of his Uncle Silas,
there had been shrinking antagonism at the first glance--which keen
first impression was presently dulled and all but effaced by the
enthusiasm, the suave tongue, and the benignant manner. Which proves
that insight, like the film of a recording camera, should have the dark
shutter snapped on it if the picture is to be preserved.

Thomas Jefferson made way when the party, marshaled by the enthusiast,
prepared for its descent on the Marlboro. Afterward, the royalties
having departed and a good-natured porter giving him leave, he was at
liberty to examine the wheeled palace at near-hand, and even to climb
into the vestibule for a peep inside.

Therewith, castles in the air began to rear themselves, tower on wall.
Here was the very sky-reaching summit of all things desirable: to have
one's own brass-bound hotel on wheels; to come and go at will; to give
curt orders to a respectful and uniformed porter, as the awe-inspiring
gentleman with the mutton-chop whiskers had done.

Time was when Thomas Jefferson's ideals ran quite otherwise: to a lodge
in some vast wilderness, like the rock-strewn slopes of high Lebanon; to
the company of the birds and trees, of the wide heavens and the shy wild
creatures of the forest. But it is only the fool or the weakling who may
not reconsider.

Notwithstanding, when the day of revelations was come to an end, and the
ambling horse was inching the ancient buggy up the homeward road, the
boy found himself turning his back on the wonderful new world with
something of the same blessed sense of relief as that which he had
experienced in former home-goings from South Tredegar, the commonplace.

At the highest point on the hunched shoulder of the mountain Thomas
Jefferson twisted himself in the buggy seat for a final backward look
into the valley of new marvels. The summer day was graying to its
twilight, and a light haze was stealing out of the wooded ravines and
across from the river. From the tall chimneys of a rolling-mill a dense
column of smoke was ascending, and at the psychological moment the slag
flare from an iron-furnace changed the overhanging cloud into a fiery
aegis.

Having no symbolism save that of Holy Writ, Thomas Jefferson's mind
seized instantly on the figure, building far better than it knew. It was
a new Exodus, with its pillar of cloud by day and its pillar of fire by
night. And its Moses--though this, we may suppose, was beyond a boy's
imaging--was th