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Oh, what a word to use, and to a minister too—“cussed”! I felt as if I should sink right down into the suller—I wuz about over the potato ben—and I didn’t much care if I did sink, I felt so worked up.

But Cousin John Richard didn’t seem to mind it at all. He had got up into a higher region than my soul wuz a sailin’ round in—he had got up so high that little buzzin’, stingin’ insects that worried me didn’t touch him; he had got up into a calm, pure atmosphire where they couldn’t fly round.

He went on calm as a full moon on a clear night, and sez he:

“It is difficult to put the blame for this state of affairs on any one class, the evil is so far spread. The evil root was planted centuries ago, and we are partaking of its poison fruit to-day.

“In looking on such a gigantic wrong we must look on it on other sides than the one whose jagged edges have struck and bruised us—we must look on it on every side in order to be just.

“After years and years of haughty supremacy, ambition and pride growing rankly, as they must in such a soil, fostered, it would seem, by Northern indolence and indifference, the South was conquered by armed force—brought down to the humiliation of defeat by a successful, if generous foe.