Publisher's Synopsis
When the Great King, that mirror of a majesty whereof modern times have robbed theworld, recoiled aghast from the threatened indignity of having to wait, he laid his fingerwith a true touch on a characteristic incident of the lot of common men, from which it wasseemly that the state of God's Vicegerents should be free. It was a small matter, no doubt, athing of manners merely, and etiquette; yet manners and etiquette are first the shadowedexpression of facts and then the survival of them; the reverence once paid to power, andnow accorded, in a strange mixture of chivalry and calculation, to mere place whencepower has fled. The day of vicegerents is gone, and the day of officers has come; and it isnot unknown that officers should have to wait, or even-such is the insolence, no longer ofoffice, but of those who give it-should altogether go without. Yet, although everybody hasnow to wait, everybody has not to wait the same length of time. For example, a geniusneeds not wait so long for what he wants as a fool-unless, as chances now and then, he beboth a genius and a fool, when probably his waiting will be utterly without end.
