"It always was so, and I suppose always will be," said he, "however it may be explained.

It is true that in the nineteenth century, when there was so little art and so much talk about it, there was a theory that art and imaginative literature ought to deal with contemporary life; but they never did so; for, if there was any pretence of it, the author always took care (as Clara hinted just now) to disguise, or exaggerate, or idealise, and in some way or another make it strange; so that, for all the verisimilitude there was, he might just as well have dealt with the times of the Pharaohs." "Well," said Dick, "surely it is but natural to like these things strange; just as when we were children, as I said just now, we used to pretend to be so-and-so in such-and-such a place.

That's what these pictures and poems do; and why shouldn't they ?" "Thou hast hit it, Dick," quoth old Hammond; "it is the child-like part of us that produces works of imagination.

When we are children time passes so slow with us that we seem to have time for everything." He sighed, and then smiled and said: "At least let us rejoice that we have got back our childhood again.

I drink to the days that are!" "Second childhood," said I in a low voice, and then blushed at my double rudeness, and hoped that he hadn't heard.