New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-02-02
SKNLLS IND SCLENCE.


Chicago has done it at last The last re-
proach upon our flag is wiped off, and the city
Of divorce and bitches is our redcemer. AS ana
ton our youth has always been the one damned
spot that would not out The faint of vulgar
ncwness has rested on our rivers and our
mountains, az well as on our ideas and our
manners; and Chicago has no doubt felt the
burden with peculiar bitterness. We may have
iibcd her with her late birth ourselves. Any
feathor-hcaded foreigner had the pre-
rOgative Of age to jeer at us Whether we
chOkcd o rebellion or sounded our RS through
our nose, we were liable to be paCted on the
back and suavey reminded that we were young,
and that things were not SO done in the older
countries over the sea. COuld we deny it I
Jonathan could stretch his mighty limbs as he
pleased brag of his giants strength
his shrewd brain, his yearly conquests yet he
was painfully conscious all tho time that he
was the hobble de-hoy among natiOns-the
unlocked school-bOy with whom nobody dared
to try a wrestle, but who could be stung into
fury by sncer. Consequently he has kootooed
and salaamed before every travelling scrbbler
or story -monger, fearful that he would be
dismissed by them to the ounces stool for
some solocism in manners or pronunciation.
To be sure, we did what we could TO make
ourselves q descent and an antiquity. The
New Englanders kept the dead bones of the
Pilgrim Fathers stalking abroad in the sight
of all men. Philadelphia has never buried
William Penn; in New-York we made what
capital we could out of Hendrix Hudson ; and
Virginia families, headed by the Lees, console
themselves to-day for their empty pockets and
missing slaves by squabbing about whether
their visionary coats -Of-arm3 should be moons
with untitled horns or rampant squirrels.
But Chicago has como to the rescue. She
has discovered skull in Calaveras County,
California, and named it in her Academy of
Sciences, which proves tho American to DO
not tho youngest son of Time, but the UNI
named ancestor of Time itself. The European
scientific journals receive the report of the dis
coyery with breathless awe. "Tho spot from
(which the skull was TAKEN" they say 4" the
"lOwest of four deposits of aurierous gravel
cover which were five successive beds OF lava
land volcanic tula, refers it to the Pli0cene
cor tho age before eho volcanic eruptions
(Which cover "A great part of the State, pre-
"ceding that of the mastOdon, elephant, and
"Other great pachyderms. This remarkable
discovery then, If placed beyond doubt car
cries back the presence of man in America to
"a period even more remote than that inferred
from tho stone implements in the drift Of
"Abbcyille and Amiens in the valley of the
"Somme OF the human skeleton in tho lOcss of
"tho Rhine Various conjectures follow rs TO
tho effect of this discovery upon future science
But what do we care for future sciencei
We arc no longer like Melchisedec, with
out father, mother, or descent. The
past ia ours. The first dead Yam
keo has gone down TO be crowned King in
Hades. "Hell from beneath is moved to meet
chin at his coming: it stirreth up the dead
Z" for him, even the chief ones of tho earth"
Talk II Yogr Norman blood vi old CastIian.