The Review of Reviews. 



August 1, isee. 



this night of which I am now particularly telling, 

 and the only face upon the hydra of Capitalism and 

 Monopoly that 1 could see at all clearly, smiled ex- 

 actly as old Rawdon had smiled when he refused 

 to give me more than a paltry twenty shillings a 

 week. 



I wanted intensely to salve my self-respect by 

 some revenge upon him, and I felt that if that could 

 be done by slaying the hydra, I might drag its car- 

 case to the feet of Nettie and settle my other trouble 

 as well ! " What do you think of me now, Nettie ?" 



That, at any rate, comes near enough to the 

 quality of my thinking then, for you to imagine how 

 I gesticulated and spouted to Parload that night. 

 You figure us as little black figures, unprepossessing 

 in the outline, set in the midst of that desolating 

 night of flaming industrialism, and my little voice 

 with a rhetorical twang protesting, denouncing. 



You wall consider those notions of my youth poor, 

 silly, violent stuff ; particularly if you are of the 

 younger generation born since the Change, you will 

 be of that opinion. Nowadays when the whole world 

 thinks clearly, thinks with deliberation, pellucid cer- 

 tainties, )ou find it impossible to imagine how any 

 other thinking could have been possible. Let me tell 

 you, then, how you can bring yourself to something 

 like the condition of our former state. In the first 

 place, you must get vourself out of health by unwise 

 drinking and eating, and out of condition by neglect- 

 ing your exercise ; then you must contrive to be wor- 

 ried verv much and made verv anxious and uncom- 

 fortahle. and then you must work very hard for four 

 or five days and for long hours every day at some- 

 thing too pettv to be interesting, too complex to be 

 mechanical, and without any personal significance to 

 you whatever. This done, go straightway into a 

 room that is not ventilated at all, and that is already 

 full of foul air, and there set yourself to think out 

 some very complicated problem. In a very little 

 while you will find yourself in a state of intellectual 

 muddle, annoyed, impatient, snatching at the ob- 

 vious, presently chcosing and rejecting conclusions 

 haphazard. Try to play chess under such conditions, 

 and you will play stu|)idly and lose your temper. 

 Tiy to do anything that taxes brain or temper, and 

 you will fail. 



Now-, the whole world before the Change was as 

 sick and feverish as that ; it was worried and over- 

 worked and perplexed by problems that would not 

 get stated simply, that altered and evaded solution ; 

 it was in an atmosphere that had corrupted and 

 thickened past breathing ; there was no thorough, 

 cool thinking in the world at all. There was nothing 

 in the mind of the world anvw-here but half-truths, 

 hasty assumptions, hallucinations and emotion. 

 Nothing. 



I know it seems incredible, and that alreadv some 

 of the younger men are beginning to doubt the great- 

 ness of the Change our world has undergone, but 



read, read the newspapers of that time. Every age 

 becomes mitigated and a little ennobled in our 

 minds as it recedes into the past. It is the paxt of 

 those who, like myself, have stories of that time to 

 tell, to supply, by a scrupulous spiritual realism, 

 some antidote to that glamour. 



V. 



Always with Parload I was chief talker. 



I can look back upon myself with, I believe, an 

 almost perfect detachment. Things have so changed 

 that, indeed, now- I am another being, with scarcely 

 anything in common with that boastful, foolish 

 youngster whose troubles I recall. I see him vulgarly 

 theatrical, egotistical, insincere; indeed, I do not like 

 him save with that instinctive material sympathy 

 that is the fruit of incessant intimacy. Because he 

 was myself, I may be able to feel and write under- 

 standingl'v about motives that will put him out of 

 sympathy with nearly every reader, but w-hy should 

 I palliate or defend his quality ? 



Always, I say, I did the talking, and it would 

 have amazed me beyond measure if anyone had told 

 me that mine w-as not the greater intelligence in these 

 wcrdy encounters. Parload was a quiet youth, and 

 stiff and restrained in all things, while I had that 

 supreme gift for young men and democracies — the 

 gift of copious expression. Parload I diagnosed in 

 my secret heart as a trifle dull. He posed as preg- 

 nantly quiet, I thought, and was obsessed by the 

 congenial notion of " scientific caution." I did not 

 remark that while my hands were chiefly useful for 

 gesticulation or holding a pen, Parload's hands could 

 do all sorts of things, and I did not think, therefore, 

 that fibres must run from those fingers to something 

 in his brain. Nor, though I bragged perpetually of 

 my shorthand, of my literature, of my indispensable 

 share in Rawdon's business, did Parload lay stress 

 on the conies and calculus he •" mugged " in the or- 

 ganised science school. Parload is a famous man 

 now-, a great figure in a great time ; his work upon 

 intersecting radiations has broadened the intellectual 

 horizon of mankind forever, and I, w-ho am at best a 

 hewer of intellectual wood, a drawer of living water, 

 can smile, and he can smile, to think how I patronised 

 and posed and jabbered over him in .'he darkness of 

 those early days. 



That night I was shrill and eloquent beyond mea- 

 sure. Rawdon was, of course, the hub upon w-hich 

 I went round — Rawdon, and the Rawdonesque em- 

 ployer, and the injustice of " wage-slavery " and aJl 

 the immediate conditions of that industrial blind 

 alley up which it seemed our lives were thrust. But 

 ever and again I glanced at other things. Nettie 

 was always there in the background of my mind, re- 

 garding me enigmatically. It was part of my pose 

 to Parload that I had a romantic love affair some- 

 where away beyond the sphere of our intercourse, 

 and that note gave a Bvronic resonance to manv of 



