Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body.  They are infra-human, a kind of vegetation.  I sometimes awake to a half-consciousness of them going on about me, as a man may become conscious of some of the processes of digestion in a morbid state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is called.  It is as if a thinker submitted himself to be rasped by the great gizzard of creation.  Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halves,—­sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other.  Not only individuals, but States, have thus a confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by what sort of eloquence.  Thus our life is not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas! to a great extent, a remembering of that which we should never have been conscious of, certainly not in our waking hours.  Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever glorious morning?  I do not make an exorbitant demand, surely.

* * * * *

BARBARA FRIETCHIE.

    Up from the meadows rich with corn,
    Clear in the cool September morn,

    The clustered spires of Frederick stand
    Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

    Round about them orchards sweep,
    Apple- and peach-tree fruited deep,

    Fair as a garden of the Lord
    To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

    On that pleasant morn of the early fall
    When Lee marched over the mountain-wall,—­

    Over the mountains winding down,
    Horse and foot, into Frederick town.

    Forty flags with their silver stars,
    Forty flags with their crimson bars,
    Flapped in the morning wind:  the sun
    Of noon looked down, and saw not one.

    Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
    Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;

    Bravest of all in Frederick town,
    She took up the flag the men hauled down;

    In her attic-window the staff she set,
    To show that one heart was loyal yet.

    Up the street came the rebel tread,
    Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

    Under his slouched hat left and right
    He glanced:  the old flag met his sight.

    “Halt!”—­the dust-brown ranks stood fast
    “Fire!”—­out blazed the rifle-blast.

    It shivered the window, pane and sash;
    It rent the banner with seam and gash.

    Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
    Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf;

    She leaned far out on the window-sill,
    And shook it forth with a royal will.