India-rubber is
modern, but the yellow animal substance which is elastic like that, and
serves the same purpose in the animal economy which that serves in our
mechanical contrivances, is as old as the mammalia. The dome, the round
and the Gothic arch, the groined roof, the flying buttress, are all
familiar to those who have studied the bony frame of man. All forms of
the lever and all the principal kinds of hinges are to be met with in our
own frames. The valvular arrangements of the blood-vessels are
unapproached by any artificial apparatus, and the arrangements for
preventing friction are so perfect that two surfaces will play on each
other for fourscore years or more and never once trouble their owner by
catching or rubbing so as to be felt or heard.
But stranger than these repetitions are the coincidences one finds in the
manners and speech of antiquity and our own time. In the days when Flood
Ireson was drawn in the cart by the Maenads of Marblehead, that fishing
town had the name of nurturing a young population not over fond of
strangers. It used to be said that if an unknown landsman showed himself
in the streets, the boys would follow after him, crying, "Rock him! Rock
him! He's got a long-tailed coat on!"
Now if one opens the Odyssey, he will find that the Phaeacians, three
thousand years ago, were wonderfully like these youthful Marbleheaders.
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