“Defunct long ago. Fiction in any sort is now practically impossible, because all life has been reduced to the glorious precision of mathematics. Given the starting-point, the rest admits of no two interpretations.” “But, pardon me, I live by story-telling. It is all I am able to do. At this moment I am putting the finishing touches to my very best----” “Your labour is in vain,” he answered civilly. “Such things only occur under glass in museums. Irregularity of conduct does not now enter within the bounds of the possible. Why, even the fame of the people who wrought your stories and rhymes is dead. We cannot understand the dreadful and chaotic conditions in the early morning of history where they worked.” “Then smother your Inoculation Day!” I answered warmly. “Let me get back into yesterday, when people had imagination, and knew a good thing when they saw it, and--and--there, I cannot argue with you; and I cannot change my century, like my boots.” The man very nearly showed astonishment. Recollect that I stood before a being who had never known hate, or love, or any sort of intellectual excitement. Yet he came as near to a surprise then as ever he did in his oyster-like life. “You are very interesting,” he said. “I wish you would stop here and permit your passions to go on mastering you until I call some of our scientific men. It has for hundreds of years been a great speculation as to what was the appearance of a human being when he loses his temper. We might inoculate----” “Oh no, you don’t!” I roared. “D’you think I’m going to have my character tinkered with at my age by a lot of perfect, passionless puppets?” But here my emotions first choked me, then woke me, and I opened my eyes, not without thanksgivings, on a pleasant morning still very nigh the romantic dawn of the Twentieth Century. A STORY WITHOUT AN END I On a fine day during the Cambrian Era bright sunshine flooded the best that our old Earth could do in the way of scenery at that remote period. Huge mud-flats extended for thousands of miles on every hand, and between them stretched shallow oceans. Humble forms of vegetation flourished in the mud and a heavy atmosphere, dense as steam, covered all. The air was full of noble rainbows, probably the most beautiful phenomena known to Cambrian times. Absolute silence marked the scene. No feather made music in the air; no fin rippled the water; no beast or herd of beasts moved upon the face of the earth to break the terrific monotony of that prehistoric picture.