THE WAYS OF MEN
Chapter 1 - "UNCLE SAM"
THE gentleman who graced the gubernatorial arm-chair of our
state when this century was born happened to be an admirer of
classic lore and the sonorous names of antiquity.
It is owing to his weakness in bestowing pompous cognomens on
our embryo towns and villages that to-day names like Utica,
Syracuse, and Ithaca, instead of evoking visions of historic
pomp and circumstance, raise in the minds of most Americans
the picture of cocky little cities, rich only in trolley-cars
and Methodist meeting-houses.
When, however, this cultured governor, in his ardor,
christened one of the cities Troy, and the hill in its
vicinity Mount Ida, he little dreamed that a youth was living
on its slopes whose name was destined to become a household
word the world over, as the synonym for the proudest and
wealthiest republic yet known to history, a sobriquet that
would be familiar in the mouths of races to whose continents
even the titles of Jupiter or Mars had never penetrated.
A little before this century began, two boys with packs bound
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