Is it too much, then, that I invite the reader’s forbearance with these paragraphs to show why our author should himself take rank and estimation with the great men whom he reverently pictures? He tells the story of Altgeld and of Johnson, energetic champions of the newer political freedom. He tells the story of Jones, the incomparable true democrat, one of the children of light and sons of the Resurrection, such as appear but once in an era. And in the telling of these men and of himself as the alien and, in his own view, largely accidental continuator of their work, it seems to me that he indicates the process by which he too has worked out his own position among them as “one of those consoling and hope-inspiring marks which stand forever to remind our weak and easily discouraged race how high human goodness and perseverance have once been carried and may be carried again.” ALBERT JAY NOCK. THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE, NEW YORK. FORTY YEARS OF IT FORTY YEARS OF IT I One hot afternoon in the summer of my tenth year, my grandfather, having finished the nap he was accustomed to take after the heavy dinner which, in those days, was served at noon in his house, told me that I might go up town with him. This was not only a relief, but a prospect of adventure. It was a relief to have him finish his nap, because while he was taking his nap, my grandmother drew down at all the windows the heavy green shades, which, brought home by the family after a residence in Nuremberg, were decorated at the bottom with a frieze depicting scenes along the Rhine, and a heavy and somnolent silence was imposed on all the house. When my grandfather took his nap, life seemed to pause, all activities were held in suspense. And the prospect was as a pleasant adventure, because whenever my grandfather let me go up town with him he always made me a present, which was sure to be more valuable, more expensive, than those little gifts at home, bestowed as rewards of various merits and sacrifices related to that institution of the afternoon nap, and forthcoming if he got through the nap satisfactorily, that is, without being awakened. They consisted of mere money, the little five or ten cent notes of green scrip; “shin-plasters” they were called, I believe, in those days. When my grandfather had rearranged his toilet, combing his thick white hair and then immediately running his fingers through it to rumple it up and give him a savage aspect, we set forth.