the
hostility of powerful labour organizations. This is a terrible time in
which we live, my dear boy. There is none recorded in history, I
think, in which the disproportion between the material and the moral
constituents of society has been so great or so menacing to the
permanence of the fabric. But nowhere, in my judgement, is the prospect
so dark as it is in the United States.'

'I thought,' said Trent listlessly, 'that Puritanism was about as strong
there as the money-getting craze.'

'Your remark,' answered Mr Cupples, with as near an approach to humour
as was possible to him, 'is not in the nature of a testimonial to what
you call Puritanism--a convenient rather than an accurate term; for I
need not remind you that it was invented to describe an Anglican party
which aimed at the purging of the services and ritual of their Church
from certain elements repugnant to them. The sense of your observation,
however, is none the less sound, and its truth is extremely well
illustrated by the case of Manderson himself, who had, I believe, the
virtues of purity, abstinence, and self-restraint in their strongest
form. No, Trent, there are other and more worthy things among the moral
constituents of which I spoke; and in our finite nature, the more
we preoccupy ourselves with the bewildering complexity of external
apparatus which science places in our hands, the less vigour have we
left for the development of the holier purposes of humanity within us.
Agricultural machinery has abolished the festival of the Harvest Home.
Mechanical travel has abolished the inn, or all that was best in it. I
need not multiply instances. The view I am expressing to you,' pursued
Mr Cupples, placidly buttering a piece of toast, 'is regarded as
fundamentally erroneous by many of those who think generally as I
do about the deeper concerns of life, but I am nevertheless firmly
persuaded of its truth.'

'It needs epigrammatic expression,' said Trent, rising from the table.
'If only it could be crystallized into some handy formula, like "No
Popery", or "Tax the Foreigner", you would find multitudes to go to the
stake for it. But you were planning to go to White Gables before the
inquest, I think. You ought to be off if you are to get back to the
court in time. I have something to attend to there myself, so we might
walk up together. I will just go and get my camera.'

'By all means,' Mr Cupples answered; and they set off at once in the
ever-growi