1 88 INTRODUCTION
in a mould. But I hope, when I see you, I shall be as you have known me, for no part of a man's life ought to be long incoherent or overcast with clouds.
As to your going to the war as a private, to mix with the nastiest rough scuff of all mankind, I regard it as wild. You are under excitement, and cannot in this way pay yourself for the loss of Stanley. He is a reality not to be dispelled by enthusiasm. The shallow can do thus, but not you or I. The day will come when you will hold dearer what you have lost than the rotten political combina- tions of the hour ; and, when you would sacrifice to an abstraction all the generosity and genius of this age, I think you deceive yourself as to the nature and value of the exchange. I regard it as the loss of that selected seed from which alone a finer race of men is capable of spring- ing up. I do not believe that all the goats live south of Mason & Dixon's line, nor all the sheep north of it. As for the many towns and cities you saw at the West, and for whose advantage you would lay down your life, I imagine they will continue to be there and to grow, whatever may become of you or me or the war. To enlist as a chaplain would be still more out of place, and I know not of what use a religion of love can be to people whose express busi- ness it is but to kill one another. Well — the war will fizzle out by and by, but there will be no fizzling back of the energetic and countless race that has perished in it. Should you join them, bequeathing your family to the country, I take it the tax-payers will little thank you, but would gladly spare your life to relieve themselves of the burden. I am glad to find no room to say more.
Your friend,
J. W. Randall.
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