"My old
woman lives there," he says, "and the devils are more afraid of her
than you are of them." Faustus does not take this advice, but goes on
meditating and reflecting (which had been his mistake all along) until
the clock strikes twelve, and dreadful voices talk Latin in heaven.
So Faustus, in his fur coat, is carried away by little black imps; and
serve him right for being an Intellectual.

The Man and His Newspaper

At a little station, which I decline to specify, somewhere between
Oxford and Guildford, I missed a connection or miscalculated a route
in such manner that I was left stranded for rather more than an hour.
I adore waiting at railway stations, but this was not a very sumptuous
specimen. There was nothing on the platform except a chocolate automatic
machine, which eagerly absorbed pennies but produced no corresponding
chocolate, and a small paper-stall with a few remaining copies of a
cheap imperial organ which we will call the Daily Wire. It does not
matter which imperial organ it was, as they all say the same thing.

Though I knew it quite well already, I read it with gravity as I
strolled out of the station and up the country road. It opened with the
striking phrase that the Radicals were setting class against class. It
went on to remark that nothing had contributed more to make our Empire
happy and enviable, to create that obvious list of glories which you can
supply for yourself, the prosperity of all classes in our great cities,
our populous and growing villages, the success of our rule in Ireland,
etc., etc., than the sound Anglo-Saxon readiness of all classes in the
State "to work heartily hand-in-hand." It was this alone, the paper
assured me, that had saved us from the horrors of the French Revolution.
"It is easy for the Radicals," it went on very solemnly, "to make jokes
about the dukes. Very few of these revolutionary gentlemen have given
to the poor one half of the earnest thought, tireless unselfishness, and
truly Christian patience that are given to them by the great landlords
of this country. We are very sure that the English people, with their
sturdy common sense, will prefer to be in the hands of English gentlemen
rather than in the miry claws of Socialistic buccaneers."

Just when I had reached this point I nearly ran into a man. Despite the
populousness and growth of our villages, he appeared to be the only man
for miles, but the road up which I had wandered turned and nar