But in spite of it all, her sense of pity seemed to be going. When the
twenty-third came, and she read that another gallant young leader had
been assassinated, she could not mourn him deeply. Though nothing could
be stupider than to slay Michael Collins, his earth went on shining in
the grave. She could not bring herself to assert that such a youth ought
never to have been born.
She had read a great deal in the papers about radio-telegraphy.
Apparently the year 1922 would be remembered as the year when all the
boys in America began to talk through empty space like gossiping
seraphs. She wished that Horatio could have lived to see the day. How
tickled she would have been to hear from Washington such words as these:
“Get ready! Your brother Horatio is on the ether.” If all the boys in
the world got acquainted with each other by such means, maybe peace
would come after all—some day.
Occasionally she had seen some reference to the deeper mystery of radium
and its terrible, almost inconceivable energy. She earnestly hoped that
nobody on earth was trying to find anything like it but greater in
quantity. Given such a power, the savage human race would destroy itself
in a year.