K. K. K. Sketches, Humorous and Didactic

When the clouds of passion and prejudice that brooded over the American States in the beginning of the latter half of the present century had dropped into the ocean of carnage, which during four years of severe revolutionary penance deluged all their borders, the return to those opposite tempers that beget in men a desire to renew the pledges of ancient covenants, and practise the ultima thule of the Messianic idea, as delivered to us by the teachers of the Cross (forgiveness), was pronounced in degree; but while it exceeded the bare tendency looked for by men, as an outgrowth of the changed order of things, this moral rehabilitation of the body politic was effected by slow and painful stages.