Margaret said every nation looked back to this; but, after all, it was only the ideal. The past was a curtain on which they embroidered their pictures of the present.
William White said that all great men looked to the appreciation of the future. We are too near to the present.
Margaret agreed.
E. P. P. said, all the science of Europe could not offer anything like the old Egyptian lore.
Margaret said the moderns needed the assistance of a despotic government.
Charles Wheeler spoke of the monuments in Central America; but before he could utter what was in his mind, Margaret interrupted, saying that all the greatness of the Mexicans only sufficed to show their littleness. We might have lost in grandeur and piety, but we had gained in a thousand tag-rag ways.
Mrs. Farrar whispered to me, “Write that down!” and I have done it.
Charles Wheeler said that late discoveries proved that there was a complete knowledge of electricity among the ancients. There were lightning-rods on the temple at Jerusalem, and they are described by Josephus, who however does not know what they are.
Margaret and I clung to the “tag-rag” gain.