of which attest the writer's personal affection. This account, with only
such condensation as is necessary, I now give to the world. I do not
believe that it belongs to the novel to teach theology; but I do believe
that religious sentiments and opinions are a legitimate subject of its
art, and that perhaps its highest function is to promote understanding
by bringing into contact minds that habitually misinterpret one
another._




THE ZEIT-GEIST.




CHAPTER I.

PROLOGUE.


To-day I am at home in the little town of the fens, where the Ahwewee
River falls some thirty feet from one level of land to another. Both
broad levels were covered with forest of ash and maple, spruce and
tamarack; but long ago, some time in the thirties, impious hands built
dams on the impetuous Ahwewee, and wide marshes and drowned wood-lands
are the result. Yet just immediately at Fentown there is neither marsh
nor dead tree; the river dashes over its ledge of rock in a foaming
flood, runs shallow and rapid between green woods, and all about the
town there are breezy pastures where the stumps are still standing, and