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masses of the people as by fixed military
service. Before mental training must come training of the body. Go
about the Continent, and see the effect of military service on
loutish peasants and the lowest classes of town population. Do you
know why it isn't even more successful? Because the damnable
education movement interferes. If Germany would shut up her schools
and universities for the next quarter of a century and go ahead
like blazes with military training there'd be a nation such as the
world has never seen. After that, they might begin a little
book-teaching again—say an hour and a half a day for everyone above
nine years old. Do you suppose, Mr Milvain, that society is going
to be reformed by you people who write for money? Why, you are the
very first class that will be swept from the face of the earth as
soon as the reformation really begins!'
    Alfred puffed at his cigarette. His thoughts were occupied with
Mr Fadge and The Study. He was considering whether he could aid in
bringing public contempt upon that literary organ and its editor.
Milvain listened to the elder man's diatribe with much
amusement.
    'You, now,' pursued John, 'what do you write about?'
    'Nothing in particular. I make a salable page or two out of
whatever strikes my fancy.'
    'Exactly! You don't even pretend that you've got anything to
say. You live by inducing people to give themselves mental
indigestion—and bodily, too, for that matter.'
    'Do you know, Mr Yule, that you have suggested a capital idea to
me? If I were to take up your views, I think it isn't at all
unlikely that I might make a good thing of writing against writing.
It should be my literary specialty to rail against literature. The
reading public should pay me for telling them that they oughtn't to
read. I must think it over.'
    'Carlyle has anticipated you,' threw in Alfred.
    'Yes, but in an antiquated way. I would base my polemic on the
newest philosophy.'
    He developed the idea facetiously, whilst John regarded him as
he might have watched a performing monkey.
    'There again! your new philosophy!' exclaimed the invalid. 'Why,
it isn't even wholesome stuff, the kind of reading that most of you
force on the public. Now there's the man who has married one of my
nieces—poor lass! Reardon, his name is. You know him, I dare say.
Just for curiosity I had a look at one of his books; it was called
"The Optimist." Of all the morbid trash I ever saw, that beat
everything. I thought of writing him a letter, advising a couple of
anti-bilious pills before bedtime for a few weeks.'
    Jasper glanced at Alfred Yule, who wore a look of
indifference.
    'That man deserves penal servitude in my opinion,' pursued John.
'I'm not sure that it isn't my duty to offer him a couple of
hundred a year on condition that he writes no more.'
    Milvain, with a clear vision of his friend in London, burst into
laughter. But at that point Alfred rose from his chair.
    'Shall we rejoin the ladies?' he said, with a certain pedantry
of phrase and manner which often characterised him.
    'Think over your ways whilst you're still young,' said John as
he shook hands with his visitor.
    'Your brother speaks quite seriously, I suppose?' Jasper
remarked when he was in the garden with Alfred.
    'I think so. It's amusing now and then, but gets rather tiresome
when you hear it often. By-the-bye, you are not personally
acquainted with Mr Fadge?'
    'I didn't even know his name until you mentioned it.'
    'The most malicious man in the literary world. There's no
uncharitableness in feeling a certain pleasure when he gets into a
scrape. I could tell you incredible stories about him; but that
kind of thing is probably as little to your taste as it is to
mine.'
    Miss Harrow and her companions, having caught sight of the pair,
came towards them. Tea was to be brought out into the garden.
    'So you can sit with us and smoke, if you like,' said Miss
Harrow to Alfred. 'You are never quite at your ease, I think,
without a pipe.'
    But the man of