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Searchology Directory 09
Page 08
In the midst of his prosperity Tarquin was troubled by a strange portent. A serpent crawled out from the altar in the royal palace, and seized on the entrails of the victim. The king, in fear, sent his two sons, Titus and Aruns, to consult the oracle at Delphi. They were accompanied by their cousin L. Junius Brutus. One of the sisters of Tarquin had been married to M. Brutus, a man of great wealth, who died, leaving two sons under age.[10] Of these the elder was killed by Tarquin, who coveted their possessions; the younger escaped his brother's fate only by feigning idiotcy. On arriving at Delphi, Brutus propitiated the priestess with the gift of a golden stick inclosed in a hollow staff. After executing the king's commission, Titus and Aruns asked the priestess who was to reign at Rome after their father. The priestess replied, whichsoever should first kiss his mother. The princes agreed to keep the matter secret from Sextus, who was at Rome, and to cast lots between themselves. Brutus, who better understood the meaning of the oracle, fell, as if by chance, when they quitted the temple, and kissed the earth, the mother of them all.
No one who has followed the diplomatic history of the negotiations that led to this war can doubt that if there had been no secret treaties, but instead open proclamations of intentions and an open discussion of international ambitions, the world might have been saved this catastrophe. It is no condemnation of any person or country to say this. The reserves and hesitations and misconceptions that led Germany to suppose that England would wait patiently while France and Belgium were destroyed before she herself received attention were unavoidable under the existing diplomatic conditions. What reasonable people have to do now is not to recriminate over the details in the working of a system that we can now all of us perceive to be hopelessly bad, but to do our utmost in this season of opportunity to destroy the obscurities in which fresh mischief may fester for our children.
Once in a generation, a Wallace may be found physically, mentally, and morally qualified to wander unscathed through the tropical wilds of America and of Asia, to form magnificent collections as he wanders, and withal to think out sagaciously the conclusions suggested by his collections; but, to the ordinary explorer or collector, the dense forests of equatorial Asia and Africa, which constitute the favorite habitation of the Orang, the Chimpanzee, and the Gorilla, present difficulties of no ordinary magnitude; and the man who risks his life by even a short visit to the malarious shores of those regions may well be excused if he shrinks from facing the dangers of the interior; if he contents himself with stimulating the industry of the better-seasoned natives, and collecting and collating the more or less mythical reports and traditions with which they are too ready to supply him.
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