Bricks Without Straw: A Novel

by Albion Winegar Tourgée

Two men sat upon one of the benches in the shade of a spreading elm in the shadow of the National Capitol, as the sun declined toward his setting. They had been walking and talking as only earnest, thoughtful men are wont to talk. They had forgotten each other and themselves in the endeavor to forecast the future of the country after a consideration of its past.

One was tall, broad, and of full habit, with a clear blue eye, high, noble forehead, and brown beard and hair just beginning to be flecked with gray, and of a light complexion inclining to floridness. He was a magnificent type of the Northern man. He had been the shaper of his own destiny, and had risen to high position, with the aid only of that self-reliant manhood which constitutes the life and glory of the great free North. He was the child of the North-west, but his ancestral roots struck deep into the rugged hills of New England. The West had made him broader and fuller and freer than the stock from which he sprang, without impairing his earnestness of purpose or intensity of conviction.

The other, more slender, dark, with something of sallowness in his sedate features, with hair and beard of dark brown clinging close to the finely-chiseled head and face, with an empty sleeve pinned across his breast, showed more of litheness and subtlety, and scarcely less of strength, than the one on whom he gazed, and was an equally perfect type of the Southern-born American. The one was the Honorable Washington Goodspeed, M.C., and the other was Hesden Le Moyne.

"Well, Mr. Le Moyne," said the former, after a long and thoughtful pause, "is there any remedy for these things? Can the South and the North ever be made one people in thought, spirit, and purpose? It is evident that they have not been in the past; can they become so in the future? Wisdom and patriotism have thus far developed no cure for this evil; they seem, indeed, to have proved inadequate to the elucidation of the problem. Have you any solution to offer?"

"I think," replied Le Moyne, speaking slowly and thoughtfully, "that there is a solution lying just at our hand, the very simplicity of which, perhaps, has hitherto prevented us from fully appreciating its effectiveness."

"Ah!" said Goodspeed, with some eagerness, "and what may that be?"

"Education!" was the reply.

"Oh, yes," said the other, with a smile. "You have adopted, then, the Fourth of July remedy for all national ills?"

"If you mean by 'Fourth of July remedy,'" replied Hesdeu with some tartness, "that it is an idea born of patriotic feeling alone, I can most sincerely answer, Yes. You will please to recollect that every bias of my mind and life has been toward the Southern view of all things. I doubt if any man of the North can appreciate the full force and effect of that bias upon the minds and hearts of those exposed to its operation. When the war ended I had no reason or motive for considering the question of rebuilding the national prosperity and power upon a firmer and broader basis than before. That was left entirely to you gentlemen of the North. It was not until you, the representatives of the national power, had acted—ay, it was not until your action had resulted in apparent failure—that I began to consider this question at all. I did so without any selfish bias or hope, beyond that which every man ought to have in behalf of the Nation which he is a part, and in which he expects his children to remain. So that I think I may safely say that my idea of the remedy does spring from a patriotism as deep and earnest as ever finds expression upon the national holiday."

"Oh, I did not mean that," was the half-apologetic rejoinder; "I did not mean to question your sincerity at all; but the truth is, there has been so much impracticable theorizing upon this subject that one who looks for results can scarcely restrain an expression of impatience when that answer is dogmatically given to such an inquiry."