Their lives were rendered unbearable by constant troubles which innumerable diseases wrought on their frames, and by the ever-recurring removal of some dear friend by death.
The advance of age was not looked for with delight and eagerness, as with us, for it brought with it an appalling train of evils. The body waxed feeble and bent. The eyes grew dim and often sightless. The senses of taste, smell, and hearing became impaired. The voice cracked, and made the speech harsh and shaky. The teeth fell out, after gradually and painfully decaying in the mouth. The gait became unsteady. The mind grew feeble, and the whole body was transformed into a pitiable spectacle of ruin and misery, soon to fall into the grave, unless one of the fell diseases to which these our ancestors were subjected swept them out of life long ere this.
Science was then in its infancy, and transfusion of blood was scouted as useless and impracticable, or many of the troubles of those days might have been avoided.
All these things were bad enough to endure, but when we remember that the greater part of the human race was led to expect nothing better after bodily death than a continuance of the spiritual ego in a state of horrible and never-ending torture, then indeed we may be thankful that we are free from so many of the ills to which it was then popularly believed all human flesh was heir.
CHAPTER VIII.
I closed the book which I had been perusing, with a sense of the liveliest amazement. Was it possible, I thought, that this wonderful people had really conquered disease, decay, death, and the elements?
The suggestion seemed so wild, and my surroundings altogether were so strange, that I pinched myself to make sure that I had not really left my earthly casing behind me, and emerged, Chrysalis-like, into another world, whereof the grovelling nature of my former existence had failed to give me any conception.
But no, I was as sensitive to pain as ever I had been; and, to make the situation once more one of active reality, Hilda presently made her re-appearance. It was well for me that she seemed to have taken a strong fancy to me, otherwise I should never have been able to feel so much at ease in her presence as I did.
True, she was not more than nineteen years of age, so she told me, and was still pursuing the studies which were to qualify her to become a full-blown Lecturer on Chemical Science, but her physique was so splendid, and her mental qualities of such surprising vigour for one so young as she, that it was impossible for me to regard myself other than as a very inferior being in her presence.
She was very pleased to find that I had been able to read the books she had placed at my disposal; but her powers of belief were severely taxed when I insisted that the retrospect, referring to the peculiar habits and customs of the Ancients, was a faithful picture of things as they still existed in my own country.