"There is going to be a row this morning. There is going
to be a regular shindy this morning."' They come to the new house but
they cannot sit down to dinner together.

'Father thinks I've been stealing his {162} damned money,' snaps out
the son in a barking voice, and refuses to meet him at table. And the
father takes his dinner alone. The end of the ghastly quarrel is that
the son gets an increase of half a crown to his weekly wage! That is
the measure of the 'new birth' which he had so fondly anticipated. He
does not realise that after being emptied from vessel to vessel,
however much larger and more beautiful the vessels become, filthy water
remains filthy water still.

What is there left to those for whom the vision of God thus fades? The
fathers amassed money, and they had the joy of conflict, and a sense of
duty. But the sons have not the joy of conflict. They inherit houses
built for them, and money for which they have not toiled. What are
they to do? Their fathers found endless interest in Church and Chapel,
and they gave of their wealth. The sons no longer believe in Church
and Chapel. They have no traditions of social service. They regard
the class from {163} which their fathers sprang with aversion and with
fear. Their favourite topic of conversation is the shortcomings of the
working-classes. One whole winter they denounced the iniquity of the
State making any provision, however pitifully small, for the decayed
veterans who fall out of the ranks of toil; another winter they
declaimed with bitterness against the crime of the State making
provision through insurance for the ill-health of their servants and
employees! They have little taste for books, and money cannot buy the
sense by which beauty floods the heart. There is nothing left them but
self-indulgence. To that they sacrifice everything. Food and clothes
and physical pleasure fill up the circuit of the days. Then weariness
seizes them. They become the captives of boredom. They rush hither
and thither. They carry to the Highlands a life which is intolerable
hi London; they bring back to London a life which is intolerable in the
Highlands. They live lives isolated from the {164} joy and innocence
of childhood--for that is the ideal they have made their own. They
rush after anything which will promise the 'easier and quicker passing
of the impracticable hours.' They still maintain some connection with
the Church, but their at