lucky, and this house rose up here out of the earth. But ‘senator’ and ‘house’ are superficialities, and I know something else that you weren’t even thinking about that day, something I’ve learned from life and history. I know that the external, visible, tangible tokens and symbols of happiness and success first appear only after things have in reality gone into decline already. Such external signs need time to reach us, like the light of one of those stars up there, which when it shines most brightly may well have already gone out, for all we know.”
