



Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org
(Images generously made available by the Hathi Trust.)





DODO

A DETAIL OF THE DAY

BY

E.F. BENSON


IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I


FOURTH EDITION

METHUEN & CO

LONDON

1893



        And far out, drifting helplessly on that grey, angry sea, I
        saw a small boat at the mercy of the winds and waves. And my
        guide said to me, 'Some call the sea "Falsehood," and that
        boat "Truth," and others call the sea "Truth," and the boat
        "Falsehood;" and, for my part, I think that one is right as the
        other.'--The Professor of Ignorance.




CHAPTER ONE


Poets of all ages and of all denominations are unanimous in assuring
us that there was once a period on this grey earth known as the Golden
Age. These irresponsible hards describe it in terms of the vaguest,
most poetic splendour, and, apart from the fact, upon which they are
all agreed, that the weather was always perfectly charming, we have to
reconstruct its characteristics in the main for ourselves. Perhaps if
the weather was uniformly delightful, even in this nineteenth century,
the golden age might return again. We all know how perceptibly our
physical, mental and spiritual level is raised by a few days of really
charming weather; but until the weather determines to be always golden,
we can hardly expect it of the age. Yet even now, even in England, and
even in London, we have every year a few days which must surely be
waifs and strays from the golden age, days which have fluttered down
from under the hands of the recording angel, as he tied up his reports,
and, after floating about for years in dim, interplanetary space,
sometimes drop down upon us. They may last a week, they have been known