MD3PAD 256-258

[Toby G Levy]

        Page 256 is blank. Page 257 begins Chapter 26 with a long
passage from the nonexistent poet Timothy Tox's poem "The Line." The
poem describes the dispute between Maryland and Pennsylvania over their
border and how  Mason and Dixon arrived "To mark the Earth with
Geometrick Scars."

        It is the middle of November when Mason and Dixon arrive in the
new world, and before they can see much of anything, they hear lots of
different noises marking civilization coming from the shore.  They awake
the next morning to coffee made by Shorty the cook, and Captain Falconer
moves the vessel to a dock in Philadelphia, described as "second only to
London, as the greatest of English-speaking cities."

        Mason and Dixon stand on the quarter-deck taking in the view.
The climate feels like late English summer to them.

Toby