Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/25

Rh instance, that the so-called "Session of 1893" was a mere "railway-journey nightmare," the result of a too copious meal too hastily devoured at Newcastle. We had found that out, every one of us, ere we had been twenty-four hours on board. One lost soul there was among us, it is true, who muttered strange words, which sounded like "Parish Councils Bill;" but we others, the saved, gazed upon him with compassion and without comprehension, and anon he faded away. So, too, it fared with those who had brought with them broken sentences of the language of some dreamland in which men talk, it would seem, about Realism, and Impressionism, and other plainly imaginary things; but these sufferers also were easily curable. Their malady soon yielded to the humane treatment of neglect, and they ceased to regard their illusions as realities. For illusions, of course, they are. There are, in reality, no such things as politics, or economics, or art, or literature, or science, or philanthropy, or