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Page 88
"Multiply the age of the President by the number of statute miles
from the equator, divide by the number of pages in the given
Constitution; the result will be the length of the outbreak, in
days. This formula includes, as you will see, an allowance for the
heat of the climate, the zeal of the leader, and the verbosity of
the theorists. The Constitution of 1823 was reproclaimed on the
25th of October last If you will give the above formula into the
hands of any of your clerks, the calculation from it will show
that that government will go out of power on the 1st of February,
at 25 minutes after 1, P.M. Your choice, on the 2d, must be
therefore between Vibeira and Estremadura; here you will have no
difficulty. Bob�dil (Vibeira's principal) was on the 13th ultimo
confined under sentence of death, at such a distance from the
capital that he cannot possibly escape and get into power before
the 2d of February. The 'Friends of the People,' in Oronoco, have
always moved slowly; they never got up an insurrection in less
than nineteen days' canvassing; that was in 1839. Generally they
are even longer. Of course, Estremadura will be your man.
"Believe me, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
"GEORGE HACKMATACK"
The Cabinet had the good sense to act on my advice. My information
proved nearly correct, the only error being one of seven minutes in the
downfall of the 1823 Constitution. This arose from my making no
allowance for difference of longitude between Piaut, where their
government was established, and Opee, where it was crushed. The
difference of time between those places is six minutes and fifty-three
seconds, as the reader may see on a globe.
Estremadura was, of course, presented to the President, and sold his
scrip.]
[Footnote G: Newspaper men of 1868 will be amused to think that half
past one was late in 1836. At that time the "Great Western Mail" was due
in Boston at 6 P.M., and there was no later news except "local," or an
occasional horse express.]
[Footnote H: The reader will observe the Arcadian habits of 1836, when
the German was yet unknown.]
[Footnote I: Anno Christi, 60.]
[Footnote J: Tacit. Annal., xiv. 9]
[Footnote K: Anno Christi, 60. See Neander, P. & T., B. iii. ch. x]
[Footnote L: This correspondence, as preserved in the collections of
fragments, has too much the aspect of a school-boy exercise to claim
much credit, though high authorities support it as genuine. But the
probability that there was such a correspondence, though now lost, is
very strong.]
[Footnote M: The Fire Alarm is the invention of Dr. William F. Channing:
"A wizard of such dreaded fame,
That when in Salamanca's cave,
Him listed his magic wand to wave,
The bells would ring in Notre Dame"]
[Footnote N: I am proud to say that such suggestions have had so much
weight, that in 1868 the alarm strikes the number of the box which first
telegraphs danger, six-four, six-four, &c., six being the district
number, and four the box number in that district.]
[Footnote O: Tetrao lagopus.]
[Footnote P: Which means, "In the thirteenth century," my dear little
bell and coral reader. You have rightly guessed that the question means
"What is the history of the Reformation in Hungary?"]
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man Without a Country and Other
Tales, by Edward E. Hale
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