feeling was not the sentiment of family and blood, a sort of base-line in life upon which trouble and disaster always throw her back?  Does she ever lose the instinct of it?  We used to say in jest that a patriotic man was always willing to sacrifice his wife’s relations in war; but his wife took a different view of it; and when it becomes a question of office, is it not the wife’s relations who get them?  To be sure, Ruth said, thy people shall be my people, and where thou goest I will go, and all that, and this beautiful sentiment has touched all time, and man has got the historic notion that he is the head of things.  But is it true that a woman is ever really naturalized?  Is it in her nature to be?  Love will carry her a great way, and to far countries, and to many endurances, and her capacity of self-sacrifice is greater than man’s; but would she ever be entirely happy torn from her kindred, transplanted from the associations and interlacings of her family life?  Does anything really take the place of that entire ease and confidence that one has in kin, or the inborn longing for their sympathy and society?  There are two theories about life, as about naturalization:  one is that love is enough, that intention is enough; the other is that the whole circle of human relations and attachments is to be considered in a marriage, and that in the long-run the question of family is a preponderating one.  Does the gate of divorce open more frequently from following the one theory than the other?  If we were to adopt the notion that marriage is really a tremendous act of naturalization, of absolute surrender on one side or the other of the deepest sentiments and hereditary tendencies, would there be so many hasty marriages—­slip-knots tied by one justice to be undone by another?  The Drawer did not intend to start such a deep question as this.  Hosts of people are yearly naturalized in this country, not from any love of its institutions, but because they can more easily get a living here, and they really surrender none of their hereditary ideas, and it is only human nature that marriages should be made with like purpose and like reservations.  These reservations do not, however, make the best citizens or the most happy marriages.  Would it be any better if country lines were obliterated, and the great brotherhood of peoples were established, and there was no such thing as patriotism or family, and marriage were as free to make and unmake as some people think it should be?  Very likely, if we could radically change human nature.  But human nature is the most obstinate thing that the International Conventions have to deal with.

ART OF GOVERNING