he melancholy justification of his existence.

But the common people themselves are not like that. They quit their
exact contemporaries at school and thence-forth are out upon the sea of
life with men of all ages and breedings and nationalities around them
and pressing them hard. They act and are reacted upon. Most of them
nurse a secret grievance. Very few of them have any code of honour
beyond law and decency. They are very largely needy adventurers, living
by their wits, and are ready to pay money to those who profess to show
them how they can increase their incomes, or obtain a pension, or
"better their positions," or cure themselves of the innumerable physical
disabilities which their fatuous ignorance and indolence have brought
upon them. They love to decipher word competitions, football
competitions, racing competitions. They have the high-binder's passion
for getting something for nothing, his dislike to real work. And this
lack of contemporary associates, this rough-and-tumble aspect of the
world, induces them to regard their vices as virtues and themselves as
oppressed helots struggling under the iron heels of those whom mere luck
and cunning have placed in authority over them. The London School of
Mnemonics was making a hundred thousand pounds a year net profit out of
these people in England alone. Even the grim witticism of the company
promoter, that there is "a sucker born every minute," seems inadequate
to account for so monstrous a simplicity of soul. The fact is, the very
boldness of the trick rendered it easy. You paid your guinea, and in due
course, in due secrecy, and under duly sworn promises to divulge no hint
of their contents to a living soul, you received a number of
refined-looking pamphlets containing a couple of thousand words each.
You thrilled as you joined in the game. Even Captain Meredith, sitting
in his chart room and looking through Number Four, which Mr. Spokesly
had inadvertently left on the table, was tickled by the subtle
atmosphere of the style. This, he divined, was the newly discovered
rapid-transit route to the Fortunate Isles, and his expression hardened
to rigid attention as his eye fell on the testimony of "a ship's
officer." This gentleman had risen from the humble position of fourth
officer to the command "of one of our largest liners" in the
miraculously brief period of eighteen months, and ascribed this success
entirely to the lessons of the London School of Mnemonics. Cap