smooth road as it would have been thought in the nineteenth
century to run along the city sidewalk.

People thought the world moved slower; at all events, they hoped
it would soon do so. Even the wiser revolutionists postponed
their outbreaks. Success, they believed, was fain to smile upon
effort which had been well postponed.

Men came to look upon a telegram as an insult; the telephone was
preferred, because it allowed one to speak slowly if he chose.
Snap-shot cameras were found only in the garrets. The fifteen
minutes' sittings now in vogue threw upon the plate the color of
the eyes, hair, and the flesh tones of the sitter. Ladies wore
hoop skirts.

But these days of passivism at last passed by; earnest thinkers
had not believed in them; they knew they were simply reactionary,
and could not last; and the century was not twenty years old when
the world found itself in a storm of active effort never known in
its history before. Religion, politics, literature, and art were
called upon to get up and shake themselves free of the drowsiness
of their years of inaction.

On that great and crowded stage where the thinkers of the world
were busy in creating new parts for themselves without much
reference to what other people were doing in their parts, Roland
Clewe was now ready to start again, with more earnestness and
enthusiasm than before, to essay a character which, if acted as
he wished to act it, would give him exceptional honor and fame,
and to the world, perhaps, exceptional advantage.