THE ZEIT-GEIST ***
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The Zeit-Geist
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Early Volumes. By L. DOUGALL. THE ZEIT-GEIST. With Frontispiece.
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The Zeit-Geist
L. DOUGALL
Author of Beggars All, What Necessity Knows, etc.
LONDON HUTCHINSON & CO PATERNOSTER ROW
"I ... create evil. I am the Lord." _Isa. xlv. 6, 7._
"Where will God be absent? In His face Is light, but in His shadow there is healing too: Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed!" _The Ring and the Book._
"If Nature is the garment of God, it is woven without seam throughout." _The Ascent of Man._
OXFORD, _January 1895_.
_When travelling in Canada, in the region north of Lake Ontario, I came upon traces of the somewhat remarkable life which is the subject of the following sketch.
Having applied to the school-master in the town where Bartholomew Toyner lived, I received an account the graphic detail and imaginative insight of which attest the writer's personal affection. This account, with only such condensation as is necessary, I now give to the world. I do not believe that it belongs to the novel to teach theology; but I do believe that religious sentiments and opinions are a legitimate subject of its art, and that perhaps its highest function is to promote understanding by bringing into contact minds that habitually misinterpret one another._
THE ZEIT-GEIST.
CHAPTER I.
PROLOGUE.
To-day I am at home in the little town of the fens, where the Ahwewee River falls some thirty feet from one level of land to another. Both broad levels were covered with forest of ash and maple, spruce and tamarack; but long ago, some time in the thirties, impious hands built dams on the impetuous Ahwewee, and wide marshes and drowned wood-lands are the result. Yet just immediately at Fentown there is neither marsh nor dead tree; the river dashes over its ledge of rock in a foaming flood, runs shallow and rapid between green woods, and all about the town there are breezy pastures where the stumps are still standing, and arable lands well cleared. The little town itself has a thriving look. Its public buildings and its villas have risen, as by the sweep of an enchanter's wand, in these backwoods to the south of the Ottawa valley.
There was a day when I came a stranger to Fentown. The occasion of my coming was a meeting concerning the opening of new schools for the town--schools on a large and ambitious plan for so small a place. When the meeting was over, I came out into the street on a mild September afternoon. The other members of the School Council were with me. There were two clergymen of the party. One of them, a young man with thin, eager face, happened to be at my side.
