When a step-mother is installed in the house, you may think her vastly superior, if you will, with her velvets and her laces and her diamonds, to her that bore you; and you may, perhaps, win fame as an original thinker by saying so to the world; but there is a certain instinct of manhood that would seal the lips of most men. And I, for my part, know many, very many Northern men; and not one of them seems to wish to have me grovel in the dust and cry peccavi. Would it not have been a disgrace to them to have spent, with all their resources and odds, four years in subduing a race of snivellers? No; let us say to the end: you were right in fighting for your country, we equally right in battling for ours. The North will, the North does respect us all the more for it.
As I read these words, Charley rose, and, opening a book-case, took out a volume. Finding, apparently, the passage he sought, he closed the book upon his forefinger.
“When a man takes upon himself,” he began, “to rise up before Israel to confess and make atonement for the sins of the people, be should be quite sure that he has the right to exercise the functions of high-priest.
“If either his father or his mother, for example, sprang from the region roundabout Tyre and Sidon, that should bid him pause. It is not enough that one wields the pen of a ready writer. One must be an Hebrew of the Hebrews. Else the confession goes for naught.
“What Jack has just read,” added he, “brought to my mind a passage which I have not thought of for ages. You must know, Alice, that after the death of Cyrus at the battle of Cunaxa, the Ten Thousand made a truce with Tissaphernes, lieutenant of Artaxerxes, who agreed to conduct them back to Greece. After journeying together for some time, he invited the Greek generals to a conference at his headquarters. Clearchus and almost all of the leading officers accepted the invitation, and at a given signal were seized and murdered.
“The Ten Thousand were in as bad plight as ever an army was. Without leaders, confronted by a countless host, they had either to surrender or cut their way through a thousand miles of hostile territory.
“Xenophon, though not an officer, called an assembly, and soon aroused a stern enthusiasm. Speech after speech was made, and no one uttered other than brave words, except a certain Apollonides; and he cried out that the others spoke nonsense,—that the safe and profitable thing to do was to grovel before the Great King. Xenophon replied in a sarcastic vein, ending as follows:
“‘It seems to me, oh men, that we should not admit this man into any fellowship with us, but that we should cashier him of his captaincy and put baggage upon his back, and use him as a beast of burden. For he is a disgrace to his native land and to all Greece, since, being a Greek, he is such as he is.’
“‘And thereupon, Agasias, the Stymphalian, taking up the discourse, said, ‘But this man is not a Greek; for I see that, like a Lydian, he has both his ears bored.’
“And such was the fact. Him, therefore, they cast out.”