The miracles of electricity the last word of science, what is left for
man to do? With wireless telegraphy, the airplane and the automobile
annihilating time and space, what else? Turning from the material to the
ethical it seems of the very nature of the human species to meddle and
muddle. On every hand we see the organization of societies for making men
and women over again according to certain fantastic images existing in
the minds of the promoters. "_Mon Dieu_!" exclaimed the visiting
Frenchman. "Fifty religions and only one soup!" Since then both the soups
and the religions have multiplied until there is scarce a culinary or moral
conception which has not some sect or club to represent it. The uplift is
the keynote of these.




Chapter the Third

The Inauguration of Lincoln--I Quit Washington and Return to
Tennessee--A Run-a-bout with Forest--Through the Federal Lines and a
Dangerous Adventure--Good Luck at Memphis



I


It may have been Louis the Fifteenth, or it may have been Madame de
Pompadour, who said, "After me the deluge;" but whichever it was, very much
that thought was in Mr. Buchanan's mind in 1861 as the time for his exit
from the White House approached. At the North there had been a political