_are_ they? Do you give a man an alms, or an alm?

Shall we read--

Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's _rage_,

and so on? Go to. But I shall not so easily convert Trade Union
orators, Members of Parliament, Mr. Sidney Webb, or the _Times_. To
them a wages is a wage, and an alms an alm, a man's riches his rich,
and his breeches his--at least I suppose so. I wish that we could call
a man's speeches his speech, and find it was perfectly true. It is a
terrible thought, "a terrible ghastly thought" indeed, that we have
not so long ago chosen over seven hundred persons of both sexes, each
of whom will conceive it his right to make a speech in Parliament
every day. Think of it. It is fair to suppose that every one of them
will make one speech every year, many of them, no doubt, one every
week, some certainly every day. I am thankful that I wasn't a
candidate, for I might have been successful. Then I should have been
compelled to listen, and perhaps tempted to reply, to some or all of
those speeches. "In the end thereof despondency and madness."

CHURCH AND THE MAN

At our Peace Celebration the other day that happened which in my
recollection never happened before. The entire village was in the
parish church, sang _Te Deum_, prayed prelatical prayers, and shared
_Hymns Ancient and Modern_. The Congregational Minister, in a black
gown, read the Lesson, the Vicar, in surplice and stole, preached. All
that in a village where more than half the people are Nonconformists,
and done upon the mere motion of that particular section of us.

No experience since the War has touched me more; and I believe it is
strongly symptomatic. Akin to it was the streaming of the people in
London to Buckingham Palace, just when war was declared, and again on
the day of the Armistice: both matters of pure instinct. For what do
these things show except that we are children who, when we are moved,
run to our mother to tell her all about it? What are we, when we are
stripped to the soul, but one great family? A man told me once that he
was present at a trial for murder where there were half a dozen in
the dock, men and women, principals and accessories. The verdict was
"Guilty," and the wretches stood up to receive the death-sentence.
As they did so, by one common instinct, they all joined hands, and
so remained until they were led away to the cells. A strangely moving
scene.

It is by no means a necessity of