Old Hammond smiled. “It always was so, and I suppose always will be,” said he, “however it may be explained. It is true that in the nineteenth century, when there was so little art and so much talk about it, there was a theory that art and imaginative literature ought to deal with contemporary life; but they never did so; for, if there was any pretence of it, the author always took care (as Clara hinted just now) to disguise, or exaggerate, or idealise, and in some way or another make it strange; so that, for all the verisimilitude there was, he might just as well have dealt with the times of the Pharaohs.”
“Well,” said Dick, “surely it is but natural to like these things strange; just as when we were children, as I said just now, we used to pretend to be so-and-so in such-and-such a place. That’s what these pictures and poems do; and why shouldn’t they?”
“Thou hast hit it, Dick,” quoth old Hammond; “it is the child-like part of us that produces works of imagination. When we are children time passes so slow with us that we seem to have time for everything.”
He sighed, and then smiled and said: “At least let us rejoice that we have got back our childhood again. I drink to the days that are!”
“Second childhood,” said I in a low voice, and then blushed at my double rudeness, and hoped that he hadn’t heard. But he had, and turned to me smiling, and said: “Yes, why not? And for my part, I hope it may last long; and that the world’s next period of wise and unhappy manhood, if that should happen, will speedily lead us to a third childhood: if indeed this age be not our third. Meantime, my friend, you must know that we are too happy, both individually and collectively, to trouble ourselves about what is to come hereafter.”
“Well, for my part,” said Clara, “I wish we were interesting enough to be written or painted about.”
Dick answered her with some lover’s speech, impossible to be written down, and then we sat quiet a little.
CHAPTER XVII: HOW THE CHANGE CAME
Dick broke the silence at last, saying: “Guest, forgive us for a little after-dinner dulness. What would you like to do? Shall we have out Greylocks and trot back to Hammersmith? or will you come with us and hear some Welsh folk sing in a hall close by here? or would you like presently to come with me into the City and see some really fine building? or—what shall it be?”
“Well,” said I, “as I am a stranger, I must let you choose for me.”