January 2011

Something valuable went out of the world when the last blank spaces on the map were filled in. The age-old area of myth and fable, which had helped to condition men’s minds ever since men first had minds to develop, shrank to the vanishing point, and an odd constriction of the human spirit seems to have begun. Western man lost his sense of wonder; his world became smaller than it had been, and having no more room for surprises it appeared also to have less room for opportunity.

Perhaps all that had happened was that Western man grew up. Knowing more about the world, he began to realize—as any youth does, when he gets on into full manhood—that most of the infinite possibilities which once beguiled him were simply part of a mirage. Yet growing up is a painful process, even a crippling one. The ultimate horizon turns out to be nearer than had been supposed, and what lies beyond it will be about what lies on this side. The universe hereafter is just a little less stimulating.

The idea of perpetual motion—something for nothing under the laws of physics—is as insidious as any in history. It will not lie down and die. To this day, the persistence of the idea is the one thing perpetual about it. The Patent Office is still pestered by single-minded inventors of “self-motors,” the technical section of the Library of Congress is haunted by furtive figures, and editors of scientific magazines regularly receive correspondence from dreamers with “new” plans for solving the most famous scientific problem of all time.

In one way an Englishman’s view of the Revolutionary War does not greatly differ from an American’s. Our historians, in the main, agree with yours that the American colonies were lost through the mistakes and obstinacy of George III and Lord North and that the whole episode, whether regarded politically or militarily, is one of the most depressing in British history.

The leadership of the American Revolution was drawn from many sources—the clergy, the merchants, the planters, and the newspaper editors—but no single group was better able to articulate the colonial position within the political, legal, and constitutional framework of the Anglo-American debate than the men of the legal profession. Curiously, modern historians have done them less credit than did their contemporaries. …

Friends of the Crown at least were in no doubt of the legal profession’s pernicious influence. “The Lawyers are the Source from whence the Clamors have flowed in every Province,” General Gage assured the home government during the Stamp Act disorders. American Tories echoed the charge in their assertion that the lawyers were “cultivating, with unwearied Pains, the Seeds of Infatuation and Tumult.” … Cadwallader Golden, New York’s longtime royal lieutenant governor, … diagnosing the source of New York’s violent disorders in connection with the Stamp Act, … pictured himself as the helpless victim of the lawyers’ neardiabolical power:

The Sense of Wonder Moment of Dawn End of the Road A New Horizon ON CHOOSING A SUBJECT ON FINISHING A VERY LONG BOOK

If there is any axiom about pioneering, it is this: the further back one goes in history, the tougher it was. Where Grandpa hacked his way through the wilderness, we ride the throughway. Father, he is happy to tell the world, worked harder than you. Before you new recruits joined up, one learns in any organization, life in this outfit was infinitely more rugged. We trust that this point is abundantly clear because, in honor of its forthcoming fiftieth anniversary, we publish herewith a possibly confusing glimpse of Girl Scouting back in the pioneer clays.

When the Protestant ministers of Toledo, Ohio, voted almost unanimously to invite the fiery and widely renowned southern evangelist, Samuel Porter Jones, to lead a month-long crusade in the spring of 1899, it was apparent to everyone that the salvation of souls was not their only aim. However loudly they might proclaim a great campaign to regenerate the city’s !lagging spiritual life, they seemed somehow more concerned with the outcome of the mayoralty election that was to be held while Sam Jones was in town. Inspired by his loud, folksy humor and fundamentalist faith, they hoped to drive out of office a mayor who frankly and stubbornly refused to enforce the existing laws against gambling, slot machines, drinking, prostitution, and —perhaps worst of all—Sabbathbreaking. By a strange coincidence, the offending mayor’s name also happened to be Sam Jones.

Throughout recorded history the marks of the empire builder have been a passion tor order and a determination to allow not even the farthest corners of his realm to go unsupervised; the story of Christianity itself begins in the midst of a census decreed for tax purposes by a Roman emperor. To this rule Philip II of Spain was no exception. The 400-year-old maps reproduced here and on the next two pages were drawn in compliance with Philip’s cédula real , or royal decree, of 1577 ordering an enumeration of his subjects in New Spain, which then included modern Mexico and parts of Louisiana, Florida, New Mexico, and Arizona.