ed any one get a
position and never would.

William was twenty-three and Alexander twenty-one. William was gracious
and graceful in manner and made himself at home in the best society;
Alexander was studious, reserved and inclined to be shy.

An invitation came that they should visit Weimar and spend some weeks in
that little world of art and letters created by Goethe and Schiller. To
William this was very tempting; but Alexander saw at Weimar scant
opportunity to study botany and geology.

Besides that, he felt that sooner or later he would drift into the
employ of the Government, following in his father's footsteps. His
ambition was practical mining, with a taste for finance.

The brothers kissed each other good-by, and one went to Weimar to assist
Schiller in editing a magazine that did not pay expenses, to bask in the
sunshine of the great Goethe, and incidentally to secure a wife.

The other started on a geological excursion, and this excursion was to
continue through life, and make of the man the greatest naturalist that
the world had seen since Aristotle lived, two thousand years before.

* * * * *

Humboldt's first book was on the geological formation of the Rhine,
published when he was twenty-six years old. The work was so complete and
painstaking that it led to his being appointed to the position of
"Assessor of Mines" at Berlin. This was the same office that Swedenborg
once held in Scandinavia.

For the benefit of our social-science friends, it is rather interesting
to note that at this time in Europe nearly all mines belonged to the
Government.

An individual might own the surface, and up to the sky, but his claim
did not go to the center of the earth. Iron, coal, copper, silver and
gold were largely mined, and the Government operated the mines direct,
or else leased them on a percentage.

I am told that in America all mining is done by individuals or private
companies, and that four-fifths of all mining companies have no mines at
all--merely samples of ores, blueprints, photographs and prospects. The
genus promoter is a very modern production, and is a creation Humboldt
never knew; the "salting" of mines was out of his province, and mining
operations carried on exclusively in sky-scrapers was a combination he
never guessed.

Whether society will ever take a turn backward, and the whole people own
and control the treasures deposited by Nature in the earth, is a
qu