estir myself, or
my last day will come before I have accomplished anything.

When I jotted down the above not very original memorandum I had passed a
perfectly uneumoirous week among my friends and social acquaintances.
I had stood godfather to my sister Agatha's fifth child, taking upon
myself obligations which I shall never be able to perform; I had dined
amusingly at my sister Jane's; I had shot pheasants at Farfax
Glenn's place in Hampshire; and I had paid a long-promised charming
country-house visit to old Lady Blackadder.

When I came back to town, however, I consulted my calendar with some
anxiety, and set out to clear my path.

I have now practically withdrawn from political life. Letters have
passed; complimentary and sympathetic gentlemen have interviewed me
and tried to weaken my decision. The great Raggles has even called,
and dangled the seals of office before my eyes. I said they were very
pretty. He thought he had tempted me.

"Hang on as long as you can, for the sake of the Party."

I spoke playfully of the Party (a man in my position, with one eye on
Time and the other on Eternity, develops an acute sense of values) and
Raggles held up horrified hands. To Raggles the Party is the Alpha and
Omega of things human and divine. It is the guiding principle of the
Cosmos. I could have spoken disrespectfully of the British Empire, of
which he has a confused notion; I could have dismissed the Trinity, on
which his ideas are vaguer, with an airy jest; in the expression of my
views concerning the Creator, whom he believes to be under the Party's
protection, I could have out-Pained Tom Paine, out-Taxiled Leo Taxil,
and he would not have winced. But to blaspheme against the Party was the
sin for which there was no redemption.

"I always thought you a serious politician!" he gasped.

"Good God!" I cried. "In my public utterances have I been as dull as
that? Ill-health or no, it is time for me to quit the stage."

He laughed politely, because he conjectured I was speaking
humourously--he is astute in some things--and begged me to explain.

I replied that I did not regard mustard poultices as panaceas, the
_vox populi_ as the _Vox Dei_, or the policy of the other side as the
machinations of the Devil; that politics was all a game of guess-work
and muddle and compromise at the best; that, at the worst, as during
a General Election, it was as ignoble a pastime as the wit of man had
devised. To take it serio