and before long there would come that right feeling which we naturally call a good understanding. The common blood, and still more the common language, are fatal instruments of misapprehension. Let them give up trying to understand us, still more thinking that they do, and acting in various absurd ways as the necessary consequence, for they will never arrive at that devoutly-to-be-wished consummation till they learn to look at us as we are and not as they suppose us to be. Dear old long-estranged mother-in-law, it is a great many years since we parted. Since 1660, when you married again, you have been a step-mother to us. Put on your spectacles, dear madam. Yes, we have grown, and changed likewise. You would not let us darken your doors, if you could possibly help it. [Footnote 41: Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, Mr. Adams's successor as minister to England, negotiated a settlement of the _Alabama_ dispute, which was unfavorably received in this country and finally rejected by the Senate, which led to his recall in 1869.] [Footnote 42: Charles Francis Adams, our minister to England from 1861 to 1867, made this remark to a British cabinet minister at the time of the threatened sailing of the Laird rams.] We know that perfectly well. But pray, when we look to be treated as men, don't shake that rattle in our faces, nor talk baby to us any longer. "Do, child, go to it grandam, child; Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig!" CHARLES A. DANA Born in 1819, died in 1897; joined the Brook Farm Community in 1842; an editor of the New York _Tribune_ in 1847-62; Assistant Secretary of War in 1863-64; became editor of the New York _Sun_ in 1868, remaining editor until his death; published "A Household Book of Poetry" in 1857; joint editor with George Ripley of the "American Encyclopedia." GREELEY AS A MAN OF GENIUS[43] Those who have examined the history of this remarkable man and who know how to estimate the friendlessness, the disabilities, and the disadvantages which surrounded his childhood and youth; the scanty opportunities, or rather the absence of all opportunity, of education; the destitution and loneliness amid which he struggled for the possession of knowledge; and the unflinching zeal and pertinacity with which he provided for himself the materials for intellectual growth, will heartily echo the popular judgment that he was indeed a man of genius, marked out from his cradle to inspire, animate, and instruct others. [Footnote 43: From an article printed in the New York _Sun_, December 5, 1872. Greeley had died November 29, of this year.]