THE UNION.

BY T. CARR LYLE, OF FARMVILLE, VA.

A'

LL men of all colors, even the verdantest of

men, not to speak of Able Editors and consistent Democrats leashed to the Enquirer, mindful or unmindful of certain Four Memorable Years not long past, cry now for the Union. "Get we into That, all will be well, most well-no pain, no complaining, no debts, and generally Big Businesses on every side, Greenbacks in gross and exceeding joy to great and small-that being Heaven very mainly. Keep we out of That, all is Hell in two volumes, printed in Black letter, bound in Bluest Federal Calf, and smelling loudly these saddest of Devil's Days; in sooth, the very blackness of darkness, a moneyless and damnable blank Void, without one Paying Newspaper or other Big Business of any kind to ease the Soul of man from continuous inward gnashing rage against the Gods, and wide, all-involving Megrims."

Alas! my friends, I perceive that you do not at all apprehend, but do greatly and altogether misapprehend Heaven, wherein, I take it, but one big business is done, and that not of a sort to delectate Able or Unable Editors very much,—said Big, and in truth Biggest kind of Business being, as I note, the Receiving and

Forwarding of Sinners into Hell; and that not by Railway either, to the glory of celestial Mahones and the profit of heavenly Stockholders drawing Divine Dividends; nor by commonest, creaking Tumbril Cart, needing tar, whereby some Cuffee and lazy Nigger God of these nether times might be benefited; but by process most swift, summary and inexpensiveby the inward self-subsidence of the Damned Soul to its proper diabolical Pit-level.

A Fact, my friends-a bald, blaze-faced, undeniable, frightful Fact, this subsidence-to one and several of us full of shuddering significance during these days of mad, scrambling, hurry-scurry and wild Tam O'Shanter racing after mere Wealth, all the Devils along, Honor thrown to the winds, and Zeus Pater Himself entirely distanced, lumbering in knockkneed impotency far in the dusty rear.

Halte la! Stop, I say; or, if it be permitted in these Barbaric Southern out-lying wastes to use the precious American vernacular, "Hold on!" I cry; though what there may be to hold by is by no means sufficiently clear. Yet stay, and allow the Almighty to catch up, or it will be the worse for you, each and every one of you, black and white, doing or undoing Business of any kind, North or South.

Nay,

"Union?" Alas! my friends, there is no Union now, nor henceforth possible in any wise. there has been no true Union these five and thirty years syne. Meseems, if memory serve me rightly, there was aforetime a Union, more or less untrue, (the simulacrum and vain shadow of vital heart-co

hesion), whereby the Peoples of these discordant,. non-agreeing Sections were bound, if not by the Divine-wrought ligaments of Love one towards. another, yet by the poor, Devil-allowed bond of common Justice between man Southern and man Northern; yea! by a certain not yet lapsed and wholly lost Sense of Right-the florid plethoric Yankee Meur (by dint of Democratic courtesy and love of office) yielding some pleasant Pretence of Power to the hot, cachetic Southern Tuum, growing daily more attenuate and moribund by Commercial Cuttle-fish Suction; there was, I say, such Union, or rather ill-disguised Disunion, in times not long past;. and that, my much self-deceived friends, was not Heaven, but a long ways thence.

For in those days-call them Halcyon, if you will -men died even as now, and there were painssharp, lancinating pangs indeed-of Flesh and Spirit; things grievous to be borne, from Conscience-smiting down to the Law's delay, the insolence of office (chiefest that of puffy Cashiers and Paying Tellers), and even the far from inconsiderable tortures of Indigestion. and headaches incurable. Wealth, with elevated nose, strutting your main Thoroughfares, or, with wide-spraddling feet and fat thum in ample Vest, frowning magnificently from his palatial Portico.. Respectables in lofty stick-backed Gigs, darting through the land, their swift spokes scarce visible,. and their eminent Selves barely discernible, through their choking Dust clouds. You, with hand on mouth, plodding the Via Dolorosa of life, cursing:

your hard lot, and in no case discerning the "blessings of the Union." Cane-growing, Cotton-planting, Rice-raising, Tobacco-selling, wholesale owners of Slaves, lording it at Watering Places and Sea-sides. Opulent Lawyers and Doctors, Rich Merchants, Distinguished Politicians, yea, Eminent Divines, moving in august procession past and far beyond You-in truth, quite unconscious of You, albeit you too were then an Enfranchised Man and Citizen of the "Best (Siccine) Government the World Ever Saw!" Misbehaving Negroes, False Friends, Protested Notes, Dishonest partners, Lazy Clerks, Worthless Sons, Disobedient Daughters, Falling Markets, Underselling Competitors, Badly fitting Clothes, Short cash Accounts, Unsalable Goods, Toothache, Doctors' and Butchers' Bills, Wet Weather, Sour Bread, Shooting Corms, Pew Rent, Bilious Colic, Dull Preaching, Nightmares, Lying Debtors and Crying Creditors,— did not one and all of these, with ten thousand other such aches and Mind-wearing Ailments, exist and bite and gnaw like phagedenic ulcers of the Soul in the very midst and centre of the much-vaunted "glorious Union?" Yea, truly.

Yet, for coward easement of present trouble, ye are fain to get back to that Union, and even call it Heaven. Be it so, then; but I tell you, Fools, not even that meagre Sham-Heaven, or any other, is in store for the like of you. Heaven for ye! What is it? Mere Belly-timber, back rations, tailors' clothes, Featherbedism, fire-made, water-brought, and boots duly emblackened by the humble, faithful Morning

Negro-bodily comfort, in sooth, and no Work done. Whereas I read Man's true and only Heaven in this Life (what it may be in that so-dreadful other Life matters not) is manful Doing and Enduring of Whatsoever hatefulest or unhateful Thing-To-Be-Done the powers Celestial or Infernal may impose. Aye! enduring, with brave, smiling, hopeful front to the Sun-visible sign of the Father of Light and Warmth, of Intelligence and Love-without one Waste moment in Kitten-pulling and frozen-puppy whining over the Dead Past, with its Egyptian Flesh-pots, Balances in Bank, and World-Respectability all ashine with StickGig Varnish thrice-coated.

As for that political "Union of the Fathers" (Infidel-Democrat Thomas Jefferson being one), which the newspaper gongs and tom-toms of Yankee diddledaddle-doodle-dum uphold with such shattering clangour of beaten brass as Tophet itself ne'er heard-as to that Union and the possibility (remotest, if any) of restoring the same, consider, I pray you, that not one of God's Holy Laws but is daily, not broken merely, but openly set at naught and Spit upon. How, then, fares Man's Compact with his Fellow-man, though deftly written on strongest parchment; and what fate betides your gossamer-fine Checks and Balances, your Tripartite Executive, Legislative and Judiciary—your trusted Governmental Tripod—say, rather, three-legged Fool's-stool, with two legs broken already? Consider, too, what every Pathologist will teach but no Statesman will learn, that the broken os femur or os tibia, or even the incised wound, (were