in the execution of this fine conception must be set down to the fact
that the President's great powers were rather the happy gift of nature
than the result of culture. To this truth he was himself in no way
blind, and he was accustomed to attribute his want of a liberal
education to the social ruin brought upon his family by the American
Civil War, and to the dislocation thereby produced in his studies. As
the President was, when I had the honor of making his acquaintance
in the year 1880, fifty years old if he was a day, this explanation
hardly agrees with dates, unless it is to be supposed that the
President was still pursuing his education when the war began, being
then of the age of thirty-five, or thereabouts.

Starting under the auspices of such a gifted leader, and imbued with
so noble a zeal for progress, Aureataland was, at the beginning of her
history as a nation, the object of many fond and proud hopes. But in
spite of the blaze of glory in which her sun had risen (to be seen
duly reflected in the professor's work), her prosperity, as I have
said, was not maintained. The country was well suited for agriculture
and grazing, but the population--a very queer mixture of races--was
indolent, and more given to keeping holidays and festivals than
to honest labor. Most of them were unintelligent; those who were
intelligent made their living out of those who weren't, a method of
subsistence satisfactory to the individual, but adding little to the
aggregate of national wealth. Only two classes made fortunes of any
size, Government officials and bar-keepers, and even in their case the
wealth was not great, looked at by an English or American standard.
Production was slack, invention at a standstill, and taxation heavy. I
suppose the President's talents were more adapted to founding a
state in the shock and turmoil of war, than to the dull details of
administration; and although he was nominally assisted by a cabinet of