This was the
greatest stride in education since 1865, but what did it teach?
One leant on a fragment of column in the great hall at Karnak and
watched a jackal creep down the debris of ruin. The jackal's
ancestors had surely crept up the same wall when it was building.
What was his view about the value of silence? One lay in the
sands and watched the expression of the Sphinx. Brooks Adams had
taught him that the relation between civilizations was that of
trade. Henry wandered, or was storm-driven, down the coast. He
tried to trace out the ancient harbor of Ephesus. He went over to
Athens, picked up Rockhill, and searched for the harbor of
Tiryns; together they went on to Constantinople and studied the
great walls of Constantine and the greater domes of Justinian.
His hobby had turned into a camel, and he hoped, if he rode long
enough in silence, that at last he might come on a city of
thought along the great highways of exchange.
CHAPTER XXIV
INDIAN SUMMER (1898-1899)
The summer of the Spanish War began the Indian summer of life
to one who had reached sixty years of age, and cared only to reap
in peace such harvest as these sixty years had yielded. He had
reason to be more than content with it. Since 1864 he had felt no
such sense of power and momentum, and had seen no such number of
personal friends wielding it.
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