"
"It depends on what you call pessimism," Lorne rejoined.
"I see England down the future the heart of the Empire,
the conscience of the world. and the Mecca of the race."
CHAPTER XVII
The Cruickshank deputation returned across that North
Atlantic which it was their desire to see so much more
than ever the track of the flag, toward the middle of
July. The shiny carriages were still rolling about in
great numbers when they left; London's air of luxury had
thickened with the advancing season and hung heavily in
the streets; people had begun to picnic in the Park on
Sundays. They had been from the beginning a source of
wonder and of depression to Lorne Murchison, the people
in the Park, those, I mean, who walked and sat and stood
there for the refreshment of their lives, for whom the
place has a lyrical value as real as it is unconscious.
He noted them ranged on formal benches, quiet, respectable,
absorptive, or gathered heavily, shoulder to shoulder,
docile under the tutelage of policemen, listening to
anyone who would lift a voice to speak to them. London,
beating on all borders, hemmed them in; England outside
seemed hardly to contain for them a wider space. Lorne,
with his soul full of free airs and forest depths, never
failed to respond to a note in the Park that left him
heavy-hearted, longing for an automatic distributing
system for the Empire.
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