th what seemed to me at first, a kind of blurred,
helpless look. I soon saw that he was pitying me and I promptly stepped
down to the dining-saloon and tried to appreciate two or three tons of
flowers.

I do not wish to say a word against missionaries. They are merely apt to
be somewhat heedless, morally-hurried persons, rushing about the world
turning people (as they think) right side up everywhere, without really
noticing them much, but I do think that a great deliberate corporate
body like The American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions ought
to be more optimistic about the Church--wait and work for it a little
more, expect a little more of it.

It seems to me that it ought to be far less pessimistic than it is,
also, about what we can do in the way of schools and social life in
civilisation and about civilisation's way of doing business. Is our
little knack of Christianity (I find myself wondering) quite worthy of
all this attention it is getting from The American Board of
Commissioners of Foreign Missions? Why should it approve of civilisation
with a rush? Does any one really suppose that it is really time to pat
it on the back--yet?--to spend a million dollars a year--patting it on
the back?

I merely throw out the question.

VIII

More Literary Rush

We had been talking along, in our Club, as usual, for some time, on the
general subject of the world--fixing the blame for things. We had come
to the point where it was nearly all fixed (most of it on other people)
when I thought I might as well put forward my little theory that nearly
everything that was the matter, could be traced to the people who
"belong to Society."

Then The P. G. S. of M. (who is always shoving a dictionary around in
front of him when he talks) spoke up and said:

"But who belongs to Society?"

"All persons who read what they are told to and who call where they
can't help it. What this world needs just now," I went on, looking The
P. G. S. of M. as much in the eye as I could, "is emancipation. It needs
a prophet--a man who can gather about him a few brave-hearted,
intelligently ignorant men, who shall go about with their beautiful feet
on the mountains, telling the good tidings of how many things there are
we do not need to know. The prejudice against being ignorant is largely
because people have not learned how to do it. The wrong people have
taken hold of it."

I cannot remember the exact words of what was said after