In this country there, arc no classes in the British sense of that word, no impassable barriers of caste.… Our society resembles rather the waves of the ocean, whose every drop may move freely among its fellows, and may rise toward the light until it flashes on the crest of the highest wave.

—James A. Garfield, 1873

The past never repeats itself, goes the truism, but knowing something about it is wonderfully useful, just the same, when yon are contemplating the present. It helps, for one thing, if one wants to get a little beyond the genial Babbittry expressed in the late Will Rogers’ familiar remark that all he knew was what he read in the newspapers.

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