minish his neighbours to beetles. When
he is more dignified he wears a single eyeglass; when more
intelligent, a wink. He is not indeed wholly without interest in
heredity and Eugenical biology; but his studies and experiments in
this science have specialised almost exclusively in _equus celer_, the
rapid or running horse. He is not a doctor; though he employs doctors
to work up a case for Eugenics, just as he employs doctors to correct
the errors of his dinner. He is not a lawyer, though unfortunately
often a magistrate. He is not an author or a journalist; though he not
infrequently owns a newspaper. He is not a soldier, though he may have
a commission in the yeomanry; nor is he generally a gentleman, though
often a nobleman. His wealth now commonly comes from a large staff of
employed persons who scurry about in big buildings while he is playing
golf. But he very often laid the foundations of his fortune in a very
curious and poetical way, the nature of which I have never fully
understood. It consisted in his walking about the street without a hat
and going up to another man and saying, "Suppose I have two hundred
whales out of the North Sea." To which the other man replied, "And let
us imagine that I am in possession of two thousand elephants' tusks."
They then exchange, and the first man goes up to a third man and says,
"Supposing me to have lately come into the possession of two thousand
elephants' tusks, would you, etc.?" If you play this game well, you
become very rich; if you play it badly you have to kill yourself or
try your luck at the Bar. The man I am speaking about must have played
it well, or at any rate successfully.

He was born about 1860; and has been a member of Parliament since
about 1890. For the first half of his life he was a Liberal; for the
second half he has been a Conservative; but his actual policy in
Parliament has remained largely unchanged and consistent. His policy
in Parliament is as follows: he takes a seat in a room downstairs at
Westminster, and takes from his breast pocket an excellent cigar-case,
from which in turn he takes an excellent cigar. This he lights, and
converses with other owners of such cigars on _equus celer_ or such
matters as may afford him entertainment. Two or three times in the
afternoon a bell rings; whereupon he deposits the cigar in an ashtray
with great particularity, taking care not to break the ash, and
proceeds to an upstairs room, flanked with two passage