here
indeed lies the road to ruin; he feels inexpressibly relieved when the
young man thanks Heaven for his terrible dream of the future, and sits
down to Conic Sections, his head between his hands. You notice this
latter touch. The playwright knows his audience. He knows they think
that an influx of Conic Sections strains the cerebral centres, and
that study is always carried on with the head compressed between the
hands. Thus the sermon reaches the hearts of those who still have
occasional nightmares of the time when they conned "Parallel lines are
those which, if produced ever so far both ways, will not meet." Alas!
I fear our conceptions of art are in the same predicament.

Is it not strange, though, how customs vary? In the Middle Ages one
went to church to see the mystery play; now one goes to the music-hall
to hear a sermon. "Pronounced by clergymen and others to be the most
powerful sermon ever preached from the stage," etc. I wonder, as
I scan my programme, whether the monastic playwrights of old
ever published encomiums on their weird productions by prominent
highwaymen. I say highwaymen because I can think of none who had a
better right to criticise dramatic performances from the practical and
moral standpoints. But the noise of the undergraduate as he goes
crashing through his ruinous nightmare recalls me. I proceed to
examine my companions in distress. All are engaged in the Road to
Ruin. I think they like stage ruin--it is so thrilling. Moreover,
it leaves out all that is at all middle class. Even our wicked
undergraduate never falls as low as the middle class. He starts as
a university man, and ends in a slum, but he is saved from the
second-class season ticket. I am still puzzling with this question of
the middle class as I quit the theatre and make my way down to the
docks. There is a mild, misty rain falling, and I turn into my
favourite tavern in Wind Street for a glass of ale. The Middle Class!
Why, I ask myself, are they so strange in their intellectual tastes?
The wealthy I understand; the workmen I understand; but O this
terrible Middle Class! I sit musing, and four men come in upon my
solitude. Obviously they are actors, rushing in for a "smile" between
the acts. Obviously, I say, for their easy manners, _savoir faire_,
and good breeding stamp them men of the world, and their evening dress
does the rest.

"Ah, you read the _Clarion_?" observes one. I start guiltily. Yes, I
had bought a copy, a