The metaphor apparently tickled Page, for he used it in a series of articles which have become immortal in the political annals of North Carolina.

These have always been known as the "Mummy letters." They furnished a vivid but rather aggravating explanation for the existing backwardness and chauvinism of the commonwealth.

All the trouble, it seems, was caused by the "mummies." "It is an awfully discouraging business," Page wrote, "to undertake to prove to a mummy that it is a mummy.

You go up to it and say, 'Old fellow, the Egyptian dynasties crumbled several thousand years ago: you are a fish out of water.

You have by accident or the Providence of God got a long way out of your time.