“I don’t know what’s coming upon us.”
“Aha!” Garland exulted, “even you are bitten with the same.”
He flung his hand out in quick deprecation.
“Oh, I don’t pretend to be a reformer. I leave that to others. I hate logarithms. I like speculative astronomy. I am naturally a lover of romance. My mind turns toward the far past or future. I like to illustrate the foolery of these society folks by stories which I invent. The present don’t interest me—at least not taken as it is. Possibilities interest me.”
“That’s a good way to put it,” said the other man. “It’s a question of the impossible, the possible, and the probable. I like the probable. I like the near-at-hand. I feel the most vital interest in the average fact.”
“I know you do, and I like it after you get through with it, but I don’t care to deal with the raw material myself. I like the archaic.”
“Yet some of your finest things, I repeat, are your reminiscent verses of boy-life,” pursued Garland, who called himself a veritist and enjoyed getting his friend as nearly on his ground as possible.
