"Ah! we who began life in the most assured and respectable of
reigns and centuries," she answered him, "have seen much. But these
others will see more. Crinolines, mushroom hats and large families
seemed to promise a decorum peaceful to dullness; but there have
been battles, murders and sudden deaths; there have been almost
supernatural inventions and discoveries--there have been marvels
of new doubts and faiths. When one sits and counts upon one's
fingers the amazements the 19th century has provided, one gasps
and gazes with wide eyes into the future. I, for one, feel rather
as though I had seen a calm milch cow sauntering--at first
slowly--along a path, gradually evolve into a tiger--a genie with
a hundred heads containing all the marvels of the world--a flying
dragon with a thousand eyes! Oh, we have gone fast and far!"
"And we shall go faster and farther," Coombe added.
"That is it," she answered. "Are we going too fast?"
"At least so fast that we forget things it would be well for us
to remember." He had come in that day with a certain preoccupied
grimness of expression which was not unknown to her. It was generally
after one of his absences that he looked a shade grim.
"Such as--?" she inquired.
"Such as catastrophes in the history of the world, which forethought
and wisdom might have prevented. The French Revolution is the obvious
type of figure which lies close at hand so one picks it up.
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