Present Time, defined impressively by Carlyle as “the youngest born of Eternity, child and heir of all the past times, with their good and evil, and parent of all the future with new questions and significance,” on the right or wrong understanding of which depend the issues of life or death to us all, the sphinx riddle given to all of us to rede as we would live and not die.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Prescott, William Hickling * President of the United States