r, would
not smoke at all.--They are a cowardly and corrupt people, living in
water, which is a singular thing to do. Neither would many birds
smoke, they have neither the stamina nor the teeth, but I am certain
that crows and jackdaws would chew tobacco eagerly and with true
relish. A large proportion of the insecta are too light-minded and
frivolous to care for smoking. Beetles, however, a very reserved and
dignified race, would smoke cigars, and so would cockroaches, a rather
saturnine and cynical people; but no others.

"As for women--I am astonished they have not smoked, by mere contagion,
long ago. If they did they would certainly grow more kind-hearted and
manly, and I am sure that a deputation of ladies with pipes in their
mouths and hands in their pockets would only have to demand the
franchise from an astounded ministry to obtain it.

"Members of Parliament are, I believe, either a separate creation or a
composite of the parrot and the magpie. I have not yet discovered
their particular function in nature but have observed them with some
particularity. They wear top hats and are constantly making speeches,
both of which are easy things to do and quite pleasant minor
accomplishments.--So far as I can gather their chief use has been to
pass something called a Budget. From the fact that this Budget
contains a disgraceful imposition on tobacco I must take it that
Members of Parliament are among the lower animals who do not
smoke--they are also uninteresting in other ways."

Having said this my old friend bowed to me and departed genially with
my cigar case in his pocket. The shirt-sleeved Adonis behind the
counter wagged his head solemnly at a fly and then clouted it with a
dish-cloth.

IV

The old gentleman took an athletic pull at his liquor, and continued
his discourse. He had been discussing more to himself than to me the
merits of Professor James and Monsieur Bergson, and had inquired was I
aware of the nature of the Pragmatic Sanction. The gentleman behind
the counter remarked, that he had one on his bicycle, but that they
were no good. This statement was denounced by the Philosopher as an
unnatural and clumsy falsehood, and, anathematising the ignorance of
his interrupter, he came by slow degrees to the following discourse--

"I have but little faith in any of the methods of education with which
I am presently acquainted. The objective of every system of teaching
should be to enable the person who