“A human life should be well rooted in some spot of a native land where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of the earth, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and spread, not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blest.” The germ of the best patriotism is in the love that a man has for the home he inhabits, for the soil he tills, for the trees that gives him shade, and the hills that stand in his pathway. I teach my son to love Georgia—to love the soil that he stands on—the body of my old mother—the mountains that are her springing breasts, the broad acres that hold her substance, the dimpling valleys in which her beauty rests, the forests that sing her songs of lullaby and of praise, and the brooks that run with her rippling laughter. The love of home—deep rooted and abiding—that blurs the eyes of the dying soldier with the vision of an old homestead amid green fields and clustering trees—that follows the busy man through the clamoring world, persistent though put aside, and at last draws his tired feet from the highway and leads him through shady lanes and well-remembered paths until, amid the scenes of his boyhood, he gathers up the broken threads of his life and owns the soil his conqueror—this—this lodged in the heart of the citizen is the saving principle of our government. We note the barracks of our standing army with its rolling drum and its fluttering flag as points of strength and protection. But the citizen standing in the doorway of his home—contented on his threshold—his family gathered about his hearthstone—while the evening of a well-spent day closes in scenes and sounds that are dearest—he shall save the Republic when the drum tap is futile and the barracks are exhausted.