hese facts--can alone decide which is an exception, which an example.
"How unpractical it all is!" That was his comment on Dunwood House.
"How unbusiness-like! They live together without love. They work without
conviction. They seek money without requiring it. They die, and nothing
will have happened, either for themselves or for others." It is a
comment that the academic mind will often make when first confronted
with the world.

But he was becoming illogical. The clod of earth had disturbed him.
Brushing the dirt off his back, he returned to the book. What a curious
affair was the essay on "Gaps"! Solitude, star-crowned, pacing the
fields of England, has a dialogue with Seclusion. He, poor little man,
lives in the choicest scenery--among rocks, forests, emerald lawns,
azure lakes. To keep people out he has built round his domain a high
wall, on which is graven his motto--"Procul este profani." But he cannot
enjoy himself. His only pleasure is in mocking the absent Profane. They
are in his mind night and day. Their blemishes and stupidities form the
subject of his great poem, "In the Heart of Nature." Then Solitude tells
him that so it always will be until he makes a gap in the wall, and
permits his seclusion to be the sport of circumstance. He obeys. The
Profane invade him; but for short intervals they wander elsewhere, and
during those intervals the heart of Nature is revealed to him.

This dialogue had really been suggested to Mr. Failing by a talk with
his brother-in-law. It also touched Ansell. He looked at the man who
had thrown the clod, and was now pacing with obvious youth and impudence
upon the lawn. "Shall I improve my soul at his expense?" he thought. "I
suppose I had better." In friendly tones he remarked, "Were you waiting
for Mr. Pembroke?"

"No," said the young man. "Why?"

Ansell, after a moment's admiration, flung the Essays at him. They hit
him in the back. The next moment he lay on his own back in the lobelia
pie.

"But it hurts!" he gasped, in the tones of a puzzled civilization. "What
you do hurts!" For the young man was nicking him over the shins with the
rim of the book cover. "Little brute-ee--ow!"

"Then say Pax!"

Something revolted in Ansell. Why should he say Pax? Freeing his hand,
he caught the little brute under the chin, and was again knocked into
the lobelias by a blow on the mouth.

"Say Pax!" he repeated, pressing the philosopher's skull into the mould;
and he added, with an