Strangely unimpressible indeed must be the mind which, looking backward through the mists of the centuries upon the primitive race from which we are believed to have sprung, can repress a feeling of sympathetic interest.  The names of John Smith and Martin Farquhar Tupper, blazoned upon the page of that dim past and surrounded by the lesser names of Shakspar, the first Neapolitan, Oliver Cornwell, that Mynheer Baloon who was known as the Flying Dutchman, Julia Caesar, commonly known as the Serpent of the Nile—­all these are richly suggestive.  They call to mind the odd custom of wearing “clothes”; the incredible error of Copernicus and other wide and wild guesses of ancient “science”; the lost arts of telegramy, steam locomotion, printing, and the tempering of iron.  They set us thinking of the zealous idolatry that led men on pious pilgrimages to the accessible regions about the north pole and into the then savage interior of Africa in search of the fountain of youth.  They conjure up visions of bloodthirsty “Emperors,” tyrannical “Kings,” vampire “Presidents,” and robber “Parliaments”—­grotesque and horrible shapes in terrible contrast with the serene and benign figures and features of our modern Smithocracy.

Let us to-day rejoice and give thanks to Bungoot that the old order of things has passed forever away.  Let us praise Him that our lot has been cast in more wholesome days than those in which Smith wrought and Tupper sang.  And yet let us not forget whatever there was of good, if any, in the pre-Smithian period, when men cherished quaint superstitions and rode on the backs of beasts—­when they settled questions of right and expediency by counting noses—­when cows were enslaved and women free—­when science had not dawned to chase away the shadows of imagination and the fear of immortality—­and when the cabalistic letters “A.D.,” which from habit we still affix to numerals designating the date, had perhaps a known signification.  It is indeed well to live in this golden age, under the benign sway of that supreme and culminating product of Smithocracy, our gracious sovereign, his Majesty John CLXXVIII.

BITS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

ON A MOUNTAIN

They say that the lumberman has looked upon the Cheat Mountain country and seen that it is good, and I hear that some wealthy gentlemen have been there and made a game preserve.  There must be lumber and, I suppose, sport, but some things one could wish were ordered otherwise.  Looking back upon it through the haze of near half a century, I see that region as a veritable realm of enchantment; the Alleghanies as the Delectable Mountains.  I note again their dim, blue billows, ridge after ridge interminable, beyond purple valleys full of sleep, “in which it seemed always afternoon.”  Miles and miles away, where the lift of earth meets the stoop of sky, I discern an imperfection in the tint, a faint graying of the blue above the main range—­the smoke of an enemy’s camp.