Automobiles -- Fiction; Devil -- Fiction; Fantasy fiction
“Up and ride with me all ye who would reach the goal! Come, ye fools of
avarice! Come, ye blown and bursting windbags of world’s conceit and
vain pretension! Come, ye greedy maws of gluttony—ye human pottles of
drink,—ye wolves of vice! Come, ye shameless women of lusts and lies
and vanities! Come, false hearts and treacherous tongues and painted
faces!—come, dear demons all, and ride with me! Come, ye pretenders to
holiness—ye thieves of virtue, who give ‘charity’ to the poor with the
right hand, and cheat your neighbour with the left! Come, ye gamblers
with a Nation’s honour, stake your last throw! Come, all ye morphia-fed
vampires and slaves to poison!—grasp at my wheels and cling! On—on—over
the fragments of mighty Empires,—over the hearts of kings and
queens,—over the lives of the brave, the good and the wise!—trample
them all down and crush them into dust and ashes! What shall we do with
wisdom, we who have done with God? What with purity?—what with courage?
Naught are these but reproach and bitterness—mere obstacles in the road
way which leadeth to destruction;—ride them down! On—on! to the
destined end!—on with rush and hurry and panting eagerness to reach the
only goal—the last of winning-posts—the close of Certainties,—the
GRAVE!”
Like a flashing blur of fiery wheels the Car now spun along in the
blackness of the night, and the drifting Phantoms round about it were
as great grey sails swelling with the angry blast, and sweeping it
onward through the dark.
“Pray no more—hope no more—love no more!” cried the Fiend. “Be as the
shifting sands, or as the trembling quicksilver—inconstant,
capricious,—ever in motion, never at rest! Change—change and revolt!
All ye who weary of old things, behold I give you new! Bodies shall be
pampered and souls killed for your pleasure;—foulest vices shall be
called merely “sensations,”—each to be tried, excused and condemned in
turn,—and virtues shall have no more place at all in the scale of
feeling! The music of life shall clash into wild discord—the love of
home shall be a lost glory,—tenderness for the young, and reverence for
the old, shall be the faded sentiments of the past, only fit for a
mummer’s jest! Change—change and sensation! Roll out your columns of
vaporous notoriety, ye printing-presses of the world!—spread wide the
fame of the Anarchist and the Courtesan,—mock and revile the spirits of
the wise and true,—noise abroad the name of the Murderer, and treat the
Poet with derision—give flattery to the rich and scorn to the
humble,—teach nothing but the art of lying,—add venom to the tongue of
scandal,—dig up the graves of the great, and kill the reputations of
the brave and pure!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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