An enemy, silent and triumphant, seemed to step behind
him.
Book III
Jubilee
Chapter I
June 17, Thursday: Anticipation
It must certainly be difficult for chroniclers of contemporary history to
determine significant dates to define the beginning and end of succeeding
periods. But I fancy that any fellow-citizen of mine, if he thinks for a
moment, will agree with me that that Jubilee Summer of 1897 was the last
manifestation in our town of the separate individual Polchester spirit, of
the old spirit that had dwelt in its streets and informed its walls and
roofs for hundreds of years past, something as separate and distinct as
the smells of Seatown, the chime of the Cathedral bells, the cawing of the
Cathedral rooks in the Precinct Elms.
An interesting and, to one reader at least, a pathetic history might be
written of the decline and death of that same spirit--not in Polchester
alone, but in many another small English town. From the Boer War of 1899
to the Great War of 1914 stretches that destructive period; the agents of
that destruction, the new moneyed classes, the telephone, the telegram,
the motor, and last of all, the cinema.
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