Sumner was jubilant. ``This,'' he said, ``will make the American people understand what they have to do; this will stop talk such as your uncle gave us yesterday afternoon.'' But to me it was a fearful moment. Sumner's remarks grated horribly upon my ears; true as his view was, I could not yet accept it. And now preparations for war, and, indeed, for repelling invasion, began in earnest. My friends all about me were volunteering, and I also volunteered, but was rejected with scorn; the examining physician saying to me, ``You will be a burden upon the government in the first hospital you reach; you have not the constitution to be of use in carrying a musket; your work must be of a different sort.'' My work, then, through the summer was with those who sought to raise troops and to provide equipments for them. There was great need of this, and, in my opinion, the American people have never appeared to better advantage than at that time, when they began to realize their duty, and to set themselves at doing it. In every city, village, and hamlet, men and women took hold of the work, feeling that the war was their own personal business. No other country since the world began has ever seen a more noble outburst of patriotism or more efficient aid by individuals to their government. The National and State authorities of course did everything in their power; but men and women did not wait for them. With the exception of those whose bitter partizanship led them to oppose the war in all its phases, men, women, and children engaged heartily and efficiently in efforts to aid the Union in its struggle. Various things showed the depths of this feeling. I remember meeting one day, at that period, a man who had risen by hard work from simple beginnings to the head of an immense business, and had made himself a multi- millionaire. He was a hard, determined, shrewd man of affairs, the last man in the world to show anything like sentimentalism, and as he said something advising an investment in the newly created National debt, I answered, ``You are not, then, one of those who believe that our new debt will be repudiated?'' He answered: ``Repudia- tion or no repudiation, I am putting everything I can rake and scrape together into National bonds, to help this government maintain itself; for, by G--d, if I am not to have any country, I don't want any money.'' It is to be hoped that this oath, bursting forth from a patriotic heart, was, like Uncle Toby's, blotted out by the recording angel. I have quoted it more than once to show how the average American--though apparently a crude materialist-- is, at heart, a thorough idealist.