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Hence the very history of nations in their fresh, vigorous, half-civilized youth always shapes itself into dramatic forms; while, as the exercise of sober reason expands with civilization, to the injury of the livelier faculties and more intuitive impulses, people look to the dramatic form of expression, whether in thought or in action, as if it were the antidote to truth, instead of being its abstract and essence.
Barns and houses were set on fire, and belated wayfarers were found mysteriously murdered in the depths of the forest. Incidents like these of Wyoming and Vermont seem trivial, perhaps, when contrasted with the lurid tales of border warfare in older times between half-civilized peoples of mediæval Europe, as we read them in the pages of Froissart and Sir Walter Scott.
The reason for Frederick's refusal was his knowledge of the semi-barbarous conditions that prevailed at the Russian court. The Russian capital, at that time, was a bizarre, half-civilized, half-oriental place, where, among the very highest-born, a thin veneer of French elegance covered every form of brutality and savagery and lust.
That is the story as I have frequently heard it told and seen it in print in California newspapers. It is doubtless correct in all essential particulars. In due time we rattled up to a stage-station, and sat down to breakfast with a half-savage, half-civilized company of armed and bearded mountaineers, ranchmen and station employees.
Civilization is at best a slow and painful affair, as we half-civilized people ought surely to understand by this time a matter not of individuals and years, but of generations and centuries; and nothing permanent has ever yet been gained by any attempt, how promising soever it may have seemed, to force the natural processes of social evolution.
It was no longer South Russia, but Sozdalian Russia, that was threatened. In 1237 Batu conquered the Great City, capital of the half-civilized Bulgars, who were, like the Polovtsi, ancient enemies of Russia, and who were to be included in her ruin. Bolgary was given up to the flames, and her inhabitants were put to the sword.
Ethnological investigation shows that black or dark-colored races have invariably preceded settlement by the whites. In accordance with the above axiom, savage and half-civilized races are found to be at the present day black haired and black eyed. I will also venture the assertion that nine tenths of all the people in the world have black hair.
It is blackmail and bribery, but accomplishes its purpose, and the pass itself, with a strip of highlands and foothills on the Afghanistan side, is thus occupied by a neutral party, which prevents friction between the nations on either side of the border. The Afridis are fearless fighters, half-civilized, half-savage, and almost entirely supported by the subsidies they receive.
Very naturally, a dispute arose respecting the boundaries, and with a degree of good sense which seems almost incredible in view of the developments of history, the two half-civilized nations decided to settle the question by conference rather than by war. A place of meeting, for the embassadors, was appointed on the frontiers of Siberia, about nine hundred miles from the great Chinese wall.
Alaric's Goths had been nominally an army belonging to the Emperor of the East; their invasion was regarded as only one more civil war. Besides, the Roman world might yet have proved itself big enough to assimilate and engulf the entire mass of this already half-civilized people. Its name was still a spell on them.
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