The Zeit-Geist

The Zeit-Geist

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Zeit-Geist, by Lily Dougall This
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Title: The Zeit-Geist
Author: Lily Dougall
Release Date: March 26, 2006 [EBook #18054]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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The Zeit-Geist
[Illustration: Zeit-geist logo]

THE Zeit-Geist Library of COMPLETE NOVELS in One Volume.
Paper, 1s. 6d.; cloth, 2s.
Early Volumes. By L. DOUGALL. THE ZEIT-GEIST. With
Frontispiece.
By GYP. CHIFFON'S MARRIAGE. With Portrait of Author.
By FRANKFORT MOORE. THE SALE OF A SOUL. With
Frontispiece.
By the Author of "A Yellow Aster." A NEW NOVEL. With
Frontispiece.
Other volumes to follow.
Each volume with designed Title-page.
LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO., PATERNOSTER ROW.
[Illustration: Bust]
[Illustration: Title page]

The Zeit-Geist
L. DOUGALL
Author of Beggars All, What Necessity Knows, etc.
LONDON HUTCHINSON & CO PATERNOSTER ROW
"I ... create evil. I am the Lord." Isa. xlv. 6, 7.
"Where will God be absent? In His face Is light, but in His shadow
there is healing too: Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed!" The

Ring and the Book.
"If Nature is the garment of God, it is woven without seam
throughout." The Ascent of Man.

OXFORD, January 1895.
_When travelling in Canada, in the region north of Lake Ontario, I
came upon traces of the somewhat remarkable life which is the subject
of the following sketch.
Having applied to the school-master in the town where Bartholomew
Toyner lived, I received an account the graphic detail and imaginative
insight of which attest the writer's personal affection. This account,
with only such condensation as is necessary, I now give to the world. I
do not believe that it belongs to the novel to teach theology; but I do
believe that religious sentiments and opinions are a legitimate subject
of its art, and that perhaps its highest function is to promote
understanding by bringing into contact minds that habitually
misinterpret one another._

THE ZEIT-GEIST.
CHAPTER I.
PROLOGUE.
To-day I am at home in the little town of the fens, where the Ahwewee
River falls some thirty feet from one level of land to another. Both
broad levels were covered with forest of ash and maple, spruce and
tamarack; but long ago, some time in the thirties, impious hands built
dams on the impetuous Ahwewee, and wide marshes and drowned
wood-lands are the result. Yet just immediately at Fentown there is
neither marsh nor dead tree; the river dashes over its ledge of rock in a
foaming flood, runs shallow and rapid between green woods, and all

about the town there are breezy pastures where the stumps are still
standing, and arable lands well cleared. The little town itself has a
thriving look. Its public buildings and its villas have risen, as by the
sweep of an enchanter's wand, in these backwoods to the south of the
Ottawa valley.
There was a day when I came a stranger to Fentown. The occasion of
my coming was a meeting concerning the opening of new schools for
the town--schools on a large and ambitious plan for so small a place.
When the meeting was over, I came out into the street on a mild
September afternoon. The other members of the School Council were
with me. There were two clergymen of the party. One of them, a young
man with thin, eager face, happened to be at my side.
"This Mr. Toyner, whose opinion has been so much consulted, was not
here to-day?" I said this interrogatively.
"No, ah--but you'll see him now. He has invited you all to a garden
party, or something of that sort. He's in delicate health. Ah--of course,
you know, it is natural for me to wish his influence with the Council
were much less than it is."
"Indeed! He was spoken of as a philanthropist."
"It's a very poor love to one's fellow-man that gives him all that his
vanity desires in the way of knowledge without leading him into the
Church, where he would be taught to set the value of everything in its
right proportion."
I was rather struck with this view of the function of the Church.
"Certainly," I replied, "to see all things in right proportion is wisdom;
but I heard this Toyner mentioned as a religious man."
"He has some imaginations of his own, I