A baleful look would follow us as we withdrew, and we would retire with a better understanding of the flaming spirit which, through that long, bloody conflict against overwhelming odds in wealth, supplies, and men, sustained the South, and which at last enabled it to accept defeat as nobly as it had accepted earlier victories....

How one loves a gentle old lady who can hate like that! In this chapter, when it appeared originally, in "Collier's Weekly," I made the statement that I had seldom spent an hour in conversation with a Southerner without hearing some mention of the Civil War, and that I had heard other Northerners remark upon this matter, and express surprise at the tenacity with which the war holds its place in the foreground of the southern mind.
This, like many another of my southern observations, brought me letters from readers of "Collier's," residing in the South.

A great number of the letters thus elicited, as well as comments made upon these chapters by the southern press, have been of no small interest to me.

On at least one subject (the question discussed in the next chapter, as to whether the expression "you-all" is ever used in the singular) my correspondents have convinced me that my earlier statement was an error, while on other subjects they have modified my views, and on still others made my convictions more profound.

Where it has been possible, and where it has seemed, for one reason or another, to be worth while, I have endeavored, while revising the story of my southern wanderings for this book, to make note of the other fellow's point of view, especially in cases where he disagrees with me.
The following, then, is from a letter written on the stationery of Washington and Lee University, and applies to certain statements contained in this chapter: In 1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a newspaper publisher: "Were I the publisher of a paper, instead of the usual division into Foreign, Domestic, etc., I think I should distribute everything under the following heads: 1.True.2.Probable.3.