, p. 439.

[40] F. B. Carpenter, _Six Months at the White House_, pp. 20-22.

[41] Dodge, _View_, ch. xiv. Rossiter Johnson, _History of War of
Secession_.

[42] Nicolay and Hay, VI, 155.

[43] Dodge, _View_, pp. 102-115.

[44] Nicolay and Hay, VI, pp. 168-169.

[45] Nicolay and Hay, VI, p. 164.

THE JOURNAL OF ISAACO[1]

I

The time approaches when all the wildness of this little world will be
overrun and tamed into the trimness of a civilized parterre; when the
last trail will have been trodden, the mystery of the last forest
bared, and the last of the savage peoples penned into a League of
Nations to die of unnatural peace. What will our children do then, I
wonder, for their books of high romance? How satisfy their thirst of
daring with nothing further to dare? Who will appease them, when

"The Rudyards cease from kipling
And the Haggards ride no more,"

when Robinson Crusoe and the classics are once read, and in a hencoop
world no saga-man arises in their stead? They say that by then we
shall have enlarged our borders and gone in our chariots of petrol to
visit the wheeling stars. But I misdoubt these Icarian flights. It
seems to me more likely that the harassed parents and publishers of
those days will be driven earthward to rummage into the lumber of the
past and bring out as new the obscure things that a former more heroic
age had buried. In those stricken times, I hope someone may have the
fortune to light upon my manuscript _Journal_ of Isaaco, a slim,
alluring folio that now glitters in red-and-gold upon my study
shelves. It would be a pity if Time, the All-Merciless, were allowed
to throw the dust of oblivion over these pretty pages, for they
possess in good measure that trait of "pleasant atrocity" which wins
the attention of youth.

But who was Isaaco, and what was his _Journal_ that it calls for the
popularity of print? Those who have followed the harrowing tale of
Mungo Park's _Travels_ along the River Niger, in the years 1795 to
1797, and again in the fatal expedition of 1805, will be well
acquainted with Isaaco. They will have smiled at his childish tempers,
applauded his snakelike cunning, and laughed outright at his heathen
superstitions. But the others must be gravely informed that Isaaco was
a West African of the Mandingo tribe who was wont for dignity's sake
to describe himself as a Mohammedan priest. Certainly he had the
Pentecostal gift of tongues, for there was h