ection?"

"They don't say nothin, Boss; they jest laff."

NIRVANA.

We are told that at one time the British Isles were connected with the
mainland of Europe; that Italy was at least within sight of the African
coast; and that westward from Gibraltar, there was a continent which
ultimately sank beneath the waves, leaving isolated mountain peaks, now
islands and shoals, to mark its submerged position.

The Egyptian priesthood told Solon of the greatness of the civilization
of this submerged land, Atlantis or Kami, even then, as of an ancient
past; and Homer, Horace and Plato have whispered of its greatness.

The soul of one of its ancient inhabitants, yet wandering upon this
earth, may through transmigration have become in part your own, and you,
in reverie at odd hours and in company with it, live again a few scenes
of those old days.

* * * * *

Near Winchester, Kentucky, driving out the Lexington turnpike you pass
an old brick farmhouse of ante-bellum days; flanked on the one side by
an old stone springhouse under two spreading elms and on the other by a
large tobacco barn that looks extremely modern and out of place. Behind
the house is an orchard of ancient apple and pear trees, all dead at the
top, a negro cabin beside which are two black heart cherry trees, higher
than the farmhouse and more than three feet through; and yet farther
back, hemp and tobacco fields and a woodland pasture of oak and walnut
trees. At least this was a description of my home thirty years ago.

I had just graduated from Center College, and having in mind to practice
law in Lexington, had during the summer formed the habit of going down
to the springhouse and under the shade of its eaves and the overhanging
elms, sit and read Kent's Commentaries.

A negro family lived in the cabin, Mose Hunter, his wife and boy. Mose
was as black as they grow them in Kentucky; but his wife was the color
of my old volumes of Kent and had build and features which fixed the
country of her ancestry in northern Africa and seemed to identify her as
a desert Berber. Mose worked on the farm, his wife was cook at the
farmhouse, and the boy, who was said to be half imbecile, was as
harmless and shy as a ground robin. I do not know of his ever having
gone off the place. He was probably fourteen, had never been to school,
and wandered about like a lost turkey hen. We could depend upon him to
pick up the apples, feed the