FullReads

“Civilised?” echoed a weedy young man scornfully. “I am a genius, yet I have had nothing to eat all day. Thy congeners killed Keats and Chatterton, and when I am dead thou wilt be sorry for what thou hast not done.”

“But hast thou published anything?” I asked.

“How could I publish?” he replied, indignantly.

“Then how could I be aware of thee?” I inquired.

“But my great-grandfather did publish,” said another. “Thou goest into ecstacies over him, and his books have sold by tens of thousands; but me thou leavest pensionless, to earn my living as a cooper. Bah!”

“And thou didst put my father in prison,” said another, “for publishing the works of a Continental novelist; but when the novelist himself comes here, thou puttest him in the place of honour.”

I was fast growing overwhelmed with shame.

“Where is thy patriotism! Thou art letting some of the most unique British birds become extinct!” “Yes, and thou lettest Christmas cards be made in Germany, and thou deridest Whistler, and refusest to read Dod Grile, and thou lettest books be published with the sheets pinned instead of sewn. And the way thou neglectest Coleridge’s grave—-“

“Coleridge’s grave?” interrupted a sad-eyed enthusiast. “Why, thou hast put no stone at all to mark where James Thomson lies!”

“Thou Hun, thou Vandal!” shrieked a fresh contingent of voices in defiance of the late Professor Freeman. “Thou hast allowed the Emanuel Hospital to be knocked down, thou hast whitewashed the oaken ceiling of King Charles’s room at Dartmouth, and threatened to destroy the view from Richmond Hill. Thou hast smashed cathedral windows, or scratched thy name on them, hast pulled down Roman walls, and allowed commons to be inclosed. Thou coverest the Lake District with advertisements of pills, and the blue heaven itself with sky-signs; and in thy passion for cheap and nasty pictorial journalism thou art allowing the art of wood-engraving to die out, even as thou acceptest photogravures instead of etchings.”

I cowered before their wrath, while renewed cries of “Thou art responsible! Thou! Thou!” resounded from all sides.

“A pretty Christian thou art!” exclaimed another voice in unthinking vituperation. “Thou decimatest savage tribes with rum and Maxim guns, thou makest money by corrupting the East with opium. Thou allowest the Armenians to be done to death, and thou wilt not put a stop to child-marriages in India.”

“But for thee I should have been alive to-day,” broke in a venerable spirit hovering near the ceiling. “If thou hadst refused to sell poison except in specially shaped bottles—-“

“What canst thou expect of a man who allows anybody to carry firearms?” interrupted another voice.

“Or who fills his newspaper with divorce cases?”

“Is it any wonder the rising generation is cynical, and the young maiden of fifteen has ceased to be bashful?”

“Shame on thee!” hissed the chorus, and advanced upon me so threateningly that I seized my hat and rushed from the room. But a burly being with a Blue Book blocked my way.

“Where didst thou get that hat?” he cried. “Doubtless from some sweating establishment. And those clothes; didst thou investigate where they were made? didst thou inquire how much thy tailor paid his hands? didst thou engage an accountant to examine his books?”

“I–I am so busy,” I stammered feebly.

“Shuffler! How knowest thou thou art not spreading to the world the germs of scarlet fever and typhoid picked up in the sweaters’ dens?”

“What cares he?” cried a tall, thin man, with a slight stoop and gold spectacles. “Does he not poison the air every day with the smoke of his coal fires?”

“Pison the air!” repeated a battered, blear-eyed reprobate. “He pisoned my soul. He ruined me with promiskus charity. Whenever I was stoney-broke ‘e give me doles in aid, ‘e did. ‘E wos werry bad to me, ‘e wos. ‘E destroyed my self-respeck, druv me to drink, broke up my home, and druv my darters on the streets.”

“This is what comes of undisciplined compassion,” observed the gold-spectacled gentleman, glowering at me. “The integrity and virtue of a whole family sacrificed to the gratification of thy altruistic emotions!”