did not transform into a pure
Smithocracy, and although some of them relapsed transiently into the
primitive forms, and others grew into extravagant and fanciful systems
begotten of the intellectual activity to which he had stirred the whole
world, yet so firmly did he establish the principle that in the
thirty-second century the civilized world had become, and has remained,
virtually Smithocratic."

It may be noted here as a singular coincidence that the year which is
believed to have seen the birth of him who founded rational government
witnessed the death of him who perfected literature: Martin Farquhar
Tupper (after Smith the most noted name in history) starved to death in
the streets of London. Like that of Smith his origin is wrapped in
obscurity. No fewer than seven British cities claim the honor of his
nativity. Meager indeed is our knowledge of this only British bard whose
works have endured through thirty centuries. All that is certain is that
he was once arrested for deer-stealing; that, although blind, he fought a
duel with a person named Salmasius, for which he was thrown into Bedford
gaol, whence he escaped to the Tower of London; that the manuscript of his
"Proverbial Philosophy" was for many years hidden in a hollow oak tree,
where it was found by his grandmother, Ella Wheeler Tupper, who fled with
it to America and published many brilliant passages from it over her own
name. Had Smith and Tupper been contemporaries the iron deeds of the
former would doubtless have been recorded in the golden pages of the
latter, to the incalculable enrichment of Roman history.

Strangely unimpressible indeed must be the mind which, looking backward
through the mists of the centuries upon the primitive race from which we
are believed to have sprung, can repress a feeling of sympathetic
interest. The names of John Smith and Martin Farquhar Tupper, blazoned
upon the page of that dim past and surrounded by the lesser names of
Shakspar, the first Neapolitan, Oliver Cornwell, that Mynheer Baloon who
was known as the Flying Dutchman, Julia Caesar, commonly known as the
Serpent of the Nile--all these are richly suggestive. They call to mind
the odd custom of wearing "clothes"; the incredible error of Copernicus
and other wide and wild guesses of ancient "science"; the lost arts of
telegramy, steam locomotion, printing, and the tempering of iron. They set
us thinking of the zealous idolatry that led men on pious pilgrimages to