Cain is described as "An instructor of every artificer in brass
and iron."

We learn, also, that magnificent statues were made in Egypt some six
thousand years ago; and that mention is made of a statue of King
Cephren, said to have been chiselled about this period, and many learned
men also affirm that letters were known to the inhabitants of the
Antediluvian world. All this, however, hardly looks like the work of a
barbarous race, and points to an acquaintance with the Arts, at any rate
of Music and Sculpture, and that of the artificers and workers in brass
and iron.

To follow, for my subject, this reasoning a little further, if there was
music (which, doubtless, there was) there must also have been dancing,
and, if dancing, there must, in the Antediluvian age, as a form of
entertainment, have also been Pantomime. On the other hand, even
supposing that man, at this period, was nothing else but a complete
savage, the words of Darwin, that I have quoted on a previous page,
conclusively proves, I think (on a common-sense like basis), of the
existence of dancing, a rude form of music, and, of course, Pantomime at
this epoch.

Ingersoll's doctrine was that "The distance from savagery to Shakespeare
must be measured not by hundreds, but by millions, of years."

Finally, why, and for what reason, should the Lord God, in His
all-seeing goodness and mercy, punish the inhabitants of the
Antediluvian world if they were only poor unenlightened savages? Was it
not because they were idolaters and worshippers of idols, "And that
every imagination of the thoughts of his (man's) heart was only evil
continually," as the sixth chapter and fifth verse of Genesis tells us?
This then being so, we know also that in every ancient form of religion
dancing was one of the acts of worship, and if dancing, there must as
previously stated, have also been Pantomime.

CHAPTER II.

Origin of Tragedy and Comedy--Mythology--The meaning of the word
Pantomime--The origin of Harlequin, Columbine, Clown, and
Pantaloon--Grecian Mythology--Transformation Scenes--The rise of Grecian
Tragedy and Comedy--The Satirical Drama.

In the year 2347 B.C., in Chapter 9, verse 20, in Genesis, there occurs:
"And Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard." This is
one of the first acts that Noah did after the Deluge, and it is, as
history tells us, from the rites and ceremonies in celebration of the
cultivation of the vine, that we owe the