Upon the beach the other day, watching the waves lap toward her, sat a woman, cultured, very beautiful and wise in woman's way and among the fairest and the best of all earth can produce. There are many such as she. Barely longer ago than the other day, as time is counted, a rugged man, gentle as resolute and noble, became the enshrined hero of a vast republic, when he struck from slave limbs the shackles of four million people. In an insular home across the sea, interested still in the world's affairs, is an old man vigorous in his octogenarianism, a power, though out of power, a figure to be a monument in personal history, a great man. But a few years ago the whole world stood with bowed head while into the soil he loved was lowered the coffin of one who has bound the nations together in sympathy for _Les Misérables_ of the earth. In a home on the continent broods watchfully a bald-headed giant in cavalry boots, one who has dictated arbitrarily, as premier, the policy of the empire he has largely made. The woman upon the sands, the great liberator, the man wonderful even in old age, the heart-stirring writer, the man of giant personality physical and mental, have had reason to boast alike a strain of the blood of Ab and Lightfoot. In the veins of each has danced the transmitted product of the identical corpuscles which coursed in the veins of those two who first found a home in the Fire Valley. Strong was primitive man; adroit, patient and faithful was primitive woman; he, the strongest, she, the fairest and cleverest of the time, could protect their offspring, breed and care for great children of similar powers and so insure a lasting race. Thus has the good blue blood come down. This is not romance, this is not fancy; this is but faithful history. THE END