Darius came heavily, and breathing heavily, into the little office.  
“Now as all this racketing’s over,” he said crossly—he meant by ‘racketing’ the general election which had just put the Liberal party into power—“I’ll thank ye to see as all that red and blue ink is cleaned off the rollers and , and the types cleaned too. I’ve told ’em ten times if I’ve told ’em once, but as far as I can make out, they’ve done to it yet.”
 
Edwin without looking up.
 
His father was now a fattish man, and he had quite as much as Edwin. Some of his hair was white; the rest was grey. White hair about his ears; gold gleamed in his mouth; and a pair of spectacles hung insecurely balanced half-way down his nose; his waistcoat seemed to be stretched tightly over a smooth hemisphere. He had an air of somewhat gross and prosperous untidiness. Except for the teeth, his bodily frame appeared to have fallen into disrepair, as though he had ceased to be interested in it, as though he had been using it for a long time as a makeshift . And this impression was more marked at table; he ate exactly as if throwing food to a wild animal somewhere within the hemisphere, an animal which was never seen, but which threateningly from time to time in its dark .
 
Of all this, Edwin had definitely noticed nothing save that his father was ‘getting .’ To Edwin, Darius was exactly the same father, and for Darius, Edwin was still aged sixteen. They both of them went on living on the assumption that the world had stood still in those seven years between 1873 and 1880. If they had been asked what had happened during those seven years, they would have answered: “Oh, nothing particular!”
 
But the world had been whizzing ceaselessly from one miracle into another. Board schools had been opened in Bursley, affairs, with ventilation; indeed ventilation had been discovered. A Jew had been made Master of the Rolls: a spectacle at which England shivered, and then, perceiving no sign of disaster, its shoulders. Irish members had taught the House of Commons how to talk for twenty-four hours without a pause. The wages of the agricultural labourer had sprung into the air and leaped over the twelve shilling bar into regions of . and Sankey had found and conquered England for Christ. Landseer and Livingstone had died, and the provinces could not decide whether “Dignity and Impudence” or the of Africa was the more interesting . Herbert Spencer had published his “Study of Sociology”; Matthew Arnold his “Literature and Dogma”; and Frederic Farrar his Life of his Lord; but here the provinces had no difficulty in deciding, for they had only heard of the last. Every effort had been made to explain by and by force to the working man that trade unions were inimical to his true welfare, and none had succeeded, so stupid was he. The British Army had been employed to put reason into the noddle of a town called Northampton which was furious because an had not been elected to Parliament. Pullman cars, “The Pirates of Penzance,” Henry Irving’s “Hamlet,” spelling-bees, and Captain Webb’s channel swim had all proved that there were novelties under the sun. , archbishops, and ministers had met at Lambeth to inspect the progress of irreligious thought, with intent to arrest it. Princes and dukes had to inaugurate the most singular scheme that ever was, the Kyrle Society,—for bringing beauty home to the people by means of art, gardening, and music. The Bulgarian had served to give new life to all penny gaffs and blood-tubs. The “Eurydice” and the “Princess Alice” had in order to demonstrate the of existence and the courage of the island-race. The “Nineteenth Century” had been started, a little late in the day, and the “Referee.” Ireland had all but died of hunger, but had happily been saved to enjoy the benefits of . The Young Men’s Association had been born again in the splendour of Exeter Hall. Bursley itself had entered on a new career as a chartered , with Mayor, alderman, and councillors, all in chains of silver. And among the latest miracles were Northampton’s success in sending the atheist to Parliament, the infidelity of the Tay Bridge three days after Christmas, the of Majuba Hill, and the discovery that soldiers objected to being flogged into insensibility for a .
 
But, in spite of numerous attempts, nobody had to make England see that her very existence would not be threatened if museums were opened on Sunday, or that Nonconformists might be buried according to their own without endangering the constitution.
 
Two.
Darius was possibly a little uneasy in his mind about the world. Possibly there had just now begun to form in his mind the conviction, in which most men die, that all was not quite well with the world, and that in particular his native country had contracted a fatal since he was a boy.
 
He was a printer, and yet the General Election had not put sunshine in his heart. And this was strange, for a general election is the brief of printers, especially of steam-printers who for dispatch can beat all rivals. During a general election the question put by a customer to a printer is not, “How much will it be?” but “How soon can I have it?” There was no time for about price; and indeed to about price would have been unworthy, seeing that every customer (ordinary business being at a standstill), was engaged in the of England. Darius was a Liberal, but a quiet one, and he was patronised by both political parties—blue and red. As a fact, neither party could have done without him. His printing office had and thundered early and late, and more than once had joined the end of one day’s work to the beginning of another; and more than once had Big James with his men and his boy (a increased since 1873), stood like plotters muttering in the yard at five minutes to twelve on Sunday evening, waiting for midnight to sound, and Big James had unlocked the door of the office on the new-born Monday, and work had instantly commenced to continue till Monday was nearly dead of old age.
 
Once only had work been interrupted, and that was on a day when, a lot of ‘blue jobs’ being about, a of red fire-eaters had come up the back with intent to answer arguments b............