"This will be his first nibble at experience, old Time's fruit, hateful to the palate of youth! for which season only hath it any nourishment! Experience! You know Coleridge's capital simile?—Mournful you call it? Well! all wisdom is mournful. 'Tis therefore, coz, that the wise do love the Comic Muse. Their own high food would kill them. You shall find great poets, rare philosophers, night after night on the broad grin before a row of yellow lights and mouthing masks. Why? Because all's dark at home. The stage is the pastime of great minds. That's how it comes that the stage is now down. An age of rampant little minds, my dear Austin! How I hate that cant of yours about an Age of Work—you, and your Mortons, and your parsons Brawnley, rank radicals all of you, base materialists! What does Diaper Sandoe sing of your Age of Work? Listen! 'An Age of betty tit for tat, An Age of busy gabble: An Age that's like a brewer's vat, Fermenting for the rabble! 'An Age that's chaste in Love, but lax To virtuous abuses: Whose gentlemen and ladies wax Too dainty for their uses. 'An Age that drives an Iron Horse, Of Time and Space defiant; Exulting in a Giant's Force, And trembling at the Giant. 'An Age of Quaker hue and cut, By Mammon misbegotten; See the mad Hamlet mouth and strut! And mark the Kings of Cotton! 'From this unrest, lo, early wreck'd, A Future staggers crazy, Ophelia of the Ages, deck'd With woeful weed and daisy!'" Murmuring, "Get your parson Brawnley to answer that!" Adrian changed the resting-place of a leg, and smiled. The Age was an old battle-field between him and Austin. "My parson Brawnley, as you call him, has answered it," said Austin, "not by hoping his best, which would probably leave the Age to go mad to your satisfaction, but by doing it. And he has and will answer your Diaper Sandoe in better verse, as he confutes him in a better life." "You don't see Sandoe's depth," Adrian replied. "Consider that phrase, 'Ophelia of the Ages'! Is not Brawnley, like a dozen other leading spirits—I think that's your term just the metaphysical Hamlet to drive her mad? She, poor maid! asks for marriage and smiling babes, while my lord lover stands questioning the Infinite, and rants to the Impalpable." Austin laughed. "Marriage and smiling babes she would have in abundance, if Brawnley legislated. Wait till you know him. He will be over at Poer Hall shortly, and you will see what a Man of the Age means. But now, pray, consult with me about these boys."