‘It is inadvisable from every point of view: nowadays one’s grandmother attains such longevity that to marry her for her fortune, is like turning monk for a livelihood: a man’s freedom arrives when ’tis not worth the having, for she goes on living until he becomes grey-headed.’ ‘True! But this is not my business!’ broke in the Emperor impatiently, ‘let us discuss what more nearly concerns me. Can I count on thy good service in this matter, or no?’ ‘Call a Cabinet Council,’ suggested Divesdale, ‘in the multitude of councillors we shall get wisdom,’ he added, quoting from very ancient history. The Emperor made a gesture of impatience at this sally, for he felt the minister was drawing him, and took his departure forthwith. The thought instantly crossed the minister’s mind that the affair would make a very interesting plot for his next novel; for he was a favourite novelist whose works were welcomed by the people for their merit, and not because they were written by a popular minister of the State. ‘If we could only put the actual occurrences of life as they appear before our eyes into our works what rattling good stories we could write!’ laughed Divesdale, as he threw himself into his easy chair for a smoke and a soliloquy. Ideals of art and literature are as subject to change and remodelling as are theories of natural science, which are bound to give way as the light of knowledge reveals little by little the true conditions of the mysteries of life and its environments. Accordingly literature-making had its fashions; a reaction had taken place, and from the field of novel writing which had been in the past almost entirely filled by lady writers, these were now self-eliminated; women having successfully taken up the positions of historians, mathematicians, political economists, and expounders of natural and mental philosophies. So successful was the female in the writing of books designed for instruction that no male had a chance in this walk of literature, unless he assumed a feminine pen-name, and by this harmless subterfuge gain a reputation in spite of his sex. Science as applied to manufactures had reached such perfection that the stones for building purposes were now manufactured, the stone quarries, as a matter of course, having almost given out. By a cunning admixture of chemically prepared material whose chief substance was composed of silicious sand brought from the pathless deserts by electric motive power, at a comparatively small expense, this granular quartz, or flint under certain conditions was reconverted into beautiful slabs of stone, of hard and enduring quality.