In 1871 the damage done by the Alabama, a British-built ship, and several other cruisers sent out partly to facilitate the cotton trade and partly to do a little fighting when a Federal vessel came that way, was assessed at fifteen million five hundred thousand dollars against Great Britain by the arbitrators who met at Geneva, Switzerland, and the northwestern boundary line between the United States and British America was settled by arbitration, the Emperor of Germany acting as arbitrator and deciding in favor of America. This showed that people who have just wound up a big war have often learned some valuable sense; not two billion dollars' worth, perhaps, but some. San Domingo was reported for sale, and a committee looked at it, priced it, etc., but Congress decided not to buy it. The Liberal Republican party, or that element of the original party which was opposed to the administration, nominated Horace Greeley, of New York, while the old party renominated General Grant for the term to succeed himself. The latter was elected, and Mr. Greeley did not long survive his defeat. The Modoc Indians broke loose in the early part of Grant's second term, and, leaping from their lava-beds early in the morning, Shacknasty Jim and other unlaundried children of the forest raised merry future punishment, and the government, always kind, always loving and sweet toward the red brother, sent a peace commission with popcorn balls and a gentle-voiced parson to tell Shacknasty James and Old Stand-up-and-Sit-down that the white father at Washington loved them and wanted them all to come and spend the summer at his house, and also that by sin death came into the world, and that we were all primordial germs at first, and that we should look up, not down, look out, not in, look forward, not backward, and lend a hand. [Illustration: PEACE COMMISSION POW-WOWING WITH THE MODOCS.] It was at this moment that Early-to-Bed-and Early-to-Rise-Black Hawk and Shacknasty James, thinking that this thing had gone far enough, killed General Canby and wounded both Mr. Meacham and Rev. Dr. Thomas, who had never had an unkind thought toward the Modocs in their lives. The troops then allowed their ill temper to get the best of them, and asked the Modocs if they meant anything personal by their action, and, learning that they did, the soldiers did what with the proper authority they would have done at first, bombarded the children of the forest and mussed up their lava-beds so that they were glad to surrender. In 1873 a panic occurred after the failure of Jay Cooke & Co., of Philadelphia, and a money stringency followed, the Democrats attributing it a good deal to the party in power, just as cheap Republicans twenty years later charged the Democratic administration with this same thing. Inconsistency of this kind keeps good men, like the writer, out of politics, and turns their attention toward the contemplation of a better land.