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��INTK OD UC T!ON
��And now your letter just comes to hand, in which I am glad to see that you will soon mount above the drearier shadows of affliction, though not at once. The first mo- ment of a bereavement stuns us, the next wakes us to only general impressions. It is not till the imagination has ex- plored the past, and gathered up every circumstance of endearment, that we reach the keenest sense of our sorrows. If there has been one moment in the past of a quality more tender and invested with a pathos more touching than the rest, the mind reverts to it ever, over and over again, till, having been rendered familiar, it gradually ceases to torment us. My memory is in possession of such moments, and, if they add bitterness to the present, I should still be loth to strike them out of the past.
I know not whether you gain or lose most in not having seen Stanley for nearly three years. You miss something in further knowledge of him, and you gain some peace of mind by removal of your associations with him to a greater distance backward. It is of no use now to lament the war. I have lost whatever I had in it precious to me. Had I lost only Simmons, it could not be made up to me ; but the worst thing about it is that it was unnecessary. If it could not have been compromised, it were better to have resolved the country into its original elements, and have allowed the States to form new associations. After the Sumter fight, there was no further hope. As to the future of this country, those who know the effects of universal suffrage in the past will have opinions of their own. Fac- tion is necessary to us, and faction has for fifty years been engaged in ruining us. This whole war has displayed the dreadful effects of faction. The substitution of inefficient for efficient generals through the influence of faction has induced most of our catastrophes, and the generals them-
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