Page:Revolution and Other Essays.djvu/235

 prophet of blood and vulgarity, prince of ephemerals and idol of the unelect," — as a Chicago critic chortles, — is dead. It is true. He is dead, dead and buried. And a fluttering, chirping host of men, little men and unseeing men, have heaped him over with the uncut leaves of "Kim," wrapped him in "Stalky & Co." for winding sheet, and for headstone reared his unconventional lines, "The Lesson." It was very easy. The simplest thing in the world. And the fluttering, chirping gentlemen are rubbing their hands in amaze and wondering why they did not do it long ago, it was so very, very simple.

But the centuries to come, of which the fluttering, chirping gentlemen are prone to talk largely, will have something to say in the matter. And when they, the future centuries, quest back to the nineteenth century to find what manner of century it was; — to find, not what the people of the nineteenth century thought they thought, but what they