easons why I should
hail this cottage with delight. First of all, it stands where trim cottages
are rarer than pit-heads and slag heaps; and, secondly, GEORGE STEPHENSON
once lived there. From now onwards, however, I have a third and more
compelling reason for respecting the old building. You shall hear.

Know, then, that I have a friend called Smithson. The Athenians would have
had a short way with him; and I admit that there have been times in the
course of our relationship when hemlock would really have been the only
thing to meet the case. Our conversations (it is no fault of mine) are
always dialectical. They take the following form. Light-heartedly I
enunciate a proposition. Smithson is interested and asks for a clearer
statement. I modify my original position. Smithson purrs. Seeing trouble
imminent, I modify my modification, and from that point onwards I make a
foredoomed but not (as I flatter myself) an unplucky fight against
relentless logic. The elenchus comes soon or late, but it always comes.
Only in dreams am I ever one up on Smithson. The old trick of cramming up
hard parts of the Encyclopaedia overnight is no good. I tried it once with
"Hegesippus" and "The Hegira." You don't know what either of these words
mean? Smithson did--and he knew the articles. No doubt he and Mr. GLADSTONE
had written them in collaboration.

Well, yesterday, Smithson and I were in the neighbourhood of the cottage
which I have told you of. Having an hour to spare from work of national
importance, we took our sandwiches and were eating them in view of the
jolly old house.

"What's that thing over the door?" I said.

"That I take to be a sun-dial," said Smithson with his accustomed reserve
of strength.

"What a delightful stile," I said. (You always have stiles on sun-dials. I
knew that).

"_Qua_ stile it is perfect. What do you make of the inscription?"

I went at it bald-headed. "_Percunt et imputantur_," I said.

"You may be right, of course," replied Smithson, "though it certainly
begins with an A."

"True," I corrected. "_Anno Domini_."

"Conceivably--but the second letter is a U."

I left Smithson painfully to reconstruct A-U-G-U-S-T from among the ivy. He
had got to the M of a long date when a burst of sun cast a crisp shadow
across the dial.

"I don't think much of GEORGE STEPHENSON after all," I said. "His beastly
clock doesn't know the right time."

Smithson snorted. Here was a challenge to the omniscient.