| 178 | 179 | 180 | 181 | 182 |
| 1 | 90 | 179 | 269 | 358 |
|
boys could do, and they said "Wonderful!"--without a spark of wonder.
The popular papers would tell of the three sons of Cossar, and how these
amazing children would lift great cannons, hurl masses of iron for
hundreds of yards, and leap two hundred feet. They were said to be
digging a well, deeper than any well or mine that man had ever made,
seeking, it was said, for treasures hidden in the earth since ever the
earth began.
These Children, said the popular magazines, will level mountains, bridge
seas, tunnel your earth to a honeycomb. "Wonderful!" said the little
folks, "isn't it? What a lot of conveniences we shall have!" and went
about their business as though there was no such thing as the Food of
the Gods on earth. And indeed these things were no more than the first
hints and promises of the powers of the Children of the Food. It was
still no more than child's play with them, no more than the first use of
a strength in which no purpose had arisen. They did not know themselves
for what they were. They were children--slow-growing children of a new
race. The giant strength grew day by day--the giant will had still to
grow into purpose and an aim.
Looking at it in a shortened perspective of time, those years of
transition have the quality of a single consecutive occurrence; but
indeed no one saw the coming of Bigness in the world, as no one in all
the world till centuries had passed saw, as one happening, the Decline
and Fall of Rome. They who lived in those days were too much among these
developments to see them together as a single thing. It seemed even to
180
Page
Quick Jump
|