With fifty patches painted on faces and limbs — so sat ye there to my astonishment, ye present-day men!
And with fifty mirrors around you, which flattered your play of colors, and repeated it!
Verily, ye could wear no better masks, ye present-day men, than your own faces! Who could — recognize you!
Written all over with the characters of the past, and these characters also pencilled over with new characters — thus have ye concealed yourselves well from all decipherers!
And though one be a trier of the reins, who still believeth that ye have reins! Out of colors ye seem to be baked, and out of glued scraps.
All times and peoples gaze divers-colored out of your veils; all customs and beliefs speak divers-colored out of your gestures.
He who would strip you of veils and wrappers, and paints and gestures, would just have enough left to scare the crows.
Verily, I myself am the scared crow that once saw you naked, and without paint; and I flew away when the skeleton ogled at me.
Rather would I be a day-laborer in the nether-world, and among the shades of the by-gone! — Fatter and fuller than ye, are the nether-worldlings!
This, yea this, is bitterness to my bowels, that I can neither endure you naked nor clothed, ye present-day men!
All that is unhomelike in the future, and whatever maketh strayed birds shiver, is verily more homelike and familiar than your "reality."
For thus speak you: "Real are we wholly, and without faith and superstition": thus do you plume yourselves — alas! even without plumes!
Indeed, how would ye be able to believe, you divers-colored
