Since Then He Has Altered The Map
Considerably To The Advantage Of The Empire, But The Heart Of The Empire
Is Set On Ballot-Boxes And Small Lies.
The illustrious Don Quixote
to-day lives on the north coast of Australia where he has found the
treasure of a sunken Spanish galleon.
Now and again he destroys black
fellows who hide under his bed to spear him. Young Hawkins, with a still
younger Boscawen for his second, was till last year chasing slave-dhows
round Tajurrah; they have sent him now to the Zanzibar coast to be
grilled into an admiral; and the valorous Sandoval has been holding the
'Republic' of Mexico by the throat any time these fourteen years gone.
The others, big men all and not very much afraid of responsibility, are
selling horses, breaking trails, drinking sangaree, running railways
beyond the timberline, swimming rivers, blowing up tree-stumps, and
making cities where no cities were, in all the five quarters of the
world. Only people will not believe this when you tell them. They are
too near things and a great deal too well fed. So they say of the most
cold-blooded realism: 'This is romance. How interesting!' And of
over-handled, thumb-marked realism: 'This is indeed romance!' It is the
next century that, looking over its own, will see the heroes of our time
clearly.
Meantime this earth of ours - we hold a fair slice of it so far - is full
of wonders and miracles and mysteries and marvels, and, in default, it
is good to go up and down seeing and hearing tell of them all.
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