Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884 Excerpt:...were as far back as history runs, and haven't made very much improvement if any. I am not that sort of an evoluter. I don't believe that the jumpin' kangaroo swum all the way from Noah's ark to the island of Australia, or that every sort of a man descended from Shem, Ham, and Japhet; but I do believe that nature furnishes her own restorers, and that all these weeds that follow the crops come up without seed just as natural as original sin follows the human family. The first year after the war a new kind of clover came up all over the land and covered it like a new carpet, and nobody ever found out where it come from or how it got here. Some said the Yankee cavalry brought it in their oats, and some said it was blown here in a storm, and an old Irishman told me it come from Erin by instinct, for it never grew anywhere but in conquered countries. One thing is certain, it come all of a sudden, and come everywhere at once, and it's a conundrum the agricultural bureau has let alone. It's a great blessing to this impoverished land, and its origin is no accident. I think the legislature ought to give the bureau another term to investigate these mysteries and determine whether these things spontane or do not spontane--and where the army worm comes from, and when they are coming, and how to stop 'em when they do come, for they eat up all my nabor's fodder, and about this time yesterday evening I wished they had eat up mine. RESENTMENT BURIED. AND NAUGHT BUT GOOD WORDS FOR THE DEAD. When a man blunders and falls there are none so poor asto do him reverence. His virtues are all forgotton. His friends desert him, and so the poet wrote: "And what is friendship but a name,, A charm that lulls to sleep, A shade that follows wealth or fame, And leaves the wretch to we...