As he bade me good-by, his face beamed in the early Christmas morning light with indescribable tenderness; and as the little wagon with its faithful old black driver disappeared through the snow, I thought again and again of the beautiful, touching love of the man who would sit night after night trying to realize his dream of beauty, to clothe in the garb of a saint the form of her he loved.
—Alexander W. Drake.
The Spyglass of the Past
It is possible for a man to have two hobbies. Dr. Aukirt demonstrated the fact. No one would have thought that the quiet man, who was so often poring over the Egyptian cases at the British Museum, was an optician; but then the truth is apt to be unsuspected. He used to say that it was all a mistake—that he was an explorer pure and simple, but that he explored the past and the heavens instead of the forest and rivers. At any rate, an archeologist he was, and a noted one too, or the British government would not have put him at the head of the expedition to excavate the ruins of Karnac, that greatest of all temples.
The men had gone to their camp as usual, but Dr. Aukirt remained behind. During the day an interesting inscription had been uncovered, and the moon shone in among the pillars of Karnac before the explorer thought of leaving the scene of the day's work. As he turned to go, he noticed a slight movement at his feet, and stopped. A tiny stream of sand was sliding slowly into a crevice between two stones in the pavement, and was disappearing beneath him. He seized a pick and at length was able to dislodge the block. A flight of steps led down into the darkness. He soon stood at the foot of the stairway with the wealth of his discovery about him. The light from his pocket lamp was reflected from the thousands of silver points in the ceiling of lapis lazuli and from the porphyry pillars with their exquisite capitals of lotus leaves. Under a frieze of small windows was a divan with the imprint of a head so plainly visible in the draperies that it seemed as though the sleeper must have but just arisen, but the fabric crumbled to dust under the Doctor's hand.
At the other side of the room was a table, evidently a student's desk, with a litter of writing materials and curious instruments. Across an unfinished papyrus lay a brass tube with a lens at each end. Dr. Aukirt picked up the strange telescope and instinctively applied it to his eye, although he was convinced that he should be unable to see anything, for the body of the glass was a double curve, like a much elongated S. But as he pointed the lens toward the divan, a priestly figure seemed to be sleeping there, and this room brightened, light streamed in through the windows which had been hidden by the sand of hundreds of years. The Doctor looked up; everything was dusty and deserted.
When he reached the open air again, he saw that the sun was rising away at the rim of the desert; and once more he looked through the new-found spy-glass. The surface of the Nile that had been so peaceful a moment ago, was aswarm with boats. Figures of dusky slaves with sad Hebraic features passed and repassed with their burdens. He turned to the ruin which he had just left, and beheld a stately temple with the sunbeams flashing from its carved and polished façade.
The puzzled and astonished archeologist went to his tent with his treasures, the papyrus and the glass, and for weeks he studied them that he might learn to use the instrument. Sometimes it seemed to him as though his search were to be rewarded, but the truth constantly eluded him, although by a smaller and smaller margin, or so he was pleased to think. One day he brought his glass once more to the banks of the Nile near Karnac. Victory seemed very near just now. Carefully he opened the instrument to its full extent—and saw a savage people warring with each other on the peaceful river bank. Then came a stronger tribe, and then a stronger still, until at length he saw the mighty procession of the Pharaoh coming to inspect the temple of Karnac. He saw the rise and fall of nations: the slow march of the ages passed before his vision like the gliding of a dream. The Egyptian had written truth: "I have made an instrument which will gather up the scattered and tangled images of the past, and focus them upon the present."
Appalled at the magnitude of his discovery, Dr. Aukirt stood in silence, and then the thought came, "Victory is not complete, the instrument can be so adjusted as to presage the future." He made what seemed to him the necessary changes; but when he attempted to look through his glass again, there was no light; the lens was broken.