DANIEL WUNDERLICH NEAD, M.D. (UNIV. OF PA.) Pennsylvania Society of Sons of the Revolution, etc. "Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.”—VIRGIL ILLUSTRATED BY JULIUS F. SACHSE, LITT.D. PART XXV. OF A NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY PREPARED AT THE REQUEST OF LANCASTER, PA. FOR OR a century and a half the term “Mason and Dixon's Line” has been a more or less familiar expression, and for the greater part of the latter half of that period it was frequently on men's tongues. The lines drawn on the earth's surface by geographers or laid out by the wisdom of statecraft are often taken in too literal a sense; and so, in the course of time, it came to pass that Mason and Dixon's Line came to be regarded almost as a tangible barrier: the line dividing the North from the South. Yet, as a matter of fact, were it not for the monuments set up at stated intervals it would be impossible to tell where the jurisdiction of one commonwealth ends and that of the other begins. The mountains and valleys are continuous, the fertile fields lie side by side, there is no difference to be found in the people, and it not unfrequently happens that a farm will lie partly on one side of the line and partly on the other, and there are even houses through which the line runs, one part of the house being in Maryland and the other part in Pennsylvania. |