knew no burdens of life save those they voluntarily assumed. The women
who sewed night and day upon garments for field and hospital, were the
same who were wont to employ their white hands with fragile china and
heirloom plate, or dally with needlework in the morning room. These were
the mothers who, standing by the slaughtered first-born, gave his sword
to the next son, and bade him go at his country's call. There was the
spirit of heroism not surpassed by the heroes of the sterner sex. They
suffered privations and terrors without a murmur.

To visit one of these ante-bellum homes was a privilege indeed. And
something of the spirit of the canaille of the French revolution must
have animated the foreign hordes, who, not content with confiscating
these captured palaces, ruthlessly cut and destroyed the richness and
elegance they were beholding for the first time in their commonplace
lives. It was not the spirit of conquest, but of vandalism, that
animated them. Wanton destruction and not spoliation, common in war
tactics, was their watchword. A domain fairer than Elysium opened to
their astonished gaze, whenever they penetrated some sylvan grove where
stood the plantation manor house.

Alas! for the old plantation days! Alas! for the easygoing spirit that
marked the times! The long, pitiless, hot sun-days were not inspirers of
extraordinary energy. Yankee thrift was as pigmy play to these owners of
bursting coffers. The hurry and bustle of our Northern neighbors was an
unknown quantity in their economy. It is to the forcible wresting from
the South of their inherited institutions, of the machinery which made
their social order possible, that the land of Dixie owes the prosperity
and thrift of to-day. Evil was done and good came therefrom. Years of
wasted substance and enforced poverty were groped through, till at
last the day-star rose upon new industries. Hands and feet and awakened