the accessible regions about the north pole and into the then savage
interior of Africa in search of the fountain of youth. They conjure up
visions of bloodthirsty "Emperors," tyrannical "Kings," vampire
"Presidents," and robber "Parliaments"--grotesque and horrible shapes in
terrible contrast with the serene and benign figures and features of our
modern Smithocracy.

Let us to-day rejoice and give thanks to Bungoot that the old order of
things has passed forever away. Let us praise Him that our lot has been
cast in more wholesome days than those in which Smith wrought and Tupper
sang. And yet let us not forget whatever there was of good, if any, in the
pre-Smithian period, when men cherished quaint superstitions and rode on
the backs of beasts--when they settled questions of right and expediency
by counting noses--when cows were enslaved and women free--when science
had not dawned to chase away the shadows of imagination and the fear of
immortality--and when the cabalistic letters "A.D.," which from habit we
still affix to numerals designating the date, had perhaps a known
signification. It is indeed well to live in this golden age, under the
benign sway of that supreme and culminating product of Smithocracy, our
gracious sovereign, his Majesty John CLXXVIII.

BITS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

ON A MOUNTAIN

They say that the lumberman has looked upon the Cheat Mountain country and
seen that it is good, and I hear that some wealthy gentlemen have been
there and made a game preserve. There must be lumber and, I suppose,
sport, but some things one could wish were ordered otherwise. Looking back
upon it through the haze of near half a century, I see that region as a
veritable realm of enchantment; the Alleghanies as the Delectable
Mountains. I note again their dim, blue billows, ridge after ridge
interminable, beyond purple valleys full of sleep, "in which it seemed
always afternoon." Miles and miles away, where the lift of earth meets the
stoop of sky, I discern an imperfection in the tint, a faint graying of
the blue above the main range--the smoke of an enemy's camp.

It was in the autumn of that "most immemorial year," the 1861st of our
Lord, and of our Heroic Age the first, that a small brigade of raw
troops--troops were all raw in those days--had been pushed in across the
Ohio border and after various vicissitudes of fortune and mismanagement
found itself, greatly to its own surprise, at Cheat Mountain Pass, ho