That Very Mab

Оглавление

May Kendall. That Very Mab

CHAPTER I. – UNDER TWO FLAGS

CHAPTER II. – DISILLUSIONS

CHAPTER III. – THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION

CHAPTER IV. – THE POET AND THE PALÆONTO-THEOLOGIST

CHAPTER V. – ST. GEORGE FOR MERRY ENGLAND

CHAPTER VI. – JUSTICE AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY

CHAPTER VII. – MACHINERY AND THE SUCCESSFUL MERCHANT

CHAPTER VIII. – THE BEAUTIFUL

CHAPTER IX. – IN WHICH THE NIHILIST, THE DEMOCRAT, AND THE PROFESSOR OFFER A SUGGESTION TO THE BISHOP

CHAPTER X. – THE SUBSEQUENT CAREER OF THE NIHILIST

CHAPTER XI. – HOME AND FOREIGN POLICY COMBINED

CHAPTER XII. – THE DELUGE

Отрывок из книги

It was on April 1, the green young year's beginning, that Mab arrived in England. She had hired a seagull – no, the seagull offered his services for nothing; I was forgetting that it was not an English, but a Polynesian seagull – to take her across. She did not altogether admire the missionaries, as we have seen, in their proceedings, the fact being that she had grown used to Polynesians in the course of the centuries she had spent among them, and the missionaries were such a remarkable contrast to the Polynesians. But their advent was certainly a source of mental improvement to her, for fairies as we know, understand things almost by instinct, and Queen Mab, one evening, chanced to overhear a good deal of the missionaries' conversation. She learned, for instance, the precise meanings, and the bearings on modern theology and metaphysics, of such words as kathenotheism, hagiography, transubstantiation, eschatology, Positivist, noumenony begriffy vorstellung, Paulisimus, wissenschaft, and others, quite new to her, and of great benefit in general conversation.

With this additional knowledge she started on the voyage, leaving her faithful subjects to take care of the island and themselves, till she came back to tell them whether their return to England would ever be practicable. She landed in Great Britain, then, on April 1, and the seagull went across to the Faroe Islands and waited there till the time which she had appointed for him to come and carry her back to Polynesia.

.....

'Ah! the Dragon was not really killed.' said the Owl coolly. 'It was only syncope, and he kept quiet for a time, and grew seven other heads worse than the first. Some say St George worships the Dragon now, himself; but people always are saying unpleasant things, and probably it isn't true. At all events, the English worship St George and the Dragon till they don't seem to know which is which.'

'What, has St George grown like the Dragon then?' cried Queen Mab distractedly, wringing her hands.

.....