ecause
you believed that leprosy was catching: this malady is not even
catching."

"Faith, Oi'd punish it with extermination," cried the Irishman.

Exasperated by the fact that his idiot prejudice was hurting my
friend, I said at length with a smile:

"You are very bitter: I'm not; you see, I have no sexual jealousy to
inflame me."

On this Mr. Walter had to interfere between us to keep the peace, but
the mischief was done: my advocacy remained without effect.

It is very curious how deep-rooted and enduring is the prejudice
against writers in England. Not only is no attempt made to rate them
at their true value, at the value which posterity puts upon their
work; but they are continually treated as outcasts and denied the most
ordinary justice. The various trials of Oscar Wilde are to the thinker
an object lesson in the force of this prejudice, but some may explain
the prejudice against Wilde on the score of the peculiar abhorrence
with which the offence ascribed to him is regarded in England.

Let me take an example from the papers of to-day--I am writing in
January, 1910. I find in my _Daily Mail_ that at Bow Street police
court a London magistrate, Sir Albert de Rutzen, ordered the
destruction of 272 volumes of the English translation of Balzac's "Les
Contes Drolatiques" on the ground that the book was obscene. "Les
Contes Drolatiques" is an acknowledged masterpiece, and is not nearly
so free spoken as "Lear" or "Hamlet" or "Tom Jones" or "Anthony and
Cleopatra." What would be thought of a French magistrate or a German
magistrate who ordered a fair translation of "Hamlet" or of "Lear" to
be burnt, because of its obscenity? He would be regarded as demented.
One can only understand such a judgment as an isolated fact. But in
England this monstrous stupidity is the rule. Sir A. de Rutzen was not
satisfied with ordering the books to be burnt and fining the
bookseller; he went on to justify his condemnation and praise the
police:

"It is perfectly clear to my mind that a more foul and filthy black
spot has not been found in London for a long time, and the police have
done uncommonly well in bringing the matter to light. I consider that
the books are likely to do a great deal of harm."

Fancy the state of mind of the man who can talk such poisonous
nonsense; who, with the knowledge of what Piccadilly is at night in
his mind, can speak of the translation of a masterpiece as one of the
"most filthy black spots" to