WHAT SHALL THE END BE?
Two men sat upon one of the benches in the shade of a spreading elm
in the shadow of the National Capitol, as the sun declined toward
his setting. They had been walking and talking as only earnest,
thoughtful men are wont to talk. They had forgotten each other and
themselves in the endeavor to forecast the future of the country
after a consideration of its past.
One was tall, broad, and of full habit, with a clear blue eye,
high, noble forehead, and brown beard and hair just beginning
to be flecked with gray, and of a light complexion inclining to
floridness. He was a magnificent type of the Northern man. He had
been the shaper of his own destiny, and had risen to high position,
with the aid only of that self-reliant manhood which constitutes
the life and glory of the great free North. He was the child of
the North-west, but his ancestral roots struck deep into the rugged
hills of New England. The West had made him broader and fuller and
freer than the stock from which he sprang, without impairing his
earnestness of purpose or intensity of conviction.
The other, more slender, dark, with something of sallowness in his
sedate features, with hair and beard of dark brown clinging close
to the finely-chiseled head and face, with an empty sleeve pinned
across his breast, showed more of litheness and subtlety, and
scarcely less of strength, than the one on whom he gazed, and was
an equally perfect type of the Southern-born American.
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