lf? He is our God. It is on his back that we have journeyed
from the primeval forest, where our ancestors ate nuts and fruit. He
is our God. His temple is in every street. His blue-robed priest stands
ever at the door, calling to the people to worship. Hark! his voice
rises on the gas-tainted air--"Now's your time! Now's your time! Buy!
Buy! ye people. Bring hither the sweat of your brow, the sweat of your
brain, the ache of your heart, buy Veal with it. Bring me the best years
of your life. Bring me your thoughts, your hopes, your loves; ye shall
have Veal for them. Now's your time! Now's your time! Buy! Buy!"

Oh! Children of Israel, was Veal, even with all its trimmings, quite
worth the price?

And we! what wisdom have we learned, during the centuries? I talked
with a rich man only the other evening. He calls himself a Financier,
whatever that may mean. He leaves his beautiful house, some twenty miles
out of London, at a quarter to eight, summer and winter, after a hurried
breakfast by himself, while his guests still sleep, and he gets back
just in time to dress for an elaborate dinner he himself is too weary
or too preoccupied to more than touch. If ever he is persuaded to give
himself a holiday it is for a fortnight in Ostend, when it is most
crowded and uncomfortable. He takes his secretary with him, receives
and despatches a hundred telegrams a day, and has a private telephone,
through which he can speak direct to London, brought up into his
bedroom.

I suppose the telephone is really a useful invention. Business men tell
me they wonder how they contrived to conduct their affairs without it.
My own wonder always is, how any human being with the ordinary passions
of his race can conduct his business, or even himself, creditably,
within a hundred yards of the invention. I can imagine Job, or Griselda,
or Socrates liking to have a telephone about them as exercise. Socrates,
in particular, would have made quite a reputation for himself out of a
three months' subscription to a telephone. Myself, I am, perhaps, too
sensitive. I once lived for a month in an office with a telephone, if
one could call it life. I was told that if I had stuck to the thing for
two or three months longer, I should have got used to it. I know friends
of mine, men once fearless and high-spirited, who now stand in front
of their own telephone for a quarter of an hour at a time, and never so
much as answer it back. They tell me that at first th