cunning is all this system.  A traitor cannot betray more than nine of his fellows, and his own death is certain to follow.  If the commander of a squad goes over to the enemy, he can but deliver up nine men and ten guns, and perhaps reveal the supposed name of the one man who, in a disguise, has communicated with him from the parent society.  But when the signal is given a hundred million trained soldiers will stand side by side, armed with the most efficient weapons the cunning of man is able to produce, and directed by a central authority of extraordinary ability.  Above all this dreadful preparation the merry world goes on, singing and dancing, marrying and giving in marriage, as thoughtless of the impending catastrophe as were the people of Pompeii in those pleasant August days in 79, just before the city was buried in ashes;—­and yet the terrible volcano had stood there, in the immediate presence of themselves and their ancestors, for generations, and more than once the rocking earth had given signal tokens of its awful Possibilities.

If I believed that this wonderful Brotherhood was capable of anything beyond destruction, I should not look with such terror as I do upon the prospect.  But after destruction there must come construction—­the erection of law and civilization upon the ruins of the present order of things.  Who can believe that these poor brutalized men will be capable, armed to the teeth with deadly weapons, and full of passions, hates and revenges, to recreate the slaughtered society?  In civilized life the many must work; and who among these liberated slaves will be ready to lay down their weapons and take up their tasks?  When the negroes of San Domingo broke out, in that world-famous and bloody insurrection, they found themselves, when they had triumphed, in a tropical land, where the plentiful bounties of nature hung abundant supplies of food upon every tree and shrub.  But in the temperate regions of America and Europe these vast populations can only live by great toil, and if none will toil all must starve; but before they starve they will slay each other, and that means universal conflict, savagery, barbarism, chaos.

I tremble, my brother, I tremble with horror when I think of what is crawling toward us, with noiseless steps; couchant, silent, treacherous, pardlike; scarce rustling the dry leaves as it moves, and yet with bloodshot, glaring eyes and tense-drawn limbs of steel, ready for the fatal spring.  When comes it?  To-night?  To-morrow?  A week hence?  Who can say?

And the thought forever presses on me, Can I do nothing to avert this catastrophe?  Is there no hope?  For mankind is in itself so noble, so beautiful, so full of all graces and capacities; with aspirations fitted to sing among the angels; with comprehension fitted to embrace the universe!  Consider the exquisite, lithe-limbed figures of the first man and woman, as they stood forth against the red light of their first sunset—­fresh from the hand of the Mighty One—­His graceful, perfected, magnificent thoughts!  What love shines out of their great eyes; what goodness, like dawn-awakened flowers, is blooming in their singing hearts!  And all to come to this.  To this!  A hell of injustice, ending in a holocaust of slaughter.