from sight and sound, except
the faint rumor of his descending feet upon the steps.

CHAPTER IV

There are, in the side streets of many if not all the greater cities of
the civilized world, shops where skilled artisans are busily at work in
the manufacture of "antiques"--antique furniture, antique rugs or
brasses or clocks or violins. The ingenious persons engaged in this
reprehensible activity have developed their skill to such a point that
it seems probable that fully half their deceit never comes to light at
all, and it is certain that their products rarely suffer much by
contrast with the things which they seek to imitate. It is only when
the maker of the original was a great master that his modern
counterfeiter fails--and not always then.

It is, at first thought, a strange business--not so strange that men
should give their lives to it as that there should be so much demand
for a purely apocryphal product. Looked at more carefully, however,
the oddness disappears, and these men are found to be catering to a
most legitimate appetite--an appetite which had its origin deep in the
early mind of the race, even though it is now, perhaps, passing from
the control of one of man's senses into that of another.

Latinism, as a creed, is dead, or dying. There are not many Latinists
left, find the pessimistic, melancholy folk who found all the beauty of
the world in "youth and death and the old age of roses" have appeared,
probably never to return. Latinism was a flavor of the soul, and the
modern soul rarely, if ever, assumes that flavor. What Latinism did,
however, was to teach the appreciation of the dignity of time, the
beauty of the passing years, and their enriching effect on things and
men. This quality is now extant as a matter of taste, a mental
attribute, and it is widely conceived to be a sign of cultivation to
"pooh-pooh whatever's fresh and new" in favor of something which has at
least the appearance of age with or without the richness and mellowness
thereof. After all, the mellowness is the essence; if the years merely
age without mellowing a thing, they have done it no good; the same
thing new is the more desirable article.

The larger and more important a thing is, the less effect the years
have upon it, and the more difficult becomes the task of the
enterprising workman who seeks to simulate the wrinkles time would
leave. In the case of cities, the task is practically hopeless. There
is