boy found himself turning his back on the wonderful new world with
something of the same blessed sense of relief as that which he had
experienced in former home-goings from South Tredegar, the commonplace.

At the highest point on the hunched shoulder of the mountain Thomas
Jefferson twisted himself in the buggy seat for a final backward look
into the valley of new marvels. The summer day was graying to its
twilight, and a light haze was stealing out of the wooded ravines and
across from the river. From the tall chimneys of a rolling-mill a dense
column of smoke was ascending, and at the psychological moment the slag
flare from an iron-furnace changed the overhanging cloud into a fiery
ægis.

Having no symbolism save that of Holy Writ, Thomas Jefferson's mind
seized instantly on the figure, building far better than it knew. It was
a new Exodus, with its pillar of cloud by day and its pillar of fire by
night. And its Moses--though this, we may suppose, was beyond a boy's
imaging--was the frenzied, ruthless spirit of commercialism, named
otherwise, by the multitude, Modern Progress.




V

THE DABNEYS OF DEER TRACE


If you have never had the pleasure of meeting a Southern gentleman of
the patriarchal school, I despair of bringing you well acquainted with