Chapter IX: Part 9

All had grown silent as she spoke,
No sound the forest stillness woke:
The nightingales had ceased to sing,
The brook had stopped its murmuring,
A sudden peace had come to pass
Over the wrangling flowers and grass,[15]
For well I noted all had been
Listening with joy unto their queen,
With some sweet hope that they might be
Included in the poetry:
And this I did with love recall,
That fairy life is in them all.

Her voice again the silence broke,
And wavering with the sunshine spoke:
As it came flickering through the leaves:
As broideress her pattern weaves,
Singing meanwhile a melody
With her design in harmony,
And thus she said: ‘O come with me
And thou a wondrous sight shalt see
Fit for a song, my Baldemere,
If thou canst read its meaning clear,
For we must go.’ I naught could say,
So followed as she showed the way.

Right wild and rugged was the road,
Through passes strange, which long we trode:
Great rocks above us darkly hung,
While peaks like towers o’er them sprung,
And grim and griesly was the way,
Scaping so oft the light of day,
We did not seem to climb a steep
But rather down in earth to creep,
Wherein we heard and time again
The sough of winds, the rush of rain,
Then wended from a passage cold
Into a forest grey and old
Where every tree seemed all alone,
For they had changed long since to stone;
Every leaf and twig was there,
As if they had been carven fair,
And all y-wrought in imagery
As men do work in ivory,
Making for brides their caskets rare:
Anon we came unto a stair;
Each step whereof was wondrous broad,
And strangely high. It was with awe
I asked its meaning, and was told,
’Twas made by giant hands of old.
Yet up we went, nor did we stop,
Till we had gained the mountain top,
Where in the twilight golden brown
Upon a bench we sate adown.

Long it was ere I could speak,
For both my soul and tongue were weak
With all the wonderful surprise
At what was spread before my eyes;
For never yet in dream or scroll
Came such a picture to my soul,
Nor yet in visions told of eld,
Compared to what I there beheld.

Straight from our feet like any wall,
An awful precipice did fall,
Ne’er had I thought of one so steep
It seemed ten thousand fathoms deep,
While down below a valleyed bay
Spread beyond vision far away,
And the wild waters of that sea
Showed all that in eternity,
Since earth hath been or Time began,
Was ever seen by living man.
Rising from darkness into light,
Then fading into sheen more bright,
A life which was a sparkling spring,
And then anon evanishing,
For there were forms of women fair,
Like ivory--then lost in air,
Or buried in the billow-caves,
As goblins vanish into graves,
Strong warriors with stretching arms
Pursuing still those wondrous forms,

Or revelling as at glorious feasts:
With all were mingled fearful beasts,
Up-leaping, roaring, rioting,
Withal full many an idle thing,
As minstrels carolling their lays,
And forms of long-forgotten days,
And dwarfs who dwell in mossy stone,
And spectres flitting all alone,
And dead men floating in their shrouds,
With dragons breathing fiery clouds,
Blinding all round with ruddy light,
And then in darkness lost to sight:
There too were castles, halls, and bowers,
With wondrous battlements and towers,
Beyond them others rising high,
And others still unto the sky,
With gardens broad and forests fair,
Yet ever fading into air,
And fields with fountains interlaid,
Where troops of merry children played,
With gentle deer and snow-white lambs,
And nuns a-singing even-psalms;
Fading anon with all the rest,
Like sun-set clouds into the West:
On earth there is no thing I ween
Which in that sea could not be seen,
All that is common, all that’s rare,
All that is humble or is fair
With every known or unknown thing,
Coming to life and vanishing,
All blending, tending into one,
As vapours fade before the sun:
Chasing, embracing, or anon
In deadly strife, and then agone:
Therein I felt all that can be
In Life to all Eternity.

Long at that wondrous sea I gazed,
As one half pleased but more amazed,
Till step by step upon my soul
There came the feeling of the whole,
And then a strange and boundless awe
As I conceivéd what I saw,
Until the thought which seized me there
Became too terrible to bear,
For what surpasses poetry,
I ween is far too much for me:
Life hath its limits, and this strife
Is far too great for mortal life:
A shudder seemed in me to rise,
And, over-borne, I closed my eyes
When a soft whisper in my ear
Said, ‘’Tis enough, O Baldemere!’
And as the fairy to me spoke,
I started at the word and woke.

I lay upon the Wildè-Stone,
All in the forest and alone,
Deep-thinking on the things I’d seen,
And then I sang, ‘O Fairy Queen!
Thou shalt in deed recorded be
By Baldemere in poetry:
God grant that this my humble lay,
May live in truth for many a day.
Would I could give it grace divine!
Not for my honour, but for thine!’

* * * * *

‘_Haec fabula docet_,’ wrote the master, ‘firstly, that there is no earthly immortality like that of Song. Now it is to be noted that in their day and time men give little real heed to any save a very few of the greatest living poets, treating minor bards with a neglect which history clearly shows is most undeserved. For the _vitality_ of even fourth-class poetry is marvellous. It is recovered and reprinted centuries after it has been forgotten by all. What scholar is there who when raking over piles of fifteenth-century, theological, legal, and even historical rubbish, which will only sell for waste-paper, has not been charmed at finding in it--O happy man!--a book of ballads, or even of poetry of _any_ kind? ’Tis little thought upon, this life of song. There’s not one poet of the present day, however small his art and weak his lay, who hath not better chance to live for aye, and speak at times to some congenial soul than any other fancied famous man.

‘There is many a small being--ay, more than any dream--who will live like a fly in amber, merely because he has known, conversed with, and thereby identified himself with some poet, so small that even the fly did not know that the other had ever rhymed at all. It is little to the credit of any civilised country that it can excessively honour and envy and glorify an Upper Ten, or Twenty Thousand in Great Britain, or a Four Hundred in America, and not include in the number more than a dozen poets. If people cared more for poetry they would enlarge the number, for there are in very truth some hundreds cruelly ignored--all sneering critics to the contrary.

He is an evil being, to me, who would belittle, crush, or condemn almost any poetry whatever. For even in the very mediocre, where there has been inspiration and love, there is a gleam as of something divine, which I must needs reverence. Truly, indeed, the muse may have been only a very small fairy, elf, or goblin, or even a witch, but it has a spark of the supernatural or occult; treat it tenderly therefore, as something born with mystic powers!

And there is also a lesson in the Bookseller himself, which, rightly read and widely understood, would do good in the world. There are thousands of people who would fain travel into foreign lands and see strange people, when there are all around them in life men far more marvellous than Turks or Indians, or beings well-nigh as queer as goblins. They go about silently like shadows in a kind of twilight of society, living in a fourth dimension, enjoying senses all unknown to us, hearing sounds which never reach our ears, lit by a light which never cheered our eyes. Such are the collectors and readers, like this old man, who steep their very hearts of hearts in the feelings of the past, and give to every thought that chiaroscuro of the romance of age which is the final beauty of art. It is one of the sarcasms of truth that such a Dryasdust, who has become among fools the very type and symbol of common-place dulness, is in reality all the time in a fairyland too fine for the Philistine with his great horny eyes to even perceive; for he in a blackletter book feels with exquisite sympathy all that romance which was in all life in an earlier age, feels it directly and _in itself_, while another only gets a coarse burlesque or imitation of it from novels, plays, and Lord-Mayor-Shows of poems.

There are very few in this world who feel or even understand in reality this spirit in which the Bookseller has his being, more’s the pity!--for it brings a great deal of happiness to the possessor. Hand in hand with it, like a twin, goes the fairy of Collecting. This spirit too is far misunderstood. He who, having got together more money than he can spend, ridicules the collector of postage-stamps or buttons is like the lunatic in Hogarth’s picture, laughing at his like. They are all, one or the other, inspired by what the gambler-scholar Pascasius Justus called the _insatiabilis habendi libido, similis ventriculi magnæ voracitatis_, the unsatiable desire of possession, which is like a gnawing, ceaseless hunger, the which, as he adds, may do no harm if it be properly supplied with good food. The delight of the collector is in renewing certain pleasant feelings which he experienced before, which some think is nine-tenths of the pleasure of love, or of intoxication, or anything else; and that in very truth man is _man_ because he has more memory and passion than any other animal, and more ganglion. Nay, there have been rakes and Don Juans who found their chief pleasure, not in pleasure, but in accumulating conquests, that is, by collecting, by adding to the list which some pitiful Leporello bears.

Now, as Collecting is a human-animal instinct (as is shown by the raven, magpie, and other creatures), and love and religion and art were nothing more in their beginnings, it may be that as we improve, it too may be developed to a holy thing or a great institution; for in it lies the secret of history and of folk-lore and of preservation of relics; which will be clear to ye all when ye read my great work on the science of collecting in all its branches.

[12]

‘Vor dem Walde was sîn ganc,
Dâ diu naktegale sanc.’

_Walther von der Vogelweide._

[13]

‘Der arme Grêgôrius,
Nü beleip er alsus;
Uf dem Wilden Steine,
Aller gnāden eine.’

_Hartmann von der Aue._ 1320. _Gregorius._

[14]

‘Bluomen springent,
Vogellên singent,
Wünneclîchen schal.’

_Leutold von Seven._ A.D. 1230.

[15]

‘Alsô stritents ûf dem Anger
Bluomen un de Klë.’

_Leutold von Seven._ (_Maienwunder._)

FLAXIUS IN THE FUTURE

‘What I was is passèd by,
What I am away doth fly,
What I shall be none do see,
Yet in that my beauties be.’--_Old Epitaph._

I KNOW not to what land or region strange the immortal Magian betook himself, after this century had reached its end and tumbled over Time’s great precipice. All that I know is this, that it was in some realm within the realm of shadowed sense, where he forgot the stars, the moon, and sun; where he forgot the blue above the trees; where he forgot the dells where water runs; where he forgot the chilly autumn breeze; where he forgot there had been newspapers or stocks or pigeon-shoots at Hurlingham, or wondrous things at the Aquarium, or Piccadilly or the Savile Club--yea, all of earth and what there is of life--most useful, beautiful, æsthetical--all this had vanished like the lightest dream.

Now whether he had dipped a while in Dîs, to talk with Pluto, whom he much admired, or sailed to some celestial violet star, to exercise strange senses here unknown, expanding in the fourth di-men-si-on, this is certain, that it was about the time when the Twentieth century had attained its majority of two thousand, Flaxius found himself again on earth, suddenly dropped from some supernal height or upward shot from the great world below.

... Seated on a very comfortable bench under the lee of the Great Wall of China in a remote corner of Manchuria, he was not there a minute ere he realised that remarkable, not to say radical, changes had swept over the face of the whole world since his evanishment.

For he observed, firstly, that the Great Wall, which he had last seen in a most dilapidated, eroded, crumbled, and top-worn state of oxidation and moss-grown rustiness, was now, so far as he could behold--and it wound like a serpent up and down rolling hills, and over tremendous rocks for half a century of miles, till it vanished in an invisible, grey thread--completely restored as if by contract, all its ancient towers being likewise correctly renewed, as if by some Chinese Gilbert Scott. At its base, at the rate of about one to the acre, were bungalows of graceful construction, but all without chimneys,[16] rising from tufted groves and gardened plains, in whose architecture the old Chinese style seemed curiously mingled with other influences. A very striking feature indeed was that of many colossal towers, about a mile one from the other; every one, as Flaxius estimated, being about one thousand feet in height.

Hearing a rustling sound hard by, he, looking up, perceived a man alighting from what he at once understood was a flying-machine. It had come unseen and noiselessly as an owl, whence, as Flaxius divined, it had proceeded with incredible speed. The new-comer, who seemed to be about thirty years of age, was a man of attractive countenance, manly, and evidently intelligent, altogether the right sort of man for the right sort to meet. He was clad in a graceful, but extremely practical garb of some material new even to the Sage. As for nationality, he was certainly European, and probably English, but his first greeting to the Immortal was in a singular jargon, which appeared to be based upon the Pidgin, once dear to Flaxius in bygone years.

‘_Come sta_, my flin? What one-piecey man you be? My no savvy you--_no hè te jamas visto_--never look-see you before one-time, allo my life-o!’

‘I understand you,’ replied Flaxius; ‘but I also speak English.’

‘Oh, of course,’ replied the stranger with a genial smile, ‘only a fellow gets so into the habit of pidgining; it comes from flying about----’

‘Naturally,’ observed Flaxius.

The stranger darted at him a quick glance, and then looked about anxiously, as if fearful that some one had overheard them, observing in a hurried, low tone:

‘I say, don’t do that again. Joking’s against the law, you know.’

‘I did not know it,’ replied Flaxius. ‘But why are you so much astonished at not knowing me?’

‘Because,’ replied the stranger, ‘I cannot recall ever meeting anybody in all my life whom I had not seen before. You know how it is nowadays, when everybody goes flying about, and all the world is acquainted. And as you are evidently a superior sort of person, I am indeed _utterly_ amazed at not knowing you, because I would have sworn that from China to Peru there was not one gentleman with whom I was not, I may say, intimate.’

‘But you must count your acquaintances by _millions_,’ replied Flaxius.

‘Certainly,’ answered the stranger gravely. ‘I know nine hundred and eighty-four million, seven hundred and fifty-eight thousand, four hundred and twenty-eight men and women by face and name. Since the new system of accretive memorising has come in, and the whole world has got mixed up, and keeps mixing, everybody knows everybody.’

‘And does everybody now know everything?’ inquired Flaxius, as nearly astonished as he had ever been during the whole course of his long and well-spent life.

‘Well, among all the whiter people of age, I think it may be fairly asserted that every grown-up person knows all that man has ever known. Of course, only the most advanced scientists and deducers are really well acquainted with the knowledge of the future. But who, in the name of the Prima Materia, are you, who put such incomprehensibly odd questions?’

‘I have been,’ replied Flaxius, ‘out of the world for a century, and am utterly ignorant of all that has taken place during that time.’

The stranger did not seem to doubt the assertion, nor to be much astonished, as he merely remarked:

‘I have heard there were a few of the very far advanced who could do that, and you look like one of them. And I suppose, of course, they keep it a secret. So if you wish it, I will say nothing to anybody. Now to know what has been doing since you left, is a long story. Do you know where to lodge to-night?’

‘No,’ replied Flaxius, ‘unless it be _à la belle étoile_.’

‘We can sleep in any of these bungalows,’ replied the stranger. ‘I have _coupons_ entitling us to rooms and food, and medical attendance, and social attentions, anywhere in the world.’

‘I have plenty of gold money,’ observed Flaxius.

‘_Money!_’ exclaimed the stranger, as if astonished. ‘Well, certainly, money can be exchanged for coupons, and coins are rising rapidly in value for collections and museums. But coupons, issued in all cities, pass current all the world over at par. But let us get to our quarters and I will tell you the rest!’

He invited Flaxius to enter the machine, in which there was room for two, and a trunk, with some comfortable wrappings. Then as he turned a handle they shot off, upward and onward like the wind. As they flew, they overtook two other _aerevolantes_ like their own, when Flaxius’s friend, exclaiming, ‘Good fellows, good luck!’ ignited several small coloured squibs or minute rockets--it had by this time grown dark--which were responded to by a single red spark from each.

‘I invited them to meet an interesting stranger whom I have just discovered,’ remarked the stranger with a laugh. ‘My name is Oakford,’ he added, ‘and it is Pidgined into Oakforto. _Yours?_--Flaxius. That will become Flasio or Flaso. Ah! here we are!’

He stopped at a large and somewhat singular, though pretty house, before which sat in a garden at tables several well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, of a somewhat Eurasian appearance. An elderly woman examined the coupons which Oakford presented.

‘Take double,’ he remarked. ‘I want extra food. This is a distinguished man of science.’

Hearing this, the landlady and all the rest present rose and bowed low to Flaxius. But with all their politeness it was evident that they were utterly amazed, which Oakford explained by saying:

‘They have all travelled so much that they never saw a stranger before in all their lives.’

‘Now, for a paradox I call that a good one,’ reflected Flaxius. ‘That at least remains in the world.’

‘May I mention the fact that you have been absent from the world for a century?’ inquired Oakford of the Sage. ‘These are all gentlemen and ladies--that is, well-educated and of strict principles.’

‘Certainly,’ replied Flaxius.

‘This, my dear friends,’ then resumed Oakford, ‘is a scientist and philosopher of the very highest rank, since he has been absent from the world for more than a century. As you are all aware, only one among many millions ever achieves such extraordinary power, and from it you can draw your own conclusions.’

The party, which had been augmented by the arrival of two additional gentlemen with ladies, all gazed at Flaxius with an expression of such sympathetic intelligence as he had rarely met among mortals in the earlier time, and then, approaching him very reverently, bowed and worshipped, each addressing him a short prayer, after which the sage, perceiving that a benediction was hoped for, gave it with impressive feeling, to their very great satisfaction.

‘You must understand,’ explained Oakford, ‘that the religion which now prevails is, that the Creative Force manifests itself in the ascending series of ideals, and most perfectly in Man; therefore we worship him in one another, but chiefly in the advanced scientist, since it is to the power in him that we are chiefly indebted for inventions, and all that does us any good.’

‘Ah!’ exclaimed Flaxius, ‘you have somewhat changed religion as it was a century ago. Then, men chiefly worshipped, firstly, themselves, and, secondly, Politicians, who, instead of doing any good to anybody, made all the devil’s own mischief they could in every way, and were all the more admired for it.’

‘You speak of the Devil,’ remarked Oakford. ‘It must have been curious to live in the world when people believed in such a being, and thought they saw his influence manifest in all things.’

‘H’m!’ quoth the sage. ‘If you have succeeded in getting the devil entirely out of everything, and removed all traces of his existence, I will say this for you, that you have more than realised my greatest expectations and fondest hopes.’

‘Nay, we have only got rid of the initial D; but that is the first step. By scientifically supplying natural wants and discouraging the development of needless ones, we have very much extinguished the worst forms of selfishness.’

‘Ah, that initial D!’ said Flaxius. ‘The Dee----!

‘“There was a jolly miller
Lived by the river Dee,
Who sang, As I care for nobody,
Then nobody cares for me!”’

‘I grant that _evil_ still remains in many a form,’ resumed Oakford; ‘but science and philanthropy have combined to a degree which would once have been deemed incredible (being supplied with all the power which mankind could contribute, to investigate and extinguish it). The vast interest which all mankind took a century ago in the idle squabbling of windy politicians, that is in mere factional, silly quarrels about nothing, or human cock-fighting in oratory, has been supplanted, owing to the ascendency of the man of science, by a general and serious interest in what really concerns our earthly welfare. Perhaps we have _not_ accomplished so much as you may have anticipated, but to this we have really come: increased liberalism has so far diminished prejudices, that the world has pretty well agreed as to what it really wants, first of all.’

‘A tremendous progress,’ interpolated Flaxius. ‘It is nine-tenths of the battle won. To know what we want is almost equivalent to having all we need.’

‘Well, let us toilette and then refresh!’ said Oakford. ‘Here is your room. If you want anything, press the button, and speak.’

‘And then the servant will come to receive orders?’

‘No; for you must first form in your own mind an image, by volitional pseudophia--that is depicting by will--and this image is, with your voice, conveyed to the chambermaid. Thus you want two silk towels, you close your eyes, form their image, and order. The maid touches the button, closes her eyes, beholds two silk towels, and brings them. Some men of science--in fact, I can do it myself, to a certain extent--make the towels for themselves at once out of the atmosphere, by a peculiar mental, physiological process, but the less expert prefer the maid.’

‘H’m!’ quoth Flaxius, as a very lady-like, pretty damsel appeared. ‘I should think, indeed, that with many travellers the volitional physiological effort would be chiefly exerted in that direction.’

‘The position of servant in a house specially frequented by men of science,’ pursued Oakford, ‘is regarded as a great honour, and only conferred on highly-educated and deserving persons. This young lady,’ he continued, ‘is the only daughter of the celebrated Kien-Long-na, who first converted rose-leaves into butterflies, he being, indeed, a leader among the mighty minds who broke away the barrier between organic or inorganic creative chemistry, and proved that living creatures could be made in the laboratory. It is even said that he has actually succeeded in making a human child, but as regards that, his daughter, here, can give you better information.

This was said with the utmost gravity, and the lady chambermaid responded quite as seriously, but with interest.

‘Yes; it is true, he has established the fact beyond all question that it _can_ be done, by sub-etherising protoplasm, even in the fourth grade, but I must admit that the specimens of work which he has thus far produced are not remarkably creditable to his skill, nor very attractive.’

‘Now, if I had heard that a century ago,’ mused Flaxius, ‘I should have taken the liberty to deny it, but I suppose that science has even extinguished Frenchmen by this time. By Nemesis! I would like to know what this chambermaid thinks when she turns over--if she ever does--specimens of what constituted nine-tenths of the reading of young ladies at the end of the last century; or what she thinks, if she indeed stoops to think, of those who revelled in it, or supplied it! Holy Science! thou hast indeed taken a great deal of fun out of life, but thou hast outbalanced the loss with abundant, honest decency!’

‘I must explain to you, also,’ said Oakford, ‘though you doubtless surmise it, that such positions are in request, because it is only in a comparatively few great families, or establishments, that servants are kept at all, since scientific appliances now enable people to do everything for themselves. Waiting has become a refined and elegant accomplishment, which can only be properly filled by ladies of superior education. In fact, it is very mortifying to a girl to have it said of her that she is always seen as a guest, and never as a waiter. It enables a young lady to see society and the world, and become more intimately acquainted with people of intellect.’

The supper, or evening refreshment, did not surprise Flaxius as a novelty, because it was precisely the same as that which he had enjoyed during his visit to the God of Ancient Days, and on other transcendental occasions. It consisted simply of a cake to each guest with a bottle of what--for want of a better term--I may call wine. Both, however, were the very perfection of food and drink.

Turning to the assembled company, Oakford said:

‘I propose, my friends, to give to our distinguished guest some account of what changes have taken place in the world as regards food, since he last honoured this planet by residing in it, and will be pleased if you would kindly aid me in so doing. To begin with, I think I may broadly state that chemistry, as the word was understood, completed its first stage, or that of Analysis, about a hundred years ago, and then began to attempt Synthesis, or the combination of the elements.’

‘It was at the same time,’ remarked the waiting-maid, ‘that the elements were reduced to one.’

‘Quite right. One of the first results of Synthesis was to make not only metals but all kinds of substances, including every variety of food. For a long time men persisted--as many of the less educated still do--in liking only imitations of what they had preferred in earlier ages, such as meat and fish, or certain vegetables and fruits. I myself have several times eaten mutton-chops, and once a roasted chicken, and, I think, I once ate a pea.’

‘History repeats itself,’ mused Flaxius.

‘But in a very short time good palatable food was produced so cheaply, and in such immense quantities, that finally every human being was supplied for nothing with a daily ration; it being now the fundamental law that all who are born are entitled to food, lodging, clothes, and facilities for mental improvement and recreation.’

‘Did not this have the effect of creating a vast mass of idlers?’ inquired Flaxius.

‘My dear Master,’ remarked one of those present, ‘you will probably have conjectured that during the past century history has been made more rapidly, and the world has passed through more important changes than it had during all its earlier period of warfare and theology, with incoherent, spasmodic, or despairing struggles. We have had terrible trials, and as yet are only beginning to realise what we have still to do. In fact I often think that we have thus far done almost next to nothing, with all our science, and that the one great glory of this our century is that we have reduced a chaos to something like order, and have produced a mere beginning from which those who are to succeed us may proceed with something like union and mutual intelligence.’

There was a general murmur of approbation at these words, when Oakford again spoke:

‘There was much idleness and more discontent than ever, more complaining over dainty food, than there ever had been during famines wherein thousands died of starvation; the reason being that those who were the most intelligent and industrious could still earn more than others and feed better. But man is really after all a working animal, and as the grosser and more intolerable kinds of labour were relieved by mechanical invention, and agriculture and raising animals gave way to artificial food, and education and culture advanced, great changes and improvements came about. And though, as I truly said, we are far from being out of all these social troubles, we think we see our way out, and have in the main succeeded in conquering those horrible pests of poverty, dirt, disease and social discontent, which once raged so terribly when you were formerly in the world. Even at the end of the Nineteenth century, when there was such a sad period of pessimism and doubt and despair, and such warring elements of labour and capital and religion and politics, men had done great and good work, it would seem as if by mere instinct to do good. Ay, it brought forth Evolution.

‘And Evolution, which had been conceived and born, as one may say, by the _Natur-philosophie_ of Germany, was warmed to new life or re-born in England by the genius of Darwin, Wallace and their supporters. From the beginning, it in turn developed science, and science, technical art. One of the first great inventions which followed the era of synthesis in chemistry was this production of artificial food in vast quantities at a very cheap rate. When attention was drawn to this, chemists soon found out how to vary its texture or substance.’

‘That is to say,’ remarked one present, ‘that it was made like meat or bread or vegetables to suit association of tastes. After a time this association greatly diminished; but it was discarded with great difficulty. People are so conservative as regards food and taste, and so convinced that what _they_ are not accustomed to is unnatural and vile, that it rose to the magnitude of a great national, or rather world, question. But after a while the artificial food became so palpably superior to the natural, both as to taste and uniform wholesomeness, that the former had to give way. Now the poorest man has by legal right a daily ration of food, such as a king would have relished in the old time.

‘Then came another invention, which was simple enough, yet which had great results. It was the production of cloth fabrics of all kinds, in incredible quantity, very rapidly and at a very trifling cost.’

‘That sounds to me,’ replied Flaxius, ‘like what Tennyson called “a fairy tale of science.” There was a story in the olden time in Florence that a brownie or household goblin once served in a family, where he did all the work--swept the rooms, cooked the dinner and played with the children--for nothing.’

‘That I suppose,’ remarked the waiting-maid, illustrates the earlier or theistic stage of society, and a Divine Providence.’

‘Ahem!’ coughed Flaxius. ‘Well, the goblin was greatly loved by the eldest boy, Marco, who, observing that his elfin friend had only a red cap and a tattered and very scanty shirt for apparel, had made and gave to him a full suit of red velvet. Whereupon the goblin declared that as he was now a fine gentleman, and had dreed his weird or served his time out, he would work no more.’

‘I see,’ quoth the chambermaid. ‘That was the Church after it had attained to violet robes and gold croziers with jewelled mitres, and ceased to be useful.’

‘_Um!_ Well, the goblin ere departing gave Marco a stick, assuring him that whenever he would say to it, “Stick, turn, _risvolge_!” or “Unroll!” it would unroll cloth, velvet, lace, or any stuff, to any extent. And by means of it, Marco fulfilled a government contract, and supplied all the clothing for the Papal army in less than a quarter of an hour, besides dressing up all his friends in purple and fine linen, _ad infinitum_.’

There was a laugh at this, and Oakford said:

‘That story would not astonish any child of this generation, for we can really roll out cloth with as great rapidity. What is to me utterly incomprehensible, is that people who knew enough to make even such simple toys as steam-engines and telephones, did not begin long before by making cheap cloth. In fact I am astonished that the man who had the wit to make that tale had not the sense to learn from it how it could be done. Why, the very roller suggests the whole. For even then men knew how to make paper by the mile, and also felt, and the step from these to fibrous and cloth-like stuffs was extremely simple. However it really required the great discovery of making _fibrine_, which followed immediately after that of the nature, identity and relative conditions of inorganic and organic substance. After that, people spun all kinds of fibre out of anything. Now clothing, like food, is supplied from the government manufactory gratis to everybody; the result having been to destroy the vanity of dress or ostentation of mere clothing, for now that gold and diamonds are cheap, and everything can be made, we have very different ambitions.

‘Perhaps the greatest factor in producing our present state of society has been _Aerostation_ by flying-machines. The first were so rudely constructed that it is said that every other man who used one lost his life by it. This proved to be such an extraordinary attraction to Americans that they all went in like lunatics for flying. They flew races, and fought duels in the air, and roamed all over the earth in machines, in which no man now living would dare to go a rod. We have specimens of them in our museums, and I have seen bold aeronauts stand before them almost mute with horror. Even so Columbus ventured over the Atlantic in a crazy little craft. Ah, Master Flaxius, you must have seen awful deeds in your time, and marvellously bold men who had no fear of death or suffering.

‘Yet pray observe, friend,’ he continued, ‘that we do not travel so much to behold scenery or man as men did of old. For now, he who sits in his study can see all things on earth and hear all distant sounds by telegraph; in which art we are making every day new discoveries, even to dispensing with wires, and seeing all the world while we sit still.’

‘I can hardly believe,’ remarked a lady present, ‘that there ever were people who dared to travel night and day in steamboats, much more in locomotive-trains. My blood almost curdles when I think of such reckless, fiendish courage! But, I dare say,’ she added after a pause, ‘it was only the madly-brave, like the Berserkers of an early age, who really did such things out of bravado. Master,’ she suddenly exclaimed, ‘did you ever _see_ a locomotive?’

‘Truly,’ exclaimed Flaxius, ‘I travelled in my time during nearly a century many thousands of miles in such trains, with ladies as gentle as yourself, to say nothing of innumerable maids and children, but none of us ever imagined that we were doing anything remarkably brave. But I believe,’ he added, ‘that any of my companions would have been terrified at the idea of flying through the air like sky-rockets as you do.’

‘Ah!’ exclaimed the waiting-maid, ‘but _that_ is a very different thing.’

‘Ah, h’m!’ mused Flaxius. ‘Women with all their science still retain certain traces of their primeval savage logic--or nature.’

‘After the first stages,’ resumed Oakford, ‘when the flying-machine was very much improved, and made very cheap, it was at first terribly abused. Thieves pounced down like hawks on property, and with the vehicle to carry two or three, an era of abduction and elopements with women began. Then there was organised a grand World Detective Flying Association, which pursued thieves into the very depths of Greenland, or Thibet, or anywhere else; the result being that in the end the dangerous classes were almost extirpated. For when they became dangerous to everybody, instead of to a few, there was a general war on them.’

‘And the abductions and elopements?’ inquired the Sage.

‘Well, Society found itself obliged to compromise a little on _that_ question, which I must freely admit is in rather a dubious condition even at the present day. While the rights of persons and things to immunity from attack are more strictly observed than ever, it has in due proportion been discovered that conventional and sentimental rights or wrongs disappear with great rapidity among cosmopolites, and that the emancipated woman claims the same privileges as man. Still, on the whole, from all that I have learned in books, we get on far more peaceably and pleasantly than you did in the days of duels and divorce-courts, and all that. When people have nothing to do but fly away like birds in order to part, divorce becomes too easy, and so they end by pairing like birds. Those who have a turn for a kind of domestic life and families--and they are in a great majority--follow it; and those who have not, do pretty much as they like, and are left alone unnoticed. Society gladly takes care of all the foundlings--very good care indeed--and it is a fact that while there was at first a very great increase in the number of such children they are now diminishing very rapidly.’

‘About ten per cent. per annum,’ remarked a lady.

‘And last year nine and four-sevenths diminution,’ added the waiting-girl.

‘As you have observed,’ said Oakford, ‘the flying-machine has led to an universal lingua-franca or pidgin English; and this has induced perhaps millions to speak good English. The old nations are breaking up and diminishing so rapidly that millions really belong nowhere. If a man is too warm any day anywhere he mounts his _flyer_, and can in most cases be, in an hour, on a mountain or by the sea, or _vice versa_. Whatever his calling is, he can find employment enough to pay his bill in any city. There is no mountain so high, no valley so deep, that you will not find some house of entertainment or shelter there. War is unknown, armies and navies have vanished before cosmopolitanism; the Frenchman has found to his amazement that he is not precisely the leader, type, and ideal of all culture, intellect, and intelligence on earth; the American no longer passes most of his time in informing every one how much grander, more beautiful, and in every way superior, everything is in Amùraca or Amáraca to everything everywhere else--in fact, he has ceased to talk about himself and his country altogether, because everybody has been there. In like manner, the English, the German officers and nobility, the Spanish, the provincial gentry of Italy, the niggers of Barbadoes and Sierra Leone, the Jews, and Irish have all slowly abandoned the opinion that they are God’s special favourites and the _fine fleur_ of creation, put into this world solely to convince everybody else how degraded they are in comparison with themselves. There is no use in nations annexing other countries--nobody cares where he belongs; the only binding laws are those of society, or mutual agreement, and as the latter grow in force, those of nations and creeds and circles vanish. Even the home does not exist for millions.

‘“And now our dream of science is to pass
In mental vision over all the world,
Seeing and knowing all, for we have found
New senses in mankind which still reveal
New qualities, conditions, and ideas,
And myriad beings who inhabit space,
Whom men of old divined in feverish dreams.
And as we are, there is no spot on earth
Unknown unto its humblest habitant,
While lenses quite perfected now reveal
The smallest secrets of the starry world;
And yet we deem that we have little won,
But in bold hope keep ever pushing on.”’

‘You will probably be very much struck,’ remarked another of the company, ‘with two very general facts as you come to see the world as it is. Firstly, the great improvement which has resulted from advanced hygiene, sanitary laws, and physical culture. Even a century ago men had begun to discover that cleanliness meant life and health, and that at the end of the reign of Queen Victoria the average of life was more than one-third greater than it had been a century before. Now, the death-rate in the most unhealthy parts of Europe is only three in a thousand, and there is great complaint as to that.’

‘It is to be noted,’ added Oakford, ‘that it was not till about 1920 that the great question arose as to whether politics, or action on public questions, should be a mere matter of faction, like Guelf against Ghibelline, Red _versus_ Green, Big Endian _contra_ Little Endian, in which people sacrificed everything to see their public men take the place of the ancient prize-fighters and quarrel. People began to weary of Grand Old Gladiators, controversialists, co-rivals, and champions of all kinds, and said it was time that measures took the place of men. In fine, the principle became a party with the motto, “A plague o’ both your houses,” and the end was the substitution of questions of practical utility for “politics,” diplomacy, foreign quarrels, and court-intrigues.

‘When this principle was once adopted, it became a burning question, and was acted on with great energy. When people awoke to the fact that they had really been fooling themselves more than they had been fooled by their leaders, and that they themselves were really the government, if they did but know it, men of science and of action, yes, men of great, vigorous, and practical minds, nurtured in evolution and true principles of history and sociology, sprung up like a race of giants and extinguished the talking politicians and mere scholars. It was perhaps the turning-point in History itself, and to us it ranks even above the Reformation in Germany and the Emancipation in America, for it was the substitution of the practical human interests of all for the idle power and ostentation of a few.

‘Then it was that the accumulations of capital made by a few, or by syndicates and trusts, were transferred to governments for the use of the people, so that it seemed providential that they had acted as they did.

‘It is wonderful that at the end of the nineteenth century when these and a hundred other causes had clearly begun to work, so few foresaw to what they would lead. Men did not note that the immense accumulation of capital and rapidly increasing ease of making money would inevitably transfer it all to government and revolutionise society. “It will not come in _our_ time,” was the cry. They did not realise, either, the great law that population diminishes and improves in proportion to culture, and least of all did they comprehend the unity and tendency of all this with improved sanitary reforms, education, transit by air, and free food and clothing, with less hard work, or gross labour. Indeed, until these advances had been made, they could not be co-ordinated, yet it is in that that the very life of society and progress lies.

‘Among the first great public measures which took the place of mere words, such as Conservative and Liberal or Republican and Democratic, was that of health and cleanliness, which at once led to gentler humanity and abhorrence of cruelty, both as regarded men and animals. Men became at first intolerant as regarded seeing others suffer from poverty, and finally detested pain in every form. I dare say that you can recall much which would now seem incredible to the greatest brute now living.’

‘Truly, I can,’ replied Flaxius. ‘There was a very good sort of man named Alexis of Piedmont, who wrote a book of quaint odds and ends of amusement, in which he gave a recipe how a goose could be roasted alive. It was very ingenious indeed, but cruel to the last degree of torture, and it ended with these words, “Then take it from the fire and serve it up, and though roasted it will still be living, and will cry out loud while it is being carved, which is a very merry thing to behold.” It was republished in many books for generations after. And in fact there was a great deal of amusement at the very end of the nineteenth century, much patronised by the very _élite_ of society which was very little worse than this. Bulls were literally tortured to death in Paris in imitation of Spanish sport, gentlemen were present at prize fights, ladies at pigeon shooting; and, perhaps, no day passed in which some magistrate did not let some wretch guilty of horrible and infamous cruelty to children or women escape with ten shillings’ fine, or a few days’ imprisonment. Even a man guilty of cruelties, very far surpassing anything ever told of Red Indians or inquisitors, or torturers of the Middle Ages--I say this advisedly--cruelties wickeder than a thousand murders, was after public trial only sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment! And the general manner in which such things were treated was to smile complacently and say, “Ah, yes, but a little roughness and knocking about makes us manly.” Under the same impression there survived in society, among the most refined people, a vast amount of covert satire, innuendo, vexation by assuming superiority, sneers--in short, the vileness of building self up on the abasement of others, as one may see in half the humorous pictures setting forth the coarse fun of the time. Torture by the _peine forte et dure_ was not abolished by law in England till the year 1823 or thereabout. Yet all this did not make people braver or more manly. It crushed and frightened the weak, or the majority; it developed bullying, and it drove the would-be dignified into reserve, _hauteur_ and coldness, which was all in fact only a masque for mean cowardice and vanity. Yet there were with all this certain curious antitheses, not without great beauty, which I apprehend you have now quite lost. There was, in the cruellest ages, the Madonna-like saintly meekness and innocence, yea, purity, which I apprehend has now taken very different form--or vanished. There was a romance and personal character in it all, which, I suppose, is now unknown to you.’

‘It is true that we have lost immensely since we have been guided solely by science and common-sense and utility,’ remarked an elderly man who had not before spoken. ‘We have lost much of domestic life or home-feeling, and as I infer from what I heard from old people in my youth, and extensive study of ancient books, we have no longer the sweet and genial ideals or inspirations of art and faith, poetry and humour, which once fired the world. They have all sunk to the level of very inferior races and children, who, indeed, are rapidly growing ashamed of them. But then we have gained what compensates for it all a thousand-fold. We are no longer sentimental or despairing or pessimistic, nor is the poison of soft sorrow in our every cup, and in every kiss. In fact, if a man of a hundred years ago were among us now he would probably decide that we do not know what love is; and to judge from the poems and novels of the olden time, I should say that it is decidedly lucky that we do not; for such a mass of misery, philandering, caprices, quarrels, tears, and agonies, as men anciently went through with, according to their romances, before they could accomplish the extremely simple and prosaic end of marriage--or similar union--passes all comprehension, suggesting a mixture of hell and lunacy. Add to this, that, with all their “beautiful poetry” and genial humour, every biography of the time shows us lives steeped in a deep consciousness of woe and suffering, with so little mitigation of it, according to their own deepest convictions, that one must needs see very plainly that they paid a fearful price for all their delightful, domestic affections and devoted loves of one fond heart, for their home circles and piety and fine art of all sorts. Yes, an awful price, not worth the whistle. We at least do not wail and howl, and sing and pray. When anything is wrong with us we go to the doctor, and if he says we are all right, we get on the flying-machine, and skim over the seas, and mountains. When we are not busied with science, or practical matters, we are engaged in taking our recreation, and between the two we have really no time for sentiment of any kind.’

‘I observe,’ replied Flaxius, ‘that you are rapidly losing, or have entirely lost, home-ties, domestic feelings, the warm attachment to a native land, or patriotism, devotion to a church or religion, with all the ancient form or spirit of art and poetry--in fact nearly all that once was supposed to form all that a man ought to live for, including the ideal of self or character. But with it you have lost their terrible sorrows; and you have gained stupendously more than you have lost in a grand philanthropy which the men of the past regarded as mere moonshine, or Utopian. Everything in its time. Every man is your friend now--no one your enemy--quarrelling is bad form, for it is unscientific. I see in you the beginning of an entirely new race of beings. You are neither happy nor unhappy, as those words were once understood--in short you would have been utterly incomprehensible to everybody a hundred years ago. But they would in the end have feared you like giants, and vanished before you as the Red Indian is crushed morally by the white man. Therefore you are great, and I, a man of the ages, tremble to think what awful, what stupendous, power you are destined to attain. You will master every law of nature, and conquer death and the grave, space and time. What were the greatest glories of art and the highest flights of poetry or genius are already beginning to appear to you as frivolous and rococo, because they were founded on false or vanished unrealities, while you are pressing forward into such a realisation of the real in all its immensity as it never entered into the heart of man to conceive. Ye are already dreaming of doing--nay, ye have in part done--what Homer of old would not have dared attribute to the gods. Ye take unto yourselves wings, and are in the earliest rosy dawn, even in the depths of ocean ye are there. Ye spin forth gold or pearl or diamond from the air, as ye will, when ye will, or will soon do so. It is as easy now to create and combine atoms as to breathe; to build a towered castle is easier and cheaper than it was to construct a cottage of yore. And it is all but the beginning of the beginnings of the very rudiments compared to what is to come. You will read with perfected lenses the minutest secrets of all the stars, discover new senses, and through them new orders of existence not now perceptible to man. And with every new discovery will come ten more daring dreams of others, far, far beyond it, and they will also be realised. In such illimitable achievements man must pass so far beyond all old conceptions of every kind that all will shrivel up and vanish. Terribly grand wilt thou be, O Humanity of the future!’

There was a pause, when the eldest one again spoke.

‘Thou hast understood us. Humanity has hitherto been in its boyhood, pleased with its pretty toys and fancies, indulging in passion or despair at every trifle. Now it is advancing to eternal manhood, and growing serious, which means more truly happy. It is leaving the paternal home, and all petty ties and beliefs, and going out into the world to do and dare. In the past lay the fabled, infinite power of the gods; in the future lies the illimitable might of man. What man has _never_ done, man can do, is the motto of the future.’

Then the waiting-maid spoke more gaily: