Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/192

 V

Evolution of a Vestryman

But, much as man's religion looked to a more ordered and symmetrical existence to-morrow, just so, upon another scale, man's daily life seemed a continuous looking-forward to a terrestrial to-morrow. Kennaston could find in the past—even he, who was privileged to view the past in its actuality, rather than through the distorting media of books and national pride—no suggestion as to what, if anything, he was expected to do while his physical life lasted, or to what, if anything, this life was a prelude. Yet that to-day was only a dull overture to to-morrow seemed in mankind an instinctive belief. All life everywhere, as all people spent it, was in preparation for something that was to happen to-morrow. This was as true of Antioch as Lichfield, as much the case with Charlemagne and Sardanapalus, with Agamemnon and Tiglath-Pileser, as with Felix Kennaston.