of a member of the black race, and he had just now, in
his perspiring effort, expressed his sympathy! Why he had chosen this
particular moment (after quite obvious debate with himself) I did not
see until somewhat later.

He now left us standing at the gate; and it was not for some moments
that John Mayrant spoke again, evidently closing, for our two selves,
this delicate subject.

"I wish we had not got into that second volume of yours."

"That's not progressive."

"I hate progress."

"What's the use? Better grow old gracefully!

"'Qui no pas l'esprit de son age
De son age a tout le malheur.'"

"Well, I'm personally not growing old, just yet."

"Neither is the United States."

"Well, I don't know. It's too easy for sick or worthless people to
survive nowadays. They are clotting up our square miles very fast.
Philanthropists don't seem to remember that you can beget children a
great deal faster than you can educate them; and at this rate I believe
universal suffrage will kill us off before our time."

"Do not believe it! We are going to find out that universal suffrage is
like the appendix--useful at an early stage of the race's evolution but
to-day merely a threat to life."

He thought this over. "But a surgical operation is pretty serious, you
know."

"It'll be done by absorption. Why, you've begun it yourselves, and so
has Massachusetts. The appendix will be removed, black and white--and
I shouldn't much fear surgery. We're not nearly civilized enough yet to
have lost the power Of recuperation, and in spite of our express-train
speed, I doubt if we shall travel from crudity to rottenness without a
pause at maturity."

"That is the old, old story," he said.

"Yes; is there anything new under the sun?"

He was gloomy. "Nothing, I suppose." Then the gloom lightened. "Nothing
new under the sun--except the fashionable families of Newport!"

This again brought us from the clouds of speculation down to Worship
Street, where we were walking toward South Place. It also unexpectedly
furnished me with the means to lead back our talk so gently, without
a jolt or a jerk, to my moral and the delicate topic of matrimony from
which he had dodged away, that he never awoke to what was coming until
it had come. He began pointing out, as we passed them, certain houses
which were now, or had at some period been, the dwellings of his many
relatives: "My cousin Julia So-and-so lives there," he would