I observe, however--and I take it as a sign of the times in Norfolk--that an extensive, well-printed and much illustrated book on Norfolk, issued by the Chamber of Commerce, contains pictures of banks, docks, breweries, mills, office buildings, truck farms, peanut farms, battleships, clubhouses, hotels, hospitals, factories, and innumerable new residences, but no picture of the church, or of the lovely old homes of Freemason Street.

Nor do I find in the booklet any mention of the history of the city or the surrounding region--although that region includes places of the greatest beauty and interest: among them the glorious old manor houses of the James River; the ancient and charming town of Williamsburg, second capital of the Virginia colony, and seat of William and Mary College, the oldest college in the United States excepting Harvard; Yorktown, "Waterloo of the Revolution"; many important battlefields of the Civil War; Hampton Institute, the famous negro industrial school at Hampton, nearby; the lovely stretch of water on which the _Monitor_ met the _Merrimac_[3]; the site of the first English settlement in America at Jamestown, and, for mystery and desolation, the Dismal Swamp with Lake Drummond at its heart.

But then, I suppose it is natural that the Chamber of Commerce mind should thrust aside such things in favor of the mighty "goober," which is a thing of to-day, a thing for which Norfolk is said to be the greatest of all markets.

For is not history dead, and is not the man who made a fortune out of a device for shelling peanuts without causing the nuts to drop in two, still living?
[3] The _Merrimac_, originally a Federal vessel of wooden construction, was sunk by the Union forces when they abandoned Norfolk.

A Confederate captain, John M.Brooke, raised her, equipped her with a ram, and covered her with boiler plate and railroad rails.