hat an infinite
number of uses they could put the little re-discovery they have made of
LUMINOUS PAINT. In that simple thing there is a secret, which as yet
they do not guess--a wonderful, beautiful, scientific secret, which may
perhaps take them a few hundred years to find out. In the meantime they
have got hold of one end of the thread; they can make luminous paint,
and with it they can paint light-houses, and, what is far more
important--ships. Vessels in mid-ocean will have no more need of
fog-signals and different-coloured lamps; their own coat of paint will
be sufficient to light them safely on their way. Even rooms can be so
painted as to be perfectly luminous at night. A friend of mine,
residing in Italy, has a luminous ballroom, where the ceiling is
decorated with a moon and stars in electric light. The effect is
exceedingly lovely; and though people think a great deal of money must
have been laid out upon it, it is perhaps the only great ballroom in
Italy that has been really cheaply fitted up. But, as I said before,
there is another secret behind the invention or discovery of luminous
paint--a secret which, when once unveiled, will revolutionize all the
schools of art in the world."

"Do you know this secret?" asked Mrs. Challoner.

"Yes, madame--perfectly."

"Then why don't you disclose it for the benefit of everybody?" demanded
Erne Challoner.

"Because, my dear young lady, no one would believe me if I did. The
time is not yet ripe for it. The world must wait till its people are
better educated."

"Better educated!" exclaimed Mrs. Everard. "Why, there is nothing
talked of nowadays but education and progress! The very children are
wiser than their parents!"

"The children!" returned Heliobas, half inquiringly, half indignantly.
"At the rate things are going, there will soon be no children left;
they will all be tired little old men and women before they are in
their teens. The very babes will be born old. Many of them are being
brought up without any faith in God or religion; the result will be an
increase of vice and crime. The purblind philosophers, miscalled wise
men, who teach the children by the light of poor human reason only, and
do away with faith in spiritual things, are bringing down upon the
generations to come an unlooked-for and most terrific curse. Childhood,
the happy, innocent, sweet, unthinking, almost angelic age, at which
Nature would have us believe in fairies and all the delicate