OCR Text |
Show The City read by children, young girls and women. Andl when of Tagaste at long I. ntervals some man spo k e 0 f th. e useh essness of such records of ephemeral happenings, . e was regar d e d b y h1. s ne1.g hb ors as a mild luln atic. Buft no one knew the worth l essness a nd use essness o the papers better t h an t h e me n themselves who made them. And they only made them because ~hey had to get bread and butter whereby they ~Ight exist; they never expressed the~selves-they Simply expressed the things the Propnetor thought would sell the paper. Possibly a few of these newspaper workers were deluded by the vain idea that the facility in writing acquired in a newspaper. office would lead to literature. But once caught In the mesh they seldom escaped until all the ambition and life were squeezed out of them; and w~en they were thrust out into the streets they were hke the typesetters- too old to learn another trade, and without the vim and buoyancy to succeed in something else. -,r Into the maw of the newspapers and commercial sweat-shops were fed the bright, ambitious country boys, and heat, fever, unrest and broken hours did their work. And the toilers came out crippled, poor in purse, broken in health and spirit; or better, they died and received, at last, the rest that life denied. -,r The city of Tagaste, centuries ago, turned to dust and ruin. Over its walls now creep the ivy and cling- 8 ing wild flowers ; serpents make their homes among The City its broken columns; and crawling lizards bask in the of Tagaste sun where once royalty and boundless wealth held sway. Tagaste died because she sacrificed her brightest and best in the mad rush to gain wealth by making cheap things that catered to the whims, depraved tastes and foolish tendencies of the worst. Where once proud Tagaste stood, green weeds wave in the empty casements; the chance-sown seeds of thistles sprout and blossom and bloom from between the mosaics of her courtways; on the deserted thresholds lichens and brambles cling in a brotherhood of disorder; while the filmy ooze of a rank vegetation steals over the interlaced spider-threads that covers all. The damp and the dust, the frost an<;! the sun, the fret of flooded waters, and the slow, patient inroads of the mosses have combined to obliterate the work of man & make his name but as a sound blown upon the breath of the winds. Tagaste is gone-gone like time, gone past recall. Tagaste is but a memory, tinged by a dream. 9 |