"
Of course we could. There were the Flies still
moving! or we might go ourselves!
[And here the reader must indulge me in a long
parenthesis. I beg him to bear me witness that I never
made one before. This parenthesis is on the tense that
I am obliged to use in sending to the press these
minutes. The reader observes that the last transactions
mentioned happen in April and May, 1871. Those to be
narrated are the sequence of those already told.
Speaking of them in 1870 with the coarse tenses of the
English language is very difficult. One needs, for
accuracy, a sure future, a second future, a paulo-post
future, and a paulum-ante future, none of which does this
language have. Failing this, one would be glad of an a-
orist,--tense without time,--if the grammarians will not
swoon at hearing such language. But the English tongue
hath not that, either. Doth the learned reader remember
that the Hebrew--language of history and prophecy--hath
only a past and a future tense, but hath no present? Yet
that language succeeded tolerably in expressing the
present griefs or joys of David and of Solomon. Bear
with me, then, O critic! if even in 1870 I use the so-
called past tenses in narrating what remaineth of this
history up to the summer of 1872. End of the
parenthesis.]
On careful consideration, however, no one volunteers
to go.
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