| 129 | 130 | 131 | 132 | 133 |
| 1 | 74 | 149 | 223 | 297 |
|
great-great-grandson was dead and decayed and forgotten, when the sham
half-timbered house had gone the way of all shams, and the Times was
extinct, and the silk hat a ridiculous antiquity, and the modestly
imposing stone that had been sacred to Mr. Morris had been burnt to make
lime for mortar, and all that Mr. Morris had found real and important
was sere and dead, the world was still going on, and people were still
going about it, just as heedless and impatient of the Future, or,
indeed, of anything but their own selves and property, as Mr. Morris had
been.
And, strange to tell, and much as Mr. Morris would have been angered if
any one had foreshadowed it to him, all over the world there were
scattered a multitude of people, filled with the breath of life, in
whose veins the blood of Mr. Morris flowed. Just as some day the life
which is gathered now in the reader of this very story may also be
scattered far and wide about this world, and mingled with a thousand
alien strains, beyond all thought and tracing.
And among the descendants of this Mr. Morris was one almost as sensible
and clear-headed as his ancestor. He had just the same stout, short
frame as that ancient man of the nineteenth century, from whom his name
of Morris--he spelt it Mwres--came; he had the same half-contemptuous
expression of face. He was a prosperous person, too, as times went, and
he disliked the "new-fangled," and bothers about the future and the
lower classes, just as much as the ancestral Morris had done. He did not
read the Times: indeed, he did not know there ever had been a
131
Page
Quick Jump
|