SWAYING TREE TOPS 



the present-day man who nervously 

 chews the end of his cigar. 



Such departures bring vividly be- 

 fore us the going of the past. It is 

 not " dozing in the present, and 

 dreading the future," to dream of the 

 past. It is not to underestimate the 

 present to value the past. There was 

 an elegance, a reserve, a refinement 

 about the life of fifty years ago which 

 is not in evidence to-day, except as it 

 is seen in some lingering representa- 

 tive of the old school, such as this 

 one who left yesterday. Perhaps 

 fifty or seventy-five years hence this 

 new material age of to-day will have 

 become softened and refined, and 

 then will have true beauty, but now it 

 stands crass, irreverent, iconoclastic. 



[77] 



