The recuperative energy displayed by the Southern people has been even more wonderful and admirable than that exhibited by France after the German conquest. France was not denuded, as the South was denuded of all that represents wealth save a fertile soil and the resolution to rise from the ashes of the past. And the South has risen. I passed through North Carolina and Virginia just before the close of the war. Recently I visited the same States, and South Carolina and Georgia for the first time since the war. What a transformation! But for the genial climate the busy factories would have recalled New England, while a keen business air had taken the place of that old-time lassitude which in ante-bellum days seemed inseparable from the institution of slavery. The Southern people have all the acuteness of the Yankee, with a genuine bonhomie which brightens the most ordinary incidents of life. New conditions have called into play valuable qualities which were torpid until touched by the wand of necessity. The old families no longer regard honorable toil with aversion or disdain; on the contrary they are workers, and work is the passport to respectable recognition. The Southern whites are getting along very well with the colored people, and look on them as not only useful, but indispensable to the South. "If the negroes emigrate," said a prominent business man of Augusta, Ga., to the writer, "I want to emigrate too." And this is the prevailing sentiment. The negroes, also, are proving themselves worthy of freedom, although it is not to be expected that the effects of three centuries of slavery could be eradicated in three decades of liberty. In looking out for business rivalry New England would do well to gaze less intently across the Atlantic and more toward the Yadkin and the Savannah. * * * There is little reason to fear for our country. The Union has endured the severest trials, only to come forth stronger than ever from every ordeal. Grave questions are presenting themselves for solution, but who can doubt that the American people have the brain and the vigor to solve them? Anarchists make no impression here. Notwithstanding the appeals of alien agitators, Americans remain true to the traditions of the Republic. It is in this deeply implanted reverence for established institutions that the hope for the future of America rests. Before it the pestilential vapor of anarchy, borne across the Atlantic from the squirming and steaming masses of Europe, disappears like a plague before a purifying flame, and, whatever may be the outcome of the struggle, in its various forms, now going on between the upper and lower orders in the mother continent, in the United States the foundations of society are likely to remain firm and unsapped.