sible."

This did not surprise me at all; but my suggestion-box was getting low.
Then I made a rally. "How about the philanthropic dodge? Robinson is on
the Associated Charities in town. I saw in the paper that he made a
speech the other night."

"If he does nothing better than speech-making, he might as well drop it.
There might be something in benevolent efforts, if one had just the
temperament and talents for them. But as it is, I fear most of it is
humbug; mutual admiration, seeing your name in the paper, and all that.
And how they get imposed on! How they pauperize and debauch those they
try to raise! It's a law of nature, Bob, that every tub must stand on
its own bottom: you can't reform a man from without. Natural selection
will have its way: the shiftless and the lazy must go to the wall. If
you could kill them off, now, that might do some good. The class that
needs help is not like us--not that we are anything to brag of: they've
not had our chance. It's very well to say, give 'em a chance; but that's
no use unless they take it, which they won't. 'Who would be free,
themselves must strike the blow.' If they wouldn't, you are bound to
respect their right of choice. Your drunken ruffian will keep on
breaking the furniture, till another like him breaks his skull. His
wife, the washerwoman with six small children, will continue getting
more and making things worse. This part of it at least ought to be
regulated by law: but that would be a restriction of personal liberty,
which is the idol of this age, and not without reason. We're between two
millstones, and I see no way out."

"How would you like politics? The gentleman is supposed to have an
opening there now."

"A doubtful and difficult one. If it had come in my time I might have
tried it. But it would be uphill work, a sort of Sisyphus affair: you
may get the stone to the top, but the chances are against it. And which
party is one to join, when he sees nothing in either but selfish greed
and stale traditions? Viewed as a missionary field, Bob, it's just like
the ministry: you are weighed down with a lot of dead conventions which
you must pretend to believe have life and juice in them yet. Before you
can do anything you must be a partisan, and that requires a mediaeval
state of mind. Mine, unluckily if you like, is modern. It wouldn't go,
Bob. Try again, if you have more on your list."

"Well, there's pure Science: you wouldn't care for the applied, I know.