railroad embankments up, and shut off the old world that was behind
them. Climb up that bank on which the irons are laid, and look to the
other side--it is gone. There IS no other side. Try and catch yesterday.
Where is it? Here is a Times newspaper, dated Monday 26th, and this is
Tuesday 27th. Suppose you deny there was such a day as yesterday?

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 praerailroadites 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 before railways are
antediluvians--we must pass away. We are growing scarcer every day; and
old--old--very old relicts of the times when George was still fighting
the Dragon.