“I don’t think you realise the difficulties of the thing,” I said. “The younger generation isn’t a handful; it’s a largish mass to tackle: and one must cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth. The number of possible instructors is limited by the labour market.”
“Hearken to the voice of the ‘practical man.’” She laughed, but not unkindly. “You don’t seem to realise, Mr. Flint, that things can be done if one is determined to do them—physical impossibilities apart, of course. When a conjurer devises a trick, do you think that he sets out by considering his available machinery? Not at all. He first thinks of the illusion he wants to produce; and he fits his machinery to that. What we need to do is to fix on our aim and then invent machinery for it. You seem to me always to put the cart before the horse and to work on the lines: ‘What can we do with the machinery we have?’ That’s all wrong, you know. We’re on the edge of a new time now; and we can do as we please. The old system is gone; and we can set up anything we choose. What we have to be sure is that the end we work toward is the right one.”
We discussed education from various points of view, I remember; but what struck me most in her ideas was the emphasis which she laid on the faculty of wonder. One of her fears was that, in the stress of the new time, life would become machine-made and that the human race might degenerate into a mere set of engine-tenders to whom the whole world of imagination was closed.
“I would begin with the tiny children,” she said, “and feed their minds on fairy tales. Only they would be new kinds of fairy tales—something to bring the wonder of Fairyland into their daily life. The old fairy tales were always about things ‘once upon a time’ and in some dim far-off country which no child ever reached. I want to bring Fairyland to their very doors and keep some of the mystery in life. I wouldn’t mind if they grew superstitious and believed in gnomes and elves and sprites and such things, so long as they felt the world was wonderful. We mustn’t let them become mere slaves to machinery. Life needs a tinge of unreality if one is to get the most out of it, so long as it is the right kind of unreality. Did you ever read Hudson’s Crystal Age?”
“No, I never came across it.”
“Do you mind if I show you something in it?”
She rose and took down a book from its shelf; then, coming back into the lamplight, searched for a passage and began to read:
“‘Thus ... we come to the wilderness of Coradine.... There a stony soil brings forth only thorns, and thistles, and sere tufts of grass; and blustering winds rush over the unsheltered reaches, where the rough-haired goats huddle for warmth; and there is no melody save the many-toned voices of the wind and the plover’s wild cry. There dwell the children of Coradine, on the threshold of the wind-vexed wilderness, where the stupendous columns of green glass uphold the roof of the House of Coradine; the ocean’s voice is in their rooms, and the inland-blowing wind brings to them the salt spray and yellow sand swept at low tide from the desolate floors of the sea, and the white-winged bird flying from the black tempest screams aloud in their shadowy halls. There, from the high terraces, when the moon is at its full, we see the children of Coradine gathered together, arrayed like no others, in shining garments of gossamer threads, when, like thistledown chased by eddying winds, now whirling in a cloud, now scattering far apart, they dance their moonlight dances on the wide alabaster floors; and coming and going they pass away, and seem to melt into the moonlight, yet ever to return again with changeful melody and new measures. And, seeing this, all those things in which we ourselves excel seem poor in comparison, becoming pale in our memories. For the winds and waves, and the whiteness and grace, have been ever with them; and the winged seed of the thistle, and the flight of the gull, and the storm-vexed sea, flowering in foam, and the light of the moon on sea and barren land, have taught them this art, and a swiftness and grace which they alone possess.’”
The moonbeam-haunted vision which the words called up seemed to touch something in my mind; a long-closed gate of Faery swung softly ajar; and once more I seemed to hear the faint and far-off horns of Elfland as I had heard them when I was a child. Wearied with toil in my ruthless world of the present, I paused, unconscious for a moment, before this gateway of the Unreal. I felt the call of the seas that wash the dim coasts of Ultima Thule and of the strange birds crying to each other in the trees of Hy-Brasil.
Miss Huntingtower sat silent; and when I came out of these few seconds of reverie, I found that she had been watching my expression keenly: