"The best times, Mr. Blenkinsop," said the Statue, "are the oldest. They are the wisest; for the older the world grows, the more experience it acquires. It is older now than ever it was. The oldest and best times the world has yet seen are the present. These, so far as we have yet gone, are the genuine good old times, sir."
"Indeed, sir!" ejaculated the astonished alderman.
"Yes, my good friend. These are the best times that we know of—bad as the best may be. But in proportion to their defects, they afford room for amendment. Mind that, sir, in the future exercise of your municipal and political wisdom. Don't continue to stand in the light which is gradually illuminating human darkness. The Future is the date of that happy period which your imagination has fixed in the Past. It will arrive when all shall do what in right; hence none shall suffer what is wrong. The true good old times are yet to come."
"Have you any idea when, sir?" Mr. Blenkinsop inquired, modestly.
"That is a little beyond me," the Statue answered. "I can not say how long it will take to convert the Blenkinsops. I devoutly wish you may live to see them. And with that, I wish you good-night, Mr. Blenkinsop."
"Sir," returned Mr. Blenkinsop, with a profound bow, "I have the honor to wish you the same."
Mr. Blenkinsop returned home an altered man. This was soon manifest. In a few days he astonished the Corporation by proposing the appointment of an Officer of Health to preside over the sanitary affairs of Beetlebury. It had already transpired that he had consented to the introduction of lucifer-matches into his domestic establishment, in which, previously, he had insisted on sticking to the old tinder-box. Next, to the wonder of all Beetlebury, he was the first to propose a great, new school, and to sign a requisition that a county penitentiary might be established for the reformation of juvenile offenders. The last account of him is, that he has not only become a subscriber to the mechanics' institute, but that he actually presided there at, lately, on the occasion of a lecture on Geology.
The remarkable change which has occurred in Mr. Blenkinsop's views and principles, he himself refers to his conversation with the Statue, as above related. That narrative, however, his fellow-townsmen receive with incredulous expressions, accompanied by gestures and grimaces of like import. They hint, that Mr. Blenkinsop had been thinking for himself a little, and only wanted a plausible excuse for recanting his errors. Most of his fellow-aldermen believe him mad; not less on account of his new moral and political sentiments, so very different from their own, than of his Statue story. When it has been suggested to them that he has only had his spectacles cleaned, and has been looking about him, they shake their heads, and say that he had better have left his spectacles alone, and that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and a good deal of dirt quite the contrary. Their spectacles have never been cleaned, they say, and any one may see they don't want cleaning.
The truth seems to be, that Mr. Blenkinsop has found an altogether new pair of spectacles, which enable him to see in the right direction. Formerly, he could only look backward; he now looks forward to the grand object that all human eyes should have in view—progressive improvement.