the Great Revolution, for which the world was not yet ready. The man was before his age, and his own generation pooh-poohed him. I quite forget his name. I quite forget the title of his book if he ever wrote one; and I shall be very much obliged to you if you can find out something about the great man, for a great man he was. When I heard of this scheme I was little more than a lad, and now, after much cogitation, I cannot honestly tell you how much of the plan is his and how much my own. But I'll give him all the credit for it.' The scheme was a scheme for automatically adjusting all incomes and reducing them to something like equilibrium-that is, the operation of the process set in motion would tend in that direction. All incomes, no matter from what sources derived, were to be fixed according to an algebraic formula, and the formula was this: •0001 (x —m)2 The income tax levied upon each citizen. Here x = the actual income earned by the citizen; m = 1,000 pounds sterling, or an equivalent in francs or dollars, if you prefer it. When x = m, then of course there could be nothing to pay; which is only another way of saying that a man with 1,000l. a year was free from all taxation. When x was greater than m, then taxation upon the income in excess of 1,000l. came into operation with rather alarming rapidity; until when a man was convicted of having in any single year made 10,000l. his taxation amounted to 8,100l. for that year, and if he were ever found guilty of having made an income of 12,000l. the State claimed the whole in obedience to this great and beneficent law. But what happens in the case of those who have an income below the 1,000l. a year—that is, when x is less than m? In this case the grandeur and sagacity, not to speak of the paternal character of the scheme, become apparent. The moment a man begins to earn more than the normal 1,000l. a year, that moment he begins to pay his beautifully adjusted quota of taxation to the State; but the moment that his income falls below the 1,000l., that moment the State begins to pay him. Of course you will not forget that minus into minus gives plus, therefore the square of the minus quantity represented by x-m, where m is greater than x, offers no difficulty. The two poles of this perfect sphere, if I may so speak, this financial orb-teres atque rotundus-are reached, first when x = 0, last when x = 11,000l. In the first case the State comes to the help of the pauper who has earned or can earn nothing, and gives him a ten-thousandth part of a hypothetical million, which amounts to exactly 100l. a year; in the other case the State deprives the bloated plutocrat of a ten-thousandth part of the same million, and relieves the dangerous citizen of ten thousand out of the eleven, saying to him, 'Citizen, be grateful that you still have your thousand, and beware how you persist in piling up riches, for the State knows how to gather them.' 'Now, my dear Polus, next time you come, do bring me tidings of my Frenchman, and do work the thing out on paper, for I never was much of a mathematician, and now my decimals are scandalously vague!' So Polus went his way with a dainty rosebud in a dainty paper box for Mrs. Polus, and a saucy message from the Lady Shepherd. Tell her, with my love, I'm very sorry her husband's such a goose!' We watched him floundering through the snow-drifts; and I verily believe he was working out my problem with his stick, 0001 (x-m)2. I don't think that man went away much impressed with the darkness and desolation of our Arcadian life. Nay, I'm inclined to think the other side had something to say, and I'm afraid this is what it said: 'Oh yes, it's all very fine-intellectual intercourse, and so on. Freshens you up? It freshens him up. He'll wriggle himself into the House of Commons some day, and he'll incubate your (x-m)2 theory, and much thanks you'll get. Glad to see people? Of course I am. But I did hope we were going to have a long day together, and there! it's all broken into. It's always the way. How was I to do my autographs with him extinguishing my 1,000l. in the funds all the while?' Here I may as well explain that the Shepherd and his lady are the objects of some wonder and perplexity to their great friends on the one hand and their little friends on the other. The first pronounce them to be poor as rats; the second declare that they are rolling in riches. This conflict of opinion is easily accounted for. When the great and noble Asnapper comes to smile at us he has to take potluck. Come when he may, there is all due provision— Ne turpe toral, ne sordida mappa Corruget nares, ne non et cantharus et lanx But the forks are all electro-plate, and the dishes are all of the willow pattern. When meek little Mr. Crumb brings Mrs. Crumb and two of the eight daughters to enjoy one hearty meal at afternoon tea, he is awe-struck by the sight of more than 6,000 volumes, and the splendour of half a dozen good engravings hanging upon the walls. As the old grey pony trots home in high spirits-for Jabez has a standing order always to give that poor little beast a double feed of corn-Mr. Crumb remarks to Mrs. Crumb, Those people must be extremely affluent. I wonder he does not restore his church!' The great and noble Asnapper, on the contrary, observes, All the 6 signs of deep poverty, my dear. Keeps his pluck up, though. Quite out of character with the general appearance of the establishment to have those books and collections and what not. I suppose some uncle left him the things. Cooking? I forgot to notice that; but the point of one's knife went all sorts of ways, and the earthenware was most irritating. Eccentric people. The Lady Shepherd, as they call her, has actually got near a thousand autographs. Why in the world doesn't she send them up to Sotheby's and buy some new stair carpets?' Ah! why indeed? Because such as she and the Shepherd have a way of their own which is not exactly your way, my noble Asnapper; because they have made their choice,. and they do not repent it. Some things they have, and take delight in them; some things they have not, and they do without them. But not even in Arcady is it all cakes and ale. Thank God we have our duties as well as our enjoyments; pursuits and tastes we have, and the serious blessed duties which call us from excess in self-indulgence. When the roads are blocked for man and beast we chuckle because there can be no obligation to trudge down to the school a mile and a half off, or to go and pay that wedding call upon the little bride who was married last week, or to inquire about the health of Mrs. Thingoe on the common, whose twins are ten days old. But snow or no snow, as long as old Biddy lives, one of us positively must go and look after the old lady.' Every man, woman, and child in the parish calls her 'the old lady,' and a real old lady she is. Biddy was ninety-one last November. She persists she's ninety-two'leastways in my ninety-two. That Register only said when I was christened, you know, and who's agoing to say how long I was born before I was christened?' Biddy has been married three times, and she avers that she wouldn't mind marrying again if she could get another partner equal to her second. Every one of her husbands had had one or more wives before he wedded Biddy. We make out that Biddy and her three spouses committed an aggregate of twelve acts of matrimony. If you think that old Biddy is a feeble old dotard, drivelling and maundering, you never made a greater mistake in your life. She is as bright as a star of the first magnitude, and as shrewd as the canniest Scotchman that ever carried a pack. She is almost the only genuine child of Arcady I ever knew who has a keen sense of humour, and is always on the look-out for a joke. She is quite the only one in whom I have noticed any tender pity for the fallen, not because of the consequences that followed the lapse, but simply and only because it was a fall. Biddy lives by herself in a house very little bigger than an enlarged dog-kennel, and much smaller than an average cowhouse. Till she was eighty-three she went about the country with a donkey and cart, hawking; since then she has managed to exist, and pay her rent too, on eighteen pence a week and a stone of flour. She is always neat and clean, and more than cheerful. She has been knitting socks for me for eight years past, and I am provided with sufficient hosiery now to last me even to the age of the patriarchs. Of course we demoralise old Biddy; her little home is hardly 100 yards off the parsonage, and every now and then the old lady comes to tea in the kitchen. One of the servants goes to fetch her, and another takes her home; and, as I have said, most days one of us goes to sit with her, and I make it a rule never to leave her without making her laugh. Is that demoralising? You may think what you like, but I hold that innocent merriment keeps people healthy in mind and body, improves the digestion, clears the intellect, brightens the conscience, prepares the soul for adoration-for is not gaiety the anticipation of that which in the spiritual world will be known as fulness of joy? On this day of snow I found Biddy sitting before the fire, half expecting me and half doubting whether I could get there. "'Cause, you know, you ain't as young as you was when you came here first.' 'Is anyone, Biddy?' She looked up in her sly way. Dash it! I ain't!' By her side on the little table was a Book of Common Prayer in very large print, and her spectacles on it. I've begun to read that book through,' she said, and I've got as far as where it's turned down, but there's some on it as I've got to be very particular with. That there slanting print, that's hard, that is; that ain't so easy as the rest on it. But I'm going to read it all through for all that. You see I've done it all before, and some of it comes easy.' 'Well, Biddy, you ought to know the marriage service by this time.' And so I do,' said Biddy, grinning. But I never had no churchings, and I don't hold wi' that there Combination. Dash it! I never did like cussing and swearing! It turned out that Biddy had set herself the task of reading the Prayer Book through, rubrics and all. Very funny, wasn't it? Pray, my reverend brethren of the clergy, have you all of you set yourselves the same task and carried it out? 2 2 A little later the Lady Shepherd dropped in to look at Biddy. She found the old woman chuckling over some very mild pleasantry of mine, which she repeated in her own odd way. Suddenly she stopped. Our doctor won't live to eighty-two!' 'Oh, Biddy, that's more than you can tell. One thing is quite certain; if he does, you won't be here to see him.' 'Why shan't I?' answers Biddy. 'He's nigh upon threescore, ain't he? and I'm in my ninety-two. You can't tell, neither, as I shan't be here. The Lord knows.' Dear old Biddy! Who does know anything? It seems to me that we can none of us know anything about anything but the past. I hardly know whether we are most ignorant of the things that shall 2 Fact! Old Biddy's habit of dashing it is so confirmed that there's no hope of her outgrowing it. be or the things that are. Old Biddy is the last of the old-world folk that fascinated me so much with their legends and traditions and reminiscences when first I settled among them-it seems but yesterday. Old Biddy has told me all she has to tell, the gossip and the experiences of days that were not as our days. With her will pass away all that is left of a generation that was the generation of our fathers. If I leave her with a smile upon the wrinkled old face there is more often a shade of sadness that passes over my own. Other faces rise up before me; other voices seem to sound; the touch of the vanished hand-gone-gone! As I turn homeward with bowed head in the grey twilight, and muse upon those eight years that have rushed by so peacefully, and yet which have remorselessly levied their tribute and left me beggared of some who were dearer than all the jewels of the mine The farm-smokes, sweetest sight on earth, Slow through the winter air a-shrinking, That, however, is not because Arcady is Arcady, but because life is life. Such as we have long ago found the secret of contentment, and something more. It had dawned upon the great Laureate, too, when he wrote All life needs for life is possible to will. 6 Yes, that is only the poet's way of putting into verse what in rugged prose appears as my favourite aphorism- The man who does not like the place he has to live in is a fool.' Ponder it well, you people who are never tired of prescribing a change' as absolutely necessary to endurable existence. Banished to the sweetest village in England, how dazed and forlorn you'd be! We could accommodate ourselves to your life as easily as we could put on a new suit of clothes. You could never accommodate yourselves to ours. You would mope and pine. Your only solace would be in droning forth a new version of the Tristia, which would not be half as melodious as Ovid's. This poor Shepherd and his Lady Shepherd will never see the Alps again-never take a boat on Lugano's lake in the summer evening, never see Rome or Florence, never again stand before the Sistine Madonna, hearing their hearts beat. Ravenna will remain for them unvisited, and Munich will be welcome to keep its acres of splashes, which Britain's young men and maidens are told with some insistence are genuine works of Rubens, every one of them. These are joys of the past. But if you assume that two old fogies like us must be longing for a change, fidgeting and hankering after it, and that we must be getting rusty, dull, and morose for lack of it, that |