for it must have been long ago discarded. The creature did
not look as if it had been ridden in any recent decade. It looked as if
it had almost abandoned the hope of ever being ridden again. It was but
hoping against hope now, as it stood rocking there in the bleak
twilight. Bright warm nurseries were for younger, happier horses. Still
it went on rocking, to show me that it could rock.

The more sentimental a man is, the less is he helpful; the more loth is
he to cancel the cause of his emotion. I did not buy the horse.

A few days later, passing that way, I wished to renew my emotion; but
lo! the horse was gone. Had some finer person than I bought it?--towed
it to the haven where it would be? Likelier, it had but been relegated
to some mirky recess of the shop... I hope it has room to rock there.

A PATHETIC IMPOSTURE

Lord Rosebery once annoyed the Press by declaring that his ideal
newspaper was one which should give its news without comment. Doubtless
he was thinking of the commonweal. Yet a plea for no comments might be
made, with equal force, in behalf of the commentators themselves.
Occupations that are injurious to the persons engaged in them ought not
to be encouraged. The writing of 'leaders' and 'notes' is one of these
occupations. The practice of it, more than of any other, depends on,
and fosters hypocrisy, worst of vices. In a sense, every kind of
writing is hypocritical. It has to be done with an air of gusto, though
no one ever yet enjoyed the act of writing. Even a man with a specific
gift for writing, with much to express, with perfect freedom in choice
of subject and manner of expression, with indefinite leisure, does not
write with real gusto. But in him the pretence is justified: he has
enjoyed thinking out his subject, he will delight in his work when it
is done. Very different is the pretence of one who writes at top-speed,
on a set subject, what he thinks the editor thinks the proprietor
thinks the public thinks nice. If he happen to have a talent for
writing, his work will be but the more painful, and his hypocrisy the
greater. The chances are, though, that the talent has already been
sucked out of him by Journalism, that vampire. To her, too, he will
have forfeited any fervour he may have had, any learning, any gaiety.
How can he, the jaded interpreter, hold any opinion, feel any
enthusiasm?--without leisure, keep his mind in cultivation?--be
sprightly to order, at unearthly hours in a w