Page:A Few Hours in a Far Off Age.djvu/87

88

E have arrived. Again I am in the court-yard of this palace of learning. Together we mount the steps. As we proceed towards an alcove, more of earnestness comes in all their faces—noticeable in every group taking places for study.

My darlings all have removed hats, and are seated.

At his mother's request, Frederick reads from book of reference:

"These strange-looking implements were used by those half-brutal people to destroy life, when they coveted the possessions of other communities, or to avenge any insult to their vanity. So merciless were they that, not content with annihilating their own kind in their frightful encounters, they also killed vast numbers of an elegant animal called the horse. Many writers of the twenty-first century affirm that its intelligence often exceeded that of its owner. For further information see the interesting work entitled 'Where is the Horse?' by Z. Darrin, said to have ascended from an ancient writer named Darwin, who, with a few others of his time, met with great opposition and vituperation, because they used their reason more than was customary in those ages."

"Of course," says the mother, "no writers of that early time could have reached the present stage of knowledge, and they were consequently at fault in many of their deductions. But that was not the cause of the foolish gibes with which