Year: 1872

SOME of our readers may have already
seen the following prophetic tale, but it
is worth reproducing at this time. 1t is
supposed to have been written in 1892 by
Max Adeler, who imagines himself a wit
ness of the terrible scenes which occurred
at the time of which the story tells. The
English satire, ''The Battle of Dork-
ing" supplied the suggestions for this
sad story:


THE CONQUEST OF AMERICA.


You ask me to tell you, my children, of
the events which Immediately preceded
the destruction of the once great Ameri-
can Union, and the capture of the coun-
try by it's present European rulers, and to
say something also of the causes which
led to these deplorable results. under
take the task with a heavy heart, for
whenever revert to that terrible time /
cannot help contrasting our proud condi
ton up to that fatal year with the humili-
ating position occupied now by the Amer
lean people. The story is short one
In the fall of 1872 Horace Greeley, the
editor of a newspaper in New York, was
elected President of the United States.
The people voted for him because they
believed him to be an honest man. But
he was vain and weak, and he entertained
certain fanatical and preposterous no.
tions-about agricultural matters, for in
stance-which he was determined to force
upon the people at all hazards, and de-
spite all opposition. He believed, among
other things, that every man ought to go
to the West to earn his bread, and long
before he was chosen President he used
to advise everybody to move to that re-
gion as cure for all the disasters which
could befall the human family.


Ac ho roaobad no
mansion, which we used to call the
White House, President Greeley organ
lied an army of two hundred thousand
men, and proceeded to force the entire
population of the seaboard States west
ward at the point of the bayonet. The
utmost violence was used. Those who
resisted were shot down, and their dead
bodies were carted off to national fac
tory which the President had established
for making some kind of fertilizer. All
the large cities of the East were depopu-
lated, and towns were entirly empty.
The army swept before it millions of men,
women and children, until the vast plains
west of Kansas were reached, when the
pursuit ceased, and the army was drawn
up in a continuous line, with orders to
shoot any person who attempted to visit
the East. Of course, hundreds of thou
sands of these poor creatures perished from
starvation. This seemed to frighten Presi-
dent Greeley, and he sent a message to
Congress recommending that 700, 1000 vol
1mes of a comic book of his, entitled
What Know About Farming" should
be voted for the relief of the starving suf-
| ferers. This was done, and farming i'm
plements and seeds were supplied and
| then the millions of wretched outcasts
made an effort to till the ground Of the
result of this will speak further on.


In the meantime the President was
doing infinite harm to the country in an
other way. His handwriting was SO fear.
fully and wonderfully bad that no living
man could read it. And so, when he sent
his first annual message to Congress-the
document was devoted wholly to the tariff
and to agriculture sentence appeared
which subsequently was ascertained to
be, Large cultivation of rutabagas and
beans is the only hope of the American
nation, l am sure" The printers not
being able to interpret this, put it in the
following form, in which it went forth to
the world: 'The Czar of Russia couldn't