HERE ARE LADIES

BY

JAMES STEPHENS

AUTHOR OF 'THE CROCK OF GOLD'

NEW YORK

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1914

COPYRIGHT, 1913

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1913

Reprinted March, 1914. 

 CONTENTS

 WOMEN THREE HEAVY HUSBANDS A GLASS OF BEER ONE AND ONE THREE WOMEN WHO WEPT THE TRIANGLE THE DAISIES THREE ANGRY PEOPLE THE THREEPENNY PIECE BRIGID THREE YOUNG WIVES THE HORSES MISTRESS QUIET EYES THREE LOVERS WHO LOST THE BLIND MAN SWEET-APPLE THREE HAPPY PLACES THE MOON THERE IS A TAVERN IN THE TOWN

HERE ARE LADIES

 WOMEN

 Listen! If but women were Half as kind as they are fair There would be an end to all Miseries that do appal. 

 Cloud and wind would fly together In a dance of sunny weather, And the happy trees would throw Gifts to travellers below. 

 Then the lion, meek and mild, With the lamb would, side by side, Couch him friendly, and would be Innocent of enmity. 

 Then the Frozen Pole would go, Shaking off his fields of snow, To a kinder clime and dance Warmly with the girls of France. 

 These; if women only were Half as kind as they are fair. 

THREE HEAVY HUSBANDS

I

He had a high nose. He looked at one over the collar, so to speak. His regard was very assured, and his speech was that short bundle ofmonosyllables which the subaltern throws at the orderly. He had neverbeen questioned, and, the precedent being absent, he had neverquestioned himself. Why should he? We live by question and answer, but we do not know the reply to anything until a puzzled comradebothers us and initiates that divine curiosity which both humbles anduplifts us. 

He wanted all things for himself. What he owned he wished to owncompletely. He would give anything away with the largest generosity, but he would share with no one--

"Whatever is mine, " said he, "must be entirely mine. If it is alive Iclaim its duty to the last respiration of its breath, and if it is deadI cannot permit a mortgage on it. Have you a claim on anythingbelonging to me? then you may have it entirely, I must have all of itor none. "

He was a stockbroker, and, by the methods peculiar to that mysteriousprofession, he had captured a sufficiency of money to enable him toregard the future with calmness and his fellow-creatures withcondescension--perhaps the happiest state to which a certain humanitycan attain. 

So far matters were in order. There remained nothing to round his lifeinto the complete, harmonious circle except a wife; but as a statedincome has the choice of a large supply, he shortly discovered a ladywhose qualifications were such as would ornament any, however exalted, position--She was sound in wind and limb. She spoke grammar with theutmost precision, and she could play the piano with such skill that itwas difficult to explain why she played it badly. 

This also was satisfactory, and if the world had been made of machineryhe would have had the fee-simple of happiness. But to both happinessand misery there follows the inevitable second act, and beyond that, and to infinity, action and interaction, involution and evolution, forging change for ever. Thus he failed to take into considerationthat the lady was alive, that she had a head on her shoulders which wasnative to her body, and that she could not be aggregated as chattelproperty for any longer period than she agreed to. 

After their marriage he discovered that she had dislikes which did notalways coincide with his, and appreciations which set his teeth onedge. A wife in the house is a critic on the hearth--this truth wasdaily and unpleasantly impressed upon him: but, of course, every manknows that every woman is a fool, and a tolerant smile is the onlyrecognition we allow to their whims. God made them as they are--wegrin, and bear it. 

His wife found that the gospel of her husband was this--Love me to theexclusion of all human creatures. Believe in me even when I am in thewrong. Women should be seen and not heard. When you want excitementmake a fuss of your husband. --But while he entirely forgot that hiswife had been bought and paid for, she did not forget it: indeed, shecould not help remembering it. A wrong had been done her not to beobscured even by economics, the great obscurer. She had been won andnot wooed. (The very beasts have their privileges!) She had beendefrauded of how many teasing and provoking prerogatives, aloofnesses, and surrenders, and her body, if not her mind, resented and rememberedit. 

There are times when calmness is not recognised as a virtue. Ofcourse, he had wooed her in a way. He took her to the opera, he gaveher jewels, he went to Church with her twice every Sunday, and once amonth he knelt beside her in more profound reverences: sometimes hepetted her, always he was polite--

But he had not told her that her eyes were the most wonderful andinspiring orbs into which a tired man could look. He never said thatthere would not be much to choose between good and evil if he lost her. He never said that one touch of her lips would electrify a paralyticinto an acrobat. He never swore that he would commit suicide and diveto deep perdition if she threw him over--none of these things. It ispossible that she did not wish him to say or do such extravagances, buthe had not played the game, and, knowing that something was badlywrong, she nursed a grievance, that horrid fosterling. 

He was fiercely jealous, not of his love, but of his property, andwhile he was delighted to observe that other men approved of his taste, he could not bear that his wife should admire these outsiders. Thiswas his attitude to her: Give me your admirations, all of them, everynote of exclamation of which you are mistress, every jot and tittle ofyour thoughts must be mine, for, lacking these, I have nothing. I amgood to you. I have interposed between you and the buffets ofexistence. I temper all winds to the bloom of your cheek. Do you yourpart, and so we will be happy. 

There was a clerk in his office, a black-haired, slim, frowning youngman, who could talk like a cascade for ten minutes and be silent for amonth: he was a very angry young man, with many hatreds and manyambitions. His employer prized him as a reliable and capable worker, liked his manners, and paid him thirty-five shillings per week--Outsideof these matters the young man abode no more in his remembrance thandid the flower on the heath or the bird on the tree. 

It happened one day that the employer fell sick of influenza and wasconfined to his bed. This clerk, by order, waited on him to see to hiscorrespondence; for, no matter who sneezes, work must be attended to. 

The young man stayed in the house for a week, and during his sojournthere he met the lady. She fair, young, brooding! he also young, silent, and angry! After the first look had passed between them, therewas little more to be said. They came together as though they had beenmagnetised. Love or passion, by whatever name it is called, was bornabruptly. There is a force in human relations drawing too imperativelyfor denial; defying self-interest, and dragging at all anchors of dutyand religion. Is it in man only the satisfaction of self? Egotismstanding like a mountain, and demanding, "Give me yourself or I willkill myself. " And women! is their love the degradation of self, thesurrender and very abasement of lowliness? or is it also egotism set ona pinnacle, so careless and self-assured as to be fearful of nothing?In their eyes the third person, a shadow already, counted as less thana shadow. He was a name with no significance, a something without alocality. His certain and particular income per annum was a thing tolaugh at . . . There was a hot, a swift voice speaking--"I love you, "it said, "I love you": he would batter his way into heaven, he wouldtear delight from wherever delight might be--or else, and this washarder, a trembling man pleading, "Aid me or I perish, " and it iswoman's instinct not to let a man perish. "If I help you, I hurtmyself, " she sighed; and, "Hurt yourself, then, " sighed the man; "wouldyou have me perish. . . ?"

So the owner by purchase smiled--

"You are mine, " said he, "altogether mine, no one else has a lien uponyou. When the weather is fine I will take you for drives in thesunshine. In the nights we will go to the opera, hearkening togetherto the tenor telling his sweet romanza, and when the wintry rain beatson the windows you will play the piano for me, and so we will be happy. "

When he was quite recovered he went back to his office, and found thatone of his clerks had not arrived--this angered him; when he returnedhome again in the evening, he found that his wife was not there. Sothings go. 

II

He was one of those who shy at the _tête-à-tête_ life which, for a longtime, matrimony demands. As his wedding-day approached he grew fearfulof the prolonged conversation which would stretch from the day ofmarriage, down the interminable vistas, to his death, and, more andmore, he became doubtful of his ability to cope with, or his enduranceto withstand, the extraordinary debate called marriage. 

He was naturally a silent man. He did not dislike conversation if itwas kept within decent limits: indeed, he responded to it contentedlyenough, but when he had spoken or been addressed for more than an hourhe became, first, impatient, then bored, and, finally, sulky orill-mannered. --"With men, " said he, "one can talk or be silent as onewishes, for between them there is a community of understanding whichturns the occasional silence into a pregnant and fruitful interludewherein a thought may keep itself warm until it is wanted: but with awoman!"--he could not pursue that speculation further, for hisacquaintance with the sex was limited. 

In every other respect his bride was a happiness. Her good lookssoothed and pleased him. The touch of her hand gave him anextraordinary pleasure which concealed within it a yet moreextraordinary excitement. Her voice, as a mere sound, enchanted him. It rippled and flowed, deepened and tinkled. It cooed and sang to himat times like the soft ringdove calling to its mate, and, at timesagain, it gurgled and piped like a thrush happy in the sunlight. Theinfinite variation of her tone astonished and delighted him, and if itcould have remained something as dexterous and impersonal as a wind hewould have been content to listen to it for ever--but, could he giveher pipe for pipe? Would the rich gurgle or the soft coo sound at lastas a horrid iteration, a mere clamour to which he must not only give anobedient heed, but must even answer from a head wherein silence had sopeacefully brooded?

His mind was severe, his utterance staccato, and he had no knowledge ofthose conversational arts whereby nouns and verbs are amazinglytransfigured into a gracious frolic or an intellectual pleasure. Tosnatch the chatter from its holder, toss and keep it playing in the airuntil another snatched it from him; to pluck a theory hot from thestating, and expand it until it was as iridescent and, perhaps, as thinas a soap-bubble: to light up and vivify a weighty conversation untilthe majestic thing sparkled and glanced like a jewel--these things hecould not do, and he knew it. Many a time he had sat, amazed as at anexhibition of acrobatics, while around him the chatter burst and sangand shone. He had tried to bear his part, but had never been able toedge more than one word into that tossing cataract, and so he fell tothe habit of listening instead of speaking. 

With some reservations, he enjoyed listening, but particularly heenjoyed listening to his own thoughts as they trod slowly, but verycertainly, to foregone conclusions. Into the silent arena of his mindno impertinent chatter could burst with a mouthful of puns or ridicule, or a reminiscence caught on the wing and hurled apropos to the verycentre of discussion. His own means of conveying or gatheringinformation was that whereby one person asked a question and anotherperson answered it, and, if the subject proved deeper than theassembled profundity, then one pulled out the proper volume of anencyclopaedia, and the pearl was elicited as with a pin. 

Meanwhile, his perturbation was real. There are people to whom we neednot talk--let them pass: we overlook or smile distantly at thewretches, retaining our reputation abroad and our self-respect in itssanctuary: but there are others with whom we may not be silent, andinto this latter category a wife enters with assured emphasis. Heforesaw endless opportunities for that familiar discussion to which hewas a stranger. There were breakfast-tables, dinner-tables, tea-tables, and, between these, there might be introduced thosepreposterous other tables which women invent for no purpose unless itbe that of making talk. His own breakfast, dinner, and tea-tables hadbeen solitary ones, whereat he lounged with a newspaper propped againsta lamp, or a book resting one end against the sugar-bowl and the otheragainst his plate. --This quietude would be ravaged from him for ever, and that tumult nothing could exorcise or impede. Further than these, he foresaw an interminable drawing-room, long walks together, andother, even more confidential and particular, sequestrations. 

After one has married a lady, what does one say to her? He could notconceive any one saying anything beyond "Good-morning. " Then the otheraspect arrested him, "What does a woman find to say to a man?" Perhapssafety lay in this direction, for they were reputed notable andtireless speakers to whom replies are not pressingly necessary. Helooked upon his sweetheart as from a distance, and tried to reconstructher recent conversations. --He was amazed at the little he couldremember. "I, I, I, we, we, we, this shop, that shop, Aunt Elsa, andchocolates. " She had mentioned all these things on the previous day, but she did not seem to have said anything memorable about them, and, so far as he could recollect, he had said nothing in reply but "Oh, yes" and "To be sure!" Could he sustain a lifetime of small-talk onthese meagre responses? He saw in vision his most miserabletea-table--a timid husband and a mad wife glaring down their noses atplates. The picture leaped at him as from a cinematograph and appalledhim. . . . After a time they would not even dare to look at eachother. Hatred would crouch behind these figures, waiting for its chainto be loosed!

So he came to the knowledge that he, so soon to be a husband, had beenspecially fashioned by nature to be a bachelor. For him safety lay insolitude: others, less rigorously planned, might safely venture intothe haphazard, gregarious state of wedlock, but he not only could not, but must not, do so, and he meditated an appeal to his bride to releasehim from the contract. Several times the meditation almost becameaudible, but always, just as he toppled on the surge of speech, thedear lady loosed a torrent of irrelevancies which swirled him from allanchorage, and left him at the last stranded so distantly from histhought that he did not know how to find his way back to it. 

It would be too brutally direct to shatter information about silk atone shilling the yard with a prayer for matrimonial freedom. The girlwould be shocked--he could see her--she would stare at him, andsuddenly grow red in the face and stammer; and he would be forced totrail through a lengthy, precise explanation of this matter which wasnot at all precise to himself. Furthermore, certain obscure emotionsrendered him unwilling to be sundered from this girl. --There was thetouch of her hand; more, the touch of her lips given bravely and withready modesty--a contact not lightly to be relinquished. He did notbelieve he could ever weary of looking at her eyes: they were grey, widely open, and of a kindness such as he could not disbelieve in; aradiant cordiality, a soft, limpid goodwill; believing and trustfuleyes which held no guile when they looked at him: there were hermovements, her swiftness, spaciousness, her buoyant certainty: oneremembered her hair, her hands, the way she wore a frock, and astrange, seductive something about the look of her shoe. 

The thing was not possible! It is the last and darkest insult to tellthe woman who loves you that you do not wish to marry her. Herindignant curiosity may be appeased only by the excuse that you likesome other woman better, and although she may hate the explanation shewill understand it--but no less legitimate excuse than this may passsunderingly between a man and a woman. 

It lay, therefore, that he must amend his own hand, and, accordingly, for the purpose of marital intercourse, he began a sad inquiry into thenature of things. The world was so full of things: clouds and windsand sewing machines, kings and brigands, hats and heads, flower-pots, jam and public-houses--surely one could find a little to chat about atany moment if one were not ambitiously particular. With inanimateobjects one could speak of shape and colour and usefulness. Animateobjects had, beside these, movements and aptitudes for eating anddrinking, playing and quarrelling. Artistic things were well or badlyexecuted, and were also capable of an inter-comparison which could notbut be interesting and lengthy. --These things could all be talkedabout. There were positive and negative qualities attaching toeverything, and when the former was exhausted the latter could still beprofitably mined--"Order, " said he, "subsists in everything, and evenconversation must be subject to laws capable of ascertainment. "

He carefully, and under the terms of badinage, approached other men, inquiring how they bore themselves in the matrimonial dispute, and whatwere the subjects usually spoken of in the intimacies of family life. But from these people he received the smallest assistance. --Some wereribald, some jocose, some so darkly explanatory that intelligence couldnot peer through the mist or could only divine that these hated theirwives. One man held that all domestic matters should be left entirelyto the wife and that talking was a domestic matter. Another said thatthe words "yes, no, and why" would safeguard a man through anylabyrinth, however tortuous. Another said that he always went out whenthe wife began to speak; and yet another suggested that the onlypossible basis for conversation was that of perpetual opposition, wherean affirmation was always countered by a denial, and the proving of thecase exercised both time and intelligence. 

As he sat in the train beside his wife the silence which he so dreadedcame upon them. Emptiness buzzed in his head. He sought diligentlyfor something to speak about--the characteristics of objects! Therewere objects and to spare, but he could not say--"that window issquare, it is made of glass, " or, "the roof of this carriage is flat, it is made of wood. "

Suddenly his wife buried her face in her muff, and her shoulders wereconvulsed. . . . 

Love and contrition possessed him on the instant. He eased his huskythroat, and the dreaded, interminable conversation began--

"What are you crying for, my dear?" said he. 

Her voice, smothered by the fur, replied--

"I am not crying, darling, " said she, "I am only laughing. "

III

He got stiffly up from his seat before the fire--

"Be hanged, " said he, "if I wait any longer for her. If she doesn'tplease to come in before this hour let her stop out. " He stared intothe fire for a few moments--"Let her go to Jericho, " said he, and hetramped up to bed. 

They had been married just six months, after, as he put it, the hardestcourtship a man ever undertook. She was more like a piece ofquicksilver than a girl. She was as uncertain as a spring wind, asflighty as a ball of thistledown--"Doesn't know her own mind for tenminutes together, " he groaned. "Hasn't any mind at all, " he'd think anhour later. While, on the following day, it might be--"That woman istoo deep, she is dodging all round me, she is sticking her finger in myeye. She treats me as if I wasn't there at one moment, and diddles meas if I was Tom Fool the next--I'll get out of it. "

He had got out of it three or four times--halted her against a wall, and, with a furious forefinger, wagged all her misdeeds in her face;then, rating her up, down and round, he had prepared to march awaycomplacent and refreshed like Justice taking leave of a sinner, only tofind that if the jade wept he could not go away--

"Dash it all, " said he, "you can't leave a girl squatting down againsta wall, with her head in her lap and she crying. Hang it, " said he, "you feel as if there was water round your legs and you'll splash ifyou move. "

So he leavened justice with mercy, and, having dried her tears with hislips, he found himself in the same position as before, with a madsuspicion tattering through his brain that maybe he had been "diddled"again. 

But he married her, and to do that was a job also. She shied atmatrimony. She shied at everything that looked plain or straight. Shewas like a young dog out for a walk: when she met a side-street shebolted down it and was instantly surrounded by adventure and misery, returning, like the recovered pup, thick with the mud of thoseexcursions. There was a lust in her blood for side-streets, lanewaysand corners. 

"Marriage!" said she, and she was woebegone--"Marriage will be forever. "

"So will heaven, " he retorted comfortingly. 

"So will--the other place, " said she, with a giggle, and crushed himunder the feeling that she envisaged him as the devil of thatparticular Hades, instead of as an unfortunate sinner plucked up by theheels and soused into the stew-pan by his wife. 

He addressed himself--

"When we are married, " said he, "I'll keep a hand on you, my lady, thatyou won't be able to wriggle away from. If you are slippery, and faithyou are, why I'm tough, and so you'll find it. " "Get rid of your kinksbefore you marry, " said he. "I've no use for a wife with one eye onme, and it a dubious one, and the other one squinting into a parlourtwo streets off. You've got to settle down and quit tricks. A wifehas no one else to deceive but her husband, that's all she can wanttricks for, and there's not going to be any in my house. It's allright for a pretty girl to be a bit larky----"

"Am I really pretty?" said she, deeply interested and leaning forwardwith her hands clasping her knees--"Do you really and truly think I ampretty? I met a man one time, he had a brown moustache and blue eyes, outside a tailor's shop in Georges Street, with a public-house on oneside, and he said he thought I was very pretty: he told me what hisname was, but I forget it: maybe, you know him: he wears a tweed suitwith a stripe and a soft hat--Let me see, no, his name began with aT----"

"His name was Thief, " he roared, "and that was his profession too. Don't let me catch you talking with a strange man, or you'll get hurt, and his brown eyes will be mixed up with his blue moustache. "

So married they were, six months now, and the wits were nearly worriedout of him in trying to keep pace with his wife's vagaries. Matrimonyhad not cured her love for side-streets, short cuts and chanceacquaintances, and she was gradually making her husband travel at asimilar tangent. When they started to go to church he would find, tohis amazement, that they were in the Museum. If they journeyed with aMuseum for an objective they were certain to pull up in the BotanicGardens. A call on a friend usually turned into a visit to a theatreor a walk by the Dodder--

"Heart-scalded I am, " said he, "with her hopping and trotting. Shetravels sideways like a crab, so she does. She has a squint in herwalk. Her boots have a bias outwards. I'm getting bow-legged, so Iam, slewing round corners after her. I'll have to put my foot down, "said he. 

And now it was all finished. Here was twelve o'clock at night and anabsent wife--a detestable combination. Twelve o'clock at night outsidea house is an immoral hour, inside a house it is non-moral, butrespectable. There is nothing in the street at that time but dubiety. Who would be a husband listening through the tolling of midnight for amuffled footfall?--And he had told her not to go: had given an order, formulated his imperative and inflexible will--

"Never mind! I'll stand by it, " said he, "this is the last straw. Onebreak and then freedom. Surgery is better than tinkering. Cut theknot and let who will try to join it then. One pang, and afterwardsease, fresh air, and freedom: fresh air! gulps of it, with the headback and an easy mind. I'm not the man to be fooled for ever--surgery!surgery!"

His wife had wished to see a friend that night and requested herhusband to go with her--he refused--

"You're always trapsin about, " said he. 

She entreated. 

He heaved an angry forehead at her, puckered an eye, toned a long Nothat wagged vibration behind it like an undocked tail. 

She persisted, whereupon he loosed his thunder--

"You're not to step outside the house this night, ma'am, " said he; andto her angry "I will go, " he barked, "If you do go, don't come backhere. I'll have a dutiful wife or I'll have none--stay in or stay out. I'm tired humouring your whimsies, let you humour mine now----"

Then a flame gathered on her face, it grew hot in her voice, flashed toa point in her eyes--

"I'm going out to-night, " said she loudly; "are you coming with me?"

"I'm not, " said he. 

"Then, " she snapped, "I'll go by myself. "

"Wherever you go to-night you can stay, " he roared. "Don't come backto this house. "

"I'm not mad enough to want to, " she replied. "I wish I'd never seenyour old house. I wish I'd never seen yourself. You are just as dullas your house is, and nearly as flat. It's a stupid, uninteresting, slow house, so it is, and you are a stupid, dissatisfied grump of aman, so you are. I'd sooner live in a cave with a hairy bear, so Iwould----" and out she ran. 

Two minutes later he had heard the door bang, and then silence. 

That was five hours ago, and during all these long hours he had satstaring sourly into the fire, seeing goodness knows what burnt-upvisions therein, waiting to hear a footfall, and an entreating voice atthe key-hole; apologies and tears perhaps, and promises of amendment. Now it was after twelve o'clock, darkness everywhere and silence. Timeand again a policeman's tramp or the hasty, light footfall of adventurewent by. So he stood up at last sour and vindictive--

"She would have her fling. She wouldn't give in. She doesn't care atinker's curse what I say. . . . Let her go to Jericho, " said he, andhe tramped up to bed. 

In his bedroom he did not trouble to get a light. He undressed in abitterly savage mood and rolled into bed, only to jump out again insudden terror, for there was some one in it. It was his wife. He laydown with a hazy, half-mad mind. Had he wronged her? Was she moreamenable than he had fancied? She had not gone out at all--or, had shegone out, sneaked in again by the back door and crept noiselessly tobed. . . . ?

He fell asleep at last on the tattered fringe of a debate--Had hewronged her? or had she diddled him again?

A GLASS OF BEER

It was now his custom to sit there. The world has its habits, whyshould a man not have his? The earth rolls out of light and intodarkness as punctually as a business man goes to and from his office;the seasons come with the regularity of automata, and go as if theywere pushed by an ejector; so, night after night, he strolled from thePlace de l'Observatoire to the Font St. Michel, and, on the returnjourney, sat down at the same Café, at the same table, if he couldmanage it, and ordered the same drink. 

So regular had his attendance become that the waiter would suggest theorder before it was spoken. He did not drink beer because he liked it, but only because it was not a difficult thing to ask for. Always hehad been easily discouraged, and he distrusted his French almost asmuch as other people had reason to. The only time he had varied theorder was to request "un vin blanc gommée, " but on that occasion he hadbeen served with a postage stamp for twenty-five centimes, and he stillwondered when he remembered it. 

He liked to think of his first French conversation. He wantedsomething to read in English, but was timid of asking for it. Hewalked past all the newspaper kiosks on the Boulevard, anxiouslyscanning the vendors inside--they were usually very stalwart, verycompetent females, who looked as though they had outgrown their sinsbut remembered them with pleasure. They had the dully-polished, slightly-battered look of a modern antique. The words "M'sieu, Madame"rang from them as from bells. They were very alert, sitting, as itwere, on tiptoe, and their eyes hit one as one approached. They werelike spiders squatting in their little houses waiting for their dailyflies. 

He found one who looked jolly and harmless, sympathetic indeed, and toher, with a flourished hat, he approached. Said he, "Donnez-moi, Madame, s'il vous plaît, le _Daily Mail_. " At the second repetitionthe good lady smiled at him, a smile compounded of benevolence andcomprehension, and instantly, with a "V'la M'sieu, " she handed him _TheNew York Herald_. They had saluted each other, and he marched down theroad in delight, with his first purchase under his arm and his firstforeign conversation accomplished. 

At that time everything had delighted him--the wide, well-lightedBoulevard, the concierges knitting in their immense doorways, eachlooking like a replica of the other, each seeming sister to akiosk-keeper or a cat. The exactly-courteous speech of the people andtheir not quite so rigorously courteous manners pleased him. Helistened to the voluble men who went by, speaking in a haste sobreathless that he marvelled how the prepositions and conjunctionsstuck to their duty in so swirling an ocean of chatter. There was abig black dog with a mottled head who lay nightly on the pavementopposite the Square de l'Observatoire. At intervals he raised his leanskull from the ground and composed a low lament to an absent friend. His grief was respected. The folk who passed stepped sidewards forhim, and he took no heed of their passage--a lonely, introspective dogto whom a caress or a bone were equally childish things: Let me alone, he seemed to say, I have my grief, and it is company enough. There wasthe very superior cat who sat on every window-ledge, winking at life. He (for in France all cats are masculine by order of philology), he didnot care a rap for man or dog, but he liked women and permitted them toobserve him. There was the man who insinuated himself between thetables at the Café, holding out postcard-representations of thePantheon, the Louvre, Notre Dame, and other places. From beneath thesecards his dexterous little finger would suddenly flip others. One sawa hurried leg, an arm that shone and vanished, a bosom that fled shylyagain, an audacious swan, a Leda who was thoroughly enjoying herselfand had never heard of virtue. His look suggested that he thoughtbetter of one than to suppose that one was not interested in the nude. "M'sieu, " he seemed to say, with his fixed, brown-eyed regard, "this isindeed a leg, an authentic leg, not disguised by even the littlest ofstockings; it is arranged precisely as M'sieu would desire it. " Hissorrow as he went away was dignified with regret for an inartisticgentleman. One was _en garçon_, and yet one would not look at one'spostcards! One had better then cease to be an artist and take topeddling onions and asparagus as the vulgar do. 

It was all a long time ago, and now, somehow, the savour had departedfrom these things. Perhaps he had seen them too often. Perhaps a kindof public surreptitiousness, a quite open furtiveness, had troubledhim. Maybe he was not well. He sat at his Café, three quarters downthe Boulevard, and before him a multitude of grotesque beings werepacing as he sipped his bock. 

Good manners decreed that he should not stare too steadfastly, and hewas one who obeyed these delicate dictations. Alas! he was one whoobeyed all dictates. For him authority wore a halo, and many sinswhich his heyday ought to have committed had been left undone onlybecause they were not sanctioned by immediate social usage. He wasoften saddened when he thought of the things he had not done. It wasthe only sadness to which he had access, because the evil deeds whichhe had committed were of so tepid and hygienic a character that theycould not be mourned for without hypocrisy, and now that he wasreleased from all privileged restraints and overlookings and could dowhatever he wished he had no wish to do anything. 

His wife had been dead for over a year. He had hungered, he had prayedfor her death. He had hated that woman (and for how many years!) witha kind of masked ferocity. How often he had been tempted to kill heror to kill himself! How often he had dreamed that she had run awayfrom him or that he had run away from her! He had invented RussianPrinces, and Music Hall Stars, and American Billionaires with whom shecould adequately elope, and he had both loved and loathed the prospect. What unending, slow quarrels they had together! How her voice haddroned pitilessly on his ears! She in one room, he in another, andthrough the open door there rolled that unending recitation of woes andreproaches, an interminable catalogue of nothings, while he sat dumb asa fish, with a mind that smouldered or blazed. He had stood unseenwith a hammer, a poker, a razor in his hand, on tiptoe to do it. Amovement, a rush, one silent rush and it was done! He had revelled inher murder. He had caressed it, rehearsed it, relished it, had jerkedher head back, and hacked, and listened to her entreaties bubblingthrough blood!

And then she died! When he stood by her bed he had wished to taunther, but he could not do it. He read in her eyes--I am dying, and in alittle time I shall have vanished like dust on the wind, but you willstill be here, and you will never see me again--He wished to ratifythat, to assure her that it was actually so, to say that he would comehome on the morrow night, and she would not be there, and that he wouldreturn home every night, and she would never be there. But he couldnot say it. Somehow the words, although he desired them, would notcome. His arm went to her neck and settled there. His hand caressedher hair, her cheek. He kissed her eyes, her lips, her languid hands;and the words that came were only an infantile babble of regrets andapologies, assurances that he did love her, that he had never loved anyone before, and never would love any one again. . . . 

Every one who passed looked into the Café where he sat. Every one whopassed looked at him. There were men with sallow faces and wide blackhats. Some had hair that flapped about them in the wind, and fromtheir locks one gathered, with some distaste, the spices of Araby. Some had cravats that fluttered and fell and rose again like banners ina storm. There were men with severe, spade-shaped, mostresponsible-looking beards, and quizzical little eyes which gave thelie to their hairy sedateness--eyes which had spent long years inlooking sidewards as a woman passed. There were men of every stage offoppishness--men who had spent so much time on their moustaches thatthey had only a little left for their finger-nails, but theirmoustaches exonerated them; others who were coated to happiness, trousered to grotesqueness, and booted to misery. He thought--In thiscity the men wear their own coats, but they all wear some one else'strousers, and their boots are syndicated. 

He saw no person who was self-intent. They were all deeply conscious, not of themselves, but of each other. They were all looking at eachother. They were all looking at him; and he returned the severe, orhumourous, or appraising gaze of each with a look nicely proportionedto the passer, giving back exactly what was given to him, and no more. He did not stare, for nobody stared. He just looked and looked away, and was as mannerly as was required. 

A negro went by arm in arm with a girl who was so sallow that she wasonly white by courtesy. He was a bulky man, and as he bent greedilyover his companion it was evident that to him she was whiter than thesnow of a single night. 

Women went past in multitudes, and he knew the appearance of them all. How many times he had watched them or their duplicates striding andmincing and bounding by, each moving like an animated note ofinterrogation! They were long, and medium, and short. There werewomen of a thinness beyond comparison, sheathed in skirts as featly asa rapier in a scabbard. There were women of a monumental, a mightyfatness, who billowed and rolled in multitudinous, stormy garments. There were slow eyes that drooped on one heavily as a hand, and quickones that stabbed and withdrew, and glanced again appealingly, and slidaway cursing. There were some who lounged with a false sedateness, andsome who fluttered in an equally false timidity. Some wore velvetshoes without heels. Some had shoes, the heels whereof were of suchinordinate length that the wearers looked as though they were perchedon stilts and would topple to perdition if their skill failed for aninstant. They passed and they looked at him; and from each, after thedue regard, he looked away to the next in interminable procession. 

There were faces also to be looked at: round chubby faces wherefrom theeyes of oxen stared in slow, involved rumination. Long faces that werekeener than hatchets and as cruel. Faces that pretended to be scornfuland were only piteous. Faces contrived to ape a temperament other thantheir own. Raddled faces with heavy eyes and rouged lips. Ragged lipsthat had been chewed by every mad dog in the world. What lips therewere everywhere! Bright scarlet splashes in dead-white faces. Thinred gashes that suggested rat-traps instead of kisses. Bulbous, flabbylips that would wobble and shiver if attention failed them. Lips of ahorrid fascination that one looked at and hated and ran to. . . . Looking at him slyly or boldly, they passed along, and turned after awhile and repassed him, and turned again in promenade. 

He had a sickness of them all. There had been a time when these wereamong the things he mourned for not having done, but that time was longpast. He guessed at their pleasures, and knew them to be without salt. Life, said he, is as unpleasant as a plate of cold porridge. Somehowthe world was growing empty for him. He wondered was he outgrowing hisillusions, or his appetites, or both? The things in which other mentook such interest were drifting beyond him, and (for it seemed thatthe law of compensation can fail) nothing was drifting towards him inrecompense. He foresaw himself as a box with nothing inside it, and hethought--It is not through love or fear or distress that men commitsuicide: it is because they have become empty: both the gods and thedevils have deserted them and they can no longer support that solemnstagnation. He marvelled to see with what activity men and womenplayed the most savourless of games! With what zest of pursuit theytracked what petty interests. He saw them as ants scurrying withscraps of straw, or apes that pick up and drop and pick again, and hemarvelled from what fount they renewed themselves, or with what charmsthey exorcised the demons of satiety. 

On this night life did not seem worth while. The taste had gone fromhis mouth; his bock was water vilely coloured; his cigarette was a hotstench. And yet a full moon was peeping in the trees along the path, and not far away, where the countryside bowed in silver quietude, therivers ran through undistinguishable fields chanting their lonelysongs. The seas leaped and withdrew, and called again to the stars, and gathered in ecstasy and roared skywards, and the trees did not robeach other more than was absolutely necessary. The men and women wereall hidden away, sleeping in their cells, where the moon could not seethem, nor the clean wind, nor the stars. They were sundered for alittle while from their eternal arithmetic. The grasping hands werelying as quietly as the paws of a sleeping dog. Those eyes held nofurther speculation than the eyes of an ox who lies down. The tonguesthat had lied all day, and been treacherous and obscene and respectfulby easy turn, said nothing more; and he thought it was very good thatthey were all hidden, and that for a little time the world might swingdarkly with the moon in its own wide circle and its silence. 

He paid for his bock, gave the waiter a tip, touched his hat to a ladyby sex and a gentleman by clothing, and strolled back to his room thatwas little, his candle that was three-quarters consumed, and hispicture which might be admired when he was dead but which he wouldnever be praised for painting; and, after sticking his foot through thecanvas, he tugged himself to bed, agreeing to commence the followingmorning just as he had the previous one, and the one before that, andthe one before that again. 

 ONE AND ONE

 Do you hate me, you! Sitting quietly there, With the burnished hair That frames the two Deep eyes of your face In a smooth embrace. 

 And you say naught, And I never speak; But you rest your cheek On your hand, a thought Showing plain as the brow Goes wrinkling now. 

 Of what do you think, Sitting opposite me, As you stir the tea That you do not drink, And frown at nought With those brows of thought. 

THREE WOMEN WHO WEPT

He was one of those men who can call ladies by their Christian names. One day he met twenty-four duchesses walking on a red carpet, and hewinked at them, and they were all delighted. It was so at first heappeared to her. Has a mere girl any protection against a man of thatquality? and she was the very merest of girls--she knew it. It was notthat she was ignorant, for she had read widely about men, and she hadthree brothers as to whom she knew divers intimate things. 

The girl who has been reared among brothers has few defences againstother males. She has acquired two things--a belief in the divine rightof man, and a curiosity as to what those men are like who are not herbrothers. She may love her brothers, but she cannot believe that theyadequately represent the other sex. Does not every girl wish to marrythe antithesis of her brother? The feeling is that one should marry asfar outside of the family as is possible, and as far outside of one'sself as may be; but love has become subject to geography, and ourchoice is often bounded by the tramline upon which we travel from ourhouses to our businesses and back again. 

While she loved and understood her brothers, she had not in the leastunderstood or believed in the stories she had read, and so, when theYoung Man out of a Book came to her, she was delighted but perplexed. 

It was difficult to live up to him worthily. It was difficult to knowwhat he would do next, and it was exceedingly difficult to keep out ofhis way; for, indeed, he seemed to pervade the part of the world whereshe lived. He was as ubiquitous as the air or the sky. If she wentinto a shop, he was pacing on the pavement when she came out. If shewent for a walk he was standing at the place farther than which she haddecided not to go. She had found him examining a waterfall on theDodder, leaning over the bear-pit in the Zoological Gardens, andkneeling beside her in the Chapel, and her sleep had been distressed bythe reflection that maybe he was sitting on her window-sill like a sadsparrow drenched in the rain, all its feathers on end with the cold, and its eyes wide open staring at misery. 

The first time they met he spoke to her. He plucked a handkerchieffrom somewhere and thrust it into her hand, saying--

"You have dropped this, I think"--and she had been too alarmed todisown it. 

It was a mighty handkerchief. It was so big that it would scarcely fitinto her muff. --"It is a table-cloth, " said she, as she solemnlystuffed away its lengthy flaps. "It is his own, " she thought a momentlater, and she would have laughed like a mad woman, only that she hadno time, for he was pacing delicately by her side, and talking in a lowvoice that was partly a whisper and partly a whistle, and was entirelyand disturbingly delicious. 

The next time they met very suddenly. Scarcely a dozen paces separatedthem. She could see him advancing towards her, and knew by his knittedbrows that he was searching anxiously for something to say. When theydrew together he lifted his hat and murmured--

"How is your handkerchief to-day?"

The query so astonished her that (the verb is her own) she simplybawled with laughter. From that moment he treated her with freedom, for if once you laugh with a person you admit him to equality, you haveranked him definitely as a vertebrate, your hand is his by right ofspecies, scarcely can you withhold even your lips from his advances. 

Another, a strange, a fascinating thing, was that he was afraid of her. It was inconceivable, it was mad, but it was true. He looked at herwith disguised terror. His bravado was the slenderest mask. Everyword he said was uttered tentatively, it was subject to her approval, and if she opposed a statement he dropped it instantly and adopted heralternative as one adopts a gift. This astonished her who had beenprepared to be terrified. He kept a little distance between them as hewalked, and when she looked at him he looked away. She had a vision ofherself as an ogre--whiskers sprouted all over her face, her earsbulged and swaggled, her voice became a cavernous rumble, herconversation sounded like fee-faw-fum--and yet, her brothers were notafraid of her in the least; they pinched her and kicked her hat. 

He spoke (but always without prejudice) of the loveliest thingsimaginable--matters about which brothers had no conception, and forwhich they would not have any reverence. He said one day that the skywas blue, and, on looking she found that it was so. The sky wasamazingly blue. It had never struck her before, but there was a colourin the firmament before which one might fall down and worship. Sunlight was not the hot glare which it had been: it was rich, generous, it was inexpressibly beautiful. The colour and scent offlowers became more varied. The world emerged as from shrouds andcerements. It was tender and radiant, comeliness lived everywhere, andgoodwill. Laughter! the very ground bubbled with it: the grasses wavedtheir hands, the trees danced and curtsied to one another with gentledignity, and the wind lurched down the path with its hat on the side ofits head and its hands in its pockets, whistling like her youngerbrother. 

And then he went away. She did not see him any more. He was not bythe waterfall on the Dodder, nor hanging over the bear-pit in the Zoo. He was not in the Chapel, nor on the pavement when she came out of ashop. He was not anywhere. She searched, but he was not anywhere. And the sun became the hot pest it had always been: the heavens werestuffed with dirty clouds the way a second-hand shop is stuffed withdirty bundles: the trees were hulking corner-boys with muddy boots: thewind blew dust into her eye, and her brothers pulled her hair andkicked her hat; so that she went apart from all these. She sat beforethe mirror regarding herself with woeful amazement--

"He was afraid of me!" she said. 

And she wept into his monstrous handkerchief. 

II

When he came into the world he came howling, and he howled withoutceasing for seven long years, except at the times when he happened tobe partaking of nourishment, or was fast asleep, and, even then, hesnored with a note of defiance and protest which proved that his humourwas not for peace. 

The time came when he ceased to howl and became fascinated by theproblem of how to make other people howl. In this art he became anadept. When he and another child chanced to be left together therecame, apparently from the uttermost ends of the earth, a pin, and theother child and the pin were soon in violent and lamentable conjunction. 

So he grew. 

"Be hanged if I know what to do with him, " said his father as herebuckled on his belt. "The devil's self hasn't got the shape or matchof such an imp in all the length and breadth of his seven hells. I'msick, sore and sorry whacking him, so I am, and before long I'll behung on the head of him. I'm saying that there's more deceit anddevilment in his bit of a carcass than there is in a public-house fullof tinkers, so there is. "

He turned to his wife--

"It's no credit at all the son you've bore me, ma'am, but a sorrow anda woe that'll be killing us in our old age and maybe damning our soulsat the heel of it. Where he got his blackguardly ways from I'm notsaying, but it wasn't from my side of the house anyway, so it wasn't, and that's a moral. Get out of my sight you sniffling lout, and ifever I catch you at your practices again I'll lam you till you won't beable to wink without help, so I will. "

"Musha, " sobbed his wife, "don't be always talking out of you. Any onewould think that it was an old, criminal thief you were instructing, instead of a bit of a child that'll be growing out of his wildness inno time. Come across to me, child, come over to your mother, my lamb. "

That night, when his father got into bed, he prodded his foot againstsomething under the sheets. Investigation discovered a brown paper bagat the end of the bed. A further search revealed a wasp's nest, insideof which there was an hundred angry wasps blazing for combat. Hisfather left the room with more expedition than decency. He did notstop to put on as much as his hat. He fled to the stream which ranthrough the meadow at the back of their house, and lay down in it, andin two seconds there was more bad language than water in the stream. Every time he lifted his head for air the wasps flew at him with theirtails curled. They kept him there for half an hour, and in that timehe laid in the seeds of more rheumatism than could be cured in twolifetimes. 

When he returned home he found his wife lying on the floor with ablanket wrapped about her head, groaning by instinct, for she wassenseless. 

Her face had disappeared. There was nothing where it had been butpoisoned lumps. A few days later it was found that she was blind ofone eye, and there was danger of erysipelas setting in. 

The boy could not be found for some time, but a neighbour, observing astone come from nowhere in particular and hit a cat, located the firstcause in a ditch. He brought the boy home, and grabbed his father justin time to prevent murder being done. 

It was soon found that the only thing which eased the restless moaningwoman was the touch of her son. All her unmanageable, deliriousthoughts centred on him--

"Sure he's only a boy; beating never did good to anything. Give him achance now for wouldn't a child be a bit wild anyhow. You will be agood boy, won't you? Come to your mother, my lamb. "

So the lad grew, from twelve to fifteen, from fifteen to twenty. Soonhe attained to manhood. To his mother he seemed to have leaped in aday from the careless, prattling babe to the responsibly-whiskeredmiracle at whom mothers sit and laugh in secret delight. Thistowering, big-footed, hairy person! was he really the little boy whoused to hide in her skirts when his father scowled? She had only toclose her eyes and she could feel again a pair of little hands clawingat her breast, sore from the violent industry of soft, wee lips. 

So he grew. Breeches that were big became small. Bony wrists werecontinually pushing out of coat cuffs. His feet would burst out of hisboots. He grew out of everything but one. A man may outgrow hisbreeches, he cannot outgrow his nature: his body is never too big ortoo small to hold that. 

Every living thing in the neighbourhood knew him. When a cat saw himcoming it climbed a tree and tried to look as much like a lump of woodas it could. When a dog heard his step it tucked its tail out of sightand sought for a hole in the hedge. The birds knew he carried stonesin his pockets. No tree cast so black a shadow in the sunlight as hedid. There were stories of a bottle of paraffin oil and a cat thatscreeched in flames. Folk told of a maltreated dog that pointed itsnose to heaven and bayed a curse against humanity until a terrified manbattered it to death with a shovel. No one knew who did it, but everyone said there were only two living hearts capable of theseiniquities--one belonged to the devil, the other to our young man, andthey acquitted Satan of the deeds. 

The owner of the dog swore by the beasts in the field and the stars inthe sky that he would tear the throat of the man who had injured hisbeast. 

The father drove his one-eyed wife from the house, and went with her tolive elsewhere; but she left him and went back to her son, and herhusband forswore the twain. 

When women saw him in the road they got past him with their breathhissing through their teeth in fear. When men passed him they did itwarily, with their fists clenched and their eyes alert. He was shunnedby every one. The strength of his arms also was a thing to be afraidof, and in the world there was but two welcomes for him, one from hismother, the other from an old, grey rat that slept in his breast--

"Sure, you're all against him, " his mother would say. "Why don't yougive the boy a chance? It's only the hot blood of youth that's workingin him--and he never did it either. Look how kind he is to me! neverthe bad word or the hard look! Ye black hearts that blame my boy, lookamong yourselves for the villain. No matter who is against you, cometo your mother, my lamb. "

He was found one day at the foot of the cliff with his neck broken. Some said that he had slipped and fallen, some said he had committedsuicide, other some pursed their lips tightly and said nothing. Allwere relieved that he was gone, saving his mother only, she mourned forher only son, and wept bitterly, refusing to be comforted until shedied. 

III

She had begun to get thin. Her face was growing sharp and peaked. Thesteady curve of her cheek had become a little indeterminate. Her chinhad begun to sag and her eyes to look a little weary. But she had notobserved these things, for we do not notice ourselves very much untilsome other person thinks we are worthy of observation and tells us so;and these changes are so gradual and tiny that we seldom observe themuntil we awaken for a moment or two in our middle age and then we getready to fall asleep again. 

When her uncle died, the solicitors who had administered his will handedher a small sum of money and intimated that from that date she must hewout her own path in life, and as she had most of the household furnitureof her late uncle at her disposal, she decided to let lodgings. Settingabout that end with all possible expedition she finished writing"apartments to let" on a square of pasteboard, and, having placed itprominently in a window, she folded her mittened hands and sat down withsome trepidation to await the advent of a lodger. 

He came in the night time with the stars and the moon. He was runninglike a youthful god, she thought, for her mind had not yet been weanedfrom certain vanities, and she could not see that a gigantic policemanwas in his wake, tracking him with elephantine bounds, and now and againsnatching a gasp from hurry to blow furious warnings on a whistle. 

It was the sound of the whistle which opened her eyes through her ears. She went to the door and saw him coming framed in the moonlight, his armspressed tightly to his sides, his head well up and his feet kicking amile a minute on the pavement. Behind him the whistle shrilled withangry alarm, and the thunder of monumental feet came near as thepoliceman sprinted in majesty. 

As the lodger ran she looked at him. He was a long-legged, young manwith a pleasant, clean-shaven face. His eyes met hers, and, although hegrinned anxiously, she saw that he was frightened. That frightened smilegripped her and she panted noiselessly, "Oh, run, run!"

As he drew level he fixed his gaze on her, and, stopping suddenly, heducked under her arm and was inside the house in a twinkling. 

The poor lady's inside curled up in fear and had started to uncurl inscreams when she felt a hand laid gently on her arm, and, "Don't make anoise, or I'm caught, " said a voice, whereupon, and with exceedingdifficulty, she closed her mouth while the scream went sizzling throughher teeth in little gasps. But now the enemy appeared round the corner, tooting incessantly on his whistle, and whacking sparks from thecobblestones as he ran. Behind her she could hear the laboured breathingof a spent runner. The lodger was kneeling at her skirts: he caught herhand and pressed his face against it entreatingly--

The policeman drew near--

"Did you see a fellow skedaddling along here, ma'am?" said he. 

She hesitated for only a moment and then, pointing to a laneway opposite, replied--

"He went up there. "

"Thank you, ma'am, " said the policeman with a genial smile, and hesprinted up the laneway whistling cheerily. 

She turned to the lodger--

"You had better go now, " said she. 

He looked at her ruefully and hesitated--

"If I go now, " he replied, "I'll be caught and get a month. I'll have toeat skilly, you know, and pick oakum, and get my hair cut. "

She looked at his hair--it was brown and wavy, just at his ears itcrisped into tiny curls, and she thought it would be a great pity to cutit. He bore her scrutiny well, with just a trifle of embarrassment and ashyly humorous eye--

"You are the kindest woman I ever met, " said he, "and I'll never forgetyou as long as I live. I'll go away now because I wouldn't like to getyou into trouble for helping me. "

"What did you do?" she faltered. 

"I got into a fight with another man, " he replied, "and while we werehammering each other the policeman came up. He was going to arrest me, and, before I knew what I was doing, I knocked him down. "

She shook her head--

"You should not have done that. That was very wrong, for he was onlydoing his duty. "

"I know it, " he admitted, "but, do you see, I didn't know what I wasdoing, and then, when I hit him, I got frightened and ran. "

"You poor boy, " said she tenderly. 

"And somehow, when I saw you, I knew you wouldn't give me up: wasn't itqueer?"

What a nice, gentlemanly young fellow he is, she thought. 

"But, of course, I cannot be trespassing on your kindness any longer, " hecontinued, "so I'll leave at once, and if ever I get the chance to repayyour kindness to a stranger----"

"Perhaps, " said she, "it might not be quite safe for you to go yet. Comeinside and I will give you a cup of tea. You must be worn out with theexcitement and the danger. Why, you are shaking all over: a cup of teawill steady your nerves and give him time to stop looking for you. "

"Perhaps, " said he, "if I turned my coat inside out and turned mytrousers up, they wouldn't notice me. "

"We will talk it over, " she replied with a wise nod. 

That was how the lodger came. He told her his name and hisemployment--he was a bookmaker's clerk. He brought his luggage, consisting mostly of neckties, to her house the following day from hisformer lodgings--

"Had a terrible time getting away from them, " said he. "They ratherliked me, you know, and couldn't make out why I wanted to leave. "

"As if you weren't quite free to do as you wished, " quoth his indignantnew landlady. 

"And then, when they found I would go, they made me pay two weeks' rentin lieu of notice--mean, wasn't it?"

"The low people, " she replied. "I will not ask you to pay anything thisweek. "

He put his bandbox on the ground, and shook hands with her--

"You are a brick, " said he, "the last and the biggest of them. Thereisn't the like of you in this or any other world, and never was and neverwill be, world without end, amen. "

"Oh, don't say that, " said she shyly. 

"I will, " he replied, "for it's the truth. I'll hire a sandwichman tostop people in the street and tell it to them. I'll get a week'sengagement at the theatre and sing it from the stage. I'll make up apoem about your goodness. I don't know what to do to thank you. Do yousee, if I had to pay you now I'd have to pawn something, and I reallybelieve I have pawned everything they'd lend on to get the money for thattwo weeks' rent. I'm broke until Friday, that's my pay day, but thatnight I'll come home with my wages piled up on a cart. "

"I can lend you a few shillings until then, " said she laughing. 

"Oh, no, " said he. "It's not fair. I couldn't do that, " but he could. 

Well the light of the world shone out of the lodger. He was like a seabreeze in a soap factory. When he awakened in the morning he whistled. When he came down to breakfast he sang. When he came home in the eveninghe danced. He had an amazing store of vitality: from the highest hair onthe top of his head down to his heels he was alive. His average languagewas packed with jokes and wonderful curses. He was as chatty as a girl, as good-humoured as a dog, as unconscious as a kitten--and she knewnothing at all of men, except, perhaps, that they wore trousers and werenot girls. The only man with whom she had ever come in contact was heruncle, and he might have been described as a sniffy old man with a cold;a blend of gruel and grunt, living in an atmosphere of ointment and pillsand patent medicine advertisements--and, behold, she was living inunthinkable intimacy with the youngest of young men; not an old, ache-ridden, cough-racked, corn-footed septuagenarian, but a young, fresh-faced, babbling rascal who laughed like the explosion of ablunderbuss, roared songs as long as he was within earshot and dancedwhen he had nothing else to do. He used to show her how to dohand-balances on the arm-chair, and while his boots were cocked up in theair she would grow stiff with terror for his safety and for that of theadjacent crockery. 

The first morning she was giving him his breakfast, intending afterwardsto have her own meal in the kitchen, but he used language of suchstrangely attractive ferocity, and glared at her with such ahumorously-mad eye that she was compelled to breakfast with him. 

At night, when he returned to his tea, he swore by this and by that hewould die of hunger unless she ate with him; and then he told her all thedoings of the day, the bets that had been made and lost, and what sort ofa man his boss was, and he extolled the goodness of his friends, andlectured on the vast iniquity of his enemies. 

So things went until she was as intimate with him as if he had been herbrother. One night he came home just a trifle tipsy. She noted at lastwhat was wrong with him, and her heart yearned over the sinner. Therewere five or six glasses inside of him, and each was the father of anantic. He was an opera company, a gymnasium, and a menagerie at once, all tinged with a certain hilarious unsteadiness which was fascinating. But at last he got to his bed, which was more than she did. 

She sat through the remainder of the night listening to the growth of herhalf-starved heart. Oh, but there was a warmth there now. . . . !Springtime and the moon in flood. What new leaves are these which thetrees put forth? Bird, singing at the peep of morn, where gottest thouthy song? Be still, be still, thou stranger, fluttering a wing at mybreast. . . . 

At the end of a month the gods moved, and when the gods move they tramplemortals in the dust. 

The lodger's employer left Dublin for London, taking his clerk with him. 

"Good-bye, " said he. 

"Good-bye, " she replied, "and a pleasant journey to you. "

And she took the card with "Apartments to Let" written upon it and placedit carefully in the window, and then, folding her mittened hands, she satdown to await the coming of another lodger, and as she sat she weptbitterly. 

THE TRIANGLE

Nothing is true for ever. A man and a fact will become equallydecrepit and will tumble in the same ditch, for truth is as mortal asman, and both are outlived by the tortoise and the crow. 

To say that two is company and three is a crowd is to make a verytemporary statement. After a short time satiety or use and wont hascrept sunderingly between the two, and, if they are any company at all, they are bad company, who pray discreetly but passionately for thecrowd which is censured by the proverb. 

If there had not been a serpent in the Garden of Eden it is likely thatthe bored inhabitants of Paradise would have been forced to import onefrom the outside wilds merely to relax the tedium of a too-sustainedduet. There ought to be a law that when a man and a woman have beenmarried for a year they should be forcibly separated for another year. In the meantime, as our law-givers have no sense, we will continue toinvoke the serpent. 

Mrs. Mary Morrissy had been married for quite a time to a gentleman ofrespectable mentality, a sufficiency of money, and a surplus ofleisure--Good things? We would say so if we dared, for we are growingold and suspicious of all appearances, and we do not easily recognizewhat is bad or good. Beyond the social circumference we are confrontedwith a debatable ground where good and bad are so merged that we cannotdistinguish the one from the other. To her husband's mentalattainments (from no precipitate, dizzy peaks did he stare; it was onlya tiny plain with the tiniest of hills in the centre) Mrs. Morrissyextended a courtesy entirely unmixed with awe. For his money sheextended a hand which could still thrill to an unaccustomedprodigality, but for his leisure (and it was illimitable) she couldfind no possible use. 

The quality of permanency in a transient world is terrifying. Apermanent husband is a bore, and we do not know what to do with him. He cannot be put on a shelf. He cannot be hung on a nail. He will notgo out of the house. There is no escape from him, and he is always thesame. A smile of a certain dimension, moustaches of this inevitablemeasurement, hands that waggle and flop like those of automata--theseare his. He eats this way and he drinks that way, and he will continueto do so until he stiffens into the ultimate quietude. He snores onthis note, he laughs on that, dissonant, unescapeable, unchanging. This is the way he walks, and he does not know how to run. Apredictable beast indeed! He is known inside and out, catalogued, ticketed, and he cannot be packed away. 

Mrs. Morrissy did not yet commune with herself about it, but if hergrievance was anonymous it was not unknown. There is a back-door toevery mind as to every house, and although she refused it house-room, the knowledge sat on her very hearthstone whistling for recognition. 

Indeed, she could not look anywhere without seeing her husband. He wasincluded in every landscape. His moustaches and the sun rose together. His pyjamas dawned with the moon. When the sea roared so did he, andhe whispered with the river and the wind. He was in the picture butwas out of drawing. He was in the song but was out of tune. Heagitated her dully, surreptitiously, unceasingly. She questioned ofspace in a whisper, "Are we glued together?" said she. There was a beein a flower, a burly rascal who did not care a rap for any one: he satenjoying himself in a scented and gorgeous palace, and in him sheconfided:

"If, " said she to the bee, "if that man doesn't stop talking to me I'llkick him. I'll stick a pin in him if he does not go out for a walk. "

She grew desperately nervous. She was afraid that if she looked at himany longer she would see him. To-morrow, she thought, I may noticethat he is a short, fat man in spectacles, and that will be the end ofeverything. But the end of everything is also the beginning ofeverything, and so she was one half in fear and the other half in hope. A little more and she would hate him, and would begin the world againwith the same little hope and the same little despair for her meagrecapital. 

She had already elaborated a theory that man was intended to work, andthat male sloth was offensive to Providence and should be forbidden bythe law. At times her tongue thrilled, silently as yet, to certaindicta of the experienced Aunt who had superintended her youth, to theintent that a lazy man is a nuisance to himself and to everybody else;and, at last, she disguised this saying as an anecdote and repeated itpleasantly to her husband. 

He received it coldly, pondered it with disfavour, and dismissed it byarguing that her Aunt had whiskers, that a whiskered female is a freak, and that the intellectual exercises of a freak are---- He lifted hiseyebrows and his shoulders. He brushed her Aunt from the tips of hisfingers and blew her delicately beyond good manners and the mode. 

But time began to hang heavily on both. The intellectual antics of aleisured man become at last wearisome; his methods of thought, by merefamiliarity, grow distasteful; the time comes when all the argumentsare finished, there is nothing more to be said on any subject, andboredom, without even the covering, apologetic hand, yawns and yawnsand cannot be appeased. Thereupon two cease to be company, and even aserpent would be greeted as a cheery and timely visitor. Dismalindeed, and not infrequent, is that time, and the vista therefrom is along, dull yawn stretching to the horizon and the grave. If at anytime we do revalue the values, let us write it down that the person whomakes us yawn is a criminal knave, and then we will abolish matrimonyand read Plato again. 

The serpent arrived one morning hard on Mrs. Morrissy's patheticpressure. It had three large trunks, a toy terrier, and a volume ofverse. The trunks contained dresses, the dog insects, and the bookemotion--a sufficiently enlivening trilogy! Miss Sarah O'Malley worethe dresses in exuberant rotation, Mr. Morrissy read the emotionalpoetry with great admiration, Mrs. Morrissy made friends with the dog, and life at once became complex and joyful. 

Mr. Morrissy, exhilarated by the emotional poetry, drew, with aninstinct too human to be censured, more and more in the direction ofhis wife's cousin, and that lady, having a liking for comedy, observedthe agile posturings of the gentleman on a verbal summit up and downand around which he flung himself with equal dexterity andsatisfaction--crudely, he made puns--and the two were further throwntogether by the enforced absences of Mrs. Morrissy, into a privacy morethan sealed, by reason of the attentions of a dog who would climb toher lap, and there, with an angry nose, put to no more than temporaryrout the nimble guests of his jacket. Shortly Mrs. Morrissy began tolook upon the toy terrier with a meditative eye. 

It was from one of these, now periodical, retreats that Mrs. Morrissyfirst observed the rapt attitude of her husband, and, instantly, lifefor her became bounding, plentiful, and engrossing. 

There is no satisfaction in owning that which nobody else covets. Oursilver is no more than second-hand, tarnished metal until some one elsespeaks of it in terms of envy. Our husbands are barely tolerable untila lady friend has endeavoured to abstract their cloying attentions. Then only do we comprehend that our possessions are unique, beautiful, well worth guarding. 

Nobody has yet pointed out that there is an eighth sense; and yet thesense of property is more valuable and more detestable than all theothers in combination. The person who owns something is civilised. Itis man's escape from wolf and monkeydom. It is individuality at last, or the promise of it, while those other ownerless people must remaineither beasts of prey or beasts of burden, grinning with ineffectiveteeth, or bowing stupid heads for their masters' loads, and all begginghumbly for last straws and getting them. 

Under a sufficiently equable exterior Mrs. Morrissy's blood was pulsingwith greater activity than had ever moved it before. It raced! Itflew! At times the tide of it thudded to her head, boomed in her ears, surged in fierce waves against her eyes. Her brain moved with acomplexity which would have surprised her had she been capable ofremarking upon it. Plot and counterplot! She wove webs horrid as aspider's. She became, without knowing it, a mistress of psychology. She dissected motions and motives. She builded theories precariouslyupon an eyelash. She pondered and weighed the turning of a head, thehanding of a sugar-bowl. She read treason in a laugh, assignations ina song, villainy in a new dress. Deeper and darker things! Profoundand vicious depths plunging stark to where the devil lodged indarknesses too dusky for registration! She looked so steadily on thesegulfs and murks that at last she could see anything she wished to see;and always, when times were critical, when this and that, abominationsindescribable, were separate by no more than a pin's point, she mustretire from her watch (alas for a too-sensitive nature!) to chase theenemies of a dog upon which, more than ever, she fixed a meditative eye. 

To get that woman out of the house became a pressing necessity. Hercousin carried with her a baleful atmosphere. She moved cloudy withdoubt. There was a diabolic aura about her face, and her hair was red!These things were patent. Was one blind or a fool? A straw willreveal the wind, so will an eyelash, a smile, the carriage of a dress. Ankles also! One saw too much of them. Let it be said then. Teethand neck were bared too often and too broadly. If modesty was indeedmore than a name, then here it was outraged. Shame too! was it only aword? Does one do this and that without even a blush? Even viceshould have its good manners, its own decent retirements. If there isnothing else let there be breeding! But at this thing the world mightlook and understand and censure if it were not brass-browed and stupid. Sneak! Traitress! Serpent! Oh, Serpent! do you slip into our veryEden? looping your sly coils across our flowers, trailing over our bedsof narcissus and our budding rose, crawling into our secret arbours andwhispering-places and nests of happiness! Do you flaunt and sway yourcrested head with a new hat on it every day? Oh, that my Aunt werehere, with the dragon's teeth, and the red breath, and whiskers tomatch! Here Mrs. Morrissy jumped as if she had been bitten (as indeedshe had been) and retired precipitately, eyeing the small dog thatfrisked about her with an eye almost petrified with meditation. 

To get that woman out of the house quickly and without scandal. Not tolet her know for a moment, for the blink and twitter of an eyelid, ofher triumph. To eject her with ignominy, retaining one's own dignityin the meantime. Never to let her dream of an uneasiness that mighthave screamed, an anger that could have bitten and scratched and beenhappy in the primitive exercise. Was such a task beyond her adequacy?

Below in the garden the late sun slanted upon her husband, as withdeclamatory hands and intense brows he chanted emotional poetry, readyhimself on the slope of opportunity to roll into verses from his ownresources. He criticised, with agile misconception, the inner meaning, the involved, hard-hidden heart of the poet; and the serpent sat beforehim and nodded. She smiled enchantments at him, and allurements, andsubtle, subtle disagreements. On the grass at their feet the toyterrier bounded from his slumbers and curved an imperative and furioushind-leg in the direction of his ear. 

Mrs. Morrissy called the dog, and it followed her into the house, frisking joyously. From the kitchen she procured a small basket, andinto this she packed some old cloths and pieces of biscuit. Then shepicked up the terrier, cuffed it on both sides of the head, popped itinto the basket, tucked its humbly-agitated tail under its abject ribs, closed the basket, and fastened it with a skewer. She next addressed alabel to her cousin's home, tied it to the basket, and despatched aservant with it to the railway-station, instructing her that it shouldbe paid for on delivery. 

At breakfast the following morning her cousin wondered audibly why herlittle, weeny, tiny pet was not coming for its brecky. 

Mrs. Morrissy, with a smile of infinite sweetness, suggested that MissO'Malley's father would surely feed the brute when it arrived. "It wasa filthy little beast, " said she brightly; and she pushed thetoast-rack closer to her husband. 

There followed a silence which drowsed and buzzed to eternity, andduring which Mr. Morrissy's curled moustaches straightened and grewlimp and drooped. An edge of ice stiffened around Miss O'Malley. Incredulity, frozen and wan, thawed into swift comprehension anddismay, lit a flame in her cheeks, throbbed burningly at the lobes ofher ears, spread magnetic and prickling over her whole stung body, andebbed and froze again to immobility. She opposed her cousin's kindeyes with a stony brow. 

"I think, " said she rising, "that I had better see to my packing. "

"Must you go?" said Mrs. Morrissy, with courteous unconcern, and shehelped herself to cream. Her husband glared insanely at a pat ofbutter, and tried to look like some one who was somewhere else. 

Miss O'Malley closed the door behind her with extreme gentleness. 

So the matter lay. But the position was unchanged. For a little timepeace would reign in that household, but the same driving necessityremained, and before long another, and perhaps more virulent, serpentwould have to be requisitioned for the assuagement of those urgentwoes. A man's moustaches will arise with the sun; not Joshua couldconstrain them to the pillow after the lark had sung reveille. A womanwill sit pitilessly at the breakfast table however the male eye mayshift and quail. It is the business and the art of life to degradepermanencies. Fluidity is existence, there is no other, and for everthe chief attraction of Paradise must be that there is a serpent in itto keep it lively and wholesome. Lacking the serpent we are no longerin Paradise, we are at home, and our sole entertainment is to yawn whenwe wish to. 

 THE DAISIES

 In the scented bud of the morning--O, When the windy grass went rippling far, I saw my dear one walking slow In the field where the daisies are. 

 We did not laugh and we did not speak As we wandered happily to and fro; I kissed my dear on either cheek In the bud of the morning--O. 

 A lark sang up from the breezy land, A lark sang down from a cloud afar, And she and I went hand in hand In the field where the daisies are. 

THREE ANGRY PEOPLE

I

He sat cross-legged on the roadside beside a heap of stones, and withslow regularity his hammer swung up and down, cracking a stone intosmall pieces at each descent. But his heart was not in the work. Hehit whatever stone chanced to be nearest. There was no cunningselection in his hammer, nor any of these oddities of stroke which acurious and interested worker would have essayed for the mere trial ofhis artistry. 

He was not difficult to become acquainted with, and, after a littleconversation, I discovered that all the sorrows of the world weresagging from his shoulders. Everything he had ever done was wrong, hesaid. Everything that people had done to him was wrong, that heaffirmed; nor had he any hope that matters would mend, for life waspoisoned at the fountain-head and there was no justice anywhere. Justice! he raised his eyebrows with the horrid stare of a man whosearches for apparitions; he lowered them again to the bored blink ofone who will not believe in apparitions even though he see them--therewas not even fairness! Perhaps (and his bearing was mildly tolerant), perhaps some people believed there was fairness, but he had his shareof days to count by and remember. Forty-nine years of here and there, and in and out, and up and down; walking all kinds of roads in allkinds of weathers; meeting this sort of person and that sort, and manyan adventure that came and passed away without any good to it--"andnow, " said he sternly, "I am breaking stones on a bye-way. "

"A bye-road such as this, " said I, "has very few travellers, and it mayprove a happy enough retreat. "

"Or a hiding-place, " said he gloomily. 

We sat quietly for a few moments--

"Is there no way of being happy?" said I. 

"How could you be happy if you have not got what you want?" and hethumped solidly with his hammer. 

"What do you want?" I asked. 

"Many a thing, " said he, "many a thing. "

I squatted on the ground in front of him, and he continued--

"You that are always travelling, did you ever meet a contented personin all your travels?"

"Yes, " said I, "I met a man yesterday, three hills away from here, andhe told me he was happy. "

"Maybe he wasn't a poor man?"

"I asked him that, and he said he had enough to be going on with. "

"I wonder what he had. "

"I wondered too, and he told me. --He said that he had a wife, a son, anapple-tree, and a fiddle. 

"He said, that his wife was dumb, his son was deaf, his apple-tree wasbarren, and his fiddle was broken. "

"It didn't take a lot to satisfy that man. "

"And he said, that these things, being the way they were, gave him notrouble attending on them, and so he was left with plenty of time forhimself. "

"I think the man you are telling me about was a joker; maybe you are ajoker yourself for that matter. "

"Tell me, " said I, "the sort of things a person should want, for I am ayoung man, and everything one learns is so much to the good. "

He rested his hammer and stared sideways down the road, and he remainedso, pursing and relaxing his lips, for a little while. At last he saidin a low voice--

"A person wants respect from other people. --If he doesn't get that, what does he signify more than a goat or a badger? We live by whatfolk think of us, and if they speak badly of a man doesn't that finishhim for ever?"

"Do people speak well of you?" I asked. 

"They speak badly of me, " said he, "and the way I am now is this, thatI wouldn't have them say a good word of me at all. "

"Would you tell me why the people speak badly of you?"

"You are travelling down the road, " said he, "and I am staying where Iam. We never met before in all the years, and we may never meet again, and so I'll tell you what is in my mind. --A person that has neighbourswill have either friends or enemies, and it's likely enough that he'llhave the last unless he has a meek spirit. And it's the same way witha man that's married, or a man that has a brother. For the neighbourswill spy on you from dawn to dark, and talk about you in every place, and a wife will try to rule you in the house and out of the house untilyou are badgered to a skeleton, and a brother will ask you to give himwhatever thing you value most in the world. "

He remained silent for a few minutes, with his hammer eased on hisknee, and then, in a more heated strain, he continued--

"These are three things a man doesn't like--he doesn't like to be spiedon, and he doesn't like to be ruled and regulated, and he doesn't liketo be asked for a thing he wants himself. And, whether he lets himselfbe spied on or not, he'll be talked about, and in any case he'll bemade out to be a queer man; and if he lets his wife rule him he'll bescorned and laughed at, and if he doesn't let her rule him he'll becalled a rough man; and if he once gives to his brother he will have tokeep on giving for ever, and if he doesn't give in at all he'll get thebad name and the sour look as he goes about his business. "

"You have bad neighbours, indeed, " said I. 

"I'd call them that. "

"And a brother that would ask you for a thing you wanted yourselfwouldn't be a decent man. "

"He would not. "

"Tell me, " said I, "what kind of a wife have you?"

"She's the same as any one else's wife to look at, but I fancy theother women must be different to live with. "

"Why do you say that?"

"Because you can hear men laughing and singing in every public-housethat you'd go into, and they wouldn't do that if their wives were hardto live with, for nobody could stand a bad comrade. A good wife, agood brother, a good neighbour--these are three good things, but youdon't find them lying in every ditch. "

"If you went to a ditch for your wife----!" said I. 

He pursed up his lips at me. 

"I think, " said I, "that you need not mind the neighbours so very muchfor no one can spy on you but yourself. If your mind was in a glasscase instead of in a head it would be different; and no one can reallyrule and regulate you but yourself, and that's well worth doing. "

"Different people, " said he shortly, "are made differently. "

"Maybe, " said I, "your wife would be a good wife to some other husband, and your brother might be decent enough if he had a different brother. "

He wrinkled up his eyes and looked at me very steadily--

"I'll be saying good-bye to you, young man, " said he, and he raised hishammer again and began to beat solemnly on the stones. 

I stood by him for a few minutes, but as he neither spoke nor looked atme again I turned to my own path intending to strike Dublin by the Papsof Dana and the long slopes beyond them. 

II

One day he chucked his job, put up his tools, told the boss he could dothis and that, called hurroo to the boys, and sauntered out of the placewith a great deal of dignity and one week's wages in cash. 

There were many reasons why he should not have quitted his work, not thelightest of them being that the food of a wife and family depended on hissticking to it, but a person who has a temper cannot be expected to haveeverything else. 

Nothing makes a man feel better than telling his employer that he and hisjob can go bark at one another. It is the dream of a great many people, and were it not for the glamour of that idea most folk would commitsuicide through sheer disgust. Getting the "sack" is an experience whichwearies after the first time. Giving the sack is a felicity granted onlyto a few people. To go home to one's wife with the information that youhave been discharged is an adventure which one does not wish to repeat, but to go home and hand her thirty shillings with the statement that youhave discharged yourself is not one of the pleasantest ways of passingtime. 

His wife's habits were as uncertain as her temper, but not as bad. Shehad a hot tongue, a red head, a quick fist and a big family--ingredientsto compose a peppery dish. They had been only a short time married whenshe gave her husband to understand that there was to be only one head ofthat household, and that would not be he. He fought fiercely for aposition on the executive but he did not get it. His voice in thehousehold economy, which had commenced with the lordly "Let this bedone, " concluded in the timidly blustering "All right, have it your ownway. "

Furthermore, the theory that a woman is helpmate to a man was repugnantto her. She believed and asserted that a man had to be managed, and shehad several maxims to which she often gave forcible and contemptuousutterance--

"Let a man go his own road to-day and he will be shaking hands with thedevil to-morrow. 

"Give a man his head and he'll lose it. 

"Whiskers and sense were never found in the same patch. 

"There's more brains in one woman's finger than there is in thecongregated craniums of a battalion of men folk. 

"Where there is two men there's one fight. Where there's three there's adrinking match, two fights and a fine to be paid. "

But while advocating peace at any price and a tax on muscles that werebigger than a fly's knuckle she was herself a warrior of the breed ofFinn and strong enough to scare a pugilist. When she was angry herfamily got over the garden wall, her husband first. She did not thinkvery much of him, and she told him so, but he was sufficient of a man notto believe her. 

For a long time he had been a dissatisfied person, leading a grumpyexistence which was only made bearable by gusts of solitary blasphemy. When a man curses openly he is healthy enough, but when he takes toeither swearing or drinking in secret then he has travelled almost beyondredemption point. 

So behold our man knocking at the door, still warmed by the fray with hislate employer, but with the first tremors of fear beginning to tatter upand down his spine. 

His wife opened the door herself. She was engaged in cleaning the place, a duty in which she was by no means remiss, one of the prime points inher philosophy being that a house was not clean until one's food could beeaten off the floor. She was a big comely woman, but at the moment shedid not look dainty. A long wisp of red hair came looping down on hershoulders. A smear of soot toned down the roses of her cheek, her armswere smothered in soap suds, and the fact that she was wearing a pair ofher husband's boots added nothing to her attractions. 

When she saw her husband standing in the doorway at this unaccustomedhour she was a little taken aback, but, scenting trouble, she at onceopened the attack--

"What in the name of heaven brings you here at this hour of the day, andthe place upset the way it is? Don't walk on the soap, man, haven't yougot eyes in your head?"

"I'm not walking on the soap with my head, " he retorted, "if I was I'dsee it, and if it wasn't on the floor it wouldn't be tripping folk up. Anice thing it is that a man can't come into his own house without beingset slipping and sliding like an acrobat on an iceberg. "

"And, " cried his wife, "if I kept the soap locked up it's the nice, cleanhouse you'd have to come into. Not that you'd mind if the place wasdirty, I'll say that much for you, for what one is reared to one likes, and what is natural is pleasant. But I got a different rearing let metell you, and while I'm in it I'll have the clean house no matter whowants the dirty one. "

"You will so, " said he, looking at the soapy water for a place to walk on. 

"Can't you be coming in then, and not stand there framed in the doorway, gawking like a fool at a miracle. "

"I'll sail across if you'll get a canal boat or a raft, " said he, "or, ifthe children are kept out of sight, I'll strip, ma'm, and swim for it. "

His wife regarded him with steady gloom. 

"If you took the smallest interest in your home, " said she, "and wereless set on gallivanting about the country, going to the Lord knowswhere, with the Lord knows who, you'd know that the children were away inschool at this hour. Nice indeed the places you visit and the companyyou keep, if the truth were known--walk across it, man, and wipe yourfeet on the kitchen mat. "

So he walked into the kitchen, and sat down, and, as he sat, the lastremnants of his courage trembled down into his boots and evaporated. 

His wife came in after him--she drooped a speculative eye on her lord--

"You didn't say what brought you home so early, " said she. 

When a hard thing has to be done the quickest way is generally the bestway. It is like the morning bath--don't ruminate, jump in, for thelonger you wait the more dubious you get, and the tub begins to lookarctic and repellent. 

Some such philosophy as this dictated his attitude. He lugged out hisweek's wages, slapped it on the table, and said--

"I've got the sack. "

Then he stretched his legs out, pushed his fists deep into his trouserpockets, and waited. 

His wife sat down too, slowly and with great care, and she stared insilence at her husband--

"Do you tell me you have lost your employment?" said she in a quiet voice. 

"I do, then, " said he. "I chucked it myself. I told old Whiskers thathe could go and boil his job and his head together and sell the soup forcat-lap. "

"You threw up your situation yourself. "

"You've got the truth of it, ma'm, " he rejoined. 

"Maybe you'd be telling me what you did the like of that for?"

"Because, " said he, "I'm a man and not a mouse. Because I don't want tobe at the beck and call of every dog and devil that has a bit more moneythan I have--a man has got to be a man sometimes, " he growled. 

"Sure, you're telling the truth, " said his wife, nodding her head at him. "A man should be a man sometimes. It's the pity of the world that hecan't be a man always: and, indeed, it's the hard thing for a woman totell herself that the man she has got isn't a man at all, but a big foolwith no more wit than a boy. "

Now this was the first time he had found his wife take trouble lyingdown. As a rule she was readier for a fight than he was. She jumpedinto a row with the alacrity of a dog: and the change worked on him. Helooked at her listless hands, and the sight of those powerful organshanging so powerlessly wrought on him. Women often forget that theirweakness is really their strength. The weakest things in the world areby a queer paradox always the strongest. The toughest stone will wearaway under the dropping of water, a mushroom will lift a rock on itsdelicate head, a child will make its father work for it. So the toocapable woman will always have a baby to nurse, and that baby will be herhusband. If she buttress her womanhood too much she saps his manhood. Let her love all she can and never stint that blessing, but a womancannot often be obeyed and loved at the same time. A man cannot obey awoman constantly and retain his self-respect: the muscles of his armsreproach him if he does, and the man with his self-respect gone is a manwith a grudge, he will learn to hate the agent who brought him low. Aday may come when he will rise and beat her in self-defence, with hisfists if he is sufficiently brutalised, some subtler, but no lessefficient, weapon if his manhood refuses to be degraded--and this was ourcase. His wife had grabbed the reins and driven the matrimonial coach:driven it well, that is true, but the driver, by right of precedent, hadsat by hurt and angry, and at last, in an endeavour to prove his manhoodamong men, he had damned his employer's self and work, although inreality all his fury was directed against the mother of his children. Hethrew up his work, and the semi-conscious thought that went home with himwas--"Now she will be sorry. If she must do everything let her earn thebread. "

The woman knew what poverty meant, and she had four young children. Itwas the thought of these helpless ones crying with hunger (she could hearthem already, her ears were dinned with their hungry lamentation) thattook the fibre out of her arms, and left her without any fight. Shecould only sit and look with wretched eyes on the man whom she had beendemoralising, and, for the first time since he knew her, the tears came, and the poor woman laid her head on the kitchen table and wept. 

He was astonished, he was dismayed, but he could not stand her tears: heran to her--the first time he ever did run to her--

"Sure, darling, " said he, "is it crying you are? What would you be doingthat for? If I've lost one job I can get another. I'm not afraid ofwork, and I know how to do it. I'll get something to do at once, if it'sonly wheeling a handcart, or selling cockles in public-houses. Wisha, dry your eyes--they're as pretty as they ever were, " said he, trying tolook at them, while his wife, with a strange shyness, would not let himsee, for she felt that there was a strange man with her, some one she didnot know. That was a man's hand on her shoulder, and she had never felta man's hand before, as long as she was married. 

"I'll go out at once, " said he, "and when I come in to-night I'll have ajob if I have to bang it out of some one with a shovel. "

He slapped on his hat, kicked the soap out of the way, tramped throughthe water on the floor, and when at the door he turned again and cameback to kiss his wife, a form of caress which had long fallen intodesuetude, and so, out into the street, a man again. 

When he had gone his wife returned to her scrubbing, and, as she workedshe smiled at something she was remembering, and, now and again, a bit ofa song came from lips that had scolded so much. Having finished her workshe spent nearly an hour at the looking-glass doing up her hair (grandhair it was, too) with her ears listening for a footstep. Now and againshe would run to the pot to see were the potatoes doing all right--"Thechildren will be in shortly, " said she, "and hungry to the bone, poordears. "

But she was not thinking of the children. The warmth of a kiss was stillon her lips. Something in the back of her head was saying--"He will doit again when he comes in. "

And the second honeymoon was pleasanter than the first. 

III

She was tall and angular. Her hair was red, and scarce, and untidy. Her hands were large and packed all over with knuckles and her feetwould have turned inwards at the toes, only that she was aware of andcorrected their perversities. 

She was sitting all alone, and did not look up as I approached--

"Tell me, " said I, "why you have sat for more than an hour with youreyes fixed on nothing, and your hands punching your lap?"

She looked at me for a fleeting instant, and then, looking away again, she began to speak. --Her voice was pleasant enough, but it was sostrong that one fancied there were bones in it--

"I do not dislike women, " said she, "but I think they seldom speak ofanything worth listening to, nor do they often do anything worthlooking at: they bore and depress me, and men do not. "

"But, " said I, "you have not explained why you thump your lap with yourfist?"

She proceeded--

"I do not hate women, nor do I love men. It was only that I did nottake much notice of the one, and that I liked being with the other, for, as things are, there is very little life for a person except inthinking. All our actions are so cumbered by laws and customs that wecannot take a step beyond the ordinary without finding ourselves eitherin gaol or in Coventry. "

Having said this, she raised her bleak head and stared like an eagleacross the wastes. 

After I had coughed twice I touched her arm, and said--

"Yes?"

"One must live, " said she quickly. "I do not mean that we must eat andsleep--these mechanical matters are settled for many of us, but lifeconsists in thinking, and nothing else, yet many people go from thecradle to the grave without having lived differently from animals. Ido not want to be one of them. Their whole theory of life ismechanical. They eat and drink. They invite each other to theirhouses to eat and drink, and they use such speech as they are giftedwith in discussing their food and whatever other palpable occurrencemay have chanced to them in the day. It is a step, perhaps, towardsliving, but it is still only one step removed from stagnation. Theyhave some interest in an occurrence, but how that occurrence happened, and what will result from it does not exercise them in the least, andthese, which are knowledge and prophecy, are the only interestingaspects of any event. "

"But, " said I, "you have not told me why you sit for a full hourstaring at vacancy, and thumping on your knee with your hand?"

She continued--. 

"Sometimes one meets certain people who have sufficient of the divineferment in their heads to be called alive: they are almost always men. We fly to them as to our own people. We abase ourselves before them inhappy humility. We crave to be allowed to live near them in order thatwe may be assured that everything in the world is not nonsense andmachinery--and then, what do we find--?"

She paused, and turned a large fierce eye upon me. 

"I do not know, " said I, and I endeavoured vainly to look everywherebut at her eye. 

"We find always that they are married, " said she, and, saying so, shelapsed again to a tense and worried reflection. 

"You have not told me, " I insisted gently, "why you peer earnestly intospace, and thump at intervals upon your knee with the heel of yourfist?"

"These men, " said she sternly, "are surrounded by their wives. Theyare in gaol and their wives are their warders. You cannot go to themwithout a permit. You may not speak to them without a listener. Youmay not argue with them for fear of raising an alien and ridiculoushostility. Scarcely can you even look at them without reproach. --Howthen can we live, and how will the torch of life be kept alight?"

"I do not know, " I murmured. 

She turned her pale eye to me again. 

"I am not beautiful, " said she. 

But there was just a tremor of doubt in her voice, so that the apparentstatement became packed with curiosity, and had all the quality of aquestion. 

I did not shrug my shoulder nor raise an eyebrow--

"You are very nice, " I replied. 

"I do not want to be beautiful, " she continued severely. "Why shouldI? I have no interest in such things. I am interested only in living, and living is thinking; but I demand access to my fellows who arealive. Perhaps, I did not pay those others enough attention. Howcould I? They cannot think. They cannot speak. They make acomplicated verbal noise, but all I am able to translate from it is, that a something called lip-salve can be bought in some particular shopone penny cheaper than it can in a certain other shop. They willtwitter for hours about the way a piece of ribbon was stitched to a hatwhich they saw in a tramcar. They agitate themselves wondering whethera muff should be this size or that size?--I say, they depress me, andif I do turn my back on them when men are present I am only actingsensibly and justly. Why cannot they twitter to each other and let meand other people alone?"

She turned to me again--

"I do not know, " said I meekly. 

"And, " she continued, "the power they have; the amazing power they haveto annoy other folk. All kinds of sly impertinences, vulgar evasions, and sneering misunderstandings. Why should such women be allowed totake men into their captivity, to sequester, and gag, and restrain themfrom those whom they would naturally be eager to meet?

"What, " she continued fiercely, "had my hat to do with that woman, ormy frock?"

I nodded slowly and grievously, and repeated--

"What indeed?"

"A hat, " said she, "is something to cover one's head from the rain, anda frock is something to guard one's limbs from inclement weather. --Tothat extent I am interested in these things: but they would put a haton my mind, and a black cloth on my understanding. "

We sat in silence for a little time, while she surveyed the bleakhorizon as an eagle might. 

"And when I call at their houses, " said she, "their servants say 'Notat home, ' a lie, you know, and they close their doors on me. "

She was silent again--

"I do not know what to do, " said she. 

"Is that, " said I, "the reason why you beat your lap with your hand, and stare abroad like a famished eagle?"

She turned quickly to me--

"What shall I do to open those doors?" said she. 

"If I happened to be you, " I replied, "I would cut off my hair, I'd buya man's clothes and wear them always, I'd call myself Harry or Tom; andthen I'd go wherever I pleased, and meet whoever I wanted to meet?"

She stared fixedly at herself in these garments, and under thesedenominations--

"They would know I was not a man, " said she gravely. 

I looked at her figure--

"No person in the world would ever guess it, " said I. 

She arose from her seat. She clutched her reticule to her breast--

"I'll do it, " said she, and she stalked gauntly across the fields. 

THE THREEPENNY-PIECE

When Brien O'Brien died, people said that it did not matter very much, because he would have died young in any case. He would have beenhanged, or his head would have been split in two halves with a hatchet, or he would have tumbled down the cliff when he was drunk and beensmashed into jelly. Something like that was due to him, and everybodylikes to see a man get what he deserves to get. 

But, as ethical writs cease to run when a man is dead, the neighboursdid not stay away from his wake. They came, and they said manymitigating things across the body with the bandaged jaws and the slygrin, and they reminded each other of this and that queer thing whichhe had done, for his memory was crusted over with stories of wild, laughable things, and other things which were wild but not laughable. 

Meanwhile, he was dead, and one was at liberty to be a trifle sorry forhim. Further, he belonged to the O'Brien nation, a stock to whomreverence was due. A stock not easily forgotten. The historic memorycould reconstruct forgotten glories of station and battle, of terriblevillainy and terrible saintliness, the pitiful, valorous, slow descentto the degradation which was not yet wholly victorious. A great stock!The O'Neills remembered it. The O'Tools and the MacSweeneys hadstories by the hundred of love and hate. The Burkes and the Geraldinesand the new strangers had memories also. 

His family was left in the poorest way, but they were used to that, forhe had kept them as poor as he left them, or found them, for thatmatter. They had shaken hands with Charity so often that they nolonger disliked the sallow-faced lady, and, so, certain small giftsmade by the neighbours were accepted, not very thankfully, but veryreadily. These gifts were almost always in kind. A few eggs. A bagof potatoes. A handful of meal. A couple of twists of tea--such like. 

One of the visitors, however, moved by an extraordinary dejection, slipped a silver threepenny-piece into the hand of Brien's littledaughter, Sheila, aged four years, and later on she did not like to askfor it back again. 

Little Sheila had been well trained by her father. She knew exactlywhat should be done with money, and so, when nobody was looking, shetip-toed to the coffin and slipped the threepenny-piece into Brien'shand. That hand had never refused money when it was alive, it did notreject it either when it was dead. 

They buried him the next day. 

He was called up for judgment the day after, and made his appearancewith a miscellaneous crowd of wretches, and there he again receivedwhat was due to him. He was removed protesting and struggling to theplace decreed. 

"Down, " said Rhadamanthus, pointing with his great hand, and down hewent. 

In the struggle he dropped the threepenny-piece, but he was so bustledand heated that he did not observe his loss. He went down, far down, out of sight, out of remembrance, to a howling, black gulf with othersof his unseen kind. 

A young seraph, named Cuchulain, chancing to pass that way shortlyafterwards, saw the threepenny-piece peeping brightly from the rocks, and he picked it up. 

He looked at it in astonishment. He turned it over and over, this wayand that way. Examined it at the stretch of his arm, and peeredminutely at it from two inches distance--

"I have never in my life seen anything so beautifully wrought, " saidhe, and, having stowed it in his pouch along with some other trinkets, he strolled homewards again through the massy gates. 

It was not long until Brien discovered his loss, and, suddenly, throughthe black region, his voice went mounting and brawling. 

"I have been robbed, " he yelled. "I have been robbed in heaven!"

Having begun to yell he did not stop. Sometimes he was simply angryand made a noise. Sometimes he became sarcastic and would send hisquery swirling upwards--

"Who stole the threepenny-bit?" he roared. He addressed thesurrounding black space--

"Who stole the last threepenny-bit of a poor man?"

Again and again his voice pealed upwards. The pains of his habitationlost all their sting for him. His mind had nourishment and the heatwithin him vanquished the fumes without. He had a grievance, arighteous cause, he was buoyed and strengthened, nothing could silencehim. They tried ingenious devices, all kinds of complicated things, but he paid no heed, and the tormentors were in despair. 

"I hate these sinners from the kingdom of Kerry, " said the ChiefTormentor, and he sat moodily down on his own circular saw; and thatworried him also, for he was clad only in a loin cloth. 

"I hate the entire Clan of the Gael, " said he; "why cannot they sendthem somewhere else?" and then he started practising again on Brien. 

It was no use. Brien's query still blared upwards like the sound ofthe great trump itself. It wakened and rung the rocky caverns, screamed through fissure and funnel, and was battered and slung frompinnacle to crag and up again. Worse! his companions in doom becameinterested and took up the cry, until at last the uproar became soappalling that the Master himself could not stand it. 

"I have not had a wink of sleep for three nights, " said that harassedone, and he sent a special embassy to the powers. 

Rhadamanthus was astonished when they arrived. His elbow was leaningon his vast knee, and his heavy head rested on a hand that was acreslong, acres wide. 

"What is all this about?" said he. 

"The Master cannot go to sleep, " said the spokesman of the embassy, andhe grinned as he said it, for it sounded queer even to himself. 

"It is not necessary that he should sleep, " said Rhadamanthus. "I havenever slept since time began, and I will never sleep until time isover. But the complaint is curious. What has troubled your master?"

"Hell is turned upside down and inside out, " said the fiend. "Thetormentors are weeping like little children. The principalities aresquatting on their hunkers doing nothing. The orders are running hereand there fighting each other. The styles are leaning against wallsshrugging their shoulders, and the damned are shouting and laughing andhave become callous to torment. "

"It is not my business, " said the judge. 

"The sinners demand justice, " said the spokesman. 

"They've got it, " said Rhadamanthus, "let them stew in it. "

"They refuse to stew, " replied the spokesman, wringing his hands. 

Rhadamanthus sat up. 

"It is an axiom in law, " said he, "that however complicated an eventmay be, there can never be more than one person at the extreme bottomof it. Who is the person?"

"It is one Brien of the O'Brien nation, late of the kingdom of Kerry. A bad one! He got the maximum punishment a week ago. "

For the first time in his life Rhadamanthus was disturbed. Hescratched his head, and it was the first time he had ever done thateither. 

"You say he got the maximum, " said Rhadamanthus, "then it's a fix! Ihave damned him for ever, and better or worse than that cannot be done. It is none of my business, " said he angrily, and he had the deputationremoved by force. 

But that did not ease the trouble. The contagion spread until tenmillion billions of voices were chanting in unison, and uncountablemultitudes were listening between their pangs. 

"Who stole the threepenny-bit? Who stole the threepenny-bit?"

That was still their cry. Heaven rang with it as well as hell. Spacewas filled with that rhythmic tumult. Chaos and empty Nox had a newdiscord added to their elemental throes. Another memorial was draftedbelow, showing that unless the missing coin was restored to its ownerhell would have to close its doors. There was a veiled menace in thememorial also, for Clause 6 hinted that if hell was allowed to go bythe board heaven might find itself in some jeopardy thereafter. 

The document was dispatched and considered. In consequence aproclamation was sent through all the wards of Paradise, calling onwhatever person, archangel, seraph, cherub, or acolyte had found athreepenny-piece since midday of the tenth of August then instant, thatthe same person, archangel, seraph, cherub, or acolyte, should deliverthe said threepenny-piece to Rhadamanthus at his Court, and shouldreceive in return a free pardon and a receipt. 

The coin was not delivered, That young seraph, Cuchulain, walked about like a person who wasstrange to himself. He was not tormented: he was angry. He frowned, he cogitated and fumed. He drew one golden curl through his fingersuntil it was lank and drooping; save the end only, that was still aripple of gold. He put the end in his mouth and strode moodily chewingit. And every day his feet turned in the same direction--down the longentrance boulevard, through the mighty gates, along the strip of carvedslabs, to that piled wilderness where Rhadamanthus sat monumentally. 

Here delicately he went, sometimes with a hand outstretched to help hisfoothold, standing for a space to think ere he jumped to a furtherrock, balancing himself for a moment ere he leaped again. So he wouldcome to stand and stare gloomily upon the judge. 

He would salute gravely, as was meet, and say, "God bless the work";but Rhadamanthus never replied, save by a nod, for he was very busy. 

Yet the judge did observe him, and would sometimes heave ponderous lidsto where he stood, and so, for a few seconds, they regarded each otherin an interval of that unceasing business. 

Sometimes for a minute or two the young seraph Cuchulain would lookfrom the judge to the judged as they crouched back or strained forward, the good and the bad all in the same tremble of fear, all unknowingwhich way their doom might lead. They did not look at each other. They looked at the judge high on his ebon throne, and they could notlook away from him. There were those who knew, guessed clearly theirdoom; abashed and flaccid they sat, quaking. There were some who wereuncertain--rabbit-eyed these, not less quaking than the others, bitingat their knuckles as they peeped upwards. There were those hopeful, yet searching fearfully backwards in the wilderness of memory, chasingand weighing their sins; and these last, even when their bliss wassealed and their steps set on an easy path, went faltering, not daringto look around again, their ears strained to catch a--"Halt, miscreant!this other is your way!"

So, day by day, he went to stand near the judge; and one dayRhadamanthus, looking on him more intently, lifted his great hand andpointed--

"Go you among those to be judged, " said he. 

For Rhadamanthus knew. It was his business to look deep into the heartand the mind, to fish for secrets in the pools of being. 

And the young seraph Cuchulain, still rolling his golden curl betweenhis lips, went obediently forward and set down his nodding plumesbetween two who whimpered and stared and quaked. 

When his turn came, Rhadamanthus eyed him intently for a long time--

"Well!" said Rhadamanthus. 

The young seraph Cuchulain blew the curl of gold away from his mouth--

"Findings are keepings, " said he loudly, and he closed his mouth andstared very impertinently at the judge. 

"It is to be given up, " said the judge. 

"Let them come and take it from me, " said the seraph Cuchulain. Andsuddenly (for these things are at the will of spirits) around his headthe lightnings span, and his hands were on the necks of thunders. 

For the second time in his life Rhadamanthus was disturbed, again hescratched his head--

"It's a fix, " said he moodily. But in a moment he called to thosewhose duty it was--

"Take him to this side, " he roared. 

And they advanced. But the seraph Cuchulain swung to meet them, andhis golden hair blazed and shrieked; and the thunders rolled at hisfeet, and about him a bright network that hissed and stung--and thosewho advanced turned haltingly backwards and ran screaming. 

"It's a fix, " said Rhadamanthus; and for a little time he staredmenacingly at the seraph Cuchulain. 

But only for a little time. Suddenly he put his hands on the rests ofhis throne and heaved upwards his terrific bulk. Never before hadRhadamanthus stood from his ordained chair. He strode mightily forwardand in an instant had quelled that rebel. The thunders and lightningswere but moonbeams and dew on that stony carcass. He seized the seraphCuchulain, lifted him to his breast as one lifts a sparrow, and trampedback with him--

"Fetch me that other, " said he, sternly, and he sat down. 

Those whose duty it was sped swiftly downwards to find Brien of theO'Brien nation; and while they were gone, all in vain the seraphCuchulain crushed flamy barbs against that bosom of doom. Now, indeed, his golden locks were drooping and his plumes were broken and tossed;but his fierce eye still glared courageously against the nipple ofRhadamanthus. 

Soon they brought Brien. He was a sight of woe--howling, naked as atree in winter, black as a tarred wall, carved and gashed, tattered inall but his throat, wherewith, until one's ears rebelled, he bawled hisone demand. 

But the sudden light struck him to a wondering silence, and the sightof the judge holding the seraph Cuchulain like a limp flower to hisbreast held him gaping--

"Bring him here, " said Rhadamanthus. 

And they brought him to the steps of the throne--

"You have lost a medal!" said Rhadamanthus. "This one has it. "

Brien looked straitly at the seraph Cuchulain. 

Rhadamanthus stood again, whirled his arm in an enormous arc, jerked, and let go, and the seraph Cuchulain went swirling through space like aslung stone--

"Go after him, Kerryman, " said Rhadamanthus, stooping; and he seizedBrien by the leg, whirled him wide and out and far; dizzy, dizzy as aswooping comet, and down, and down, and down. 

Rhadamanthus seated himself. He motioned with his hand--

"Next, " said he, coldly. 

Down went the seraph Cuchulain, swirling in wide tumbles, scarcelyvisible for quickness. Sometimes, with outstretched hands, he was across that dropped plumb. Anon, head urgently downwards, he divedsteeply. Again, like a living hoop, head and heels together, he spungiddily. Blind, deaf, dumb, breathless, mindless; and behind him Brienof the O'Brien nation came pelting and whizzing. 

What of that journey! Who could give it words? Of the suns thatappeared and disappeared like winking eyes. Comets that shone for aninstant, went black and vanished. Moons that came, and stood, and weregone. And around all, including all, boundless space, boundlesssilence; the black, unmoving void--the deep, unending quietude, throughwhich they fell with Saturn and Orion, and mildly-smiling Venus, andthe fair, stark-naked moon and the decent earth wreathed in pearl andblue. From afar she appeared, the quiet one, all lonely in the void. As sudden as a fair face in a crowded street. Beautiful as the soundof falling waters. Beautiful as the sound of music in a silence. Likea white sail on a windy sea. Like a green tree in a solitary place. Chaste and wonderful she was. Flying afar. Flying aloft like a joyousbird when the morning breaks on the darkness and he shrills sweettidings. She soared and sang. Gently she sang to timid pipes andflutes of tender straw and murmuring, distant strings. A song thatgrew and swelled, gathering to a multitudinous, deep-thundered harmony, until the over-burdened ear failed before the appalling uproar of herecstasy, and denounced her. No longer a star! No longer a bird! Aplumed and horned fury! Gigantic, gigantic, leaping and shriekingtempestuously, spouting whirlwinds of lightning, tearing gluttonouslyalong her path, avid, rampant, howling with rage and terror she leaped, dreadfully she leaped and flew. . . . 

Enough! They hit the earth--they were not smashed, there was thatvirtue in them. They hit the ground just outside the village ofDonnybrook where the back road runs to the hills; and scarcely had theybumped twice when Brien of the O'Brien nation had the seraph Cuchulainby the throat--

"My threepenny-bit, " he roared, with one fist up--

But the seraph Cuchulain only laughed--

"That!" said he. "Look at me, man. Your little medal dropped farbeyond the rings of Saturn. "

And Brien stood back looking at him--He was as naked as Brien was. Hewas as naked as a stone, or an eel, or a pot, or a new-born babe. Hewas very naked. 

So Brien of the O'Brien nation strode across the path and sat down bythe side of a hedge--

"The first man that passes this way, " said he, "will give me hisclothes, or I'll strangle him. "

The seraph Cuchulain walked over to him--

"I will take the clothes of the second man that passes, " said he, andhe sat down. 

 BRIGID

 (AFTER THE IRISH)

 Do not marry, Breed, asthore! That old man whose head is hoar As the winter, but instead Mate with some young curly-head; He will give to you a child, He will never leave your side, And at morning when you wake Kiss for kiss will give and take. 

 I wish that I had died, I do, Before I gave my love to you; Love so lasting that it will While I live be with you still: And for it what do I get? Pain and trouble and regret, The terrors of the aspen-tree Which the wind shakes fearfully. 

 If this country could be seen As it ought--then you had been Living in a castle grand With the ladies of the land: The friend and foe, the gael and gall, Would be cheering, one and all, For yourself, and, this is true, I would be along with you. 

 You promised, 'twas a lie, I see, When you said you'd come to me At the sheep-cote; I was there, And I whistled on the air, And I gave our settled call-- But you were not there at all! There was nothing anywhere But lambs and birds and sunny air

 When it is dark you pass me by, And when the sun is in the sky You pass me also--night or day You look away, you walk away! But if you would come to me, And say the word of courtesy, I would close the door, and then I'd never let you out again. 

 But do not marry, Breed, asthore! That old man; his heart is hoar As his head is: you can see Winter gripping at his knee: His eyes and ears are blear and dim, How can you expect of him To see or hear or pleasure you Half as well as I would do?

THREE YOUNG WIVES

I

She was about to be a mother for the second time, and the fear which isthe portion of women was upon her. In a little while she would be inthe toils, and she hated and feared physical pain with a great hatredand a great fear. But there was something further which distressed her. 

She was a soft, babyish creature, downy and clinging, soft-eyed andgentle, the beggar folk had received gifts at her hand, the dogs knewof her largesse. Men looked on her with approval, and women liked her. Her husband belonged to the type known as "fine men, " tall, generously-proportioned, with the free and easy joviality which is socommon in Ireland. He was born a boy and he would never grow out ofthat state. The colour of his hair or the wrinkles on his cheek wouldnot have anything to do with his age, for time was powerless againstthe richness of his blood. He would still be a boy when he was dyingof old age; but if protestations, kisses and homage were any criterionthen the fact that he loved his wife was fixed beyond any kind of doubt. 

But he did not love her. --He was as changeable as the weather of hiscountry. Swift to love he was equally swift to forget. His passionswere of primitive intensity, but they were not steadfast. He clutchedwith both hands at the present and was surprised and irritated by thefact that he could in nowise get away from the past: the future he didnot care a rap about. Nobody does: there is, indeed, no such thing asthe future, there is only the possibility of it, but the past and thepresent are facts not to be gotten away from. What we have done andwhat we are doing are things which stamp us, mould us, live with us andafter us: what we will do cannot be counted on, has no part in us, hasonly a problematical existence, and can be interfered with, hindered, nullified or amplified by the thousand unmanageable accidents offuturity. 

He had married thanking God from a full heart for His goodness, andbelieving implicitly that he had plucked the very Flower of Womanhood, and the Heart of the World, and, maybe, he had. --There are many Flowersof Womanhood, all equally fragrant, and the Heart of the World can beatagainst the breast of any man who loves a woman. 

Some time previously their little boy had contracted small-pox, and hismother, nursing him, took it from him. When they recovered her beautywas gone. The extraordinary bloom which had made her cheek a shrine toworship and marvel at was destroyed for ever, while, by a curiouschance, the boy was unmarked. 

Now the only love which he had to give was a physical love. He did notlove a woman, he loved the husk. Of the woman herself he knew nothingand cared less. He had never sought to know his wife, never tried topierce beneath her beauty and discover where the woman lived and whatshe was like at home. Indeed, he knew less of his wife than hisservants did, and by little and little she had seen how the matterstood. She had plucked the heart from his mystery and read him to thebones, while remaining herself intact. But she held him still, although by the most primitive and fragile of bonds, by the magnetismof her body, the shining of her eyes, the soft beauty of her cheeks;and, behold! she was undone. The disease had stamped on her face, and, in the recoil, had stamped on her husband's love. 

How many nights of solitary tears she had known! she alone could countthem, a heavy knowledge. How many slights, shrinkings, coldnesses shehad discerned! the tale of them was hot in her brain, the index heavyon her heart. 

She knew her loss on the day that her husband looked at her after herrecovery when all fear of infection had passed--the stare, the flush, the angry disgust. Her eyes were cameras. She had only to close themand she could see again in dismal procession those dismal details. 

And now, as she lay helpless on the bed, she watched him. She wasracked with pain, and he was mumbling that it would be all right againin a little time. "A week from now, " said he, "and you will haveforgotten all about it. "

But she, looking at him with fearful eyes, traced this sentence at theback of his brain, "I hope that she will die, " and the life within herwhich had been sown in happiness and love, and had grown great throughmisery and tears was now beating at the gates of entrance. . . . Shemight die: so many people die in labour, and she was not strong. Witha new clairvoyant gaze she saw Death standing by the bed, hooded, cloaked and sombre; his eyes were fixed on her and they were peacefuland kindly eyes. Had there been nothing else to care for she wouldhave gone gladly to the Dark One; but there remained her little son. What heart was he to rest on when she was gone? Whose arms could openso widely as the mother's when he fled from the terrible things whichhaunt Babyland?--it was an arrow in her heart. 

She knew well that her husband would marry again. He was of those menwho are inveterate husbands--and that new woman!--Who was she? Whatwas she like? What would be her attitude towards a motherless child?towards her little one? She would be kindly at first, little doubt ofthat, but afterwards, when her own children came, what would become ofthe child of a husband's first wife? . . . 

She stared down vistas of sorrow. She was a woman, and she knew women. She saw the other little ones, strangers to her, cared for and loved, all their childish troubles the centre of maternal interest and debate, while her boy slunk through a lonely, pathetic childhood, frightened, repressed, perhaps beaten, because he was not of the brood. . . . 

She saw these things as she lay looking at her husband, and shebelieved they would come to pass if she died. 

And in the night time, when the stars were hidden behind the windowcurtains, by the light of a lamp that fell on toiling, anxious people, in a hospital-like atmosphere of pain and clamour she did die. 

II

It was believed long ago in the ancient kingdom of Erinn that it wasdeath to be a poet, death to love a poet, and death to mock a poet. Sothe Gael said, and, in that distant time, the people of the Gael were awise people, holding the ancient knowledge, and they honoured the poetand feared him, for his fostering was among the people of the Shee, andhis curse was quickened with the authority of the gods. Even latelythe people feared the poets and did them reverence, although the NewIgnorance (known humorously as Education) was gradually strangling thelife out of Wisdom, and was setting up a different and debased standardof mental values. There was a lady once and she scorned a poet, wittingly and with malice, and it was ill for her in the sequel, forthe gods saw to it. 

She was very beautiful--"The finest girl in three counties, sir, " saidher father: but he might have been prejudiced in favour of his own, andhe had been known to speak of himself as "the finest man in Ireland, and you know what that means, sir. " Further, his dog was "the greatestdog that ever ratted in the universe. " Whatever he owned was not onlygood, it was great and unique, and whatever he did not own had, in hisopinion, very little to recommend it. 

But his daughter was beautiful. When the male eye encountered her itwas in no haste to look away. When the female eye lit on her it was, and the owner of the female eye, having sniffed as was proper, wenthome and tried to do up her hair or her complexion in the likemanner--as was also proper. A great many people believe (and who willquarrel with their verities) that beauty is largely a matter of craftand adjustment. --Such women are beautiful with a littledifficulty--they pursue loveliness, run it to earth in a shop, obtainit with a certain amount of minted metal, and reincarnate themselvesfrom a box. --They deserve all the success which they undoubtedlyobtain. There are other women who are beautiful by accident--such as, the cunning disposition of a dimple, the abilities of a certain kind ofsmile, the possession of a charming voice--for, indeed, an ugly womanwith a beautiful voice is a beautiful woman. But some women arebeautiful through the spendthrift generosity of nature, and of thislast was she. Whatever of colour, line, or motion goes to theconstruction of beauty that she was heiress to, and she knew it onlytoo well. 

A person who has something of his own making may properly be proud ofhis possession, even if it is nothing more than a stamp album, but aperson who has been gifted by Providence or Fairy Godmothers should notbe conceited. A self-made man may be proud of his money, but his sonmay not. Pride in what has been given freely to you is an empty pride, and she was prouder of her beauty than a poet is of his odes--it washer undoing in the end. 

She was so accustomed to the homage of men that one who failed to makeinstant and humble obeisance to her proved himself to be either a veryvulgar person or else a miracle. Such folk were few, for the averageman bends as readily to beauty as a flower sways to the wind, or thesea to the touch of the moon. 

Before she was twenty years of age she had loomed in the eye of everymale in her vicinity as the special female whom nature had built to hisexclusive measure. When she was twenty-one she had withstood thematrimonial threats of half the male population of Ireland, and sheknew how every social grade (there are not many of them) of Irish lifemade love, for that was the only thing they were able to do while theywere near her. From the farmer with a spade in his fist to thelandlord with a writ in his agent's pocket, all sang the same song, thesole difference being a matter of grammar; and, although young womenhave big appetites in these cases, and great recuperative powers, shewas as tired of love and love-lorn swains as a young and healthy womancan be, and then, suddenly, and to her own delighted consternation, shedid fall in love. 

The tantalising part of the whole matter was that she was unable toformulate any good reason for falling in love with this particularmale. Her powers of observation (and they were as sharp as a cat'stooth) pointed out that although he was a young man his head wasbeginning to push out through his hair, and she had always consideredthat a bald man was outside the pale of human interest. Furthermore, his trousers bagged at the knees, perhaps the most lamentable mishapthat can descend on manly apparel. --They were often a little jagged atthe ends. She did not understand that trousers such as these were thecorrect usage, they were in the tradition: he was wearing "the beardedbreeches of the bard. " He was a little weak on his legs, and his handssometimes got in his own way, but she said to herself with a smile, "How different he is from other men!"

What that difference consisted in got between her and her rest, therewas a crumb in her bed on the head of it. 

Meanwhile, he had not told her that he loved her, and she was strangelyanxious for news to that effect. Indeed, she sought confirmation ofher hopes as often as maidenly modesty permitted, which was prettyfrequent, for maidenly modesty has its diplomacy also; besides, has nota reigning beauty liberty to pay court?--there are plenty of otherqueens who have done it. 

He was a poet by profession, but his livelihood depended upon hisability as a barrister. When she first saw him he was crossing astreet. Suddenly, in the centre of the road, he halted, with his toesturned in, his fingers caressing his chin, and an expression of raptand abstracted melancholy on his visage, while he sought for themissing, the transfiguring word. There was a sonnet in his eye and itimpeded his vision. Meanwhile, the wheeled traffic of the streetaddressed language to him which was so vigorous as almost to bepoetical. She had pulled him from beneath a horse's head which afrantic driver was endeavouring to pull the mouth from. The words ofthe driver as he sailed away were--"Go home and die, you moonstruck, gibbering, wobbling omadhaun, " and she had thought that his descriptionwas apt and eloquent. 

She saw him a second time, when her father took her for a visit to theFour Courts. He was addressing the Court, and, while his language wasmagnificent, the judge must have considered that his law was onvacation, for he lost his cause. 

They met again in her own home. Her father knew him very well, and, although they seldom met, he had that strong admiration for him which avigorous and overbearing personality sometimes extends to a shy andunworldly friend--

"A perfect frost as a lawyer, " he used to say, "but as a poet, sir, Shakespeare is an ass beside him, and if any one asks you who said so, tell them that I did, sir. "

He sat beside her at dinner and forgot her before the first course wasremoved, and, later, when he knocked a glass off the table, he lookedat her as though she were responsible for the debris. 

He did not make love to her, a new and remarkable omission in herexperience of men, however bald, and while this was refreshing for atime it became intolerable shortly. She challenged him, as a womancan, with the flash of her eyes, the quick music of her laugh, but hewas marvelling at the width of the horizon, rapt in contemplation ofthe distant mountains, observing how a flower poised and nodded on itsstalk, following the long, swooping flight of a bird or watching howthe moon tramped down on the stars. So far as she could see he wasunaware that her charms were of other than average significance--

"These poets are awful fools, " said she angrily. 

But the task of awakening this landlocked nature was one whichpresented many interesting features to her. She was really jealousthat he paid her no attention, and, being accustomed to the homage ofevery male thing over fifteen years of age, she resented hisnegligence, became interested in him, as every one is in the abnormal, and when a woman becomes interested in a man she is unhappy until hebecomes interested in her. 

There had arrived, with the express intention of asking her to marryhim, another young gentleman. He had a light moustache and a fancywaistcoat, both of which looked new. He was young, rich, handsome, andsufficiently silly to make any woman wish to take charge of him, andher father had told him to "go in and win, my boy, there's no one I'dlike better, sir, " a very good heartener for a slightly dubious youth, even though he may consider that the lady of his choice is watchinganother man more intently than is pleasant. 

The young gentleman gripped, with careful frenzy, at his light, newmoustache, and growled as he watched the stalking. But the poet wasoccupied and careless, and then, suddenly, it happened. What movement, conscious or unconscious, opened his eyes one cannot say: the thingseemed to be done without any preliminaries, and he was awakened and inthe toils. 

They had been reading poetry together, his poetry, and he wasexpressing, more to himself than to her, how difficult and howdelightful it was to work with entire satisfaction within the "scantyplot" of a sonnet. She was listening with bated breath, and answeringwith an animation more than slightly tinged with ignorance, for she wasas little interested in the making of sonnets as in the making ofshoes. --Nobody is interested in the making of sonnets, not even poets. 

He fell silent after a space and sat gazing at the moon where it globedout on the stillness, and she also became silent. Her nerves, she toldherself, were out of order. She was more used to dismissing than tobeing dismissed and yet she seemed beaten. There was nothing furtherthat a girl could do. He cared no more about her than he did aboutwhatever woman cleaned his rooms. She was not angry, but a feeling ofweariness came upon her. (It is odd that one can be so in earnest whenone is in jest. ) Once or twice she shook her head at the moon, and asshe stared, moody and quiet, it seemed that the moon had slid beyondher vision and she was looking into great caverns of space, burstingwith blackness. Some horror of emptiness was reaching to roll her inpits of murk, where her screams would be battered back on her tonguesoundless. 

With an effort she drew her eyes into focus again and turned them, smiling bitterly, on her companion, and, lo, he was looking at her withtimid eyes, amazed eyes, and they spoke, for all their timidity, louderthan trumpets. She knew that look, who could mistake it? Here wasflame from the authentic fire. He was silent, but his breath came andwent hurriedly, and he was bending towards her, little by little he wasbending, his eyes, his whole body and soul yearning. 

Then she arose----

"It is getting a little cold, " said she: "we had better go in. "

They went indoors silently. He was walking like a man just awakenedfrom a dream. While she!--her head was high. Where was her equal!She frowned in the face of the moon and stars. She beat her small feetupon the earth and called it slave. She had torn victory from nowhere. A man's head swung at her girdle and she owned the blood that dripped, and her heart tossed rapture and anthem, carol and paean to the airaround. --She had her hour. 

That night the other young gentleman whom any woman would like to takecharge of asked her to be his wife, and she consented gracefully, slightly disarranging his nice, new moustache in the act of surrender. 

The next day the poet left the house pleading urgent briefs as anexcuse--

"You'll come to the wedding, " cried her father, "or, " laughing, "maybe, you'll help us with the settlements, that's more in your line, " and heput an arm fondly about his daughter. She, regarding their visitor, nestled to him and laughingly said--

"It would not be like my wedding at all if you stayed away. You mustwrite me an ode, " and her eyes mocked him. 

He stood, looking at her for a moment, and his eyes mocked also, forthe poet knew by his gift what she had done, and he replied withcareless scorn--

"I will come with pleasure, and, " with an emphasis she noted, "I willdance at your wedding. " So he laughed and marched away heart-whole. 

Then, disengaging her arm from her father's, she smiled and walkedslowly indoors, and as she walked there spread over her body a fiercecoldness, and when her husband sought her afterwards that wintry breastchilled him, and he died: but the poet danced at her wedding, when hereyes were timid and pleading, and frightened. 

III

She read the letter through twice, and then she stood for a few minuteslooking in front of her, with her arms hanging loosely by her sides, and her foot tapping on the carpet. She was looking into the futurewith the thoughtful gaze of one who has cut off all communication withthe past, and, with a strange feeling of detachment, she was wonderinghow that future would reveal itself, and whether he. . . ? She crossedto the fireplace, sat down, and read the letter over again. 

Her husband had gone out that evening with a friend. In his usualhit-or-miss fashion, he kissed his wife and asked her to settle histie. He was always asking her to do something, but he never didanything for her. --It was, "Will you hand me the paper, like a goodgirl?" and, "I say, dear, my pipe is stuffed, you might stick a hairpinthrough it, " or, "You might see, old lady, if there is a matchanywhere. " Before their marriage she had been accustomed to men whodid things for her, and the change was sudden: likeable enough atfirst--

. . . How red the fire is to-night! They must be sending better coalthan we usually get--there is not a single dark spot in it, and how theshape continually changes! Now it is a deep cave with stalactiteshanging from the roof, and little swelling hillocks on the floor, and, over all, a delicate, golden glow surging and fading. The blue flameon the top that flits and flickers like a will-o'-the-wisp is gas, Isuppose--I wonder how they extract it. . . . I wonder will he be sorrywhen he comes home, and finds. . . . Perhaps his friend will besufficient for him then. . . . It is curious to think of oneself as apiece of animated furniture, a dumb waiter, always ready when required, and decently out of sight when not wanted--not dumb, though! He cannotsay I failed to talk about it: but, of course, that is nagging and badtemper, and "making yourself ridiculous for nothing, my dear. "Nothing! I warned him over and over again; but he must have company. He would be stifled unless he went among men now and again--"Malecompany is a physical necessity for men, my dear. " I suppose women donot need any other company than that of their husbands, and they mustnot ask too much of that. . . . What strange, careless, hopefulcreatures they are, and how they cease to value what they have got!Does the value rise again when it is gone, I wonder? . . . Out allday, and he cannot understand why I ask him to stay with me at night. "A man wants air, sweetheart. " A woman does not, of course--she wouldnot have the cheek to want anything: there is something not "nice"about a woman wanting anything. Do all men stifle in the air theirwives have breathed? If I ask him "do you love me still?" he replies, "of course, do you mind if I run out for an hour or two, dear. " Onewill ask questions, of course. . . . A kiss in the morning, another atnight, and, for Heaven's sake, don't bother me in the interval: that ismarriage from a man's point of view. Do they really believe that womenare alive? Is matrimony always a bondage to them? Are all women'slives so lonely? Are their wishes neglected, their attempts to thinklaughed at, their pride stricken?--I wonder. . . . And he did love me, I know that: but if he has forgotten I must not remember it. He couldnot see enough of me then: and the things he said, and does notremember--I was a wonder that the world could not equal--it islaughable. --A look from me was joy, a word delight, a touch ecstasy. He would run to the ends of the earth to gratify a whim of mine, andlife without me was not worth living. . . . If I would only love him!If I could only bring myself to care for him a little--he was toohumble, too unworthy to imagine--and so forth, and so forth; and it wasall true then. Now I am some one who waits upon him. He wants thisand that, and asks me for it. He has cut his finger and shouts for meto bind it up, and I must be terribly concerned about it; somehow, hewill even manage to blame me for his cut finger. He cannot sleep inthe night, so I must awaken also and listen to his complaint. He issick, and the medicine tastes nasty; I am to understand that if themedicine tastes nasty I am responsible for it--I should not have givenhim anything nasty: he is surprised: he trusted me not to do such athing to him. He turns to me like a child when he has any . . . Heturns to me like a child and trusts . . . He turns to me . . . Like achild. . . . 

The sound of a horse's hooves came to her, and she arose from her chairwith frightened haste. She looked swiftly at the clock, and then stoodlistening in a rigid attitude, with a face that grew white and peaked, and flushed and paled again. The car came swiftly nearer and stopped alittle way from the house. Then a foot crunched the gravel, and herdesperate eyes went roving quickly about the room as though she werelooking for a place to hide in. Next, after a little interval ofsilence, a pebble struck the window. She stood for a moment staring atthe window and then ran to it, swung open a pane of glass, and, leaningout, she called in a high, strained voice, "I will not go. " Then, closing the window again, she ran back to the fireplace, crouched downon the rug and pushed her fingers into her ears. 

Her husband came home before eleven o'clock, brushed the wraith of akiss half an inch from her lips, and asked was there anything nice forsupper? The supper things were already on the table, and, aftertasting a mouthful--

"Who cooked this?" said he. 

She was watching him intently--

"The girl did, " she replied. 

"I knew it, " said he angrily, "it's beastly: you might have done ityourself when you were not busy; a lot you care about what I like. "

"I will do it to-morrow, " she replied quietly. 

"Yes do, " said he, "there is no one can cook like you. "

And she, still watching him intently, suddenly began to laugh--

He leaped up from the table and, after a stare of indignantastonishment, he stalked off to bed--

"You are always giggling about nothing, " said he, and he banged thedoor. 

THE HORSES

He was tall and she was short. He was bulky, promising to be fat. Shewas thin, and, with a paring here and there, would have been skinny. His face was sternly resolute, solemn indeed, hers was prim, andprimness is the most everlasting, indestructible trait of humanity. Itcan outface the Sphinx. It is destructible only by death. Whoever hasmarried a prim woman must hand over his breeches and his purse, he willcollect postage stamps in his old age, he will twiddle his thumbs andsmile when the visitor asks him a question, he will grow to dislikebeer, and will admit and assert that a man's place is the home--thesethings come to pass as surely as the procession of the seasons. 

It may be asked why he had married her, and it would be difficult tofind an answer to that question. The same query might be put to almostany couple, for (and it is possibly right that it should be so) we donot marry by mathematics, but by some extraordinary attraction which isneither entirely sexual nor mental. Something other than these, something as yet uncharted by psychology, is the determining factor. It may be that the universal, strange chemistry of nature, planninggranite and twig, ant and onion, is also ordering us more imperativelyand more secretly than we are aware. 

He had always been a hasty creature. He never had any brains, and hadnever felt the lack of them. He was one of those men who are called"strong, " because of their imperfect control over themselves. Hisappetites and his mental states ruled him. He was impatient of anyrestraint; whatever he wanted to do he wanted urgently to do and wouldtouch no alternatives. He had the robust good humour which willcheerfully forgive you to-morrow for the wrongs he has done you to-day. He bore no malice to any one on earth except those who took theirmedicine badly. Meek people got on very well with him because theybehaved themselves, but he did not like them to believe they wouldinherit the earth. 

Some people marry because other people have done so. It is in the air, like clothing and art and not eating with a knife. He, of course, gotmarried because he wanted to, and the singular part of it was that hedid not mate with a meek woman. Perhaps he thought she was meek, forbefore marriage there is a habit of deference on both sides which ismisleading and sometimes troublesome. 

From the beginning of their marriage he had fought against his wifewith steadiness and even ferocity. Scarcely had they been wed when hergently-repressive hand was laid upon him, and, like a startled horse, he bounded at the touch into freedom--that is, as far as the limits ofthe matrimonial rope would permit. Of course he came back again--therewas the rope, and the unfailing, untiring hand easing him to the way hewas wanted to go. 

There was no fighting against that. Or, at least, it did not seem thatfighting was any use. One may punch a bag, but the bag does not mind, and at last one grows weary of unproductive quarrelling. One shrugsone's shoulders, settles to the collar, and accepts whatever destinythe gods, in their wisdom, have ordained. Is life the anvil upon whichthe gods beat out their will? It is not so. The anvil is matter, thewill of the gods is life itself, urging through whatever torment tosome identity which it can only surmise or hope for; and the one orderto life is that it shall not cease to rebel until it has ceased tolive; when, perhaps, it can take up the shaping struggle in some otherform or some other place. 

But he had almost given in. Practically he had bowed to the new order. Domestic habits were settling about him thick as cobwebs, and asclinging. His feet were wiped on the mat when he came in. His hat washung on the orthodox projection. His kiss was given at the statedtime, and lasted for the regulation period. The chimney-corner claimedhim and got him. The window was his outlook on life. Beyond the halldoor were foreign lands inhabited by people who were no longer of hiskind. The cat and the canary, these were his familiars, and his wifewas rapidly becoming his friend. 

Once a day he trod solemnly forth on the designated walk--

"Be back before one o'clock, " said the voice of kind authority, "lunchwill be ready. "

"Won't you be back before two?" said that voice, "the lawn has to berolled. "

"Don't stay out after three, " the voice entreated, "we are going tovisit Aunt Kate. "

And at one and two and three o'clock he paced urgently wifeward. Heate the lunch that was punctually ready. He rolled the inevitablelawn. He trod sturdily to meet the Aunt Kate and did not quail, andthen he went home again. One climbed to bed at ten o'clock, one wasgently spoken to until eleven o'clock, and then one went to sleep. 

On a day she entrusted him with a sum of money, and requested that heshould go down to the town and pay at certain shops certain bills, thedetails whereof she furnished to him on paper. 

"Be back before three o'clock, " said the good lady, "for the Fegans arecoming to tea. You need not take your umbrella, it won't rain, and youought to leave your pipe behind, it doesn't look nice. Bring somecigarettes instead, and your walking-stick if you like, and be sure tobe back before three. "

He pressed his pipe into a thing on the wall which was meant for pipes, put his cigarette-case into his pocket, and took his walking-stick inhis hand. 

"You did not kiss me good-bye, " said she gently. 

So he returned and did that, and then he went out. 

It was a delicious day. The sun was shining with all its might. Onecould see that it liked shining, and hoped everybody enjoyed its art. If there were birds about anywhere it is certain they were singing. Inthis suburb, however, there were only sparrows, but they hopped andflew, and flew and hopped, and cocked their heads sideways and chirpedsomething cheerful, but possibly rude, as one passed. They were busyto the full extent of their beings, playing innocent games with happylittle flies, and there was not one worry among a thousand of them. 

There was a cat lying on a hot window-ledge. She was looking drowsilyat the sparrows, and any one could see that she loved them and wishedthem well. 

There was a dog stretched across a doorway. He was very quiet, but hewas not in the least bored. He was taking a sun-bath, and he waswatching the cat. So steadily did he observe her that one discerned ata glance he was her friend, and would protect her at any cost. 

There was a small boy who held in his left hand a tin can and a pieceof string. With his right hand he was making affectionate gestures tothe dog. He loved playing with animals, and he always rewarded theirtrust in him. 

Our traveller paced slowly onwards, looking at his feet as he went. Henoticed with a little dismay that he could not see as much of his legsas he thought he should see. There was a slight but nicely-shapedcurve between him and his past--

"I am getting fat, " said he to himself, and the reflection carried himback to the morning mirror--

"I am getting a bit bald, too, " said he, and a quiet sadness tookpossession of him. 

But he reassured himself. One does get fat. "Every one gets fat, "said he, "after he gets married. " He reviewed his friends andacquaintances, and found that this was true, and he bowed before animmutable decree. 

"One does get bald, " quoth he. "Everybody gets bald. The wisestpeople in the world lose their hair. Kings and generals, rich peopleand poor people, they are all bald! It is not a disgrace, " said he;and he trod soberly forward in the sunshine. 

A young man caught up on him from behind, and strode past. He waswhistling. His coat-tails were lifted and his hands were thrust in hispockets. His elbows jerked to left and right as he marched. 

"A fellow oughtn't to swagger about like that, " said our traveller. "What does he want to tuck up his coat for, anyhow? It's not decent, "said he in a low voice. "It makes people laugh, " said he. 

A girl came out of a shop near by and paced down in their direction. She looked at the young man as they passed, and then she turned again, a glance, no more, and looked after him without stopping her pace. Shecame on. She had no pockets to stick her hands in, but she also wasswaggering. There was a left and right movement of her shoulders, animpetus and retreat of her hips. Something very strong and yetreticent about her surging body. She passed the traveller and wentdown the road. 

"She did not look at me, " said he, and his mind folded its hand acrossits stomach, and sat down, while he went forward in the sunlight to dohis errands. 

He stopped to light a cigarette, and stood for a few minutes watchingthe blue smoke drifting and thinning away on the air. While he stood aman drove up with a horse and car. The car was laden withgroceries--packets of somebody's tea, boxes of somebody's chocolate, bottles of beer and of mineral water, tins of boot blacking, andparcels of soap; confectionery, and tinned fish, cheese, macaroni, andjam. 

The man was beating the horse as he approached, and the travellerlooked at them both through a wreath of smoke. 

"I wonder, " said he, "why that man beats his horse?"

The driver was sitting at ease. He was not angry. He was notimpatient. There was nothing the matter with him at all. But he wassteadily beating the horse; not harshly, gently in truth. He beat thehorse without ill-will, almost without knowing he was doing it. It wasa sort of wrist exercise. A quick, delicate twitch of the whip thatcaught the animal under the belly, always in the same place. It wasvery skilful, but the driver was so proficient in his art that onewondered why he had to practice at it any longer. And the horse didnot make any objection! Not even with his ears; they lay back to hismane as he jogged steadily forward in the sunlight. His hooves wereshod with iron, but they moved with an unfaltering, humble regularity. His mouth was filled with great, yellow teeth, but he kept his mouthshut, and one could not see them. He did not increase or diminish hispace under the lash; he jogged onwards, and did not seem to mind it. 

The reins were jerked suddenly, and the horse turned into the path andstopped, and when he stood he was not any quieter than when he had beenmoving. He did not raise his head or whisk his tail. He did not movehis ears to the sounds behind and on either side of him. He did notpaw and fumble with his feet. There was a swarm of flies about hishead; they moved along from the point of his nose to the top of hisforehead, but mostly they clustered in black, obscene patches about hiseyes, and through these patches his eyes looked out with a strangepatience, a strange mildness. He was stating a fact over and over tohimself, and he could not think of anything else--

"There are no longer any meadows in the world, " said he. "They came inthe night and took away the green meadows, and the horses do not knowwhat to do. " . . . Horse! Horse! Little horse! . . . You do notbelieve me. There are those who have no whips. There are children whowould love to lift you in their arms and stroke your head. . . . 

The driver came again, he mounted to his seat, and the horse turnedcarefully and trotted away. 

The man with the cigarette looked after them for a few minutes, andthen he also turned carefully, to do his errands. 

He reached the Railway Station and peered in at the clock. There weresome men in uniform striding busily about. Three or four people weremoving up the steps towards the ticket office. A raggedy man shook anewspaper in his face, paused for half a second, and fled away bawlinghis news. A red-faced woman pushed hastily past him. She was carryinga big basket and a big baby. She was terribly engrossed by both, andhe wondered if she had to drop one which of them it would be. A short, stout, elderly man was hoisting himself and a great leather portmanteauby easy stages up the steps. He was very determined. He bristled ateverybody as at an enemy. He regarded inanimate nature as if he wasdaring it to move. It would not be easy to make that man miss a train. A young lady trod softly up the steps. She draped snowy garments abouther, but her ankles rebelled: whoever looked quickly saw them once, andthen she spoke very severely to them, and they hid themselves. It wasplain that she could scarcely control them, and that they would escapeagain when she wasn't looking. A young man bounded up the steps; hewas too late to see them, and he looked as if he knew it. He staredangrily at the girl, but she lifted her chin slightly and refused toadmit that he was alive. A very small boy was trying to push a largeindia-rubber ball into his mouth, but his mouth was not big enough tohold it, and he wept because of his limitations. He was towed along byhis sister, a girl so tall that one might say her legs reached toheaven, and maybe they did. 

He looked again at the hour. It was one minute to two o'clock; andthen something happened. The whole white world became red. The oldestseas in the world went suddenly lashing into storm. An ocean of bloodthundered into his head, and the noise of that primitive flood, roaringfrom what prehistoric gulfs, deafened him at an instant. The waveswhirled his feet from under him. He went foaming up the steps, wasswept violently into the ticket office, and was swirled away like abobbing cork into the train. A guard tried to stop him, for the trainwas already taking its pace, but one cannot keep out the tide with aticket-puncher. The guard was overwhelmed, caught in the backwash, andswirled somewhere, anywhere, out of sight and knowledge. The traingathered speed, went flying out of the station into the blazingsunlight, picked up its heels and ran, and ran, and ran; the windleaped by the carriage window, shrieking with laughter; the wide fieldsdanced with each other, shouting aloud

"The horses are coming again to the green meadows. Make way, make wayfor the great, wild horses!"

And the trees went leaping from horizon to horizon shrieking andshrieking the news. 

 MISTRESS QUIET-EYES

 While I sit beside the window I can hear the pigeons coo, That the air is warm and blue, And how well the young bird flew-- Then I fold my arms and scold the heart That thought the pigeons knew. 

 While I sit beside the window I can watch the flowers grow Till the seeds are ripe and blow To the fruitful earth below-- Then I shut my eyes and tell my heart The flowers cannot know. 

 While I sit beside the window I am growing old and drear; Does it matter what I hear, What I see, or what I fear? I can fold my hands and hush my heart That is straining to a tear. 

 The earth is gay with leaf and flower, The fruit is ripe upon the tree, The pigeons coo in the swinging bower, But I sit wearily Watching a beggar-woman nurse A baby on her knee. 

THREE LOVERS WHO LOST

I

Young Mr. O'Grady was in love. It was the first time he had been inlove, and it was all sufficiently startling. He seemed to have leapedfrom boyhood to manhood at a stroke, and the things which had pretendedto be of moment yesterday were to-day discovered to have only the verymeanest importance. Different affairs now occupied him. A littlewhile ago his cogitations had included, where he would walk to on thenext Sunday, whether his aunt in Meath Street would lend him the priceof a ticket for the coming Bank Holiday excursion, whether his brotherwould be using his bicycle on Saturday afternoon, and whether thepacket of cigarettes which he was momently smoking contained as manycigarettes as could be got elsewhere for two pence. 

These things were no longer noteworthy. Clothing had assumed animportance he could scarcely have believed in. Boots, neck-ties, theconduct of one's hat and of one's head, the progress of one'smoustache, one's bearing towards people in the street and in the house, this and that social observance--all these things took on a new andimportant dignity. He bought a walking-stick, a card-case, a purse, apipe with a glass bottom wherein one could observe one's own nicotineinexorably accumulating. --He bought a book on etiquette and a pot ofpaste for making moustaches grow in spite of providence, and one day heinsisted on himself drinking a half glass of whisky--it tasted sadly, but he drank it without a grimace. Etiquette and whisky! these thingshave to be done, and one might as well do them with an air. He was inlove, he was grown up, he was a man, and he lived fearlessly up to hisrazor and his lady. 

From the book on etiquette he exhumed a miscellany of useful andpeculiar wisdom. Following information about the portage of knives andforks at incredible dinners he discovered that a well-bred personalways speaks to the young lady's parents before he speaks to the younglady. He straightened his shoulders. --It would be almost as bad, hethought, as having to drink whisky, but if it had to be done why hewould not shrink from this any more than he had from that. He setforth on the tingling errand. 

Mr. O'Reilly was a scrivener, a husband and a father. He made copiesof all kinds of documents for a living. He also copied maps. It hasbeen said that scriveners have to get drunk at least twice a week inorder to preserve their sanity; but the person whose miserableemployment is to draw copies of maps is more desperately environed thanan ordinary scrivener. It was Mr. O'Reilly's misfortune that he wasunable to get drunk. He disliked liquor, and, moreover, it disagreedwith him. He had, to paraphrase Lamb, toiled after liquor as otherpeople toil after virtue, but the nearer he got the less did he likeit. As a consequence of this enforced decency the ill-temper, which isthe normal state of scriveners, had surged and buzzed around him solong that he had quite forgotten what a good temper was like. --It mightbe said that he hated every one, not excepting his wife and daughter. He could avoid other people, but these he could never escape from. They wanted to talk to him when he wanted to be let alone. Theyworried him with this and that domestic question or uproar. He wouldgladly have sold them both as slaves to the Barbadoes or presented themto the seraglio of any eastern potentate. There they were! and heoften gnashed his teeth and grinned at them in amazement because theywere there. 

On the evening when young Mr. O'Grady sallied forth to ask him for thehand of his daughter in marriage he was sitting at supper with hisconsort--

Mr. O'Reilly took the last slice of bread from under his wife's hand. It was loot, so he ate it with an extra relish and his good ladywaddled away to get more bread from cupboard--

"Everything's a trouble, " said she, as she cut the loaf. "Doesn't itmake you think of the hymn 'I'm but a stranger here, heaven is myhome'?"

"No, ma'm, " said her husband, "it does not. Where is Julia Elizabeth?"and he daringly and skilfully abstracted the next slice of bread whilehis wife was laying down the butter knife. 

"I wish, " said she, as she reached for the knife again, "I wish youwould give me a chance, O'Reilly: you eat much quicker than I do, Godhelp me!"

"I wish, " rapped her husband fiercely, "that you would give a plainanswer to a plain question. Now then, ma'm, in two words, where isthat girl? My whole life seems to be occupied in asking that question, and yours seems to be spent in dodging the answer to it. "

"I don't know, " replied his wife severely, "and that's three words. "

"You don't know!" he looked around in helpless appeal and condemnation. "What sort of an answer is that for a mother to give about herdaughter?" and under cover of his wrath he stole the next slice ofbread. 

His wife also became angry--she put her plate in her lap and sat up athim--

"Don't barge me, man, " said she. "A nice daughter to have to give suchan answer about. Leave me alone now for I'm not well, I say, on thehead of her. I never know where she does be. One night it's (sheendeavoured to reproduce her daughter's soprano) 'I am going to adance, mother, at the Durkins'----'"

"Ha'penny hops!" said her husband fiercely. "Can't you cut me a bit ofbread!"

"And another night, 'she wants to go out to see Mary Durkan. '"

"I know her well, a big hat and no morals, a bankrupt's baggage. "

"And the night after she 'wants to go to the theatre, ma. '"

"Dens of infamy, " said he. "If I had my way I'd shut them all up andput the actors in gaol, with their hamleting and gamyacting andha-ha'ing out of them. "

"I can't keep her in, " said his wife, wringing her hands, "and I won'ttry to any longer. I get a headache when I talk to her, so I do. Lastnight when I mentioned about her going out with that Rorke man sheturned round as cool as you please and told me 'to shut up. ' Her ownmother!" and she surveyed Providence with a condemnatory eye--

At this point her husband swung his long arm and arrested the slice ofbread in his wife's lap--

"If she spoke to me that way, " he grinned, "I'll bet I'd astonish her. "

His wife looked in amazement from her lap to his plate, but she hadability for only one quarrel at a time--

"And doesn't she talk to you like that? You never say a word to herbut she has a look in her eye that's next door to calling you afool. --I don't know where she is at all to-day. "

"What time did she go out?"

"After breakfast this morning. "

"And now it's supper-time--ha! that's good! Can't you give me a bit ofbread, or do you want to eat the whole loaf yourself? Try to rememberthat I do pay for my food. "

With an angry shake of the head his wife began to cut the loaf, andcontinued speaking--

"'Where are you going to, Julia Elizabeth?' said I. 'Out, ' said she, and not another word could I get from her. Her own mother, mind you, and her best clothes----"

Mr. O'Reilly ate the last slice of bread and arose from the table. 

"I suppose, " said he, "she is loafing about the streets with some youngpuppy who has nothing of his own but a cigarette and a walking-stick, and they both borrowed. I'll have a talk with her when she comes in, and we'll see if she tells me to shut up. "

The door banged, the room shook, and Mrs. O'Reilly settled to herfrustrated tea, but her thoughts still ran on her daughter. 

It was at this point that, directed by love and etiquette, Mr. O'Gradyknocked at the door. Mrs. O'Reilly was again cutting the loaf in anexasperation which was partly hunger and partly maternal, and, as shecut, she communed with herself--

"As if, " said she, "I haven't enough trouble trying to keep a crankyman like her pa in good humour, without being plagued by JuliaElizabeth"--she paused, for there was a knock at the door. --"If, " saidshe to the door, "you are a woman with ferns in a pot I don't want you, and I don't want Dublin Bay herrings, or boot-laces either, so you cango away. --The crankiness of that man is more than tongue can tell. AsMiss Carty says, I shouldn't stand it for an hour--Come in, can'tyou--and well she may say it, and she a spinster without a worry underheaven but her suspicious nature and her hair falling out. And then tobe treated the way I am by that girl! It'd make a saint waxy so itwould. --Good heavens! can't you come in, or are you deaf or lame orwhat?" and in some exasperation she arose and went to the door. Shelooked in perplexity for one moment from her food to her visitor, butas good manners and a lady are never separate she welcomed and drew theyoung man inside--

"Come in, Mr. O'Grady, " said she. "How are you now at all? Why it'snearly a week since you were here. Your mother's well I hope (sit downthere now and rest yourself). Some people are always well, but I'mnot--it's (sit there beside the window, like a good boy) it's hard tohave poor health and a crotchety husband, but we all have our trials. Is your father well too? but what's the use of asking, every one's wellbut me. Did your aunt get the pot of jam I sent her last Tuesday?Raspberry is supposed to be good for the throat, but her throat's allright. Maybe she threw it out: I'm not blaming her if she did. Godknows she can buy jam if she wants it without being beholden to any onefor presents and her husband in the Post Office. --Well, well, well, I'mreal glad to see you--and now, tell me all the news?"

The young man was a little embarrassed by this flood of language andits multiplicity of direction, but the interval gave him time tocollect himself and get into the atmosphere. --He replied--

"I don't think there is any news to tell, ma'm. Father and mother arequite well, thank you, and Aunt Jane got the jam all right, but shedidn't eat it, because----"

"I knew she didn't, " said Mrs. O'Reilly with pained humility, "we allhave our troubles and jam doesn't matter. Give her my love all thesame, but maybe she doesn't want it either. "

"You see, " said the young man, "the children got at the jam before shecould, and they cleaned the pot. Aunt Jane was very angry about it. "

"Was she now?" said the instantly interested lady. "It's real bad fora stout person to be angry. Apoplexy or something might ensue anddeath would be instantaneous and cemeteries the price they are inGlasnevin and all: but the children shouldn't have eaten all the jam atonce, it's bad for the stomach that way: still, God is good and maybethey'll recover. "

"They don't seem much the worse for it, " said he, laughing; "they saidit was fine jam. "

"Well they might, " replied his hostess, with suppressed indignation, "and raspberries eightpence the pound in Grafton Street, and the bestpreserving sugar twopence-three-farthings, and coal the way it is. --Ah, no matter, God is good, and we can't live for ever. "

The four seconds of silence which followed was broken by the lover--

"Is Julia Elizabeth in, ma'm?" said he timidly. 

"She's not, then, " was the reply. "We all have our trials, Mr. O'Grady, and she's mine. I don't complain, but I don't deserve it, fora harder working woman never lived, but there you are. "

"I'm rather glad she's out, " said the youth hastily, "for I wanted tospeak to yourself and your husband before I said anything to her. "

Mrs. O'Reilly wheeled slowly to face him--

"Did you now?" said she, "and is it about Julia Elizabeth you cameover? Well, well, well, just to think of it! But I guessed it longago, when you bought the yellow boots. She's a real good girl, Mr. O'Grady. There's many and many's the young man, and they in goodpositions, mind you--but maybe you don't mean that at all. Is it amessage from your Aunt Jane or your mother? Your Aunt Jane does sendmessages, God help her!"

"It's not, Mrs. O'Reilly: it's, if I may presume to say so, aboutmyself. "

"I knew it, " was the rapid and enthusiastic reply. "She's a fine cook, Mr. O'Grady, and a head of hair that reaches down to her waist, and wonprizes at school for composition. I'll call himself--he'll bedelighted. He's in the next room making faces at a map. Maps are aterrible occupation, Mr. O'Grady, they spoil his eyesight and make himcurse----"

She ambled to the door and called urgently--

"O'Reilly, here's young Mr. O'Grady wants to see you. "

Her husband entered with a pen in his mouth and looked very severely athis visitor--

"What brought you round, young man?" said he. 

The youth became very nervous. He stood up stammering--

"It's a delicate subject, sir, " said he, "and I thought it would onlybe right to come to you first. "

Here the lady broke in rapturously--

"Isn't it splendid, O'Reilly! You and me sitting here growing old andcontented, and this young gentleman talking to us the way he is. Doesn't it make you think of the song 'John Anderson, my Jo, John'?"

Her husband turned a bewildered but savage eye on his spouse--

"It does not, ma'm, " said he. "Well, " he barked at Mr. O'Grady, "whatdo you want?"

"I want to speak about your daughter, sir. "

"She's not a delicate subject. "

"No indeed, " said his wife. "Never a day's illness in her life exceptthe measles, and they're wholesome when you're young, and an appetiteworth cooking for, two eggs every morning and more if she got it. "

Her husband turned on her with hands of frenzy--

"Oh----!" said he, and then to their visitor, "What have you to sayabout my daughter?"

"The fact is, sir, " he stammered, "I'm in love with her. "

"I see, you are the delicate subject, and what then?"

"And I want to marry her, sir. "

"That's not delicacy, that's disease, young man. Have you spoken toJulia Elizabeth about this?"

"No, sir, I wanted first to obtain your and Mrs. O'Reilly's permissionto approach her. "

"And quite right, too, " said the lady warmly. "Isn't it delightful, "she continued, "to see a young, bashful youth telling of his love forour dear child? Doesn't it make you think of Moore's beautiful song, 'Love's Young Dream, ' O'Reilly?"

"It does not, " her husband snapped, "I never heard of the song I tellyou, and I never want to. "

He turned again to the youth--

"If you are in earnest about this, you have my permission to courtJulia Elizabeth as much as she'll let you. But don't blame me if shemarries you. People who take risks must expect accidents. Don't goabout lamenting that I hooked you in, or led you on, or anything likethat. --I tell you, here and now, that she has a rotten temper--"

His wife was aghast--

"For shame, O'Reilly, " said she. 

Her husband continued, looking steadily at her--

"A rotten temper, " said he, "she gives back answers. "

"Never, " was Mrs. O'Reilly's wild exclamation. 

"She scratches like a cat, " said her husband. 

"It's a falsehood, " cried the lady, almost in tears. 

"She is obstinate, sulky, stubborn and cantankerous. "

"A tissue, " said his wife. "An absolute tissue, " she repeated with thefirmness which masks hysteria. 

Her husband continued inexorably--

"She's a gad-about, a pavement-hopper, and when she has the toothacheshe curses like a carman. Now, young man, marry her if you like. "

These extraordinary accusations were powerless against love andetiquette--the young man stood up: his voice rang--

"I will, sir, " said he steadily, "and I'll be proud to be her husband. "

In a very frenzy of enthusiasm, Mrs. O'Reilly arose--

"Good boy, " said she. "Tell your Aunt Jane I'll send her another potof jam. " She turned to her husband, "Isn't it delightful, O'Reilly, doesn't it make you think of the song, 'True, True Till Death'?"

Mr. O'Reilly replied grimly--

"It does not, ma'm. --I'm going back to my work. "

"Be a gentleman, O'Reilly, " said his wife pleadingly. "Won't you offerMr. O'Grady a bottle of stout or a drop of spirits?"

The youth intervened hastily, for it is well to hide one's vices fromone's family--

"Oh no, ma'm, not at all, " said he, "I never drink intoxicatingliquors. "

"Splendid, " said the beaming lady. "You're better without it. If youknew the happy homes it has ruined, and the things the clergy say aboutit you'd be astonished. I only take it myself for the rheumatism, butI never did like it, did I, O'Reilly?"

"Never, ma'm, " was his reply. "I only take it myself because myhearing is bad. Now, listen to me, young man. You want to marry JuliaElizabeth, and I'll be glad to see her married to a sensible, sober, industrious husband. --When I spoke about her a minute ago I was onlyjoking. "

"I knew it all the time, " said his wife. "Do you remember, Mr. O'Grady, I winked at you?"

"The girl is a good girl, " said her husband, "and well brought up. "

"Yes, " said his wife, "her hair reaches down to her waist, and she wona prize for composition--Jessica's First Prayer, all about a girlwith----"

Mr. O'Reilly continued--

"She brings me up a cup of tea every morning before I get up. "

"She never wore spectacles in her life, " said Mrs. O'Reilly, "and shegot a prize for freehand drawing. "

"She did so, " said Mr. O'Reilly. 

His wife continued--

"The Schoolboy Baronet it was; all about a young man that broke his legdown a coal mine and it never got well again until he met the girl ofhis heart. "

"Tell me, " said Mr. O'Reilly, "how are you young people going to live, and where?"

His wife interpolated--

"Your Aunt Jane told me that you had seventeen shillings and sixpence aweek. --Take my advice and live on the south side--two rooms easily andmost salubrious. "

The young man coughed guardedly, he had received a rise of wages sincethat information passed, but candour belongs to childhood, and one mustlive these frailties down--

"Seventeen and six isn't very much, of course, " said he, "but I amyoung and strong----"

"It's more than I had, " said his host, "when I was your age. Hello, there's the post!"

Mrs. O'Reilly went to the door and returned instantly with a letter inher hand. She presented it to her husband--

"It's addressed to you, O'Reilly, " said she plaintively. "Maybe it's abill, but God's good and maybe it's a cheque. "

Her husband nodded at the company and tore his letter open. He readit, and, at once as it appeared, he went mad, he raved, he stuttered, now slapping the letter with his forefinger and, anon, shaking his fistat his wife--

"Here's your daughter, ma'm, " he stammered. "Here's your daughter, Isay. "

"Where?" cried the amazed lady. "What is it, O'Reilly?" She arosehastily and rolled towards him. 

Mr. O'Reilly repelled her fiercely--

"A good riddance, " he shouted. 

"Tell me, O'Reilly, I command you, " cried his wife. 

"A minx, a jade, " snarled the man. 

"I insist, " said she. "I must be told. I'm not well, I tell you. Myhead's going round. Give me the letter. "

Mr. O'Reilly drew about him a sudden and terrible calmness--

"Listen, woman, " said he, "and you too, young man, and be thankful foryour escape. "

"DEAR PA, " he read, "this is to tell you that I got married to-day toChristie Rorke. We are going to open a little fried-fish shop nearAmiens Street. Hoping this finds you as it leaves me at present, yourloving daughter, "JULIA ELIZABETH. 

"P. S. --Give Christie's love to Ma. "

Mrs. O'Reilly sank again to her chair. 

Her mouth was partly open. She breathed with difficulty. Her eyeswere fixed on space, and she seemed to be communing with the guardiansof Chaos--

"Married!" said she in a musing whisper. "Christie!" said she. Sheturned to her husband--"What an amazing thing. Doesn't it make youthink, O'Reilly, of the poem, 'The World Recedes, it Disappears'?"

"It does not, ma'm, " said her husband savagely. 

"And what is this young gentleman going to do?" she continued, gazingtearfully at the suitor. 

"He's going to go home, " replied her husband fiercely. "He ought to bein bed long ago. "

"A broken heart, " said his wife, "is a sad companion to go home with. Doesn't it make you think of the song----?"

"It does not, ma'm, " roared her husband. "I'm going back to my work, "and once again the door banged and the room shook. 

Young Mr. O'Grady arose timidly. The world was swimming about him. Love had deserted him, and etiquette was now his sole anchor; he shookhands with Mrs. O'Reilly--

"I think I had better be going now, " said he. "Good-bye, Mrs. O'Reilly. "

"Must you really go?" said that lady with the smile of a maniac. 

"I'm afraid so, " and he moved towards the door. 

"Well, " said she, "give my love to your mother and your Aunt Jane. "

"I will, " was his reply, "and, " with firm politeness, "thank you for avery pleasant evening. "

"Don't mention it, Mr. O'Grady. Good-bye. "

Mrs. O'Reilly closed the door and walked back towards the table smilingmadly. She sank into a chair. Her eye fell on the butter-knife--

"I haven't had a bit to eat this day, " said she in a loud andthreatening voice, and once again she pulled the loaf towards her. 

II

His mother finished reading the story of the Beautiful Princess, and itwas surely the saddest story he had ever heard. He could not bear tothink of that lovely and delicate lady all alone in the great, blackforest waiting until the giant came back from killing her seven brothers. He would return with their seven heads swinging pitifully from hisgirdle, and, when he reached the castle gates, he would gnash his teeththrough the keyhole with a noise like the grinding together of greatrocks, and would poke his head through the fanlight of the door, and say, fee-faw-fum in a voice of such exceeding loudness that the castle wouldbe shaken to its foundation. 

Thinking of this made his throat grow painful with emotion, and then hisheart swelled to the most uncomfortable dimensions, and he resolved todevote his whole life to the rescue of the Princess, and, if necessary, die in her defence. 

Such was his impatience that he could not wait for anything more than hisdinner, and this he ate so speedily that his father called him aPerfect-Young-Glutton, and a Disgrace-To-Any-Table. He bore theseinsults in a meek and heroic spirit, whereupon his mother said that hemust be ill, and it was only by a violent and sustained outcry that heescaped being sent to bed. 

Immediately after dinner he set out in search of the giant's castle. Nowthere is scarcely anything in the world more difficult to find than agiant's castle, for it is so large that one can only see it through thewrong end of a telescope; and, furthermore, he did not even know thisgiant's name. He might never have found the place if he had not met acertain old woman on the common. 

She was a very nice old woman. She had three teeth, a red shawl, and anumbrella with groceries inside it; so he told her of the difficulty hewas in. 

She replied that he was in luck's way, and that she was the only personin the world who could assist him. She said her name wasReally-and-Truly, and that she had a magic head, and that if he cut herhead off it would answer any questions he asked it. So he stropped hispenknife on his boot, and said he was ready if she was. 

The old woman then informed him that in all affairs of this delicatenature it was customary to take the will for the deed, and that he mightnow ask her head anything he wanted to know--so he asked the head whatwas the way to the nearest giant, and the head replied that if he tookthe first turning to the left, the second to the right, and then thefirst to the left again, and if he then knocked at the fifth door on theright-hand side, he would see the giant. 

He thanked the old woman very much for the use of her head, and shepermitted him to lend her one threepenny-piece, one pocket-handkerchief, one gun-metal watch, one cap, and one boot-lace. She said that she nevertook two of anything, because that was not fair, and that she wantedthese for a very particular, secret purpose, about which she dare notspeak, and, as to which she trusted he would not press her, and then shetook a most affectionate leave of him and went away. 

He followed her directions with the utmost fidelity, and soon foundhimself opposite a house which, to the eyes of any one over seven yearsof age, looked very like any other house, but which, to the searching eyeof six and three quarters, was patently and palpably a giant's castle. 

He tried the door, but it was locked, as, indeed, he had expected itwould be. Then he crept very cautiously, and peeped through the firstfloor window. He could see in quite plainly. There was a polar bearcrouching on the floor, and the head looked at him so directly andvindictively that if he had not been a hero he would have fled. Theunexpected is always terrible, and when one goes forth to kill a giant itis unkind of Providence to complicate one's adventure with a gratuitousand wholly unnecessary polar bear. He was, however, reassured by thesight of a heavy chair standing on the polar bear's stomach, and in thechair there sat the most beautiful woman in the world. 

An ordinary person would not have understood so instantly that she wasthe most beautiful woman in the world, because she looked very stout, andmuch older than is customary with princesses--but that was owing to thefact that she was under an enchantment, and she would become quite youngagain when the giant was slain and three drops of his blood had beensprinkled on her brow. 

She was leaning forward in the chair, staring into the fire, and she wasso motionless that it was quite plain she must be under an enchantment. From the very first instant he saw the princess he loved her, and hisheart swelled with pity to think that so beautiful a damsel should besubjected to the tyranny of a giant. These twin passions of pity andlove grew to so furious a strength within him that he could no longercontain himself. He wept in a loud and very sudden voice which liftedthe damsel out of her enchantment and her chair, and hurled her acrossthe room as though she had been propelled by a powerful spring. 

He was so overjoyed at seeing her move that he pressed his face againstthe glass and wept with great strength, and, in a few moments, theprincess came timidly to the window and looked out. She looked rightover his head at first, and then she looked down and saw him, and hereyebrows went far up on her forehead, and her mouth opened; and so heknew that she was delighted to see him. He nodded to give her courage, and shouted three times, "Open Sesame, Open Sesame, Open Sesame, " andthen she opened the window and he climbed in. 

The princess tried to push him out again, but she was not able, and hebade her put all her jewels in the heel of her boot and fly with him. But she was evidently the victim of a very powerful enchantment, for shestruggled violently, and said incomprehensible things to him, such as "Isit a fire, or were you chased?" and "Where is the cook?" But after alittle time she listened to the voice of reason, and recognised thatthese were legitimate and heroic embraces from which she could nothonourably disentangle herself. 

When her first transports of joy were somewhat abated she assured himthat excessive haste had often undone great schemes, and that one shouldalways look before one leaped, and that one should never be rescued allat once, but gradually, in order that one might become accustomed to thesevere air of freedom--and he was overjoyed to find that she was as wiseas she was beautiful. 

He told her that he loved her dearly, and she admitted, after somepersuasion, that she was not insensible to the charms of his heart andintellect, but she confessed that her love was given to another. 

At these tidings his heart withered away within him, and when theprincess admitted she loved the giant his amazement became profound andcomplicated. There was a rushing sound in his ears. The debris of hiswell-known world was crashing about him, and he was staring upon a newplanet, the name of which was Incredulity. He looked round with a queerfeeling of insecurity. At any moment the floor might stand up on one ofits corners, or the walls might begin to flap and waggle. But none ofthese things happened. Before him sat the princess in an attitude ofdeep dejection, and her lily-white hands rested helplessly on her lap. She told him in a voice that trembled that she would have married him ifhe had asked her ten years earlier, and urged that she could not fly withhim now, because, in the first place, she had six children, and, in thesecond place, it would be against the law, and, in the third place, hismother might object. She admitted that she was unworthy of his love, andthat she should have waited, and she bore his reproaches with a meeknesswhich finally disarmed him. 

He stropped his penknife on his boot, and said that there was nothingleft but to kill the giant, and that she had better leave the room whilehe did so, because it would not be a sight for a weak woman, and hewondered audibly how much hasty-pudding would fall out of the giant if hestabbed him right to the heart. The princess begged him not to kill herhusband, and assured him that this giant had not got any hasty-pudding inhis heart at all, and that he was really the nicest giant that everlived, and, further, that he had not killed her seven brothers, but theseven brothers of quite another person entirely, which was only areasonable thing to do when one looked at it properly, and she continuedin a strain which proved to him that this unnatural woman really lovedthe giant. 

It was more in pity than in anger that he recognised the impossibility ofrescuing this person. He saw at last that she was unworthy of beingrescued, and told her so. He said bitterly that he had grave doubts ofher being a princess at all, and that if she was married to a giant itwas no more than she deserved, and further he had a good mind to rescuethe giant from her, and he would do so in a minute, only that it wasagainst his principles to rescue giants. --And, saying so, he placed hispenknife between his teeth and climbed out through the window again. 

He stood for a moment outside the window with his right hand extended tothe sky and the moonlight blazing on his penknife--a truly formidablefigure, and one which the princess never forgot; and then he walkedslowly away, hiding behind a cold and impassive demeanour a mind that wastortured and a heart that had plumbed most of the depths of humansuffering. 

III

Aloysius Murphy went a-courting when the woods were green. There weregrapes in the air and birds in the river. A voice and a song wenteverywhere, and the voice said, "Where is my beloved?" and the songreplied, "Thy beloved is awaiting thee, and she stretches her handsabroad and laughs for thy coming; bind then the feather of a bird tothy heel and a red rose upon thy hair, and go quickly. "

So he took his hat from behind the door and his stick from beside thebed and went out into the evening. 

He had been engaged to Miss Nora MacMahon for two ecstatic months, andheld the opinion that the earth and the heavens were aware of theintensity of his passion, and applauded the unique justice of hischoice. 

By day he sat humbly in a solicitor's office, or scurried through thethousand offices of the Four Courts, but with night came freedom, andhe felt himself to be of the kindred of the gods and marched in pomp. By what subterranean workings had he become familiar with the lady?Suffice it that the impossible is possible to a lover. Everything canbe achieved in time. The man who wishes to put a mountain in hispocket can do so if his pocket and his wish be of the requisitemagnitude. 

Now the lady towards whom the raging torrent of his affections had beendirected was the daughter of his employer, and this, while it notatedromance, pointed also to tragedy. Further, while this fact was wellwithin his knowledge, it was far from the cognizance of the lady. Hewould have enlightened her on the point, but the longer he delayed therevelation, the more difficult did it become. Perpetually his tongueached to utter the truth. When he might be squeezing her hand orplunging his glance into the depths of her eyes, consciousness wouldtouch him on the shoulder with a bony hand and say, "That is the boss'sdaughter you are hugging"--a reminder which was provocative sometimesof an almost unholy delight, when to sing and dance and go mad was butnatural; but at other times it brought with it moods of woe, abysses ofblackness. 

In the solitude of the room wherein he lodged he sometimes indulged ina small drama, wherein, as the hero, he would smile a slightly sad andquizzical smile, and say gently, "Child, you are Mr. MacMahon'sdaughter, I am but his clerk"--here the smile became more sadlyquizzical--"how can I ask you to forsake the luxury of a residence inClontarf for the uncongenial, nay, bleak surroundings of a SouthCircular Road habitation?" And she, ah me! She vowed that a hut and acrust and the love of her heart. . . ! No matter!

So, nightly, Aloysius Murphy took the tram to Clontarf, and there, wide-coated and sombreroed like a mediaeval conspirator, he troddelicately beside his cloaked and hooded inamorata, whispering of thespice of the wind and the great stretches of the sea. 

Now a lover who comes with the shades of night, harbinger of the moon, and hand in glove with the stars, must be a very romantic personindeed, and, even if he is not, a lady whose years are tender caneasily supply the necessary gauze to tone down his too-rigorousprojections. But the bird that flies by night must adduce for ourcuriosity substantial reason why his flight has deserted the whitenessof the daytime; else we may be tempted to believe that his advent indarkness is thus shrouded for even duskier purposes. --Miss MacMahon hadbegun to inquire who Mr. Murphy was, and he had, accordingly, begun toexplain who he was not. This explanation had wrapped his identity inthe most labyrinthine mystery, but Miss MacMahon detected in the rapid, incomprehensible fluctuations of his story a heart torn by unmeritedmisfortune, and whose agony could only be alleviated by laying her owndear head against its turmoil. 

To a young girl a confidant is almost as necessary as a lover, and whenthe rendezvous is clandestine, the youth mysterious, and his hatbroad-leafed and flapping, then the necessity for a confidant becomesimperative. 

Miss MacMahon confided the knowledge of all her happiness to thethrilled ear of her younger sister, who at once hugged her, and bubbledquery, conjecture, and admonishment. ". . . Long or short? . . . Dark or fair?" ". . . And slender . . . With eyes . . . Dove . . . Lightning . . . Hair . . . And so gentle . . . And then I said . . . And then he said . . . !" "Oh, sweet!" sighed the younger sister, andshe stretched her arms wide and crushed the absent excellences of Mr. Murphy to her youthful breast. 

On returning next day from church, having listened awe-stricken to asermon on filial obedience, the little sister bound her mother tosecrecy, told the story, and said she wished she were dead. Subsequently the father of Clann MacMahon was informed, and he said"Hum" and "Ha, " and rolled a fierce, hard eye, and many times duringthe progress of the narrative he interjected with furious energy thesewords, "Don't be a fool, Jane, " and Mrs. MacMahon responded meekly, "Yes, dear, " and Mr. MacMahon then said "Hum" and "Ha" and "Gr-r-r-up"in a truly terrible and ogreish manner; and in her distant chamber MissMacMahon heard the reverberation of that sonorous grunt, and whisperedto her little sister, "Pa's in a wax, " and the little sister pretendedto be asleep. 

The spectacle of an elderly gentleman, side-whiskered, precise andgrey, disguising himself with mufflers and a squash hat, and stalkingwith sombre fortitude the erratic wanderings of a pair of youngfeatherheads, is one which mirth may be pleased to linger upon. Such aspectacle was now to be observed in the semi-rural outskirts ofClontarf. Mr. MacMahon tracked his daughter with considerable stealth, adopting unconsciously the elongated and nervous stride of a theatricalvillain. He saw her meet a young man wearing a broad-brimmed hat, whose clothing was mysteriously theatrical, and whose general shape, when it could be glimpsed, was oddly familiar. 

"I have seen that fellow somewhere, " said he. 

The lovers met and kissed, and the glaring father spoke rapidly butsoftly to himself for a few moments. He was not accustomed to walking, and it appeared as if these two intended to walk for ever, but he keptthem in sight, and when the time came for parting he was close at hand. 

The parting was prolonged, and renewed, and rehearsed again withamendments and additions: he could not have believed that sayinggood-bye to a person could be turned into so complicated and symbolic aceremony: but, at last, his daughter, with many a backward look andwave of hand, departed in one direction, and the gentleman, aftersimilar signals, moved towards the tramway. 

"I know that fellow, whoever he is, " said Mr. MacMahon. 

Passing a lamp-post, Mr. Aloysius Murphy stayed for a moment to lighthis pipe, and Mr. MacMahon stared, he ground his teeth, he foamed atthe mouth, and his already prominent eyes bulged still further androunder--

"Well, I'm----!" said he. 

He turned and walked homewards slowly, murmuring often to himself andto the night, "All right! wait, though! Hum! Ha! Gr-r-r-up!"

That night he repeatedly entreated his wife "not to be a fool, Jane, "and she as repeatedly replied, "Yes, dear. " Long after midnight heawoke her by roaring violently from the very interior depths of adream, "Cheek of the fellow! Pup! Gr-r-r-up!"

At breakfast on the following morning he suggested to his wife andelder daughter that they should visit his office later on in the day--

"You have never seen it, Nora, " said he, "and you ought to have a lookat the den where your poor old daddy spends his time grinding dressmaterial for his family from the faces of the poor. I've got somefunny clerks, too: one of them is a curiosity. " Here, growing suddenlyfurious, he gave an egg a clout. 

His daughter giggled--

"Oh, Pa, " said she, "you are not breaking that egg, you are murderingit. "

He looked at her gloomily--

"It wasn't the egg I was hitting, " said he. "Gr-r-r-up, " said hesuddenly, and he stabbed a piece of butter, squashed it to death on aslice of bread, and tore it to pieces with his teeth. 

The young lady looked at him with some amazement, but she said nothing, for she believed, as most ladies do, that men are a little madsometimes, and are foolish always. 

Her father intercepted that glance, and instantly snarled--

"Can you cook, young woman?" said he. 

"Of course, father, " replied the perplexed maiden. 

He laid aside his spoon and gave her his full attention. 

"Can you cook potatoes?" said he. "Can you mash 'em, eh? Can you mash'em? What! You can. They call them Murphies in this country, girl. Can you mash Murphys, eh? I can. There's a Murphy I know, and, although it's been mashed already, by the Lord Harry, I'll mash itagain. Did you ever know that potatoes had eyes, miss? Did you evernotice it when you were cooking them? Did you ever look into the eyesof a Murphy, eh? When you mashed it, what? Don't answer me, girl. "

"I don't know what you are talking about, Pa, " said the young lady. 

"Don't you, now?" grinned the furious gentleman, and his bulging eyeslooked like little round balls of glass. "Who said you did, miss?Gr-r-r-up, " said he, and the poor girl jumped as though she had beenprodded with a pin. 

Mr. Aloysius Murphy's activities began at ten o'clock in the morning byopening the office letters with an ivory instrument and handing them tohis employer; then, as each letter was read, he entered its receipt anddate in a book kept for that purpose. 

When Mr. MacMahon came in on the morning following the occurrences Ihave detailed he neglected, for the first time in many years, torespond to his clerk's respectfully-cordial salutation. To thediscreet "Good-morning, sir, " he vouchsafed no reply. Mr. Murphy was atrifle indignant and a good deal perturbed, for to an unquietconscience a word or the lack of it is a goad. Once or twice, lookingup from his book, he discovered his employer's hard eyes fixed upon himwith a regard too particular to be pleasant. 

An employer seldom does more than glance at his clerk, just thesideward glint of a look which remarks his presence without admittinghis necessity, and in return the clerk slants a hurried eye on hisemployer, notes swiftly if his aspect be sulky or benign, and stays hisvision at that. But, now, Mr. Murphy, with sudden trepidation, with afrightful sinking in the pit of his stomach, became aware that hisemployer was looking at him stealthily; and, little by little, he tookto sneaking glances at his employer. After a few moments neitherseemed to be able to keep his eyes from straying--they createdopportunities in connection with the letters; the one looking intent, wide-eyed, and with a cold, frigid, rigid, hard stare, and the otherscurrying and furtive, in-and-away, hit-and-miss-and-try-again, wink, blink, and twitter. 

Mr. MacMahon spoke--

"Murphy!"

"Yes, sir. "

"Have you anything in Court to-day?"

"Yes, sir, an ex parte application, Donald and Cluggs. "

"Let O'Neill attend to it. I shall want you to draft a deed for someladies who will call here at noon. You can come down at ten minutesafter twelve. "

"Yes, sir, " said Murphy. 

He grabbed his share of the letters and got to the door bathed inperspiration and forebodings. He closed the door softly behind him, and stood for a few seconds staring at the handle. "Blow you!" said heviciously to nothing in particular, and he went slowly upstairs. 

"He can't know, " said he on the first landing. On the second floor hethought, "She couldn't have told for she didn't know herself. " Hereached his desk. "I wish I had a half of whisky, " said the young manto himself. 

Before, however, twelve o'clock arrived he had journeyed on the hopefulpinions of youth from the dogmatic "could not be" to the equallyimmovable "is not, " and his mind resumed its interrupted equilibrium. 

At twelve o'clock Mrs. And Miss MacMahon arrived, and were at onceshown into the private office. At ten minutes past, Mr. Murphy'srespectful tap was heard. "Don't, Eddie, " said Mrs. MacMahon in aqueer, flurried voice. "Come in, " said her husband. Nora wasexamining some judicial cartoons pinned over the mantelpiece. Mr. Murphy opened the door a few inches, slid through the aperture, and wasat once caught and held by his employer's eye, which, like a hand, guided him to the table with his notebook. Under the almost physicalpressure of that authoritative glare he did not dare to look who was inthe room, but the rim of his eye saw the movement of a skirt like thefar-away, shadowy canter of a ghost's robe. He fixed his attention onhis note-book. 

Mr. MacMahon began to dictate a Deed of Conveyance from a precedentdeed in his hand. After dictating for some few minutes--

"Murphy, " said he, and at the word the young lady studying the cartoonsstiffened, "I've rather lost the thread of that clause; please readwhat you have down. "

Murphy began to read, and, at the first word, the girl made a tiny, shrill, mouse's noise, and then stood stock-still, tightened up andfrightened, with her two wild eyes trying to peep around her ears. 

Mr. Murphy heard the noise and faltered--he knew instinctively. Something told him with the bellowing assurance of a cannon who wasthere. He must look. He forced his slack face past the granite imagethat was his employer, saw a serge-clad figure that he knew, one earand the curve of a cheek. Then a cascade broke inside his head. Itbuzzed and chattered and crashed, with now and again the blankbrutality of thunder bashing through the noise. The serge-clad figureswelled suddenly to a tremendous magnitude, and then it receded just asswiftly, and the vast earth spun minutely on a pin's point ten millionmiles away, and she was behind it, her eyes piercing with scorn. . . . Through the furious winds that whirled about his brain he heard awhisper, thin and cold, and insistent as a razor's edge, "Go on, Murphy; go on, Murphy. " He strove to fix his attention on hisshorthand notes--To fight it down, to stand the shock like a man, andthen crawl into a hole somewhere and die; but his mind would not grip, nor his eyes focus. The only words which his empty brain could pump upwere these, irrelevant and idiotic, "'A frog he would a-wooing go, heigho, ' said Rowley"; and they must not be said. "It is a bitdifficult, perhaps, " said the whispering voice that crept through thetumult of winds and waters in his head. "Never mind, take down therest of it, " and the far-away whisper began to say things all aboutnothing, making queer little noises and pauses, running for a momentinto a ripple of sound, and eddying and dying away and coming backagain--buz-z-z! His notebook lying on the table was as small as apostage stamp, while the pencil in his hand was as big as an elephant'sleg. How can a man write on a microscopic blur with the stump of a firtree? He poked and prodded, and Mr. MacMahon watched for a few momentshis clerk poking his note-book with the wrong end of a pencil. Hesilently pulled his daughter forward and made her look. After alittle--

"That will do, Murphy, " said he, and Mr. Murphy, before he got out, made two severe attempts to walk through a wall. 

For half an hour he sat at his desk in a trance, with his eyes fixedupon an ink-bottle. At last, nodding his head slowly--

"I'll bet you a shilling, " said he to the ink-bottle, "that I get thesack to-night. "

And the ink-bottle lost the wager. 

THE BLIND MAN

He was one who would have passed by the Sphinx without seeing it. Hedid not believe in the necessity for sphinxes, or in their reality, forthat matter--they did not exist for him. Indeed, he was one to whomthe Sphinx would not have been visible. He might have eyed it andnoted a certain bulk of grotesque stone, but nothing more significant. 

He was sex-blind, and, so, peculiarly limited by the fact that he couldnot appreciate women. If he had been pressed for a theory ormetaphysic of womanhood he would have been unable to formulate any. Their presence he admitted, perforce: their utility was quite apparentto him on the surface, but, subterraneously, he doubted both theirexistence and their utility. He might have said perplexedly--Whycannot they do whatever they have to do without being always in theway? He might have said--Hang it, they are everywhere and what goodare they doing? They bothered him, they destroyed his ease when he wasnear them, and they spoke a language which he did not understand anddid not want to understand. But as his limitations did not press onhim neither did they trouble him. He was not sexually deficient, andhe did not dislike women; he simply ignored them, and was only reallyat home with men. All the crudities which we enumerate as masculinedelighted him--simple things, for, in the gender of abstract ideas, vice is feminine, brutality is masculine, the female being older, vastly older than the male, much more competent in every way, stronger, even in her physique, than he, and, having little baggage of mental orethical preoccupations to delay her progress, she is still the guardianof evolution, requiring little more from man than to be stroked andpetted for a while. 

He could be brutal at times. He liked to get drunk at seasonableperiods. He would cheerfully break a head or a window, and wouldbandage the one damage or pay for the other with equal skill andpleasure. He liked to tramp rugged miles swinging his arms andwhistling as he went, and he could sit for hours by the side of a ditchthinking thoughts without words--an easy and a pleasant way ofthinking, and one which may lead to something in the long run. 

Even his mother was an abstraction to him. He was kind to her so faras doing things went, but he looked over her, or round her, and marchedaway and forgot her. 

Sex-blindness carries with it many other darknesses. We do not knowwhat masculine thing is projected by the feminine consciousness, andcivilisation, even life itself, must stand at a halt until that hasbeen discovered or created, but art is the female projected by themale: science is the male projected by the male--as yet a poor thing, and to remain so until it has become art; that is, has becomefertilised and so more psychological than mechanical. The small partof science which came to his notice (inventions, machinery, etc. ) waseasily and delightedly comprehended by him. He could do intricatethings with a knife and a piece of string, or a hammer and a saw: but apicture, a poem, a statue, a piece of music--these left him asuninterested as they found him: more so, in truth, for they left himbored and dejected. 

His mother came to dislike him, and there were many causes and manyjustifications for her dislike. She was an orderly, busy, competentwoman, the counterpart of endless millions of her sex, who liked tounderstand what she saw or felt, and who had no happiness in readingriddles. To her he was at times an enigma, and at times again asimpleton. In both aspects he displeased and embarrassed her. One hasone's sense of property, and in him she could not put her finger onanything that was hers. We demand continuity, logic in other words, but between her son and herself there was a gulf fixed, spanned by nobridge whatever; there was complete isolation; no boat plied betweenthem at all. All the kindly human things which she loved wereunintelligible to him, and his coarse pleasures or blunt evasionsdistressed and bewildered her. When she spoke to him he gaped oryawned; and yet she did not speak on weighty matters, just thenecessary small-change of existence--somebody's cold, somebody's dress, somebody's marriage or death. When she addressed him on sternersubjects, the ground, the weather, the crops, he looked at her as ifshe were a baby, he listened with stubborn resentment, and strode awaya confessed boor. There was no contact anywhere between them, and hewas a slow exasperation to her. --What can we do with that which is oursand not ours? either we own a thing or we do not, and, whichever way itgoes, there is some end to it; but certain enigmas are illegitimate andare so hounded from decent cogitation. 

She could do nothing but dismiss him, and she could not even do that, for there he was at the required periods, always primed with the wrongreply to any question, the wrong aspiration, the wrong conjecture; aperpetual trampler on mental corns, a person for whom one could donothing but apologise. 

They lived on a small farm and almost the entire work of the place wasdone by him. His younger brother assisted, but that assistance couldhave easily been done without. If the cattle were sick he cured themalmost by instinct. If the horse was lame or wanted a new shoe he knewprecisely what to do in both events. When the time came for ploughinghe gripped the handles and drove a furrow which was as straight and aseconomical as any furrow in the world. He could dig all day long andbe happy; he gathered in the harvest as another would gather in abride; and, in the intervals between these occupations, he fled to thenearest publichouse and wallowed among his kind. 

He did not fly away to drink; he fled to be among men. --Then heawakened. His tongue worked with the best of them, and adequately too. He could speak weightily on many things--boxing, wrestling, hunting, fishing, the seasons, the weather, and the chances of this and theother man's crops. He had deep knowledge about brands of tobacco andthe peculiar virtues of many different liquors. He knew birds andbeetles and worms; how a weazel would behave in extraordinarycircumstances; how to train every breed of horse and dog. He recitedgoats from the cradle to the grave, could tell the name of any treefrom its leaf; knew how a bull could be coerced, a cow cut up, and whatplasters were good for a broken head. Sometimes, and often enough, thetalk would chance on women, and then he laughed as heartily as any oneelse, but he was always relieved when the conversation trailed to moreinteresting things. 

His mother died and left the farm to the younger instead of the elderson; an unusual thing to do, but she did detest him. She knew heryounger son very well. He was foreign to her in nothing. His temperran parallel with her own, his tastes were hers, his ideas had beenlargely derived from her, she could track them at any time and make ordemolish him. He would go to a dance or a picnic and be as exhilaratedas she was, and would discuss the matter afterwards. He could speakwith some cogency on the shape of this and that female person, the hatof such an one, the disagreeableness of tea at this house and thegoodness of it at the other. He could even listen to one speakingwithout going to sleep at the fourth word. In all he was a decent, quiet lad who would become a father the exact replica of his own, andwhose daughters would resemble his mother as closely as two peasresemble their green ancestors. --So she left him the farm. 

Of course, there was no attempt to turn the elder brother out. Indeed, for some years the two men worked quietly together and prospered andwere contented; then, as was inevitable, the younger brother gotmarried, and the elder had to look out for a new place to live in, andto work in--things had become difficult. 

It is very easy to say that in such and such circumstances a man shoulddo this and that well-pondered thing, but the courts of logic have asyet the most circumscribed jurisdiction. Just as statistics can proveanything and be quite wrong, so reason can sit in its padded chairissuing pronouncements which are seldom within measurable distance ofany reality. Everything is true only in relation to its centre ofthought. Some people think with their heads--their subsequent actionsare as logical and unpleasant as are those of the other sort who thinkonly with their blood, and this latter has its irrefutable logic also. He thought in this subterranean fashion, and if he had thought in theother the issue would not have been any different. 

Still, it was not an easy problem for him, or for any person lackinginitiative--a sexual characteristic. He might have emigrated, but hisroots were deeply struck in his own place, so the idea never occurredto him; furthermore, our thoughts are often no deeper than our pockets, and one wants money to move anywhere. For any other life than that offarming he had no training and small desire. He had no money and hewas a farmer's son. Without money he could not get a farm; being afarmer's son he could not sink to the degradation of a day labourer;logically he could sink, actually he could not without endangering hisown centres and verities--so he also got married. 

He married a farm of about ten acres, and the sun began to shine on himonce more; but only for a few days. Suddenly the sun went away fromthe heavens; the moon disappeared from the silent night; the silentnight itself fled afar, leaving in its stead a noisy, dirty blacknessthrough which one slept or yawned as one could. There was the farm, ofcourse, one could go there and work; but the freshness went out of thevery ground; the crops lost their sweetness and candour; the horses andcows disowned him; the goats ceased to be his friends--It was all upwith him. He did not whistle any longer. He did not swing hisshoulders as he walked, and, although he continued to smoke, he did notlook for a particular green bank whereon he could sit quietly floodedwith those slow thoughts that had no words. 

For he discovered that he had not married a farm at all. He hadmarried a woman--a thin-jawed, elderly slattern, whose sole beauty washer farm. How her jaws worked! The processions and congregations ofwords that fell and dribbled and slid out of them! Those jaws werenever quiet, and in spite of all he did not say anything. There wasnot anything to say, but much to do from which he shivered away interror. He looked at her sometimes through the muscles of his arms, through his big, strong hands, through fogs and fumes and singular, quiet tumults that raged within him. She lessoned him on the things heknew so well, and she was always wrong. She lectured him on thosethings which she did know, but the unending disquisition, the perpetualrepetition, the foolish, empty emphasis, the dragging weightiness ofher tongue made him repudiate her knowledge and hate it as much as hedid her. 

Sometimes, looking at her, he would rub his eyes and yawn with fatigueand wonder--there she was! A something enwrapped about withpetticoats. Veritably alive. Active as an insect! Palpable to thetouch! And what was she doing to him? Why did she do it? Why didn'tshe go away? Why didn't she die? What sense was there in the makingof such a creature that clothed itself like a bolster, without anyfreedom or entertainment or shapeliness?

Her eyes were fixed on him and they always seemed to be angry; and hertongue was uttering rubbish about horses, rubbish about cows, rubbishabout hay and oats. Nor was this the sum of his weariness. It was notalone that he was married; he was multitudinously, egregiously married. He had married a whole family, and what a family--

Her mother lived with her, her eldest sister lived with her, heryoungest sister lived with her--and these were all swathed about withpetticoats and shawls. They had no movement. Their feet were likethose of no creature he had ever observed. One could hear theflip-flap of their slippers all over the place, and at all hours. Theywere down-at-heel, draggle-tailed, and futile. There was noworkmanship about them. They were as unfinished, as unsightly as apuddle on a road. They insulted his eyesight, his hearing, and hisenergy. They had lank hair that slapped about them like wet seaweed, and they were all talking, talking, talking. 

The mother was of an incredible age. She was senile with age. Hercracked cackle never ceased for an instant. She talked to the dog andthe cat; she talked to the walls of the room; she spoke out through thewindow to the weather; she shut her eyes in a corner and harangued thecircumambient darkness. The eldest sister was as silent as a deepditch and as ugly. She slid here and there with her head on one sidelike an inquisitive hen watching one curiously, and was always doingnothing with an air of futile employment. The youngest was asemi-lunatic who prattled and prattled without ceasing, and was alwayscatching one's sleeve, and laughing at one's face. --And everywherethose flopping, wriggling petticoats were appearing and disappearing. One saw slack hair whisking by the corner of one's eye. Mysteriously, urgently, they were coming and going and coming again, and never, neverbeing silent. 

More and more he went running to the public-house. But it was nolonger to be among men, it was to get drunk. One might imagine himsitting there thinking those slow thoughts without words. One mightpredict that the day would come when he would realise very suddenly, very clearly all that he had been thinking about, and, when thisurgent, terrible thought had been translated into its own terms ofaction, he would be quietly hanged by the neck until he was as dead ashe had been before he was alive. 

 SWEET-APPLE

 At the end of the bough, at the top of the tree (As fragrant, as high, and as lovely as thou) One sweet apple reddens which all men may see, At the end of the bough. 

 Swinging full to the view, tho' the gatherers now Pass, and evade, and o'erlook busily: Overlook! nay, but pluck it! they cannot tell how. 

 For it swings out of reach as a cloud, and as free As a star, or thy beauty, which seems too, I vow, Remote as the sweet rosy apple--ah me! At the end of the bough. 

THREE HAPPY PLACES

I

One awakened suddenly in those days. Sleep was not followed by thehaze which trails behind more mature slumbers. One's eyes opened wideand bright, and brains and legs became instantly active. If by achance the boy lying next to you was still asleep, it was the thing tohit him with a pillow. Even among boys, however, there are certainmorose creatures who are ill-tempered in the morning, and these, onbeing struck with a pillow, become malignantly active, and desire tofight with fists instead of pillows. 

Bull was such a boy. He was densely packed with pugnacity. He livedfor ever on the extreme slope of a fight, down which he slid at a word, a nod, a wink, into strenuous and bloodthirsty warfare. He was neverseen without a black eye, a bruised lip, or something wrong with hisear. He had the most miscellaneous collection of hurts that one couldimagine, and he was always prepared to exhibit his latest injury inexchange for a piece of toffee. If this method of barter was notrelished, he would hit the proprietor of the toffee and confiscate thegoods to his own use. 

His knowledge of who had sweets was uncanny. He had an extra sense inthat direction, which was a trouble to all smaller boys. No matter howcunningly one concealed a sticky treasure, just when one was secretlyenjoying it he came leaping out of space with the most offensivefriendliness crinkling all over his face, and his desire to participatein the confection was advanced without any preliminary courtesies--

"What have you got? Show! Give us a bit. Can't you give a fellow abit?"

When the bit was tendered he snatched it, swallowed it, and growled--

"Do you call that a bit? Give us a real bit. "

There are plenty of boys who will defend their toffee with their lives. Such boys he liked to meet, for their refusal to surrender a part gavehim an opportunity to fight and a reason for confiscating the whole ofthe ravished sweetmeat. One often had to devour one's sweets at a fullgallop. It was no uncommon thing to see a small boy scudding furiouslyaround a field with Bull pounding behind, intent as a bloodhound, andas horribly vocal. A close examination would discover that the smallboy's jaws were moving with even greater rapidity than his legs. If hemanaged to get his stuff devoured before he was caught it was allright, but he got hammered anyhow when he was caught. However, Bull'sapproach was usually managed with great skill and strategy, and beforethe small boy was aware Bull was squatting beside him usingblandishments both moral and minatory. 

He was a very gifted boy. He had no bent for learning lessons but hehad a great gift for collecting and turning to his own use the propertyof other people. Sometimes three or four boys swore a Solemn Leagueand Covenant against him. His perplexity then was extreme. He sawtoffee being devoured and none of it coming his way. Possibly hismethod of thinking was in pictures, and he could visualise with painfulclarity the alien gullets down which toffee was traveling, and, simultaneously, he could see the woeful emptiness of his own red lane. He must have felt that all was not right with a Providence which couldallow such happenings. A world wherein there was toffee for others andnone for him was certainly a world out of joint. His idea of Utopiawould be a place where there were lots of things for him to eat and acircle of hungry boys who watched his deliberate jaws with envy andhumility. Furthermore, the idea that smaller boys could have, not thecourage, but the heart to congregate against him, must have come to himwith a shock. He was appalled by a sense of the sinfulness of humannature, and dismayed by the odds against which virtue has to fight. 

The others, strong in numbers, followed him on such occasions chewingtheir tuck with grave deliberation, descanting minutely and loudly onthe taste of each bit, the splendid length of time it took to dissolve, and the blessedly large quantity which yet remained to be eaten. Hethreatened them, but his threats were received with yawns. He wheedled(a thing he could do consummately well) but they were not to beblandished. He mapped out on his own person the particular and painfulplaces where later on he would hit them unless he was bound over to thepeace by toffee. And they sucked their sweetstuff and made diagrams oneach other of the places where they could hit Bull if they had a mindto, and told each other and him that he was not worth hitting and, would probably die if he were hit. But they were careful not dissolvepartnership until the sweets were eaten and beyond even the wildesthopes of salvage. Then, in the later-on that had been predicted, Bullcaptured them in detail, and, as he had promised, he "lammed thestuffing" out of them. 

He had all the grave wisdom of the stupid, and the extraordinary energyand persistence which perpetuates them. He never could learn a lesson, but he could, and did, pinch the boy next to him into adept prompting, and would intimidate any one into doing his sums. Indeed, the man ofwhom he was the promise had no need for ordinary learning. The lighteraccomplishments of life had no appeal, nor would the deeper lessonshave any meaning for him. He is simply a big, physical appetite, untrammelled by anything like introspection or conscience, and workingin perfect innocence for the fulfilment of its simple wants. For atbase his species are surely the most simple of human creatures. Inspite of their complex physical structure they are one-celled organismsdriven through life with only a passionate hunger as their motivepower, and with no complexities of thought or emotion to hamper theirloud progressions. None but those of their own kind can suffer fromtheir ravages, and, even so, they fly the contact of each other withhorror. 

Doubtless by this time Bull is a prosperous and wealthy citizensomewhere, the proprietor of a curved waistcoat and a gold watch. Possessions other than these he would regard with the amiable toleranceof a philosopher regarding a child with toys. So strongly acquisitivea nature must win the particular little battles which it is fitted towage. When a conscienceless mind is buttressed by a pugnacioustemperament then houses and land, and cattle and maidservants, andsuch-like, the small change of existence, are easily gotten. 

II

The sunlight of youth has a special quality which will never again beknown until we rediscover it in Paradise. What a time it was! How thesun shone, and how often it shone! I remember playing about in aparched and ragged field with a leaf from a copy-book stuck under mycap to aid its quarter-inch peak in keeping off the glare of thattremendous sunshine. 

Tip-and-Tig, Horneys and Robbers, Relievo we played, and another game, the name of which did not then seem at all strange, but which now wearsan amazing appearance--it was, Twenty-four Yards on the Billy-Goat'sTail. I wonder now what was that Billy-Goat, and was he able to wag thetriumphant tail of which twenty-four yards was probably no more than aninconsiderable moiety. There were other games: Ball-in-the-Decker, Cap-on-the-Back, and Towns or Rounders. These were all summer games. 

With the lightest effort of imagination I can see myself and othertireless atoms scooting across reaches of sunlight. I can hear thecontinuous howl which accompanied our play, and can see that ragged, parched field spreading, save for the cluster of boys, wide and silentto the further, greener fields, where the cows were lying down in greatcoloured lumps, and one antic deer, a pet, would make such astonishingjourneys, jumping the entire circuit of the field on four thin andabsolutely rigid legs; for when it made these peculiar excursions itnever seemed to use its legs--these were held quite rigidly, and thedeer bounded by some powerful, spring-like action, its brown coatflashing in the sunlight, and its movement a rhythmic glory which theboys watched with ecstasy and laughter. 

An old ass was native to that field also. He had been a bright, kind-hearted donkey at one time: a donkey whose nose might be tickled, and who would allow one to climb upon his back. But the presence ofboys grew disturbing as he grew old, and the practical jokes of whichhis youth took no heed induced a kind of insanity in his latter age. He took to kicking the cows as they browsed peacefully, and, later, hedeveloped a horrid appetite for fowl, and would stalk and kill and eathens whenever possible. Later still he directed this unhealthyappetite towards small boys, and after he had eaten part of one lad'sshoulder and the calf from another boy's leg he disappeared--whether hewas sold to some innocent person, or had been slaughtered mysteriously, we did not know. We professed to believe that he had died of thehorrible taste of the boys he had bitten, and, afterwards, whenever weplayed cannibals, we refused, greatly to their chagrin, to kill and eatthese two boys, on the ground that their flesh was poisonous; but theothers we slaughtered and fed on with undiminished gusto. 

There were only two trees in the field--great, gnarled monsters castinga deep shade. In that shade the grass grew long and green and juicy. After a game the boys would fling themselves down in the shadow of thetrees to chew the sweet grass, and play "knifey, " and talk. --Suchtalk!--endless and careless, and loud as the converse of young bulls. What did we talk about? Delightful and inconsequent shoutings--

"That is a hawk up there, he's going to soar. How does he keep sosteady without moving his wings? Watch now! down he drops like astone. . . . If you give your rabbit too many cabbage leaves he'll dieof the gripes. . . . Did you ever play jack-stones? a fellow showed mehow, look! . . . When we were at the sea yesterday Jimmy Nelsonwouldn't go out from the shore. He was afraid of his life--he wouldn'teven duck down. I swam nearly out of sight, didn't I, Sam? So didSam. . . . You could climb right up to the top of that tree if youtried. No you couldn't. --Yes I could, it's forked all the wayup. . . . The new master wears specs--Old Four-Eyes! and he grins at afellow. I don't think he's much. . . . How do midges get born? . . . My brother has one with four blades and a thing for poking stones outof a horse's hoof. . . . A horse-hair won't break the cane at all:it's all bosh: rosin is the only thing. . . . "

There was a little stream which twisted a six-foot path through thefield, the sunshine dashing off its waters in brilliant flashes. Thetop of the water swarmed with flying insects and strange, smallspider-things skimmed over its surface with amazing swiftness. Webelieved there were otters in that stream--they came out at nightfalland, unless you had the good fortune to be rescued by a Newfoundlanddog, they would hold you down under water until you were drowned. Wealso held there were leeches in the stream--they would grip you by thehundred thousand and suck you to death in five minutes, and they clungso tightly that one could not prise their mouths open with a poker. Wehoped there were whales in it, but not one of us desired a sharkbecause it is the Sailor's Enemy. 

An iron railing ran by part of the field. Every hole and joint of itwas crammed with earwigs, and these could be poked out of the creviceswith a straw. When an amazing number of them had been poked out therewas always another one left. The very last earwig that could bediscovered was the King. He was able and willing to bite ten times asbadly as any of the others, and he was awfully vicious when his nestwas broken into. Furthermore, he had the ability to put a curse on youbefore he died, and he always did this because he was so vicious. If aKing Earwig had time to curse you before he was killed terrible thingsmight happen. His favourite curse was to translate himself into thenext piece of bread you would eat, and then you would see one-half ofhim waggling in a hole in the bread: the other half you had alreadyeaten. --For this reason the King Earwig was always allowed to go freeuntil he was not looking, then he was killed with great suddenness. 

I remember how the slow evening shadows drew over the quiet fields. Thesunlight slowly faded to a mist of gold, into which the great treesthrust timorous, shy fingers, and these gradually widened, until, atlast, the whole horizon bowed into the twilight. 

Across the field there could be heard the voice of the river, afurtive, desolate hoarseness in the dusk. The cows in the far fieldshad long ago wandered home to be milked, scarcely a bird moved in thehigh silences, the gnats had hidden themselves away in the deep, ruggedbark of the trees, and, through the dimness, the heavy beetles werehurling like stones, and dropping and rising again in a laboriousflight. 

III

He could remember that he had wept to be allowed go to school. Evenmore vivid was his recollection of the persuasive and persistent tearswhich he had shed to be allowed to stay at home. 

Most of the joys of school were exhausted after he had submitted to onehour of dreary discipline. --To be compelled to sit still when everyinch of one's being clamoured to move about; to have to stand up andstare at a blackboard upon which meaningless white scrawls wereperpetually being drawn, and as perpetually being wiped out to amaster's meaningless, monotonous verbal accompaniment; to have to joinin a chant which began with "a, b, c, " and droned steadily through acomplexity of sounds to a ridiculously inadequate "z"--such thingsbecame desperately boring. One was not even let go to sleep, and ifone wept from sheer ennui, then one was clouted. School, he shortlydecided, was not worth anybody's while, but he also discovered that atorment had commenced which was not by any artifice to be evaded. 

Along the road to school there ran a succession of meadows--the pathwas really a footway through fields--and how not to stray into thesemeadows was a problem demanding the entire of one's attention. Sometimes a rabbit bolted almost from under one's feet--it flapped awaythrough the grass, and bobbed up and down in a great hurry. Then hisheart filled with envy. He said to himself--

"That rabbit is not going to school: if it was it wouldn't run soquickly. "

It was paltry comfort to hurl a wad of grass after it. 

Through most of the journey there was an immense, lazy bee with a bassvoice, and he droned defiance three feet away from one's cap whichalmost jolted to be put over him. He seemed to understand that at suchan hour he was not in any danger, and so he would drop to the grass, roll on his back, and cock up his legs in ecstasy. 

"Bees, " said he to himself in amazement and despair, "do not go toschool. "

Each bush and tree seemed, for the moment, to be inhabited by a birdwhose song was unfamiliar and the markings on whom he could notremember to have seen before; and he had no time to stay and note them. He dragged beyond these objects reluctantly, pondering on theunreasonable savagery of parents who sent one to school when the sunwas shining. 

But the greatest obstacle to getting to school was the river whichdanced briskly through the fields. The footpath went for a stretchalong this stream, and, during that piece of the journey, haste was notpossible. There are so many things in a river to look at. Themovement of the water in itself exercises fascinations over a boy. There are always bubbles, based strongly in froth, sailing gallantlyalong. --One speculates how long a bubble will swim before it hits arock, or is washed into nothing by an eddy, or is becalmed in asheltered corner to ride at jaunty anchor with a navy of similardelicate tonnage. 

Further, if one finds a twig on the path, or a leaf, there is nothingmore natural than to throw these into the river and see how fast or howerratically they sail. Pebbles also clamour to be cast into thestream. Perhaps a dragon-fly whirls above the surface of the water tohold one late from school. The grasses and rushes by the marge maystir as a grey rat slips out to take to the water and swim low down andvery fast on some strange and important journey. The inspection ofsuch an event cannot be hurried. One must, if it is possible, discoverwhere he swims to, and if his hole is found it has to be blocked upwith stones, even though the persistent bell is clanging down over thefields. 

Perhaps a big frog will push out from the grass and go in fat leapsdown to the water--plop! and away he swims with his sarcastic nose upand his legs going like fury. The strange, very-little-boy motions ofa frog in water is a thing to ponder over. There are small frogs also, every bit as interesting, thin-legged, round-bellied anatomies who tryto jump two ways at once when they are observed, and are caught soeasily that it is scarcely worth one's trouble to chase them at all. 

Just where the path turned there was an arch under which the riverflowed. --It was covered in with an iron grating. Surely it was a placeof mystery. Through the bars the dark, swirling waters were dimlyvisible--there were things in there. Black lumps rose out of thewater, and, for a little distance, the slimy, shimmering, cold-lookingwalls could be seen. Beyond there was a deeper gloom, and, beyond thatagain, a blank, mysterious darkness. Through the grating the voice ofthe stream came back with a strange note. On the outside, under thesun, it was a tinkle and a rush, a dance indeed, but within it was alow snarl that deepened to a grim whisper. There was an edge of maliceto the sound: something dark and very terrible brooded on the face ofthose hidden waters. It was the home of surmise. --What might there notbe there? There might be gully-holes where the waters whirled in widecircles, and then flew smoothly down, and down, and down. If one couldhave got in there to see! To crawl along by the slippery edge in thedarkness and solitude! It was very hard to get away from this place. 

A little farther on two goats were tethered. As one passed they wouldcease to pluck the grass and begin to dance slowly, such dainty, anticsteps, with their heads held down and their pale eyes looking upwardswith a joke in them. They did not really want to fight; they wanted toplay but were too shy to admit it. 

And here the schoolhouse was in sight. The bell had stopped: it wasnow time to run. 

He gripped the mouth of his satchel with one hand to prevent the lessonbooks from jumping out as he ran, he gripped his pocket with the otherhand to prevent his lunch from being jolted into the road. 

Another few yards and he was at the gate--some one was glaring outthrough a window. It was a big face rimmed with spectacles andwhiskers--a master. He knew that when yonder severe eye had liftedfrom him it had dropped to look at a watch, and he also knew exactlywhat the owner of the severe eye would say to him as he sidled in. 

 THE MOON

 If the Moon had a hand I wonder would she Stretch it down unto me?

 If she did, I would go To her glacier land, To her ice-covered strand. 

 I would run, I would fly, Were the cold ever so, And be warm in the snow. 

 O Moon of all Light, Sailing far, sailing high In the infinite sky. 

 Do not come down to me, Lest I shriek in affright, Lest I die in the night Of your chill ecstasy. 

THERE IS A TAVERN IN THE TOWN

I

The old gentleman entered, and was about to sit down, when a buttonbecame detached from some portion of his raiment and rolled upon thefloor. He picked the button up and observed that he would keep it forhis housekeeper to sew on, and, while speaking on the strangeness ofhousekeeping and buttons, he came slowly to the subject of matrimony--

"Like so many other customs, " said he, "marriage is not native to thehuman race, nor is it altogether peculiar to it. So far as I am awareno person was ever born married, and in extreme youth bachelors andspinsters are so common as to call for no remark. Nature strives, notfor duality as in the case of the Siamese Twins but for individuality. We are all born strongly separated, and I am often inclined to fancythat this ceremony of joining appears very like flying in the face ofProvidence. I have also thought, on the other hand, that thesegregation of humanity into male and female is not an economicpractice, but I fear the foundation of the sex habit is by this time sodeeply trenched in our natures as to be practically ineradicable. 

"Throughout nature the male and female habit is usual: all beasts areborn of one or the other gender, and this is also the case in thevegetable kingdom: but I am not aware that the ridiculous and wastefulpreparations with which we encumber matrimony obtain also among plantsand animals. Certainly, among some animals courtship, as we understandit, is practised--Wolves, for instance, are an extraordinarily acutepeople who make good husbands and fathers, and in these relations theydisplay a tenderness and courtesy which one only acquainted with theirout-of-door manners would scarcely credit them with. Their courtshipis conducted under circumstances of extraordinary rigour. A he-wolfwho becomes enamoured of a female from another tribe is forced, inattempting to wed her, to set his life upon the venture, and, disdaining all the fury of her numerous relatives, he must forciblydetach her from her family, kill or maim all her other suitors, sustainin a wounded and desperate condition a prolonged chase over thesnow-clad Russian Steppes, and, ultimately, consummate his nuptials, ifhe can, with as many limbs as his lady's family have failed to collectoff him. This is a courtship admirably fitted to evolve a hardy andSpartan race strong in the virtues of reliance and self-control. 

"Spiders, on the other hand, are a people whom I despise on severalcounts, but must admire on others. They conduct their love affairs inan even more tragic style. In every event matrimony is a tragedy, butin the case of spiders it is a catastrophe. Spiders are a very sourand pessimistic people who live in walls, corners of hotel bedrooms andholes generally, in which places they weave very delicate webs, and sitfor a long period in a state of philosophic ecstasy, contemplating theinfinite. Their principal pastimes are killing flies and committingsuicide--both of which games should be encouraged. Like so many otherunhappy creatures they are born with a gender from which there is noescape. The male spider is very much smaller than the female, and hedoes not care greatly for his life. When he does not desire to liveany longer he commits matrimony or suicide. He weds a large and fiercewife, who, when in expectation of progeny, kills him, and, being athorough-going person as all females are, she also eats him, possiblyat his own request, and thus she relieves her husband of the tedium ofexistence and herself of the necessity for seeking immediate victual. I do not know whether male spiders are very plentiful or extremelyscarce, but I cite this as an example of the extravagance and economyof the female gender. 

"Of the courting habits of fish I have scanty knowledge. Fish are veryugly, dirty creatures who appear to live entirely in water, and theyhave been known to follow a ship for miles in the disgusting hope ofgarbage being thrown to them by the steward. Their chief pastime isweighing each other, for which purpose they are liberally provided withscales. They can be captured by nets, or rods and lines, or, when theyare cockles, they can be captured by the human hand, but, in thislatter case, they cannot be tamed, having very little intelligence. The cockle has no scale, and feels the deprivation keenly, hidinghimself deep in the sea and seldom venturing forth except atnight-time. He is composed of two shells and a soft piece, is chieflyuseful for poisoning children and is found at Sandymount, a place wherenobody but a cockle would live. Other fish may be generally describedas, crabs, pinkeens, red herrings and whales. How these conduct theirmatrimonial adventures I do not know--the statement that whales arefond of pinkeens is true only in a food sense, for these races havenever been observed to intermarry. 

"A great many creatures capture or captivate their mates bysinging. --These are usually, but not always, birds, and include wilywagtails, larks, canary birds and the crested earwig. Poets, musichall comedians and cats may also be included in this category. Dogsare imperative and dashing wooers, but they seldom sing. Peacocksexpand their tails before the astonished gaze of their brides, showinghow the female sex is over-borne by minor, unimportant advantages. Frogs, I believe, make love in the dark, which is a wise thing for themto do--they are very witty folk, but confirmed sentimentalists. Grocers' assistants attract their mates by exposing very tall collarsand brown boots. Drapers' assistants follow suit, with the comelyaddition of green socks and an umbrella--they are never known to fail. Some creatures do not marry at all. At a certain period they break intwo halves, and each half, fully equipped for existence, waggles awayfrom the other. --They are the only perfectly happy folk of whom I amaware. For myself, I was born single and I will remain so, I willnever be a slave to the disgusting habit of matrimony. "

Having said this with great firmness, the old gentleman shed two morebuttons from his waistcoat, and, after sticking three nails and a pieceof twine through his garments, he departed very happily. Thegentleman-in-waiting sneezed three times in a loud voice, and gave awar-whoop, but I took no notice of these impertinences. 

II

I had not seen the old gentleman for a long time, and when he enteredwith one foot in a boot and the other in a carpet slipper, I wasoverjoyed. When the bubbling tankard which I had ordered was placedbefore him he seized my two hands, wrung them heartily and dashed intothe following subject--

"It must be remembered, " said he, "that dancing is not an art but apastime, and should, therefore, be freed from the too-burdensomeregulations wherewith an art is encumbered. An art is ahighly-specialised matter hedged in on every side by intellectualpolicemen, a pastime is not specialised, and never takes place in thepresence of policemen, who are well known to be the sworn enemies ofgaiety. For example, theology is an art but religion is a pastime: welearn the collects only under compulsion, but we sing anthems becauseit is pleasant to do so. Thus, eating oysters is an art by dint of theelaborate ceremonial including shell-openers, lemons, waiters andpepper, which must be grouped around your oyster before you canconveniently swallow him, but eating nuts, or blackberries, or aprivily-acquired turnip--these are pastimes. 

"The practice of dancing is of an undoubted antiquity. History teemswith reference to this custom, but it is difficult to discover whatnationality or what era first witnessed its evolution. I myselfbelieve that the first dance was performed by a domestic hen who foundan ostrich's egg, and bounded before Providence in gratitude forsomething worthy of being sat upon. 

"In all places and in all ages dancing has been utilised as a first-aidto language. The function of language is intellectual, that of dancingis emotional. It is scarcely possible to say anything of an emotionalnature in words without adventuring into depths or bogs ofsentimentality from which one can only emerge greasy with dishonour. When we are happy we cannot say so with any degree of intelligibility:in such a context the spoken word is miserably inadequate, and must besupplemented by some bodily antic. If we are merry we must skip to beunderstood. If we are happy we must dance. If we are wildly andecstatically joyous then we will become creators, and some new andbeneficent dance-movements will be added to the repertory of ourneighborhood. 

"Children will dance upon the slightest provocation, so also do lambsand goats; but policemen, and puckauns, and advertisement agents, andfish do not dance at all, and this is because they have hard hearts. Worms and Members of Parliament, between whom, in addition to theirhigh general culture, there is a singular and subtle correspondence, donot dance, because the inelastic quality of their environment forbidsanything in the nature of freedom. Frogs, dogs, and very youngmountains do dance. 

"A frog is a most estimable person. He has a cold body but a warmheart, and a countenance of almost parental benevolence, and the joy oflife moves him to an almost ceaseless activity. I can never observe afrog on a journey without fancying that his gusto for travel isdirected by a philanthropic impulse towards the bedside of a sickfriend or a meeting to discuss the Housing of the Working Classes. Hehas danced all the way to, he will dance all the way from hisobjective, but the spectacle of many men dancing is provocative ofpain. --To them dancing is a duty, and a melancholy one. If one dancedto celebrate a toothache one might take lessons from them. They standin the happy circle, their features are composed to an iron gravity, their hands are as rigid as those of a graven image, and then, thefatal moment having arrived, they agitate their legs with a cold furywhich is distinctly unpleasant. Having finished they dash theirpartners from their sides and retire to blush and curse in a corner. 

"When a man dances he should laugh and crow and snap his fingers andmake faces; otherwise, he is not dancing at all, he is taking exercise. No person should be allowed to dance without first swearing that hefeels only six years of age. People who admit to feeling more than tenyears old should be sent to hospital, and any one proved guilty offourteen years of age should be lodged in gaol without the option. 

"It is peculiar how often opposite emotions may meet on a common planeof expression. The extremes of love and hate strive to get equallyclose to kiss or to bite the object of their regard. Work and play maybe equally strenuous and equally enthralling. Hunger and satiety unitein a common boredom. A happy person will dance from sheer delight, andthe man in whom a pin has been secreted can only by dancing express theexquisite sensibility of his cuticle. Whatever one does or refrainsfrom doing one must be tired by bed-time--it is a law--but one may bepleasantly tired. 

"I will suspect the morals of a man who cannot dance. I will lookcuriously into his sugar or statecraft. I will impeach his candour orreticence, and sneer at his method of lighting a fire unless he canfrolic when he goes out for a walk with a dog--that is the beginning ofdancing: the end of it is the beginning of a world. A young dog is apiece of early morning disguised in an earthly fell, and the man whocan resist his contagion is a sour, dour, miserable mistake, withoutbravery, without virtue, without music, with a cranky body and ashrivelled soul, and with eyes incapable of seeing the sunlight. 

"I have often thought that dogs are a very superior race of people. They are certainly more highly organised on the affectional plane thanman. A dog will love you just for the fun of it--and that is virtue. Pat a dog on the head and he will dance around you in an ecstasy ofgood-fellowship. Let us, at least, be the equal of these sagacities. Let us put away our false intellectual pride. Let us learn to beunconscious. The average man trembles into a dance imagining that alleyes are rayed upon him wonderingly or admiringly, whereas, in truth, he will only be looked at if he dances very well or very badly. Bothof these extremities of perfection ought to be avoided. We shouldexercise our very bad or very good qualities in solitude lest averagepeople be saddened by their disabilities in either direction. Let yourcurses be as private as your prayers for both are purgative operations. In public we must conform to the standard, in private only may we doour best or our worst. Acting so, we will be freed from false prideand cowardly self-consciousness. Let us be brave. Let us caress thewaists of our neighbours without fear. Let everybody's chin be ourtoy. Let us pat one another on the hats as we pass in the melancholystreets. --Thus only shall we learn to be gay and careless who for solong have been miserable and suspicious. We will be fearless andcompanionable who have been so timid and solitary. A new, a better, areal police force will arrest people who don't dance as they travel toand from their labour. The world will be happy at last, andcivilisation will begin to be possible. "

Here, in an ecstasy of good-fellowship, the old gentleman seized hispewter with his left hand and my glass with his right hand, and heemptied them both before recognising his mistake. I had, however, runout of tobacco, whereupon he became very angry, and refused to bid megood-night. 

III

The old gentleman condescended to accept the last cigar which I had, and, having lit it with my only match, he earnestly advised me never tosmoke to excess, because this indulgence brought spots before the eyes, deteriorated the moral character, and was, moreover, exceedinglyexpensive. --On the subject of smoking and tobacco he spoke as follows--

"I have observed that people who do not smoke are usually of a sour andunsociable disposition. All red-haired people smoke naturally, andthey almost invariably use cut-plug. Very dark-haired men smoke twist, and their natural strength and virtue is such that in the intervals ofsmoking they also chew tobacco. Fair-haired men generally smokecigarettes--they do this, not for the purpose of enjoyment, but purelyin imitation of their betters. However, in later life, when theybecome bald, as they invariably do, they also became regenerate andsmoke pig-tail. Men with mouse-coloured hair do not smoke at all. They collect postage stamps and sea-shells, and are usually to be foundsitting round a fire with other girls eating chocolates and seeking forreplies to such questions as, when is a door not a door? and why does achicken cross the road? They are miserable creatures whom I will notfurther mention. 

"The usage of tobacco, or some smokable substitute, is as old asprimitive man. Almost all nations of the earth are adepts in thisparticular habit. It is, of course, an acquired taste, as also arewashing and tomatoes. We are born with appetites which are static andunchangeable, but we are also born with a yearning for pleasure whichis almost as positive as an appetite and only needs cultivation tobecome equally imperative. Doubtless, a traveller from some distantplanet, who knew nothing of tobacco, would be astonished at thespectacle of a man exhaling smoke from his lips with splendidunconcern, and our traveller's conjectures as to the origin of thesmoke and the immunity of the smoker would be highly amusing andinstructive. 

"I am often surprised on reflecting that our immediate ancestors weredebarred from this pleasant indulgence, and I have wondered how theymade the evenings pass. The lack of tobacco and pockets in theirclothes (both of which are great civilising agents) may have beenresponsible for the wars, harryings, kidnappings and cattle raidswhich, alternating with rigorous and austere religious ceremonial, formed the bulk of their pleasures. Nowadays we leave these violententertainments to children and the semi-literate and take our pleasuresmore composedly. A man who can put his hands in his pockets willseldom remove them for the purpose of slaying some one whose only faultis that he was born in the County Sligo. A man with a pipe in histeeth will be too much at peace with society to endanger its existence. 

"If the blessings of tobacco should be extended to the remainder of thevertebrates (as, why should it not?) I am sure that lions, elephants, and wild boars would avail themselves of it. So, also, wouldkangaroos, a beautiful and agile race living in Polynesia, orthereabouts--they are beautiful hoppers, and collect large quantitiesof this plant. In this direction they are especially well equipped, each having a pouch in her stomach in which to carry tobacco and hops, but wherein they now ignorantly secrete their young. Serpents wouldsmoke a pipe with considerable elegance, and might become morebenevolent in consequence. Frogs would smoke, but I fancy they wouldexpectorate too elaborately to be neighbourly. Fish, however, wouldnot smoke at all. --They are a cowardly and corrupt people, living inwater, which is a singular thing to do. Neither would many birdssmoke, they have neither the stamina nor the teeth, but I am certainthat crows and jackdaws would chew tobacco eagerly and with truerelish. A large proportion of the insecta are too light-minded andfrivolous to care for smoking. Beetles, however, a very reserved anddignified race, would smoke cigars, and so would cockroaches, a rathersaturnine and cynical people; but no others. 

"As for women--I am astonished they have not smoked, by mere contagion, long ago. If they did they would certainly grow more kind-hearted andmanly, and I am sure that a deputation of ladies with pipes in theirmouths and hands in their pockets would only have to demand thefranchise from an astounded ministry to obtain it. 

"Members of Parliament are, I believe, either a separate creation or acomposite of the parrot and the magpie. I have not yet discoveredtheir particular function in nature but have observed them with someparticularity. They wear top hats and are constantly making speeches, both of which are easy things to do and quite pleasant minoraccomplishments. --So far as I can gather their chief use has been topass something called a Budget. From the fact that this Budgetcontains a disgraceful imposition on tobacco I must take it thatMembers of Parliament are among the lower animals who do notsmoke--they are also uninteresting in other ways. "

Having said this my old friend bowed to me and departed genially withmy cigar case in his pocket. The shirt-sleeved Adonis behind thecounter wagged his head solemnly at a fly and then clouted it with adish-cloth. 

IV

The old gentleman took an athletic pull at his liquor, and continuedhis discourse. He had been discussing more to himself than to me themerits of Professor James and Monsieur Bergson, and had inquired was Iaware of the nature of the Pragmatic Sanction. The gentleman behindthe counter remarked, that he had one on his bicycle, but that theywere no good. This statement was denounced by the Philosopher as anunnatural and clumsy falsehood, and, anathematising the ignorance ofhis interrupter, he came by slow degrees to the following discourse--

"I have but little faith in any of the methods of education with whichI am presently acquainted. The objective of every system of teachingshould be to enable the person who is being subjected to this repulsivetreatment to do something which will fit him to maintain a place inlife where he will be as little liable as possible to the changes andvicissitudes of civilised existence. 

"The cumbrous and inadequate preparation which is now in vogue canscarcely be spoken of by a person of understanding without the use oflanguage unbefitting one who is a member of (inter alia) the ReformedChurch and the highest order of the vertebrates. 

"If one walks into any school in this kingdom one is certain to meet atall, thin, anaemic youth with a draggled moustache and a worried eyewho is endeavouring to coerce a mass of indigestible, inelastic andunimportant facts into the heads of divers sleepy and disgustedchildren. If a small boy, on being asked where Labrador is, repliesthat it is the most northerly point of the Berlin Archipelago, he maybe wrong in quite a variety of ways, but even if he answered correctlyhe would still know just as little about the matter, while if he wereto give the only proper reply to so ridiculous a conundrum, he wouldtell his tormentor that he did not care a rap where it was, that he hadnot put it there, and that he would tell his mother if the man did notleave him alone. What has he got to do with Labrador, Terra del Fuego, or the Isles of Greece? Give him a fistful of facts about Donnybrook, and send him away to hunt out the truth of it, with a sandwich in hispocket and the promise of a lump of toffee when he came back with hiscargo of truths--that would interest him, the toffee would make theinformation stick, while the verification of his facts would make hishead fat and fertile. 

"When we ceased to be natural creatures and put on the oppressiveshrouds, wraps and disguises which we label in the villainous aggregatecivilisation, we ceased to know either how to teach or how to learn. We exchanged the freedom and spaciousness of life for a crampedexistence compounded of spectacles and bad grammar, this complicatedstill further by the multiplication tables, the dead languages andindigestion tabloids. During his school-days many a healthy boy had toparse ten square miles of dead language. Why? he does not know and hewill never be told, for no one else knows any more than he. The onlything of which he is certain is, that he did not do anything to deserveit. 

"Civilisation, which is responsible for all the woes of life, such aswashing, shaving and buying boots, is responsible for this also. Potatoes are more productive than Latin roots, are twice as nourishingand cannot be parsed. Teach a girl how to recognise an egg by thenaked eye, and then teach her how to cook it. Teach a boy how todiscover the kind of trees eggs grow on and what is the best kind ofsoil to plant them in. Teach a girl how to keep her hands fromscratching, her tongue from telling lies, and her teeth from droppingout prematurely, and she will, maybe, turn out a healthy kind of mammalhaving a house filled with brightness and laughter. Teach a boy how toprevent another boy from mashing the head off him, teach him how to begood to his mother when she is old, teach him how to give two-pence toa beggar without imagining that he is investing his savings in Paradiseat fifty per cent and a bonus; and then, having eliminatedcivilisation, education, clothes, tin whistles and soap this earth willnot be such a bad old ball-alley for a man to smoke a pipe in. 

"Everything is wrong. People should rise to their feet and salute whena farmer or a teacher comes into a room. No man should be allowed intoParliament who has not engaged in one or other of these professions, but because they are the two most important professions in the worldtheir exponents are robbed and harried into slaves and fools. "

Having said this with great earnestness the old gentlemanabsent-mindedly impounded my drink, absorbed it, and strode awaywrapped in thought. The gentleman-in-waiting sympathetically asked meif I would have another one, but on learning that I had no more moneyhe said good-night. 

V

The old gentleman was in a state of most unusual content. It mighthave been because the sun was shining, or it might have been because hehad just finished his third glass: whatever it was, the smile upon hisface was of a depth and a radiance impossible to describe. He spokefor a while upon the pleasant smell of hay passing through a city, and, remarking upon the enviable thirst of hay-makers, he swept gradually tothe following weighty monologue--

"From the earliest times, " said he, "drinking has been regarded notalone as a necessary lubricant, but also as a pastime, and theingenuity of every race under the sun has been exercised in the attemptto give variety and distinction to its beverages. 

"We may take it that the earliest race of men drank nothing but water, and hot water to boot, for at that era the earth must have been, if nothot, at least tepid. One can easily imagine that the contemporaries ofthe five-toed horse might have welcomed death as a happy release fromtheir too sultry existence. 

"I suppose man is the only brewing animal known to scientific research. All other creatures take their food and drink neat, or in a raw state. Of course, almost all mammals are enabled by a highly ingeniousinternal mechanism to brew milk, or some other lacteal substitute, butthis is performed by a natural, instinctive impulse towards thepreservation of their young and conserves none of the spirit ofartifice and calculation so necessary to authentic brewing operations. 

"Brewing was possible only when the stability of the human race was, more or less, assured and permanent. Our primal ancestors existed in astate as nearly resembling chaos as well might be. They had not yetaggregated into communities, but vast hordes of families--a father, anuncertain number of mothers, and an astounding complexity ofchildren--wandered wherever food seemed most abundant, and fought withor eluded such other families as they chanced upon. This state ofexistence was too precarious and haphazard to allow of the niceties ofbrewing being evolved. 

"But the natural tendency of families to lengthen, the gregariousinstincts of the race, and the need of mutual protection and assistanceultimately welded these indiscriminate families into communities ofever-varying extent, and the movement of these huge troops andtransportation of their baggage becoming more and more difficult(vehicles being unknown and horses, perhaps, treble-toed, wily andferocious) and food, which until then had only been obtained in afugitive state, becoming less easy of access, these communities wereforced to select a settled habitation, scratch the earth for provender, settled down to the breeding of one-toed horses, and exercise therespectable virtues of thrift and industry for their preservation. Thus, laws were formulated, tentative and unsatisfactory at first, andever tending, as to this day, to become more complex and lesssatisfactory. Villages took shape, straggled into towns, widened intocities and coalesced into kingdoms and empires: and so, thecivilisation of which we are partakers crawled laboriously into being, with the brewer somewhere in the centre, active, rubicund anddisputatious, as he has continued to date, with a seat on the CountyCouncil which he had swindled some thirsty statesman out of, and moreproperty than he could deal with by himself. 

"It is a singular reflection that thirst has very little to do with theconsumption of drink, nor is this appetite subject to the vagaries ofclimate, for the inhabitants of the coldest regions will, it is feared, drink on equal terms with those dwelling in the sun-burnt tropics. Inalmost all ceremonial observances drinking has had a special place, andthis diversion lends itself to an infinite number of objects--we canfrom the same bowl quaff health to our friends and confusion to ourenemies, doubtless with equal results. Here alone men meet on equalterms. There is no religion, nationality or politics in liquor: let itbe but sufficiently wet and potent and it matters not if the brew hasbeen fermented in the tub of a Christian or the vessel of a heathenTurk. 

"I understand that this latter race are forbidden, by the form ofheresy which they call religion, to use liquors more potent thansherbet. Some thinkers believe that this deprivation is possibly thereason of their being Turks. --They are Turks, not from conviction, butfrom habit, spite, and the bile engendered by a too rigid and bigotedabstinence. In this belief, however, I do not concur, for I considerthat a Turk is a Turk naturally, and without any further constraintthan those imposed by the laws of geography and primogeniture. 

"Meanwhile it is interesting to speculate on the future of an abstinentnation whose politics have the misfortune to be guided by a Peerageinstead of a Beerage, and whose national destiny is irrationallydivorced from the interests of 'The Trade. ' Any departure from theestablished customs of humanity must be criticised unsparingly, and, ifnecessary, destructively. To overthrow the customs of antiquity mustentail its own punishment and that punishment may be an awe-inspiringand chastening Success. Therefore, this happy whisky-governed land ofours should never forsake its liquor or it may be forced by opportunityand work to become great. The foundations of our civilisation aresteeped in beer--let no sacrilegious hand seek to interfere with it, for, even if the foundations were rotten, the interests of the Trademust not be disturbed, the grave and learned members of our Corporationmight be horribly reduced to working for their living, and ourunfortunate City might have the extraordinary misfortune to scrambleout of debt in the absence of its statesmen. "

The old gentleman, with a bright smile, said that "he did not mind ifhe did, " and he "did" with such gusto that I had to call a cab. 

VI

The old gentleman came in hurriedly and called for that to which he wasaccustomed. He fumbled in one pocket after another, and after going overall his pockets several times he remarked to me "I have forgotten mypurse. " His air was so friendly and confiding that it more than repaidme for the small sum which I had to advance. He sat down close besideme, and, after touching on the difficulty of being understood in atavern, he drew genially to these remarks--

"Language may be described as a medium for recording one's sensations. It is gesture translated into sound. It is noise with a meaning. Musiccannot at all compare with it, for music is no more than the scientificdistribution of noise, and it does not impart any meaning to thedisintegrated and harried tumults. Language may be divided into severalheads, which, again, may be subdivided almost indefinitely. --The primaryheads are, language, talk, and speech. Speech is the particular form ofnoise which is made by Members of Parliament. Language is the symbolswhereby one lady in a back street makes audible her impressions of thelady who lives on the same floor--it is often extremely sinewy. Talk maybe described as the crime of people who make one tired. 

"It is my opinion that people talk too much. I think the world would bea healthier and better place if it were more silent. On every day thatpasses there is registered over all the earth a vast amount of languagewhich, so far as I can see, has not the slightest bearing on anythinganywhere. 

"I have been told of a race living in Central Africa, or elsewhere, whoby an inherent culture were enabled to dispense with speech. Theywhistled, and by practice had attained so copious and flexible avocabulary that they could whistle good-morning and good-night, orhow-do-you-do with equal facility and distinction. This, while it is astep in the right direction, is not a sufficiently long step. To liveamong these people might appear very like living in a cageful of canariesor parrots. Parrots are a very superior race who usually travel withsailors. They have a whistle which can be guided or deflected intovarious by-ways. I once knew a parrot who was employed by a sailor-manto curse for him when his own speech was suspended by liquor. He couldalso whistle ballads and polkas, and had attained an astonishingproficiency in these arts; for, by long practice, he could dovetailcurses and whistles in a most energetic and, indeed, astonishing manner. It would often project two whistles and a curse, sometimes two curses anda whistle, while all the time keeping faithfully to the tune of 'TheSailor's Grave' or another. It was a highly cultivated and eruditeperson. As it advanced in learning it took naturally to chewing tobacco, but, being a person of strongly experimental habits, it tried one day tocurse and whistle and chew tobacco at the one moment, with theunfortunate result that a piece of honeydew got jammed between a whistleand a curse, and the poor thing perished miserably of strangulation. 

"It is indeed singular that while every race of mankind is competent tospeak, none of the other races, such as cats, cows, caterpillars, andcrabs, have shown the slightest interest in the making of this orderednoise. This is the more strange when we reflect that almost all animalsare provided with a throat and a mouth which are capable of making anoise certainly equal in volume and intelligibility to the sounds made bya German or a Spaniard. 

"Long ago men lived in trees and had elongated backbones which they wereable to twitch. There were no shops, theatres, or churches in thosetimes, and, consequently, no necessity for a specialized and meticulousprosody. Man barked at his fellow-man when he wanted something, and ifhis request was not understood he bit his fellow-man and was quit of him. When they forsook the trees and became ground-walkers they came intocontact with a variety of theretofore unknown objects, the necessity fornaming which so exercised their tongues that gradually their bark took ona different quality and became susceptible of more complicated sounds. Then, with the dawning of the Pastoral Age, food in a gregariouscommunity became a matter of more especial importance. When a man barkedat his wife for a cocoanut and she handed him a baby or a bowl of soup oran evening paper it became necessary, in order to minimise heralternatives, that he should elaborate his bark to meet this and anhundred other circumstances. I do not know at what period of history manwas able to call his wife names with the certainty of reprisal. It waspossible quite early, because I have often heard a dog bark in adissatisfied and important manner at another dog and be perfectlycomprehended. 

"A difficulty would certainly arise as to the selection of a word whenforty or fifty men might at the same time label any article with as manydifferent names, and, it is reasonable to suppose, that they would bereluctant to adopt any other expression but that of their own creation. In such a crux the strongest man of the community would be likely toclout the others to an admission that his terminology was standard. 

"Thus, by slow accretions, the various languages crept into currency, andthe youth of innumerable schoolboys has been embittered by having tolearn to spell. 

"Grasshoppers are a fine, sturdy race of people. A great many of themlive on the Hill of Howth, where I have often spent hours hearkening totheir charming conversation. They do not speak with the same machinerythat we use--they convey their ideas to each other by rubbing theirhind-legs together, whereupon noises are produced of exceeding varietyand interest. As a method of speech this is simply delightful, and Iwish we could be trained to converse in so majestical a manner. Perhapswe shall live to see the day when the journals will chronicle that Mr. Redmond had rubbed his legs together for three hours at the TreasuryBench and was removed frothing at the feet, but after a little rest hewas enabled to return and make more noise than ever. "

The old gentleman smiled very genially and went out. The assistantsuggested that he had a terrible lot of old "guff, " but I did not agreewith him. 

VII

Between impartial sips at his own and my liquor the old gentlemanperused the small volume which he had taken from my pocket. After hehad read it he buttoned the book in his own pouch and addressed me withgreat kindness--

"In some respects, " said he, "poets differ materially from otheranimals. For instance, they seldom marry, and when they do it is onlyunder extreme compulsion. --This is the more singular when we rememberthat poets are almost continually singing about love. When they domarry they instantly cease to make poetry and turn to labour like therest of the community. 

"It has been finely said that the poet is born and not made, but Ifancy that this might be postulated of the rest of creation. 

"Many people believe that all poets arise from their beds in the middleof the night, and that they walk ten miles until they come to ahillside, where they remain until the dawn whistling to the littlebirds; but this, while it is true in some instances, is not invariablytrue. A proper poet would not walk ten miles for any one except apublisher. 

"The art of writing poetry is very difficult at first, but it becomeseasy by practice. The best way for a beginner is to take a line fromanother poem; then he should construct a line to fit it; then, havingwon his start, he should strike out the first line (which, of course, does not belong to him) and go ahead. When the poet has written threeverses of four lines each he should run out and find a girl somewhereand read it to her. Girls are always delighted when this is done. They usually clasp their hands together as though in pain, roll theireyes in an ecstasy, and shout, 'How perfectly perfect!' Then the poetwill grip both her hands very tightly and say he loves her but will notmarry her, and, in an agony of inspiration, he will tear himself awayand stand drinks to himself until he is put out. This is, of course, only one way of being a poet. If he perseveres he will ultimatelywrite lyrics for the music halls and make a fortune. He will then weara fur coat that died of the mange, he will support a carnation in hisbuttonhole, wear eighteen rings on his right hand and one hundred andtwenty-seven on his left. He will also be entitled to wear twobreast-pins at once and yellow boots. He will live in England when heis at home, and be very friendly with duchesses. 

"Poetry is the oldest of the arts. Indeed, it may be called the parentof the arts. Poetry, music, and dancing are the only relics which havecome down to us from those ancient times which are termed impartiallythe Golden or the Arboreal Ages. In ancient Ireland the part played bythe poet was very important. Not alone was he the singer of songs, hewas also the bestower of fame and the keeper of genealogies, and, therefore, he was treated with a dignity which he has since refused toforget. When a poet made a song in public, it was customary that theking and the nobility should divest themselves of their jewels, goldchains, and rings, and give this light plunder to him. They alsobestowed on him goblets of gold and silver, herds of cattle, farms, andmaidservants. The poets are not at all happy in these constrictedtimes, and will proclaim their astonishment and repugnance in theroundest language. 

"A few days ago I was speaking in Grafton Street to a poet of greateminence, and, with tears in his voice, he told me that he had neverbeen offered as much as a bracelet by any lady. Times have changed;but for the person who still wishes to enter this decayed professionthere is still every opportunity, for poetry is only the art of cuttingsentences into equal lengths, and then getting these sentences printedby a publisher. It is in the latter part of this formula that the realart consists. 

"There are a great many poets in Ireland, particularly in Dublin. Inan evening's walk one may meet at least a dozen of this peculiarpeople. They may be known by the fact that they wear large, soft hats, and that the breast-pockets of their coats have a more than noticeablebulge, due to their habit of carrying therein the twenty-sevenmasterpieces which they have just written. They are very etherealcreatures, composed largely of soul and thirst. Soul is a far-away, eerie thing, generally produced by eating fish. "

The old gentleman borrowed the price of a tram home; but as heinstantly stood himself a drink with it, I was forced to relend him themoney when we got outside. 

VIII

The old gentleman was in a very bad temper when I arrived. He had alarge glass of porter in his hand--a pint, in fact--and he was gazingon this liquid with no great favour. I was a little surprised at hischoice of a drink, for I had never before known him care for any otherrefreshment than spirits; but I did not like to make any reference tothe change. Looking thus, with great disgust, upon his pint, he beganto talk with some asperity about the English nation. 

"The ways of Providence, " said he, "are indeed inscrutable, else whyshould there be such things in the world as lobsters, gutta-percha, ballet-dancers, and Englishmen? These four objects, and someothers--notably water, tram-cars, and warts--I can find no necessityfor in nature; but there must be some reason for such, or else theycould not have arrived at the more or less mature stage of developmentat which they are found. 

"If we apply the canons of the Pragmatic philosophy to these objects wewill arrive at some conclusion which, although it may not justify theirexistence, will give a hint as to their expediency. The question to beput to any doubtful fact in nature is this--'What is your use?' and thereality of the fact is in ratio to the degree of usefulness inhering init. Thus treated, most of the objects to which I have referred may beable to adduce some excuse for their existence. A lobster may averthat if he were not alive his absence would be a severe blow to thelobster-pot industry, and would throw many respectable families on thealready-overburdened rates. Gutta-percha might plead that it hasaspired through many millions of ages to a maturity which would enableit to rub out lead-pencil marks. Ballet-dancers would have a greatdeal to say for themselves, possibly on moral grounds; but I really seeno reason for Englishmen. 

"I have said that an object is real in ratio to its usefulness. If weexamine an Englishman thus pragmatically we must discover that hisusefulness is zero, and we are then forced to inquire why he exists atall, for he does undoubtedly exist, as witness this pint of porterwhich I hold in my hand, and which I do hold in my hand solely onaccount of the unexplainable existence of Englishmen. 

"I may say at once that I never indulge in this particular form ofrefreshment, against which I have nothing further to charge than itdoes not agree with my system, but I am no bigot in such matters, andcan quite willingly believe that lower natures and less cultivatedpalates may take pleasure in secreting this inordinately lengthyliquid. I cannot avoid the belief that any liquid which may be imbibedby the imperial pint is an essentially gross drink, and one unfittedfor persons of a high culture. Nor can I find in nature that any ofthe more specialised organisms take their drink in such extravagantquantities. Camels, who, I am informed, are a very well-behaved andmoral race leading rigorous and chaste lives in a desert, do drinkdeeply, but their excess is more apparent than real, for Providence inan aberration endowed these folk with more stomachs than the averageperson possesses, and the necessity for filling these additionalcisterns accounts for and justifies their liberal use of moisture. Worms, on the other hand, are a folk for whom I have very littlereverence and no affection. I am not aware whether they are allstomach or all neck, but from their corner-boy expression I am inclinedto fancy that worms would drink pints if they could. Happily, thisdisgusting exhibition is forbidden by the imperfect state of theircivilisation and the inelastic quality of their environment. 

"But this is beside the point. My grievance is, that in my old age Iam forced to drink porter which disagrees with my liver, and amcompelled to abstain from spirits which have a sustaining and medicinaleffect on that organ, and this deprivation is solely due to theunnatural and inexplicable existence of Englishmen. It may be thatnature grew Englishmen for the sole purpose of interfering with myorgans, and so, by modifying my teaching in accordance with my diseasedinterior, nature may be striving to evolve a new culture wherein bilewill have a rare ability. If this is so, then I am not at all obligedto nature for singling me out as the instrument of her changes; if itis not so I can only confess my ignorance and wash my hands of thematter. 

"Mark you, it was only during my lifetime that an exorbitant tax wasplaced on whisky. Before my era the interference with this refreshmentwas of the most tentative and apologetic description. 

"I can remember, and I do remember with dismay, the time when whiskywas purchaseable at two bronze pennies for the naggin, but now one maydischarge a ruinous impost for the privilege of imbibing one poorfourth of that happy measure. 

"This has been brought about by the continuous interference ofEnglishmen with my liquor. Time and again they have added additionaldifficulties to my obtaining this medicinal refreshment, and, while Iam compelled to bow my head to the ideas of nature for the improvementof our race, I am often inclined, having bowed it, to charge goat-likeat these intolerable people and butt them off the face of the earthinto the nowhere for which their villainous and ungenial habits havefitted them. Otherwise, by their future exactions I may be brought tothe drinking of benzene or printer's ink for lack of a fortunewherewith to purchase fitter refreshment. "

Having said this with great fury, the old gentleman laid down hisuntasted pint and stalked out. The acolyte behind the counter made asympathetic clicking noise with his tongue and sold the pint to anotherman. --He probably did this thoughtlessly, and I did not care toembarrass him by remarking on it. 

IX

I met the old gentleman marching solemnly across Cork Hill. There wasa tramcar in his immediate rear, a cab in front of him, an outside-carand a bicycle on his right hand, and a dray laden with barrels on hisleft. The drivers of all these vehicles were entreating him in onevoice to stroll elsewhere. He looked around and, observing thatmatters were complicated, he opened his umbrella, held it over hishead, and awaited events with the most admirable fortitude. When I hadescorted him to the pavement, and further to his own hostelry, heseized the third button of my waistcoat and spake as follows:--

"It is an admirable example of the wisdom of nature that she hasrefrained in every case from equipping her creatures with wheelsinstead of legs, and she might easily have done this. So far as I amaware there are but four methods of progression in nature--these are, flying, swimming, walking and crawling. None of these are performedwith a rotary motion, and all are admirably adapted to the people usingthem, and are sufficiently expeditious to suit their needs. 

"There is no doubt that the most primitive of movements is that ofcrawling, and by this method of progression, one is brought into anintimate contact with the earth which cannot fail to be beneficial. Ido not see any real difficulty in the way of our again becoming a raceof happy and crawling people. The initial essay towards this end is toshed our arms and legs as useless incumbrances, and then to aim at astronger growth of jaw and cranium. Among certain organisms it will befound that the jaws are the most immediately useful parts of the body, performing the most varied and delicate functions with the greatestease. A dog, for example, will, with the one organ, play with a ball, kill a cat, or nip the calf of a Christian, and, when the moon is high, he can make a noise with his mouth which is as loud and quite asmelodious as the professional clamour of a ballad-vocalist. 

"One of the greatest evils of civilisation is the longing for speed, which, within the past hundred years, has developed from a simple viceto a complicated mania. Long ago men were accustomed to use their legsin order to propel themselves forward, and, when greater speed wasnecessary, they assisted their legs with their hands--this was coevalwith, or shortly after, the arboreal age. Next came the hunting epoch, when some person, probably a commercial traveller, dropped off a treeon to a horse's back, and finding the movement pleasant he informed hiscompanions of his adventure and demonstrated to them how it had beenperformed. It is from this occurrence we may date the degradation ofthe human race and the industry of horse-stealing. There followed thepastoral age, when nuts were, more or less, abandoned as a food andtillage became general. The necessity for conveying the crops from thefield to the camp excited some lazy individual to invent a cart, and, thus, wheels came into use and the doom of humanity as an instinctiveand natural race was sealed. 

"While we walked on our own legs we were natural and instinctivecreatures, open to every impression of nature and able to tell the timewithout clocks, but when we adopted mechanical methods of progressionwe became unnatural and mechanical people, whizzing restlessly andrecklessly from here to yonder, for no purpose save the mere sensualpleasure of movement, and we are at this date simply debauched bytravel and have shortened the world to less than one-tenth of itsactual size as well as destroying our abilities for simple and rationalenjoyment. 

"If we continue using these artificial means of locomotion there is nodoubt that the race will become atrophied in the legs but withextraordinary results. The spectacle of an egg-shaped humanitysquatting painfully on engines is not a pleasant one to contemplate, nor is the prospect of a world wherein there will be neither breechesnor boots good for the moralist or economist to dwell upon. 

"In order to conserve the happiness of the world every inventor shouldbe squashed in the egg, more particularly those having anything to dowith wheels, cogs or levers. The wheel has no counterpart in nature, and is unthinkable to any but a diseased and curious mind. Man willnever more be happy until he has broken all the machinery he can findwith a hammer, and has then thrown the hammer into the sea; and then hecan, by experiment, become almost as rooted in the earth as a tree oran artesian well. It is a bad thing to have an indefinite horizon. Itis a good thing to grow knowing one part of the world as thoroughly asone knows the inside of one's boots. Legs make for nationality, patriotism, and all the virtues which centre in locality. Wheels makefor diffuseness, imperialisms, cosmopolitanisms. By the use of legshumanity has stalked into manhood. By the use of wheels we are rapidlyrolling into a race of commercial travellers, touts, gad-abouts, andmembers of parliament, folk with the hanging jaws of astonishment, avidfor curios, and with mental, moral and optical indigestion. 

"I believe that the Spanyols and Mandibaloes, two Mongol racesinhabiting the countries at the rear of the Great Chow Desert, were thefirst people to deal largely with wheels. The men of these nationswere used, when travelling, to affix two small wheels upon theirshoulder blades, and on coming to any slight incline in their path theywould curl up their legs, lie on their backs and free-wheel asdistantly as the slant of the ground permitted, greatly, no doubt, tothe astonishment of less sophisticated people. But, knowing theirhabits, their enemies were wont to lie in wait at the bottoms of hillsand slopes, and when a Spanyol or Mandibaloe came wheeling down a hillwith his legs up he was killed before he could regain a lesscomplicated position, or one more fitted for defence or offence. Thus, these races became rapidly extinct, and are now only remembered by thetracks as wide as a man's shoulderblades which are occasionally foundin parts of the post-tertiary formation. "

The old gentleman released the third button of my waistcoat which hehad held for so long and stepped with me out of the hostel. As it hadbegun to rain he carefully folded up his umbrella, tucked it under hisarm, and strode rapidly down the street. Some small boys followed himfor a little time singing, "We are the boys of Wexford who fought withheart and hand, " but I drove these away. 

X

He wiped his face with a large, red pocket-handkerchief, pursed hislips, shut one eye, and, with the other, he critically observed theremnant of his liquor. After a moment of deep consideration he smileddelightfully and said he thought it was all right. The apothecarybehind the counter smiled also as one gratified and suggested thatthere was not much of that at the North Pole, and, after a littlediscussion on this point, the old gentleman addressed me in thefollowing words:--

"I do not understand what necessity impels people to the discovery ofsomething, which, if it has any existence at all, has only anidealistic existence, and which, when it is discovered, cannot beutilised in any possible direction. Utility is the first attribute ofall terrestrial bodies. A stone, for instance, is a useful inorganicsubstance--it can be built into a house, or thrown at a duck, or, whenground into sand, it can be, and is, sold as sugar by a grocer. It isconstantly being utilised in one or other of these directions; and sowith all other objects. But the necessity for a North or a South Polehas yet to be demonstrated. 

"The statement that the North Pole was put there by the Castleauthorities is one which I do not believe, for I am assured that atevery period of the world's history there has been a North and a SouthPole, which, surrounded as they were by snow-clad countries, icebergs, cold water and whales, were too remote and inhospitable to tempt theaverage civilian to journey there. 

"The only thing which grows in the Polar regions is ice, and this isgenerally found in almost tropical profusion and rankness, growingsometimes to the height of several hundred feet, none of which wearboots. Polar bears and Esquimos are also found there, but in scatteredand inconsiderable quantities. These two races spend most of theirtime chasing each other in order to keep themselves warm, which they doby degrees which are often registered on a barometer. They also eateach other and get scurvy. Outside of these relaxations theirexistence is stagnant and unexciting. I sometimes fancy that if I hadthe misfortune to be born a polar bear or an Esquimo I would not havebeen a patriot. 

"I have no esteem for ice in other than easily portable quantities. Some small pieces to pack around fish, a particle to drop into a glassof lager beer--that is all the ice which I can regard patiently orleniently; but a continent composed entirely of ice and polar bearstempts me to believe that Providence is subject to aberrations. 

"It is supposed to redound to the credit of a nation when one of itscitizens resolves to discover some inaccessible and futile place, andproceeds to do so in the most fantastic manner. The inhabitants ofthat country who remain at their work and continue to pay their ratesare expected to be in a condition of wild enthusiasm and delight at theadventure. --My own impression is, that the majority of people take nomore than a tepid interest in these forlorn adventures, and are butimperfectly convinced of the sanity of the adventurers; and this is themore particularly noticeable when the quest is for something sointangible and unmarketable as a North Pole. Why need they go so farafield for their excitement? Every discoverer is a detective. Hetraces missing places, and there are cartloads of Poles in their owncountries waiting for explorers. 

"The habit of seeking for a North Pole is one of only comparativeantiquity. Its conception is well within the historic era, and must, therefore, be classed as an acquired habit and one not inherent in man. I have not observed that any other animals are addicted to thispeculiar expeditionary craze. It is true that many species of birdsmigrate annually from these shores, and, although their departures areusually chronicled in the newspapers, it must not without furtherevidence be inferred that these birds have gone to look for the NorthPole. They may, as a matter of fact, have left this country to avoidbeing arrested, for here one is continually being arrested. Theevidence in favour of the North Pole theory as regards birds is, thatnobody knows where they have gone to, and that as the rest of the earthis round and densely populated their arrival would be noted somewhereas their departure was, but their arrival not being so noted, and asthey must be somewhere, the process of eliminating all possible placesleaves nowhere but the North Pole as their objective. Now birds are avery intelligent and strenuous race of people who build nests in treesand have often five eggs at a time, and I believe that they leave thesecountries because their nests are full of broken egg-shells, andbecause the winter is setting in, and because they dislike coldweather; and, thus disliking cold weather, it is unlikely that theywould fly to the North Pole where the cold is very intense, and where, moreover, there is little food to be found, saving polar bears andEsquimos, a form of victual for which birds have only the scantiestrelish. My own impression is, that these birds when out of sight ofland are enabled by a mechanism with which we are not yet familiar, toconvert themselves into fishes, or, alternatively, that they know thewhereabouts of Tir na n-Og and go there, or else that they do not goanywhere at all but are simply translated into the Fourth Dimension ofSpace, and are, thus, flying, nesting and mating all around us in amedium which our eyes are too gross to penetrate. 

"From a perusal of the evening papers I observe that the discoverer ofthe North Pole is an American citizen with a complicated pedigree, along beard and a red shirt, all of which he hoisted to the top of thePole and left there for subsequent identification. I fear this was athoughtless action on his part because the Esquimos who live habituallyat the North Pole, but have not discovered it, will, while his back isturned, take to wearing his shirt in turn. They are a communisticpeople, I fancy, and no shirt will survive communism. Also, seeing thefuss which is being made of their Pole, they may either hide it or sellpieces of it to tourists as remembrancers. 

"The explorer should have cached his shirt and other memorials at thefoot of the Pole, built a cairn upon it, and shook cayenne pepper ontop of all to keep bears away--but it is useless to advise explorers. "

The ancient hereupon made a significant gesture to the curate, whomisinterpreted it, and brought more than he had required. He was verymuch perturbed, for, as he explained, he had forgotten to bring hispurse with him. He consented, however, to use my purse for his needs, and, after paying his shot, he, in an abstracted and melancholy manner, put the change in his trouser pocket. There was only one shilling inthe purse so I did not like to draw his attention to the mistake. Hevery genially returned my purse, and said he had conceived a greatliking for me. 

XI

When the old gentleman came in I noticed at once that he was out ofhumour. He had a large scar on his chin, and three pieces of newspaperon his cheeks. He discharged the contents of my tobacco pouch into apipe which had a holding capacity of one and a half ounces, and then hebecame more cheerful--

"I dislike extremely, " said he, "the impertinent interference withnature which men are nowadays guilty of. Not content with clamping ourfeet in leathern boxes, our legs in cloth cylinders, our trunks in avariety of wrappings of complex inutility, and then inserting our headsinto monstrous felt pots, we even approach ourselves more minutely andscrape the very hair from our faces which nature has sown there forpurposes of ornament and protection; with the result, that it isdifficult for a short-sighted person to distinguish rapidly the sex ofthe people with whom he comes in contact saving by a minute and tediousexamination of their clothing. 

"This habit of shaving is one which is entirely confined to man. It isthe one particular habit that he holds apart from all other animals, and, indeed, it is not an accomplishment upon which he need pridehimself, for in parting with his beard he has sacrificed the onlypleasant-looking portion of his face. 

"It could easily be proved that hair and innocence have a subtlerelationship. No very hairy person is really vicious, as witness thecaterpillar, of whom I have not heard that he ever bit any one: while, on the other hand, the frog, who is born bald, would doubtless be verysavage were it not for the fact that nature has benevolently curtailedhis teeth. Fishes, also, an uncleanly race, and who I fancy are shavedbefore birth, are all monsters of cold-blooded ferocity, and they willdevour their parents and even their own offspring with equal andindiscriminate enjoyment. 

"The habit of shaving is not of a very ancient origin. When humanitylived a quiet, rural and unambitious life, men did not shave: theirhair was their glory, and if they had occasion to swear, which musthave been infrequent, their hardiest and readiest oath was, 'by thebeard of my father, ' showing clearly that this texture was held inveneration in early times and was probably accorded divine honours uponsuitable occasions. 

"With the advent of war came the habit of shaving. A beard offered toohandy a grip to a foeman who had gotten to close quarters, therefore, warriors who had no true hardihood of soul preferred cutting off theirbeards to the honourable labour of defending their chins. Many ancientraces effected a compromise in order to retain a fitting militaryappearance, for a bare-faced warrior has but little of terror in hisaspect. The ancient Egyptians, for example, who had cut off, or couldnot cultivate, or had been forcibly deprived of their beards, were wontto go into battle clad in heavy false whiskers, which, when an enemyseized hold of them, came off instantly in his hand, and the ancientEgyptian was enabled to despatch him while in a trance of stupefactionand horror. Clean-shaved men became, by this cowardly stratagem, verymuch prized as fighting men, and thus the foundation of the shavinghabit was laid. 

"It is a remarkable fact that, save for an inconsiderable number wholive in circuses, women have no beards. I am unable at present totrace the reason for this singular omission, but the advantages ofbeards for women are too patent for explanation. They would improveher personal appearance, and their advantages as air-purifiers orrespirators I need not dwell upon. I am certain that a persistentapplication of goose-grease and electricity to the chin of a womanwould at last enable her to become as bearded and virtuous as herhusband, besides entitling her to the political franchise. They areperverse creatures, however, and it is possible that this deprivationis responsible for many of their ill-humours and crankinesses. Theirscarcity of beard is the more remarkable when we observe that thefemale cat is as magnificently whiskered as her male companion. Thewisdom of cats is proverbial, and I have never heard of a cat who hashired another cat to bite out, tear off, scrape or otherwise demolishhis or her whiskers. When I do hear of some such occurrence I shall beprepared to reconsider my position on this subject. 

"In some ways a clean-shaved face is desirable. A pig's cheek shouldnot have whiskers, neither should oysters nor the face of a clock, buta man's face should never be seen out of doors without a decent andhonourable covering. "

Having said this, the old gentleman, with remarkable presence of mind, drank my whisky, and then apologised with dignified and touchinghumility. As we departed the youth behind the counter corrugated hisfeatures in a remarkable manner, and said, "bow-wow" by way ofvalediction. 

XII

He helped himself absently to two water biscuits and a piece of cheeseand sank to a profound reverie. The eating of this light refreshmentwas probably a manifestation of subconscious thought, for, when he hadfinished, he spoke to me as follows--

"There are a great many things which I dislike immensely but thenecessity for which I must perforce acquiesce in: these are water, easterly winds and actresses: but there are other habits cultivated byhumanity for which I can find no apology, and some of these have grownto so great an extent that they now bulk as evils of terrificmagnitude. "

"Foremost among these reprehensible customs I will mention that ofeating. Of all the evils under which civilisation staggers helplesslythe most ponderous and merciless is hunger, and it is the evil whichwill ultimately decimate all existing forms of life. 

"All forms of organic life have now for millions of years been slavesto this filthy habit of eating, and have superimposed upon theiroriginal singleness of form a variety of weighty and unattractiveorgans to keep pace with the satisfaction of this oppressive appetite, until to-day the entire organic world stands upon the imminent brink ofdestruction if food should be withheld from it for one entire week. 

"Every living being should be self-supporting and self-sufficient. Itshould be inherent in the economy of a man to produce for himself notalone food but also shelter and raiment from his own internalresources. A man should be able to build a house or evolve a loaf ofbread out of his own body with ease and assurance. 

"Look for a moment at spiders. Every spider carries within himself thematerials for his own home. His stomach, instead of being, as isvulgarly supposed, a cemetery for smaller organisms, is in reality hisbrick-field and rope-walk, and out of this minute sack he will produceendless miles of cordage and web which he weaves into the mostbeautiful and mathematical harmonies. This is a self-contained utilitywhich might be imitated by men with advantage, and that which is donewith ease by a spider can scarcely offer insuperable difficulty to thechief of the vertebrates. Of course, each man's production will bemore or less guided and limited by his capacity. --Thus, fat men willspin forth cathedrals, opera-houses and railway stations. Thin menwill devote themselves to obelisks, church spires, factory chimneys, and artistic bric-a-brac. Short men will willingly produce artisans'dwellings, busts of famous men and, perhaps, now and then, pyramids orvilla residences. Constant work of this description will not alonerender us independent of landlords, but, by atrophy of the digestiveorgans, will inaugurate a brighter era for long-suffering, food-fedhumanity. 

"Suppose it is advanced that man cannot keep up his strength andusefulness without some kind of exterior nourishment--I will thenproceed to demonstrate how this can be most easily accomplished. Ourfirst cousins, the trees and bushes, do not sit down at stated hours toa heterogeneous mess of steak, tea and onions: they stand firm in theground unhurried by the sound of the dinner-bell and careless of thestate of the American market. As the spider is sufficient in itself inhouse-building, so are the trees, the grass and all inorganic lifeself-supporting so far as food is concerned. The reason is, thattrees, grass and flowers are bedded in the earth, the source of allnourishment. Let this fact be but properly understood, and the lastand greatest bar to human progress will be removed, and 'themillenniums which so furiously chase us' will have a chance of catchingus up. 

"If, once a week, men would bury themselves to the chin in good fertileclay, and allow the nurture of the earth to permeate their bodies therewould be an end to this gross and unfortunate digestive activity. Ihave myself experimented in this direction with the most encouragingresults. A rich, loamy soil is very good--it is rather cold at thebottom, but invigorating. Light, sandy clay would suit sedentarypersons such as parsons, artists, judges. In poor ground somesuperphosphates, or a light compost could be strewn by each personaround himself. Families would take turns in pruning each other, andso forth; but all these incidental matters would rapidly adjustthemselves. After a time we might succeed in propagating ourselves byseeds or slips, and this would lead to a radical readjustment of oursex relations and put an end to many of the problems wherewith we areeternally badgered and perplexed. 

"In some ways I will admit that food is valuable. As a means ofkilling a rich uncle by gout, or of attaining wealth by judiciousadulteration it can be recommended, and looked at in the light of agentle morning exercise to be taken immediately after rising it isuseful, but as a method of obtaining nourishment it is obsolete anddisgustingly vulgar. "

At this point the gentleman-in-waiting snorted in a most unbecomingmanner, and dived under the counter, from beneath which he alternatelymewed like a cat and crowed like a cock. It was a clear attack ofhysteria. While the poor man was recovering from his seizure the oldgentleman absent-mindedly departed without paying his shot. 

THE END