In my own neighborhood there lived a most excellent Christian family. It consisted of husband and wife and four or five children. The children, I should judge, were from twelve to eighteen years of age. But the father and mother were divided on the great national issue. He was decidedly for the Union, she just as decidedly for the Southern Confederacy. At the dinner hour almost every day, in the presence of their children, they hotly discussed the question on which they were divided. This procedure at last menaced the union of the household. But with good sense, the father, before his whole family, proposed to the mother that, for the sake of peace in their home, they declare a truce until the close of the war. The wife and mother acceded to this timely proposal. The national question was never thereafter mooted under that roof; but when the war ended I noticed that the wife as well as the husband was for the Union. Silence and events had prevailed. But this divided household was not an isolated case. There were scores of families in the city made discordant and unhappy over the burning issue of the hour. In those days of decision there was a distinguished judge of one of our courts who was a Southerner by birth and education. He was pro-slavery in sentiment, but a decisive, ardent Union man. One morning he met an old Southern friend at the Post-office, whither in those days we all went for our mail. As usual they cordially greeted each other. Then the judge said to him: “I understand from others that you are an enemy of the Old Flag?” He replied that he was. Then responded the judge, “You are my enemy. Never recognize me again by look or word.” That decision was positive and irreversible; the division was sharp and irreconcilable.