Page:A Few Hours in a Far Off Age.djvu/90

Rh "Were tigers ever so cruel as this? (Pointing to the 'Conquering Heroes.') If so, our kind pet, Leoni, cannot be of the same species."

"Yes, dear, it has been as conclusively proved that the congener of our sweet-tempered, gentle animal was the mean ferocious tiger of that age as that these fierce murder-loving men were the progenitors of our noble-minded Fredericks and Carls of the present day. You must take into your analysis of our history that in those sadly ignorant old times, men, and many other vindictive animals, devoured flesh. It is easy to understand bow such a primeval diet would tend to the conservation of blood-thirsty instincts, more especially if eaten uncooked, as by the tigers then. Indeed, in some countries there existed brutes in somewhat of human form, who ate anything that had lived—cooked or not—even their own species."

Frederick:

"Oh, horrible! (Looking at the cases.) Yet it was not much worse than the amusements of the 'Conquering Heroes.' What could be more contemptibly ferocious than that one who has just divided an infant with his cruel blade."

Very sorrowfully his mother replied:

"Yes, even worse than that was done by those heroes. So much more so that it could not be represented here. could not be told in the present era—all of which was the result of a state of ignorance, impossible for us to fully imagine. In these war records you have seen one great cause of premature death, cruelty, grief and misery, which endured long, very long, after the originators had passed away, and their vanity forgotten. But (rising from her seat) the greatest factor of calamity of every known sort under which poor ignorant humanity has writhed in agony—bodily and mental—I have yet to inform you upon.