"Yes, Marie was right. Life is meant for work, and not for ease; to labour in danger and in dread; to do a little good ere the night comes, when no man can work: instead of trying to realise for oneself a Paradise; not even Bunyan's shepherd-paradise, much less Fourier's Casino-paradise; and perhaps least of all, because most selfish and isolated of all, my own heart-paradise--the apotheosis of loafing, as Claude calls it. Ah, Tennyson's Palace of Art is a true word--too true, too true! "Art? What if the most necessary human art, next to the art of agriculture, be, after all, the art of war? It has been so in all ages. What if I have been befooled--what if all the Anglo-Saxon world has been befooled by forty years of peace? We have forgotten that the history of the world has been as yet written in blood; that the story of the human race is the story of its heroes and its martyrs--the slayers and the slain. Is it not becoming such once more in Europe now? And what divine exemption can we claim from the law? What right have we to suppose that it will be aught else, as long as there are wrongs unredressed on earth; as long as anger and ambition, cupidity and wounded pride, canker the hearts of men? What if the wise man's attitude, and the wise nation's attitude, is that of the Jews rebuilding their ruined walls,--the tool in one hand, and the sword in the other; for the wild Arabs are close outside, and the time is short, and the storm has only lulled awhile in mercy, that wise men may prepare for the next thunder-burst? It is an ugly fact: but I have thrust it away too long, and I must accept it now and henceforth. This, and not luxurious Broadway; this, and not the comfortable New England village, is the normal type of human life; and this is the model city!--Armed industry, which tills the corn and vine among the cannons' mouths; which never forgets their need, though it may mask and beautify their terror: but knows that as long as cruelty and wrong exist on earth, man's destiny is to dare and suffer, and, if it must be so, to die.... "Yes, I will face my work; my danger, if need be. I will find Marie. I will tell her that I accept her quest; not for her sake, but for its own. Only I will demand the right to work at it as I think best, patiently, moderately, wisely if I can; for a fanatic I cannot be, even for her sake. She may hate these slaveholders,--she may have her reasons,--but I cannot. I cannot deal with them as _feras naturae_. I cannot deny that they are no worse men than I; that I should have done what they are doing, have said what they are saying, had I been bred up, as they have been, with irresponsible power over the souls and bodies of human beings. God! I shudder at the fancy! The brute that I might have been--that I should have been!