DE JUVENTUTE
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 prae-railroadites 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 longnecked
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.