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Bentarasko Benta Section 06
Page 03
It is yet a much disputed point to what particular portion of the Glacial Age we can trace the appearance of man. We can profitably note the tendency of scientific thought in this direction. But a short time has elapsed since a few scholars here and there began to urge an antiquity for man extending back beyond the commonly accepted period of six thousand years. Though it is now well known and admitted that there are no good grounds for this estimate, yet such was its hold, such its sway over scientific as well as popular thought, that an appeal to this chronology was deemed sufficient answer to the discoveries of DePerthes, Schmerling, and others. It was but yesterday that this popular belief was overthrown and due weight given the discoveries of careful explorers in many branches, and the antiquity of man referred, on indisputable grounds, to a point of time at least as far back as the close of the preceding geological age.
The Dominie was to preach his harvest sermon, and his flock was to join him in giving thanks to God for the bounties He had bestowed upon them. He had, indeed, blessed them with an abundant harvest that year; and now they had come to thank Him and be joyful. Conspicuous in the group was the little snuffy doctor, Critchel, looking happy among the people whose ills he had administered to for half a century. On Harvest-Sunday he could kiss and caress the bright faced little children he had helped bring into the world as fondly as a young mother. There, too, was the schoolmaster, with his ruddy face and his seedy clothes, ready to do his part in making Harvest-Sunday pass pleasantly, for indeed the crop was a matter of importance with him. And there was Titus Bright, for the merry little inn-keeper would have considered such a gathering incomplete without him. Titus was not so well thought of by the Dutch settlers since he gave up his little tavern for a big one, and had taken to boarding fine folks from the city.
Among the other events which occurred during the reign of King Charles the Second, and which tended to connect unfavorable associations with the recollection of it in the minds of men, was a very extraordinary affair, which is known in history by the name of Titus Oates's Popish Plot. It was the story of a plot, said to have been formed by the Catholics, to put King Charles to death, and place his brother James, who, it will be recollected, was a Catholic, upon the throne in his stead. The story of this plot was told by a man named Titus Oates, and as it was at first generally believed, it occasioned infinite trouble and difficulty. In after times, however, the whole story came to be regarded as the fabrication of Oates, without there being any foundation for it whatever; hence the name of Titus Oates's Popish Plot, by which the affair has always since been designated in history. The circumstances were these:
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