“Old Bill” Suggests—

Modern science has traced life of this earth back through at least 5,000,000 years of forests, mammals and flowering plants; 10,000,000 years of reptiles, ferns and warm, shallow seas, and another 25,000,000 years to the first abundant fossils, mostly shellfish.

Dictum of Archbishop Usher, in less enlightened days of 300 years ago that “Heaven and earth, center and circumference, were created all together at the same instant, with the clouds full of water, on Oct. 24, 4004 B.C. at 9 o’clock in the morning,” read in the same evening, is something of a contrast. DeWolf Hopper, who claims Washington crossed the Delaware to see him play in Trenton, can almost remember that far back. But it was a good, sturdy statement for those days, settling controversy and getting people’s minds back on their work.

After some experience in trying to pick the bottom of the depression a couple of years ago, we shake hands with Usher, over the centuries, on the principle that any prophet should be chary of exact dates.

OLD BILL.