honestly that I settled it, I shall be willing to trust my posthumous
fame to that achievement.

I said good morning to the specialist, and went off feeling not only
kindly, but respectfully towards him. He is an enthusiast, at any rate,
as "earnest" a man as any philanthropic reformer who, having passed his
life in worrying people out of their misdoings into good behavior, comes
at last to a state in which he is never contented except when he is
making somebody uncomfortable. He does certainly know one thing well,
very likely better than anybody in the world.

I find myself somewhat singularly placed at our table between a minute
philosopher who has concentrated all his faculties on a single subject,
and my friend who finds the present universe too restricted for his
intelligence. I would not give much to hear what the Scarabee says about
the old Master, for he does not pretend to form a judgment of anything
but beetles, but I should like to hear what the Master has to say about
the Scarabee. I waited after breakfast until he had gone, and then asked
the Master what he could make of our dried-up friend.

--Well,--he said,--I am hospitable enough in my feelings to him and all
his tribe. These specialists are the coral-insects that build up a reef.
By and by it will be an island, and for aught we know may grow into a
continent. But I don't want to be a coral-insect myself. I had rather be
a voyager that visits all the reefs and islands the creatures build, and
sails over the seas where they have as yet built up nothing. I am a
little afraid that science is breeding us down too fast into
coral-insects. A man like Newton or Leibnitz or Haller used to paint a
picture of outward or inward nature with a free hand, and stand back and
look at it as a whole and feel like an archangel; but nowadays you have a
Society, and they come together and make a great mosaic, each man
bringing his little bit and sticking it in its place, but so taken up
with his petty fragment that he never thinks of looking at the picture
the little bits make when they are put together. You can't get any talk
out of these specialists away from their own subjects, any more than you
can get help from a policeman outside of his own beat.

--Yes,--said I,--but why should n't we always set a man talking about the
thing he knows best?

--No doubt, no doubt, if you meet him once; but what are you going to do
with him if you meet him every day? I tr