Put in all your time teaching Methy how to add and multiply." My history was meagre, because as Aunt Jerusha had said, history itself was meagre.

There had not even been a flood, much less a first, second, or third Punic War.

Nobody in my time had ever heard of Napoleon Bonaparte or George Washington or Julius Caesar, or Alexander, save a few prophets in the hills back of Enochsville, in whose prognostications few of their contemporaries took any stock; as was indeed not unnatural, since when they attempted to prophesy as to the weather they showed themselves to be rather poor guessers.

If a man prophesies a blizzard for to-morrow and to-morrow comes bringing with it the balmy odors of Spring, no one is likely to set much store by his prognostications concerning the possible presidential candidacy of a man named Bryan six or seven thousand years later.

Consequently the only history with which I took the trouble to familiarize myself was that which ante-dated my birth, and even that was somewhat hazy in the minds of historians.