among us long before the Time Machine was made—­thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end.  If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so.  But to me the future is still black and blank—­is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story.  And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers—­shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle—­to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.