IN the North one hears the war mentioned, in social conversation,once a month; sometimes as often as once a week; but as a distinctsubject for talk, it has long ago been relieved of duty. There aresufficient reasons for this. Given a dinner company of six gentlemento-day, it can easily happen that four of them--and possibly five--were not in the field at all. So the chances are four to two,or five to one, that the war will at no time during the eveningbecome the topic of conversation; and the chances are still greaterthat if it become the topic it will remain so but a little while.

If you add six ladies to the company, you have added six peoplewho saw so little of the dread realities of the war that they ranout of talk concerning them years ago, and now would soon weary ofthe war topic if you brought it up.

The case is very different in the South. There, every man youmeet was in the war; and every lady you meet saw the war.

The war is the great chief topic of conversation. The interest in itis vivid and constant; the interest in other topics is fleeting.

Mention of the war will wake up a dull company and settheir tongues going, when nearly any other topic would fail.

In the South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they date from it.

All day long you hear things 'placed' as having happened since the waw;or du'in' the waw; or befo' the waw; or right aftah the waw;or 'bout two yeahs or five yeahs or ten yeahs befo' the wawor aftah the waw. It shows how intimately every individualwas visited, in his own person, by that tremendous episode.

It gives the inexperienced stranger a better idea of what a vastand comprehensive calamity invasion is than he can ever get by readingbooks at the fireside.

At a club one evening, a gentleman turned to me and said,in an aside--'You notice, of course, that we are nearly always talking about the war.

It isn't because we haven't anything else to talk about, but because nothingelse has so strong an interest for us. And there is another reason:

In the war, each of us, in his own person, seems to have sampledall the different varieties of human experience; as a consequence,you can't mention an outside matter of any sort but it will certainlyremind some listener of something that happened during the war--and out he comes with it. Of course that brings the talk back to the war.

You may try all you want to, to keep other subjects before the house,and we may all join in and help, but there can be but one result:

the most random topic would load every man up with war reminiscences,and shut him up, too; and talk would be likely to stop presently,because you can't talk pale inconsequentialities when you'vegot a crimson fact or fancy in your head that you are burningto fetch out.'

The poet was sitting some little distance away; and presentlyhe began to speak--about the moon.

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