Under the pretense of "liberalizing" the Government the politicians are sacrificing its organic character to whimsical experimentation; its checks and balances wisely designed to promote and protect liberty are being loosened by schemes of reform more or less visionary; while nowhere do we find intelligence enlightened by experience, and conviction supported by self-control, interposing to save the representative system of the Constitution from the onward march of the proletariat. One cynic tells us that "A statesman is a politician who is dead," and another cynic varies the epigram to read "A politician out of a job." Patriotism cries "God give us men," but the parties say "Give us votes and offices," and Congress proceeds to create a commission. Thus responsibilities are shirked and places are multiplied. Assuming, since many do, that the life of nations is mortal even as is the life of man--in all things of growth and decline assimilating--has not our world reached the top of the acclivity, and pausing for a moment may it not be about to take the downward course into another abyss of collapse and oblivion? The miracles of electricity the last word of science, what is left for man to do? With wireless telegraphy, the airplane and the automobile annihilating time and space, what else? Turning from the material to the ethical it seems of the very nature of the human species to meddle and muddle. On every hand we see the organization of societies for making men and women over again according to certain fantastic images existing in the minds of the promoters. "_Mon Dieu_!" exclaimed the visiting Frenchman. "Fifty religions and only one soup!" Since then both the soups and the religions have multiplied until there is scarce a culinary or moral conception which has not some sect or club to represent it. The uplift is the keynote of these. Chapter the Third The Inauguration of Lincoln--I Quit Washington and Return to Tennessee--A Run-a-bout with Forest--Through the Federal Lines and a Dangerous Adventure--Good Luck at Memphis I It may have been Louis the Fifteenth, or it may have been Madame de Pompadour, who said, "After me the deluge;" but whichever it was, very much that thought was in Mr. Buchanan's mind in 1861 as the time for his exit from the White House approached. At the North there had been a political ground-swell; at the South, secession, half accomplished by the Gulf States, yawned in the Border States. Curiously enough, very few believed that war was imminent. As a reporter for the States I met Mr. Lincoln immediately on his arrival in Washington. He came in unexpectedly ahead of the hour announced, to escape, as was given out, a well-laid plan to assassinate him as he passed through Baltimore. I did not believe at the time, and I do not believe now, that there was any real ground for this apprehension.