It was a solemn thought, indeed. I murmured softly to myself—
The knights are dust,
Their swords are rust;
Their souls are with
The saints, we trust.
Just then a wood-tick ran up one of my alabaster limbs about nine feet, made a location and began to do some work on it under the United States mining laws.
I removed him by force and submitted him to the dry crushing process between a piece of micaceous slate and a fragment of deoderized, copper-stained manganese.
But we were speaking of the Aztecs, not the wood-ticks.
Nothing on earth is old save by comparison. The air we breathe, and which we are pleased to call fresh air, is only so comparatively. It is the same old air. As a recent air it is not so fresh as "Silver Threads Among the Gold."
It has been in one form and another through the ever-shifting ages all along the steady march of tireless time, but it is the same old union of various gaseous elements floating through space, only remodeled for the spring trade.