t destitute to face the prospect of a
bleak and impoverished old age; and I could not help a weak pleasure in
the thought that a certain relative security was being guaranteed to
those people of the working classes who had never had it before. At the
same moment I quite saw that to a prouder and stronger heart it must
indeed be bitter to have to sit still under your own security, and even
more bitter to have to watch that pauperising security coming closer and
closer to others--for the generous soul is always more concerned for
others than for himself. No doubt, I thought, if truth were known, my
distant relative is consumed with longing to change places with that
loafer who tried to open the door of my cab--for surely he must see, as I
do, that that is just what he himself--having failed to stand the
pressure of competition in his life--would be doing if it were not for
the accident of his birth, which has so lamentably insured him against
coming to that.

"Yes," I thought, "you have learnt something to-day; it does not do, you
see, hastily to despise those distant relatives of yours, who talk about
pauperising and molly-coddling the lower classes. No, no! One must look
deeper than that! One must have generosity!"

And with that I stopped the cab and got out for I wanted a breath of air.
1911

THE BLACK GODMOTHER

Sitting out on the lawn at tea with our friend and his retriever, we had
been discussing those massacres of the helpless which had of late
occurred, and wondering that they should have been committed by the
soldiery of so civilised a State, when, in a momentary pause of our
astonishment, our friend, who had been listening in silence, crumpling
the drooping soft ear of his dog, looked up and said, "The cause of
atrocities is generally the violence of Fear. Panic's at the back of
most crimes and follies."

Knowing that his philosophical statements were always the result of
concrete instance, and that he would not tell us what that instance was
if we asked him--such being his nature--we were careful not to agree.

He gave us a look out of those eyes of his, so like the eyes of a mild
eagle, and said abruptly: "What do you say to this then? . . . I was out
in the dog-days last year with this fellow of mine, looking for Osmunda,
and stayed some days in a village--never mind the name. Coming back one
evening from my tramp, I saw some boys stoning a mealy-coloured dog. I
went up and told the young