TIBBITTS’ SERMON.
loaded down with pot-metal, killing each other, the Indians of America were doing the same thing among themselves, only they were clothed more sensibly. A breech clout was a thundering sight more comfortable in the summer than steel armor, and I don’t know that killing a man with a lance was any more deserving of adoration than killing one with a bow and arrow. The point to it all is killing the man. Antiquity!
“What do you know about it? Here is a lot of stone that has been piled up a thousand years or more. How do you know but what the Indians are older than the Gauls? I hold that they are. The Gauls built a cathedral that is standing yet. I defy you to go anywhere in Wisconsin and find such a cathedral standing. What does that prove? Why! that the ancient Indians built their cathedrals so much farther back than the Gauls that they have all disappeared. Nothing can resist the iron tooth of time. Now I think that this cathedral is rather modern than otherwise. [By this time we were in front of the cathedral.] It is tolerably ancient, but if you want to visit a really old country, go to Wisconsin. That is so old that everything of this kind has disappeared entirely.”
ROUEN.
We left the cathedral, and after infinite trouble, owing to the fact that the average citizen of Rouen is sadly deficient in English, found the statue of Joan of Arc. The Professor stood before it in an ecstatic mood; Tibbitts, profoundly disgusted.