Stepsons of Light

There are two sorts of people—those who point with pride and those who view with alarm. They are quite right. The world will not soon forget Parkman “of Ours”. Here was a man of learning, common sense, judgment and wide sympathies. Yet once he stumbled; the paregorical imperative, which impels each of us to utter ignominious nonsense, urged Francis Parkman to the like unhappiness, drove him to father and put forth this void and singular statement:


I have often perplexed myself to divine the various motives that give impulse to this strange migration; but whatever they may be, whether an insane hope of a better condition of life, or a desire of shaking off the restraints of law and society, or mere restlessness, certain it is that multitudes bitterly repent the journey.