wondrous adventures that have befallen a civilized man
during the past two centuries encourages me in the belief
that, however ill the telling, the facts themselves will
command your interest to the final page.

Beyond thirty! Romance, adventure, strange peoples,
fearsome beasts--all the excitement and scurry of the lives
of the twentieth century ancients that have been denied us
in these dull days of peace and prosaic prosperity--all, all
lay beyond thirty, the invisible barrier between the stupid,
commercial present and the carefree, barbarous past.

What boy has not sighed for the good old days of wars,
revolutions, and riots; how I used to pore over the
chronicles of those old days, those dear old days, when
workmen went armed to their labors; when they fell upon one
another with gun and bomb and dagger, and the streets ran
red with blood! Ah, but those were the times when life was
worth the living; when a man who went out by night knew not
at which dark corner a "footpad" might leap upon and slay
him; when wild beasts roamed the forest and the jungles, and
there were savage men, and countries yet unexplored.

Now, in all the Western Hemisphere dwells no man who may not
find a school house within walking distance of his home, or
at least within flying distance.

The wildest beast that roams our waste places lairs in the
frozen north or the frozen south within a government
reserve, where the curious may view him and feed him bread