Arizona republican., 1909-12-21
IF SAMUEL JOHNSON CAME BACK.

But now imagine Johnson reporn ilto the London or even the Lichfield oi
 today, It is one of the proofs of his astounding vitality (and. incidentally of Boswelrs genius) that he IS the
 man of all others whom we do con-
 stantly recall to life, as a sort or test or measure of change. l speak for my self. at any rate: l seldom come across any new marvel of science. abstract or applied. without thinking what
 would Johnson have said of this? and
 I often feel a sort of rage at the re- morseless march of time, which makes the speculation so emptily fantastic. As Lord Roseberry aptly put 1t, of all
 men we have never known. he is the
 man we know best And he is the
 man. not certainly. of loftiest intellect
 or finest faculty, but of widest and
 keenest interest in all human affairs.
 To imagine him plunged into the
 whirhng. seething( palpitating world
 of today is to imagine an adventure Tar
 stranger than ever befell Sinbad the
 Sailor or Captain Lemuel Gulliver. Just
 think of it, Think of him, newly awakened from his sleep Of twenty
 five lustres, turning out of Bolt court into Fleet street, What a highway or miracles would he not find 1t. First and least of the marvels. he would see. perhaps a ragged urchin skimmering along on a slender two-wheeled con trivance, more rapidly and smoothly
 than any prince of his day ever trav- eled. Then he would see vehicles. some huge and numbering, some smaller and more elegant. rushing along at what would seem to him mad vefocities. with no visible means of propulsion. Turn ing to his left, he would be reassured to find St. Paul's standiRs-where it did; but in front of it he would see in terposed a bridge across Ludgate hill, over which would come laundering. | with chatter and roar such as he never heard in his life. a smoke belch- ing munster. trailing after it a long string of carriages. every one or them | far longer and heavier than the largest stage coach of his day. And to all these | phenomena he would possess no key. They would not be developments of , anything known to or foreseen by him, | They would be as marvellous to him as | to Caesar or Aristotle, and far more marvellous than anything that his own | age could have shown to those emil
 nent characters, had they joined him in
 a saunter down Fleet street.
 Yet on the pavements of Fleet street
 he would be only on the threshold of l the new wonderland. Imagine him
 buying a newspaper and reading in il items of news from New York. Mos
 COW. Calcutta. Picking tand many other
 cities unknown to him). dated either the very day or the day before. Hal he would think, it is evident that the
 newspaper writers of this generation
 invent their news. as I used to invent | speeches for members of parliament
 But if his spirit of investigation took him into one of the adjacent newspa- per offices. how would his brain rec at what was there told him. He would
 learn that the items of news were only
 occa sionally invented in London-that
 for the most part they were actually
 sent from New York or Peking. as tn,
 case might be, and were sometime.
 veracious reports of actual occurrences He would find messages arriving iron