ossible paths to the Dawn. He would
try others--scores of others....

He must get right away out of here--to-night. He must have his car
brought round from the garage--now--to a side door....

But first he sat down to the writing-table, and wrote quickly:

_Dear Duchess,_

_I regret I am called away on urgent political business...._

_Yours faithfully_ _J. Perkins...._

He took the morocco leather case out of his pocket and enclosed it,
with the note, in a large envelope.

Then he pressed the electric button by his bedside, almost feeling
that this was a signal for the Dawn to rise without more ado....

SOME DAMNABLE ERRORS ABOUT CHRISTMAS

_By_

G.K. CH*ST*RT*N

That it is human to err is admitted by even the most positive of our
thinkers. Here we have the great difference between latter-day thought
and the thought of the past. If Euclid were alive to-day (and I dare
say he is) he would not say, "The angles at the base of an isosceles
triangle are equal to one another." He would say, "To me (a very
frail and fallible being, remember) it does somehow seem that these
two angles have a mysterious and awful equality to one another." The
dislike of schoolboys for Euclid is unreasonable in many ways; but
fundamentally it is entirely reasonable. Fundamentally it is the
revolt from a man who was either fallible and therefore (in pretending
to infallibility) an impostor, or infallible and therefore not human.

Now, since it is human to err, it is always in reference to those
things which arouse in us the most human of all our emotions--I mean
the emotion of love--that we conceive the deepest of our errors.
Suppose we met Euclid on Westminster Bridge, and he took us aside and
confessed to us that whilst he regarded parallelograms and rhomboids
with an indifference bordering on contempt, for isosceles triangles he
cherished a wild romantic devotion. Suppose he asked us to accompany
him to the nearest music-shop, and there purchased a guitar in order
that he might worthily sing to us the radiant beauty and the radiant
goodness of isosceles triangles. As men we should, I hope, respect his
enthusiasm, and encourage his enthusiasm, and catch his enthusiasm.
But as seekers after truth we should be compelled to regard with a
dark suspicion, and to check with the most anxious care, every fact
that he told us about isosceles triangles. For adoration involves a
glorious obliquity of vision. It invo