It should be the solemn and persistent duty of the race to contend for every right the Magna Charta of the Republic has granted them, but it might assuage the pang of deprivation and stimulate opportunity did he fully know the stages of savagery, slavery, and oceans of blood through which the Anglo-Saxon passed to attain the exalted position he now occupies. Much of the jurisprudence we now have responding to and crystallizing the best needs of humanity were garnered in this sanguine and checkered career. It is said that the law is a jealous mistress, demanding intense and entire devotion and unceasing wooing to succeed in winning her favor, or profiting by her decrees. Yet, for student or layman, the study is instructive and ennobling. It is an epitome of ages of human conduct, the products, the yearnings, and strivings of the human heart, as higher conceptions of man's relation to his fellow found echo or inscription in either the common or written law. Locality, nationality, race, sex, religion, or social manner may differ, but the accord of desire for civil liberty--the "torch lit up in the soul by the omnipotent hand of Deity itself"--is ever the same. Constitutional law "was not attained by sudden flight," but it is the product of reform, with success and restraint alternating through generations. It is the ripeness of a thousand years of ever-recurring tillage, blushing its scarlet rays of blood and conquest ante-dating historic "Runny Meade." It is well to occasionally have such reminiscent thought; it makes us less pessimistic and gives life to strive and spirit and hope. We cannot unmake human nature, but can certainly improve conditions by self-denial, earnest thought, and wise action. CHAPTER XII. Previous to my resolve to settle in the South I had read and learned much of politics and politicians; the first as being environed by abnormal conditions unstable and disquieting--the class that had established and controlled the economy of the Southern States; had been deposed in the wage of sanguinary battle on many well contested fields--deposed by an opponent equally brave, and of unlimited resources; defeated, but unsubdued in the strength of conviction in the rightfulness of their cause. A submission of the hand but not of the heart. New constitutions granting all born beneath the flag equality of citizenship and laws in unison adopted, and new officers alien to local feeling were the executors. It is unnecessary here to remark that if a succession of love feasts had been anticipated, they had been indefinitely postponed.