But Authority is supreme;
the peer and the plutocrat go on unharmed, while the poor men who copy
follies which do not hurt the rich go right on to the death of the soul.
_April, 1889._
_DISCIPLINE_.
Of the ancestor generally assigned to us by gentlemen who must be
right--because they say so--we have very few records save the odd
scratches found on bones and stones, and the remnants of extremely
frugal meals eaten ages ago. We gather that the revered ancestor hunted
large game with an audacity which must have pleased the Rider Haggard of
ancient days; at any rate, some simple soul certainly scratched the
record of a famous mammoth-fight on a tusk, and we can now see a furious
beast charging upon a pigmy who awaits the onset with a coolness quite
superior to Mr. Quatermain's heroics. That Siberian hunter evidently
went out and tried to make a bag for his own hand, and I have no doubt
that he carried out the principle of individualism until his last
mammoth reduced him to pulp. There is no indication of organization,
and, although the men of the great deltas were able to indulge in
oysters with a freedom which almost makes me regret the advance of
civilization and the decay of Whitstable, yet I cannot trace one record
of an orderly supper-party.
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