lain it away. The fact that I feel it is a
better proof that it is there than the fact that you don't feel it is a
proof that it isn't there! The only thing about it that isn't beautiful to
me is the fact that life can't live except by taking life--that there is no
right to live; and that, I admit, is disconcerting. You may say to me, 'You
old bully, crammed with the corpses of sheep and potatoes, which you
haven't even had the honesty to kill for yourself, you dare to come here,
and talk this stuff about the beauty of it all, and the joy of living. If
all the bodies of the things you have consumed in your bloated life were
piled together, it would make a thing as big as a whole row of ricks!' If
you say that, I admit that you take the sentiment out of my sails!"

"But I don't say it," said I: "Who dies if Father Payne live?"

He laughed at this, and clapped me on the back. "You're in the same case as
I, old man," he said, "only you haven't got such a pile of blood and bones
to your credit! Here, we must stow this talk, or we shall become both
humbugs and materialists. It's a puzzling business, talking! It leads you
into some very ugly places!"

LXI

OF BOOKISHNESS

I went in to see Father Payne one morning about some work. He was reading a
book with knitted brows: he looked up, gave a nod, but no smile, pointed to
a chair, and I sate down: a minute or two later he shut the book--a neat
enough little volume--with a snap, and skimmed it deftly from where he
sate, into his large waste-paper basket. This, by the way, was a curious
little accomplishment of his,--throwing things with unerring aim. He could
skim more cards across a room into a hat than anyone I have ever seen who
was not a professed student of legerdemain.

"What are you doing?" I said--"such a nice little book!" I rose and rescued
the volume, which was a careful enough edition of some poems and scraps of
poems, posthumously discovered, of a well-known poet.

"Pray accept it with my kindest regards," said Father Payne. "No, I don't
know that I _ought_ to give it you. It is the sort of book I object
to."

"Why?" I said, examining it--"it seems harmless enough."

"It's the wrong sort of literature," said Father Payne. "There isn't time,
or there ought not to be, to go fumbling about with these old scraps. They
aren't good enough to publish--and what's more, if the man didn't publish
them himself, you may be sure he had very good reasons for _not_