y. What was I to know of such things? I was a
classical scholar, not a chemist.. The other men who survived were not
educated. Only two things did the Chauffeur accomplish--the brewing
of strong drink and the growing of tobacco. It was while he was drunk,
once, that he killed Vesta. I firmly believe that he killed Vesta in a
fit of drunken cruelty though he always maintained that she fell into
the lake and was drowned.

"And, my grandsons, let me warn you against the medicine-men. They call
themselves _doctors_, travestying what was once a noble profession, but
in reality they are medicine-men, devil-devil men, and they make for
superstition and darkness. They are cheats and liars. But so debased and
degraded are we, that we believe their lies. They, too, will increase
in numbers as we increase, and they will strive to rule us. Yet are
they liars and charlatans. Look at young Cross-Eyes, posing as a
doctor, selling charms against sickness, giving good hunting,
exchanging promises of fair weather for good meat and skins, sending the
death-stick, performing a thousand abominations. Yet I say to you,
that when he says he can do these things, he lies. I, Professor Smith,
Professor James Howard Smith, say that he lies. I have told him so to
his teeth. Why has he not sent me the death-stick? Because he knows that
with me it is without avail. But you, Hare-Lip, so deeply are you
sunk in black superstition that did you awake this night and find the
death-stick beside you, you would surely die. And you would die, not
because of any virtues in the stick, but because you are a savage with
the dark and clouded mind of a savage.

"The doctors must be destroyed, and all that was lost must be discovered
over again. Wherefore, earnestly, I repeat unto you certain things which
you must remember and tell to your children after you. You must tell
them that when water is made hot by fire, there resides in it a
wonderful thing called steam, which is stronger than ten thousand men
and which can do all man's work for him. There are other very useful
things. In the lightning flash resides a similarly strong servant of
man, which was of old his slave and which some day will be his slave
again.

[Illustration: I have stored many books in a cave 179]

"Quite a different thing is the alphabet. It is what enables me to
know the meaning of fine markings, whereas you boys know only rude
picture-writing. In that dry cave on Telegraph Hill, where y