The Napoleon of Notting Hill
men so extravagantly toil and die in them? Has nothing been done by Notting Hill that any chance clump of farmers or clan of savages would not have done without it? What might have been done to Notting Hill if the world had been different may be a deep question; but there is a deeper. What could have happened to the world if Notting Hill had never been?"
The other voice replied―
"The same that would have happened to the world and all the starry systems if an apple-tree grew six apples instead of seven; something would have been eternally lost. There has never been anything in the world absolutely like Notting Hill. There will never be anything quite like it to the crack of doom. I cannot believe anything but that God loved it as He must surely love anything that is itself and unreplaceable. But even for that I do not care. If God, with all His thunders, hated it, I loved it."
And with the voice a tall, strange figure lifted itself out of the débris in the half-darkness.
The other voice came after a long pause, and as it were hoarsely.
"But suppose the whole matter were really a hocus-pocus. Suppose that whatever meaning
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