incendiary speeches; for ammunition, viperish propaganda, and for epoch-making action you have nothing. In that "nothing" lies their main ingenuity and strong hope. If they can prevail on the masses to do nothing, at the right moment, and to go on doing nothing till there is nothing left, then, say they, they will have civilisation under; and if our heads don't fall off of their own accord then a thousand willing hands will be stretched forward to pull them off.

You ask me how I know all this. Close the doors so that we cannot be overheard, and I will tell you. I buy their continental newspaper—"organ" they prefer to call it, being rather proud of the noise—and there I read all that I want to know. It costs a halfpenny a day, runs to six pages, is well printed and brightly composed and contains no advertisements. There is generally a picture in thick black lines in the centre of the first page. Blood being the easy thing for the printer to "feature," the picture generally deals with the cutting off of heads. If it refers to the past, you and I are cutting off the worker's head, severing from a fine muscular body a noble head with a halo to it. If it refers to the future, the worker is having our heads off, severing from a fat and uncontrolled corpus a most unpleasant excrescence in a very shiny top-hat.

To run a daily newspaper of that "make-up," without advertisements and for subscribers of whom the larger number, like myself, omit to pay their half-penny, is not easy business. In fact it is not business at all. The question being raised as to where the money came from, the producers tried to allay our suspicion by making a great show of an appeal for help. The published results, which I give you in their English equivalent, were much as follows:—

The grand total of sixteen pounds, nine shillings and eight-pence three-farthings shows a magnificent spirit, but wouldn't keep much more than a couple of square inches of the front page alive for more than one day. Reverting, then, to the more pressing question of the removal of our heads, who is paying for the operation?

He is a heavy-built octopus sort of man of about forty-seven; a red cheery complexion, rather more fat than muscle, long grey hair tending to curl at the extremes, and followed about by a lady who acts as his secretary, calls him "Master" and adores the ground he walks on. They are married, but not, I should hasten to add, to each other; none of your dull orthodox practices for them. About his profile there is an undeniable something which makes his head a suggestive model for sculpture. It is framed in a large, white, soft silk collar, which falls gracefully over the lapels of the coat and is, I am told, of a mode much worn among the élite of the anarchist and atheist world.

I've a friend here in the law-and-order business who thought that, having reported all the movements of this Master of the Black Arts, he might find it worth while to make his acquaintance in the flesh. Indirect enquiry elicited that the desire to get into touch was reciprocated, the attentions of the police being insufficient to satisfy his sense of importance. So the meeting was arranged, and I was allowed to come along too.

We were received in great state in a special suite of the local hotel de luxe. The Lady Secretary was there, overflowing with "Masters" and "Sirs," and obsessed by the fear that her idol might not do himself justice in our presence. A very touching instance of human devotion: the fifth instance in his case, I believe.

This is the gentleman who finances the propaganda of destruction; we asked him if that was not so, and he answered, "Why, of course." Had we any fault to find with his protégé, the admirable halfpenny daily? We had noticed that its news was punctual and exact. Then of what did we complain?

"Of a certain exaggeration in the leading articles," said I, rubbing the back of my neck and wondering how long it would be there to rub and I to rub it.

"But what newspaper leaders are not exaggerated?" he asked.

"Your editors should not be paid to twist everything into an irritant," I protested.

"Of which of your great English dailies is the editor not paid to twist, as you put it?" he asked.

I knew that I had right on my side and he had not. But still somehow I seemed to be in the wrong all the way.

So my friend took the matter in hand. He didn't argue. He just drew his chair up to the Master's and asked him to tell us all about himself, how he came by his great ideals, what was the future of the world as he foresaw it and how he meant to arrange the universe when at length he took over?

The Master, gently smiling his appreciation of this recognition of his Ego, gave voice.

To the lady it was all, of course, above criticism: sublime, adorable. To me the frankness of it and the impudence of it was, I confess, amusing.

An agreeable, if wrong-headed, crank, was my summary.

And this or something like it was my friend's:—"b. U.S.A. of Eng. parents, 9.5.78; tinned meat business, Chicago; 6 months' h.l. for frauds in connection with packing; went to Mexico, but left to avoid prosecution for similar frauds on larger scale; prison in Belgium, France and England in connection with illegal dealings in rifles (? for Germany); apparently liable to more prison in U.S.A. for crime unknown, if returns there; won't say where he gets his money from, but doesn't seriously pretend it is his own."

And when I came to go back over the Master's two hours' chat about himself, those are about the facts it all boiled down to.

(To be continued.)

"£40.—Handsome Black Silk Golf Goat (large size)."—Irish Paper.

The very thing for the