remorse to reveal
such dark episodes long after they have occurred. It has nothing to do
with the orgies of the Anti-Puritan League. That body is so offensively
respectable that a newspaper, in describing it the other day, referred
to my friend Mr. Edgar Jepson as Canon Edgar Jepson; and it is believed
that similar titles are intended for all of us. No; it is not by the
conduct of Archbishop Crane, of Dean Chesterton, of the Rev. James
Douglas, of Monsignor Bland, and even of that fine and virile old
ecclesiastic, Cardinal Nesbit, that I wish (or rather, am driven by
my conscience) to make this declaration. The crime was committed in
solitude and without accomplices. Alone I did it. Let me, with the
characteristic thirst of penitents to get the worst of the confession
over, state it first of all in its most dreadful and indefensible form.
There is at the present moment in a town in Germany (unless he has died
of rage on discovering his wrong), a restaurant-keeper to whom I still
owe twopence. I last left his open-air restaurant knowing that I owed
him twopence. I carried it away under his nose, despite the fact that
the nose was a decidedly Jewish one. I have never paid him, and it is
highly improbable that I ever shall. How did this villainy come to occur
in a life which has been, generally speaking, deficient in the dexterity
necessary for fraud? The story is as follows--and it has a moral, though
there may not be room for that.

.....

It is a fair general rule for those travelling on the Continent that the
easiest way of talking in a foreign language is to talk philosophy. The
most difficult kind of talking is to talk about common necessities. The
reason is obvious. The names of common necessities vary completely
with each nation and are generally somewhat odd and quaint. How, for
instance, could a Frenchman suppose that a coalbox would be called a
"scuttle"? If he has ever seen the word scuttle it has been in the
Jingo Press, where the "policy of scuttle" is used whenever we give
up something to a small Power like Liberals, instead of giving up
everything to a great Power, like Imperialists. What Englishman in
Germany would be poet enough to guess that the Germans call a glove a
"hand-shoe." Nations name their necessities by nicknames, so to
speak. They call their tubs and stools by quaint, elvish, and almost
affectionate names, as if they were their own children! But any one can
argue about abstract things in a