It was, however, the modern note in her recollections of her world's
march in days long past, in which Coombe found mental food and fine
flavour. The phrase, "in these days" expressed in her utterance neither
disparagement nor regret. She who sat in state in a drawing-room
lighted by wax candles did so as an affair of personal preference,
and denied no claim of higher brilliance to electric illumination.
Driving slowly through Hyde Park on sunny days when she was able
to go out, her high-swung barouche hinted at no lofty disdain of
petrol and motor power. At the close of her youth's century, she
looked forward with thrilled curiosity to the dawning wonders of
the next.
"If the past had not held so much, one might not have learned
to expect more," was her summing up on a certain afternoon, when
he came to report himself after one of his absences from England.
"The most important discovery of the last fifty years has been the
revelation that no man may any longer assume to speak the last
word on any subject. The next man--almost any next man--may evolve
more. Before that period all elderly persons were final in their
dictum. They said to each other--and particularly to the young--'It
has not been done in my time--it was not done in my grandfather's
time. It has never been done. It never can be done'."
"The note of today is 'Since it has never been done, it will surely
be done soon'," said Coombe.
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