the arm.

"Perhaps," said Ascher to me, "if you are kind enough to see my wife
home you will wait in my house till I get back. I may have something to
say to you. It is possible that I shall reach the house before you do,
but I may be late. I do not know. Will you wait for me?"

"Won't you come on, sir?" said Jack.

I noticed, then, that Jack was excited and nervous. I do not ever
remember having seen him excited or nervous before, not even when he
went in second wicket down in the Eton and Harrow match with seventy
runs to make and an hour left to play. I held Ascher's coat for him and
watched them get into the taxi together.

When I got back to the hall Gorman was well into his speech and had
captured the attention of his audience. I was able to pick up the thread
of what he was saying almost at once. He was discoursing on the arts of
peace, contrasting them with the arts of war. In past ages, so Gorman
said, the human intellect had occupied itself mainly in devising means
for destroying life and had been indifferent to the task of preserving
it. Gunpowder was invented long before the antitoxin for diphtheria was
discovered. Steel was used for swords ages before any one thought of
making it into motor cars. These were Gorman's illustrations. I should
not have thought that motor cars actually preserve life; but Gorman is a
good orator and a master in the art of concealing the weak points of
his argument. His hearers were quite ready to ignore the mortality
statistics of our new motor traffic. The pig-breeding scientist led a
round of applause.

Gorman developed his theme. The intellect of the modern world, he said,
was not only occupied with the problems of preserving life, but was bent
on making life more convenient and happier, especially the life of the
toiling masses of our people. The mediaeval world built cathedrals, fine
castles, Doge's palaces and such things. We have supplied mankind with
penny postage stamps. Which, Gorman asked, is the greater achievement:
to house a Doge or two in a building too big for them or to enable
countless mothers--sorrowing and lonely women--to communicate by letter
with the children who had left the maternal home?

After dwelling for some time on the conveniences Gorman passed on to
speak of the pleasures of modern life. He said that pleasures were more
important than work, because without pleasures no work could be really
well done. When he reached that point I began to s