But how far can this comparison be carried? Where does the identity stop? Will the human race become mature? and more than mature?—old? Feeble and childish?
How old are we now? Are we boys, youths, men? Or are we already——? No, that would be too unpleasant to think of.
Let us suppose that we are just in the exuberance of youth! We are then no longer children exactly, and still we may hope something of the future.
Yes, of the future,—when this stifling school atmosphere has been blown away. When we shall take pleasure in the short jacket of the boy that comes after us; when people will be at liberty to be born without any legal permit, and will not be reviled for it; when humanity will speak one language; when metaphysics and religion have been forgotten, and knowledge of nature takes the place of noble birth. When we shall have broken away from the nursery stories.
There is some silk for my Chinaman’s pigtail. Some will say it is only flax.
Chapter II
Walter thought neither of the heroic age nor of Chinese cues. Without any feeling for the beauty of the landscape, he hurried along till he came to a bridge that spanned a marshy ditch. After looking about carefully to assure himself that he was alone, he selected this bridge for his reading-room, and proceeded at once to devour his robber undisturbed.
For a moment I felt tempted to make the reader a participant of Walter’s pleasure by giving a sketch of the immortal work that chained the boy’s attention. But aside from the fact that I am not very well versed in Glorioso—which fact of itself, though, would not prevent me from speaking about him—I have many other things of a more urgent nature to relate, and am compelled therefore to take the reader directly to the Hartenstraat, hoping that he will be able to find his way just as well as if he had crossed the Ouwebrug—the old bridge.
Suffice it to say that Walter found the book “very nice.” The virtuous Amalia, in the glare of flaring torches, at the death-bed of her revered mother, in the dismal cypress valley, swearing that her ardent love for the noble robber—through the horrible trapdoor, the rusty chains, her briny tears—in a word, it was stirring! And there was more morality in it, too, than in all the insipid imitations. All the members of the band were married and wore gloves. In the cave was an altar, with wax tapers; and those chapters in which girls were abducted always ended with a row of most decorous periods, or with mysterious dashes—which Walter vainly held up to the light in his effort to learn more about it.