“Well,” said Mr. North, “after all we shall get along and get through, even if there should be a separation.”

“Mr. Worth,” said I, “when you were studying Cicero, could you understand—­for I could not—­how he and other patriots could feel so strongly about the fortunes of their country as to declare—­which they frequently do—­that they would rather die than survive their country’s honor?  It has come to me vividly of late.  I see it and feel it.  The sunshine will seem to have gone out of our life when we become two unfriendly nations.

“It is easy,” said I, “for it gratifies some of the lower passions, to ridicule a whole section of the country for their act of secession or a disposition towards it; to boast that the South cannot do without us; to prophesy that they will get sick of it, and wish to return; to express wonder that they should feel so much hurt; to remind them that, if they will do as we have always counselled them, there would be no trouble; and there is a temptation to say, as friends in a quarrel will hastily say, Let them go.  But when they are irrecoverably gone, justifiably or not, I tell you, Mr. North, there will be mourning in our streets.  I know, indeed, that there are some among us to whom it will be a carnival; but—­”

“They will have a long Lent after it,” said Mrs. North; “pray excuse me.”

“Ties of kindred,” said I, “patriotism, Christian friendships, will not go down to hopeless graves without leaving behind them sorrows ending only with life.

“It appears to me,” said I, “that our ship is where nothing but an immediate calm and then a change of the wind, can save us.  If we become two nations, it may be for judgment and destruction; and it may be for some great, ultimate good.  But it will be hard parting.  To think of having no South! and of their having no North!  We shall each become provincial.  We are wonderfully fitted to qualify and improve each the other.  How strange it would be to have these two sections love each other!  No one among us under twenty-five years of age, has probably ever thought of us but as in controversy.”

“Speaking of Southern life,” said Mrs. North, “I have not seen our friend Grant since he came back from the South.”

“I have seen him,” said I, “and have heard his story.  He made his home with an old friend, a clergyman.  It was known that he was a stranger, and at once he was made to feel at home by many of the citizens.  The morning after he arrived, Jack, a servant of a neighboring family, came into the breakfast-room, with a waiter filled with dishes, which he deposited on the side-board.  ’Master and Missis send their compliments, and want to know how the family is, and how Mr. Grant is this morning.’  Now they had never seen Mr. Grant; but they knew that he had arrived the night before.  ‘Well, Jack,’ says Mrs. ——­, ’I see you have got some good things for us.’  ’O, not much, Missis; but they thought you and