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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
CONTENTS
LIFE’S GOLDEN AGE.
IN ALL SHADES.
‘UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER’ GRANT.
A GOLDEN ARGOSY.
A FEW WORDS ON SALMON ANGLING.
BUTTERINE.
THAT FATAL DIAMOND.
FISH-CULTURE.
TWO SONNETS.
No. 111.—Vol. III.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1886.
LIFE’S GOLDEN AGE.
All the world has shrunk since the GoldenAge of our childhood. Time was longer, andpeople were taller then. A wet day was thedepth of despair and the end of all things;the hours also were longer, and a year fromJanuary to December lapsed slowly by, likethe prehistoric ages. The future seemed to bebringing a measureless succession of such yearsuntil the gigantic height of grown-up peoplewould be reached; but life was so long, itwas hardly worth while to think about themystery of growing to their height at last.Our old home has shrunk since those days; therooms are smaller and darker; the streets, oncefamiliar, would be narrower if we could seethem now; the garden has shrunk too; the treeshave been growing down; and the church spireis stumpy, as if Time had pushed its top lower,like a shutting telescope. Beyond the homecircle who were part of our existence, the grown-uppeople of the Golden Age were a mysteriousrace. They cared no more for games or playthings;though we refused to believe that anylength of years would make us cease to care forhide-and-seek among the gorse and the billowsof fern, and for the mustering of tin armies orthe acquisition of new toys. Not only were thegrown-up people in a dried-up state of indifferenceto games and plays, but they actuallylaughed at things that were not in the leastfunny. They never cried; they never ran; theydid not ask for pudding twice, though they mighthave it; they had learned all possible lessonslong ago, and had managed to remember themfor the rest of their lives, and they knew allabout everything always.
But oh, the green world of those days! Havethe green lanes since wound on through goldenlight and moving leaf-shadows? Have the cornfieldsbeen so broad beyond the hedges, sucha sea of warm and breeze-swept yellow ripeness,flecked all along near the hedge-path withsparkling blue, and with blazing red poppies?Have the skies been so far away since, wherethe lark sang out of sight, and where, with ourhead on the grass, we made upward voyages