ist was first in the field, with a volume of gray-headed
jokes which I had been familiar with during thirteen
centuries. If he had left out that old rancid one about
the lecturer I wouldn't have said anything; but I
couldn't stand that one. I suppressed the book and
hanged the author.

Slavery was dead and gone; all men were equal
before the law; taxation had been equalized. The
telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the type-
writer, the sewing-machine, and all the thousand will-
ing and handy servants of steam and electricity were
working their way into favor. We had a steamboat or
two on the Thames, we had steam warships, and the
beginnings of a steam commercial marine; I was getting