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just sensible; and they lived in a nice sensible house in the later
Victorian sham Queen Anne style of architecture, with sham
half-timbering of chocolate-painted plaster in the gables, Lincrusta
Walton sham carved oak panels, a terrace of terra cotta to imitate
stone, and cathedral glass in the front door. His boys went to good
solid schools, and were put to respectable professions; his girls, in
spite of a fantastic protest or so, were all married to suitable,
steady, oldish young men with good prospects. And when it was a fit and
proper thing for him to do so, Mr. Morris died. His tomb was of marble,
and, without any art nonsense or laudatory inscription, quietly
imposing--such being the fashion of his time.
He underwent various changes according to the accepted custom in these
cases, and long before this story begins his bones even had become dust,
and were scattered to the four quarters of heaven. And his sons and his
grandsons and his great-grandsons and his great-great-grandsons, they
too were dust and ashes, and were scattered likewise. It was a thing he
could not have imagined, that a day would come when even his
great-great-grandsons would be scattered to the four winds of heaven. If
any one had suggested it to him he would have resented it. He was one of
those worthy people who take no interest in the future of mankind at
all. He had grave doubts, indeed, if there was any future for mankind
after he was dead.
It seemed quite impossible and quite uninteresting to imagine anything
happening after he was dead. Yet the thing was so, and when even his
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