The modern
scientific discoverer and inventor oftentimes finds himself engaged in
quests as strange as that of the Holy Grail of Round-Table fiction. To
the Past, with its mythic delusions, simplicity, and dense ignorance of
Nature, we can never return, any more than the mature man can shrink
into the fresh boy again. Nor is it to be regretted. The distant in
time, like the distant in space, wears a halo, a vague, blue
loveliness, which is all unreal. The tired wayfarer, who is weary with
the dust, the din, and stony footing of the Actual and the Present, may
sometimes fondly imagine, that, if he could return to the far Past, he
would find all smooth and golden there; but it is a pleasant delusion
of that glorious arch-cheat, the Imagination. Yet if we cannot go back
to the Past, we can march forward to a Future, which opens a deeper and
more wondrous and airier vista, with its magicians of the Actual
casting into shade the puny achievements of old necromancy and mythic
agencies.
* * * * *
JUANITA.
Yes! I had, indeed, a glorious revenge! Other people have had home,
love, happiness; they have had fond caresses, tender cares, the bright
faces of children shining round the board.
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