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                         THE LAST GENERATION




                         _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

                          THE BRIDGE OF FIRE

               A BOOK OF POEMS CONTAINING THE BALLAD OF
         HAMPSTEAD HEATH AND THE TWIN SONNETS OF BATHROLAIRE

                            Price 1s. net




                         THE LAST GENERATION

                        A STORY OF THE FUTURE

                                  BY
                         JAMES ELROY FLECKER

           _El hombre es el rey de la creacion_; _vive_ (he
       lives) _en la tierra y cree_ (he believes) _en el cielo_

                                       DE ARTEAGA, _Spanish Grammar_


                           THE NEW AGE PRESS
                       140 FLEET STREET, LONDON
                                 1908



                  Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
                  At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh



                                  TO

                             FRANK SAVERY

                 WHO TAUGHT, ENCOURAGED, AND REVEALED




CONTENTS


                                        PAGE
       INTRODUCTION                        9
    I. AT BIRMINGHAM TOWN HALL            13
   II. THE PROCLAMATION                   17
  III. THE MUTUAL EXTERMINATION CLUB      23
   IV. THE EPISODE OF THE BABY            29
    V. THE FLORENTINE LEAGUE              34
   VI. OUTSIDE                            43
  VII. THE LAST MEN                       54




THE LAST GENERATION

INTRODUCTION


I had been awake for I know not how many hours that summer dawn while
the sun came over the hills and  the beautiful roses in my
mother's garden. As I lay drowsily gazing through the window, I
thought I had never known a morning so sultry, and yet so pleasant.
Outside not a leaf stirred; yet the air was fresh, and the madrigal
notes of the birds came to me with a peculiar intensity and clearness.
I listened intently to the curious sound of trilling, which drew
nearer and nearer, until it seemed to merge into a whirring noise that
filled the room and crowded at my ears. At first I could see nothing,
and lay in deadly fear of the unknown; but soon I thought I saw rims
and sparks of spectral fire floating through the pane. Then I heard
some one say, "I am the Wind." But the voice was so like that of an
old friend whom one sees again after many years that my terror
departed, and I asked simply why the Wind had come.

"I have come to you," he replied, "because you are the first man I
have discovered who is after my own heart. You whom others call dreamy
and capricious, volatile and headstrong, you whom some accuse of
weakness, others of unscrupulous abuse of power, you I know to be a
true son of AEolus, a fit inhabitant for those caves of boisterous
song."

"Are you the North Wind or the East Wind?" said I. "Or do you blow
from the Atlantic? Yet if those be your feathers that shine upon the
pane like yellow and purple threads, and if it be through your
influence that the garden is so hot to-day, I should say you were the
lazy South Wind, blowing from the countries that I love."

"I blow from no quarter of the Earth," replied the voice. "I am not in
the compass. I am a little unknown Wind, and I cross not Space but
Time. If you will come with me I will take you not over countries but
over centuries, not directly, but waywardly, and you may travel where
you will. You shall see Napoleon, Caesar, Pericles, if you command. You
may be anywhere in the world at any period. I will show you some of my
friends, the poets...."

"And may I drink red wine with Praxiteles, or with Catullus beside his
lake?"

"Certainly, if you know enough Latin and Greek, and can pronounce them
intelligently."

"And may I live with Thais or Rhodope, or some wild Assyrian queen?"

"Unless they are otherwise employed, certainly."

"Ah, Wind of Time," I continued with a sigh, "we men of this age are
rotten with booklore, and with a yearning for the past. And wherever I
asked to go among those ancient days, I should soon get dissatisfied,
and weary your bright wings. I will be no pillar of salt, a sterile
portent in a sterile desert. Carry me forward, Wind of Time. What is
there going to be?"

The Wind put his hand over my eyes.




I

AT BIRMINGHAM TOWN HALL


"This is our first stopping place," said a voice from the points of
flame.

I opened my eyes expecting to see one of those extravagant scenes that
imaginative novelists love to depict. I was prepared to find the upper
air busy with aeroplanes and the earth beneath given over to unbridled
debauch. Instead, I discovered myself seated on a tall electric
standard, watching a crowd assembled before what I took to be
Birmingham Town Hall. I was disappointed in this so tame a sight,
until it flashed across me that I had never seen an English crowd
preserve such an orderly and quiet demeanour; and a more careful
inspection assured me that although no man wore a uniform, every man
carried a rifle. They were obviously waiting for some one to come and
address them from the balcony of the Town Hall, which was festooned
with red flags. As the curtains were pulled aside I caught a momentary
glimpse of an old person whose face I shall never forget, but
apparently it was not for him that the breathless crowd was waiting.
The man who finally appeared on the balcony was an individual not more
than thirty years old,