n the lives
of our great men, who stand forth to plead the cause of the poor and
weak.

But man's atmosphere is equally potent to blight and to shrivel. Not
time, but man, is the great destroyer. History is full of the ruins of
cities and empires. "Innumerable Paradises have come and gone; Adams
and Eves many," happy one day, have been "miserable exiles" the next;
and always because some satanic ambition or passion or person entering
has cast baneful shadow o'er the scene. Men talk of the scythe of time
and the tooth of time. But, said the art historian: "Time is
scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm; we who smite
like the scythe. Fancy what treasures would be ours to-day if the
delicate statues and temples of the Greeks, if the broad roads and
massy walls of the Romans, if the noble architecture, castles and towns
of the Middle Ages had not been ground to dust by blind rage of man.
It is man that is the consumer; he is moth and mildew and flame." All
the galleries and temples and libraries and cities have been destroyed
by his baneful presence. Thrice armies have made an arsenal of the
Acropolis; ground the precious marbles to powder, and mixed their dust
with his ashes. It was man's ax and hammer that dashed down the carved
work of cathedrals and turned the treasure cities into battle-fields,
and opened galleries to the mold of sea winds. Disobedience to law has
made cities a heap and walled cities ruins. Man is the pestilence that
walketh in darkness. Man is the destruction that wasteth at noonday.

When Mephistopheles appears in human form his presence falls upon homes
like the black pall of the consuming plague, that robes cities for
death. The classic writer tells of an Indian princess sent as a
present to Alexander the Great. She was lovely as the dawn; yet what
especially distinguished her was a certain rich perfume in her breath;
richer than a garden of Persian roses. A sage physician discovered her
terrible secret. This lovely woman had been reared upon poisons from
infancy until she herself was the deadliest poison known. When a
handful of sweet flowers was given to her, her bosom scorched and
shriveled the petals; when the rich perfume of her breath went among a
swarm of insects, a score fell dead about her. A pet humming-bird
entering her atmosphere, shuddered, hung for a moment in the air, then
dropped in its final agony. Her love was poison; her embrace death.
This