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Atlantic Monthly, Vol 2, Issue 12, October, 1858
The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12,
October, 1858, by Various
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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858
Author: Various
Release Date: December 11, 2003 [eBook #10435]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 2, ISSUE 12, OCTOBER, 1858***
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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
VOL. II.--OCTOBER, 1858.--NO. XII.
THE NEW WORLD AND THE NEW MAN.
Half a dozen rivulets leap down the western declivity of the Rocky Mountains, and unite; four thousand miles away the mighty Missouri debouches into the Mexican Gulf as the result of that junction. Did the rivulets propose or plan the river? Not at all; but they knew, each, its private need to find a lower level; the universal law they obeyed accomplished the rest. So is it with the great human streams. Mighty beginnings do not lie in the minds of the beginners. History is a perpetual surprise, ever developing results of which men were the agents without being the expectants. Individual actors, with respect to the master claim of humanity, are, for the most part, not unlike that fleet hound which, enticed by a tempting prospect of meat, outran a locomotive engine al