CHAPTER XXVI.





TWO years rolled away-two short, bright years of individual and
national prosperity, and then came a change. To use the words of the
immortal Dickens, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of
times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it
was the season of light, it was the season of darkness; it was the
spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything
before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going direct to
heaven, we were all going direct the other way." These utterances of
inspiration so fittingly describing the period that ushered in the
bloody French Revolution, may be applied with equal truth and force
to the years that inaugurated the war between the States in fair
America.

Did not prosperity bud and blossom in every vale and hamlet of this
fair domain? And yet were a people ever more unmindful of, or more
ungrateful for their blessings? Bickering and strife, dissension and
hatred, grew fiercer with the growth of the nation's grandeur.
Slavery, on one hand said, "I will," and Freedom, on the other, "You
shall not." So the war-cloud, "the size of a man's hand" only at
first, appeared upon the dim horizon of the future. Wisdom sought to