nfluence of the feminine presence, continued their debates
with delightful ferocity, finding matter in each event of life, though
clear, and especially in those which had not yet occurred. So they had
a very happy time, and their friendship deepened from day to day.

"I can see your point of view," one of them would say, after an
apparently harmless proposition had been advanced. "Perhaps so," the
other would reply, clinging desperately to the advantage of the first
service in definitions, "but you certainly do not understand it."

Whereupon the third had the pleasure of showing that neither of the
others knew what he was talking about. This invariably resulted in
their combining against him, and usually to his gain, because he was
able to profit by the inconsistencies of their double play.

But of all earthly pleasures, as Sancho Panza said, there cometh in
the end satiety. The neighbours, after several years of refreshing
colloquial combat, felt an alarming decline of virility and the
approach of an anaemic peace. Their arguments grew monotonous, remote,
repetitious, amounting to little more than a bald statement of
position: "Here I stand"--"There you stand"--"There he stands,"--"What
is the use of talking about it?" The salt and pepper had vanished from
their table of conversation, and as each man silently chewed his own
favourite cereal, they all felt as if the banqueting-days were ended
and each must say to the others:

"Grow old apart from me,
The worst is yet to be."

One night as they were about to separate, long before midnight,
without a single spirited controversy, they looked at one another
sadly, as men who felt the approach of a common misfortune.

"The trouble is," said the Mystic, who disliked nothing so much as
solitude, "we do not meditate enough, and so the springs of our
inspiration from the Oversoul are running dry."

"The trouble is," said the Sceptic, whose doubts were more dogmatic
than dogmas, "that our fixed ideas are choking the feed-pipes of our
minds."

"The trouble is," wheezed the Asthmatic, whose suppressed dyspepsia
gave him an enormous appetite, "modern life is demoralised, especially
in domestic service. In the last month my wife has had five cooks, and
she whom she now has is not a cook. Hygiene is the basis of sound
thinking."

This sudden and unexpected renewal of the joy of disputation cheered
them greatly, and they discussed it for several hours, arriving, as