A JOLLY BY JOSH







Privately Printed

MCMII




Dear Charlie,--Having a spare moment as I crossed the continent
last time, I sat down in the rear end of a Lake Shore Limited
train, and began to cast about me with a view to hitting upon some
way of passing the time amicably with myself. As I looked about
the car, I studied the faces and persons of my fellow-travellers,
and found them uniformly uninteresting. My mind wandered from them
out of the window, and I noted with a casual eye the advance
civilization was making on both sides of the track. I began
wandering vaguely from that back to the time when this was a
trackless wilderness; and I pictured to myself the advent of the
white man, and so on in an aimless sort of a way, from the
beginning of our country until I reached the Declaration of
Independence, the terms of which have always remained vividly
impressed upon my mind.