250 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



in the horizon, which others cannot see, and will 

 not believe till it touches their eyeballs. And then 

 they will swear they always saw it, and will have 

 forgotten that they ever didn't see it. The man 

 was never yet found that would head a deputation 

 to carry the world's recantation and apology to the 

 derided prophet, whose derided prophecy has come 

 true. With the advent of the Fact, (lies out the 

 prophet's only distinction to be ridiculed. Such 

 was ever his fate ; and will be, to the end of time ; 

 varied only by the politer form and phase that 

 civilization gives to persecution. 



Yet, in the present active progress of invention, 

 the transition is so rapid between one phase of our 

 industrial condition and another, that the difficulty 

 of inducing men to realize the possibility of a com- 

 ing discovery, seems almost to tread upon the heels 

 of the after difficulty of recalling the memory of a 

 deficiency that has been supplied. The paradox of 

 to-day becomes the truism of to-morrow. And in 

 spite of all her wonderful advancement in arts and 

 manufactures, in spite of all her great names in 

 every department of practical science, there is no 

 country where both these phases of mind, apparently 

 so inconsistent with each other, co-exist more perti- 

 naciously, more permanently, than in England 



