All his speculations, all his telescopic philosophies, all his
discoveries, find plausible support until he stumbles on an open grave.
There, man and chickens are dumb. Somehow, those who write and talk
about the future never impress me so much with how much they know, as
with how little. How absolutely nothing they can tell. How echoless
is the Awful Silence into which they toss their petty pebbles of
theories and hopes and speculations. It seems to me that if it were
not for that sensitive disc, the Conscience, which conveys to us the
'still small voice,' from a country far beyond the reach of our petty
theories, the Silence that envelops this planet would be intolerable.
It is unbroken even by the second great event of Life--Death. It must
be a strange sight viewed from elsewhere--this terrestrial chicken
coop of ours, so small that if each of its inhabitants were to touch
hands they would make a ring around it, sailing through the unbroken
silence of Space. A thin crust over a molten centre whirling at a
thousand miles an hour. A collision, a jar, just enough to move it out
of its orbit would wreck it--its surface covered with ignorant human
chickens, knowing neither where they came from nor where they are going
to, scratching, fighting, crowing, clucking, smoothing their feathers
in vanity, and cocking their telescopes at the firmament in hungry
curiosity! It is a sight that must make the Angels weep.




OBSERVATIONS OF A RETIRED VETERAN XIII


Ah, here you are again! What; you don't remember me? Why, I remember
you. It was last Christmas, don't you know, in this store? You were