Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/243

 the work did not appear for these several centuries. I shall now enter upon this further great step of society, and call it distinctively—

"Honour to whom honour is due." That distinguished ancestor of mine, of a thousand years back, whom I have such repeated occasion to call up in such long retrospect—the great founder of my house, and of that great provision trade in which his descendants have ever since been engaged, and who in this, as well, probably, as countless other matters of his day, if every one had his due and at its due time, ought to have been and would have been much more highly and more publicly appreciated by his generation,—has left on record how, through his own sole instrumentality, this remarkable resanitation took its beginning. Now, indeed, the whole story belongs to the world's fame. My great ancestor, noticing, on one occasion, amongst the juvenile street Arabs of his day—a day when such social spectacles were still possible in our midst,—certain naturally healthful and perfect forms, although otherwise rag-covered, soiled, and totally neglected, the idea occurred to him to collect together and carefully train all such perfect forms. They were to be specially brought up in separate institutions, where they might be duly educated so as to complete all the rudimentary advantages nature had given them, and thus be sent forth into the world as a kind of superior race—a natural nobility—to take, by force of pure personal quality, their natural lead in society.