philosophee in them. But I aye took them and thanked him--for
he is a nice man, though a perfect babe in matters of understanding.
And I found them useful for spills. The other day he handed me
this..." and he waved a blue paper-covered booklet.

"Mahn," he exclaimed, pushing his peaked cap back from his grey head,
and sweeping his brass buttons down with his hand; "mahn, this has fair
hit me between the eyes." Then he opened the pamphlet and began to
read passages that he had heavily scored with blue pencil. The Czar
has abolished the sale of vodka for ever! What is the result?

"The old women in the villages," read the ticket-collector, "can hardly
believe their own eyes, so changed are their menfolk.... Everywhere
peace, kindness and industry. War is said to be hell; but this is like
a foretaste of heaven."

"Listen to this," cried the collector, his arm outstretched. "A
newspaper correspondent writes, since the sale of vodka stopped the old
night population (in the doss-houses) seems to have vanished." Every
passage he read bore the same testimony.

"And what are we doing?" he exclaimed. "We have stopped nothing; we
surround our soldiers with the old temptations, and we leave their
defenceless wives exposed to the same temptations; I know all about it.
Mahn, it was Ruskin that said, 'There is no wealth but life,' and we
leave all our wealth of life at the mercy of every evil. It's a fair
scandal. Do you ken the conclusion I've come to! It is that the best
form of government is a benevolent despotism. Oor men are afraid of
this and that--losing votes--but an autocrat with a stroke of a pen can
sweep away the power of hell. If they would only make King George an
autocrat for a few years.... That would be grand!"

He insisted on lending me the blue-covered pamphlet, and it being his
hour off he walked with me across the bridge. The valley was now dark.
The snuff-manufacturer's house down below was wrapped in gloom. Lights
twinkled on the slopes. Below a lamp-post at the far end of the bridge
two men stood. When he saw them the ticket-collector stood fast.

"Mahn," said he, "I've come to a great resolution. I'm too old to
fight; and they canna get at me in ony way. No Income-tax for me; and
threepence on the tea is naething, for I never take it; I want to feel
that I am worth men dying for me; and I am going to be tee-total till
the end of the war. I'll give the money to help the soldiers' we