publican."
Part of it has come true already. Meanwhile it looks as though the
United States, having exhausted the reasonable possibilities of
democracy, is beginning to turn crank. Look at woman suffrage by
Federal edict; look at prohibition by act of Congress and constitutional
amendment; tobacco next to walk on the plank; and then!--Lord, how glad
I feel that I am nearly a hundred years old and shall not live to see
it!

Chapter the Thirty-First

The Age of Miracles--A Story of Franklin Pierce--Simon Suggs
Billy Sunday--Jefferson Davis and Aaron Burr--Certain Constitutional
Shortcomings

I

The years intervening between 1865 and 1919 may be accounted the most
momentous in all the cycles of the ages. The bells that something more
than half a century ago rang forth to welcome peace in America have been
from that day to this jangled out of tune and harsh with the sounding of
war's alarms in every other part of the world. We flatter ourselves with
the thought that our tragedy lies behind us. Whether this be true or
not, the tragedy of Europe is at hand and ahead. The miracles of modern
invention, surpassing those of old, have made for strife, not for peace.
Civilization has gone backward, not forward. Rulers, intoxicated by
the lust of power and conquest, have lost their reason, and nations,
following after, like cattle led to slaughter, seem as the bereft of
Heaven "that knew not God."

We read the story of our yesterdays as it unfolds itself in the current
chronicle; the ascent to the bank-house, the descent to the mad-house,
and, over the glittering paraphernalia that follows to the tomb, we
reflect upon the money-zealot's progress; the dizzy height, the dazzling
array, the craze for more and more and more; then the temptation and
fall, millions gone, honor gone, reason gone--the innocent and the
gentle, with the guilty, dragged through the mire of the prison, and the
court--and we draw back aghast. Yet, if we speak of these things we are
called pessimists.

I have always counted myself an optimist. I know that I do not lie awake
nights musing on the ingratitude either of my stars or my countrymen. I
pity the man who does. Looking backward, I have sincere compassion for
Webster and for Clay! What boots it to them, now that they lie beneath
the mold, and that the drums and tramplings of nearly seventy years of
the world's strifes and follies and sordid ambitions and mean repinings,
and l