"In England, it seems to me there are four main phases of
history. Four. Avebury, which I would love to take you to see
to-morrow. Stonehenge. Old Sarum, which we shall see in a
moment as a great grassy mound on our right as we come over
one of these crests. Each of them represents about a thousand
years. Old Sarum was Keltic; it, saw the Romans and the
Saxons through, and for a time it was a Norman city. Now it
is pasture for sheep. Latest as yet is Salisbury,--English,
real English. It may last a few centuries still. It is little
more than seven hundred years old. But when I think of those
great hangars back there by Stonehenge, I feel that the next
phase is already beginning. Of a world one will fly to the
ends of, in a week or so. Our world still. Our people, your
people and mine, who are going to take wing so soon now, were
made in all these places. We are visiting the old homes. I am
glad I came back to it just when you were doing the same
thing."
"I'm lucky to have found a sympathetic fellow traveller,"
she said; "with a car."
"You're the first American I've ever met whose interest in
history didn't seem--" He sought for an inoffensive word.
"Silly? Oh! I admit it. It's true of a lot of us. Most of us.
We come over to Europe as if it hadn't anything to do with us
except to supply us with old pictures and curios generally.
We come sight-seeing. It's romantic. It's picturesque. We
stare at the natives--like visitors at a Zoo. We don't
realize that we belong. . . . I know our style. . . . But we
aren't all like that. Some of us are learning a bit better
than that. We have one or two teachers over there to lighten
our darkness. There's Professor Breasted for instance. He
comes sometimes to my father's house. And there's James
Harvey Robinson and Professor Hutton Webster. They've been
trying to restore our memory."
"I've never heard of any of them," said Sir Richmond.
"You hear so little of America over here. It's quite a large
country and all sorts of interesting things happen there
nowadays. And we are waking up to history. Quite fast. We
shan't always be the most ignorant people in the world. We
are beginning to realize that quite a lot of things happened
between Adam and the Mayflower that we ought to be told
about. I allow it's a recent revival. The United States has
been like one of those men you read about in the papers who
go away from home and turn up in some distant place with
their memories gone. They've forgotten what their names were
or where they lived or what they did for a living; they've
forgotten everything that matters. Often they have to begin
again and settle down for a long time before their memories
come back. That's how it has been with us. Our memory is just
coming back to us."
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