The great weakness of Experience as a teacher lies in the fact that truth is so alterable. We have hardly realized how utterly the snows and roses of yesteryear vanish before the amiable book agent points out to us the obsolete character of our most prized encyclopædia. All books should be purchased with a view to their utility in lifting the baby’s chin a proper distance above the breakfast table; for, quite likely, this will soon become their sole office in the household. Within a fifteen-minute walk of the window by which I write lives a man who rejects utterly the idea that the world is round, and he is by no means a fool. He is a far more interesting person, I dare say, than Copernicus or Galileo ever was; and his strawberries are the earliest and the best produced in our township. Truth, let us say, is a continuing matter, and hope springeth eternal. This is where I parted company with the revered doctor long ago. His inability to catch bass in the creek isn’t going to keep me at home to-morrow morning. For all I care, he may sit on his veranda and talk himself hoarse to his old friend, Professor Killjoy, whose gum shoes and ear-muffs are a feature of our village landscape. When you and I, my brother, are called on to address the young, how blithely we congratulate our hearers upon being the inheritors of the wisdom of all the ages. This is one of the greatest of fallacies. The twentieth century dawned upon American States that were bored by the very thought of the Constitution, and willing to forget that venerable document at least long enough to experiment with the Initiative, the Referendum, and the Recall. What some Lord Chief Justice announced as sound law a hundred years ago means nothing to commonwealths that have risen since the motor-car began honking in the highway. On a starry night in the spring of 1912 a veteran sea-captain, with wireless warnings buttoned under his pea-jacket, sent the finest ship in the world smashing into an iceberg. All the safety devices known to railroading cannot prevent some engineer from occasionally trying the experiment of running two trains on a single track. With the full weight of the experience of a thousand years against him the teller begins to transfer the bank’s money to his own pocket, knowing well the hazard and the penalty.