ough written many years ago, it
seems still to excite the interest of a younger generation; for, after
an interval of silence on the subject of greater or less duration,
suddenly, without apparent cause, numerous letters in relation to it
will appear on the author's table, and "solutions" will be printed in
the newspapers. This ebb and flow has continued up to the present time.
Mr. Stockton made no attempt to answer the question he had raised.

We both spent much time in the South at different periods. The dramatic
and unconsciously humorous side of the negroes pleased his fancy. He
walked and talked with them, saw them in their homes, at their
"meetin's," and in the fields. He has drawn with an affectionate hand
the genial, companionable Southern negro as he is--or rather as he
was--for this type is rapidly passing away. Soon there will be no more
of these "old-time darkies." They would be by the world forgot had they
not been embalmed in literature by Mr. Stockton, and the best Southern
writers.

There is one other notable characteristic that should be referred to in
writing of Mr. Stockton's stories--the machines and appliances he
invented as parts of them. They are very numerous and ingenious. No
matter how extraordinary might be the work in hand, the machine to
accomplish the end was made on strictly scientific principles, to
accomplish that exact piece of work. It would seem that if he had not
been an inventor of plots he might have been an inventor of instruments.
This idea is sustained by the fact that he had been a wood-engraver only
a short time when he invented and patented a double graver which cuts
two parallel lines at the same time. It is somewhat strange that more
than one of these extraordinary machines has since been exploited by
scientists and explorers, without the least suspicion on their part that
the enterprising romancer had thought of them first. Notable among these
may be named the idea of going to the north pole under the ice, the one
that the center of the earth is an immense crystal (Great Stone of
Sardis), and the attempt to manufacture a gun similar to the Peace
Compeller in The Great War Syndicate.

In all of Mr. Stockton's novels there were characters taken from real
persons who perhaps would not recognize themselves in the peculiar
circumstances in which he placed them. In the crowd of purely
imaginative beings one could easily recognize certain types modified and
altered. In The Cas