IRRIGATION, POLITICS, AND SECTIONALISM 97 



North and East. A bland and indulgent 

 smile is the sole reply vouchsafed to anyone 

 venturing to suggest the possibility of future 

 rude shaking, if no worse, of the uniting 

 bonds. In the days when my home was in 

 the South, I was firmly assured by Northerners 

 profoundly ignorant as they were then, and 

 are, in large measure, to this day, of the inner 

 workings of Southern life and feeling that 

 sectionalism was dead and buried in the 

 Southern States. I permitted myself a lifting 

 of the eyebrows, but kept silence. If, in 

 their desire for a consummation devoutly to 

 be desired, they were anticipating events, 

 why ruffle their calm by bringing forward 

 proofs and statements which in all probability 

 would not be credited ? on the same principle 

 that those who are acquainted with a foreign 

 country only on hearsay are prone to claim a 

 more profound knowledge of the subject than 

 he who has lived in that country for years. 

 The untravelled Englishman and the un- 

 travelled American make themselves almost 

 equally ridiculous in this respect, though the 

 palm for absurdity must in fairness be awarded 

 to the inhabitants of our own tight little isle. 



7 



