y
class that an absolutely unbreakable will could be cast; and
so, through the generations, clients and lawyers pursued the
illusion. It was a pursuit like unto that of the Universal
Solvent of the mediaeval alchemists.

He arose and began, in a few well-chosen phrases that carried an
undertone of faint irony, to introduce Ernest. Colonel Van Gilbert was
subtly facetious in his introduction of the social reformer and member
of the working class, and the audience smiled. It made me angry, and
I glanced at Ernest. The sight of him made me doubly angry. He did not
seem to resent the delicate slurs. Worse than that, he did not seem to
be aware of them. There he sat, gentle, and stolid, and somnolent. He
really looked stupid. And for a moment the thought rose in my mind, What
if he were overawed by this imposing array of power and brains? Then I
smiled. He couldn't fool me. But he fooled the others, just as he had
fooled Miss Brentwood. She occupied a chair right up to the front, and
several times she turned her head toward one or another of her CONFRERES
and smiled her appreciation of the remarks.

Colonel Van Gilbert done, Ernest arose and began to speak. He began in
a low voice, haltingly and modestly, and with an air of evident
embarrassment. He spoke of his birth in the working class, and of the
sordidness and wretchedness of his environment, where flesh and spirit
were alike starved and tormented. He described his ambitions and ideals,
and his conception of the paradise wherein lived the people of the upper
classes. As he said:

"Up above me, I knew, were unselfishnesses of the spirit, clean and
noble thinking, keen intellectual living. I knew all this because I read
'Seaside Library'* novels, in which, with the exception of the villains
and adventuresses, all men and women thought beautiful thoughts, spoke a
beautiful tongue, and performed glorious deeds. In short, as I accepted
the rising of the sun, I accepted that up above me was all that was fine
and noble and gracious, all that gave decency and dignity to life, all
that made life worth living and that remunerated one for his travail and
misery."

* A curious and amazing literature that served to make the
working class utterly misapprehend the nature of the leisure
class.

He went on and traced his life in the mills, the learning of the
horseshoeing trade, and his meeting with the socialists. Among them, he
said, he had f