-cellar and throw the keys down the well. Very
well; then will you do without alcohol or without temperance? There is
the choice; and I have made mine.

Besides, we are all for liberty down here, individualists to a man.
Give us a loophole to avoid compulsion and we use it. One of the
most frequently exercised of my magisterial functions is to certify
conscientious objections to the Vaccination Act. I do it against the
grain. A doctor told me the other day that he believed smallpox had
reached the end of its tether, and was on the ebb. I am sure I hope
so, lest there should be one day a bad outbreak among these liberty
men. I must have signed away the chances of hundreds of children, who,
by the way, are not of an age to consent. I never fail to point out
the risk; but the Court awards it and the law allows it; so I sign.

There is much to be said for Anarchy in the abstract, nothing at all
in the concrete. Mr. Smillie, however, appears to favour it, raw,
rough and ready. In that he is precocious, and, like the rathe
primrose, will "forsaken die." He will rend the Labour party in twain
from the top to the bottom, and will see the agricultural vote drop
off his industrials just as it had begun to adhere to them. I know the
peasantry. They will never strike for political ends, for though they
are not quick to see the consequences of hypothetical actions, they
do see that if you make Parliamentary government impossible you make a
Labour majority not worth having.

And another thing: Mr. Smillie and his friends may want a revolution,
but Hodge and his most certainly do not. They want to earn their
livelihood, pay their way, and dig their plots of ground. No more
warfare for them. I dare say I shall be sorry for Mr. Smillie when
the time comes; but I may have to be still more sorry for my country
first. I can't help hoping, however, when it comes to the point that
his feet will be a little colder than his head seems to be just now.

_LA PETITE PERSONNE_

No letter-writer's stage can at any time be called empty, because upon
it you necessarily have at all times two persons at least: the mover
of the figures and the audience, the puppeteer and the puppetee, the
letter-writer and the letter-reader. The play presented is, therefore,
a play within a play: like the _Mousetrap_ in _Hamlet_, like _Pyramus
and Thisbe_ in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, like the romantic drama
of _Gayferos and Melisandra_ which Don Quixote w