Between Snow and Fire — page 74: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

’ > 66 ‘TWEEN SNOW AND FIRE. mye here and there grazing, constituted the only sign of life, and the range of wooded hills against the sky line loomed purple and misty in the golden summer haze. If ever a land seemed to enjoy the blessings of peace as- suredly it was this fair land here spread out around them. They had reached another of the ostrich camps, wherein were domiciled some eight or ten pairs of eighteen-month- old birds, which not having yet learned the extent of their power, were as tame and docile as the four-year-old male was savage and combative. Eustace had scattered the contents of his colander among them, and now the two were leaning over the gate, listlessly watching the birds feed. “Talking of people never thinking,” continued Eustace, “1 don’tso much wonder atthat. They haven't time, I sup- pose, and so lose the faculty. They have enough to do to steer ahead in their own narrow little groves. But what does astonish me is that if you state an obvious fact—so obvious as to amount to a platitude—it seems to burst upon them as a kind of wild surprise, as a kind of practical joke on wheels, ready to start away down-hill and drag them with it to utter crash unless they edge away from it as far as possible. You see them turn and stare at each other, and open an amazed and gaping mouth into which you might insert a pumpkin without them being in the least aware of it.” “ As for instance ?” queried Eanswyth, with a smile. * Well—as for instance. I wonder what the effect would be upon an ordinary dozen of sane people were I suddenly to propound the perfectly obvious truism that life is full of surprises. I don’t wonder, at least, for I ought to know by this time. They would start by scouting the idea ; ten to one they would deny the premise, and retort that life was just what we chose to make it; which is a fallacy, in that it assumes that any one atom in the human scheme is absolutely independent—firstly, of the rest of the crowd ; secondly, of circumstances—in fact, is competent to boss the former and direct the latter. Which, in the words of the immortal Euclid, is absurd.” “Yet if any man is thus competent, it is yourself, Eus- tace.”” “No,” he said, shaking his head meditatively. ‘ You are mistaken. I am certainly not independent of the action Gomicbooks (E(0) m