The Cream of the Jest James Branch Cabell (recommended ebook reader TXT) đ
- Author: James Branch Cabell
Book online «The Cream of the Jest James Branch Cabell (recommended ebook reader TXT) đ». Author James Branch Cabell
Here was beauty, and wit, and learning, and genius, being wastedâ âquite wantonlyâ ânever to be recaptured, never to be equaled again (despite the innumerable painstaking penmen destined to fret the hearts of unborn wives), and never, in the outcome, to be thought of as a very serious loss to anybody, after all.â ââ âŠ
These book-rolls burned with great rapidity, crackling cheerily as the garnered wisdom of Catoâs octogenarian life dissolved in puffs of smoke, and the wit of Sosipater blazed for the last time in heating a pint of water.â ââ ⊠But then in Parma long afterward Kennaston observed a monk erasing a song of Sapphoâs from a parchment on which the monk meant to inscribe a feeble little Latin hymn of his own composition: in an obscure village near Alexandria Kennaston saw the only existent copy of the Mimes of Herondas crumpled up and used as packing for a mummy-case; and at Prior Park Kennaston watched Mrs. Elizabeth Barnes, then acting as cook for Dr. William Warburton, destroy in making pie-crust the unique manuscript copies of three of Shakespeareâs dramas, which had never been printed.
Andâ âconceding Heaven to be an actual place, and attainment of its felicities to be the object of human lifeâ âKennaston could not, after all, detect any fault in Amrouâs logic. Aesthetic considerations could, in that event, but lead to profitless time-wasting where every moment was precious.
XXV Byproducts of Rational EndeavorThen again Kennaston stood in a stonewalled apartment, like a cell, wherein there was a furnace and much wreckage. A contemplative friar was regarding the disorder about him with disapproval, the while he sucked at two hurt fingers.
âThere can be no doubt that Old Legion conspires to hinder the great work,â he considered.
âAnd what is the great work, father?â Kennaston asked him.
âTo find the secret of eternal life, my son. What else is lacking? Man approaches to God in all things save this, Imaginis imago, created after Godâs image. But as yet, by reason of his mortality, man shudders in a world that is arrayed against him. Thus, the heavens threaten with winds and lightnings, with plague-breeding meteors and the unfriendly aspect of planets; the big seas molest with waves and inundations, stealthily drowning cities overnight, and sucking down tall navies as a child gulps sugarplums; whereas how many plants and gums and seeds bear manâs destruction in their tiny hearts! what soulless beasts of the field and of the wood are everywhere enleagued in endless feud against him, with tusks and teeth, with nails and claws and venomous stings, made sharp for manâs demolishment! Thus all struggle miserably, like hunted persons under a sentence of death that may at best be avoided for a little while. And manifestly, this is not as it should be.â
âYet I much fear it is so ordered, father.â
The old man said testily: âI repeat, for your better comfort, there can be no doubt that Satan alone conspires to hinder the great work. No; it would be abuse of superstition to conceive, as would be possible for folk of slender courage, that the finger of heaven has today unloosed this destruction, to my bodily hurt and spiritual admonition.â Kennaston could see, though, that the speaker half believed this might be exactly what had happened. âFor I am about no vaunting transgression of manâs estate; I do but seek to recover his lost heritage. You will say to me, it is written that never shall any man be one day old in the sight of God?â âYet it is likewise written that unto God a thousand years are but one day. For this period of time, then, may each man righteously demand that death delay to enact the midwife to his second birth. It advantages not to contend that even in the heyday of patriarchs few approached to such longevity; for Moses, relinquishing to silence all save the progeny of Seth, nowhere directly tells us that some of the seed of Cain did not outlive Methuselah. Yea, and our common parent, Adam, was created in the perfect age of man, which then fell not short of one hundred years, since at less antiquity did none of the antediluvian fathers beget issue, as did Adam in the same year breath was given him; and the years of Adamâs life were nine hundred and thirty; whereby it is a reasonable conceit of learned persons to compute him to have exceeded a thousand years in age, if not in duration of existence. Now, it is written that we shall all die as Adam died; and caution should not scruple to affirm this is an excellent dark saying, prophetic of that day when no man need outdo Adam in celerity to put by his flesh.â
Then Kennaston found the alchemist had been compounding nitrum of Memphis with sulphur, mixing in a little willow charcoal to make the whole more friable, and that the powder had exploded. The old man was now interested, less in the breakage, than in the horrible noise this accident had occasioned.
âThe mixture might be used in court-pageants and miracle-plays,â he estimated, âto indicate the entrance of Satan, or the
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