Seeing her, the Southern woman naturally believed that she was a type of the womanhood of the North,--which she was not. Hearing her reports, written from a standpoint utterly fatal to their truth or even fairness, of the existent culture in the conquered country, the Northern woman believed that her accounts gave a true picture of the conditions of civilization and thought prevailing in the South,--which they did not. So increased the poison of misunderstanding in the veins of both sections. The Southern woman was rebellious; the Northern woman was intolerant. Were the women alone to be consulted, there was small hope of ever fusing into one the severed elements which theoretically composed the nation. And yet, because of conditions arising from the deplorable state of things which then existed, the women were to become, though only gradually and not of set purpose, the dominating constituents in such fusion. The mills of the gods were grinding and the grist was to prove of sustenance to the country in unlooked-for ways. Before following to its end the movement which began in want and need, however, it may be well to cast a glance at the conditions which gave to that movement its rise and direction. Not only had the South become deeply impoverished as a result of the long struggle and of the loss of its slaves, but it was suffering from many of the evils which the cooler heads among statesmen, North and South, had foreseen as the result of the sudden emancipation of the negroes. Moreover, there had been imported into the Southland a most undesirable element in the persons and families of those who were contemptuously termed "carpet-baggers," and these were, unhappily, in the ascendant in matters political and wished to become so in matters social. It was a time of the rule of the demos in its worst form--the _demos_ which has broken loose from restraint and has turned upon its former masters as its natural prey. As a consequence of all these things, society as once known did not exist in the South. The social element was of course present and recognized; but it was unable to find expression in its wonted manner. The man who once had lived upon the labors of his dependents was now forced to earn his own bread, generally in scanty quantity, by his own work, manual or mental; and his wife, who had once glittered resplendent in the social circle and had found her every desire as well as need supplied almost as quickly as formed, was now compelled to assume even more than the normal duties of the typical housewife and to bend all her energies toward eking out the small subsistence which her husband was able to provide. Naturally, under such uncongenial circumstances, there was little thought of social gathering or function, except in a very few of the larger towns, which refused to abandon their ways because of poverty. Such a town was New Orleans, with its brilliant circles of Creoles. In general, however, there was no