f us agreed with the other. I
think that we were at one, save for the fact that I was, after all, a
Northerner--and that is a blemish which nobody in Kings Port can quite
get over. John, therefore, was unprepared for my wholesale denunciation
of lynching.

"With your clear view of the negro," he explained.

"My dear man, it's my clear view of the white! It's the white, the
American citizen, the 'hope of humanity,' as he enjoys being called,
who, after our English-speaking race has abolished public executions,
degenerates back to the Stone Age. It's upon him that lynching works the
true injury."

"They're nothing but animals," he muttered.

"Would you treat an animal in that way?" I inquired.

He persisted. "You'd do it yourself if you had to suffer from them."

"Very probably. Is that an answer? What I'd never do would be to make a
show, an entertainment, a circus, out of it, run excursion trains to see
it--come, should you like your sister to buy tickets for a lynching?"

This brought him up rather short. "I should never take part myself," he
presently stated, "unless it were immediate personal vengeance."

"Few brothers or husbands would blame you," I returned. "It would be
hard to wait for the law. But let no community which treats it as a
public spectacle presume to call itself civilized."

He gave a perplexed smile, shaking his head over it. "Sometimes I think
civilization costs--"

"Civilization costs all you've got!" I cried.

"More than I've got!" he declared. "I'm mortal tired of civilization."

"Ah, yes! What male creature is not? And neither of us will live quite
long enough to see the smash-up of our own."

"Aren't you sometimes inconsistent?" he inquired, laughing.

"I hope so," I returned. "Consistency is a form of death. The dead are
the only perfectly consistent people."

"And sometimes you sound like a Socialist," he pursued, still laughing.

"Never!" I shouted. "Don't class me with those untrained puppies of
thought. And you'll generally observe," I added, "that the more nobly
a Socialist vaporizes about the rights of humanity, the more wives and
children he has abandoned penniless along the trail of his life."

He was livelier than ever at this. "What date have you fixed for the
smash-up of our present civilization?"

"Why fix dates? Is it not diversion enough to watch, and step handsomely
through one's own part, with always a good sleeve to laugh in?"

Pensiveness returned upon