"Well, Grandpa, if you desire to be enlightened scientifically, I may
say that it is a subject beginning with Adam and including the whole
human race. It is divided into five parts: zoological anthropology,
showing the differences and similarities between men and brutes;
descriptive anthropology, showing the differences and similarities
between the races; general anthropology, which is the descriptive
biology of the human race; theological anthropology, which concerns the
divine origin and the destiny of man; and ethical anthropology, which
discusses the duties of man to the world and his creator."
"Do tell! it's a pretty big subject, and no wonder it has a house to
itself."
Inside they found skulls, skeletons, bones, savage relics consisting of
dress, utensils, ornaments and weapons with amulets, charms, idols and
everything pertaining to early religions the world over.
On the eastern border of south pond was to be found the outdoor
ethnographical exhibit. Indian groups, Indian schools and everything
illustrating their primitive life and material progress.
There were objects, shell heaps, village sites, burial places, mounds,
cliff houses and the ruins of Mexico, Central and South America. To see
the same thing, and to only very little better advantage, would require
thousands of dollars and years of perilous travel.
"The more I go through these places," said Uncle "the more I feel
ashamed that I did not do my share in bringing of relics. Now I could
have brought the old nightcap that sister Susan's dead husband's
grandfather brought over from England; and I have a gridiron that my
great aunt gave me to remember her by. And there's the snuffers and the
old wood-yard rake that my grandfather made himself way back in New
England, and the dress in which my aunt Harriet was married, and the
horseshoe from the foot of the horse that killed cousin John's boy Tom,
and sister Hanner's gold fillin' of her tooth, which was the first gold
fillin' in our parts, and it came out just afore she died, and I don't
know how much more. Ain't they anthropological, ethnographic biology or
something like that?"
"I think, Grandpa, they would have been more useful in some kind of a
cabinet in the old settler's cabin, but we needn't to fret about it
any."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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