RETROSPECTIVE


"WE ARE ONE AND UNDIVIDED"

About twenty years ago, I think it was--I won't be certain, though--
a man whose name, if I remember correctly, was Wm. L. Yancy--I write only
from memory, and this was a long time ago--took a strange and peculiar
notion that the sun rose in the east and set in the west, and that the
compass pointed north and south. Now, everybody knew at the time that
it was but the idiosyncrasy of an unbalanced mind, and that the United
States of America had no north, no south, no east, no west. Well,
he began to preach the strange doctrine of there being such a thing.
He began to have followers. As you know, it matters not how absurd,
ridiculous and preposterous doctrines may be preached, there will be some
followers. Well, one man by the name of (I think it was) Rhett, said it
out loud. He was told to "s-h-e-e." Then another fellow by the name (I
remember this one because it sounded like a graveyard) Toombs said so,
and he was told to "sh-sh-ee-ee." Then after a while whole heaps of
people began to say that they thought that there was a north and a south;
and after a while hundreds and thousands and millions said that there was
a south. But they were the persons who lived in the direction that the
water courses run. Now, the people who lived where the water courses
started from came down to see about it, and they said, "Gents, you are
very much mistaken. We came over in the Mayflower, and we used to burn
witches for saying that the sun rose in the east and set in the west,
because the sun neither rises nor sets, the earth simply turns on its
axis, and we know, because we are Pure(i)tans." The spokesman of the
party was named (I think I remember his name because it always gave me