The Cereals and Serials of the last Century.—Hares caught before cooked.—Useless Indians put under Ground.—Human Bones the Phosphates of History.—The Statecraft of Washington, Jefferson, and Others.—The Automatic Workings of Governments exposed.—What small Brains rule.—Description of our Government Machine.—Its Merits and Demerits.—The Disadvantages of frequent Changes of official Workmen.—How the Machine-Oil is stolen.—The Inventions of the Eighteenth Cycle of Time.—An American Noah inebriated by the Cotton-Gin.—How Ham laughed and how Japhet put a Blanket over the Patriarch.—The Growth of Commerce.—The Notions which Importations put in and on the Heads of the Young People.—Paris supplies the Mistakes of Nature.—Of Dress.—Hoops, Head-Gear, Coats, Vests, Tights, etc., descanted upon.—Improvements in Roads and Means of Transit.—The Journey from New York to Boston in 1732.—The Road-Maker and Vehicle-Propeller as Leaders of Civilization.—The great Invention now needed.—The Populations of New York and Boston in 1700.—Description of the Former in that Year by an English Traveller.—Slave-Market in New York in 1711.—Manufactures and their Growth.—The Habits of the Period described.—Improvements in Morals, and wherein.—A general Review of American Literature and Book-Making through the Century.—The first American printed Volume; and how fast and long it ran.—Earliest Original Book of Poems; by a Woman, with a touching Specimen therefrom.—An Account of the leading Writers on Theology, Political Science, Government, Natural Science, Natural History, of Novels, etc.—The American Joss; its Worshippers, and their Treatment. Before turning our backs upon the eighteenth and leaping upon the engine-driven nineteenth century, to be borne swiftly through its rapidly changing scenes, it is well to take a hurried glance backward over the path we have traversed and to pick up a few waifs strewn along the wayside. The largest American products of the last century were material. Cereals were common and abundant; serials uncommonly few. The Western lobe or half of the world’s brain did not work so actively as the Eastern. Our forefathers were occupied with the earnest business of first catching their hare before preparing to cook him. They improved the breeds of useless Indians by putting them thoroughly under ground. They disposed also of not a few Englishmen and Hessians during the last quarter of the century by converting them at Saratoga, Princeton, Eutaw Springs, Yorktown, and elsewhere into good compost, making our soil historically fruitful. Human bones are the phosphates of history. They quicken a rich heroic growth over sterile soils. Our ancestors enriched many American fields in this way. It is not Quaker husbandry, and Quaker phosphates are few; but for all that, the seeds which they raise and sell never do as well as when sown in these phosphated furrows.