Formerly, people had a few opinions, which, if erroneous, were at
least universal. Nero was not considered an immaculate man. The Flood
was currently believed to have caused the death of quite a number of
persons. And George Washington, it was widely stated, once cut down
a cherry-tree. But now all these comfortable illusions have been
destroyed by 'the least little men who spend their time and lose their
wits in chasing nimble and retiring truth, to the extreme perturbation
and drying up of the moistures.'"

Kennaston looked up for a moment, and Billy Woods, who had counted
seven wrinkles and was dropping into a forlorn doze, started
violently. His interest then became abnormal.

"There are," Mr. Kennaston complained, rather reproachfully, "too many
inquiries, doubts, investigations, discoveries, and apologies. There
are palliations of Tiberius, eulogies of Henry VIII., rehabilitations
of Aaron Burr. Lucretia Borgia, it appears, was a grievously
misunderstood woman, and Heliogabalus a most exemplary monarch; even
the dog in the manger may have been a nervous animal in search of
rest and quiet. As for Shakespeare, he was an atheist, a syndicate, a
lawyer's clerk, an inferior writer, a Puritan, a scholar, a _nom de
plume_, a doctor of medicine, a fool, a poacher, and another man of
the same name. Information of this sort crops up on every side. Even
the newspapers are infected; truth lurks in the patent-medicine
advertisements, and sometimes creeps stealthily into the very
editorials. We must all learn the true facts of history, whether we
will or no; eventually, the writers of historical romance will not
escape.

"So the sad tale goes. Ignorance--beautiful, divine Ignorance--is
forsaken by a generation that clamours for the truth. The
earnest-minded person has plucked Zeus out of Heaven, and driven the
Maenad from the wood, and dragged Poseidon out of his deep-sea palace.
The conclaves of Olympus, it appears, are merely nature-myths;
the stately legends clustering about them turn out to be a rather
elaborate method of expressing the fact that it occasionally rains.
The heroes who endured their angers and jests and tragic loves are
delicately veiled allusions to the sun--surely, a very harmless topic
of conversation, even in Greece; and the monsters, 'Gorgons and Hydras
and Chimaeras dire,' their grisly offspring, their futile opponents,
are but personified frosts. Mythology--the poet's necessity, the
fertile mothe