out
the mysteries of this life and the next?"

"Very likely. People like the emotional and the amusing. All the same,
they are credulous, and entertain doubt and belief on the slightest
evidence."

"Isn't it natural," spoke up Mr. Lyon, who had hitherto been silent,
"that you should drift into this condition without an established
church?"

"Perhaps it's natural," Morgan retorted, "that people dissatisfied with
an established religion should drift over here. Great Britain, you know,
is a famous recruiting-ground for our socialistic experiments."

"Ah, well," said my wife, "men will have something. If what is
established repels to the extent of getting itself disestablished, and
all churches should be broken up, society would somehow precipitate
itself again spiritually. I heard the other day that Boston, getting a
little weary of the Vedas, was beginning to take up the New Testament."

"Yes," said Morgan, "since Tolstoi mentioned it."

After a little the talk drifted into psychic research, and got lost in
stories of "appearances" and "long-distance" communications. It appeared
to me that intelligent people accepted this sort of story as true on
evidence on which they wouldn't risk five dollars if it were a question
of money. Even scientists swallow tales of prehistoric bones on testimony
they would reject if it involved the title to a piece of real estate.

Mr. Lyon still lingered in the lap of a New England winter as if it had
been Capua. He was anxious to visit Washington and study the politics of
the country, and see the sort of society produced in the freedom of a
republic, where there was no court to give the tone and there were no
class lines to determine position. He was restless under this sense of
duty. The future legislator for the British Empire must understand the
Constitution of its great rival, and thus be able to appreciate the
social currents that have so much to do with political action.

In fact he had another reason for uneasiness. His mother had written him,
asking why he stayed so long in an unimportant city, he who had been so
active a traveler hitherto. Knowledge of the capitals was what he needed.
Agreeable people he could find at home, if his only object was to pass
the time. What could he reply? Could he say that he had become very much
interested in studying a schoolteacher--a very charming school-teacher?
He could see the vision raised in the minds of his mother and of the earl
and o