restraint,
and though each maintained his contentions he was quick to acknowledge a
point made by the other. As one listened one was led to hope that a
happier day is perhaps at hand when such things as "complexes" and
convictions will disappear.

The types of these two were in striking contrast. The labour leader was
stocky, chestnut-coloured, vital, possessing the bulldog quality of the
British self-made man combined with a natural wit, sharpened in the
arena, that often startled the company into an appreciative laughter.
The ship-builder, on the other hand, was one of those spare and hard
Englishmen whom no amount of business cares will induce to neglect the
exercise of his body, the obligation at all times to keep "fit";
square-rigged, as it were, with a lean face and a wide moustache
accentuating a square chin. Occasionally a gleam of humour, a ray of
idealism, lighted his practical grey eyes. Each of these two had managed
rather marvellously to triumph over early training by self-education: the
labour leader, who had had his first lessons in life from injustices and
hard knocks; and the ship-builder, who had overcome the handicap of the
public-school tradition and of Manchester economics.

"Yes, titles and fortunes must go," remarked our hostess with a smile as
she rose from the table and led the way out on the sunny, stone-flagged
terrace. Below us was a wide parterre whose flower-beds, laid out by a
celebrated landscape-gardener in the days of the Stuarts, were filled
with vegetables. The day was like our New England Indian summerthough
the trees were still heavy with leaves--and a gossamer-blue veil of haze
stained the hills between which the shining river ran. If the social
revolution, or evolution, takes place, one wonders what will become of
this long-cherished beauty.

I venture to dwell upon one more experience of that week-end party. The
Friday evening of my arrival I was met at the station, not by a limousine
with a chauffeur and footman, but by a young woman with a taxicab--one of
the many reminders that a war is going on. London had been reeking in a
green-yellow fog, but here the mist was white, and through it I caught
glimpses of the silhouettes of stately trees in a park, and presently saw
the great house with its clock-tower looming up before me. A fire was
crackling in the hall, and before it my hostess was conversing amusedly
with a well-known sculptor--a sculptor typical of these ren