Page:Select Conversations with an Uncle (Now Extinct) And Two Other Reminiscences.djvu/28

12 right. For instance, when she asked, 'Who sends the members of Parliament to Westminster?' I answered her, 'The governors of the young ones and the wives of the others/ And when she said that was wrong—I don't remember Socrates ever saying bluntly that an answer was wrong—I said I supposed she referred to the Evil One. It was very dull of me, of course, and it obliged her to dictate the right solution.

"Afterwards she threw over teaching me anything, and explained to me all about her Movements. At least, I got really interested in her Movements. One thing she said struck me very much, though it could hardly be called novel. It was that the fads of one age were the fashions of the next; that while the majority of people were engaged in their little present-day chores, persons like herself are making the laws and preparing the customs for the generation to follow."

"Poor generations to follow!" I said.

"Yes, but there is a lot of truth in it;