nounce.

"The optimist believes in the regeneration of the race, in its
ultimate perfectibility, the synthesis of humanity, the providential
idea, and the path of the future; he therefore puts on a shovel hat,
cries out against lust, and depreciates prostitution."

"Oh, the brute!" chuckled the wizen youth, "without prostitutes and
public-houses! what a world to live in!"

"The optimist counsels manual labour for all. The pessimist believes
that forgetfulness and nothingness is the whole of man. He says, 'I
defy the wisest of you to tell me why I am here, and being here, what
good is gained by my assisting to bring others here.' The pessimist
is therefore the gay Johnny, and the optimist is the melancholy
Johnny. The former drinks champagne and takes his 'tart' out to
dinner, the latter says that life is not intended to be happy
in--that there is plenty of time to rest when you are dead."

John laughed loudly; but a moment after, reassuming his look of
admonition, he asked Mike to tell him about his poem.

"The subject is astonishingly beautiful," said Mike; "I only speak of
the subject; no one, not even Victor Hugo or Shelley, ever conceived
a finer theme. But they had execution, I have only the idea. I
suppose the world to have ended; but ended, how? Man has at last
recognized that life is, in equal parts, misery and abomination, and
has resolved that it shall cease. The tide of passion has again
risen, and lashed by repression to tenfold fury, the shores of life
have again been strewn with new victims; but knowledge--calm,
will-less knowledge--has gradually invaded all hearts; and the
restless, shifting sea (which is passion) shrinks to its furthest
limits.

"There have been Messiahs, there have been persecutions, but the Word
has been preached unintermittently. Crowds have gathered to listen
to the wild-eyed prophets. You see them on the desert promontories,
preaching that human life must cease; they call it a disgraceful
episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets--you see
them hunted and tortured as were their ancestors, the Christians of
the reign of Diocletian. You see them entering cottage doors and
making converts in humble homes. The world, grown tired of vain
misery, accepts oblivion.

"The rage and the seething of the sea is the image I select to
represent the struggle for life. The dawn is my image for the
diffusion and triumph of sufficient reason. In a couple of hundred
lines I hav