"Yes, madame—perfectly."
"Then why don't you disclose it for the benefit of everybody?" demanded Erne Challoner.
"Because, my dear young lady, no one would believe me if I did. The time is not yet ripe for it. The world must wait till its people are better educated."
"Better educated!" exclaimed Mrs. Everard. "Why, there is nothing talked of nowadays but education and progress! The very children are wiser than their parents!"
"The children!" returned Heliobas, half inquiringly, half indignantly. "At the rate things are going, there will soon be no children left; they will all be tired little old men and women before they are in their teens. The very babes will be born old. Many of them are being brought up without any faith in God or religion; the result will be an increase of vice and crime. The purblind philosophers, miscalled wise men, who teach the children by the light of poor human reason only, and do away with faith in spiritual things, are bringing down upon the generations to come an unlooked-for and most terrific curse. Childhood, the happy, innocent, sweet, unthinking, almost angelic age, at which Nature would have us believe in fairies and all the delicate aerial fancies of poets, who are, after all, the only true sages—childhood, I say, is being gradually stamped out under the cruel iron heel of the Period—a period not of wisdom, health, or beauty, but one of drunken delirium, in which the world rushes feverishly along, its eyes fixed on one hard, glittering, stony-featured idol—Gold. Education! Is it education to teach the young that their chances of happiness depend on being richer than their neighbours? Yet that is what it all tends to. Get on!—be successful! Trample on others, but push forward yourself! Money, money!—let its chink be your music; let its yellow shine be fairer than the eyes of love or friendship! Let its piles accumulate and ever accumulate! There are beggars in the streets, but they are impostors! There is poverty in many places, but why seek to relieve it? Why lessen the sparkling heaps of gold by so much as a coin? Accumulate and ever accumulate! Live so, and then—die! And then—who knows what then?"
His voice had been full of ringing eloquence as he spoke, but at these last words it sank into a low, thrilling tone of solemnity and earnestness. We all looked at him, fascinated by his manner, and were silent.
Mr. Challoner was the first to break the impressive pause.
"I'm not a speaker, sir," he observed slowly, "but I've got a good deal of feeling somewheres; and you'll allow me to say that I feel your words—I think they're right true. I've often wanted to say what you've said, but haven't seen my way clear to it. Anyhow, I've had a very general impression about me that what we call Society has of late years been going, per express service, direct to the devil—if the ladies will excuse me for plain speaking. And as the journey is being taken by choice and free-will, I suppose there's no hindrance or stoppage possible. Besides, it's a downward line, and curiously free from obstructions."
"Bravo, John!" exclaimed Mrs. Challoner. "You are actually corning out! I never heard you indulge in similes before."
"Well, my dear," returned her husband, somewhat gratified, "better late than never. A simile is a good thing if it isn't overcrowded. For instance, Mr. Swinburne's similes are laid on too thick sometimes. There is a verse of his, which, with all my admiration for him, I never could quite fathom. It is where he earnestly desires to be as 'Any leaf of any tree;' or, failing that, he wouldn't mind becoming 'As bones under the deep, sharp sea.' I tried hard to see the point of that, but couldn't fix it."