Friday, 26th December.



DE JUVENTUTE



We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient
world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark. The
children will gather round and say to us patriarchs, "Tell us,
grandpapa, about the old world." And we shall mumble our old
stories; and we shall drop off one by one; and there will be
fewer and fewer of us, and these very old and feeble. There will
be but ten prae-railroadites left: then three -- then two --
then one -- then 0! If the hippopotamus had the least
sensibility (of which I cannot trace any signs either in his hide
or his face), I think he would go down to the bottom of his tank,
and never come up again. Does he not see that he belongs to
bygone ages, and that his great hulking barrel of a body is out
of place in these times? What has he in common with the brisk
young life surrounding him? In the watches of the night, when
the keepers are asleep, when the birds are on one leg, when even
the little armadillo is quiet, and the monkeys have ceased their
chatter, he -- I mean the hippopotamus -- and the elephant, and
the long-necked giraffe, perhaps may lay their heads together and
have a colloquy about the great silent antediluvian world which
they remember, where mighty monsters floundered through the ooze,
crocodiles basked on the banks, and dragons darted out of the
caves and waters before men were made to slay them. We who lived