— A cow for my dairy, a dog for my game. And a purse when my friend needs to borrow; I’ll envy no nabob his riches, nor fame, Nor the honors that wait him to-morrow._

_And when at the close I throw off this frail cov’ring Which I’ve worn for three-score years and ten— On the brink of the grave I’ll not seek to keep hov’ring Nor my thread wish to spin o’er again. But my face in the glass I’ll serenely survey, And with smiles count each wrinkle and furrow— That this worn-out old stuff which is thread-bare to-day Shall become everlasting to-morrow._