FullReads

“She doesn’t–forgive the impertinence–take herself seriously enough.”

“Lady Barbara? Then you’ve found her out?”

“Ah!–you’re not offended?”

“Not in the least.”

“Good. It was a motley assemblage, as you say. Yet I’m inclined to think I found my pearl in the oyster. I’m afraid I interrupted–eh?”

“No, no, not at all. Only some idle scribbling. I’d finished.”

“You are a poet?”

“Only a lunatic. I haven’t taken my degree.”

“Ah! it’s a noble gift–the gift of song; precious through its rarity.”

Polyhistor caught a note of emotion in his visitor’s voice, and glanced at him curiously.

“Surely,” he thought, “that vulgar, ruddy little face is transfigured.”

“But,” said the stranger, coming to earth, “I am lingering beside the mark. I must try to justify my solecism in manners by a straight reference to the object of my visit. That is, in the first instance, a matter of business.”

“Business!”

“I am a man with a purpose, seeking the hopefullest means to an end. Plainly: if I could procure you the post of resident doctor at D—- gaol, would you be disposed to accept it?”

Polyhistor looked his utter astonishment.

“I can affect no surprise at yours,” said the visitor, attentively regarding Polyhistor. “It is perfectly natural. Let me forestall some unnecessary expression of it. My offer seems unaccountable to you, seeing that we never met until last night. But I don’t move entirely in the dark. I have ventured in the interval to inform myself as to the details of your career. I was entirely one with much of your expression of opinion as to the treatment of criminals, in which you controverted the crude and unpleasant scepticism of the lady you talked with.” (Poor New Charlie!) “Combining the two, I come to the immediate conclusion that you are the man for my purpose.”

“You have dumbfounded me. I don’t know what to answer. You have views, I know, as to prison treatment. Will you sketch them? Will you talk on, while I try to bring my scattered wits to a focus?”

“Certainly I will. Let me, in the first instance, recall to you a few words of your own. They ran somewhat in this fashion: Is not the man of practical genius the man who is most apt at solving the little problems of resourcefulness in life? Do you remember them?”

“Perhaps I do, in a cruder form.”

“They attracted me at once. It is upon such a postulate I base my practice. Their moral is this: To know the antidote the moment the snake bites. That is to have the intuition of divinity. We shall rise to it some day, no doubt, and climb the hither side of the new Olympus. Who knows? Over the crest the spirit of creation may be ours.”

Polyhistor nodded, still at sea, and the other went on with a smile:–

“I once knew a world-famous engineer with whom I used to breakfast occasionally. He had a patent egg-boiler on the table, with a little double-sided ladle underneath to hold the spirit. He complained that his egg was always undercooked. I said, ‘Why not reverse the ladle so as to bring the deeper cup uppermost?’ He was charmed with my perspicacity. The solution had never occurred to him. You remember, too, no doubt, the story of Coleridge and the horse collar. We aim too much at great developments. If we cultivate resourcefulness, the rest will follow. Shall I state my system in nuce ? It is to encourage this spirit of resourcefulness.”

“Surely the habitual criminal has it in a marked degree?”

“Yes; but abnormally developed in a single direction. His one object is to out-manoeuvre in a game of desperate and immoral chances. The tactical spirit in him has none of the higher ambition. It has felt itself in the degree only that stops at defiance.”

“That is perfectly true.”

“It is half self-conscious of an individuality that instinctively assumes the hopelessness of a recognition by duller intellects. Leaning to resentment through misguided vanity, it falls ‘all oblique.’ What is the cure for this? I answer, the teaching of a divine egotism. The subject must be led to a pure devotion to self. What he wishes to respect he must be taught to make beautiful and interesting. The policy of sacrifice to others has so long stunted his moral nature because it is an hypocritical policy. We are responsible to ourselves in the first instance; and to argue an eternal system of blind self-sacrifice is to undervalue the fine gift of individuality. In such he sees but an indefensible policy of force applied to the advantage of the community. He is told to be good–not that he may morally profit, but that others may not suffer inconvenience.”