Hidden stories

Yet again, a good lesson about remaining open to the fact that everyone has dimensions of which you will remain unaware.

Richard Armitage has only ever been on my radar screen in the context of being the individual to have inadvertently divulged the information that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA desk agent, an event that became known as the Plame Affair. While the investigation of that event was a shameful exercise in partisan witch hunting which turned up nothing illegal but which did destroy one man's career without basis, I had no mental mark against Armitage other than as a character in that sad chapter.

But there is always more to a person than what get's highlighted.

I was watching a two hour documentary last night on the Fall of Saigon, April 30, 1975. One of the speakers was Richard Armitage. Independent of his role in the Plame Affair, he played a commendable humanitarian role at the time of the Fall of Saigon. From the Wikipedia account.

Immediately prior to the fall of Saigon, he organized and led the removal of South Vietnamese naval assets and personnel from the country and out of the hands of the approaching North Vietnamese. Armitage told South Vietnamese naval officers to take their ships to a designated place in the ocean where they would be rescued by U.S. forces and their ships destroyed. When Armitage arrived at the designated location he found 30 South Vietnamese Navy ships and dozens of fishing boats and cargo ships with as many as 30,000 Vietnamese refugees.[8][9] With transportation options limited for removing the floating city, Armitage, aboard the destroyer escort USS Kirk, personally decided that humanity required him to lead the flotilla of ships over 1000 miles to shelter in Subic Bay, Philippines, in 1975. This went against the wishes of both the Philippine and American governments. Nevertheless, Armitage personally arranged for food and water to be delivered by the U.S. Defense Department before negotiating with both governments for permission to dock in Subic Bay.

An officer bucking direct orders goes against every grain of training, even if in pursuit of humanitarian welfare. I doubt he got a medal but he should have.

“Hate speech” is a made-up term used to justify censorship

From Glenn Reynolds' EUGENE VOLOKH: No, there’s no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment. Ever pithy.

“Hate speech” is a made-up term used to justify censorship. It’s an un-American idea, used by anti-American people. It’s a marker for fascism.

And just where are you going to get a lawyer?

This one's new to me. From the comment thread on Call from an Angry PR Flack by Kevin D. Williamson

barthomew • 20 hours ago
Mistake in Hell

An engineer dies and reports to hell. Pretty soon, the engineer gets dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and starts designing and building improvements. After a while, they've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and the engineer is a pretty popular guy.

One day God calls Satan up on the telephone and says with a sneer, "So, how's it going down there in hell?"

Satan replies, "Hey things are going great. We've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there's no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next."

God replies, "What??? You've got an engineer? That's a mistake -- he should never have gotten down there; send him up here."

Satan says, "No way. I like having an engineer on the staff, and I'm keeping him."

God says, "Send him back up here or I'll sue."

Satan laughs uproariously and answers, "Yeah, right. And just where are you going to get a lawyer?"

Terrorists, oddly enough, not so much.

The New York Times appears to be taking two opposite positions separated over fifteen years.

In late 1999, there was a kerfuffle when the Brooklyn Museum of Art (a government institution) ran an exhibit "Sensation" which included a painting of The Holy Virgin Mary (by Chris Ofili) bedaubed with elephant feces and surrounded by pictures of female genitalia from pornographic magazines.

The editorial board provided this opinion, The Battle of Brooklyn.

To be sure, many citizens of conscience find parts of the Brooklyn exhibition repugnant, and it is understandable that many Roman Catholics would find Chris Ofili's image of the Virgin Mary offensive. . . A museum is obliged to challenge the public as well as to placate it, or else the museum becomes a chamber of attractive ghosts, an institution completely disconnected from art in our time.

For the editorial board of the Times, this was a matter of artistic freedom and it was not only appropriate for public funding to directly trivialize and insult Christians, particularly Catholics, but it was encumbent and necessary in order to avoid becoming "a chamber of attractive ghosts."

The Government is entitled to, and should be expected to, insult the religious beliefs of the citizens of the country. Right or wrong, it was an argued opinion on their part.

How to reconcile that opinion fifteen years ago with their position yesterday in Free Speech vs. Hate Speech from The Editorial Board.

There is no question that images ridiculing religion, however offensive they may be to believers, qualify as protected free speech in the United States and most Western democracies. There is also no question that however offensive the images, they do not justify murder, and that it is incumbent on leaders of all religious faiths to make this clear to their followers.

But it is equally clear that the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest in Garland, Tex., was not really about free speech. It was an exercise in bigotry and hatred posing as a blow for freedom.

The palpably fallacious No True Scotsman argument is insulting for an editorial but let's set that aside for the moment.

In 1999 it is, according to the NYT, appropriate and inevitable for the government to denigrate a major world religion through art work and in 2015 it is a hate crime of the worst order for private individuals to mock a major world religion without any government funding.

On the face of it, in order to compass the two opinions, it appears the the New York Times' Editorial must be any or all of the following things.

They must be Christophobes and/or Islamophiles

They must be cowards, feeling free to insult one set of religious believers whom they believe to present no physical threat while placating another whom they fear.

They must be cultural bigots, believing Western religious believers to be better behaved than adherents of Islam.

They must believe that Government is entitled to broader freedom of speech than private citizens.

They must not believe in the First Amendment and the traditionally expansive definition of freedom of speech.

They really hate citizens who do not share their worldview and are willing to ally themselves with intended murderers in order to excoriate the non-compliant citizen.

You could continue but I think it is always best to treat an argument as if the advocate really believes their statements to be true rather than simply attack it on logical and evidentiary bases. The Editorial Board makes that stance difficult.

How can you construe both statements of the Board to be true? What is the most positive interpretation? Let's set aside the real possibility that they have in fact changed their minds, that they now believe they were wrong in 1999 and neither the government or private citizens should mock religious figures.

Perhaps I am not being imaginative enough but the only construction that squares these two positions is something along the lines of "It is inappropriate and not an exercise of free speech to criticize any group who is a minority in the local jurisdiction." We are a country whose culture and governmental structure celebrates the underdog and protects the minority from the majority. So perhaps, in the NYT mind, it is appropriate to condone and, indeed, endorse the insulting of one religion as long as it is a large religion (in the US). This still remains somewhat ignorant given the long history of discrimination against Catholics, but at least it reconciles, however inartfully, the two Editorial positions.

Is there a better and more complimentary reconciliation? I am not coming up with much. It seems a whole lot easier to come up with a much longer list of unseamly and nefarious reasons why the NYT would choose to endorse the insulting of one religion while rejecting the insulting of another.

Perhaps it is simply a matter of epistemological closure. Scott Alexander in I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup hypothesizes that broadly the US divides into the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe (for out-group purposes). As always Alexander is broadly erudite and deeply curious. He wanders around his topics, kicking, prodding, poking, trying to make sense of it and all the while generating innumerable insights and new perspectives. Not all are right, but all are worth exploring further. The whole meditation is worth reading. Some of his postulations that I suspect shed light on the Times' Editorial Board positions:

The Blue Tribe is most classically typified by liberal political beliefs, vague agnosticism, supporting gay rights, thinking guns are barbaric, eating arugula, drinking fancy bottled water, driving Priuses, reading lots of books, being highly educated, mocking American football, feeling vaguely like they should like soccer but never really being able to get into it, getting conspicuously upset about sexists and bigots, marrying later, constantly pointing out how much more civilized European countries are than America, and listening to “everything except country”.

[snip]

The worst reaction I’ve ever gotten to a blog post was when I wrote about the death of Osama bin Laden. I’ve written all sorts of stuff about race and gender and politics and whatever, but that was the worst.

I didn’t come out and say I was happy he was dead. But some people interpreted it that way, and there followed a bunch of comments and emails and Facebook messages about how could I possibly be happy about the death of another human being, even if he was a bad person? Everyone, even Osama, is a human being, and we should never rejoice in the death of a fellow man.

[snip]

This commenter was right. Of the “intelligent, reasoned, and thoughtful” people I knew, the overwhelming emotion was conspicuous disgust that other people could be happy about his death. I hastily backtracked and said I wasn’t happy per se, just surprised and relieved that all of this was finally behind us.

And I genuinely believed that day that I had found some unexpected good in people – that everyone I knew was so humane and compassionate that they were unable to rejoice even in the death of someone who hated them and everything they stood for.

Then a few years later, Margaret Thatcher died. And on my Facebook wall – made of these same “intelligent, reasoned, and thoughtful” people – the most common response was to quote some portion of the song “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead”. Another popular response was to link the videos of British people spontaneously throwing parties in the street, with comments like “I wish I was there so I could join in”. From this exact same group of people, not a single expression of disgust or a “c’mon, guys, we’re all human beings here.”

[snip]

You can talk all you want about Islamophobia, but my friend’s “intelligent, reasoned, and thoughtful people” – her name for the Blue Tribe – can’t get together enough energy to really hate Osama, let alone Muslims in general. We understand that what he did was bad, but it didn’t anger us personally. When he died, we were able to very rationally apply our better nature and our Far Mode beliefs about how it’s never right to be happy about anyone else’s death.

On the other hand, that same group absolutely loathed Thatcher. Most of us (though not all) can agree, if the question is posed explicitly, that Osama was a worse person than Thatcher. But in terms of actual gut feeling? Osama provokes a snap judgment of “flawed human being”, Thatcher a snap judgment of “scum”.

[snip]

And my hypothesis, stated plainly, is that if you’re part of the Blue Tribe, then your outgroup isn’t al-Qaeda, or Muslims, or blacks, or gays, or transpeople, or Jews, or atheists – it’s the Red Tribe.

[snip]

My hunch – both the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe, for whatever reason, identify “America” with the Red Tribe. Ask people for typically “American” things, and you end up with a very Red list of characteristics – guns, religion, barbecues, American football, NASCAR, cowboys, SUVs, unrestrained capitalism.

That means the Red Tribe feels intensely patriotic about “their” country, and the Blue Tribe feels like they’re living in fortified enclaves deep in hostile territory.

I suspect that that line of thought is probably more explanatory of the Editorial Board's conflicting positions than any generous but tortured effort to reconcile the two editorials. Free Speech, Texas, Satire, Christians in general, observant Catholics in particular, and Pam Geller are all Outgroup for the New York Times. Terrorists, oddly enough, not so much.

Colonialism per se had little or nothing to do with it.

From Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff. I enjoyed this book and reviewed it a week ago.

The book covers the 1945 crash of an army aircraft in what was nicknamed Shangri-La in the mountains of western Papua New Guinea, a valley untouched by Western civilization till 1938 and really till the 1950's. It serves as a miniature case study.

There are many in Western academia who are eager to lay all modern ills at the feet of Western Civilization. To an extent, that is understandable as the West has been at the vanguard of most economic, social, technological, scientific and other changes which have so enhanced life around the world in the past five hundred years. But those advances, even when ultimately beneficial, almost always came at the cost of strife, disruption, unintended consequences and occasionally violence.

The critics believe that Western Civilization in general and colonialism in particular were especially at fault for the negative consequences attendant to modernization. Alternatively, and I would count myself in this camp, others argue that the issue was not Western Civilization per se or even colonialism, but rather simply the consequence of the wrenching process of moving from ancient hunter gatherer societal structures and economies into the modern, industrial, knowledge economy. The transition might be handled more or less well but would always be substantially traumatic.

Shangri-La never experienced colonialism per se. The inhabitants were untouched by either technology or colonial rule or the modern economy until the 1950s. With integration into the modern world happening so late and skipping all the earlier issues of ignorance and colonialism, did that transition occur with any greater ease or better outcomes than those areas which were subject to colonialism and more rapacious mercantilism?

It would appear that the answer is no. The trauma has to do with the transition rather than with colonialism per se.

From the Epilogue, page 300, Zuckoff describes what happened after the 1945 rescue of the crash survivors.

FOUR MONTHS AFTER the rescue, Shangri-La and the "Grand Valley" discovered in 1938 by Richard Archbold were formally acknowledged to be one and the same. As the journal Science reported: "The identity of the valley came about through a comparison of photographs taken by the Army just before the survivors were rescued with airplane photographs taken by the Archbold expedition. The identity is acknowledged by the Army, and particularly by Colonel Ray T. Elsmore, who directed the recent rescue operations."

Archbold never returned to New Guinea, never married, and never engaged in further exotic expeditions. He devoted the remainder of his life, and his considerable fortune, to the Archbold Biological Station, a five-thousand-acre preserve near Lake Placid, Florida, dedicated to ecological research and conservation. He died in 1976 at sixty-nine.

JUST AS THE Uluayek legend foretold, a new age dawned after the return of the sky spirits. Changes in the valley during the ensuing decades have been dramatic, but whether for better or worse is a matter of debate.

Spurred in part by news stories about the natives during coverage of the Gremlin Special rescue, Christian missionaries established camps in the valley in the decade after the war. They flew in aboard new amphibious planes that could land and take off from a straight stretch of the Baliem River. After initially reacting with hostility, in time a majority of native families accepted Christianity. Today, more than a dozen large churches dot the valley's one town of any size, Wamena, a dusty former Dutch government post with trash-strewn streets and a population of ten thousand and rising. Wamena is also now the site of a small airport; aircraft remain the only way in and out, but the valley's former isolation has surrendered to regularly scheduled flights.

After the missionaries came Indonesian troops, who arrived in force in the 1960s and '70s, after the Netherlands ended colonial control over the western half of New Guinea. Dutch New Guinea is now an Indonesian province called Papua. (The eastern half of the island of New Guinea is a separate country, called, confusingly, Papua New Guinea.) Hollandia has been renamed Jayapura. Shangri-La is now the Baliem Valley.

Tribal affiliations remain intact among valley people, but natives throughout the province are collectively called Papuans. A low-intensity independence movement has sputtered along seeking a "Free Papua." But hundreds of miles from the Baliem Valley, mining companies are extracting major gold and copper deposits. The Indonesian government has no intention of ceding control over Papua or its resources.

Years of persuasion by missionaries and force by Indonesian authorities put an end to the perpetual wars that formerly defined native life in the Baliem Valley. But an absence of war has also meant an absence of strong leaders, and peace hasn't meant prosperity. The province has the highest rates of poverty and AIDS in Indonesia. Health care is woeful, and aid workers say school is a sometimes thing for valley children. The Indonesian government provides financial support, but much of the money ends up in the hands of nonnative migrants who run virtually all the businesses of Wamena.

Elderly native men in penis gourds walk through Wamena begging for change and cigarettes. Some charge a small fee to pose for photos, inserting boar tusks through passages in their nasal septums to look fierce. More often, they look lost.

One village near Wamena earns money by displaying a mummified ancestor to the few tourists who obtain special government permits to visit the valley. Younger men and women have largely abandoned penis gourds and twine skirts. Instead they wear Western castoff shorts and T-shirts with unfamiliar logos and images. In February 2010, a young man walked toward his remote village wearing a T-shirt that displayed a portrait of Barack Obama. Asked if he knew the identity of the man on his shirt, he smiled shyly and said no.

Robert Gardner, a documentary filmmaker who first visited the valley in 1961 to film the Dani people in their original state, despairs at the changes during the past half century. "They were warriors and independent people," he said. "Now they're serfs in their own country." Others, however, say the transition to modern ways, though difficult, will eventually lead to improved opportunities and standards of living.

Outside Wamena, large parts of the landscape remain unchanged from scenes depicted in photographs taken by Earl Walter and the movie made by Alex Cann. Families still live in thatch-roofed huts and grow sweet potatoes and other root crops, and they still count their wealth in pigs.

None of this is to say that bad things did not happen, that individuals and even groups of individuals did not routinely find ways of exploiting the Dani in the Grand Valley. What this suggests though is that there are terrible costs to remaining in a stone-age culture (annual death rates through endemic warfare of 1-2% for one thing) and that there are terrible costs to transitioning from a stone-age set of circumstances toward a modern set of circumstances. Colonialism per se had little or nothing to do with it.

Bureaucracy or delegation - an historical argument.

From Spain was a weak state, and that still matters by Tyler Cowen. In this post, Cowen is citing an argument that the weakness of Spain in the 1500s was its non-existent and ineffective bureaucracy. The argument comes from The Long Process of Development: Building Markets and States in Pre-Industrial England, Spain and Their Colonies by Robin Grier and Jerry F. Hough.

The great weakness of the Spanish government was not its bureaucratic nature, but its inability to build an effective bureaucracy until the 1700s. Without an effective bureaucracy, Spain was doomed to a personalistic policy process in which options and tradeoffs often were not properly weighed. Rulers could not trust the market because they were incapable of taxing decentralized economic activity.

One example of the lack of bureaucratic capability during the 1500s and 1600s is found in the example of Philip’s attempt to conquer England with the Spanish Armada. Until the 1580s Philip’s “defense department” had only one secretary assisted by a handful of clerks, none with military experience.

As he prepared to launch the Spanish Armada to try to conquer England, he doubled the number of responsible defense officials to two – one for the army and one for navy!

The ships were largely rented from Genoa. Although many of them were sunk in the failed attack, Philip did not try to build a merchant fleet of his own to match Elizabeth’s rapid expansion of her armed merchant fleet at the same time.

I am sure there is some merit to the argument but I am also pretty confident that it is by no means the whole story; other factors were in play that were even more consequential than simply absence of effective bureaucracy.

I recall a passage, perhaps from V.S. Naipaul's The Loss of El Dorado or perhaps from his brother, Shiva Naipaul's Beyond the Dragon's Mouth: Stories and Pieces. In it, there is an account of a crime having been committed in Trinidad, then a Spanish colony. The primary suspect is imprisoned for a number of years while an exchange of correspondence takes place between the island Viceroy and King Philip II regarding how to dispose of the case. Two things stood out. First the picture of Philip II slavishly holed up in his castle office conducting correspondence about the most trivial issues in his colonies stretching around the globe from Trinidad in one direction to the Philippines in the other, scribbling, scribbling, scribbling. The second item was the elapsed time. The Viceroy writes the king about the crime and sends the letter off for its 2-4 month journey to Spain, not hearing back for 8-12 months. They had to go three or four cycles, each being 8-12 months, with the King requesting further clarification or additional information before making a decision. Ultimately a decision is made some four or five years after the event. This in an era when the average life span was some 30-40 years.

As often happens at Marginal Revolution, the most interesting part is not the post but the comment discussion. In this case, numerous readers are taking the authors to task with more facts and alternative interpretations. I think the following commenter has the rub of the issue.

ralph e. May 7, 2015 at 9:27 am

Geoffrey Parker in “The Grand Strategy of Philip II” identifies Philip II’s “refusal to delegate, zero-defects mentality, self-generated information overload and messianic outlook” as causing the failure of the 1588 Armada.

Religion and debt repayment

From Alumni from these colleges (almost) always pay their debts by Jonathan Rothwell.

A novel and interesting effort to measure the real value creation of a university.

Brookings’ new report on college quality attempts to evaluate schools based on their contributions to the economic success of alumni. Federal loan repayment is one of the measures, in addition to mid-career salaries and careers in high-paying occupations.

The challenge in evaluating colleges is to isolate the college’s contribution from its students’. Students with higher test scores and from families with higher incomes—like the wealthy and powerful Lannisters—will usually earn more money after college compared to their less-advantages peers. Also, colleges that offer higher-level degree programs (like medical degrees, master’s degrees, and bachelor’s) will tend to have higher-earning graduates than colleges that offer associate’s degree or certificates.

We predict loan repayment and the other outcomes based on a college’s student characteristics and a few of its baseline characteristics like the local cost of living and the mix of degrees offered. The difference between predicted loan repayment and actual repayment is what we call the college’s “value-added,” or its economic contribution to students.

Look at the results. Fascinating evidence of the real world importance of values and behaviors.

50% of the universities with the most diligent and unexpectedly high repayment rates are institutions with strong religious affiliations. Religiously affiliated universities are only 23% of all universities, so they are significantly overrepresented in the list of diligent debt repayers.

What the data would seem to support is what most would accept as commonsense, if you wish to have a commercial relationship with someone, and all else being equal, favor those who take their religion seriously.

They "allow very trivial pretexts to foment the flame of commotion"

Reading history is very restorative. In fevered times, it is easy to get caught up in alarms and diversions and despair for the future of the family, the church, the country. But we've been there before and come through if we just would pay attention.

Christian scholar Evagrius Scholasticus from the 6th century provides some perspective. He could be writing about Ferguson or Baltimore or numerous other locales. From Hypatia Part I: The Mean Streets of Old Alexandria by Michael Flynn quoting Ecclesiastical History, Book 2 ch. VIII by Evagrius Scholasticus.

The populace [of Egypt] in general are an inflammable material, and allow very trivial pretexts to foment the flame of commotion, and not in the least degree that of Alexandria, which presumes on its numbers, chiefly an obscure and promiscuous rabble, and vaunts forth its impulses with excessive audacity. Accordingly, it is said that everyone who is so disposed may, by employing any casual circumstance as a means of excitement, inspire the city with a frenzy of sedition, and hurry the populace in whatever direction and against whomsoever he chooses.

There are some other good descriptions as well.

The Alexandrian is more delighted with tumult than any other people: and if at any time it should find a pretext, breaks forth into the most intolerable excesses; for it never ceases from its turbulence without bloodshed.
-- Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, Book VII, ch. 13

Alexandria [is] a city which on its own impulse, and without ground, is frequently roused to rebellion and rioting, as the oracles themselves show.
-- Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman Antiquities, Book XXII ch. 11

It is the wont of the people of Egypt that like madmen and fools they are led by the most trivial matters to become highly dangerous to the commonwealth; for merely because a greeting was omitted, or a place in the baths refused, or meat and vegetables withheld, or on account of the boots of slaves or some other such things, they have broken out into riots, even to the point of becoming highly dangerous to the state, so that troops have been armed to quell them. With their wonted madness, accordingly, on a certain occasion, when the slave of the chief magistrate then governing Alexandria had been killed by a soldier for asserting that his sandals were better than the soldier's, a mob gathered together, and, coming to the house of the general Aemilianus, it assailed him with all the implements and the frenzy usual in riots; he was pelted with stones and attacked with swords, and no kind of weapon used in a riot was lacking.
-- Historia Augusta, Lives of the Thirty Pretenders, 22

Sound like the trigger warning, rape culture hysteria, male patriarchy, white privilege crowd? Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Cake baking and freedom of speech

A take that I think is right but which I have not seen expressed before.

Keith Burgess-Jackson points out that the controversy over whether commercial establishments can and should be forced to service patrons whose actions contravene the business owner's religious beliefs is not only about freedom of religion.

There's more at stake than freedom of religion. There's also freedom of expression. If I am required by law to affirm something I disbelieve, my First Amendment right is violated. Freedom of expression includes freedom not to be made to express. Let's apply this idea to the case of homosexual "marriage." If I bake and decorate wedding cakes for a living, then I may not be forced to express, either in, on, or though the cake, views I reject (for whatever reason, including reasons of religious conviction). The same is true of photographers, painters, and caterers, all of whom express themselves through their work.

I think his argument is fundamentally right but what is striking to me is that there has been a national conversation on this case for a couple of months now and all the focus has been on religious freedom and, as far as I know, no one has focused on the freedom of speech issue.

Collins Graves' Ride

I was preparing a document for Boy Scouts and in doing so, I came across a collections of stories I prepared for a Scouting Troop a few years ago as part of a reading program. James Baldwin was a 19th century story teller who mastered the art of telling complex stories in simple, thrilling ways for young children. In 1874 there was a dam collapse in Massachusetts which is recounted in detail in In the Shadow of the Dam by Elizabeth M. Sharpe.

Here is Baldwin's shorter version. I like the recollection of otherwise long forgotten heroes.

THE RACE WITH THE FLOOD by James Baldwin

It was a bright spring morning in May, 1874. There had been much rain in Massachusetts. The ground was soaked with moisture. The streams were full to the brink. But overhead the sky was clear, and the sum shone warm and bright upon the glad earth. The trees were new-clad in their bright spring vesture, the orchards were white with bloom. It was the happiest time of the year.

In the Hampshire hills that morning nearly everybody was out of doors. The softness of the air, the beauty of the landscape, the music of nature, called to young and old to come out and enjoy life at its fullest. The children were loitering on their way to school. The men were in the fields getting ready for the spring planting. The women were busy in their dooryards or in their little flower gardens, here training a budding vine or lifting up a fallen branch, there dropping a seed or transplanting some favorite shrub.

In the Williamsburg valley, life had never seemed sweeter than on that quiet spring morning. But suddenly a nameless thrill passed through the air. The children paused in the middle of the road. The women looked up and listened. The men stopped short in their work and glanced inquiringly first at the river and then at the green hills above them.

"What was that?" each asked the other.

Some thought it was a passing gust of wind among the trees. Some said a rock had been suddenly loosened from its place on the hillside. Others declared that it was only the mountain brooks rushing down, with more than their usual volume, to meet the roaring river.

"The river is wider than I ever saw it before," said the miller, standing in his door; "and it seems to be growing wider every minute."

Then a shouting was heard far up the road, and the sound of galloping hoofs. The river roared louder and louder, and each little brook seemed to be a torrent. Every heart was filled with a feeling of terror. Nearer and nearer came the sound of the galloping horse, and far away, above the roar of the streams, you might have heard the shrieking of women and the wild shouting of men.

And now down the narrow road the horse and his rider comes. The horseman waves his arms wildly and shouts as he rides.

"It is Collins Graves," say the wondering women. Everybody in the valley knows him, plain young farmer as he is; but nobody ever saw him ride as now.

His voice is hoarse with shouting. He points backward, and then upward to the hills. He draws no rein, but urges his panting steed right onward while he shouts,—

"The dam has burst! To the hills! To the hills for your lives!"

He is gone as swiftly as he came, carrying the warning to the farms and villages below. The roar of the great flood is now distinctly heard. With shrieks and shouts, men, women, and children hasten to climb the hills; nor do they reach them a moment too soon.

A mighty wave comes sweeping down the valley like some rearing monster. It carries everything before it. The mill, the bridge, the village, houses, barns, cattle, all are ingulfed and swept away. But, thanks to Collins Graves, the heroic horseman, the children are all safe, high up on the hills, and safe also are the women and the men. Safe, too, is the hero himself, as he checks his steed on high ground at the foot of the valley below which the flood can do no harm.

"Thank God! The brave man's life is spared!
From Williamsburg town he nobly dared
To race with the flood and take the road
In front of the terrible swath it mowed.
For miles it thundered and crashed behind,
But he looked ahead with a steadfast mind;
'They must be warned!' was all he said,
As away on his terrible ride he sped.

"When heroes are called for, bring the crown
To this Yankee rider; send him down
On the stream of time with the Curtius old.
His deed as the Roman's was brave and bold,
And the tale can as noble a thrill awake,
For he offered his life for the people's sake."
—JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.