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The family prospered and must have enjoyed public confidence, for we find the name of Thomas Edison, as a bank official on Manhattan Island, signed to Continental currency in 1778. According to the family records this Edison, great-grandfather of Thomas Alva, reached the extreme old age of 104 years.
That to me it presented greater attractions than any other continental capital that I have visited; that I would have willingly spent as many weeks within its walls as I spent days, and that though eager to pass on to a country, to examine into the condition of which, constituted one and the principal object of my journey, I did not make up my mind to quit the city without reluctance.
The old Continental styles had not all gone out, but were toned down a little. There were pretty embroidered satin petticoats and sheer gowns falling away at the sides, with a train one had to tuck up under the belt when one really danced. Hair of all shades done high on the head with a comb of silver or brilliants, or tortoise shell so clear that you could see the limpid variations.
Though a soaking does not greatly signify when dry clothes and a roof lie at the journey's end, nine hours at a foot's pace, through mud and water, wet and weary, will take the heart out of most people. We tailed into Tangier, a dilapidated, worn string of bedraggled vagrants, and rode to the Continental. An hour later, clean and dry, in comfortable chairs, with hot coffee, there was content.
At all events, I've had a good Russian cry over this poor fellow," she added, pointing to the prince, who had not recognized her in the slightest degree. "So enough of this nonsense; it's time we faced the truth. All this continental life, all this Europe of yours, and all the trash about 'going abroad' is simply foolery, and it is mere foolery on our part to come.
At a period, however, when that arbitrary power, which had so long held in subjection the other nations of the Continent, sought to overthrow the only monarch who dared to oppose it, and to claim for his subjects the natural rights from which they had been excluded by the "Continental System," it pleased Divine Providence to destroy the fetters which enslaved the nations of Europe, as if to try, whether in the school of adversity, they had learned to merit the blessings of independence.
Lowell in 1894, who thus wrote of them: "Scattered over the orange-ochre groundwork of the continental regions of the planet, are any number of dark round spots. How many there may be it is not possible to state, as the better the seeing, the more of them there seem to be. In spite, however, of their great number, there is no instance of one unconnected with a canal.
"There is Tom Willing, who made the most part of his money importing Guinea niggers, and now is in a mortal funk lest some of it, like them, shall run away. Two years ago he was a member of the rebel Congress and a partner of that desperate speculator Morris, with a hand thrust deep in the Continental treasury rag-bag.
From the time of Richelieu until 1870, France was stronger than any of her continental neighbors. Unless they were united against her she had little to fear from them; and her comparative strength tempted her to be aggressive, careless, and experimental in her foreign policy. That policy was vacillating, purposeless, and frequently wasteful of the national resources.
But silver dollars were scarce; and on the 1st of May the crestfallen commissioners had to send the Congress a financial report which may best be summed up in a pithy phrase which soon became proverbial 'Not worth a Continental.
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