Prologue
_ Good wine needs no bush； but this story has to begin with an apology.
Years ago I promised myself to write a treatise on the lost Mayors of Cornwall--dignitaries whose pleasant fame is now night, recalled only by some neat byword or proverb current in the Delectable (or as a public speaker pronounced it the other day, the Dialectable) Duchy. Thus you may hear of "the Mayor of Falmouth, who thanked God when the town jail was enlarged"； "the Mayor of Market Jew, sitting in his own light"； "the Mayor of Tregoney, who could read print upside-down, but wasn‘t above being spoken to"； "the Mayor of Calenick, who walked two miles to ride one"； "the Mayor of East Looe, who called the King of England ‘Brother.‘" Everyone remembers the stately prose in which Gibbon records when and how he determined on his great masterpiece, when and how he completed it. "It was at Rome: on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed fria

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