And now, in preparing the work, he feels that he has fulfilled a vow to the dead as well as a duty to the living. The appeal is made not to the dear, dead Cæsar, whose great heart was just awakening to the task before him, but to that other and greater Cæsar whom none so devoutly revered the AMERICAN PEOPLE.

It is not claimed that this work represents the views of President Garfield upon the subject treated. The above-related conversation was written out from notes which were made immediately after it took place. One or two letters which the author has in reply to more or less complete expositions of the subject are of the same tenor. The author does not believe that the President had decided upon any particular course of action in regard to the matter, but does believe that he considered it the most important question that was to receive attention. during his administration. On one occasion he expressly stated that he regarded it as a providential thing that "the national prosperity is such as to permit appropriations for this purpose that would otherwise be deemed onerous.''

What would he not have said had he lived to see

an annual surplus of more than a hundred millions in the Treasury!

A Retrospect.

HE simplest things not unfrequently come to

THE

seem the most intricate and really are the most inexplicable. Nearly all the great convulsions history records seem to have turned upon the slightest misunderstandings. The construction of a single sentence has more than once been accounted a good enough cause for years of warfare. The meaning of a single word set the Christian world by the ears for centuries and made martyrs by wholesale. The path of reconcilement between two opposing forces may be as broad as

the king's highway to an unprejudiced mind, and yet neither party will consent to walk therein. It is not because men are incapable of seeing both sides of a question that such apparently insignificant differences become of so great consequence, but because they will not believe that those who think differently from themselves are as honest as they know themselves to be in their opinions: thus it is that difference once begun ends only at the antipodes.

The story I desire to tell is so simple in its elements that it seems almost absurd to treat it as one demanding serious exposition. There were two peoples who dwelt together as one nation. Nominally, they had been united for three quarters of a century only. In reality common interests and common dangers had bound them more or less closely to each other for three hundred years. When they were merely isolated colonies they spoke of themselves under a common name. They had very many other things in common. They boasted a common origin, though this was justly subject to modification. They spoke the same language, worshiped the same God in a like multiplicity of forms, and, in general, professed to revere the same ideals. Nominally the same gov

ernment extended over both, though in truth it was only a common form that lent itself to hide the antipodal ideas that underlay the one and the other.

These two peoples never noted or admitted the inherent differences that existed between them. When they spoke of themselves collectively they said, "We, the People," as if they were but one. Yet each one accounted its own distinctive differences as its chiefest excellences. Instinctively, they knew that a great gulf lay between them. Year after year they bridged it with mutual falsehoods. Year after year they swore to all the world that it did not exist. Yet year by year it grew wider and deeper, and generation after generation the impulse gained to regard themselves as dissimilar in all respects but one-that of a common nationality. To this fiction they both clung with a faith that would have been ludicrous had it not been so sincere. They were like two families dwelling in one house, each pursuing its distinct avocations and nourishing its own interests, yet holding under one lease and constituting one possession. To the world they were one country; to themselves, two peoples. To the world they were "The United States;" to each other they were "The North" and "The South."