We accept the result with a smile that is childlike and grand. The country is safe--again. In fact we begin to suspect that the nightmare was, after all, the fond, familiar flea-bite of antiquity. At any rate, the country is safe again--safe as a fire risk on crude asbestos stored in a vacant lot. And then the resonance of Wyoming's new, bewitching and lady-like female electoral vote splits fame's brazen trumpet into hair-pins carrying the assurance that henceforth presidents are liable to be nominated by intuition and elected by instinct. Then, also, the men who helped to save it once if not oftener--before, and are still willing diffidently to confess the fact, rejoice with others at the latest victory. We have recently been told in a magazine article, written by the meditative son of a confederate sire, that the rebellion was put down chiefly by its own pestiferous, irredeemable paper currency. This startling political warning may well be subjected to searching cross-examination. The Old Soldier of the Union neither affirms nor denies. He is content with his limited measure of pardonable pride in some of the features of that old, old story of daring and devotion and sacrifice in the days when the country was saved once before--in the days of the deeds that shaped up a country worth saving again, worthy of being saved again and again, as many times as need be, by the generations yet to come. The Old Soldier is satisfied to have borne an honorable, though inconspicuous, part on the winning side and the right side of a contest fraught with such tremendous consequences. In the vast sum total of effort, achievement and sacrifice, no man other than the favored and gifted two or three ultimate leaders did more than an infinitesimal share. The shares of glory are proportionally minute--even our U. S. colonial dame cuts but a sorry figure in contrast with the daughter of seventeen revolutions from Venezuela. Thus the up-to-date woman is coldly antedated! The Old Soldier claims no undue meed of praise. From corps commander to the man who bore a musket, individuals earned but a fragmentary fraction of the full plentitude of honor. Comrades of the flag were they, and all are equal now. He invites suspicion and ridicule who struts to the front, while his hatband plays a sweet symphonic tribute to his valor. No genuine Old Soldier attempts to Weylerize his record. An occasional harmless effervescence of exaggeration is charitably overlooked, but all are comrades and equals. They only rank in priority of encomium who went up in chariots of fire, through sulphurous battle-clouds, to advanced lines in the battalions of the blessed. Together they marched and camped and fought and conquered. Dying, they sealed their sacrifice with martyrdom. Surviving, they proved their willingness to die, and lived to clasp with joy the sweetness of restored affection, pride and hope.