Colonel Quaritch, V.C.

Chapter 29

EDWARD COSSEY MEETS WITH AN ACCIDENT

At the best of times this is not a gay world, though no doubt we ought

to pretend that humanity at large is as happy as it is represented to

be in, let us say, the Christmas number of an illustrated paper. How

well we can imagine the thoughtful inhabitant of this country Anno

Domini 7500 or thereabouts disinterring from the crumbling remains of

a fireproof safe a Christmas number of the /Illustrated London News/

or the /Graphic/. The archaic letters would perhaps be unintelligible

to him, but he would look at the pictures with much the same interest

that we regard bushmen's drawings or the primitive clay figures of

Peru, and though his whole artistic seventy-sixth century soul would

be revolted at the crudeness of the colouring, surely he wou