Page:A Few Hours in a Far Off Age.djvu/8

Rh sounds comes to my ears as a new entrancing harmony. Involuntarily my memory recalls the wild-beastly roar of footballers one afternoon when I was unfortunately compelled to walk about half a mile from where they were going through their brutal pastime.

"Though," continues this lady, "you must naturally expect to find the brute still more unpleasantly prominent than you have yet seen."

"More prominent!" echoes the boy. "Then, mother, I think evolution most degrading if it proves that we came from beings lower than those we examined last Sunday and Monday."

"My Frederick, I am not at all surprised at your opinion. Youth in the individual, as youth in a world, cannot judge accurately on subjects where accuracy is all-important. When the world was much younger, and the vanity of unthinking beings was, of course, very strong, most men thought as you do. When you are older you will not give so positive an opinion on any subject without reflection, or judge by the portion only of an argument. You will, more wisely, await the whole."

"Yes, dear and generous-minded mother, you are right, as you always are. I ought not to have spoken so hastily, but I was thinking of that twenty-first century's mode of insulting woman by placing women members of the Senate in a third chamber to debate by themselves."

Smiling, the lady replies: "Oh! my true-hearted chevalier des dames, it is not known whether that arrangement originated in men's comical vanity, or from a wish by the women to secure quiet in their debates, the men being notorious in those days for their silly quarrels and irrelevant chatter. You must endeavour to restrain all impatience, for I have