the
editor suddenly loses patience and says, "This correspondence must now
cease.--Ed." and wonders why on earth he ever allowed anything so
tedious and idiotic to begin.

I pointed out to Laider one of the Australian letters that had
especially pleased me in the current issue. It was from "A Melbourne
Man," and was of the abrupt kind which declares that "all your
correspondents have been groping in the dark" and then settles the
whole matter in one short sharp flash. The flash in this instance was
"Reason is faith, faith reason--that is all we know on earth and all we
need to know." The writer then inclosed his card and was, etc., "A
Melbourne Man." I said to Laider how very restful it was, after
influenza, to read anything that meant nothing whatsoever. Laider was
inclined to take the letter more seriously than I, and to be mildly
metaphysical. I said that for me faith and reason were two separate
things, and as I am no good at metaphysics, however mild, I offered a
definite example, to coax the talk on to ground where I should be safer.

"Palmistry, for example," I said. "Deep down in my heart I believe in
palmistry."

Laider turned in his chair.

"You believe in palmistry?"

I hesitated.

"Yes, somehow I do. Why? I haven't the slightest notion. I can give
myself all sorts of reasons for laughing it to scorn. My common sense
utterly rejects it. Of course the shape of the hand means something,
is more or less an index of character. But the idea that my past and
future are neatly mapped out on my palms--" I shrugged my shoulders.

"You don't like that idea?" asked Laider in his gentle, rather academic
voice.

"I only say it's a grotesque idea."

"Yet you do believe in it?"

"I've a grotesque belief in it, yes."

"Are you sure your reason for calling this idea 'grotesque' isn't
merely that you dislike it?"

"Well," I said, with the thrilling hope that he was a companion in
absurdity, "doesn't it seem grotesque to you?"

"It seems strange."

"You believe in it?"

"Oh, absolutely."

"Hurrah!"

He smiled at my pleasure, and I, at the risk of reentanglement in
metaphysics, claimed him as standing shoulder to shoulder with me
against "A Melbourne Man." This claim he gently disputed.

"You may think me very prosaic," he said, "but I can't believe without
evidence."

"Well, I'm equally prosaic and equally at a disadvantage: I can't take
my own belief as evidence, and I've no other evide