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 TODDLE ISLAND
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 BEING 
 
 THE DIARY OF LORD BOTTSFORD 
 
 ' Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped 
 down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, 
 crieth : and the cries of them which have reaped are 
 entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.' 
 
 James v. 4. 
 
 LONDON 
 RICHARD BENTLEY 
 
 publishers in rbinarj) to ^) 
 1894 
 
 [All rights reserved} 
 
 AND 
 
 the 
 
 SON
 
 IpeMratei 
 
 TO MY BELOVED AND REVERED 
 
 MOTHER, 
 
 WHO, ALWAYS RELIGIOUS AND ALWAYS REAL, 
 
 TAUGHT ME THE FOLLY 
 OF SUPERSTITION AND SHAMS.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 I. 
 
 ' Although some things are too serious, solemn, or sacred, to be 
 turned into ridicule, yet the abuses of them are certainly not ; since it is 
 allowed that corruptions in religion, politics, and law may be proper 
 topics for this kind of satire. ... I demand whether I have not as 
 good a title to laugh as men have to be ridiculous ; and to expose vice, 
 as another has to be vicious. If I ridicule the follies and corruptions 
 of a court, a ministry, or a senate, are they not amply paid \?j pensions, 
 titles, and power, while I expect and desire no other reward than that 
 of laughing with a few friends in a corner ?' DEAN SWIFT. 
 
 1 And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 
 Tis that I may not weep.' LORD BYRON. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THOUGH I had lived forty-five years I had never heard of 
 Toddle Island, and it seems to me rather wonderful that 
 such an obscure corner of the earth was ever brought before 
 my notice. 
 
 If you carefully study a map of the world, you will find a 
 small group of islands in the Southern Pacific called the 
 Bounty Islands. Toddle Island is almost directly opposite 
 these, and though the careless reader may not see it, yet it is 
 marked on most maps. I have never been able to make 
 
 i
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 out why it was not included amongst the others, but the 
 Bounty Islands lie nearer the Antarctic Ocean than Toddle 
 Island, and may have been kept in a state of savagery by 
 Maori criminals from New Zealand. Their history, how- 
 ever, is yet to be written, and I am anticipating far too 
 rapidly with regard to Toddle Island itself. My visit origin- 
 ated in this way : After receiving my title and estates, I 
 went every year to London. Each year seemed duller than 
 the one before it, and after I had spent a calendar month 
 in going to a dinner and three parties each night, I was 
 weary sick of the whole show. As I returned from the 
 packed rooms of the Duchess of Bromby, I called upon my 
 friend Dick Spooner to tell him I could endure London no 
 longer. 
 
 Though Dick was ten years my junior, yet he was my 
 only friend in the world. We had lived together in poverty. 
 At that time, about seven years earlier, Dick was a school- 
 master. Poor drudge ! I remember his haggard look 
 when he was starving on a few pence a day, for which he 
 was expected to pour the knowledge of four generations into 
 the sterile young brain in four years. I was not much better 
 off. I veiled my huckstering life under the sweet fiction of 
 estate agent, whilst my remote cousin, Lord Bottsford, was 
 roaming through the capitals of Europe. At last the estates 
 and title came to me ! 
 
 Then Dick and I left our drudgery. I made him inde- 
 pendent of the world, but we seldom lived apart. 
 
 The reader will now see how it came to pass that I ever 
 heard of Toddle Island, for in the old dark days Dick used 
 to teach the peasant children geography, and to enlarge 
 their ideas he told them the longest names of the smallest 
 islands in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Those were 
 the days before education was invented. 
 
 After pouring out my scorn for the dance of death which
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 a rich Londoner calls pleasure, Dick suggested a walk on 
 the Embankment. There we strolled. As the dawn broke 
 and the light showed through the arches of Waterloo Bridge, 
 we halted at Cleopatra's Needle. 
 
 Dick is an imaginative fellow, and sometimes melancholy ; 
 but he has had a hard life, and as a child he was soaked in 
 a sour religion. Still, on many occasions bfi is grand, and 
 I can pour out my pessimism without any fear of injuring 
 him. As we came near the new Sphinxes I was saying that 
 British civilization was chiefly sawdust, and that society was 
 so much mud which had dried on the back of the golden 
 calf. 
 
 When we stood still, I continued : 
 
 ' Do let us leave it ; I had rather be a Brummagem Sphinx 
 or a hieroglyph, which no man can read, on the tomb of a 
 dead religion, than take part in a pantomime where the 
 thief and the undertaker are the only serious characters. 
 Will you decide upon some place and come with me, 
 Dick ?' 
 
 ' What do you want, savagery or solitude ?' 
 
 ' A mixture of both, or some form of civilization which 
 we have not seen, and which does not play its own paean 
 on a tin whistle and then ask the public for a collection to 
 defray expenses.' 
 
 c What do you say to Toddle Island ? It lies where many 
 seas meet ; it has no climate, and its inhabitants have no 
 ancestry. Like the island itself, they came from nowhere, 
 or everywhere ; and I am told that the Toddlers are highly 
 interesting no one ever saw them twice alike.' 
 
 ' Capital ! That sounds better than this life of a blowfly 
 in a bottle, which wears itself out by making music for its 
 own funeral. Is it far away ?' 
 
 'Fourteen thousand miles. Let us go, that we may 
 write a history of Toddle Island. One writer can correct
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 the other, and I am told that a true history of the Toddlers 
 would rouse the genuine laughter of a professional clown.' 
 
 And so it came to pass that we resolved to sail to 
 Toddle Island. We found London somewhat interesting, 
 for the confusion of most London shops gave us infinite 
 sport in hunting for our outfit. Even I almost found the 
 Metropolis pleasant. 
 
 By the time we were ready to sail London was like a 
 gingerbread man with the gilt sucked off. The fashionable 
 magnates, whether philanthropists or flirts, had fled like a 
 swarm of locusts, and left the place to the beggarly people 
 who work for a living, together with a few clerks and stray 
 curates. 
 
 As we got out into the ocean, our spirits rose and our 
 joy was great. We stored up any scraps of information 
 regarding the manners and customs of the Toddlers, yet 
 we carefully avoided their histories, for we were advised 
 that those books were samples of partisan mud-throwing, 
 and no more to be believed than a modern sermon in 
 England. I am compelled to say that Dick perpetrated 
 some verses, otherwise he was often brilliant. He treated 
 the tumbling waves as if they were familiar friends who 
 had never deceived him, and at night he seemed to have 
 a secret language by which he communed with the stars. I 
 sometimes wish I could trust Nature as Dick does; but 
 then I might become a Pantheist, and that would shock 
 my tenantry at least, they would be frightened at the word. 
 
 There were few people on board, as it was not the season 
 to visit Toddle Island, and these few were mostly traders. 
 The only intelligent man amongst them was Mr. Gane, an 
 agent for an automatic bubble-blowing machine. He marked 
 my astonishment at this announcement. Then he explained 
 that he had been ' called to the Bar,' but no one would give 
 him a brief, because he lived at that time with his grand-
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 5 
 
 mother, and she did not give dinners ; so he took to trade, 
 and he had found that the Toddlers are fond of buying 
 bubbles, only they must be perfectly round, sea-green, and 
 reflect the owner's face with added beauty. 
 
 I listened with admiration to Mr. Gane. He told me 
 most amusing things about the islanders and their customs. 
 He especially tried to impress me with the fact that they 
 were a mercantile race, and that their shopkeeping instincts 
 pervaded everything they did ; upholstered every hope and 
 regulated every affection. Nothing was so dear to the 
 Toddlers as to seem stolidly respectable ; for the respecta- 
 bility itself they had no desire. 
 
 I observed Mr. Gane on many occasions engrossed in 
 his favourite amusement of cards with the other passengers. 
 He seemed very much puzzled with my companion, and 
 was utterly Unable to comprehend the nature of a man who 
 could sit still for three hours gazing on the sea. 
 
 When we arrived at our destination we found a busy 
 harbour, and landed after much delay. In my folly I had 
 taken piles of luggage, for which there seemed no arrange- 
 ment. Three or four fellows pounced upon it, and after a 
 hand-to-hand struggle my best portmanteau fell into the 
 water. Had I been aware how completely our language 
 resembled theirs, I certainly should have relieved my 
 feelings. I never spent a more trying time than those few 
 minutes, when we were ordered about by officials and 
 hustled by savages. Certain fellows were exceedingly rude 
 and opened our boxes, and when they had turned their 
 contents topsy-turvy, we were allowed to reclaim them. 
 This is undoubtedly a survival of barbarism, and probably 
 dates from the time when the inhabitants of the island 
 murdered all who landed, and seized their goods. It 
 seemed strange to me that they should insist upon this 
 imitation butchery and plunder, but I knew not the crooked
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 ways of the Toddler then. Once free and in a sort of 
 public carriage, we hastened to our hotel, greatly surprised 
 to find that English was understood by the natives. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 NEXT morning I called upon the English Consul, and pre- 
 sented my introduction. When he appeared, I conferred 
 with him as to the best means of becoming intimately 
 acquainted with the customs, politics, and religion of the 
 Toddlers. He smiled frigidly at my inquiry, and said : 
 
 'You can hardly be aware that it is extremely difficult to 
 know these people. In fact, I sometimes feel convinced 
 that they know nothing themselves of their own morals or 
 religion. These people are the odds and ends of the earth, 
 and if you take the trouble to understand one class, say the 
 bootmakers, and thoroughly master their religion and pre- 
 judices, then you will come upon another class hatters, 
 for instance who have entirely different customs and 
 notions, and who probably are descended from a different 
 tribe altogether.' 
 
 I assured the Consul that it was this absence of uniformity, 
 or, to put it more clearly, this wholesale contradiction, which 
 had tempted me to visit the island. I pointed out to him 
 that if the islanders had possessed the ordinary uniformity 
 either of wild animals or civilized men, I never should have 
 taken the trouble to come so far. 
 
 He said : ' I will invite a few of the leading men to meet 
 you, and some of them may forward your plans.' 
 
 I had to wait till the promised party could be arranged, 
 and during the time I tried to read their current literature.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 They had certain newspapers ; and though they were 
 hundreds of years behind the English press both in 
 ubiquity and omniscience, still, there was a daily literature. 
 I was greatly perplexed by the climate, which seemed to 
 change every morning, and always for the worse. 
 
 At last the evening arrived for this small party at which 
 I was to be introduced to the manners and customs of the 
 Toddlers. To my great surprise, although it was a cold 
 night, the guests had taken special pains to be less clad 
 than usual. The two or three ladies present were remark- 
 ably unclothed. I was told afterwards by the Consul that 
 in this way the fashionable women of the island show 
 their respect for a distinguished visitor, and that on great 
 occasions they make it a point of honour to disclose them- 
 selves as much as possible. 
 
 I was introduced to the Mayor of Cable, Sir George 
 Blandford, to Professor Planet, and to many others. 
 
 I could only hear part of the conversation during the 
 banquet on account of the confusion of so many people 
 talking across the table at the top of their voices. The 
 chief features of a dinner-party appeared to be to drink a 
 large amount and to talk without ceasing. 
 
 I look back now with amusement upon that dinner-party. 
 
 Professor Planet got into a very heated discussion with 
 the Mayor. In fact, I should have thought that they both 
 lost their tempers ; only I was assured afterwards that it is 
 absolutely impossible in Toddle Island for any mayor to 
 lose his temper, or for any professor to be angry on a 
 public occasion. 
 
 The Mayor had said that in this seaport town of Cable 
 crime had increased during his term of office, and he felt 
 it to be a personal insult. He thought he could prevent 
 this by a kind of automatic whipping - post. Professor 
 Planet held entirely different views. He admitted that
 
 8 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 crime was on the increase in Cable, that it was no longer 
 safe to walk in many parts of the town after sunset ; but he 
 was of opinion that the people did not commit crime of 
 their own accord in fact, it was due to their ignorance, 
 probably because they had never heard of the exact posi- 
 tion of the Milky Way ; and the Professor maintained that 
 if astronomy were introduced into the schools of the island, 
 so that every child before he was five years of age could 
 explain the difference between the sun and the moon, crime 
 would disappear. To my great astonishment, the Mayor 
 did not answer this, but merely settled the question by 
 languidly affirming that such education would endanger the 
 Sacred Ass ! 
 
 Professor Planet was a communicative man, with a con- 
 siderable amount of leisure. So on the following day I 
 called upon him, fully intending to solve some of the 
 mysteries of the previous night. Dick had not been present 
 at the dinner-party, and I succeeded in so thoroughly 
 confusing his mind by my account of it that he went with 
 me to see Professor Planet. 
 
 We called in the middle of the morning, and were shown 
 into a large room packed with books, and strewn with 
 photographs and pamphlets. Being encouraged by his 
 kindness of manner, I immediately told the Professor that 
 I had been puzzling over the conversation of the night 
 previous. 
 
 'Are you aware, sir,' I asked, 'that I come from a 
 country where we have solved every problem except the 
 problem of the criminal ? Just before I left England a new 
 and brilliant attempt was mooted. It was proposed to take 
 the criminals, clothe and feed them, and let them live in 
 magnificent palaces, if they would, because the .first element 
 of all regeneration with the Northern nations is "to respect 
 the sacredness of the human will." ' 

 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 The Professor looked with wonder upon me. I con- 
 tinued : 
 
 ' There seemed something so original in your plan last 
 night, that crime was due to ignorance of the planets and 
 the Milky Way, that I beg you to explain your proposal for 
 the prevention of crime.' 
 
 The Professor answered : ' It is indeed gratifying to find 
 that a gentleman who has come from the greatest country 
 in the world has the same interest in crime as a quiet 
 student at the shrine of humanity. The first fact we have to 
 grasp is the totality of the universe. I know very little 
 about the Milky Way, and I know nothing about crime ; 
 but I am sure that in the individual crime-child, and in the 
 hazy, infinite glories of the Milky Way, we have the two 
 extremes of the universe, and in this island we know that 
 extremes meet, therefore I suggested my cure of crime to 
 the Mayor. He possesses power and money, and has risen 
 from a rank in life which would make it less difficult for 
 him to comprehend the workings of the criminal instincts, 
 because at one time he was a tradesman.' 
 
 I did not understand this, and in order to get the smallest 
 ray of light from the infinite Milky Way, I asked him why 
 the Mayor had so suddenly and so completely refuted his 
 argument by a reference to the Sacred Ass. 
 
 He smiled, saying : ' I had forgotten that you are a 
 stranger, and that probably you may not have heard of the 
 Sacred Ass. Now, we in this island are a people composed 
 of many tribes, and the points on which we agreed originally 
 were remarkably few. But centuries ago a powerful man 
 came to the island, and slew the kings and nobles. It is 
 said that his totem was an animal remarkably like an ass. 
 You must remember that this was thousands of years ago, 
 when men could neither read nor write. The conqueror 
 died, and other kings succeeded him ; but the people
 
 10 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 always inquired before making a new law whether it would 
 have had the approval of the king and his Sacred Ass. By 
 degrees every reference to the king disappeared ; only the 
 ass remained. One or two officials ventured to say that 
 they had seen the Sacred Ass. Be this as it may, the 
 whole history of the island is bound up with that of the 
 Sacred Ass, which is one of the few things that no foreigner 
 has ever understood.' 
 
 Dick and I remained a long time with Professor Planet. 
 We asked many questions about the wonderful animal 
 which seemed to be their guardian saint. I am afraid that 
 neither of us fully comprehended what it was all about. I 
 have, unfortunately, a practical turn of mind, which prevents 
 my dealing with mysteries, and all I could do for the rest 
 of the day was to sit and smoke, and draw caricatures of 
 short-tailed, long-eared asses, and worry Dick to tell me 
 which he thought looked the most sacred. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 I CALLED upon the Mayor. He immediately offered me 
 cigars of the choicest brand, smiling with an infinitude that 
 would have sufficed to annihilate, not only Professor Planet, 
 but also the Milky Way. 
 
 Thus encouraged, I said : ' Sir George Blandford, I do 
 not understand your country ; will you kindly help me 
 to the true meaning of that remarkable phrase of yours, 
 which acted like a charm? Is it true that the islanders 
 have no respect for the lives of others, but yet that everyone 
 regards the Sacred Ass with feelings of the deepest awe ?' 
 
 The Mayor took a long breath, and whispered : ' I sup-
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 pose you are aware that the Sacred Ass is never discussed 
 by us? But as you are a stranger, I will tell you what 
 I know of it : Whether it symbolizes the origin of power in 
 this nation, or whether it is a confused tradition of some 
 memorable battle, I cannot say. It is said that two classes 
 of servants divide the grooming of him between them ; one 
 set grooms his tails, and the other his ears. That is why, in 
 all pictures you see of the Sacred Ass, his ears and his tails 
 are so remarkably long. It ought to be possible to find out 
 how far this is true, because, in the capital, there are two 
 stables into which the animal is taken to be groomed ; one 
 is called the lower stable, and the other the upper. We owe 
 our greatness to this animal, and every right-minded man in 
 the island would outrage his nearest friends rather than hear 
 anything which might disturb the Sacred Ass. All our 
 patience, our endurance, our simplicity of life, our content- 
 ment with the poorest circumstances, our pure Christianity, 
 our universal justice, and many other virtues and blessings, 
 are due to this noble animal.' 
 
 I grew more bewildered the more Sir George explained, 
 but I left him with a smiling face. 
 
 For a long time after my interview with Professor Planet 
 and with the Mayor, I avoided the subject of religion, or 
 politics, or whatever it was, which led them to venerate the 
 Sacred Ass. 
 
 Dick and I suspected that these two people were oddities 
 of the island. It seemed to us altogether unlikely that their 
 statements were true. We resolved, however, not to make 
 ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of our new friends, but 
 to wait and examine. Meantime, I had found lodgings. 
 There is a remarkable charm in living in a country whose 
 institutions, religion, and rate-paying are entirely outside of 
 one's own experience, and I feel sure that this is the sole 
 cause of our success in discovering the true history of the
 
 12 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 Toddlers. We entered into their pursuits without the fatal 
 bias of hereditary tendency. I never quite made out how 
 Dick spent his time, for, in spite of a good deal of ex- 
 perience, it was almost impossible to keep him from taking 
 everything in earnest, and I feel sure that the first requisite 
 to understand the life and character of the Toddlers is 
 a sense of the ridiculous. They, of course, do not laugh 
 at their own blunders and inconsistencies, but enlightened 
 and scientific Europe, when their customs have been under- 
 stood, will confirm all that I have said in this diary. 
 
 The ancestors of the Toddlers were probably thrown up 
 by the sea and drifted on to the marsh or rock of this little 
 island, and, finding themselves face to face with starvation, 
 they glared at each other fiercely, and then subdued their 
 desire for a dinner with a cynical smile ; that smile was 
 the dawn of their civilization. I feel sure it was the 
 burlesque of it that led these savages to refrain from devour- 
 ing each other. So they abandoned all their succeeding 
 history to these two forces. As a rule they drift. If the 
 drifting should on any occasion become serious, they 
 immediately laugh the old cynical laugh of the hungry 
 cannibal, and call it compromise. 
 
 Dick and I spent many an hour trying to arrange the 
 disorganized fragments which legend furnished with regard 
 to the Sacred Ass. At one time he thought he had solved 
 the whole difficulty by pointing out that it was a form 
 of religion. However, when we got to know them better, 
 we found that this could not be, because, in a dim and 
 confused sense, many of these people were Christians. 
 
 I went to a kind of party, which the Mayor's wife used to 
 give, and here I gathered information about the customs of 
 her class. I remember on one occasion I got into diffi- 
 culties by trying to understand the worship of the Sacred 
 Ass. This was most unfortunate, and I think it was the
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 13 
 
 word ' worship ' which roused the anger of Mrs. Feather, 
 the leader of fashion in Cable. 
 
 She was immensely rich, through some process which 
 her father could have easily explained, or any of the dock 
 navvies, for he had beguiled hundreds of these men to work 
 for years at low wages, whilst he put money into his bank, 
 and persuaded the wretches that they enjoyed a great privilege 
 in being allowed to toil on his behalf. The result was that 
 when he died Mrs. Feather and her brothers and sisters 
 found themselves the richest people in Cable. Now, the 
 Toddlers regard a banker as the source of intelligence and 
 morality. Yet I found afterwards that, in order to avoid 
 the difficulty of any fixed principles, they take care not to 
 leave the gift of intelligence entirely in the hands of the 
 bankers. The trick is ingenious. They must have intelli- 
 gence and morality, so, in addition to that which is invented 
 by the bankers, they create a lighter kind by appealing to 
 chance. They select certain children before they are born 
 to wear a gold thread on their necks. This gold thread 
 confers all virtues on the wearer. When one finds a person 
 with a gold thread round his neck, that person is known to 
 b_e intelligent, and is recognised as powerful. 
 
 Mrs. Feather drew her intelligence and power from the 
 bank. I ventured to say to her that I thought there was a 
 great deal of mystery about the Sacred Ass. She gave me 
 a detailed account of his virtues. She showed me that he 
 was the noblest thing in creation, that but for him this 
 world would have been a swamp of stagnant tears, and, in 
 fact, to be allowed in any way to serve such an animal was 
 the highest privilege of the most aristocratic Toddler. I 
 said to her : 
 
 ' Madam, have you ever seen this animal ?' 
 
 She grew pale with a sacred horror, and declared she 
 never had.
 
 I 4 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 ' Do you know anyone who has seen him ?' 
 
 ( No,' she replied, ' but we know the Stables where he is 
 kept, and I am spending fabulous sums that my eldest son 
 may become a Groom in the Stables.' 
 
 I accepted this as final. 
 
 Here I must inform the reader that to be a Groom to the 
 Sacred Ass was considered a great honour, for the Grooms 
 and the Jockeys were the two classes who governed the 
 whole island. They had so much power and so many 
 privileges that it was impossible to withstand them. There 
 were a few of the old islanders who fancied that the Grooms 
 were their own servants, and that the Jockeys could be 
 destroyed, but I never found any proof of either of these 
 statements. By some extraordinary arrangement, if a man 
 once became a Jockey he was a Jockey for life, and his 
 eldest son was also a Jockey, but the other sons were not. 
 If the eldest son died childless, the second son would be the 
 Jockey, but the others would not. This was a piece of 
 mystery suited to a Sacred Ass. 
 
 In selecting their rulers, the islanders apparently iook the 
 utmost trouble to find those persons who knew nothing 
 about the people; and whenever they discovered a man 
 who, by his birth, surroundings, and education, was entirely 
 ignorant of the daily life and wants of the people, this man 
 would be made a ruler. It was a clever device, but I have 
 not been able to discover by whom it was invented. Their 
 object was to prevent any change by which the people should 
 obtain a better position ; for the Jockeys regarded them- 
 selves as belonging to an entirely different race, and many 
 of the Grooms were of the same opinion. In order to hood- 
 wink the Grooms and keep them quiet, the Jockeys would 
 occasionally invite a Groom into their own Stable and call 
 him instantly a Jockey. I would not take the trouble to 
 give these wretched details, but that to the Toddlers they
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 15 
 
 were of the utmost importance. We can have no idea how 
 the little life of this little island experienced all the shocks 
 of earthquakes and volcanoes merely by changing the 
 colour of a ribbon. I was told that the Royal Family of the 
 island paid great attention to these details. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CABLE followed the fashions of the capital, and it was 
 marked by the class distinctions and the party strife, the 
 luxury and the starvation, which are the peculiar glory of.the 
 capital of the island. Nothing shocked the Toddlers so 
 much as to have their poor frozen to death. They did not 
 care how many of them were killed in any other way as, in 
 fact, many were day by day by their various employments} 
 and owing to their being unable to procure sufficient food 
 but if it happened that, during a winter of extreme severity, 
 one or two of them were frozen to death, this created a 
 great sensation. So that the clever, poor Toddlers, who 
 felt instinctively that they were intended for the peerage, 
 and who consistently refused to work for their living, 
 prospered on those occasions. It was not considered a bad 
 thing to be poor on this island, if they were poor enough, 
 and poor long enough, for then they belonged to the Lower 
 Peerage. The State built large palaces, in which the Lower 
 Peerage were placed. The Lower Peerage and the Upper 
 Peerage closely resembled each other, their chief difference 
 being in name. They called the Upper Peerage the aristo- 
 cracy, and the Lower Peerage the paupers. For each 
 peerage large houses were provided in which they could 
 live, spacious rooms, warm and well lighted, and a never-
 
 1 6 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 failing stock of food, for all of which they were in no wise 
 responsible. 
 
 By the kindness of Professor Planet, I had been intro- 
 duced to the few learned people of Cable. Never have I 
 heard of a race so dominated by one illusion as were these 
 poor Toddlers by their Sacred Ass. It entered into all 
 their thoughts and speculations ; it altered the alliances 
 and relationships of life, and in the moments of their highest 
 exultation you could detect the bray of this strange animal. 
 Professor Planet had introduced me to a distinguished young 
 man of the wealthier people called Richard Rope. Mr. 
 Rope was aspiring to be a Groom, that is, something answer- 
 ing to our Member of Parliament. He was learning how 
 to be 'elected.' In theory such a man, when elected, had 
 to look after the interests of those who had chosen him. I 
 never discovered that this theory had been carried out ; in 
 fact, it was one of those numerous instances of the survival 
 of the cannibal burlesque to which I have already referred. 
 A man obtained the position of a ruler in this way : First \ 
 of all he promised to do everything that the people in Cable 
 wished him to do. Secondly, he had a home some distance 
 away where he could go and live, fish and shoot, and forget 
 the dirty back-streets of Cable ; but on certain necessary 
 occasions he would pay a visit to the town, and he would 
 invite a few of the privileged class to a banquet, and if he 
 gave them very good food and very strong wine, they would 
 all stand round him and sing, ' He is a jolly good fellow.' 
 
 This must strike an Englishman as a bad pantomime, 
 and it must fill our hearts with thankfulness that never 
 in_our struggle for British freedom did we present to the 
 world a spectacle of such nude and grotesque jugglery. 
 
 I talked much with Mr. Rope, and asked him what he 
 thought of Professor Planet's theory for the abolition of 
 crime.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 17 
 
 He said : ' I attach no importance to what a professor says. 
 A professor is a man who was not born for this world. He 
 possesses some of the instincts of an aristocrat, but yet he is 
 not aristocratic, because as a rule a professor has to give 
 years of toil to some difficult subject, which is an indignity 
 that no well-born Toddler would endure.' 
 
 I asked Mr. Rope if he would explain to me why there 
 was any such form as an ' election,' seeing that the whole 
 thing was in the hands of the bankers. 
 
 He was very much hurt at this remark, and immediately 
 said : 
 
 ' You will pardon me, but there you are mistaken. For 
 the convenience of practical life we place a good deal of 
 power in the hands of the bankers, and they are able 
 to render us considerable service, because we can always 
 have a list of the people for whom they work before we 
 invite our large parties, and this prevents our ever inviting 
 the wrong class, but the power of an " election " is by no 
 means in their hands. We must also have an election on 
 account of the Sacred Ass, who keeps us from anarchy and 
 ruin. No one can disturb that. In order to make the 
 nation doubly secure, we have two opposing parties in every 
 place of the island. One party is known as the "Stpck- 
 stillers," and the others as the " Runaways." These two 
 parties, being always diametrically opposed, efficiently 
 neutralize each other. These two political parties prevent 
 tyranny.' 
 
 I learnt afterwards that, instead of having a government, 
 they allow the Stockstillers and Runaways to meet in a 
 public hall and play the game of ' Oranges and Lemons,' 
 and these two parties will sit up half the night trying to pull 
 each other across an imaginary line. I marvelled alike at 
 the subtlety of their wisdom and the cheapness of their 
 amusement. I began to make more careful notes, and, 
 
 2
 
 1 8 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 after a party or visit, I usually devoted the following morn- 
 ing to writing down all I had learnt. 
 
 At Dick's earnest request, I went with him to spend a 
 day in their court of law. It was the dullest form of con- 
 fusion I had witnessed. 
 
 On the following day I called on Professor Planet, and 
 told him of our experiences. I inquired : 
 
 ' Do you consider that you administer justice well in the 
 island ?' 
 
 'I never heard that we did,' said the Professor frankly; 
 < but, then, I know nothing about the rabble and the criminal 
 class. Still, I feel they would be well looked after sure to 
 be. Yes, when I think of it, I believe our system is based 
 on " Give the devil his due." ' 
 
 """' But I think I have heard that the law of Toddle Island 
 is complicated by paid jugglers and such-like. In there any 
 truth in that ?' 
 
 'Law! law! Oh, that is a different thing. You mean 
 the game of the " Infinite Circle " ; that is in the hands of 
 professional jugglers, but that is not to administer justice, 
 it is to try cases ; it is one of our national pantomimes.' 
 
 Then the Professor gave me a full explanation of this 
 game. I had laughed at the many devices amongst the" 
 islanders to promote party divisions and class distinctions 
 they think that the discovery of caste is the foundation of 
 civilization but this did not amuse me half as much as their 
 game of the ' Infinite Circle.' The ' Infinite Circle ' at one 
 time was loosely connected with the administration of 
 justice in the island, and in old records was called law. 
 
 The islanders apparently have abstained from any 
 methodical administration of justice, because they thought 
 it would interfere with their national motto that the world 
 was made for the powerful ; but lest there should be a 
 rising of the numerous classes who toil and suffer to
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 19 
 
 provide the luxuries of life for their neighbours, they 
 invented a system called 'Going to Law,' though its 
 correct name is the ' Infinite Circle.' It is founded on the 
 principles of gammon and spinach and the triumph of 
 might over right. 
 
 The discovery of this clever system is said to have been 
 made by the ancient Baron Towser, a one-legged wiseacre 
 of his time. He originated the ' Infinite Circle ' one winter's 
 night whilst watching his grandchildren play at ' Hunt the 
 Slipper.' He thought that a system which kept the young 
 in good spirits and out of mischief would be a boon if 
 applied to grown-up persons. He made many other 
 brilliant discoveries, of which the greatest were that no 
 mode of government was so perfect as that of the Toddlers, 
 and that its leading principles were of Divine origin. 
 
 Baron Towser's love of the mythical ought to have pro- 
 cured his speedy canonization. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PROFESSOR PLANET had once held some position at the 
 University of Oxferry, and he assured me that we should 
 never really understand the Toddlers until we had studied 
 their highest educational system. 
 
 I therefore obtained an introduction to Professor Sock, 
 and we went to Oxferry. We found the city very different 
 from smoky, bustling Cable. A venerable dreaminess 
 brooded over the place. The city consisted of two main 
 streets and a vast number of slums ; but its chief attraction 
 was several large houses or colleges, which were originally 
 set apart for the advancement of learning. Youths used to
 
 20 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 go there formerly to be educated. With that peculiar 
 wealcness for appearances which rules every Toddler from 
 his birth to his death, they still cherish the same names 
 and forms in Oxferry, and therefore some people are of 
 opinion that the men there are really learned. I gathered 
 that changes were now taking place, but that the old 
 customs had been so well preserved that we were able to 
 form a correct opinion of a life many centuries earlier. 
 
 In former times sharp boys had been sent to Oxferry to 
 receive a free education ; they were called scholars. They 
 were usually poor, but at that period it was not thought a 
 dishonour to be poor, if they were learned. However, as 
 those savages began to develop, they came to recognise 
 that poverty was the evil positive, and as Oxferry was at 
 first a religious place, they took steps to keep the wicked 
 poor away. Now, Toddlers who have enough money invest 
 it in their sons, and have them crammed with some trivial 
 details of forgotten languages ; then these boys are sent up 
 to the colleges, where a few specified inquiries are made 
 about their character, parentage, and the less common parts 
 of the forgotten languages ; if all seems satisfactory, the 
 youth is styled a scholar and has rooms and food given 
 him, and so his father receives good interest for the money 
 laid out. 
 
 But for the poor, who were originally entitled to these 
 privileges, no provision is made. In consequence of this 
 and similar changes, the University no longer prides itself 
 upon its education so much as upon its social advantages. 
 It is held to be of more importance that well-bred ycmths 
 should be good judges of horses, dogs, wine, and women, 
 than that they should accurately master ten pages of Greek 
 in eight weeks, three times a year. 
 
 The only other practical training which the youths get is 
 given by the tradesmen of the city. These tradesmen (at
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 21 
 
 least, the most respectable of them) take pity on the 
 ignorance of the gilded youth, and try to give them some 
 commercial knowledge by charging them eight times the 
 market value of any article they may purchase. In this 
 way, after seeing the same account for years, a gentleman 
 does occasionally learn that there are fifty shillings in a 
 pound. In more obtuse cases these lessons of practical 
 utility are given by money-lenders with the same result. 
 The money-lender is a cannibal, who must feed on live human 
 beings, and thus he has degenerated into a parasite. 
 
 Every care is taken to teach these youths that they belong 
 to a superior order. They are not under the same laws as 
 the tradesmen of the place ; they are tried by a separate 
 court, and the police have no power over them. To ensure 
 these youths habitual respect, they are not allowed to walk 
 out after dark without a label on their backs, so that all the 
 townspeople may know them and stand aside to let them 
 pass. Oxferry boasts that it has never adopted the barbarism 
 of a new thought or~> a fresh custom during the last four 
 thousand years. 
 
 Old notions are immortal in this sepulchre of learning. 
 I suppose it is for this reason that the wine-drinking or the 
 athletic still look down upon the scholars and those students 
 who wish to make a living out of Oxferry. It is evidently 
 a survival of that time, to which I have referred, when all 
 students were poor, and despised in consequence. 
 
 From the day a youth, who is not rich, enters Oxferry, 
 to the day he leaves it, his one great concern is to know 
 how he will ' pass ' through a large crimping-machine, which 
 is worked at various periods of the year. This crimping- 
 machine is a most comical and elaborate arrangement. It 
 is supposed to find out what amount of any particular 
 subject has been lodged in a boy's brain, and, in order to 
 ensure its accuracy, it is worked by three or four men who
 
 22 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 are frequently changed, and every one of whom works the 
 machine on different principles. The result would be 
 obvious to any intelligence except the 'scholarly mind.' 
 Any other machine would have been broken to atoms long 
 since by the endless series of grotesque mistakes. 
 
 I found Professor Sock a charming man. He was a 
 bachelor, and possessed all the easy indifference of a museum 
 official always cool, slightly caustic, and with penetrating 
 vision into the jest of life. In fact, I could hardly doubt 
 that he was in some remote way connected with the landed 
 gentry of England there was such a charming ignorance 
 of fact, such a discreet avoidance of the disagreeable. He 
 had that languid repose of refinement which glosses the 
 scars of time and hides the grave with roses. His life 
 harmonized well with the ways of this strange city, whose 
 dreamy gentleness charmed me. 
 
 I can never express my obligation to Professor Sock for 
 his remarkable kindness. All Oxferry life was open to him, 
 and he spared no pains to enable us to understand it fully. 
 The very names of the colleges are mouldy with antiquity. 
 They have the accent of a time when life was bald and 
 every term was new and sacred. Now, it strikes one as 
 being rather grotesque to hear these clubs of refined luxury 
 called Sawdust, Woodenspoon, Puttynose, Dying Souls, 
 Jesus, and such like ; but there cannot be the shadow of 
 a doubt that these names date from a rude past. 
 
 There are no women in the 'Varsity,' as it is known that 
 no lady can live longer than a week in this city, whose air 
 is poisoned with books, unless it be in the month of May. 
 For this reason a large number of dogs are kept ; any man 
 with an affectionate nature keeps a dog. I am told it 
 answers remarkably well, and leads to a more even-tempered 
 friendship than any other form of domestic life yet invented. 
 
 Though social rank and the art of dining and getting
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 23 
 
 drank with a becoming amount of wit are reckoned amongst 
 the chief excellencies of the glorious young life, yet athletics 
 also appeal to the demi-savage. If a man can row better 
 than a bargee, and does not object to being sworn at, he 
 may acquire immortal fame by ' stroking a boat ' ; or if he can 
 kick as well as a Yorkshire collier, he may win silver cups 
 and dine with Lord Mayors. 
 
 I rejoiced that these manly attributes were cultivated, 
 but I could not quite understand them, as I was unable to 
 give eight hours a day to any one subject. 
 
 The head of the University is called the Vice-Railer. 
 He is changed from time to time. The one in office now 
 was the learned Principal of Sawdust College. He was a 
 little old man who looked like a white-haired boy. His 
 friends called him the Old Serpent, and said he had crucified 
 Christ between Plato and Paul; his enemies thought he 
 was a man of ability, and said that if he had been as con- 
 sistent as he was clever, he would have been a real force 
 for good. He tried to pass a by-law that no Don should 
 drive more than one horse at once, but he himself never 
 drove out except in a carriage and pair. Perhaps this was 
 the real grievance. 
 
 When we had been in Oxferry about a week, Professor 
 Sock took us to a remarkable gathering called convocation. 
 He said that usually convocation was as dull as marriage, 
 but to-day there was to be a great assembly and a free fight. 
 The question was whether the University should vote a sum 
 of money to provide drowned rats for the science students 
 to dissect ; but dread issues were couched under these 
 words. A small band of daring men had induced the 
 University to form a school of natural science and build a 
 new museum. 
 
 These daring few were viewed with suspicion by the vast 
 majority, who maintained that polite literature and traditional
 
 24 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 theology were the only studies that could produce great 
 men. It was a battle between the old school and the new. 
 The Toddlers naturally objected to science because it dealt 
 with facts. 
 
 I expected great amusement, for Oxferry was noted for 
 making bonfires of those who introduced new methods. 
 The learned sons of the University gathered by hundreds 
 from all parts of the island. The Vice-Railer took his seat 
 with the autocratic air of a second jvife. He introduced 
 the subject, but he was too learned to speak up, and there- 
 fore I don't know what he said. 
 
 The advocates of science contended that it wa 
 
 found a school for the study of nature if natural objects 
 
 * >* _J _!.-!/ **+*- wM __ - ^-j-^^ 
 
 were tcTbe withheld from the students. "This seemed to 
 me obvious, and I thought that there the matter would 
 end ; but the greater part of convocation cried ' Cruelty, 
 cruelty ! shame, shame !' The Vice - Railer seemed as 
 astounded as a husband who learns for the first time what 
 his wifjg really thinks of him. Then he gesticulated con- 
 vulsively to obtain quiet. A big, portly old doctor of 
 divinity arose ; he was resplendent in a scarlet gown and 
 lavender kid gloves. He maintained that, as the rat was 
 not mentioned in the Bible, it was one of those secrets 
 which God had reserved to Himself. 
 
 Clerical applause. 
 
 A scholar from the north of the island affirmed that, if 
 they would eat oats, they would enjoy such health that 
 they would not require to dissect rats to learn any 
 science. 
 
 This was regarded as an argumentum ad porridgeum. 
 
 The chief librarian inveighed against the cruelty of drown- 
 ing rats, and denounced the curse of his God on all 
 knowledge thus obtained. If, he said, they intended to kill 
 the rats for eating, that would be merciful, but to drown
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 25 
 
 rats and then cut them up would revive the atrocities of the 
 darkest ages in the island. 
 
 Many fiddled on this string, but no one wept. When the 
 weariness of iteration had produced something akin to 
 silence, a professor of theology entered upon an elaborate 
 denunciation of the proposal, because it would engender 
 ' spiritual pride.' He averred that unless some check was 
 put on this daring impiety, soon no secret would be sacred 
 either to ' nature or to nature's God.' He branded such 
 men as impious, and concluded with a learned quotation 
 'Mirantur nihil nisi pulices ; pediculos et seipsos.' 
 
 Ringing applause arose, and the enemy felt his cause was 
 lost, for his advocates had not quoted Latin. 
 
 After a little inane chatter and certain formalities, it was 
 agreed, by way of compromise, that only water-rajs should 
 be provided for the_ students, as these animals would not 
 feel the shock of ^mf rg J3P- 
 
 Never ha~ve 1 seen Dick laugh as he laughed over this 
 quibble, which had caused a three hours' debate of all the 
 learned men of the nation. 
 
 With a red face and a platonic smile the Vice-Railer dis- 
 missed them. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AFTER we had devoted several days to seeing Oxferry, and 
 using every opportunity to understand the customs of the 
 city, Professor Sock suggested that we should hear some 
 lectures. As Dick was deeply interested in the social 
 problems of the island, we first went to hear a lecture on 
 'Political Economy,' by Professor Gambling. He was a 
 little, excitable man, and wore glasses. One could scarcely
 
 26 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 see his face for his nose. There were five or six student 
 present. The Professor informed us that he did not intend 
 to take the subject marked on the syllabus, but he wished 
 to apply a theory of his own to the newest political blunder 
 in the island. I was at a loss to understand his drift. It 
 seemed that there had been some quarrel between the 
 Jockeys and the Grooms about a royal pension. This, I 
 am told, has happened before, and it is attributed by some 
 to electricity, by others to those changes of climate which 
 occur in consequence of a ground-swell in the depths of the 
 ocean. All this, I beg to state, was their explanation. 
 
 Professor Gambling was quite sure that neither electricity 
 nor ground-swells had anything whatever to do with the 
 outbreak, but that the whole thing arose from false theories 
 in political economy. If they would adopt his theory, in 
 future everyone would be a little better off than his neigh- 
 bours. Peals of laughter greeted this statement. At last, 
 a wild dialogue took place between him and Professor Sock, 
 and, after an hour's brilliant entertainment, we left, but we 
 had not heard what was Professor Gambling's theory. 
 Never before had I realized the advantages of endowed 
 education, and strange thoughts arose in my mind as the 
 Professor put his academic cap on wrong side first, and 
 marched out of the room. 
 
 Next morning I told Sock that I should be glad to know 
 more of the language of the island. Here I promised 
 myself unlimited sport. We went to a gorgeous new hall to 
 hear Professor Greenback on ' The History and Mystery of 
 Toddle Literature.' 
 
 My expectation was at its highest, for Professor Green- 
 back was a young man who had suddenly leaped into 
 distinction by his appointment as a lecturer on ' The History 
 and Mystery,' etc. In the lecture-room we found three 
 people listening in gloomy silence, whilst the Professor, with
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 27 
 
 his nose touching the paper, tried to read some elaborate 
 principles on 'The Origin of the Vocative Case in the 
 Teutonic Nation.' After awhile Professor Sock asked me 
 if T had had enough of this, and I felt compelled honestly 
 to say that I had. So we left. We inquired of the porter 
 who those people were whom Professor Greenback was so 
 laboriously instructing. He said one was a graduate of 
 Oxferry, who, having little to do and longing for Professor 
 Greenback's good luck, came to learn how it was done. 
 Another was an American, who had come over to Toddle 
 Island, having previously laid a wager that he would go 
 once to every lecturer in Oxferry, and present himself after 
 hearing the last, able to know his right hand from his left. 
 The third was a personal friend out of work who lived with 
 the young Professor. I marvelled. 
 
 As we were in the hall, I suggested that there might be 
 some other lecture that we could hear. Professor Sock ran 
 over a list, and I selected one on ' Ecclesiastical History,' 
 not having the remotest idea what the subject could mean. 
 So he asked the porter if Professor Vellum was lecturing. 
 
 The porter said : ' No, sir ; Professor Vellum has lectured 
 so far this term to one German every day, and this morning 
 he asked if only that one man had come. When I answered 
 "Yes," Professor Vellum immediately turned and fled, and 
 I had to go and inform the gentleman that there would be 
 no lecture.' 
 
 ' Ah, that is unfortunate !' said Sock ; ' but I see there is a 
 lecture on "Effete Monarchies," that ought to be interest- 
 ing; shall we go?' 
 
 ' You cannot, sir,' said the porter ; ' Professor Parchment 
 did intend to have done the " Effete Monarchies " this term, 
 and came three days the first week, but as no one attended 
 the lecture, he postponed the series until the spring.' 
 
 We tried two or three others, but had to give them up
 
 28 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 for similar reasons. We thanked Professor Sock for his 
 kindness, and returned to our rooms to revel over the 
 morning's burlesque. 
 
 At length I asked : ' What do these people mean by 
 having such a system? Are these professors paid for 
 lecturing ?' 
 
 Dick produced a book, and found that the professors are 
 paid large sums of money. They are never allowed to work 
 more than twenty-four weeks in the year, and they require 
 the other twenty-eight to restore their health and fertilize 
 their brains. I am told that it is a most exhausting process, 
 this lecturing to wooden benches. 
 
 We were invited out to dine in the evening, and I looked 
 forward to being able to ask about their system of educa- 
 tion. 
 
 On my left at dinner sat Mr. Thwaite, a history lecturer. 
 He spoke with an accent that was new to me, and he had 
 the largest hands I have seen in the island. He seemed an 
 authority on all things except the art of blushing. 
 
 I said to Mr. Thwaite quite carelessly : 
 
 ' Do you think that Oxferry will ever be used for educa- 
 tional purposes ?' 
 
 He drove both his big hands through his shock of hair, 
 drank two glasses of sherry in an abstracted sort of way, and 
 then said quite solemnly : 
 
 ' There is some mistake. Oxferry js^the home of learn- 
 ing ; in fact, we scarcely admit that there is such a thing as 
 scholarship outside this University.' 
 
 'You astonish me. I have been attending lectures, or 
 hunting for them, both yesterday and to-day. I thought 
 they were the unrehearsed parts of an endowed paper- 
 chase.' 
 
 He suppressed his anger, and asked me the names of the 
 lecturers. Then he said :
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 29 
 
 ' You were unfortunate. In the first place, the lecturer 
 on Political Economy is mad, and Political Economy is not 
 a science.' 
 
 ' But I thought it was one of the subjects in which you 
 examine the students.' 
 
 ' So it is ; but we do not trust to Gambling for their 
 knowledge. Rouser knows ten times more of that subject, 
 and he is the examiner. He contradicts Gambling on every 
 point, and woe be to the student who only knows his 
 Political Economy from Gambling.' 
 
 ' Then, does the University pay these two men to contra- 
 dict each other all the year round ?' 
 
 ' Well, my lord, it looks like that, but it could not be so. 
 Do you think it could ?' 
 
 ' After the various forms of comedy I have seen in your 
 lecture-rooms, I could believe anything. Who does the 
 teaching ?' 
 
 1 Oh, if that is what you mean, the college tutors do that. 
 Our professors are men of research ; they pursue truth.' 
 
 ' It must be a pity that they should never overtake it. 
 Still, in Oxferry the pursuit of truth seems a well-paid pro- 
 fession.' 
 
 ' Not very. All these men would have made a great deal 
 more money had they taken to law or business.' 
 
 Of course, on this I could have no opinion. I told him 
 that I had learnt that persons engaged in teaching were held 
 in contempt in the island. He said : 
 
 ' You have been greatly misinformed.' 
 
 'But do the Toddlers regard the ordinary day-school 
 master with any more respect than a beast of burden ?' 
 
 ' Well, that is his fault. Schoolmasters have been diffi- 
 cult to get on with.' 
 
 ' What do you say with regard to the countless number 
 of ladies engaged in teaching children from the nursery
 
 30 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 upwards? Are they part of the professional teaching 
 class ?' 
 
 He laughed outright, and said : 
 
 ' Indeed no ; there is only one professional class amongst 
 the women of this country.' 
 
 'Where does your teaching profession commence?' 
 
 ' We have in Oxferry the gentlemen who do it privately, 
 whom we call wheel-barrows ; secondly, we have the gentle- 
 men who are paid by each particular college, whom we call 
 tutors, because they do some actual teaching ; and, thirdly, 
 we have the professors, who, by their great learning, are a long 
 way above the requirements of the ordinary students, and 
 you find their rooms empty, because their heads are so full.' 
 
 I think I saw the burlesque of the situation. I called to 
 mind the origin of these people, and I remembered that all 
 their civilization arose from their comical cannibalism. 
 
 I passed the sherry. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 As the attempt to hear lectures in Oxferry had yielded only 
 amusement, we determined to make another effort. We 
 obtained permission to attend the lecture of the celebrated 
 Professor Calf. He was known throughout the whole 
 island, and, I believe, on some adjacent continents, for the 
 discovery of the law of Greek accents by means of photo- 
 graphy. We went early, because we were afraid we should 
 not obtain a place where we could hear. We found the 
 door of the lecture-room still locked, and when the porter 
 opened it, he was exceedingly astonished at our appearing 
 without the regular costume (for these people were indebted
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 31 
 
 for everything to their robes), and only on my producing the 
 card of Professor Sock were we able to obtain admission. 
 Here we waited, and two or three pale-faced youths 
 entered with gigantic note-books. Exactly at five minutes 
 past the hour, Professor Calf arrived a thin, dilapidated 
 sort of man, with powerful spectacles and a small quantity 
 of neglected hair, which seemed to be fleeing from the 
 reign of baldness to hide behind his collar. 
 
 He at once began to talk rapidly about the connection 
 between certain Etruscan vases and the doom of Homer, 
 saying that if these vases were fully understood, they would 
 throw light upon a verse of Homer, in the copying of which 
 all critics agreed that there had been a mistake. The young 
 men with the large notebooks wrote like so many recording 
 angels, as if the doom of Homer and the fate of Greek 
 literature hung upon the utterances of this distinguished 
 Calf. I was surprised to find that on no occasion did the 
 Professor advance any opinions of his own; Yet his 
 remarks were received with a respect which I had nowhere 
 seen in the island. He constantly quoted one Professor 
 Sauerkraut ; he was at the head of his nation, and had 
 devoted years to elucidating the history of vases ; he had 
 startled the world with the proposition that language had its 
 origin in reason ; he discovered that the alphabets of nations 
 were derived from the vowel -sounds of the ordinary 
 domestic cat. All this was written down with great rapidity. 
 I looked upon these nine young men and the empty 
 benches, and contemplated this dull, worn old man who 
 seemed to hold communion with the past, and I inter- 
 changed some glances with Dick, as this appeared strongly 
 to support the opinion we had formed on the value of 
 education in the island. Immediately the clock struck the 
 hour, Calf stopped in the middle of an impressive sentence, 
 in which he was trying to account for some small fragments
 
 32 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 of sawdust which had been discovered in the oldest and 
 only perfect vase in the world. He had got so far as, ' I 
 think we shall find the spirit of the past to There he 
 paused, and his hearers rose in gloomy silence, as if they 
 were the pall-bearers of that past, and mechanically dis- 
 appeared, doubtless to hurry off to some other lecturer of 
 equal erudition. 
 
 Dick and I hastened out, and presently found ourselves 
 in a pleasant walk winding by the river. The sun was 
 shining with unusual loveliness. The trees, no longer green, 
 had the richest variety of colour, and the whole scene was 
 so dream-like, so different from anything I had yet seen in 
 the island, that we walked in silence, thinking of the spirit 
 of the past, and the sawdust, and the weird Professor. 
 One doubted the possibility of man's development, and the 
 interest of human life died away in a distant murmur. 
 
 We were invited to breakfast the following day with Pro- 
 fessor Morass. Formerly the professors were the only 
 teachers allowed to marry, for it is a tradition of the place 
 that the tutors are only able to teach so long as they remain 
 single. I looked forward with some degree of curiosity to 
 this breakfast, for we had seen no domestic life in Oxferry ; 
 there is a deep prejudice against all the business people, so 
 that those who live in the colleges do not consider it respect- 
 able to be seen speaking with a townsman, and I believe in 
 ancient times many battles were fought between the college 
 people and the townspeople. They are still remarkably 
 jealous of each other, and fight official duels to prevent any 
 improvements. 
 
 Dr. Morass was a Professor of Theology. He had 
 obtained this distinction owing to his knowledge of Greek 
 particles ; but as no theologian in the island had ever known 
 any science, the Professor's fad was biology, to demonstrate 
 that he was an all-round man.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 33 
 
 Dick and I arrived at nine o'clock to breakfast. Pro- 
 fessor Morass lived in a very old. house in his college, which 
 one entered through dark gloomy corridors. We were the 
 only guests. The family present consisted of the Professor, 
 his wife, and two grown-up daughters. 
 
 A sort of absent-mindedness appeared to throw a meta- 
 physical haze over the doings of this household. It was 
 difficult to obtain our fish and coffee, for Professor Morass 
 had received a letter from a bosom friend who had a new 
 theory with regard to cannibal plants which would greatly 
 strengthen the design argument. This delighted the Pro- 
 fessor; it was certainly going one step further than he 
 himself had gone, but that afforded him an opportunity of 
 going a step further than his friend, and then he would be 
 of European fame, and would have exceeded any known 
 professor in irresponsibility. I remembered, whilst I was 
 meditating how long it would be before I should have some 
 fresh toast, and my cup returned, that this method is the 
 secret of greatness. E.g., Sauerkraut starts a theory that 
 Homer never lived in the country, because nowhere has he 
 described the beauty of the shadow cast by a mushroom. 
 All the professors at Oxferry talk and write about the new 
 discovery, and praise it very much. This they do for thirty- 
 six hours. Then there comes a lull of twelve hours, which 
 is their nearest approach to sanity, during which time they 
 are mainly asleep ; but when they awake the battle begins, 
 and some professor more daring than his foes immediately 
 shows by the most cogent reasoning that Sauerkraut has 
 entirely mistaken the point of his own argument, or that he 
 has invented the proof of a fact which never existed. After 
 this kind of battledore and shuttlecock has raged in pro- 
 fessorial circles for nearly a week, there is sure to be some 
 new theory on the whole subject. 
 
 I had made several efforts to start a subject of conversa- 
 
 3
 
 34 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 tion, and Dick seemed to have laid aside his fatal habit of 
 dreaming, and devoted his attention to Miss Morass. In 
 vain ; the Professor ran on about his plants and his cannibals, 
 until Mrs. Morass annihilated him and his theories, and 
 started a much more interesting subject, namely, the pro- 
 fession of her eldest son, George William. 
 
 Mrs. Morass wished George to have something to do in 
 the Government of the country. Some of her remote 
 ancestors had been Grooms, and their portraits were the 
 pride of her life. Both the grown-up daughters seconded 
 the mother. They were entirely ignorant of what George 
 would have to do ; apparently they knew nothing about the 
 Sacred Ass ; in fact, when we asked them certain questions 
 regarding the 'duties of the Grooms, we could only gather 
 from them that it was 'a very good position.' 
 
 The Professor grew quite sad, and I felt for him as I 
 always did feel for the aged in this island, for I am bound 
 to admit the Toddlers seemed remarkably unkind to the 
 old. The greatest contempt that they could express was 
 to call anyone an old woman, and their only respect for an 
 old man was centred in a document that he himself had 
 made disposing of his wealth. 
 
 I was greatly disappointed in this breakfast. We had 
 learnt very little, and seemed to have witnessed a domestic 
 squabble, which contrasted disadvantageously with the 
 civilization of England, where one might stay in a thousand 
 houses without ever seeing the skeleton in the cupboard, 
 and where hosts and hostesses never read their letters at 
 breakfast, and never talk in the presence of their guests of 
 things only known to themselves. 
 
 Dick and I left the house with a sigh of relief.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 35 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WE were invited to attend a public lecture by Dr. 
 Dogma-ma, the Professor of Poetry. As I had been taught 
 that the life of a nation could be traced in its poetry, and 
 as it is difficult for a foreigner to catch the profounder 
 meaning of poets, I felt that this might be an opportunity. 
 
 We arrived at a small new building to find the doors 
 locked, although it wanted only a quarter of an hour to the 
 time for the lecture. 
 
 I was interested in this gathering. The building was 
 chiefly filled with ladies' schools. There were also rows of 
 young men, who appeared to wear black bibs, placed on 
 their backs to be out of the way. The lecturer was received 
 with a certain amount of subdued cheering, and, to my 
 surprise, he had selected not the poetry of the island, but 
 the poetry of ' the Gospels.' 
 
 He began by distributing printed notes of the lecture, 
 giving the details of some of the more difficult points for 
 reference. Then he said : ' Possibly some of you in child- 
 hood thought that God made the Gospels, just as you have 
 them. That is not so. They grew, often damaged, as early 
 literature must be damaged, by the hand of the copyist and 
 the editor. Additions and changes crept in, as in the fable 
 of our Sacred Ass. No one now seriously believes that the 
 Sacred Ass was born with two tails.' 
 
 Here I thought his audience shuddered. 
 
 He resumed : ' But lest you should pay me the com- 
 pliment of supposing that this is original heresy (which, 
 by the way, is almost as interesting as original sin), I will 
 quote a distinguished Boss. As a rule, a Boss is satisfied 
 to find out that God is a great Personal First Cause, who
 
 36 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 thinks and loves ' (here the Professor struggled to suppress a 
 laugh), ' but the Right Reverend the Lord Boss of Swamp 
 discovered the make-up of the three Gospels, as you will 
 see by reference to printed Clause I.' 
 
 I turned to printed Clause I., and I give it, that my 
 readers may not accuse me of exaggeration when I write of 
 the theology of the island. These are the exact words of 
 a Right Reverend Lord Boss, as quoted by his biographer : 
 
 ' It may be worth while to state the origin of the three 
 Gospels.* The Boss of Swamp supposed : 
 
 '(i) X, the original Hebrew Gospel. 
 ' (2) X, a Greek version of the same. 
 '(3) X + a + A, a volume containing a copy of the 
 
 Hebrew Original Gospel, accompanied 
 
 by lesser (a) and greater (A) additions. 
 1 (4) X + b + B, another copy of ditto, accompanied by 
 
 other lesser (b) and greater (B) additions. 
 1 (5) X + g + G, a third copy of ditto, accompanied by 
 
 a third set of lesser (g) and greater (G) 
 
 additions. 
 ' (6) Y, Hebrew gnomology (collection of sayings of 
 
 the Lord), varying according to different 
 
 copies. 
 
 ' Hence this Right Reverend Lord Boss holds our 
 Gospels to have arisen, viz. : 
 
 1 The Hebrew Matthew from X + Y + a + A + g + G. 
 Luke, X + Y + b + B+g + G + A". 
 Mark, X + a + A + b + B + A". 
 
 'The Greek Matthew, to be a translation from the 
 Hebrew Matthew, with the collation of X and of 
 Luke and Mark.' 
 
 * This is Bishop Marsh's hypothesis, copied from Dean Alford's 
 Greek Testament, vol. i., p. 6.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 37 
 
 The Professor read these hieroglyphics with a solemn 
 countenance. 
 
 He then said they were only one of the various arrange- 
 ments. (Laughter, especially on the part of the Professor.) 
 
 The Professor said much that was startling with regard 
 to the origin of the Gospels. He himself was convinced 
 that they were varying blends of original traditions and 
 Aberglaube. Only one thing was clear on any theory, 
 they were made up. 
 
 Being a professor of poetry, he wished to show that he 
 was capable of research and logic, and he spent much 
 .energy on ' the chronological order of the three Gospels.' 
 
 He quoted 31 learned authorities in favour of the order 
 found in the translation of the islanders ; 95 more learned 
 men held the order to be Mark, Matthew, Luke ; 117 held 
 the order to be Luke, Matthew, Mark ; etc., etc., etc., to 
 the end of life. 
 
 The Professor showed great reverence for certain scholars 
 on a neighbouring continent. He thought they had dis- 
 covered the chronological order, if not the origin of the 
 Gospels. He quoted their learned specialists, such as 
 Professor Kroter, Professor Kraut, and Professor Wurst, 
 every one of whom had escaped the real difficulty by making 
 an order of his own. 
 
 Professor Dogma-ma had calculated that there were 
 8,571 different arrangements of the chronological order 
 and sources of the four Gospels. He had the candour to 
 point out that the whole 8,571 could not be absolutely 
 correct, and therefore that some of the professors in the 
 Land of Sausages must have made a mistake. He preferred 
 the simple theory of Professor Sauerkraut, whose name was 
 received with faint acclamations from two of the scholars 
 who recognised him as a great authority. 
 
 Professor Sauerkraut had, by a logical process known as
 
 38 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 the Undistributed Impudence, succeeded in striking out 
 most of the manuscripts labelled A, B, C, etc., and the 
 lecturer hinted that probably he had determined the value 
 of the surviving manuscripts by their size. Owing to this 
 brilliant idea, the Oxferry Professor had discovered the 
 truth. He recognised at once that as these Gospels were 
 poetical narratives, size must determine their value some- 
 times the smallest, sometimes the largest, had the greatest 
 weight. Two centuries of careful training would enable 
 the average man in the street by the same method to pick 
 out the true verses and neglect the false, with the beautiful 
 speed with which an old apple- woman knows good apples 
 from bad. 
 
 Dr. Dogma-ma himself had applied this rule and found 
 that it worked with the unerring rapidity of an irresponsible 
 suggestion. He had noticed, for instance, in one of the 
 Gospels that there were certain verses in which ' were ' or 
 ' was ' occurs before all nouns. He granted that these 
 verses were remarkably rare, but they were the undoubted 
 survivals of the original oral teaching which preceded 
 manuscript, and the absolute proof of his theory was found 
 in the fact that the accents in the original Greek were 
 made heavier on these verses than any other. 
 
 ' Now,' said he, ' I have great faith in accents. They are 
 small, unimportant, not to say unmeaning adjuncts of 
 language. They are outside the circle of prejudice. They 
 are the calm petrified witnesses of a past age, and are 
 unmoved by the wind of criticism and unmelted by the 
 heat of controversy.' 
 
 Much applause arose, especially from the ladies' schools, 
 at this conclusive proof. 
 
 I must admit that this Professor lectured with great skill 
 and fluency, and his manner and method had the brilliant 
 polish of a new coffin. As the clock struck, he closed his
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 39 
 
 lecture. The audience rose, and presently were jammed in 
 the narrow doorway through which they were trying to 
 escape. The adjectives of the island were freely used. 
 The crowd scattered, and the lecture was forgotten, while 
 the Professor was feted at an afternoon tea-party. 
 
 Dick and I walked home in high spirits. We had never 
 heard Professor Dogma-ma's name in Cable. We marvelled 
 at the wasted skill and the perverted knowledge with which 
 he had avoided the subject announced, and we thought 
 that a great deal of his success depended upon the fact that 
 all the islanders educate their children by means of a game 
 called ' blind man's buff,' and therefore when listening to 
 such lectures they renew their youth. We felt that they 
 were beings capable of intellectual discoveries. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OVER lunch Dick said, ' There is one great mystery with 
 regard to these islanders that I really think we must solve.' 
 I asked, ' Is it more about the Sacred Ass ?' 
 'No,' he replied; 'but it is apparently something as 
 sacred. One Sunsday I saw crowds hurrying to a church 
 just as they do to a theatre in London. I was informed 
 that a distinguished Boss of the island was going to preach, 
 so I joined the crowd. The church was a big, uncomfort- 
 able place, and among the many hundreds there were only 
 three women present, besides the two who opened the 
 small square boxes in which the people sat. As I could 
 get no seat, I stood near the door, when a most remarkable 
 procession came past. At first I thought it was a play, and
 
 40 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 I tried to recollect what I had heard about Passion Plays 
 and the Lord of Misrule, which the dull old people of the 
 Middle Ages invented. It seemed a tableau of ancient 
 history. The men wore long, highly-coloured garments, 
 like those of the women of the island. Before them walked 
 a man with a terrible-looking weapon, so old that the point 
 had been broken off; behind followed two others, armed in 
 like manner ; and then came a string of the oldest men that 
 the world ever produced. All rose as these entered, and 
 one of them, who wore pillows for sleeves, was shown up a 
 flight of steps, and took his stand in a peculiar little box. 
 The organ began to groan, and the people sang in a 
 foreign language. After this came a prelude from the Boss 
 in the box. This was a peculiar prayer, and he referred to 
 some very ancient things, for which he said he had every 
 reason to be truly thankful, chiefly that a man and his wife 
 had founded something for the promotion of learning, for 
 which he was quite sure all would offer praise and thanks- 
 giving. Then came a long prosy discourse, in which, as 
 far as I could gather, he was answering some unknown 
 foreigner. It was very uninteresting, and the poor old men 
 who had been dressed up for the occasion would have been 
 worn out had they not been carefully provided with velvet 
 cushions before and behind so that they were able to sleep 
 in peace. Then I discovered the use of the poker-men. 
 When the ceremony was over they went to these ancients 
 and woke them up, and led them out just as they had 
 brought them in. I am told that this is a custom of great 
 antiquity, and that they bring these old men in once a 
 week to teach the youthful savages who abound in these 
 parts some reverence for age.' 
 
 Dick told me that he had been inquiring very carefully 
 into the religion of the island. Dick holds strange views 
 on the subject of religion ; he seems to think that it affects
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 41 
 
 the character of a nation. However, the religion of Toddle 
 Island is such a marvel that hitherto it has defied all his 
 efforts. He says there are many varieties, but he learnt at 
 Oxferry that most of them are regarded as spurious, and that 
 the only paying concern is known as the Unoiled Machine. 
 
 Now, I might have stayed at Oxferry for years without 
 getting up on a Sunsday morning to see the superstitious on 
 parade. I regard it as one of the chief privileges of travel- 
 ling abroad, that one is never expected to go to church. 
 Why should one go to a form of worship of which one 
 knows nothing? 
 
 It is most likely wrong. 
 
 I had heard somewhere that religion was hardly recog- 
 nised at Oxferry, and therefore I was rather surprised when 
 Dick said he had discovered an organized religious system 
 here, established and endowed, which seemed to be a part 
 of the nation's political history. This organization is known 
 in ecclesiastical language as the Unoiled Machine. Those 
 who look after the Unoiled Machine answer in some measure 
 to what we call the clerical class in England. The 
 islanders call them Maskers, and the Chief Directors rejoice 
 in the name of Boss, which is believed to be a corruption of 
 some ancient Eastern title, meaning overseer. 
 
 But a more numerous class of men, enriched by the 
 Unoiled Machine, were the Recumbents. These were the 
 poor beggars who by toil or trickery had been able to obtain 
 a position where they could rest, and therefore it was only 
 human nature that they should lie down and take it easy. 
 On this account they were called Recumbents. I have been 
 assured that a few of the Recumbents almost rank amongst 
 the aristocracy. 
 
 The third division is composed of Jobbers. They are the 
 errand-boys of the Unoiled Machine, and are called Jobbers 
 because first one man hires them and then another.
 
 42 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 The Unoiled Machine is the marvel of the human race. 
 As an organization Dick thought it very clever, and he did 
 not wonder that some held it to be of Divine origin, so 
 complete was its mechanism. 
 
 The term Unoiled seems to have some allegorical 
 reference to the unction which was supposed to be given to 
 the early Church, though it is given no longer. He in- 
 formed me that at one time the whole nation was afflicted 
 with a zymotic disease known as fermented prejudice. 
 
 This epidemic spread from palace to cottage, and 
 when they had imprisoned many and burnt a few, they 
 found that the whole trouble arose because one party wished 
 the engine to pull the machine, while the other thought it 
 should be pushed. 
 
 The Maskers do not quarrel about the engine ; they 
 quarrel about the fire now. One set declares the fire should 
 be lighted at the bottom, another set at the top, and a third 
 set outside. The first set is called La^y ; the second 
 Crazy ; and the third Hazy. The Lazy say the fire is 
 in you, and does not burn until you feel it and wear a black 
 apron. The Crazy say the fire is in the engine, and won't 
 burn unless you tie some ribbons to the chimney-pot. The 
 Hazy say the fire is greater than the engine, and burns out- 
 side the machine, whether the stoker wears an apron or a 
 paper cap. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 DICK and I appeared to have exhausted all that visitors are 
 allowed to see in Oxferry. We had filled our days, in the 
 languid fashion peculiar to the place, with mild forms
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 43 
 
 of revelry or the tedium of sight-seeing. We had only been 
 waiting for a letter inviting us to the mansion of Lord 
 Broomdepath. I had brought a strong introduction to this 
 peer, and he was to show me the life of the aristocracy in 
 their country seats. 
 
 Now that the letter had come and we were about to leave 
 this national mausoleum, I found that it had. exerted con- 
 siderable influence on Dick's mind. He had read much 
 during our stay, and he spoke of the library in terms of high 
 praise. 
 
 On the evening of our departure we dined with Professor 
 Sock in his college. Opposite me sat one of the brilliant 
 young fellows of the college, who were just then in fashion. 
 
 These dashing young bloods, who have not been elected 
 Fellows many months, try to keep from growing mouldy by 
 tilting against the pet hobby-horses of those who two years 
 ago were their tutors. I learnt from Sock that this was Mr. 
 Mainchance, a rising young man, who was almost sure to 
 get the next vacant Professorship in History, Science, or 
 Jurisprudence, because he had taken a first class in all 
 these subjects. Failing that, he was getting a petition 
 signed by members of the University, requesting the 
 authorities to place the literature of Willy-Wolly on the 
 course of instruction for the youths of the island, and as 
 Mr. Mainchance alone knew even the situation of the 
 country whose natives speak unvarnished Willy-Wolly, it 
 amounted to a certainty that, should the University announce 
 this dialect as a course of study, Mr. Mainchance's div 
 interested labours would be rewarded by his being appointed 
 P~ublic Reader in Willy-Wolly. 
 
 I tried to take an interest in this prodigy. 
 
 Dick was sitting next to him, and he asked Mr. Main- 
 chance how it was that the religion of the islanders was so 
 confusing.
 
 44 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 ' It is due partly,' he replied, ' to the fact that we have as 
 many religions as the Gadarene swine had devils.' 
 
 Here he looked round to see if he had shocked every- 
 body. There was that murmured disapproval which is the 
 surest encouragement to a wayward child, so he continued : 
 
 ' There is a large amount of religion in the average 
 Toddler. It is sometimes dull and heavy. It more 
 frequently takes lunatic forms, but I believe it is usually 
 present. Here in Oxferry we have discovered that religion 
 perverts the intellect, and therefore you must not judge the 
 islanders by us.' 
 
 ' You surprise me !' said Dick. ' I thought you had a 
 national Ass and a State Religion.' 
 
 ' At one time everybody did share in a universal religion. 
 A band of fanatics came over to the island, and by slaughter 
 and bribery they reduced the worship to one form. The 
 human animal was fairly happy then, and the word " inquiry " 
 had not been invented.' 
 
 ' Was that the origin of the Unoiled Machine ?' 
 
 ' It certainly prepared the way for it ; but it is a very long 
 story to explain the Unoiled Machine fully. We take no 
 interest in it now, except from a historical point of view- 
 No one would care two straws for the old thing if it 
 were not for the quarrels among the Maskers. Like all idle 
 fellows they soon got into mischief. They quarrelled as to 
 whether the engine-driver should stand on the box or sit in 
 his own armchair at home. The whole country was up in 
 arms, and I blush to say that our barbarous ancestors killed 
 each other because they could not agree on points of less 
 importance to us than the pattern of a doormat.' 
 
 Somebody said, ' No, no.' Others laughed. Mainchance 
 told a story of some Fresher who had come from the 
 country, and had written down, in answer to one of the 
 questions in the Matriculation paper, that the Unoiled
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 45 
 
 Machine was of Divine origin, and drawn into Toddle Island 
 by the Sacred Ass. 
 
 When the laughter subsided, Mainchance pointed out 
 that this account was clearly the half-forgotten legend of 
 the Car-borne Jove ; then someone remarked ' that Fresher 
 ought to have a brilliant career as an inventor of Theological 
 Patents.' 
 
 ' Far from it,' said Mainchance ; ' he has been cured of 
 his theological tendencies long since. His story of the 
 Machine and the Ass was told in the Common Room, and 
 next morning when the Fresher got up, he found a goat 
 and cart tied to his bedpost, with a label round the goat's 
 neck, " To the most Reverend the only Chaplain of a fusty 
 religion. A present from heaven." That took the moon- 
 shine out of him. He has not made two chapels this 
 term.' 
 
 Then they sipped their wine and laughed with dignified 
 ease. How these men toy with their religion ! No one 
 can tell whether their gods are Jove, or Venus, or them- 
 selves. 
 
 We adjourned to the Common Room, and by the aid of 
 wine or coffee and cigars we tried to forget men and gods. 
 The old oak room seemed black with the melancholy of 
 ages, and the candles here and there were fitting types of 
 the daring young spirits who burn down into conventional 
 darkness every generation. 
 
 The legends of the Toddlers did not suit my constitu- 
 tion. Their jest only saddened me, and I think, if I had 
 received a classical education and lived on beef, I should 
 have been as sleekly religious as " a converted footman in 
 a Christian family." This must be my apology for spoiling 
 a good cigar by remarking to Sock : 
 
 ' I am surprised that the intellectual men of the island 
 can tolerate this jumble of official jargon and foreign fairy-
 
 46 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 tales, which seem to me so large a part of the Unoiled 
 Machine.' 
 
 He replied : ' A large number of our young men tolerate 
 it no longer. Mainchance, for instance, and his set are 
 quite superior to religion, whether of Jew or Gentile.' 
 
 ' And do you find it makes any difference to them ?' 
 
 1 Not much. Maj]^is_a born believer_and a born ritualist. 
 He will have a creed, and he will wear official garments.' 
 
 ' You think these are two fixed laws of human life, do 
 you?' 
 
 ' Certainly. No tribe of men could live without them, 
 any more than they can live without lungs or mouths. 
 Mainchance and his lot are unconsciously forming a 
 new sect. If they could only get a short, taking name, I 
 think they would have a future. At present they are known 
 as Flabbergasters.' 
 
 I thought I should like to see a sect manufactured 
 under my very eyes, for I had heard that the island grew 
 sects as a peculiar species of mushroom. So I inquired 
 fully about the Flabbergasters, Oxferry's newest crown of 
 glory. 
 
 They seemed a most amusing set of fellows. They had 
 rebelled against all creeds ; and they professed the utmost 
 contempt for all worlds, except the one in which they lived. 
 But so powerful was the hereditary instinct favoured by the 
 climate of Toddle Island, that these fellows were unable to 
 live without a creed. Still, I am bound to say they had 
 succeeded in reducing it to small dimensions. Any man 
 or woman with a fixed income sufficiently large to be inde- 
 pendent of public opinion was able to join the Flabbergasters 
 by subscribing only to two doctrines. The first doctrine 
 declared that there is not anything to be known outside the 
 individual experience ; and the second, that one faculty may 
 judge all the other faculties.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 47 
 
 The second doctrine seemed to me slightly comic. The 
 great enemy of the Flabbergasters was a something called 
 spirit, as opposed to matter. Anyone who believed that 
 man could have aught else than a body was sure to be 
 ridiculed by a young Flabbergaster ; and, if he argued upon 
 such a trifle, he would have proved, by various physical 
 devices, that spirit did not exist. It was in vain to point 
 out to him that, by the nature of the case, the existence of 
 spirit scarcely admitted of ordinary physical proof; I sup- 
 pose here the second doctrine showed itself remarkably 
 convenient, because if one faculty can judge of all the 
 other faculties, or one nature of all other natures, then 
 there is no difficulty. But, with the contradiction so pro- 
 verbial in the island, I could not hear of one of these 
 Flabbergasters who would close his eyes and try to catch 
 the beauty of a sunset in the palms of his hands, or who 
 would stop his ears tight and sniff classical music through 
 his nose. Perhaps it was owing to the fact that this sect 
 was young, and had not yet adapted itself to its surround- 
 ings. 
 
 However, I am bound to add, for the credit of the 
 intellect of the islanders, that their wisest men regarded 
 all forms of life as appearances, pieces of the shifting 
 scenery of old Time's stage, and they said that to expect 
 an appearance to be its own cause was more foolish than 
 to expect a coffin to fix the date of its own inscription. 
 
 We said adieu to our friends, and as the stars shone 
 above the mouldering walls of the old quadrangle, Dick 
 said aloud, ' Dreams, dreams !' 
 
 Perhaps he was right. 
 
 Next morning we left Oxferry for Barnside, the seat of 
 Lord Broomdepath. We had learnt something about this 
 strange tomb by the rivers, but the chief feeling in my own 
 mind was one of pity, as I met crowds of pale-faced youths
 
 48 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 with their black bibs on their backs ; yet at the same time 
 it filled me with a deeper respect for those brave men of 
 my native land who had succeeded in making education 
 available even to the offspring of a tramp. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 WE arrived safely at Barnside, a large old-fashioned 
 mansion, which appeared in the early twilight to be in 
 the midst of a forest. There were other guests. The 
 gentlemen wore mourning, and the ladies had denuded 
 themselves as at Cable, only more so. 
 
 We had a comfortable evening, though there was one 
 heated discussion about the Sacred Ass, especially as to 
 whether his hair was changing colour; Lord Guy, a fiery 
 young nobleman, was positive that the animal was anti- 
 quated. This shocked Lord Broomdepath. 
 
 I had the honour of taking in the Duchess of Tinder to 
 dinner, who assured me that she knew England quite well. 
 She spoke with admiration of the universality of the national 
 religion. I was unable to comprehend to what she alluded, 
 but in the end I discovered she referred to the Derby Day. 
 I could not contradict her, and I supposed in an island 
 where the wisdom of the State and the whole of their 
 Government is represented by an Ass, she might well infer 
 that a big horse-race was the annual festival of our national 
 religion. 
 
 I was so glad that I had spent some time in obscji*e 
 towns like Cable and Oxferry before going into this blaze 
 of aristocratic life, because otherwise I should have contra- 
 dicted the Duchess, and that is never done in the island.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 49 
 
 It is considered the lowest depth of boorishness to differ 
 from a lady on any subject, and therefore all ladies of the 
 island are taught they are infallible, and it is exceedingly 
 difficult for them to obtain any information. A gartered 
 Earl was unsparingly bitter in his attack upon the Lord 
 Guy for the above assertion. But at length dinner made 
 them more amiable, and conversation settled down into 
 sweet trifles. The ladies rose and left us later, and seemed 
 exceedingly glad to disappear. 
 
 I asked the Earl of Hoarfrost why it should make the 
 least difference to the aristocracy of the country whether 
 the Sacred Ass had white hair or black. 
 
 He said, ' The real aristocrats do not care ; in fact, there 
 is nothing in the island that couM give them the 
 concern. Tney are provided with wealth ; they have titles 
 wrnch are a public guarantee of their intelligence, and there 
 is no discovery or benefit, effected by any human being, 
 which they do not claim. But we have a large number of 
 young persons like Lord Guy, who were not in our peerage 
 a few weeks ago. Our aristocracy is not like yours in 
 England, which is derived, I believe, entirely from kings, 
 or the wives of polygamous kings. That must be a great 
 boon to England. I think it accounts for the fact that 
 none of your English peers ever degrade themselves.' 
 
 We returned to the drawing-room and joined the ladies, 
 and here I noted for the first time that the aristocracy of 
 Toddle Island is millions of ages in advance of the common 
 people. It was a room which must have been built three 
 centuries ago, and that to the imagination of the Toddler 
 is a stupendous wonder, and has the power of conferring a 
 liberal education. All the ladies present appeared to have 
 been reared in conservatories. I thought at least that they 
 would sing or play to us, but nothing of the kind. They 
 had hired some of the less civilized people of the island to 
 
 4
 
 So TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 do both. One who sang was a gentleman known to fame, 
 as I was told, and he was received for the space of a few 
 minutes as if he were a human being, and belonged to the 
 same ' set.' 
 
 There appeared also a lady (at least she might have 
 looked like the others if she h^d been sufficiently unclothed) 
 who played selections of exquisite musreTrom sofne^of the 
 best German composers. For a long time I was almost 
 dumfounded, not with the brilliancy of her playing I had 
 heard things as good as that in England but to think that 
 the Toddlers should be influenced by German music 
 Toddlers, who were probably the descendants of the 
 scavengers of the ten lost tribes ! 
 
 The next morning was a most agreeable surprise to me. 
 It was in late autumn, and these guests were assembled in 
 order to have a day's sport. There was a charm in the 
 whole scene. Some of the trees still retained their gorgeous 
 foliage, and Dick, who had been up early and out, was 
 excited by their strange beauty, and declared that the leaves 
 burnt with fiery messages and possessed all the thrilling 
 charm of passionate music. I was rather uneasy about 
 Dick, because he passed in Society as a connection of 
 mine ; and though I regarded him as far more noble than 
 the people at Barnside, still, I had seen enough the night 
 before, and in Oxferry, to feel quite sure that these aristocrats 
 would forgive anything in a man rather than his ignorance 
 of their own sports and games ; therefore I was apprehensive 
 lest Dick should know nothing about dogs and guns. So I 
 asked him whether it would not be advisable for us to 
 avoid the shooting-party. He assured me that he would 
 be perfectly satisfied either way, that he used to be fond 
 of shooting, and that anything would be welcome in the 
 sunshine, which seemed to be making its nest among the 
 glowing leaves.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 This breakfast was one of the most delightful gatherings 
 that I had yet seen in the island. The unlimited plenty 
 and variety, the vivacity of the conversation, the number of 
 guests, the view stretching for miles from the dining-room 
 window, and the occasional sound of birds or dogs, all 
 combined to make it a morning when one felt that life was 
 a treasure of the gods. As Dick could use a gun, I thought 
 we might venture to join the shooting-party. We had a 
 charming day's sport. At first they let out a few tame 
 hens pheasants I believe they called them ; and the men, 
 in order to get a little practice, stood in a row and fired at 
 the old things. Of course somebody was sure to hit them, 
 and then the servants picked them up and put them in 
 bags. 
 
 But we found a cover (after a very long walk) in which 
 the birds were remarkably wild, and the dismay that fell 
 upon many faces, as bird after bird escaped, was quite 
 ludicrous. 
 
 Dick had been quiet in the early part of the day. I 
 believe his head was among the tree-tops ; but when the 
 shooting became very wild and some birds had escaped, he 
 awoke from his dream and brought down every bird that 
 rose on his path. He seemed to know this brake as if 
 he had lived in it, and no bird could escape him. Lord 
 Broomdepath complimented him. 
 
 I was highly gratified. Dick was a hero. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 WHEN the light failed, we made our way back. I wondered 
 at Dick, because I was well aware that in England no school- 
 master could shoot. 
 
 We trudged along in the deepening twilight. There was
 
 52 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 a slight mist, which helped to render all things indistinct, 
 and cast the drapery of dreams over the scene. Dick was 
 pensive, and had that strange look which I had seen some- 
 times on the voyage. The sources of enjoyment to Dick 
 are very peculiar. 
 
 We walked in silence, and the rest were ahead of us. At 
 length we saw a light in the small window of a hut on the 
 border of the moor. Dick said he would see if he could 
 obtain a drink of water. He knocked, and an exceedingly 
 tidy old woman opened the door. I do not remember to 
 have seen this sample of person in Toddle Island before. 
 The old woman asked us respectfully into the house. 
 
 We had left, as everybody knows, the gayest scene in 
 which man can take part, for health, strength, sport, and 
 the best of jokes filled the hall of life with laughter. We 
 had enjoyed all those things which make man feel he 
 is lord of creation. 
 
 To our great surprise, this small room, exceedingly clean 
 and poorly furnished, had a bed in one corner. Instantly 
 Dick said to the old woman in tender tones : 
 
 ' I am sorry to see you have someone ill.' 
 
 On the bed in the corner was lying a woman, whose age 
 it was impossible to guess. There was that peculiar face 
 which I had seen at Cable and found nowhere else except 
 in the women of Toddle Island. It appears to be the 
 result of much suffering, of absolute slavery, and is only 
 varied by having either a fierce or tender expression. In 
 this case it was neither fierce nor hard, but remarkably 
 gentle. 
 
 The old woman very soon told us all. 
 
 Her only daughter, Rachel, for twenty years had suffered 
 from rheumatism. During all that time she had been lying 
 on the same bed. 
 
 I was exceedingly sorry that we had come in, for the
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 55 
 
 contrast was appalling. It upset all one's fixed ideas about 
 the lord of creation and other rose-bud theories. Why in 
 the world science should not do more for the sick was 
 a great mystery to me. But I did not know then that these 
 Toddlers were hardly civilized, and that their men of science 
 were like Professor Planet, speculating about things of no 
 earthly use, or selling their knowledge at a fabulous price 
 which the poor could not pay. 
 
 I only waited for the old woman to stop talking, and 
 then I intended to depart promptly. I was feeling in my 
 waistcoat pocket for a half-sovereign. 
 
 Dick approached the bedside, and to his kind inquiries 
 the sufferer answered in a remarkably soft voice, without a 
 tinge of disappointment or regret. With my usual habit of 
 noting contrasts, I could not help thinking of the imperious, 
 haughty dignity of the ladies whom I had met at dinner the 
 night before, to whom men gave all homage, offering them 
 the best of everything, and regarding them as luxurious and 
 whimsical animals. 
 
 From that moment I became a spectator in a scene which 
 astonished me. My young friend, the crack shot, sat down 
 by the bedside and asked her how she had for twenty years 
 endured the ravages of suffering which were plainly visible. 
 The bones of every finger were out of place, her arms were 
 powerless, she was at the mercy of half savages, and yet she 
 was as full of happy peace as the birds at spring-time or the 
 fawns that play in the early autumn. She meekly replied 
 that she must bear what Providence sent, and that all 
 her sufferings were not equal to those of her 'Master.' 
 
 Dick said : ' I suppose you know Christ ?' 
 
 She answered : ' Yes, my whole solace lies in thinking of 
 Him. My brother's little boy comes and sings hymns 
 to me when I am very bad, or my mother will read to me 
 when she has a few minutes to spare.'
 
 54 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 Then Dick produced a New Testament from his pocket, 
 and read a chapter out of St. John's Gospel, and asked 
 if she were familiar with that. She said it was her favourite 
 Gospel, and that she knew a large part of it by heart. After 
 some words, which seemed to me full of consolation, if one 
 could only grasp them as facts, Dick wished her good-bye, 
 and promised to call and have a long talk with her. 
 
 When we left it was growing dark. Apparently, however, 
 not only do all the people round Barnside live for the 
 special delight of Lord Broomdepath, but all the roads 
 have been made with Barnside as a centre, so that the old 
 woman directed us to a path which led us straight back. 
 Now, I had two or three mysteries with regard to Dick. I 
 never knew before that he could handle a gun, or that he 
 carried a New Testament in his pocket. In order to get 
 away from a very painful subject, I said to him : 
 
 ' I was quite surprised to find you such a crack shot.' 
 
 He replied : ' I have scarcely shot since I was a youth. 
 I don't know whether I ever told you before that my father 
 was a gamekeeper, and one of the best shots in our county, 
 so that the squire was as proud of him as his retriever. I 
 suppose that, learning to shoot at the time when one learns 
 best, it has stuck to me.' 
 
 I replied : ' I expect now these Toddlers will take such a 
 fancy to you that you will be feted for the next six months, 
 and end by marrying an heiress. ' 
 
 There was no response. Dick was evidently in a solemn 
 mood, so I asked : 
 
 ' What explanations have you to give of the extraordinary 
 case in the cottage ? Those two women seemed quite 
 content, not to say happy.' 
 
 Dick said : ' I am very glad we entered that cottage, for 
 it has done much to clear up some mysteries in the life of 
 these people. I told you before, I believed they had heard
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 55 
 
 of Christianity, and now, you see, we are perfectly sure 
 of it.' 
 
 We arrived rather late at Barnside. It was time to dress 
 for dinner, ever the greatest event of the day. We dis- 
 covered that the social rank of Toddlers is shown by dinner. 
 They may have very much the same kind of breakfast in 
 different social positions. It is possible that they may meet 
 together over luncheon, but in dinner you come to an act of 
 worship which takes the same place in their lives as faith 
 takes in the lives of some cottagers. 
 
 I was more fortunate on this occasion, and did not take 
 in to dinner the Duchess who had mistaken Derby Day for 
 a religious gathering, but the wife of one of the lower 
 nobility. Her husband was Sir John Gaunt, and though I 
 understood afterwards that her father was only a doctor, 
 yet, with that native fondness for confusion which marks 
 every act of a Toddler, she was called Lady Gaunt. I was 
 a long way removed from Dick at the dinner-table, yet I 
 could not help noticing that he had taken in to dinner the 
 youngest and most beautiful lady present. She was the 
 sister of Lord Guy. I suppose this special honour was 
 conferred upon Dick because he really was the hero of the 
 day. One guest after another told the remarkable story of 
 the most wonderful ' bag ' that he had made. 
 
 We had never been asked the question, but I believe it 
 was the current opinion that he was a cousin of mine, and 
 did not possess a title because of the perverse exclusiveness 
 of the English in making titles descend only in the male 
 line. However, this was of no account in Toddle Island, 
 because they make lords and dukes by such a ready pro- 
 cess that I should not have wondered if they had sprinkled 
 a little salt on his left thumb and made him a Knight of the 
 Garter or the Toasting-Fork there and then. I asked Lady 
 Gaunt respecting the condition of the island
 
 56 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 She replied : ' Never was this island so prosperous. We 
 are succeeding to an extent that would have seemed per- 
 fectly miraculous to our ancestors, for the great difficulty 
 with regard to these islanders is to place such a barrier 
 between the masses and the privileged class that it shall be 
 insurmountable, and yet that the Lower Orders shall not be 
 irritated by it.' 
 
 I bowed, and said : ' That would indeed be a work of 
 art, for which we should be devoutly thankful in England.' 
 
 She replied gaily : ' We have almost accomplished it, for, 
 you see, we have the most charming laws with regard to 
 property in this country. I don't know much about them, 
 not being a lawyer; but we have a sacred principle by 
 which the aristocracy may acquire the land, and if they can 
 get the land, you have at once a distinction between the 
 Lower Orders and the nobility which is fixed, because if 
 two peers can take possession of all the land of a neighbour- 
 hood, the other people are their servants, and are only too 
 thankful to be allowed to live in the villages, till the soil, 
 work the quarries, and build new houses.' 
 
 ' Really, this is quite interesting, but how do they get 
 possession of the land? I wonder the people will allow 
 them to have it.' 
 
 ' I don't know who invented the process, but it works 
 exceedingly well. There was a time we know when this 
 island was not inhabited by Toddlers, but by an entirely 
 different race, so that the Toddlers who arrived first were 
 able to kill a few hundreds of the original race, and take 
 possession of whole districts. Many of our dukes descend 
 from such ancestors. They were exceedingly clever ancestors, 
 too men born to rule.' 
 
 'Pardon me, but either I do not understand, or the 
 ancestors of these dukes must have practised a form of 
 murder and plunder. You say that the island belonged to
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 57 
 
 an entirely different race, and you point out that the 
 Toddlers obtained the land by killing the original owners ; 
 surely that was murder and plunder ?' 
 
 She smiled beautifully, and said : ' We call this the 
 "fortune of war," and I am sure you must recognise that 
 it is quite right and just.' 
 
 I said : ' It seems to me, if a band of men are strong 
 enough to murder, all else they do is highly moral. What 
 of the other Toddlers, who did not murder the original 
 inhabitants, and did not thereby get possession of a few 
 thousand acres ?' 
 
 ' That,' she said, ' merely shows either their slavish nature, 
 or that they were short-sighted, and proves that they belong 
 to the inferior order. You know the greatness and dignity 
 of Toddle Island is built up on this one supreme fact that 
 the aristocracy are a different race from the rest.' 
 
 'Really, do you mean to say that they came over in 
 different boats, or from a different country, or were created 
 at a different time, or where does the distinction come in ?' 
 
 ' That I cannot explain ; I can only use the speech 
 of learned historians, and say that it is lost in remote 
 antiquity.' 
 
 I was just going to say something true, when I remembered 
 that in this island one must believe anything that a lady 
 says at a dinner-table or in a drawing-room, so"! bowed, and 
 said: 
 
 'I feel it a privilege to be admitted into the circle of 
 such a severe aristocracy as that of Toddle Island.'
 
 58 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 I WAS deeply interested in hearing from Lady Gaunt how 
 the aristocracy were fenced off from the rest of the islanders. 
 I had noticed that there was some remarkable difference 
 which I was convinced did not exist in nature, and it gave 
 me fresh occasion to marvel at the subtle ingenuity of the 
 rulers of the island. Here was a race of people, or, rather, 
 the fragments of several races, whose earliest known life 
 began in a cannibal riot, in which human beings were of no 
 value whatever, apart from dinner, yet they had succeeded 
 in taking some of the most violent of the savages and 
 training them up in such a way that at the end of a few 
 generations the descendants of these savages were regarded 
 as a distinct and superior order. 
 
 I had scarcely time to realize the position explained by 
 Lady Gaunt, when my attention was attracted to a lively 
 debate on the other side of the table, in which Lord Guy 
 was taking an active share. He was saying with much 
 animation : ' The Sacred Ass is chiefly a tradition, which 
 has grown and taken hold of the popular imagination just 
 like a fairy-tale, the belief in ghosts, his Satanic majesty, 
 and other traditions which the popular mind received with- 
 out inquiry, and augments without limit.' 
 
 Duke de Tail said : ' But surely, Guy, you will admit, for 
 all Parliamentary purposes, and especially for the stupidity of 
 the house of Grooms, that the Sacred Ass is indispensable.' 
 
 There were remonstrances from one or two ladies of the 
 highest rank. A very elderly dowager, who looked like an 
 unframed family portrait just handed down from a back 
 gallery, gave some articulate sniffs, which I took to indicate 
 a form of convulsions peculiar to the island. Could she
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 59 
 
 have expressed her disapproval and disgust, I felt sure 
 that we should have had a brilliant page to add to this 
 history. 
 
 Many of the guests disappeared, others came, but Miss 
 Edith Guy remained. She was half-cousin, I found, to 
 Lady Broomdepath, and though Lord Guy was new to the 
 peerage, yet his paternal ancestors dated from a time when 
 all the land in Toddle Island was unappropriated. They 
 had shown prescient wisdom in selecting one or two of the 
 best corners and appropriating a seaport, so that when 
 civilization was devised, their descendants were in a com- 
 fortable position. But this comfort had been a drawback 
 to them. For generations they slumbered at ease, carefully 
 rearing game, and keeping men to shoot any others who 
 ventured to come for sport on their own account. The 
 islanders had skilful remedies for many evils, and if a man 
 were original, or had any well-developed sense of justice, 
 they either shot him in a quarrel, or they caught hirjn and 
 then executed him in public ignominy. It might have 
 been due to such awful examples as these that the Guys 
 remained in their easy obscurity, for I am informed that so 
 strong were the cannibal instincts in the Toddlers, that for 
 some years even peers were not quite safe, for one peer 
 had been known to betray another, and then gloat over his 
 death, and once, at least, they made holiday by killing their 
 king. I merely state these facts lest any English reader 
 should be greatly shocked at some things I shall have to 
 relate of Miss Edith Guy. 
 
 Dick became a hero in the eyes of some of the ladies. 
 He kept up his reputation as a sportsman. He sang some 
 of the pathetic old English songs, and the ladies would 
 gather round him as if they had discovered a bard of the 
 olden time. 
 
 Now I thought I should like to have the privilege of
 
 60 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 watching these artificial and frivolous women under the 
 influence of a natural passion. I took more interest in this, 
 perhaps, than it was worth ; but there is something universal 
 and irresistible in passion. I am quite sure, if it were care- 
 fully explained and properly understood by the children of 
 our elementary schools, that the crowded arenas of crime 
 would become a paradise. Many desire to find some 
 universal touch that should bind all life together, and 
 probably this secret would be arrived at more easily by 
 investigating the origin and force of passion than by any 
 other means. I am quite aware that this is rank heresy, 
 and that it would not do for the preface to a code of moral 
 laws. But I had been greatly struck, in trying to under- 
 stand conduct on Toddle Island, by this one indisputable 
 fact, that, artificial and inconsistent as. they were, nothing 
 was so artificial and inconsistent as their morals. 
 
 Instead of separating human passion from the passions of 
 all other animals, and from the other irresistible forces upon 
 which the order of the universe and the continuity of life 
 depend, they ought to have taken the trouble to understand 
 the potency and the naturalness of passion. All the efforts 
 of human society, laws, and government have been directed 
 against this one eternal wave of life, with a result which 
 might have been foreseen. The societies have been de- 
 molished, the laws have grown obsolete, the governments 
 have passed away. Yet passion lives. The animal affinities 
 survive both slavish creeds and sham morals. I deter- 
 mined to note the force of passion in the lives of these 
 remarkable people. There were ca^es, I was told, where 
 this one natural force had caused the Toddlers to lay aside 
 their strongest prejudices and obey this wider and grand 
 impulse, which is verily the throbbing of the universe. 
 For instance, the Toddlers were exceedingly selfish ; they 
 possessed in a marked degree the instincts of cannibals ;
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 61 
 
 they had learnt to play a part so well that many of them 
 were masks on stilts ; they gave their unswerving devotion 
 to the bankers ; but at one single throb of this universal 
 desire which is the flush of life's dawn, they have been 
 known to sacrifice their selfishness, and even to discard 
 their bankers. 
 
 The reader will not wonder, therefore, when I suspected 
 that my friend Dick and Miss Guy were becoming some- 
 what interested in each other, that I was a great deal more 
 than interested in them. 
 
 She was a lady of ancient lineage. She was not quite so 
 restless as her brother, Lord Guy. She had the fair hair, 
 blue eyes, and lithe figure which the Toddlers, years ago, 
 set up as one of their models of beauty. Her vivacity was 
 so great that it engaged her in many pursuits, and almost 
 involved her in the charge of fickleness. She had been 
 accustomed to universal admiration, and I am told that 
 more than one Toddler had tried to get possession of her 
 as his sole property; therefore it would be interesting to 
 see her discard her kith and kin to marry a foreigner. 
 Dick, on the other hand, was so unlike the busy, business- 
 loving Englishman that I felt sure with him there would 
 be no playing at passion, and it would rise to a sublime 
 height. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THEIR chief feast-day is dedicated to the sun, and is 
 properly called Sunsday. It is one of the numerous relics 
 of a prior Pagan religion. 
 
 Breakfast on this morning differed from that of the 
 previous days. Some guests did not come down to break-
 
 62 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 fast on Sunsday. About half-past ten a couple of carriages 
 drove up to the door to convey those who were inclined to 
 the neighbouring church. I thought it my duty as a guest 
 to do what my host did, therefore I drove with him. I was 
 interested. The church was small and chiefly occupied by 
 rustics, who found Lord Broomdepath and his guests the 
 most attractive part of the service. The performance was 
 of considerable length, and we left before it was over. I 
 observed that great prominence was given in their prayers 
 to the aristocracy, and the members of the Royal Family of 
 the island. The People seemed left, as they were on the 
 other days of the week, pretty much to take care of them- 
 selves. 
 
 I think it is one of the remarkable features of the island, 
 that the People do all virtuous and noble things without the 
 tonic of State pensions or public prayers ; but the others, I 
 suppose because they are not brought up in the same state 
 of hardy virtue, require extra pensions and extra prayers to 
 keep them anywhere near the level either of work or heroism 
 which seems to come naturally to the rest of the islanders. 
 
 I observed that a number of boys had been drilled and 
 put in white uniforms to take part in the service. After we 
 had stood, knelt, and sat with infinite variety, we took 
 advantage of a pause in the service to rise in a body and 
 leave the saloon pew which Lord Broomdepath had fitted 
 up quite apart from the rest of the congregation. I am 
 told that it is a most important point with the aristocracy in 
 these country districts not to worship with the labouring 
 classes, as at one time there was an epidemic in the island 
 a form of insanity. Under its influence many people main- 
 tained that during the act of worship there was no aristo- 
 cracy, but that all were brothers. 
 
 With that shrewdness which marks the governors of 
 Toddle Island, the aristocrats did not openly contradict the
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 63 
 
 statement, but said with frozen indifference that there might 
 be some truth in it, and then quietly told the Priest of each 
 particular church that they were going to send upholsterers 
 to furnish saloons where they might sit apart from the mob. 
 Of course, being the rulers of the island, they were also the 
 rulers of religion, and by this means the wise aristocracy 
 succeeded in bringing to nought the insane theory of equal 
 privileges. The People have suffered very considerably 
 from that epidemic, for they still in some of the prayers 
 repeat words which lead them to suppose that all men have 
 one Father, and yet whenever they come to church they 
 are positively taught that they are mistaken. As we left 
 the church a small crowd gathered to witness our departure. 
 Two or three people stayed behind to see the service out. 
 
 On our return, I asked Lord Broomdepath the meaning 
 of sundry things in the church why, for instance, had they 
 selected the boys clothed in white to sit in that part of the 
 church where everyone could see their bad behaviour? 
 He said that formerly there had been a theory that all 
 persons were born bad, and could not help it ; but now it 
 was not the fashion to say so, because it seemed to include 
 the aristocracy, who were with difficulty prevailed upon to 
 go to church. As a compromise the ecclesiastical dignitaries 
 had made this invention. They selected ten or twenty boys, 
 and placed them where the whole of the congregation could 
 see them. The boys took care that the theory of universal 
 depravity was kept well to the fore. 
 
 He continued : ' It is of vital importance to retain the 
 hold on the popular mind, and in order to do that you 
 must always have a religious service about five centuries 
 behind the times.' 
 
 I expressed my surprise at this, and said : ' It seems a 
 great mistake to put religion into language, which is a 
 changing vehicle and wears out soon. You might as well
 
 64 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 expect a day labourer to carry his harvest in a cart three 
 centuries old as to say his prayers in the language of his 
 ancestors three hundred years ago.' 
 
 His lordship seemed to regard me as some strange 
 animal, then asked abruptly : ' Have you heard of our 
 great religious invention called the Unoiled Machine ?' 
 
 ' Yes, and I am puzzled by it.' 
 
 ' You will recognise that in it no changes or adaptations 
 have taken place.' 
 
 ' I came to that conclusion while staying at Oxferry.' 
 
 His lordship laughed, and said : ' Oxferry is an exception 
 in Toddle Island. In the first place they never require 
 motion. Their leading professors have been known to 
 spend twenty-five years in trying to determine whether 
 prayer was a human volition or a law of nature. And in 
 the second place they apply the force of gold. By this 
 means they are able to bribe a lot of young fellows into an 
 outward reverence for the Unoiled Machine.' 
 
 I said : ' Will your lordship explain the mystery of this 
 machine ?' 
 
 He replied : ' It is remarkably simple. Centuries ago, 
 three or four very clever men hit upon a principle in 
 mechanics known as the "square peg in the round hole." 
 This new discovery supplied a Machine which could be 
 planted in any town or village ; and when you have put 
 upon it the impress of the State, it becomes a fixture, such 
 as no man can move. There you have the simple mystery 
 of our great national institution.' 
 
 We reached home at lunch-time with a feeling of intense 
 relief. 
 
 Lady Gaunt had not attended the service. I sat next 
 her at lunch ; she seemed astounded that I could take the 
 least interest in any religion. 
 
 She said : ' Of course I quite understand that Lord
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 65 
 
 Broomdepath must go to church. His position and in- 
 fluence are necessary to sanction this first-day amusement. 
 We naturally shrink from anything that would throw us 
 back upon the earlier Paganism. There was a time when 
 every tribe in this island had its own form of Paganism, and 
 so great was the brutality, and so frequent were the murders, 
 that we owe a debt of gratitude to those gentlemen who 
 discovered the Unoiled Machine, and tied it to the Sacred 
 Ass.' 
 
 I said to Lady Gaunt : ' You interest me. I have long 
 wondered what can be the connection between these two 
 remarkable gods of your nation. Do you think that, as 
 a nation, you have now attained to unity ?' 
 
 ' Yes,' she replied, ' we may safely say we are united. 
 We have tens of thousands nay, hundreds of thousands of 
 creatures in the island to whom life is a curse ; yet they 
 gladly work for others.' 
 
 ' I never heard of such a remarkable fact in the history of 
 mankind.' 
 
 ' Did I not tell you that when our ancestors discovered 
 the difference between the aristocracy and the commons, 
 from that moment Toddle Island became great ?' 
 
 I, of course, bowed, and said that I remembered well 
 her disclosures with regard to the origin of the Aristocracy. 
 
 She bent towards me, and said in a scarcely audible 
 whisper : 
 
 ' Pardon me, my lord, we never apply the word " origin " 
 to the Aristocracy. It is like the Sacred Ass itself; it has 
 no origin.' 
 
 I thanked her for her great kindness. 
 
 We changed the topic. 
 
 ' Do you never go to the Sunsdays' performance ?' I 
 asked. 
 
 ' Not when I am visiting in the country. In my own 
 
 5
 
 66 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 home, of course, I am bound^ to go, for the sake of 
 example to my servants. Othe*vise, my reason tells me 
 that it is useless.' 
 
 'It appeared to me,' I replied, 'this morning to be 
 monotonous, and I thought some of the devices for inducing 
 slumber were remarkably clever.' 
 
 ' Yes, and where the music is good one can almost 
 tolerate it once a week. But, you see, we have to listen to 
 a discourse from a man whom probably we could not invite 
 to dinner. You are aware, I have no doubt, that very few 
 of the Maskers are admitted to the Aristocracy, and only 
 on the understanding that they will never henceforth mix 
 as equals with men in their own profession. Then they 
 receive a title and become Jockeys, so that they may in a 
 degree catch that undefinable something which, next to his 
 estates, marks a real Aristocrat. Further, there are certain 
 expressions used in these services which may have once 
 been quite true, and almost decent, but now they are both 
 untrue and indecent. To hear small boys sing these words 
 causes rapid deterioration of one's moral sense, and, I 
 am sure, in the long-run, utterly destroys the artistic 
 faculty.' 
 
 Not knowing to what her ladyship referred, I felt that 
 it might be one of the ten thousand things you may not 
 ask in Toddle Island. So I bowed, and assured her that 
 she was right. 
 
 Luncheon advanced. A cloud hung over the household. 
 
 Lord Guy alone retained any vivacity. The ladies seemed 
 afraid of each other, lest they should do or say something out 
 of harmony with the traditions of the day. It amused me 
 considerably during the whole of that Sunsday to find that 
 almost all the guests had their private superstitions with 
 regard to its observance. One of the gentlemen passed the 
 whole day reading a novel, for which, he maintained, ' the
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 67 
 
 day was instituted.' Another was perfectly sure that this 
 was injurious physically a^id morally, and declared that the 
 day was intended for quiet contemplation and communion 
 with nature. A third declared that it was his only chance 
 of keeping an exact account of his bills, and of writing up 
 his private correspondence. But no sooner had the ladies 
 withdrawn, than Lord Guy threw a flood of light on this 
 morbid gathering, and said that he was going to one of the 
 barns to try a pair of fox terriers. The old rat-catcher had 
 caught scojes of rats, which, he had no doubt, were created 
 to relieve the weary monotony of Sunsday. 
 
 The men brightened at Lord Guy's proposal. Dick did 
 not accompany us ; I think Miss Guy was going to show 
 him some ruins of an old castle. 
 
 As I watched the pair depart, I had a glimpse of that 
 strange beauty which has transfigured some lives in every 
 period of the world's history. The scene was idyllic. The 
 sunlight fell on the many-tinted trees, and the faintest of 
 blue mists draped the far distance. 
 
 No condition is more suited to imaginative love than the 
 sombre effulgence of autumn, for then man's highest hope 
 burns its loveliness into the fading leaves of custom, and 
 the mild mournfulness of the death-mist finds an answering 
 melancholy in human experience, in the mysterious 
 evanescence of passion, and in the creeping decay of life. 
 
 For a moment the sight of the two lovers, in such a scene, 
 deeply moved me, and there flashed upon me unutterable 
 visions of life and love, the fount of being and the source of 
 beauty. They were visions of the impossible too fair and 
 too fleet to be recorded. 
 
 It was already clear to me that love had begun to exert 
 its renovating influence on those two lives. Miss Guy had 
 gained a new charm of subdued beauty, and a sacred dawn- 
 ing light flooded those blue eyes. My tall, handsome Dick
 
 68 TODDLE I'SLAND 
 
 no longer sat like a priest dreaming in a temple, but he was 
 walking up to the tree of life, as one not afraid to gather its 
 fruit. Love was throwing its nimbus round his dark 
 melancholy ; and it almost seemed as if he might triumph 
 over his own imagination. 
 
 They were gone. 
 
 I had had my glimpse of beauty, and I turned to the 
 ashes of Time. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 WE found the excitement of the terriers and the rats a 
 sufficient relief, with the aid of first-rate cigars. The men 
 recovered their gaiety. This was the oldest part of the 
 mansion, and the one from which it took its name. I was 
 assured that this very barn had stood for at least five 
 centuries. 
 
 When the game was over, we dispersed to get rid of the 
 remaining two hours before dinner. I took a solitary walk, 
 and sought the aid of oxygen, the undoubted friend of man 
 under all conditions. When about two miles from Barn- 
 side, I was startled by the sound of hooting and moaning, 
 laughing and yelling, by turns. I concluded that it was a 
 party of revellers ; but before I could be quite sure of any- 
 thing, a man grasped me by the arm, saying frantically, 
 ' You won't let them have me ?' 
 
 It was a mad-looking workman, and he assured me that 
 he was pursued by wild animals and devils. Again and 
 again he implored my protection, and he clutched my arm 
 fiercely. I was bewildered, not knowing what he meant. 
 I felt thankful that he regarded me as a protector and not 
 an enemy, because I was totally unarmed. I asked him
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 69 
 
 where he lived, and took him home. He held my arm and 
 moaned and groaned terribly. It seemed as if he were 
 indeed a demon. We arrived at a small row of houses, 
 and in the first of these the man lived. He opened the 
 door and the poor children uttered a scream of terror, and 
 the frightened wife seemed relieved to find that someone 
 was with the madman. He assured her that he had got 
 some powder and shot, and that he would shoot 'them.' 
 She told me quietly that she had concealed the gun, and 
 there was no danger. He sat down by the fire, and whilst I 
 was talking with his wife he fell asleep. She said that he 
 would be better when he woke. The little children stopped 
 their crying, and ventured out of the corners to their mother, 
 but the whole scene was one of misery. 
 
 On my way back I overtook Dick, deep in one of those 
 private conversations of his with the stars. He was in a 
 very sober mood, otherwise I intended to rally him about 
 Miss Guy, for his time had been so taken up during the 
 last week that really I had seen very little of him. He 
 walked to church in the morning, and stayed to see the 
 service out. 
 
 I said : ' Who would have thought of finding you here, 
 and alone ?' 
 
 He said, ' I have been to the cottage on the moorside, 
 to see Mary Pratt and her bedridden daughter. She was 
 in great pain, but her sufferings may be relieved as the 
 family are in want.' He continued : ' I never go to this 
 cottage without obtaining a truer view of life ; the great 
 mysteries that hem us in on all sides seem to lift like a 
 morning fog when I am talking with that suffering woman.' 
 
 ' What are the mysteries which vanish under this strange 
 influence ?' 
 
 He said : ' This morning, at church, we heard those 
 lessons which seem to have an unmistakable reference to
 
 70 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 some great future event, in which the human race will take 
 part. But it was plain that they had little or no meaning 
 to the majority, so I walked down and read them over with 
 this suffering, uneducated woman. To her every word was 
 real. She looked upon Christ as we should look upon our 
 ancestors ; they have gone, but we nevertheless realize our 
 inseparable connection, and feel assured that somewhere in 
 human development we are likely to meet them. She did 
 not put it in this way, but evidently that is one of the many 
 realities which mould her life. I don't think it would make 
 the slightest difference if the Aristocracy of Toddle Island 
 were to disappear, or if the island itself were to vanish. 
 She has grasped the truth of the spiritual potentialities 
 which result from faith in Christ.' 
 
 I tried to recount to him some of the things which Lady 
 Gaunt had said at lunch, and then I asked him how this 
 poor afflicted creature, whose life was as distorted as her 
 own hands, could be expected to take any true, wide view 
 of the universe, seeing that every human being measures 
 life by his own history and that the whole universe is seen 
 by no one. 
 
 He replied : ' That of course is true. We know that 
 forms of life are only recognised by us in proportion as we 
 have the physical power, but I fail to see how this can 
 affect a poor afflicted creature, who simply starts where we 
 leave off, and who applies the test of experience as rigidly 
 as we do. Why should we deny her experience and believe 
 in our own ? She has lived more than twenty years with a 
 body that is of so little use to her that the idea may have 
 grown in her mind that it is possible to live without a body 
 at all. This would account for the fact that she has lost 
 sight of grandeur, physical life, power, and all the things 
 which the Toddlers represent by the one word wealth. She 
 is like one who has already passed through the darkness of
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 71 
 
 the grave, or lived on its furthest edge for twenty years, 
 exploring in the dawn the new world that lies beyond. So 
 it comes to pass that she is a lifetime ahead of all the people 
 that you will meet at dinner to-night.' 
 
 ' Indeed ! I think you would have to pack your port- 
 manteau if you ventured to express such an idea amongst 
 these islanders. I cannot say that I like it myself.' 
 
 ' But is it not one of the clearest truths borne out by all 
 experience ? Take, for example, the people you will meet 
 at dinner. They have a certain amount of time, of energy, 
 and of intelligence. All these things are given to various 
 pursuits. In order to bring the point out clearly, suppose 
 a man is awake sixteen hours a day, and gives six of them 
 to music, and four to sport, and three to visiting, and three 
 to his food, you can account Tor his existence, and you 
 would never think of asking him why he knew nothing of 
 astronomy, or never explored Central Africa.' 
 
 I assented. 
 
 ' Just in the same way, then,' he continued, ' if there is \ 
 another order of life and another order of development, in 
 which these present objects and pursuits have no part, it is 
 quite true that the people who devote the whole of their 
 time and energy to dinners, pleasures, and wealth, have no 
 energy left to devote to the pursuit of the other life.' 
 
 We continued our walk in silence. I was bewildered 
 with the Toddlers. I had just witnessed a sight which 
 convinced me that I was quite correct in my theory about 
 their savagery and cannibalism. Then Dick had seen 
 another order of life that really was quite as wonderful as 
 any of the inferences he had drawn from it. 
 
 These were people called by the same name, supposed to 
 belong to the same race. I thought of this morning's 
 ' service ' with its stately and precise officialism, and the 
 gaping superstition, and the undeveloped intelligence of the
 
 72 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 rustic. I had listened to the cultured ridicule of Lady 
 Gaunt, who represented the leaders of the island. But the 
 ladies were scarcely out of the dining-room before the old 
 brute instincts of the original cannibal broke forth with 
 bursts of laughter, and everybody found delight in watching 
 the murderous fury of a brace of terriers. I had seen a 
 howling madman, the father of a family, at large. Then as 
 a light from the unknown world, through the mist of the 
 early evening, came the undoubted fact that a dying 
 woman, lying in the coffin of Time, had become already 
 the citizen of a world which is curtained off from most 
 of us. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 NEVER had dinner been more welcome. The exercise and 
 the oxygen had developed my physical affinity for the 
 universe. When we assembled in the drawing-room, mani- 
 festly one common feeling possessed all of us ; relief had 
 come at last. 
 
 At dinner conversation was not so brilliant as after a 
 day's shooting, and Lord Broomdepath asked how I had 
 managed to spend my time. I was compelled, in reply to 
 his politeness, to say that I had taken a long walk ; and 
 when he described it as dull, I had to say that it was far 
 otherwise. I told him of the extraordinary object I had 
 met, and where I left him. A burst of laughter followed 
 my statement, and for a moment I was horrified, supposing 
 that I must have said something highly indecorous. 
 
 Lord Broomdepath instantly said : ' That was old Jim 
 Pint. He is the greatest toper in the neighbourhood, and 
 I suppose, after drinking a week, he has delirium tremens.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 73 
 
 A great deal of this had no meaning to me, so I began 
 to inquire more fully into it, and learnt that this man was 
 a butcher in the neighbourhood, who drank a great deal, 
 and that, after neglecting his work for a week in order to 
 drink, he had this particular disease, which appears to be 
 a form of voluntary madness known in the island. 
 
 Lord Broomdepath told us that Jim was a rough customer, 
 and often, when maddened, he had turned his wife and little 
 children out into the lane, on a winter's night, and locked 
 the door. Then he would fall asleep till next morning, and 
 when remonstrated with, declare he knew nothing about it. 
 In fact, he said he had got the fellow to live in this row of 
 cottages because he was afraid that some night his family 
 might freeze to death, but now the neighbours could take 
 them in. One lady said it was a cruelty; I think Lady 
 Gaunt even went so far as to say it was a shame. 
 
 When dinner was over and the ladies had retired, evidently 
 nobody knew what to do. An extra amount of wine was 
 taken, but even this failed to rouse the hilarity necessary 
 for a first-rate dinner-party in Toddle Island. 
 
 Dick had been the quietest man at dinner, and I was not 
 surprised, as he holds such strange opinions that I some- 
 times wonder he ever goes to dinner. Moreover, he was 
 now always seated next to Miss Guy, and his attentions 
 were devoted to her. Several of us returned to the drawing- 
 room, and there was a great deal of tittle-tattle as to where 
 everybody was going to keep Christmas, for these people 
 have a dim notion of most of our institutions. I think 
 Dick's theory so far correct, that at some time Christianity 
 was probably introduced to the Toddlers ; but owing to the 
 contradictions of the nature and habits of these people, they 
 have produced the ' Hybrid specimen,' which would be 
 charming novelty if foreigners could understand it.
 
 74 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 IN the drawing-room there was a stranger. Duchess de 
 Tail introduced him. It was one Professor Gritt. He 
 only arrived the night before. In some mysterious way he 
 is a friend of Lord Broomdepath's. Professor Gritt was said 
 to have entirely deleted the emotions, to have discovered 
 the origin of the moral sense, and to have shown that 
 conscience is dependent upon climate, so that in a perfectly 
 beautiful country, with a perfectly beautiful climate, there 
 would be no conscience at all, and moral sense would be 
 unnecessary. Man would grow up like a respectable middle- 
 class cabbage, and either always do right, or rot and become 
 useful to the next generation. His theories were simple. 
 The learned man was a great recluse, and could rarely be 
 seen. 
 
 ' He never got drunk ; he never prayed, and he never 
 had a tailor's bill,' said Lord Guy the following day ; and 
 his lordship was of opinion that these three distinctions 
 entitled Professor Gritt to the padded room in a lunatic 
 asylum. 
 
 The Duchess said, after introducing the Professor to me : 
 ' My dear Professor, will you inform Lord Bottsford about 
 the peculiarities of a disease which greatly interests his 
 lordship ? It is a case of a common man, who has taken 
 so much drink that he sees visions, and moans, and howls. 
 You know the kind of thing.' 
 
 The Professor smiled the grimmest, smallest smile that 
 I remember to have seen on that solemn, grim island, and 
 said : ' The national beverage of the island contains a certain 
 poison, which produces a pleasing variety of madness in its 
 early stages. This poison is the chief source of our wit a"d
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 75 
 
 our commerce.' He looked very knowingly at the Duchess, 
 who reproved him by raising her eyebrows the hundred- 
 thousandth part of an inch ; but the Professor continued : 
 ' When this most delicate and charming intoxicant or 
 narcotic, or both, is combined with the brute fury of our 
 ordinary day-labourer, it causes violent madness.' 
 
 ' But,' I asked, ' do the people afflicted with such mad- 
 ness never destroy property and life ?' 
 
 ' Frequently both,' said the Professor. 
 
 ' And is it not the part of a good Government to protect 
 its people?' I inquired, thinking of the last speech I had 
 heard in the British House of Commons. 
 
 The Professor bowed, and said : ' We have not arrived at 
 that conclusion in Toddle Island ; we have here a singular 
 climate and a singular soil, consequently we have a peculiar 
 variety of butterflies and mushrooms. We do not call upon 
 Government to suppress these varieties of butterflies or 
 mushrooms, because we know that they are produced by 
 the almighty forces called conditions.' 
 
 To this I assented, but said : ' I do not quite see why 
 that frees Government from the responsibility of protecting 
 their fellow-citizens.' 
 
 ' Neither would it,' said the Professor severely, ' if the 
 Government believed that these creatures were their fellow- 
 citizens ; but that is a story without a demonstration. Just 
 as you admitted that the butterflies and the mushrooms are 
 produced by conditions, we feel that the Lower Orders and 
 their vices are also the product of environment, and sooner 
 or later they will either improve the environment, or the 
 environment will improve them off the face of the earth. 
 Why, therefore, should we be so foolish as to disturb the 
 placid peace of Government ?' 
 
 I ventured to ask : ' Is not this rather a cruel and un- 
 feeling philosophy ?'
 
 76 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 'Not in the least,' said the Professor sharply, 'simply 
 because it is not philosophy. It is only the application of 
 the bare facts of science to the animal that science calls 
 man. He is no more valuable than any other animal the 
 moment he ceases to discharge his proper functions.' 
 
 ' Do you not in this island lock a man up who is a 
 lunatic ?' 
 
 ' That depends ; if the lunacy comes upon him from 
 without, and we are unable to assign any cause, then we 
 lock him up ; if he brings his lunacy upon himself, as this 
 fellow did, then by virtue of an old superstition about the 
 freedom of the individual, we leave him at liberty, so that 
 if he will he may produce it again.' 
 
 ' How singular ! Here you leave a man at large to prove 
 that you believe in some sort of a creed. Who would be 
 responsible if that creature were to commit murder ?' 
 
 ' Oh, no one would be responsible ; we should all be 
 shocked.' 
 
 'Responsible !' said the Duchess. ' How can you suggest 
 murder, on a Sunsday night, too ?' 
 
 I thought she would faint. 
 
 The conversation was changed. Professor Gritt dis- 
 appeared. The ladies, worn out and languid, retired 
 early. 
 
 I wrote long letters to my steward, in order to make the 
 necessary arrangements for the coming Christmas parties 
 amongst the tenantry. 
 
 We sat down to breakfast next morning for the first time 
 without our host, who arrived twenty minutes late. He 
 appeared irritated, and asked me : 
 
 ' Was Jim Pint very furious last night ?' 
 
 I replied : ' I have never seen anyone with this disease 
 before, but certainly I have seen few things so alarm- 
 ing.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 77 
 
 ' What a pity ! What a pity !' said his lordship. ' We 
 might have been spared this scandal.' 
 
 Some of the ladies excitedly asked what could be the 
 matter. 
 
 He said : ' I suppose the stupid fool woke up after you 
 left him, and the idiot of a wife had not hidden the gun, so 
 he took it in the middle of the night and shot her and the 
 five children. Then, to prove that he was stark mad, he 
 placed them in a row before the cottages outside and took 
 his gun and went away. The neighbours have been to the 
 steward this morning, and we are going to offer a reward for 
 his capture.' 
 
 At this point all else became inaudible, as the company 
 took a little gymnastic exercise on the interjections, and 
 one or two ladies declined any more breakfast. Scores of 
 inquiries were poured upon Lord Broomdepath. 
 
 Beyond one or two expressions of ' Poor children !' and 
 ' Poor thing !' from the ladies, I was unable to discover that 
 anyone remembered the wife or the children, except to 
 censure her for not hiding the gun. The source of Lord 
 Broomdepath's annoyance became more manifest when he 
 was allowed to speak. 
 
 He said : ' This place won't be bearable now. There is 
 sure to be a special excursion of the Free Press Association. 
 They will take sketches of the cottages, and write long 
 articles about every sickening detail, such as the colour of 
 the children's hair, and the number of their teeth, whether 
 they were accustomed to dress before breakfast, whether the 
 cottage was damp or dry, whether I had taken care to dig a 
 well and to furnish them with clothes-props. Then these 
 wretched writers will get possession of my autograph and 
 my portrait, and will ransack the island for copies of Barn- 
 side, and the neighbourhood will be intolerable all through 
 this drunken fool.'
 
 78 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 Poor Lord Broomdepath ! The burden seemed over- 
 whelming. His face was flushed and his eyes blazed, 
 and he panted as if breath itself were failing to utter his 
 indignation. 
 
 He declared that he would rather dine with, or off, an 
 ordinary cannibal, than he would undergo the torture of 
 being interviewed by the representatives of the five thousand 
 one hundred and ninety-seven different papers which be- 
 longed to the Free Press Association. 
 
 The guests had to shoot that day without his lordship, 
 whose chief desire was to arrange a discreet and gentle- 
 manly flight from his own mansion. His lordship met me 
 on the terrace and poured out his woes. 
 
 He said : ' I sometimes think I really will sell this abomin- 
 able place and go and live on the Continent. I want to 
 know where is the justice or the common-sense of it that a 
 man in my position should endure so many annoyances? 
 Here I have ten thousand acres of land, with the largest 
 rent-roll in the country, and yet, forsooth, I must be subject 
 to the petty annoyances of any uncontrolled brute who 
 chooses to go mad. 
 
 ' It is no disgrace to him ; neither he nor his friends care 
 the least, but the scandal of it makes my life a walking 
 funeral. Whenever I go out to dinner I shall have to 
 recite Jim Pint's biography as if I were a broken-down actor 
 on hire. Whenever I go to a party there is sure to be some 
 old Toddler who has got a theory, and he will come to me 
 to know whether this striking case does not prove that man's 
 brain originally came out of the mist, or whether his head is 
 the source of electricity, or whether the whole thing was due 
 to the rapidity of the sunsets. If I won't satisfy his curiosity 
 he will take a sketch of me and gibbet me in the papers. If 
 I do satisfy his curiosity he will write to the scientific 
 journals and declare that Lord Broomdepath is of the
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 79 
 
 same opinion as himself. Then I shall have to contradict 
 this, and he will go on expecting to be received into the 
 peerage.' 
 
 I sympathized greatly with his lordship. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE turn which events had taken changed our lives at 
 Barnside. Some of the young men devoted the day to 
 sport as usual. The ladies dispersed to write letters or ride 
 or drive. I was walking in front of the house, when 
 Professor Gritt approached in the stealthy, apologetic manner 
 of a man who has spent most of his life in getting to the 
 grave in the quietest way possible. 
 
 I remarked : ' I am sorry to see Lord Broomdepath so 
 perturbed by this news.' 
 
 The Professor replied : ' It is quite amazing. Usually no 
 events have the least effect upon him. I suppose he is 
 afraid of being interviewed by the Free Press.' 
 
 ' Is that so very dreadful ?' 
 
 'Yes; it is the Medieval Inquisition brought over and 
 intensified in the island. In one of my early volumes I 
 said : " The kings of the island would have been a race of 
 ordinary mortals except for their vices." The day after the 
 volume was published, interviewers came about me like bees. 
 I tried to take them separately, but they gathered round 
 me ten deep, made notes, and raised such questions as : 
 
 ' " Pardon me, how do you describe your eyes ?" 
 
 ' " Was there anything interesting about your mother-in- 
 law, besides the superior sharpness of her false teeth I 
 mean ah had ah she a cork leg, or did she always 
 correct your MS. with a lucifer match ?"
 
 8o TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 '"Do you intend always to wear a blue necktie? Is 
 chocolate a colour that meets with a kind response from 
 your retina ?" 
 
 ' " Are you a Monist or a Dualist ?" 
 
 ' " Do you think the vices of kings are immoral ?" 
 
 ' " Have you any of the mannerisms of genius ? For 
 instance, do you shut your eyes when you pick your teeth, 
 or do you invariably warm your tooth-brush before using 
 it?" etc. 
 
 ' The interview was a success from the Free Press point 
 of view. They bewildered me, so that I could not swear to 
 my own answers, and then each went away to invent my 
 character and habits. For the next month I read remark- 
 ably interesting details of my appearance and the state of 
 my house. At least, they had for me the charm of novelty. 
 
 ' One acute observer noted that I arranged my books from 
 right to left, and not in the usual way. Another observed 
 that I was averse to spring-cleaning, because he had 
 noticed a faint line across the ceiling, which he inferred was 
 meant for a cobweb. A third noticed that the last door- 
 step leading up to the house was only raised half the distance 
 of the others, and he made an induction that this was an 
 infallible sign of the new literary character. One fellow, 
 who probably stood behind me all the time, favoured the 
 public with the original discovery that I always looked away 
 from a man when I answered his questions. I have never 
 been sure of my identity since that interview, so I could 
 almost pardon Lord Broomdepath for allowing such a 
 prospect to perturb him.' 
 
 I left Gritt ruminating on defective education. The day 
 passed in varied pursuits. The hour of dinner arrived. 
 The ladies were bright and chattering, as they ever are in 
 the island. Nothing daunts their spirits. Of course, I 
 only speak of their public appearances ; then they are as
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 81 
 
 smilingly brilliant as angels with a fixed rent-roll. Lord 
 Broomdepath tried to throw off his depression. He said he 
 had had a most fatiguing and irritating day. The Free 
 Press Association had come down by a special train from 
 the capital of the island. They had inundated the neigh- 
 bourhood. I cannot understand on what principle the 
 Toddlers regulate their lives, for it appears to be the special 
 object of one class to checkmate another class. If a man 
 thinks he has a grievance say his neighbour's window- 
 blinds are of a colour that offends his taste he first of all 
 writes to the Free Press, and if they encourage him, he 
 forms a society for the regulation of colours in window- 
 blinds. The Free Press know everything, and are the final 
 arbiters of all science. A man may give fifty years to 
 investigating a subject or writing a book, but if one of the 
 members of the Free Press had two dinners the night before 
 he saw it, or missed his breakfast to catch a train the same 
 morning that he wrote his article, then the man and his 
 book would be annihilated. 
 
 The formation of societies appears to be a special madness 
 among the islanders. They have separate associations for 
 every professed virtue, and for all obsolete things. 
 
 Dinner was dull. Lord Broomdepath was not himself. 
 Professor Gritt carefully avoided dinner, so that we were not 
 able to enjoy one of his monologues. I like a man who 
 can give monologues. It is interesting to have all the 
 fermentations of prejudice, and the obliquities of observa- 
 tion of any one man poured out at once. Then one realizes 
 what raw material men call knowledge.
 
 82 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 DICK and I determined to return to Cable. The Consul 
 wrote and asked me to relieve his loneliness, and to help 
 him in keeping 'a real English Christmas.' On the after- 
 noon before we left, Dick paid a visit to the cottage on the 
 moor, and as usual he came back with a face not like that 
 of a man wrestling with an angel, but that of an angel 
 wrestling with Destiny. 
 
 He told me that the extravagant inconsistencies of the 
 Toddlers rendered life a burden, because of the wanton 
 way in which miseries were created, and because of their 
 artificial and contradictory code of morals. He hinted that 
 once or twice he had been disappointed in Miss Guy, that 
 to her life was rigidly divided into the Upper and Lower 
 Orders. The upper class existed for the sake of them- 
 selves by virtue of their own right and the fiat of the 
 universe under their special approval ; whilst the Lower 
 Orders were such mainly because they liked it, and some 
 only demoralized themselves still further by rebelling against 
 the ' divine order of the world.' 
 
 We were among the last to leave Barnside. Dick and 
 Miss Guy had parted with a mutual understanding and the 
 hope of an early meeting. 
 
 After certain ceremonies two young people may inform 
 their friends that they are engaged. These forms are the 
 survivals of a time when the remote ancestor of the Toddlers 
 used to woo his bride by cutting off her hair or knocking 
 out her front teeth. 
 
 As we drove from Barnside to the station, Dick was in 
 the pensive mood when silence is most acceptable. The 
 morning impressed me. Snow was falling fast. The whole
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 83 
 
 scene was invigorating and inspiriting. The speed of our 
 horses, the beauty of the snow, and the keen air helped 
 to give one a pleasing excitement which becomes remark- 
 ably rare after a man is forty. 
 
 Upon arriving at Cable we secured our old quarters. 
 We found the whole place not beautiful with snow, but 
 black, wet, and cold. These people have a peculiar habit 
 of compelling the householders to pay rates in order to 
 have the streets cleaned. To impress the benefit of this 
 upon the ratepayers, all the mud of every street is carefully 
 scraped to one side and left there to be scattered on the 
 passengers by the traffic. I am told that this gave rise to 
 the criminal law of the island. At one time ' vestries ' 
 undertook the management of the streets. They passed 
 generations in scraping up the mud and leaving it there; 
 then they adopted the same method in dealing with 
 criminals. They built large houses, into which they put 
 their criminals, and having removed them they piously 
 flocked to their temples and thanked their various gods for 
 the blessings of civilization, carefully forgetting that in a 
 very short time all these thousands of people would again 
 be let loose. 
 
 Cable was crowded with scientists who had assembled 
 for a congress. I called upon the Consul. He gave me a 
 kind reception, and promised me a treat, for he was going 
 to have a small bachelor party of Toddlers. Amongst them 
 he said I should meet with the most able man of his genera- 
 tion, Professor Smyte, who was distinguished for his learning, 
 and still more distinguished by the fact that he was the first 
 Professor who had received a title from Government. He 
 had just been created Sir James Smyte. I expressed my 
 astonishment that the Toddlers had been so long in exist- 
 ence without recognising the claims of men of learning and 
 scientific attainment.
 
 84 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 The Consul smiled and said : ' Sir James received his 
 title some years ago, and now it may become the fashion, 
 for by introducing a few clever men into the peerage they 
 delude the public into thinking that the peers are really 
 great. 
 
 ' The only wonder to me is that men who have achieved 
 distinction in science or art should care a straw to receive 
 a baby's rattle, which is usually given either to quiet a 
 screaming politician, or to distinguish a big tradesman from 
 a little tradesman. The poor beggars must have very 
 shoddy views of life to accept the tin rattle ! But nothing 
 comes amiss to the Toddlers ; their Government is peculiar. 
 They are great believers in the wisdom of the unconscious, 
 therefore as a rule they select thgir kings_and their lards 
 before their birth, so that there may be no partiality or 
 prejudice. Then many vigorous fellows by some means 
 (into which it is usually best not to inquire) have amassed 
 fortunes and so gained a banker. These fellows insist upon 
 becoming Grooms, and spend one half of their fortune in 
 hiring men to persuade the public that their patrons are 
 great believers in the Sacred Ass so that they may be made 
 Jockeys. 
 
 ' The Toddlers require standing armies in order to pro- 
 tect their own banks, and to get possession of lands which 
 they know did not belong to them ten years before, and 
 which they also know were at one time stolen. They 
 shower their titles and peerages not upon those who dis- 
 cover the way either to wisdom, health, or virtue, but, on 
 the contrary, on the men who can most successfully kill off 
 a large number of their fellowmen. 
 
 'Of course the Lower Orders, as they call them, are more 
 nearly allied to animals than even the Toddlers themselves 
 would like to admit, and when the People began to multiply 
 and gained more intelligence than the owners of all the land
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 85 
 
 in the island, it created a panic. The Aristocracy of Toddle 
 Island were on the very verge of emigrating, and I believe 
 they would have emigrated had there been a single man 
 among them who knew either how to manage a ship or 
 where to go. They felt that they were entirely in the hands 
 of the People, like rats in a trap. The People did all the 
 work, made all the discoveries, paid the Aristocracy large 
 sums of money to be allowed to make a new road, or a 
 petty machine, or even for the privilege of ploughing the 
 land and sowing the seed. When the nobility were in this 
 state of distraction, some wily old fox suggested that he had 
 met a poor man with a patent which would prevent the 
 People from gaining power. They purchased the patent. 
 
 ' Like all masterpieces of ingenuity, the patent was sim- 
 plicity itself. It was a cheap method of increasing the 
 poison of the national beverage so as to effectually enslave 
 the People by their lowest appetites. Thus the People 
 could no longer be a terror to the Aristocrats. At the same 
 time, as the desire for this beverage increased, so the wealth 
 of the Aristocracy would increase by the money paid to 
 them. 
 
 ' The whole of this scheme was carefully drawn up, the 
 labels of the bottles and barrels in which the beverage was 
 kept bore the mark of the Sacred Ass. The committee of 
 middle-class men, who had helped the Aristocrats to carry 
 out the plot, had large sums of money paid to them and 
 were raised to the peerage. This left no room to give a 
 title to men of learning or to discoverers of the arts and 
 sciences amongst the Toddlers.'
 
 S6 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 I LOOKED forward to meeting Sir James Smyte and his 
 learned brethren. Dick opened a new problem by asking 
 at luncheon : ' Have you observed that the civilization of 
 the Toddlers is based on the principle of the smallest 
 possible advantage to the least possible number? Their 
 system is adopted to repress progress. If two men live in 
 a small house they are spared taxation ; but should one of 
 them move into a -larger house, in order to bring up his 
 children in a more healthy and moral condition, they tax 
 this man. The better the house the greater the tax, and 
 the better a man's family is brought up the greater the tax, 
 the object apparently being to prevent the common people 
 from rising to respectability. Also I discovered that if 
 Mr. X. should invent something which would be of great 
 value to mankind, he immediately goes to some office and 
 pays a fee ; then the Government undertakes to prevent 
 any other person from inventing the same thing, or using 
 the same invention. By this means they have been able to 
 prevent a large number of discoveries. I am told there are 
 thousands of beautiful things invented which are never 
 used, because the Government has pledged that no one 
 shall make them except the inventor.' 
 
 I was staggered by these statements. 
 
 The Consul had gathered together at his dinner some of 
 the remarkable men of the island, chiefly professors, exceed- 
 ingly old men, who had passed their lives in the pursuit of 
 one idea. In looking back upon the laborious years which 
 they had spent, the retrospect had the effect of a powerful 
 lens, until each Professor mistook his one idea for the
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 87 
 
 universe. There was not much conversation, but there was 
 a certain amount of mild contradiction. 
 
 Some time after dinner Dick stated his conclusion about 
 the organized repression of the people of the island. He 
 was asking Mr. Fluff, a great ethnologist, why such a cruel 
 system should have been adopted. Mr. Fluff seemed rather 
 to smile at the ignorance of a foreigner, and they had a 
 passage of arms on the subject. 
 
 I found the discussion would become too serious, so I 
 ventured to ask Mr. Fluff if he thought that the taxes on 
 industry and respectability did really increase crime and 
 vice. 
 
 ' Well,' he replied, ' crime I should say is not increased.' 
 Here I observed he looked towards Professor Planet. I 
 wondered where that gentleman had put the ' Milky Way.' 
 He, however, was silent, and Mr. Fluff continued: 'As for 
 vice, it is a variable term. We have no fixed morals. We 
 have had to devote so much time to amassing that wealth, 
 which is necessary to keep a permanent Aristocracy as a 
 source of civilized life, that we have not been able to devote 
 any attention to moral subjects, except by accident.' 
 
 I grew bewildered. I asked : ' Do you not think it is a 
 serious danger to^ allow a^class to increase which does not 
 create wealth, but can only spend ? Is there no danger lest 
 your Aristocracy should sink the ship of State ?' 
 
 ' Not at all ; they are, in fact, absolutely necessary for 
 the proper balance of the nation.' 
 
 ' Really, Mr. Fluff, that is remarkable ; pray explain this 
 balance of the nation.' 
 
 ' We have, as our chief glory, the upper class, whose first 
 qualification is that they should not do anything useful. 
 Now, if we allowed the Aristocracy to be useful, or to create 
 wealth like the rest of the nation, then the Aristocracy would 
 run the risk of being destroyed. But by breeding at the
 
 88 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 other extreme an equally large body of people to do nothing, 
 we restore the balance, and we are able to grind down the 
 middle classes and compel them to keep both our peers 
 and our paupers. I assure you this is one"of the cHief 
 glories of the Sacred Ass. I believe that the caricatures 
 of that animal are not quite correct.' (This he said in an 
 almost inaudible whisper.) ' It should be represented with 
 two heads and no tail, otherwise we destroy its beautiful 
 symbolic accuracy, because our State is, in fact, a creature 
 with two mouths, and yet it lives. The Sacred Ass has 
 no reference to government, as many people think, for 
 politics are a late invention to prevent progress. The 
 Sacred Ass is the two-headed State, showing that peers and 
 paupers may both continue to eat, and the body bursts 
 not.' 
 
 The Professor rubbed his hands in glee at the thought 
 that the devouring monster called the Sacred Ass should 
 live for ever. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 OVER luncheon the next day, Dick said : ' I was walking 
 down one of the very poor streets and wondering how in 
 the world human beings could live in such untterable 
 misery, when a man said : " Excuse me, but I believe you 
 are a foreigner, and you can hardly be aware that it is not 
 safe for you to walk down this street, even in broad day- 
 light." I walked with him out of this street into the public 
 thoroughfare, and as far as his home. He asked me in. It 
 was a large, well-furnished house, with books, pictures, and 
 every sign of comfort. I learnt at Oxferry that there are 
 certain funds devoted to the Unoiled Machine, and that if
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 89 
 
 a Masker can only secure a department to which is attached 
 a large income, he is no longer compelled to do anything, 
 but he may keep some young fellow, who will turn the 
 Machine at stated intervals, and take care that the music 
 is played. He also sees that people touch the Machine 
 when they get married. This ancient superstition is ob- 
 served in many places. It is supposed to act as a charm 
 on the future of the happy couple. Mainchance told me 
 that the chief feature of the ceremony is that each lies 
 soundly to the other, as a sample of their capacity to 
 practise the deceit necessary for marriage in the island. 
 They are a most contradictory people ; we shall never 
 understand them !' 
 
 I told him not to despair, and also informed him of a 
 long talk I had with Sir James Smyte on woman, the sum 
 of which was that no woman knows anything whatever of 
 business or religion. 
 
 He said : ' I am glad you have told me this, because it 
 does help to clear up some difficulties. It also shows me 
 how it is that though Miss Guy is kindness itself to dogs 
 and horses, yet she has no idea how the poor suffer, and 
 she has not the faintest consciousness that she may be 
 responsible for their suffering.' 
 
 The name of Dick's new friend was John Josiah. He 
 had a district in Cable, where there was a large and beau- 
 tiful church, with a house adjoining in which he lived, 
 according to the usual arrangement in the island. As a 
 proof of the influence of Hebrew expressions upon these 
 peculiar people, they call all the men in charge of a church 
 by the ancient title of reverend, without attaching the least 
 meaning to the word. 
 
 We invited the Rev. John Josiah to luncheon. I hoped 
 we should be able to learn much about the Toddlers. 
 
 Dick had changed during our stay in the island. That
 
 90 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 cloud of melancholy appeared to have vanished. He was 
 full of interest in the doings of the islanders, because of his 
 attachment to Miss Guy. As his character seemed to be 
 unfolding, I could not disguise from myself that it might 
 be his highest fortune to settle in Toddle Island, and 
 develop those grand ideas which were his heritage. 
 
 So far I had met very few of Mr. Josiah's profession. 
 The Maskers answered generally to what we should term 
 the clerical class ; but they were so divided in position, and 
 so continually at war with one another, that it was almost 
 impossible to speak of them as a class. A large number of 
 them led irresponsible lives of no social position, and could 
 be dismissed by their superiors just as easily as I might 
 dismiss my stable-man at home. This was amusing, 
 because Dick had explained that all these different ' orders ' 
 of the Unoiled Machine were declared to be of Divine 
 origin. 
 
 The Rev. John Josiah was about fifty, a small, thick-set 
 man, with a pale face, a hooked nose, and black eyes. He 
 knew a great number of people, and possessed many ac- 
 complishments. 
 
 My first feeling was one of wonder that I had not met 
 more of this class, if they are as well equipped socially as 
 this man. He almost seemed to belong to the Aristocracy, 
 though I know it has been an ancient practice of the 
 islanders to shut out of Society all persons who do anything 
 to earn a living. 
 
 Dick said : ' Mr. Josiah, we are visiting Toddle Island 
 chiefly to obtain correct information about its customs. I 
 am particularly interested in the religion of the country. 
 Will you tell me what especially distinguishes the religion 
 of Toddle Island ?' 
 
 Mr. Josiah replied : ' It is impossible for me to name the 
 chief feature of our religion. We have so many religions.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 91 
 
 There was a time in the history of this country, a stage of 
 early, half-awakened consciousness, when it was thought to 
 be a most terrible thing for a man to be without a religion 
 of some sort. This soon placed us in an awkward dilemma, 
 because the freedom of the islanders depends upon the 
 fact that every man must obey his conscience, so that each 
 individual has a right either to make his own fortune or his 
 own religion, at the expense of every other person and 
 every other religion. Now, we never give up an idea in 
 Toddle Island. I suppose we are unable to do so. The 
 way out of our difficulty was to create several religions, so 
 that each man could have his own, fight, and worry his 
 neighbour, and yet they could both be equally religious and 
 equally selfish.' 
 
 Dick remarked : ' This is bewildering ; I thought that 
 religion was that higher life by which men grow into union 
 with Deity.' 
 
 The Rev. John replied : ' Some few people hold that 
 view. They are regarded as maniacs by the mass of their 
 countrymen. There are three elements in our religion, 
 and each is warmly cherished. The first is an abnormal 
 reverence for the past. The second is the practical per- 
 formance of fixed rules. These are the mechanical and 
 the most powerful part of any religion. We believe in the 
 mechanical. The third part of our religion is the spiritual 
 or the delusive part. It is that part which has been the 
 cause of fanaticism, and by it the devotees of delusion have 
 been able to throw a mirage of loveliness on the fogs of 
 life.' 
 
 These statements made Dick very uncomfortable. I 
 wondered what he thought of these definitions of religion, 
 which seemed to me to be a trinity of the meaningless, the 
 mechanical, and the mocking. 
 
 Dick merely asked, perhaps a little more quietly than
 
 92 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 usual : ' Am I to understand that in the religion which you 
 call the State religion the mechanical part is recognised as 
 the most important ?' 
 
 The Rev. John replied : ' I only give you my own obser- 
 vations, because I should tell you that my opinions are 
 exceedingly unorthodox. I had the usual training which 
 is given to men of my profession, and all I can say is that 
 we were not taught any other branch of religion except the 
 mechanical. Then, after I had entered the profession, I 
 was horrified to discover that the several portions of worship 
 and of faith, in which we most completely believe, are of 
 Pagan origin. I incurred the wrath of my ecclesiastical 
 superiors. That, however, I could have endured, as they 
 are so few and so far away that one seldom sees them ; but 
 when I came to test the three divisions, I found that those 
 who cultivated emotional religion most exclusively were of 
 all people those with whom one would rather not live. I 
 accepted a parish, and there I had a large number of Saints 
 to work with me ; and so continually and fiercely did they 
 fight, that I had to dismiss every one of them.' 
 
 I looked at Dick. There was an awkward pause. 
 
 Mr. Josiah continued : ' I used to live in a fashionable 
 town, where there were five rich persons to one poor. I 
 had many means of observing their lives. I knew how the 
 men of law duped their fellow-citizens and received their 
 fees ; how the men of physic deluded their patients and 
 filled their own pockets ; how the business men over- 
 reached their customers till fraud was the other name of 
 success. I had access to every drawing-room. I knew 
 every lady and her favourite piece of slander, and also how 
 many seconds it took her to compose the smile with which 
 she had said good-bye to her intimate friend, before she 
 poured her sulphuric fires on the fame of that friend. All 
 this I could have borne, but when I was reminded that
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 93 
 
 every one of them prayed, I was reduced to the necessity of 
 abjuring their religion or going mad.' 
 
 ' How did you escape ?' asked Dick breathlessly. 
 
 ' I threw up my parish, left the town, and adopted the 
 former course.' 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE Rev. John Josiah's statement gave Dick such a shock 
 that again there was a pause. Meantime, cigars and coffee 
 arrived. I was interested in prolonging the conversation, 
 for here, at any rate, I seemed to have found a man who 
 had something to tell us that was clear, though I have long 
 held the opinion that every profession tends to fossilize 
 prejudice. 
 
 Dick soon led us back to the subject by asking : 
 
 'Do you not find it worse than atheism and madness 
 combined to be responsible for thousands of people, and 
 compelled to teach them doctrines which in your opinion 
 have long since been exploded ?' 
 
 ' Not at all. As for the responsibility, I dare say that I 
 look after these thousands of people as well as another 
 would. As for teaching, it is only necessary for me to read 
 what other people have written.' 
 
 ' But do you not think that Christianity differs from every 
 other religion in some important features?' 
 
 ' I should like to know one of those features,' said 
 Mr. Josiah, with cynical apathy. 
 
 ' Well, this is one of them : it creates a new life by means 
 of a new power acting from within.' 
 
 'That sounds mystical.' 
 
 ' So it would be, if it were not for the fact that it deals 
 with the most practical part of a man's life- character. It
 
 94 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 is independent of circumstances. Every individual of the 
 meanest capacity and the poorest social position may by its 
 power become a well-spring of renewed life. It carries 
 within itself its own immortality.' 
 
 ' I think I have read somewhere that such extreme views 
 were held on one or two occasions in this island when there 
 was an epidemic of the impossible.' 
 
 Dick expressed great surprise, and after a pause he said : 
 
 ' So great is the loveliness of this renewed life that I do 
 not believe you have an outcast in your parish who would 
 not be attracted by its charm.' 
 
 The Rev. John Josiah dwelt upon what he called 
 the common-sense of daily life. ' Men,' he said, ' are 
 animals ; and to forget this is to climb to unknown heights 
 of moonshine and waste our time in chawing impalpable 
 cloud. Such a food would support neither the dignity of 
 the Sacred Ass, nor that of the Unoiled Machine to which 
 it is yoked.' 
 
 I knew enough of the island to recognise that this was 
 the last word on the subject. I had enjoyed Mr. Josiah's 
 visit. I had learnt how these men may be driven to 
 perverted adaptation, which they practise so long that at 
 length they regard it as a normal condition. 
 
 ***** 
 
 A few days after Mr. Josiah's visit, we found that the 
 whole of Cable was in a state of excitement because of a 
 great festival. It was our own Christmas seen under a new 
 aspect. When I inquired of Sir George Blandford why they 
 selected this period of the year upon which to hold the 
 festival, he said, with great innocence, ' For the same reason 
 that a man keeps his birthday namely, that he accepts the 
 inevitable, and celebrates the day as it comes round year 
 after year. This is simply a birthday on a great national 
 scale.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 95 
 
 When I asked Professor Planet why they selected this 
 particular period, he was perfectly certain it was not a birth- 
 day, and that the season had been selected after much 
 squabbling, not because it represented the actual date of 
 the birth of Christ, but because it fitted in more completely 
 and easily with former Pagan festivals. 
 
 'In fact,' he said, 'our religious festivals are chiefly 
 Pagan adaptations ; and they are very confusing because 
 they are neither one thing nor the other. It might be 
 possible to get to know the exact meaning of many Pagan 
 ceremonies, if only we might say that they are Pagan, but as 
 we have been brought up all our lives to regard some Pagan 
 ceremony, perhaps nineteen thousand years old, as a bit of 
 pure Christian symbolism which originated nineteen hundred 
 years ago, the mind becomes confused. Above all, who 
 would dare to think correctly when we remember that to 
 the majority in the island all our ceremonies and religions 
 are regarded as purely Christian, and correct thinking is the 
 way to the gallows? Some believe that a portion of the 
 ceremonies were specially revealed to the Toddlers them- 
 selves.' 
 
 I laughed immoderately, partly at the statement, and 
 partly at the puzzled look on the Professor's face ; and I 
 confess I have laughed on numerous occasions when the 
 words of the Professor have recurred to me. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 ON Christmas morning we went to Mr. Josiah's church, and 
 there we found that considerable progress had been made 
 in the art of worship. In honour of the festival there were 
 many decorations, and it was interesting to note that they
 
 96 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 carefully selected those trees and flowers which had been 
 sacred to Pagans, centuries before the Christian Era. 
 
 In this they showed their wisdom, because the ultimate 
 triumph of man depends very largely upon the continuity 
 of his experience as a race. The struggle for life has shown 
 again and again that unless several generations of men will 
 carefully cherish the same customs, and use the same names, 
 methods, and places, the outer forces of the world would 
 shatter the human race, and that possibly nothing would be 
 left except a few fragments of barbarism, preserved by their 
 paint. Therefore I admired the way in which these people 
 had succeeded in attaching their religious festival to the 
 ancient mystic rites of forgotten generations. I- observed 
 that they carefully regarded the class distinctions which 
 prevailed outside the Church. There was no attempt to 
 give all the same privileges, which, I believe, Dick regards 
 as an inherent part of true Christianity. The rich had seats 
 and books in harmony with their daily surroundings. The 
 less affluent were slightly removed from them, and so were 
 spared, perhaps, the envy from which they prayed to be 
 delivered. The poor were still further removed, lest they 
 should see the jewelled and cushioned devotions which the 
 wealthy enjoy; and this helped to fulfil that part of the 
 prayer in which they asked to be delivered from hatred. I 
 often wondered that the two extreme classes could live side 
 by side in Toddle Island. 
 
 Everything that I saw was perfectly decorous, and the 
 Rev. John Josiah was true to his own statements. Not an 
 original word did he utter, and I thought the pieces were 
 remarkably well selected. I was only surprised that such 
 beautiful literature had so little effect upon the congrega- 
 tion. Many of them paid no attention to it whatever, and 
 some few seemed to be sleeping off last night's toil. I 
 intended to inquire whence this beautiful literature was
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 97 
 
 derived, because it evidently had not originated in Toddle 
 Island, and it seemed to me a few centuries ahead of them, 
 both in beauty of expression and in comprehensiveness of 
 thought. 
 
 When the service was over, Professor Planet came up to 
 us and undertook to show us round the edifice. It was 
 an old building, and some parts of it, constructed when a 
 different order of worship prevailed, were no longer used. 
 The Professor specially pointed out these parts as proofs of 
 the rapid decay of religious forms in Toddle Island. He 
 was full of hope for the future on this account, and he 
 declared that there was no way by which you could more 
 certainly measure the progress of a people than by the 
 speed with which it outgrew its religious forms and delu- 
 sions. 
 
 I asked : ' Do you know about what Jtime the Toddlers 
 adopted foreign and Pagan forms to clothe their Chris- 
 tianity ?' 
 
 ' They never adopted Pagan forms to clothe their Chris- 
 tianity. Pagan forms are the heirloom of ancestral dark- 
 ness, and, as far as forms go, the Toddlers glossed Paganism 
 with a Christian varnish ; but even this they chiefly obtained 
 ready-made. Some man in the sixth century took upon 
 himself to fix the year and the day of the month of Christ's 
 birth, and he was wrong in both. He was nearly four years 
 out with the former, and several months with the latter.' 
 
 ' How very interesting,' I said ; ' if you will allow me, 
 Professor Planet, I should like to know more of this.' 
 
 ' Come in this afternoon, and I will tell you what I know 
 of it.' 
 
 Dick and I talked over this mixture of Paganism and 
 prejudice at lunch. 
 
 We found Professor Planet surrounded with books, and 
 able to give us chapter and verse for his statements. I 
 
 7
 
 98 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 asked him if he would kindly tell me how he thought the 
 Christmas festival began. 
 
 He said : ' It is of the first importance to grasp that the 
 Toddlers import their religious ceremonies from Babylon. 
 In most things Nimrod is our father. He is the religious 
 leader of the world apparently, only on the wrong side. 
 All the Baal worship and Antichrist of the Bible are but 
 resettings of Nimrod. Christmas Day is more likely to be 
 his birthday than that of anyone else.' 
 
 'You astonish me. I should not have thought the 
 Toddlers had any connection with Babylon. 'What was 
 the name of the festival before it was changed into 
 Christmas ?' 
 
 ' It was known as Yule-tide, and the derivation of Yule 
 is very hard to find. Everything has been suggested, and 
 every suggestion points to a Pagan origin. Among our 
 early ancestors it was sometimes called Yole. Probably it 
 is from the Chaldee E61, a little child, and so Yule means 
 the birth of the Pagan Messiah Nimrod. All this points 
 to Babylon as its source.' 
 
 ' How strange that so remote a country should dominate 
 foreign tribes in this island ! I did not know that Nimrod 
 was a religious man at all.' 
 
 ' Nimrod is a veiled name. It may stand for the old 
 Namarud, the name of a Pagan Trinity. It means the 
 father, mother, son, and was the sacred name of surpassing 
 sanctity. All this is Babylonian, and Babylon was the seat 
 of the second great apostasy of man the fount of super- 
 stition for all generations. 
 
 ' The Babylonians had their " Lady-day," their Lent, their 
 hot-cross buns (which they called boun) ; and even the 
 great sign of the cross, which was probably invented by the 
 fire-worshippers. We borrowed them all, and we forgot to 
 pay them back. They cannot primarily have to do with
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 99 
 
 the birth of Christ, or the life of Christ, as they were hoary 
 superstitions before He came to the world.' 
 
 Dick questioned some of these statements ; but the Pro- 
 fessor knew his work, and showed him how one ' Christian 
 Father' after another raised his voice against hiding 
 Christianity behind the mask of Pagan follies. 
 
 We had a sober afternoon, and as we returned home the 
 stars glittered in a fierce cold, which would have effectually 
 prevented shepherds from watching their flocks by night. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 FOR a few days at this season the whole of Cable seemed 
 changed. Much of the ordinary business of the town was 
 stopped, and gave place to festivity. 
 
 I gathered from the majority of these parties that the 
 primeval Toddler was unaccustomed to them. They were 
 unanimous in bemoaning their fatigue after these gatherings, 
 and yet there was no respectable man or woman in Cable 
 who durst have stayed away. 
 
 It is customary to send cards to each other at this festival. 
 These cards were full of Pagan devices and Heathen greet- 
 ings. Sometimes one found a card which bore some sort 
 of religious motto, just as a make-believe that this season 
 of riot was a religious festival. 
 
 I was left alone for a great part of these festivities, as 
 Dick received an invitation to stay at Rock Castle with 
 Lord Guy. I teased him a good deal, though I am bound 
 to say that his brighter prospects, and the great interest 
 which he took in the charming Miss Guy, had wrought such 
 a transformation that no one would have recognised in him 
 the listless and gloomy man of former years.
 
 ioo TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 I determined to employ this spare time in obtaining infor- 
 mation from the Consul, and from Professor Planet. 
 
 The night after Dick left, I was disturbed in the darkness 
 by unearthly screams from another part of the house. I 
 immediately concluded that it was fire, and I prepared to 
 escape. However, upon opening my door, and rushing in 
 the direction indicated by the cries, I found the landlady 
 was in an uncontrollable fury, and I soon discovered that 
 she was in the condition in which I had found Jim Pint. 
 Remembering the terrible result of this disease at Barnside, 
 I was inclined to treat the matter far more seriously than 
 either her son or daughter. I wished at once to go and 
 procure medical assistance, but the son prevented me. He 
 was a respectable young fellow, and I noticed his extreme 
 terror when I proposed to call in medical aid. His mother 
 was suffering from delirium tremens. 
 
 I had paid more attention to this disease since returning 
 to Cable, and I was informed that it was by no means 
 unusual, but considered very disgraceful, because it was the 
 only undeniable proof of drunkenness. 
 
 Now, the Toddlers are a great drinking nation. They 
 attribute this fact to various causes ; to the prevalence of 
 fogs, or the character of the winds, or the colour of the 
 sky, or the habits of their ancestors, or the influence of the 
 future. In fact, a book might be written upon the exuberant 
 wit with which they have garnished this deadly custom. 
 This is their usual practice ; but the moment you accuse 
 them of it, they apply their grand trick of betaking them- 
 selves to theory, and by statistics or by history, which are 
 their two most subtle means of bewildering correct observa- 
 tions, they show that there is no drinking to excess. The 
 extraordinary ravings of this woman, her piercing shrieks 
 and yells, the horror with which she regarded troops of 
 devouring demons or wild beasts, were truly awful. How-
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 101 
 
 ever, they assured me that they would remove her to her 
 bedroom. 
 
 It seemed to me that this proof of her drinking-habits 
 cleared up many mysteries I had never been able to solve. 
 I had thought they were peculiar to the lodging-house cult. 
 I need not describe them, as they will be sufficiently well 
 known to any person who has ever stayed at the seaside, 
 even in England. 
 
 I inclined to the theory of Professor Gritt, that a man's 
 occupation is the chief cause of his moral character. I 
 shall read with interest the book which he told me he 
 intended to publish. He gave me this outline of his method : 
 There are certain vices peculiar to kings, tramps, paupers, 
 and barristers j and so it is with professions all over the 
 world. Therefore he concluded that the men had not 
 carried them into their various professions, but that the 
 professions had inflicted them upon the men. It is a 
 charming idea, that we shall in the future be able to 
 tabulate the vices of all people when once we know their 
 professions. Just as there are certain physical diseases 
 peculiar to the glassblower, the hairdresser, the coachman, 
 or the housemaid, so when this wonderful volume is out, we 
 shall be able to know the moral character peculiar to each 
 trade and profession. 
 
 I rose rather late next morning. I inquired after the 
 landlady, and learnt that her violence had abated. I had 
 a charming letter from Dick, giving a full description of 
 Rock Castle and its ancient trees, surrounded by a stream 
 of water, which at one time must have been a protection 
 against an enemy. He said exceedingly little about Miss 
 Guy ; but there was an evident exaltation of tone, which 
 showed me that the whole nature of the man was growing 
 under these altered conditions. I had been disappointed 
 that I had not obtained some facts to help me in under-
 
 102 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 standing the grandeur of passion or its use as an educative 
 process during my stay at Barnside. However, I did not 
 despair ; I still hoped to have this more fully explained 
 should Dick's visit prove successful. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 AFTER reading Dick's letter and sundry others, chiefly 
 invitations, I went to see the Consul, and asked him to 
 explain this peculiar drinking habit of the Toddlers, by 
 which they turned themselves into howling wild beasts. 
 He told me that one of the first arts of the islanders was 
 a discovery of a certain liquid, which they in their savage 
 ignorance believed to be the water of life. The liquid was 
 known to the whole civilized world, and many of the 
 Toddlers thought that they owed their small amount of 
 civilization to this drink. It was known by the general 
 name of Strong Drink. 
 
 I asked him what was the public opinion regarding the 
 excesses that I had seen. He said that public opinion was 
 against it, but that public practice was in favour of it. The 
 Toddlers had been accustomed to believe that Strong Drink 
 was as great a necessity of life as food itself. In the ruder 
 ages it was the only beverage made by their ancestors. 
 Occasionally it led to a violent outbreak ; then some effort 
 would be made to repress the evil, but very soon it would 
 be forgotten ; and they manufactured still larger quantities, 
 and drank to still greater excess. He described how their 
 kings and their nobles, even on public occasions, had 
 transformed themselves to tottering imbeciles or raving 
 maniacs by this poison. He entirely agreed with some 
 statements which Dick had made to me, declaring that
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 103 
 
 poverty and crime for many hundred years had been 
 manufactured by drink. 
 
 I was amazed. 
 
 So I asked : ' Is there no law in Toddle Island that 
 professes to have some concern for the ordinary well-being 
 of society ?' 
 
 He seemed astounded at my inquiry, and replied : ' Yes, 
 thousands of them.' 
 
 ' But,' I continued, ' how do you account for the fact 
 that for hundreds of years they have made no organized 
 effort to stop the sale of this drink, although they know 
 that it turns men into maniacs ?' 
 
 He laughed, then said : ' You landed proprietors, and 
 gentlemen with an immense rent-roll, should never forget 
 that the ruling passion of man is greed. Why, in this 
 island, the Government have opened nearly a quarter of a 
 million places in order to distribute this poison, which you 
 suggest they might banish.' 
 
 ' But,' I remarked, ' a minute ago you told me that they 
 had statutes for the protection of Society, yet by their own 
 admission the State fosters a vice which disintegrates the 
 life of the nation. Does the State prize this vice ?' 
 
 The Consul replied smilingly : ' My lord, you will never 
 understand this custom unless you can be perfectly clear 
 that the whole thing is a national See-saw. It is thus. A 
 large number of people want this drink ; so the Government 
 says, We will only allow it to be obtained in those places 
 authorized by law. Then they make the traders pay for 
 permission to sell it. Those allowed to sell drink are styled 
 Licensed Bread-sellers. The Government obtains immense 
 sums of money by this trade, almost a million a week. 
 Now, with this lordly income, it can create peers, manu- 
 facture an aristocracy (just as they do corks for the bottles), 
 and employ an unlimited army of officials some to keep
 
 104 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 the accounts, some to collect the money, some to be spies 
 upon the Licensed Bread-sellers. There you have the 
 whole thing in a nutshell. The Government does not gain 
 a penny on the transaction, but it has all those millions 
 to talk about. It has to expend some millions upon the 
 crowds made permanently mad, permanently criminal, or 
 permanently paupers through drink. Now, we should con- 
 sider this a great loss, but not so the Toddlers. They are 
 ruled by appearances.' 
 
 ' I could not have believed that such a nation as the 
 Toddlers could have indulged in a public game so de- 
 structive.' 
 
 'We all learn day by day to realize more fully how 
 crudely grotesque the ancestors of nations must have been. 
 I believe this game of See-saw is the survival of a habit 
 acquired by savages, when to beguile their weary days they 
 used to ride at the opposite ends of a tree, holding on by 
 each other's tails.' 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 I ACCEPTED the Consul's invitation to lunch, as I was 
 greatly amused at the origin of this custom, which seemed 
 half a crime and half a creed. He declared to me that the 
 National See-saw was as sacred as the gallows, and the one 
 thing of which the whole of Toddle Island approved. 
 Somehow it had escaped my mind that we were all 
 descended from savages, and that the savages themselves 
 were the Aristocracy of their period in comparison with the 
 rest of the animal world. It is a source of illimitable 
 interest to examine dress, social habits, houses and religions, 
 and trace everyone of them back until we arrive at a period
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 105 
 
 when none of them existed, and when a man was 'a man 
 for all that.' 
 
 I renewed the subject over luncheon by saying : ' Will 
 you allow me to inquire further about this National See- 
 saw, by which the Jockeys and Grooms of the Sacred Ass 
 retain their positions and beguile their fellow-countrymen ? 
 Do I understand that there is a law against drunkenness ?' 
 
 ' Certainly ; several.' 
 
 'Am I also correct in supposing that the vast majority 
 of the drunkards are made in the houses set apart and 
 authorized by the Government ?' 
 
 ' Exactly.' 
 
 ' Yet do you say that there is no real profit obtained from 
 this large business ?' 
 
 ' I have watched the operation closely, and I am of 
 opinion that the Toddlers lose by their See-saw. Of course, 
 many of them think to the contrary, but you have to 
 remember that the Toddlers are born conjurers, and that 
 those men who show the most remarkable aptitude for 
 sleight of hand are set apart for one of the various pro- 
 fessions instituted to hoodwink the People. Perhaps you 
 have never studied the exact position of the government 
 of the island. There is nothing like it on earth. It is a 
 string of endless contradictions the canonized blunders of 
 the selfish dead. Therefore, in the absence of real govern- 
 ment, it was found expedient to have recourse to organized 
 jugglery, because people must either be governed or be 
 educated to govern themselves. If they were educated to 
 govern themselves, there would have been an end to the 
 Aristocracy long ago ; and if they were to be governed, they 
 would require intelligent men to govern. So they hit upon 
 a method of national conjuring. The most enslaved people 
 of the island think that they select their own representatives 
 to make their own laws, and yet these very representatives
 
 io6 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 have no thought for the hooting rabble upon whom they 
 fawned, and have no more consideration for their rights 
 than for those of a comet.' 
 
 I replied that I had not yet been able to form any idea 
 with regard to the government of the island, for I had been 
 perpetually stopped by the Sacred Ass, so that I had really 
 come to look upon the phrase as a Shibboleth of savagery 
 invented in the delirium tremens of superstition. ' But,' I 
 concluded, ' how does this bear upon the singular contradic- 
 tions of passing a law to make people drunk, and passing 
 another law to punish them when they are drunk ?' 
 
 He said : ' They have an official in the Government 
 called the Checker, whose business it is to look after the 
 income of the nation, and in order to delude the island, he 
 has to raise a large amount of money ; therefore, if he can 
 get money paid into his chest, he employs a man to pay it 
 out of that into his till, and another man to pay it out of 
 the till into a purse, and a third to put it into his pocket, 
 and so on, ad infinitum. Then the Checker is invited out 
 to dinner and called a statesman, because it all begins again 
 from the pocket and comes round to the State chest. It 
 would give the amusement of a card-trick if it were not so 
 disastrous. It imperils the trade of the country, and renders 
 vast numbers of the citizens, not only incapable of work, but 
 dependent upon the work of others.' 
 
 ' Can there be any real reason why the Checker should 
 wish to prolong such confusion ? Why does he not resign 
 his office, or reform his method ?' 
 
 My friend ^railed that pitying smile of his, which would 
 have irritated me but for the delicious fun I derive from 
 investigating organized folly. 
 
 He said : ' You do not grasp the first principle under- 
 lying all Government life in Toddle Island viz., that the 
 officials must retain office at all costs. That answers your
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 107 
 
 first point. With regard to reforming his method, only a 
 visitor could make a suggestion so foreign to the island. 
 What would be the use of all the traditions of the Sacred 
 Ass if they did not prevent the rabble from rushing to 
 prosperity by good government ?' 
 
 The method of government with regard to this drink 
 traffic seemed to me to be that of a cottager who kept a 
 vicious cow because it belonged to his grandmother, though 
 she only gave half a pail of milk a day, and always kicked 
 that over. But to be quite clear, I asked : 
 
 ' Is there no one in the island who observes the ruin 
 caused by this vice ?' 
 
 'Yes, the judges know all about it; and occasionally 
 some fool tells the truth. Then they make him a peer and 
 keep him quiet.' 
 
 He added : ' I don't suppose you will ever know what a 
 profitable thing crime is in Toddle Island. They must 
 have the criminals, because they are the class that pay. 
 They also provide employment for hundreds of thousands 
 in very comfortable positions. Their judges and lawyers 
 are among the wealthy classes owing to the criminals. The 
 police, the keepers of prisons, gaolers, hangmen all 
 manner of people, in fact are kept employed on account 
 of criminals. 
 
 ' You cannot suppose, therefore, that this nation would be 
 so foolish as to abolish either its criminals or its paupers. 
 The people who prosper in the world are able to point to 
 the criminal class as a proof of a special Providence, which 
 gives a peculiar blessing to the respectable sharper, and 
 provides bread and water for the sharper who is not respect- 
 able.' 
 
 ' But why should the criminal class be bound up with 
 this See-saw on which the Government takes its daily ride ?' 
 
 ' I was leading up to that. If you would think out the
 
 io8 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 national value of the criminal class from the official point of 
 view, then you would see how important it is that Govern- 
 ment should make some provision for recruiting that class. 
 They are bound to pass sentences of punishment or death 
 occasionally, otherwise the Lower Orders would forget that 
 there is " a moral Governor of the world." Yet if they were 
 to be in earnest for the suppression of crime and the causes 
 of crime, many of their best theologians think that possibly 
 the island might forget the existence of the " moral Governor," 
 because the people would be so prosperous and so happy 
 that they might have time either to admire the stars, or to 
 cultivate flowers, which would be contrary to moral discipline. 
 Now, they have long since found out that the chief cause of 
 crime is drink ; therefore when a clever man invented this 
 mode of licensing tens of thousands of people to promote 
 drunkenness, and of paying salaries to hundreds of thousands 
 to punish the drunkard, he created the finest See-saw that 
 men or gods ever invented.' 
 
 I murmured something about its being remarkably clever, 
 and that I must really look into the device, because it 
 seemed to me to surpass that invention of the ' square peg 
 in the round hole.' 
 
 He continued : ' There is no such simple means of pro- 
 ducing criminals as to take away the power of the will and 
 the sense of responsibility. So in this island Government 
 has opened tens of thousands of shops for this purpose. 
 The shopkeepers pay for the privilege of destroying the will 
 and the sense of responsibility, so that they turn their 
 customers into the streets unable to walk ; then the Govern- 
 ment steps in, takes them up, and fines them for being 
 drunk and incapable. Can statecraft go further than that ?'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 109 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 A FEW hours later I dined with Professor Planet, and to 
 my astonishment I met Professor Gritt. I liked to consult 
 Gritt on all subjects, because, not being a Toddler, he was 
 able to see things in a truer light than the natives. 
 
 I was considerably crushed during dinner. I happened 
 to say that I had been informed at Oxferry that the rich 
 and the poor were allowed equal privileges in the original 
 Christian system. Such contemptuous laughter greeted my 
 reference to Oxferry as an authority on anything in connec- 
 tion with Christianity, that I felt there must be some great 
 mistake. So after dinner I asked Professor Gritt : 
 
 ' Am I to gather from the laughter at my remark about 
 Oxferry that these people send their sons to be educated at 
 a University in which they do not believe ?' 
 
 He remarked : ' They do not send their sons to be 
 educated at all. Education is not the primary idea at 
 Oxferry. They desire their sons to acquire the art of 
 lounging through life and of spending money with that 
 reckless grace which is the trade-mark of the Aristocrat. 
 The practical world outside Oxferry attaches not the 
 slightest importance to anything they do. They have spent 
 so many centuries in draping a defunct system, that, instead 
 of being leaders of universal education, they are coroners 
 investigating the prejudices of a dead age.' 
 
 Professor Gritt and I talked over various subjects left 
 unfinished at Barnside. He had been toiling at his great 
 work. He had commenced a new and elaborate volume on 
 ' The Increase of Madness among Married Women in 
 Toddle Island.' I gave a bachelor's smile at the title of his 
 new book, and I asked him whether it was to be a scientific
 
 I io TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 or a comic treatise. He said soberly that he knew nothing 
 of comedy, that he was not a Toddler, and therefore he 
 could find no food for foolery in any of the women in Toddle 
 Island. 
 
 He told me that he had stayed for twenty-four hours in 
 the suburbs of Cable with a wealthy citizen, Mr. Widawak. 
 He was a man of great ability, though he was singularly 
 unhappy in his home, but whenever he referred to his bitter 
 experiences with a mad wife, Mr. Widawak described it as 
 ' the conflict of reason with instinct.' 
 
 ' Now,' said Gritt, ' there you have one great side of the 
 Toddlers' character. Up to a certain point of development 
 such a disease as this married-woman-madness would be 
 treated with the horsewhip ; but when once the Toddler 
 himself has surmounted his early savagery, he breaks out 
 into burlesque in some form or other.' 
 
 The day after the dinner, I called upon Professor Gritt to 
 have a quiet talk and to learn something about the new 
 madness. He told me that years ago he had noticed the 
 extraordinary change which takes place in a woman's mind 
 a few years after marriage. As girls the Toddlers were 
 lovely, intelligent, and often reasonable; but let them 
 marry, and usually it was only a matter of time to develop 
 a change unknown elsewhere in human history. For this 
 change at present there was no other word than madness. 
 He detailed to me his own narrow escape from matrimony, 
 and told me that it was brought to pass by the fact that his 
 favourite sister married Dr. Snow, a man of consider- 
 able eminence in the medical profession. As brother and 
 sister in a strange land, they had been bound together by 
 every tie that could unite two sympathetic natures. And 
 he said : 
 
 ' I would have gone bail for the sound common-sense, the 
 strict honour, and the unswerving constancy of my sister,
 
 TODDLE ISLAND in 
 
 but I was shocked to witness her deterioration during the 
 first ten years of her married life. The old instincts of a 
 fervent nature were laid aside as indifferently as the curl- 
 papers of yesterday. She absolutely lost that beautiful 
 balance which had helped her to look upon life in its 
 brightness and darkness, without the hysterical laughter of 
 a buffoon, or the morbid moaning of a demoniac. Facts 
 began to have no significance. Her husband ceased to be 
 a human being. He either succeeded in restoring one 
 almost dead, so that she regarded him as a demi-god, or 
 he had forgotten to fetch her home from a ball, by which 
 negligence he sank lower than the commonest footman. I 
 marked all this, and made friends with Dr. Snow, and 
 enlisted his sympathy in what may be called a long series of 
 pathological experiments. He had a large and wealthy 
 practice, and from his wide experience he discovered this 
 new disease of Toddle Island, which he called, " Married- 
 woman-madness." He is sure that in the near future no 
 man will be considered educated unless he has a course of 
 training on this disease.' 
 
 I was perfectly astonished at Professor Gritt's earnestness. 
 It is true I was a foreigner I had not seen much of the 
 social life of Toddle Island. Whenever I spent a few hours 
 in any family circle, the obliging sweetness of both husband 
 and wife had struck me as being the most hopeful feature 
 of these barbarians, and on public occasions I had heard 
 them praise the bliss of home in terms which would have 
 sounded extravagant even in the mouth of an English 
 politician. 
 
 I pointed all this out to Professor Gritt, and asked him 
 how he explained this, side by side with the outbreak of 
 Married-woman-madness. 
 
 The Professor placed both his feet in an easy-chair near 
 his own, and laughed immoderately.
 
 ii2 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 At last he said : 
 
 ' My lord, I think you must have forgotten that I told you 
 that these people arrange their lives on a principle of 
 methodized fraud. They unfortunately consist of fragments 
 of tribes, and being in an island where seas meet, not only 
 do they get a large amount of driftwood and wreckage, but 
 the literature of other nations has reached them by the 
 same process. In some of this literature there were certain 
 principles which reflected great credit upon human nature. 
 They immediately adopted these high principles, and 
 registered them as a part of the life of the island, without 
 in any wise attempting to realize them in conduct.' 
 
 ' Yes,' I said languidly ; ' I have been told again and 
 again that these islanders are so wretched that they soothe 
 the savagery of daily life by delusions.' 
 
 ' Exactly so,' said the Professor ; ' and that accounts for 
 the fact that you find every man idolizes his wife, and every 
 wife reverences her husband, as she promises to do when 
 she is married. All sermons on the subject are full of 
 patriarchal simplicity. In all references to marriage it is 
 styled the height of human bliss. But when you have spent 
 nearly half a century among them, as I have; when you 
 have been taken in hundreds of times by the glitter of the 
 banquet-room and their affability in evening dress ; and 
 when you have stayed long enough in hundreds of homes 
 to discover that behind the laughing mask there are the 
 throbbing wounds which bleed daily unless they have been 
 cauterized with cursing, then you will know how to estimate 
 their favourite phrases of domestic bliss.' 
 
 I could merely reply : ' Well, Professor Gritt, I must 
 give up the inner life of these people. It is fathomless.' 
 
 I need hardly say I was thinking of the fate of my only 
 friend Dick. What would happen to him, with all those 
 refined and subtle longings and ideals, should he be bound
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 113 
 
 to one of these fair barbarians, who would turn his home 
 into a private lunatic asylum almost before the sound of 
 their wedding-bells had died away ? 
 
 I must have appeared disturbed and distracted, for Pro- 
 fessor Gritt called me back to the subject by saying : 
 
 ' It is much better to accept the fact as it is, and it is 
 much simpler to tell our young men of this disease, because, 
 if it does not prevent their marrying, it would spare them 
 the additional pang of feeling that they had been deliber- 
 ately duped. Of course, when once we recognise it is a 
 madness the sting is taken away. I grant it blurs the 
 visions of youth ; but that is nothing compared with the 
 dull, wretched despair which now crushes the hearts of 
 tens of thousands of the best men in the island.' 
 
 ' But,' I asked, ' would it not be the end of marriage ?' 
 
 'Not the end; it would doubtless lead to considerable 
 modifications. The wiser men postpone marriage now for 
 seven or ten years longer than their ancestors did ; but 
 the greatest cruelty of the present system is, that it makes 
 the unfortunate mad wife responsible for her conduct.' 
 
 I was deeply moved by this astounding statement. It 
 filled me with horror when I thought of the possibility of 
 leaving my only friend to the tender mercy of strangers, and 
 exposed to the fury of a lunatic, whom he was bound to 
 cherish and respect. 
 
 I asked the Professor what he thought was the cause. 
 
 He replied : ' The present outbreak may be due to 
 woman's struggle for womanhood, instead of sleeping in 
 slavery. The women of the island have never been held 
 responsible for their conduct. They have been sheltered 
 or exposed; trampled upon like slaves; arrayed in fine 
 costumes and placed upon pedestals like goddesses ; petted 
 and fawned upon like beautiful wild beasts, who had to be 
 charmed before life was safe ; but they have never been
 
 ii4 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 treated as human beings, and, therefore, when they are 
 placed in such a position (for the world must admit they are 
 human beings) the fabric of their life is shaken to its founda- 
 tions, and they become hungry bears with their whelps, 
 prowling amidst the ruins which men have left.' 
 
 I almost groaned : ' How horrible !' 
 
 ' Yes,' said the Professor, ' and the most horrible thing I 
 have to tell you is that it is true. We will have a more 
 pleasant topic next time, my lord.' 
 
 I arrived home in a morbid mood. I have not much to 
 wish for in my own life, and, barring two or three pet dogs 
 and my favourite horse, I am not aware that anyone would 
 miss me if I disappeared. So that my alarm was not 
 increased by feelings with regard to personal safety. 
 
 I found a letter from Dick, and after referring to some of 
 my kind wishes, etc., for the New Year, he said : 
 
 ' I wish you were here to see the extreme beauty of the 
 neighbourhood around Rock Castle. I write amidst all the 
 glow of a winter's sunset streaming over the bare trees of an 
 oak forest on the one hand, and gilding the tops of pines, 
 black as the home of doom, on the other. 
 
 ' There is something to me extremely weird in viewing the 
 light fall through these gaunt, leafless trees, and then turn- 
 ing to see how it nestles among the dark pines, while here 
 and there a bird hastens home to roost. All round is snow, 
 making a universal mirage of diamond dust. All sounds 
 are muffled. The snow seems only the bleached silence of 
 ages. I see all this "as I have never seen it before. Not 
 only does its natural beauty stir vibrations within me that 
 are unutterable, but I feel strong whenever I am in fellow- 
 ship with Nature. I never shiver when it snows ; I never 
 feel lonely. 
 
 ' But this afternoon I have to tell you of a far greater
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 115 
 
 charm, which will be mine for life, with its exceeding beauty 
 of hope and innumerable flashing visions of new loveliness, 
 and I have no doubt you will easily divine my meaning. 
 
 ' I have told you in the past that there was an inexplicable 
 barrier between Edith and myself on some subjects which 
 concern me most keenly. It almost seemed as if she lived 
 on the brilliant surface, whereas I was toiling in the depths 
 of a quarry. But I have found during my stay here that I 
 was mistaken, and I am supremely happy, my dearest friend, 
 to be able to tell you that we have become formally engaged 
 to-day. 
 
 ' Lord Guy has been most kind. You know I was led to 
 believe that there would be insuperable difficulties, and that 
 very awkward questions might be raised with regard to 
 family and fortune if I ventured to seek this alliance. 
 
 ' It has not been so. I dare not trust myself to tell you 
 more at present. I know you will rejoice with me. I ask 
 you to believe that now my whole life in its most trivial 
 concerns and in its hidden depths has its own particular 
 and private sun, which shines over all and illumines even 
 the darkness of imagination. 
 
 ' I have one favour to ask, and that is that you will let us 
 go to the Capital of the island. The Guys are going, and 
 they assure me that you can never know Toddle Island 
 unless you reside there; that all the other parts of the 
 island are Pagan and barbarous, when once you have seen 
 the culture -and beauty found in the Capital. 
 
 ' Grant me this favour, and rejoice with 
 
 ' Your devoted friend, 
 
 'DICK.' 
 
 When I had read the letter I let it fall from my hands, 
 and sat musing on the possibility of an illimitable anguish. 
 As I returned home I had almost made up my mind to
 
 ii6 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 warn Dick about this new disease, and the misery which 
 marriage in the island might involve. And here was a 
 letter saying it was too late ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 I HAD to write my congratulations to Dick, though with 
 half-heartedness, and the letter seemed to be as cold a sham 
 as our English poor law. I could only hope that in the 
 early ecstasy of his new joy, he would read his own fervour 
 into the dull lines. 
 
 I mused upon his possible fate continually. Never, since 
 I had acquired my title and estates, had anything so dis- 
 turbed my rest. 1 thought seriously of his desire to go to 
 the Capital of the island, and I received with joy the 
 assurance from Professor Planet that in the Capital there 
 was no time to think, and reflection was an obsolete word. 
 
 I was quite ready to face the horrors even of ' an over- 
 built bear-garden,' providing that I could escape the torture 
 of pondering over Dick's future. However, it was necessary 
 to delay a few days in order to hear from him. So when 
 Sir George Blandford invited me to go and spend a couple 
 of days in the country with his friend, Sir Henry Blott, I 
 accepted the invitation. I wished to meet with a Govern- 
 ment official who had spent many years outside the island. 
 
 Although Sir Henry was only the second baronet of the 
 family, yet in many ways he was distinguished. I was 
 assured that I should see something of the inner life of 
 a very powerful order of the Toddlers. For in this island, 
 from luck of some kind, Peers spring forth like mushrooms 
 from a dung-hill either the favourite dancing-master of 
 a prince, or the ingenious tailor of a member of the Govern-
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 117 
 
 ment, or the painter of a royal infant early removed from 
 Toddle Island to the greater Existence, or even the mayor 
 of a town who happened to stand bare-headed in the street 
 when a royal carriage drove through. 
 
 The Toddlers have so many tricks. They take out the 
 patent of their titles in the same way as an Englishman 
 would register an automatic machine for selling matches. 
 Amongst the many humorous theories of the islanders, this 
 is remarkably grotesque, viz., that unless a person has had 
 his name spoken audibly in the presence of royalty he is 
 not a citizen. I was assured that it made no difference if 
 the King were as deaf as a post, the fact was the same, and 
 they were immediately transformed from serfs into citizens. 
 
 I found the whole of this set forth in a very learned 
 volume about five hundred years old, entitled ' An Exhaustive 
 and Veracious Treatise on the Divine Science of Hanky 
 Panky.' 
 
 I may have to return to the volume again if I am to show 
 one hundredth part of the oddities and whims of these 
 strange people. 
 
 Sir Henry Blott was a man of many combinations. His 
 father had risen, by means of a powerful intellect, to be of 
 some service to the Toddlers in one of those national 
 scrimmages which they are ever seeking to cause. He was 
 supposed to have been knighted because he had terminated 
 the scrimmage which a distant cousin of his had begun, and 
 for which the cousin received a peerage. 
 
 I am told that this is a favourite method of founding great 
 families. One man commits a gigantic blunder, and when 
 it is full blown he comes before the public as the discoverer 
 of its existence. In the meantime he has let somebody else 
 into the secret, who comes forward to put an end to the 
 difficulty. If it succeeds, both gentlemen are promoted to 
 the House of Jockeys. There is nothing in the mind of
 
 ii8 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 the average Toddler more completely fixed than the 
 hereditary power and virtue of all men. If once a man 
 obtains a title for his distinguished ability, it is decreed by 
 the law of the land that that ability and character must 
 remain for ever in the direct line of the eldest son, and, 
 consequently, the title remains with him. 
 
 Sir Henry had travelled and gained much information. 
 I therefore supposed that he would be free from the narrow 
 prejudices of the island, for many of the difficulties of the 
 Toddlers arise from their geographical situation. I have 
 no doubt that if a fly walks round a thimble often enough, 
 he first of all comes to think it belongs to himself, and, 
 secondly, that it is the most important part of the world. 
 This is, doubtless, the cause of many of the follies of Toddle 
 Island. It is so small, so remote, that these poor islanders 
 have persuaded themselves that it is the sacred centre of the 
 universe. So that we find in all their systems of science or 
 philosophy, art or religion, that narrow limit which is abso- 
 lutely necessary both to a fly and a thimble. 
 
 Sir George called my attention to the patriarchal sim- 
 plicity of Sir Henry's household. 
 
 He occupied the largest mansion in the village, and had 
 a small army of gardeners, grooms, coachmen, but the 
 indoor domestics were maids. In politics he was a Stock- 
 stiller. He cherished the antiquated formularies of State. 
 Before breakfast we all assembled in the dining-room round 
 a table which glittered with silver and groaned with plenty. 
 A slight shower of snow was falling outside, and the sun 
 was vainly trying to pierce the clouds. A fire in the grate 
 roared and crackled, and a large log of wood was ready to 
 take the place of its predecessor. Then, as we stood 
 solemnly waiting for some function, the servants filed in. 
 All was silent. 
 
 Sir Henry said solemnly : ' Good-morning to you.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 119 
 
 A chorus answered : ' Good-morning, Sir Henry.' 
 
 They thus recognised all that was necessary in duty and 
 loyalty. Sir Henry then read some religious formularies, 
 followed by a selection of ancient Hebraic literature. It 
 struck me as being exceedingly beautiful, though I was 
 unable to attach any clear meaning to it. I believe that it 
 was written by one of the Jewish prophets, and it referred 
 to the fatal captivity. 
 
 Then Sir Henry approached Deity, and thanked Him for 
 the supreme blessings of life a well-ordered household, a 
 well-governed State, and the privileges of living under a 
 Government that afforded the simplest pathway to virtue, 
 and the unfailing entrance to unending bliss. And much 
 else of that sort. 
 
 I was greatly struck by the peace and plenty, and the 
 good order of the household. 
 
 I wondered whether Dick would have some such house- 
 hold if he settled in Toddle Island. I longed to discover 
 whether Sir Henry had escaped the poison of Married- 
 woman-madness, by the report of which that dreadful 
 Professor Gritt had filled me with alarm. 
 
 Sir Henry took me into his library and showed me 
 remarkable photographs, which seemed to indicate that 
 the natives of Toddle Island were modern compared with 
 the rest of the hairy animals, biped or quadruped, which 
 roamed about the world. Not that Sir Henry believed for 
 a moment in the theories which the islanders periodically 
 put forth under the name of science. He would have 
 explained any coincidences, either as unconscious imitation, 
 or as an accident on the part of Nature, and he would not 
 have felt that he had given an unreasonable explanation. 
 
 There was at lunch a young fellow, called Mattmann, who 
 was a school-inspector. He seemed well acquainted with 
 everything that concerned Sir Henry. We smoked in a
 
 120 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 large conservatory, enjoying both its beauty and its warmth. 
 I found Mr. Mattmann genial and communicative, and as I 
 desired to make some discovery on this appalling subject of 
 Married-woman-madness, I inquired after Sir Henry's wife, 
 whom I had not seen. I discovered that she was no longer 
 to be seen, as Sir Henry had been a widower for many 
 years. This prevented my obtaining information on this 
 point. 
 
 Mr. Mattmann said : ' Sir Henry has had a brilliant 
 career, such as only Toddle Island offers those who are 
 not born into a royal family. He was the only son of a 
 poor baronet, who received his title because he succeeded 
 in pleasing a demented old king in his back-garden by an 
 automatic fountain. Yet Sir Henry occupies a front rank 
 in the island. He devoured the sciences as the rich devour 
 the poor, and was acknowledged, when even a young man, 
 as one of the most learned of his time. 
 
 ' He took the paying side in politics ; he never asked a 
 single question with regard to the history of the Sacred Ass. 
 He maintained a childlike simplicity on all such points. By 
 these means he won the approval of the Government. He 
 visited our dependencies, captured a few tigers, and shot 
 down a few black men, and brought a native prince to 
 imbibe the civilization of Toddle Island. Then the Govern- 
 ment showered upon him its highest favours, and he was 
 allowed to sit on the Saddleback. 
 
 'It was an unfortunate Government, and Sir Henry was 
 not long enough in office to display his undoubted abilities. 
 But here you see the result of having a well-regulated con- 
 stitution. Though the Government had resigned its power, 
 and a rival Government took its place, yet they both agreed 
 on one point that Sir Henry was entitled to a pension for 
 life of ^"5,000 a year.' 
 
 I was interested in this sketch of Sir Henry, for when I
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 121 
 
 travelled in various parts of the island, I had wondered how 
 those large houses were kept up. I was not aware that 
 there was a Government institution for preserving such 
 houses and for paying men to live in them. I wonder 
 if that is why respectable people often speak of a paternal 
 Government ? 
 
 I offered Mr. Mattmann another cigar, and determined 
 to learn more on this subject. 
 
 I said : ' Am I right in supposing that all the members 
 of the Government receive a pension equal to that of Sir 
 Henry?' 
 
 He nearly vaulted over a flower-pot at my question, and 
 answered : 
 
 ' Certainly not ; Sir Henry held a very high position, and 
 therefore was entitled to a pension.' 
 
 ' Did he receive any money whilst in office ?' 
 
 ' Certainly.' 
 
 ' Did all the others receive money while they were doing 
 the work of the Government ?' 
 
 ' No, only a few of them.' 
 
 ' The apparent moral is that, should a man play at 
 government at all, he must be in office, otherwise it is 
 in vain ?' 
 
 ' Of course ; just as we do not give hereditary pensions 
 to common soldiers, but only to officers, so we should 
 never think of giving pensions to the ordinary members of 
 the Government. Our rule is, that the pension is large and 
 permanent where the toil is least. It is one of our dis- 
 coveries that it never works with human nature to offer a 
 reward for doing anything useful. It lowers the moral 
 standard and diverts the attention from business, but when 
 an office has no particular business attached to it, there a 
 pension may be safely offered.'
 
 122 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 I WAS greatly struck by Mr. Mattmann's statements. I felt 
 that he was a sensible fellow. 
 
 I asked : ' Are not the rest of the Toddlers exceedingly 
 jealous ?' 
 
 ' Here and there a few men, with more ability than luck, 
 are inclined to grumble. Some raw lad among the Grooms 
 periodically brings forward a request that we should inquire 
 into the origin and use of pensions. However, he has been 
 quiet lately, because on the last occasion a very old friend 
 of his, a great wag, rose and said " That he should move 
 that the House of Grooms inquire into the origin and use 
 of grandmothers." ' 
 
 ' But I should have thought the other professions would 
 be jealous, and that every man who desired to form one of 
 the peerage, or to die a millionaire, would take up the pro- 
 fession of Government official.' 
 
 My new friend smiled, and said : ' That is not at all 
 necessary to gratify either of those ambitions, because the 
 same rule is religiously observed in every profession. It is 
 exactly the same in the army. We have a large number of 
 very brave fellows who go and do the fighting and run the 
 risk of life and limb for about a shilling a day ; and should 
 they be unfortunate enough to avoid being killed for many 
 years, we have a make-believe pension of about eightpence 
 a day which we give to these few. These make-believe 
 pensions are very small, and may easily be lost by any 
 breach of discipline or misbehaviour, and at the best are 
 only available as long as the man lives. But those at the 
 head of affairs, who survey battlefields through a telescope, 
 are offered quite luxurious pensions, which belong to them 
 and their children for unending generations.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 123 
 
 ' How very odd !' I exclaimed. 'But at the same time I 
 suppose it is immensely clever to have hit upon a trick by 
 which you can bribe your nobility to take any part in real life.' 
 
 ' Just so ; and it is the same in our great religious institu- 
 tion, of which I am sure you have heard.' 
 
 ' The Unoiled Machine ?' I hazarded. 
 
 ' Yes ; here you have the most charming system, the 
 beau-ideal of mechanism.' 
 
 ' The square peg in the round hole,' I suggested. 
 
 ' Exactly,' he replied. ' I see you have studied its 
 beauties, but there is one particular charm which may have 
 escaped you. Hundreds of years ago, from some strange 
 source, the inhabitants of the island heard of the Christian 
 religion. They were poor, simple-minded folk, with an 
 almost infinite capacity for tragedy. The homely religion 
 of Christ, which began in pauperism and was perfected by 
 murder, appealed to the daily life and the morbid instincts 
 of this tragedy-loving people. They took it up keenly, and 
 for awhile believed it to be a help. But soon importations 
 were made I imagine because it was found rather awkward 
 to accept and act upon a religion that was so straight- 
 forward and which seemed to stake all on character. A 
 powerful race, who had great influence in this island in its 
 earlier history, sent a man of undoubted shrewdness, who, 
 on account of his skill in conjuring, is generally believed 
 to have been a descendant from some Toddler. This 
 conjurer met with a few people who were emerging from 
 savagery, and who had just previously made the discovery 
 that compromise and deceit were as necessary to civilization 
 as the gallows and the graveyard. He helped them out of 
 many serious difficulties by the various inventions of the 
 Unoiled Machine. He was able to give them the twofold 
 advantage of holding the simplest faith without renouncing 
 any of the outward and visible benefits of Paganism or
 
 124 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 pleasure. The Founder of their religion was a haggard, 
 toiling peasant ; but this did not fit in with the elaborate 
 structure of rival power and selfishness, called Government. 
 They created an order of princes of the Unoiled Machine, 
 who claim to be peers of the island, and sit with the Jockeys 
 in their wrangles. To an ordinary mind this probably seems 
 a flat denial of first principles. Not so to the Toddler. 
 Their Founder passed his life in the meanest circumstances, 
 and only met the rich in his burial. His representatives in 
 this island were the rich, and only resembled the poor in 
 one single fact they died.' 
 
 I now saw that there was a certain unity of method in 
 the island which had escaped my observation. As far as I 
 could make out, the only way of coercing these semi- 
 savages was first of all to confine the land of the island to a 
 few people, and create an Aristocracy out of mud, and then, 
 by a system of pensions and peerages, to be continually 
 renewing and cherishing this Aristocracy, and thus by 
 wholesale conjuring prevent the unpainted savage, lurking 
 within every Toddler, from showing his face. 
 
 I asked Mr. Mattmann if there was any system upon 
 which the pensions were given to the chief officials of 
 Government, of the army, or of the Unoiled Machine. 
 
 He replied : ' There are no fixed conditions, but there 
 are many clever devices. For instance, it is a great help if 
 you can prove that your grandfather's grandfather had a 
 pension. It is no less advantageous if a man can marry 
 someone whose grand-parents had a pension. Then, there 
 are many offices to which no work is attached, and for 
 which there is a great demand by well-bred persons of small 
 intelligence. These offices are called Shelves. Some 
 people think that they are quite ridiculous in a civilized 
 country, but this only proves that they have no love for the 
 picturesquely antique.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 125 
 
 ' There is a large pension attached to the Saddler of the 
 Sacred Ass. There is an equally large pension given to the 
 Sitter. Originally this was a man who used to sit on the 
 Sacred Ass whilst he was groomed. You will also find a 
 pension for the man who bleeds the Sacred Ass, another 
 for the man who shoes him, another for the man who ties 
 the ribbon round his neck, and four very good pensions for 
 the men who tie a ribbon round each leg, now called the 
 Garter. These men were the original Knights of the 
 Garter. In fact, there are thousands of such offices.' 
 
 'But if, as some say, there is no Sacred Ass now to be 
 found, surely these offices are absurd.' 
 
 ' Well, that may be true ; but it is not quite safe to say 
 so. We are exceedingly delicate on this subject of pensions. 
 Perhaps you would pardon my saying as a caution that it 
 would not do to name pensions in the presence of Sir Henry.' 
 
 I bowed my acknowledgments. 
 
 After a pause, I remarked : ' As a foreigner, I am very 
 confused by your official names. I know quite well that 
 the Sacred Ass is symbolical, or it is a tradition, or it is a 
 real name that has lost its meaning ; and just so with the 
 Unoiled Machine.' 
 
 ' Exactly.' 
 
 ' I wish to know if these two wonderful inventions were 
 always coupled together, and always meant what they mean 
 now?' 
 
 ' By no means. Of course, the beginning of all true 
 things is lost in antiquity, and we never inquire beyond 
 a certain point. No doubt there is a little fable mixed up 
 with both, though I cannot tell you which part it is. The 
 State, you see, stands first. It is truly called the Sacred 
 Ass, because that quadruped is much-enduring, is sure- 
 footed, and is honoured in some countries as a royal 
 animal.'
 
 126 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 ( That is odd ; and then, in order to confuse all succeed- 
 ing generations, you called your hodge-podge of foreign 
 laws, accidents, and pillage the constitution of Toddle 
 Island, and dub it the Sacred Ass. All this you embody in 
 a caricature of a two-tailed, two-headed monster that can 
 move neither backwards nor forwards.' 
 
 ' No, no, not so bad as that. It is merely made double 
 to convey an idea of its power, and it stands still because it 
 would be undignified to move. That is all.' 
 
 I was glad when he assured me that was all, because at 
 one time I had intended to hire a gross of theological 
 German professors to devote fifty years of their lives to 
 tabulating the initial stages of the legend of the Ass. I felt 
 sure that there must be large room for speculation in the 
 fable. I knew that they had exhausted their criticisms on 
 the Four Gospels, because they have suggested every change 
 of order and every variety of theory for the insertion of 
 miracles and parables that can be expressed by arithmetical 
 or algebraical signs. I am informed that unless the 
 younger men can have a new subject upon which to practise 
 their inventive power for sixteen hours a day, it is just 
 possible theology in Germany may suffer from rapid decay, 
 and the stolid Teuton may regain his eyesight. It is 
 well that I did not employ these professors. The poor 
 Sacred Ass would have been considerably fly-blown with 
 a gross of such bluebottles buzzing around him half a 
 century. 
 
 Shortly afterwards we found Sir Henry, his daughter, 
 and Sir George gathered in the drawing-room. It was that 
 peculiar hour when the workers of the island, hungry and 
 weary, are longing for their freedom from slavery, and when 
 the non-workers are lounging about, ill at ease, uncertain 
 what to do till dinner-time. In order to while away this 
 period, the ladies hit upon an invention which calls them
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 127 
 
 together to drink tea, talk about their neighbours, listen to 
 music, read fiction, or engage in any light employment. 
 
 I found Sir Henry as serene as if there were not a care m 
 the island, and as if he had never known anything of the 
 difficulties of holding office and conducting affairs. He 
 had that benign smile which seemed to say, ' I have invented 
 Providence, or Providence has invented me.' 
 
 I had seen in the morning paper that there was consider- 
 able agitation in certain parts of the island a great unrest, 
 great poverty, and that the daily slavery of tens of thousands 
 was becoming a horror which no man could endure. 
 
 But there was no trace of these things here, and as I sat 
 listening to some exquisite foreign music, I grew rather 
 melancholy, and wished that Dick was with me. I regard 
 Dick as the interpreter of one half of the world to me. He 
 seems to know by a subtle instinct what are the feelings of 
 the poor and the suffering, the weak and the outcast. I 
 never take him down any street in the island without his 
 discovering some of the sorrows and woes which the poor 
 workers have to suffer in this half-developed, ill-regulated 
 country. 
 
 There was something exceedingly fascinating in the peace 
 of this winter twilight. A blazing fire roared and flickered 
 in the large grate, pictures covered the walls, beautiful works 
 of art or antiquity crowded every niche and ledge. 
 Magazines of all sorts lay in profusion on the tables. From 
 the window there was a lovely prospect. The sun was 
 going down like a fiery globe, and here and there a bird was 
 seeking a nighVs shelter. The daughter was playing a piece 
 which moaned and bubbled with the tragedy and the ideality 
 of slumbering generations of ancestors, who had lived and 
 yearned and died dumb. Truly, I wanted an interpreter. 
 It baffled me to understand the extreme conditions of this 
 strange island, and it stung me to suppose for a moment
 
 128 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 that the lovely music, the light-hearted girls, and the peace 
 of a wealthy home, could only be obtained by having 
 thousands of other homes without music and without 
 peace. 
 
 I murmured to myself, ' Pah !' and I went out across the 
 lawns and fields, and had my cigar alone. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 IN the library after dinner, Mr. Mattmann called my atten- 
 tion to a very rare book, ' The Libellus Asinorum,' in which 
 I found the following lucid statement on the Toddlers' 
 Ass : 
 
 ' I write a book on Asses, for the animal appears to exert 
 a favourable influence on the life of man. 
 
 ' The young Toddler does not advance far in his education 
 without meeting this animal, for he is expected to climb the 
 Asses' Bridge, and on this feat his future largely depends. 
 Scarcely any Toddler has been known to achieve eminence 
 who was unable to get over the Asses' Bridge early in life 
 There is evidently some natural affinity between the Ass and 
 the islanders, and it is no wonder that with many their 
 reverence amounts to a religious faith. Some believe the 
 whole Ass is sacred, others only reverence the hair, and 
 several venerate the tails in particular. There was an 
 ancient treatise, written by an enthusiast, on " The Venerable 
 Coccyx, or the Holy Stump." I deeply regret that I cannot 
 meet with a copy of this work, for I feel sure it would have 
 given me clearer views on this inscrutable subject. 
 
 ' There appears to be a decline of reverence in the island, 
 for the People declare there is no evidence of a Sacred Ass, 
 except the dung-heap, and that that is so mouldy its origin
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 129 
 
 is doubtful. They openly avow that the Sacred Ass Govern- 
 ment is played out, and that they intend to substitute 
 intelligence for officialism. 
 
 ' The Sacred Ass was an animal with two heads or at 
 any rate with two mouths with one he did eat and with 
 the other he did bray. This double arrangement accounted 
 for the fact that he devoured much and gave out nothing in 
 return. It also explains why the beast was so confused 
 that he knew nothing of progress, for, as he walked either 
 end foremost with equal difficulty, he never had to turn 
 round, and, consequently, never knew whether he was walk- 
 ing backwards or forwards. The bewilderment arising from 
 this double-headed confusion caused him to take refuge in 
 standing stock still, like an illegible sign-post in the midst 
 of the ages. 
 
 ' From this absence of motion, there arose also the varied 
 contradictions which the islanders call history, for the 
 Grooms stood by one mouth and the Jockeys by the other, 
 each affirming that their particular end was the front. The 
 clamour of these two sets of attendants has given rise to 
 many factions. 
 
 ' Why the animal should be associated with royal power 
 and statecraft, apart from its two-mouthed fitness, is not 
 easy to discover, unless it arose from the fact that the 
 natives used to cherish an ancient foreign book, in which 
 they find an early tradition of king-making. It represents a 
 gentleman as seeking Asses and finding them. 
 
 ' Perhaps the proof upon which historians will finally rely 
 when they treat the Sacred Ass to the honour of a scientific 
 investigation, will be the fact that there verily was a time- 
 honoured custom of bleeding the Sacred Ass, which caused 
 many peers to come into existence, and which prevented 
 nobles from perishing from off the face of the earth. 
 
 ' As the subject was unpleasant, and the islanders object 
 
 9
 
 130 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 to using a natural term on any occasion, this bleeding of the 
 Sacred Ass was known by the title of Pensions. These were 
 rather pleasing than otherwise, and had the great charm of 
 being imperishable. For though the Ass fled, pensions 
 remained. 
 
 ' The Earl of Smalltooth received ,5,000 per annum 
 because an ancestor of his once combed the Ass. Lord 
 Rider received ; 10,000 a year for sitting on the Ass's back 
 whilst he was groomed. Lord Lance had ,7,000 a year 
 for bleeding the Ass before dinner. Lord Cup received the 
 same sum for bleeding him after meat. The Earl of Sponge, 
 who washed the animal's face with warm water when he 
 would not bray, received .20,000 a year. Religion gathered 
 round the sacred animal, and the Dean of Thistle received 
 .3,000 for saying grace before the Ass was fed. 
 
 'There were hundreds of others, but their names are 
 written in the Chronicles of Toddle Island. 
 
 'Every year the People still pay many items for the 
 Sacred Ass, the use of which is known to no man outside 
 the Stables. Thus : Item, four new hoofs for the Sacred Ass 
 ^500,000 ; item, examining the mouth of the Sacred Ass 
 in search of his teeth, ^90,000 ; item, for resetting the tail 
 of the Sacred Ass behind and before, .5,000 ; item, var- 
 nishing the front teeth of the Sacred Ass, .3,000 ; item, 
 gilding the under side of each tail, .2,000 ; and many such 
 items equally moderate and reasonable.' 
 
 This old book contained so much about asses, that 1 
 began to suspect the whole world was under the hoofs of 
 this intelligent animal. 
 
 I found a chapter dealing with the Unoiled Machine and 
 the Sacred Ass, and there were not wanting evidences that 
 the two had been connected. 
 
 There was a tradition that on one Sunsday each year the 
 following verse used to be sung :
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 131 
 
 ' Be Thou, O Lord, the rider, 
 
 And we the little ass, 
 That to God's holy city 
 Together we may pass.' 
 
 The author was of opinion that the word ' little ' had been 
 inserted for ' sacred ' in the above verse, in that tone of 
 mock humility which is so common to hymns. 
 
 If this should ever be shown to be the true reading, then 
 this verse would probably turn out to be a part of the 
 earliest national anthem used by the Toddlers. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THE following day brought with it the same routine. Sir 
 Henry discoursed about the wonders he had seen when out 
 of Toddle Island. He was a man of clever devices and 
 theories. He was never shocked but once, when I ventured 
 to ask why the island found it necessary to take a Jewish 
 religion and Pagan ritual and substitute them for Chris- 
 tianity. It may have been that I blurted out my question, 
 but I have never seen anyone so completely absorbed in 
 checking natural emotion, and at the same moment trying 
 to say something polite. He proved to me that I was 
 entirely misinformed, that they knew nothing of the Jewish 
 race, except that there were a few pauper Jews in the island. 
 It was true that they used some of the same literature, but 
 it was in a different language and for a far different purpose. 
 In fact, the new relationship rendered it distinct. As for 
 the Pagans, he was not quite sure that the island had ever 
 been Pagan. He felt pretty confident that at present no 
 Pagan rites survived. 
 
 'We have,' he said, 'a contented peasantry a nation 
 teeming with happy and intelligent working men, whose
 
 132 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 only desire is to serve their betters. And we have an 
 Aristocracy such as no other part of the world could rival, 
 whose first care is always for their dependents ; and thus 
 the whole nation is bound together in the closest ties of 
 friendship and prosperity.' 
 
 I saw Mr. Mattmann looking at me over the top of a 
 book, whilst Sir Henry was delivering this panegyric on his 
 paradise. Even Sir George pretended to go and look out 
 of the window to discover in what quarter the wind was. I 
 rose to the occasion, and congratulated Sir Henry on being 
 a Toddler, and I flatter myself he did not observe the 
 sarcasm. 
 
 It was a lovely day. There was a delicious charm 
 about the old mansion, and perhaps I, too, should have 
 believed that Toddle Island was Paradise had I been Sir 
 Henry Blott. 
 
 Mr. Mattmann took the earliest opportunity of saying : 
 ' I forgot to tell you that in our island you must always 
 remember there are two classes of people those who have^ 
 and those who have not. There are many thinkers in both 
 cases, but they never think alike ; and you will never under- 
 stand their figures of speech unless you first find out to 
 which class they belong.' 
 
 ' So it seems. Contradictory names for the same thing 
 one is the dialect of luxury, and the other the clamour of 
 hunger.' 
 
 ' Well, we must accept our own civilization. It appeared 
 to be the only method by which our ancestors could rise 
 above the droves of wild hogs which they kept in their 
 forests ; and you must admit that Sir Henry and his family 
 are a good specimen of progress.' 
 
 ' Quite true ; but why is it necessary that he should be 
 absolutely ignorant of all other modes of life in the island ?' 
 
 ' That is inevitable ; no man sees farther in life than his
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 133 
 
 own nose, and as he does not make the length of it, he may 
 not be altogether responsible.' 
 
 'And what becomes of truth?' I remarked, trying to 
 remember some scraps of things which Dick had told me. 
 
 He said : ' I dare say we do miss that, and this, of course, 
 accounts for our never having a history. All any man can 
 do is to keep his own journal, and his deepest researches 
 are frequently but a careful exposition of his own pre- 
 judices.' 
 
 So we chatted till the carriage came to convey Sir George 
 and myself away. Sir Henry had recovered from his shock, 
 and was most courteous. 
 
 We arrived at Cable in a storm of sleet, and I was glad 
 to reach my quiet room. Here I found a letter from Dick, 
 saying that if I would proceed to the Capital, he would 
 arrive there in a few days. I prepared for my departure. 
 As I called to say farewell to those who had been so kind 
 to me during my stay at Cable, I thought with a smile of 
 the strange ideas with which I had commenced to investi- 
 gate the social life of this seaport town. 
 
 Professor Planet still held that there need be no crime, 
 and that the only thing important to man was climate, 
 slightly modified, perhaps, by daily bread. I found that 
 kind, eccentric friend busy making a new chart of the ' Milky 
 Way,' and I have no doubt before I return to Cable he 
 will have simplified that outline of peace and glory to suit 
 the capacity of school-children. 
 
 At last my adieux were all said. I was on my way to 
 Fogham, the Capital of Toddle Island.
 
 00fe II* 
 
 ' Woe unto you that are rich.' JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 ' The rich are robbers ; a kind of equality must be effected by making 
 gifts out of their abundance. Better all things were in common.' 
 SAINT CHRYSOSTOM. 
 
 ' Opulence is always the product of a theft, committed, if not by the 
 actual possessor, by his ancestors.' SAINT JEROME. 
 
 ' In strict justice, everything should belong to all. Iniquity alone 
 has created private property.' SAINT CLEMENT. 
 
 ' That distinction which thou standest upon, and which seemeth so 
 vast between thy poor neighbour and thee, what is it ? Whence did it 
 come ? Whither tends it ? // is not anywise natural, or according to 
 primitive design, for as all men are in faculties and endowments of 
 nature equal, so were they all originally equal in condition, all wealthy 
 and happy ; all things at first were promiscuously exposed to the use 
 and enjoyment of all, everyone from the common stock assuming as 
 his own what he needed. Inequality and private interest in things 
 were the by-blows of our fall ; sin introduced these degrees and 
 distances ; it devised the names of rich and poor ; it begot these in- 
 grossings and enclosures of things ; it forged those two small pestilent 
 words, meum and tuum, which have engendered so much strife among 
 men, and created so much mischief in the world.' REV. ISAAC 
 BARROW, D.D., born 1630, died 1677, Maste'r of Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, and Vice-Chancellor of the University. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 AFTER my experience in the island, of which the foregoing 
 book is only an outline, I was prepared for much that was 
 gorgeous and contradictory in the Capital. 
 
 I looked forward to meeting Dick, and hoped there 
 might be something in the countless streets of Fogham 
 that would either give me a new thought or some amuse- 
 ment. I soon recognised that I had emerged from the
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 135 
 
 land of sleep to the home of nightmare. To the man of 
 wealth, this world of ours no longer seemed a large grave 
 whose sides were slowly crumbling in, but a hall of automatic 
 luxury ; and the moment anything became disagreeable 
 he pressed a button, and a lift conveyed him to a new 
 department, where laughter and forgetfulness were on 
 sale. 
 
 When Dick arrived I could hardly realize he was the 
 same man who had lived with me at Cable, certainly not 
 the one who had embarked with me at London Docks. 
 The whole aspect was altered, the whole tone of mind was 
 revolutionized, braced up by the tonic of something ac- 
 complished and something worth doing. His tall form 
 seemed still taller. His coal-black eyes had a softness 
 toning down their brightness, which not only made them 
 more beautiful but far more pleasant to gaze upon, for one 
 no longer looked at him in fear lest they should dart forth 
 lightning. I am convinced there is no such tonic, no such 
 beautifier, as hope. 
 
 I had long regarded men as savages struggling to the 
 light with an energy not so well directed as that of a 
 neglected potato in a cellar, whose shoots try to reach the 
 grating. I had so frequently despaired, as I had witnessed 
 the gesticulations of their dumb anguish, that I may be 
 pardoned for feeling, in the presence of the changed Dick, 
 that there might be hope, could we only apply some new 
 motor power within. There came to my mind all the gray 
 days and leaden experiences which I knew had been Dick's 
 portion, when the nerves were exhausted and the brain was 
 weary, and the man drifted like a slowly rotting log. 
 
 Dick was now full of energy and radiant with hope. 
 
 Our ordinary salutations were scarcely over, when we 
 were summoned to dinner. There is a tonic in the pleasing 
 excitement of sitting down to dine with unlimited time,
 
 136 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 varied plenty, and a brilliant friend. It may not kill dull 
 Care, but it certainly deposits him on the mat outside. 
 
 Dick told me all about Rock Castle its beauty, its age, 
 its prestige ; how the queen within, and the king without, 
 had fought for the crown of Toddle Island ; how its owner, 
 after wanderings and fightings round the Jewish city (which 
 was one of the many national manias of the island), had 
 returned to find his castle thronged with a gay assembly, 
 waiting to see his wife's marriage with a neighbouring lord, 
 when the ragged owner of wife and castle walked severely 
 through their midst and hushed their riot, like the presence 
 of truth in a religious service. 
 
 He explained that he had come to like Lord Guy. 
 
 All this was only preparatory to a more complete state- 
 ment of the many nobler qualities and winning graces of 
 Miss Guy. I thought of Professor Gritt's . theory, and I 
 was alarmed. 
 
 I would have forfeited my title and estates rather than 
 have clouded the delight of a man who had waited thirty- 
 five years for it. And yet as he discoursed upon her 
 brilliant accomplishments, her nobility of character, and 
 her many acts of kindness, I was perpetually thinking of 
 that new form of madness, which was another name for 
 marriage. 
 
 Next day we called upon the Guys at Sedgemoor a 
 mansion near many other mansions overlooking a large 
 open space, which contained some bare black trees, and 
 which is a park, I believe, for a few weeks in the year. 
 
 Lord Guy was out, but Lady Guy and Miss Guy received 
 us, and I recognised for the first time during my stay in 
 the island a subtle charm which had been absent from 
 every other home. I had seen the head of a family 
 dominating everything, regarding his wife and children as 
 appendages, having their place in that universal providential
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 137 
 
 order which spends its time in devising ways and means for 
 the wealthy Toddler. 
 
 But this home-scene was altogether different. An indo- 
 lence and playfulness seemed to dispel the daily formalism 
 which is the backbone of every Toddler's virtue and dignity. 
 Lady Guy had wonders to show me, and I very soon found 
 that we had lost the two lovers. 
 
 Sedgemoor became the centre of our operations. Here 
 we met all the best people. Soon we received more invita- 
 tions in a day than we could accept in a week. Frequently 
 Dick rode out in the park opposite, with Miss Guy. I 
 gathered this was absolutely necessary, if he was to belong 
 to the Aristocracy of Toddle Island. Here again I received 
 a surprise. I could not have been sure that Dick had ever 
 mounted a horse, and yet he rode with the skill of a horse- 
 breaker. This, too, I suppose he had picked up, like his 
 shooting, when he was a lad. It stood him in good stead, 
 and I think, had he been less imaginative and could he 
 have believed that the poor were miserable ' because they 
 liked it,' he would have passed for one of the oldest peers 
 of the island, so few accidents does it require to create an 
 Aristocrat. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 I HAD arrived at Fogham determined at any cost to solve 
 the mystery with regard to the Sacred Ass, and to prove or 
 disprove Professor Gritt's theory with regard to the madness 
 peculiar to married women. 
 
 Fogham was once a village, discovered by a civilized 
 nation, which paid a visit to the island with a view to 
 annexing it, either as a transport station for their criminals, 
 or as a happy hunting-ground for their nobles. The current
 
 138 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 of events, however, was too strong for these civilized people. 
 They had real wars enough, and, after learning the art of 
 murder by practising upon the unclad islanders, they re- 
 turned home to vie with one another in the annihilation of 
 man. 
 
 Fogham has a history, but it is not possible to discover 
 it. The city acts upon the rest of the island like a vortex, 
 into which is drawn its able men and its beautiful women. 
 This doubtless has given rise to the prevailing superstition 
 in Fogham, that all the wise and beautiful are to be found 
 within it. I was told upon our arrival that the social life of 
 the place was in abeyance, because it was ' empty.' And 
 yet the streets were gorged with traffic, and thousands of 
 people seemed to have no other object than to overtake 
 time in its flight. For downright aimless hurry and 
 organized collision, Fogham stands unrivalled in the 
 history of semi-barbarism. 
 
 Though I was greatly soothed and cheered by Dick's 
 presence, yet I found that my occupation as a companion 
 was to a large extent gone. He seemed to have apartments 
 at Sedgemoor. 
 
 Soon I was informed that the social life of Fogham was 
 in a state of rapid restoration. 
 
 Lady Guy was kind enough to ask some of the Ministers 
 of State to a luncheon, that I might get to know all about 
 the Sacred Ass, because it was their peculiar profession to 
 worship the beast. All these belonged to a large party 
 called the ' Stockstillers ' ; and I was highly gratified to 
 discover that they were unanimous in their opinion that the 
 Sacred Ass never moved. One of the most venerable of 
 these statesmen, Lord Gooseberry, seemed very learned, 
 and by lifting a finger he was able to seal the fate of many 
 adjacent islands, occupied by small savage tribes. Lord 
 Gooseberry was a typical Toddle Aristocrat. He spoke
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 139 
 
 with fluency on all subjects in an indifferent, negligent 
 manner, which seemed to say, ' My lightest whisper could 
 stay the stars in their courses.' He had that rotund form ' 
 of which the Aristocracy are so proud, because it is a public 
 advertisement of the fact that through long generations 
 there has been more food in the family than was necessary. 
 He had the characteristic retreating 1>row. Lord Goose- 
 berry's smiles were of the sweetest when, like a foreigner, I 
 asked questions about the Sacred Ass. He declared that 
 many ancestors of his had stood by the animal on all 
 possible occasions. They had sat upon him, curry-combed 
 him, bled him, bruised him. He dropped his voice, and 
 said, ' Not only did he never move, but I believe the beggar 
 did not even feel.' 
 
 This was not very satisfactory to me. 
 
 Lord Gooseberry introduced me to the Earl of Bootts, 
 who pleased me more than any of those present. Lord 
 Bootts was not rotund, and his brow had more proportion 
 to his body than is usual in a peer. He was of medium 
 height, with a well-arched nose and a very mobile, short, 
 thin upper lip, which became a perfect semicircle when he 
 smiled. His gray eyes seemed partly hidden by very 
 shaggy eyebrows. Had he been precise in his conduct and 
 a little more carefully dressed, he might have been taken for 
 a respectable family solicitor, who controlled the purse- 
 strings of half the county. 
 
 I was charmed with his name. It was one of the names 
 with a meaning ; it was one of those few and futile efforts 
 which the early Toddlers made to write a history. Thousands 
 of years before, some ancestor of this Earl saved the life of a 
 King and mounted the Sacred Ass barefoot, whereupon the 
 King, in the plenitude of his wisdom, immediately called him 
 the Earl of Bootts. To me it seemed odd ; but I am told it 
 was in accordance with the traditions and usages of the island.
 
 140 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 A very advanced thinker, who was afterwards burnt 
 because he refused to discontinue thinking, discovered that 
 whenever a Toddler was frank and expressed his sentiments 
 plainly, he went back to the original nature of his primeval 
 ancestors, and became a ravening wolf. This great thinker 
 iherefore came to the rescue of the island by the simple 
 advice that all who made any claim to culture, or were 
 admitted to Court, should learn to use a language from 
 which it was impossible to discover their feelings. The 
 Toddlers adopted this method. 
 
 First of all they gave their Aristocracy titles, which had 
 no meaning. Secondly, they always employed in the utter- 
 ances of Court or Government a language so old that it was 
 no longer intelligible. This was the origin of the phrase 
 ' Official Answer,' which trick has now become a profession. 
 The art of officialism is measured by this one accomplish- 
 ment. If a statesman, or anyone aspiring to be a leader of 
 the People, could answer inquiries with the dull bray of an 
 automatic donkey, then he would be a master of the art. 
 Thirdly, to extend the benefit of this discovery to ' all sorts 
 and conditions of men,' they call the people together the 
 first day of the week and ask them to repeat certain phrases 
 audibly, to which there is no meaning whatever. By this 
 process the Toddlers are prevented from having any sound 
 form of speech, and learn to pray. I found an immense 
 difficulty in conducting my inquiries on account of this 
 official dialect. 
 
 By the help of Lord Bootts, I was able to make acquaint- 
 ances. I told him that I particularly wished to know their 
 men of science. He seemed greatly surprised at my 
 request, and assured me that I should find it remarkably 
 dull, unless I interviewed two at once and set one to correct 
 the other. 
 
 On referring to his secretary, he obtained the names of
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 two or three eminent doctors, and as Dr. Squires was the 
 only eminent medical man who knew everything about 
 madness and women, the secretary felt sure he was the one 
 to whom I ought to apply. 
 
 Lord Bootts gave me a note of introduction, which I 
 forwarded by letter to Dr. Squires, asking for the favour of 
 an appointment. 
 
 In a few days I was invited to lunch with the learned 
 specialist who knew all about madness and women. 
 
 At lunch many things intervened before we were able to 
 get to my point. However, I steadily led the doctor to the 
 subject of insanity in general, which he dismissed as being 
 due either to some failure or change of cellular growth. He 
 was convinced that a little extra fluid mounting to the brain 
 would be quite enough to account for those extraordinary 
 things which we daily see in our own intimate friends. 
 
 He said : ' Man's conduct is physiology, plus climate. 
 There is a point where it is impossible to say whether 
 physiology is acted upon by climate or is independent of it. 
 If we could settle this we should unveil the source of life. 
 Some are under the dominion of physiology, others merely 
 under the dominion of climate ; but the vast bulk of man- 
 kind are first under the dominion of one and then the 
 other. And to these sources may be traced all the contra- 
 dictions and originalities of character. A genius is physi- 
 ology out of harmony with climate ; therefore the men who 
 are in harmony with climate regard him as mad.' 
 
 I then told him of Professor Gritt's theory. He seemed 
 greatly amused at first, but as he had never heard of Pro- 
 fessor Gritt, he was inclined to think the theory was not 
 true. I told him, however, how many volumes Gritt had 
 written, and that I believed he was going to read a paper 
 before a Continental society. Dr. Squires asked me if I 
 knew whether the Germans had heard of the theory.
 
 142 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 I told him that as far as I remembered a great deal of 
 Professor Gritt's evidence 'had been collected by German'! 
 students, who were unable to get a practice because they i 
 had no eyesight. 
 
 Then Dr. Squires remembered that the theory was sup- 
 posed to explain a great many difficulties in Germany, but 
 he thought it far wiser and safer not to bring such a delicate 
 subject into public notice, lest it should disturb the sacred- 
 ness of home. He remembered that Professor Crutch had 
 spoken of some such difficulty. ' -" 
 
 This interview was not quite satisfactory. But I gathered 
 that this madness was physiological in its source, and that 
 if I wished to pursue my inquiries I should do well to confer 
 with Professor Crutch. 
 
 I mused much upon this difficulty, and upon woman's 
 position among the islanders. 
 
 Most ingenious methods of barbarity were employed to 
 check woman. I remember at Cable the Consul and I were 
 once standing at his window, when a working-man publicly 
 maltreated the woman who was his property, or his wife. I 
 was horrified at the inhuman cruelty, but the Consul took an 
 extra pull at his cigar, and said : ' My lord, a few years ago 
 the people of this island used to sell their wives and children 
 as slaves under the same conditions as they now sell their 
 cattle, and, of course, the old idea still remains. If that 
 fellow had encouraged his dog to worry a cat, all the police 
 in Cable would have been ready to apprehend him, and he 
 would have been sent to prison ; but if you and I were to 
 insist upon some officer taking this man before the magis- 
 trate, that worthy official, who is most likely very much 
 married, would ask the man if he was willing to promise 
 to do better, and would then dismiss the fellow with a 
 caution.' 
 
 The whole of the island was disfigured, and its life
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 143 
 
 retarded, because none of their women durst be natural. 
 Many of these women were undoubtedly brave and noble, 
 but the effect of slavery upon tens of thousands of sensitive 
 creatures was deadly. 
 
 It seemed to me that the islanders were paying a heavy 
 penalty, a sort of debt which had been accumulating for 
 centuries, on account of the brutal way in which they had 
 treated their women from cannibal times till now. I could 
 never forget the ponderous lordliness of the domestic tyrant 
 as I used to see him in Cable a great person who fought 
 the world and earned the money and laid down the law 
 to his wife and children as unceremoniously as he did to 
 his office-clerk or the house-dog. The utter absence of 
 any conception that the women of his household could 
 possibly have any rights was so fixed and patent that it 
 amounted to a burlesque. I used to return home and 
 snigger for a day at the vagaries of this half- savage life, when 
 I had seen three or four grown-up daughters and the wife 
 all carefully obeying the behests of this crown of 'nature, who 
 condescended to let them live in the same house with him, 
 and who paid a man to drive them in a carriage, and another 
 to attend them when they were ill, and another to read 
 prayers to them once a week, and then expected the lavish 
 outlay of body, soul, affections, and will, until the human 
 being was annihilated. At dinners or dances they tolerated 
 a certain amount of equality amongst the sexes, and pro- 
 viding a girl was sufficiently young, pretty, and wealthy, she 
 was deluded into the dream, for the few days of the season, 
 that she possessed rights. I used to pity the poor, ill-starred 
 young things, and wonder if they would shed tears of blood 
 after marriage, when the facts of life should for the first time 
 dawn upon them. I knew the contempt with which they 
 were named. I knew how they were valued, reckoned up, 
 catalogued, marked down in the price-list, to a nicety which
 
 144 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 would have done credit to a judge of prize cattle or cracked 
 china. I knew how the size of a chin, or the length of a 
 neck, or the colour of an eyelash, all told for or against them 
 in the terrible shambles into which they had been led. 
 They had never been allowed to be natural. Their reading, 
 their music, their occupations, were all cut out on cardboard, 
 and they were coerced by the most foolish customs and the 
 most superstitious saws, until the time came when they were 
 bidden to partly strip and to bow before some royal person, 
 to show whether they had learned to walk backwards. 
 From that day men would measure their character and 
 destiny by these two qualifications, the art of undressing 
 and walking backwards. It was one of the many curious 
 customs of Fogham, that on stated occasions the thorough- 
 fares would be blocked with a line of carriages conveying 
 the most delicately bred of their girls to the royal presence, 
 and for hours they would sit exposed to the jeerings of the 
 mob, who openly and publicly talked over their ' points,' 
 just as they would dogs at a show. I did not attach any 
 importance to the ceremony, though I am told it is one of 
 the greatest events in the lives of the nobility.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 145 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WE dined at home that night, and Dick seemed dull. I 
 found that he had been enlarging his experience of Fogham 
 at a rapid rate. On the previous Sunsday, as he was return- 
 ing home across the bare park, he had seen a large crowd 
 round a black man. He was in a white robe, which covered 
 him except his head and his feet, and was engaged in 
 preaching, probably with a view to adding a new sect to the 
 Islanders' bilious list. But someone contradicted him, and 
 a tumult arose. In the end the ragged African presented the 
 appearance of a pet idol, who had been maltreated because 
 he refused to answer prayer. Dick helped him to escape, 
 and got his address in Paradise Street, E. So to-day he had 
 been hunting on the other side of Fogham, where the ships 
 come in, and where the people live like rats in the banks of 
 a river. He did not find the African in Paradise Street, 
 but whilst he stood inquiring at the door, a crowd of ragged 
 women and children gathered and hooted him. The woman 
 at the door asked : 
 
 ' Why don't you come in ?' 
 
 He supposed this was merely to give him shelter, so he 
 entered, and hence his depression. 
 
 He said : ' The woman, Mrs. Black, led the way into a 
 small room, looking out upon a dirty back yard, about six 
 feet long, and another row of houses backing up to this one. 
 The odour was disgusting ; the room was without furniture. 
 A bundle of blackened rags in one corner served for a bed, 
 and boxes were used as stools. Whilst I noted these things 
 the clamour of the crowd outside seemed to increase, and 
 she asked me if I would not look at her child. The woman 
 led me to the corner of the room, and, lifting a ragged 
 coverlet, showed me the emaciated features of a young girl, 
 
 10
 
 146 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 dead. Supposing her excited condition to be due to grief, 
 I tried to soothe and comfort her, and, remembering that 
 Lord Guy had said the remedy for all difficulties in Fogham 
 was coin in your pocket, I asked her what I could do to 
 help her. This astonished her immensely, and she inquired 
 if I were not the coroner. Then I partly understood the 
 mistake. 
 
 ' I made her understand that I was not the coroner, that 
 I was a stranger in Fogham, and that I had come to inquire 
 about the negro, who had said he lodged here. 
 
 'Then she explained that her husband, herself, and five 
 children had lived in this one room until quite lately. Her 
 husband had been out of work many months, except earning 
 a few pence now and again, and she had struggled to pay 
 the rent by washing. A fortnight ago her husband was 
 waiting for work at the docks, when news of a vessel to be 
 unloaded arrived, and hundreds rushed to obtain employ- 
 ment. Only thirty or forty were required, and in the jost- 
 ling her husband had been thrown down, and had broken 
 his leg. Since then he had been lying in the infirmary. 
 The winter was very severe, and she had found it more 
 difficult than ever to obtain work. Then this little child of 
 ten had died, and as they were too poor to pay for a doctor 
 it was necessary for the coroner to come and see the body, 
 and he had kept them waiting. Meantime, the landlord 
 was angry about his rent, and accused her of keeping her 
 dead child in the room to prevent him from turning her and 
 her family into the streets. 
 
 ' Now I understood my strange reception. 
 
 1 It was in every way awkward, for whilst I was listening 
 to her story I heard the impatient crowd outside, and I 
 believe that the absence of a handle to the door alone 
 prevented them from rushing in. However, they triumphed, 
 and some of these extraordinary objects entered. They
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 147 
 
 seemed to be descendants of the Gorgons. It was for- 
 tunate that the unhappy woman and myself had cleared 
 up the situation. She had understood my sympathy, and 
 possessed a clear proof of it, so that she was armed to con- 
 front them. Their amazement was great when they saw the 
 golden coin, with which she concluded her explanation.' 
 
 The first thing that struck me, as usual, was the burlesque 
 of it all. The comedy of Dick chevying a negro through 
 unknown localities, exposed to the fury of savage women, 
 and ending by the bedside of a child who had died from 
 starvation. 
 
 ' Well, how did they salute you when you returned ?' 
 Dick said : ' The crowd of women had not diminished, 
 but they might have been a completely new crowd. The 
 intense suffering and want impressed upon their features 
 was the most painful sight I have witnessed ; but the 
 moment they learnt I was a friend to this poor woman, their 
 faces lit up with a gratitude which is seen only in the paint- 
 ings of saints. 
 
 ' I sought Lord Guy, to get his advice in the matter. I 
 went to his club, but he was not present. So I asked Lord 
 Gooseberry to advise me. I was very indignant with him, 
 because more than once he laughed. And when I asked 
 him the cause of this unnecessary delay, he replied : 
 
 ' " Probably either because they like it, or the coroner 
 may have gone when the woman was drinking in the next 
 public-house. There is no doing anything for these people, 
 and wise men keep out of their way. I beg your pardon ; 
 you are a visitor, and unaware of the degraded selfishness 
 and helplessness of this class." 
 
 ' After much useless conversation I left him. I did not 
 fare much better at Sedgemoor. Lord Guy was out, and 
 Lady Guy declared that she knew nothing of such matters, 
 and she did not believe there was a single case in the history
 
 148 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 of Fogham where a family had ever slept in a room in which 
 lay a dead body. She said that the women had discovered 
 that I was a foreigner, and had imposed upon me, and that 
 I ought to be truly thankful that I had escaped with my life, 
 and the best thing I could do was to go and dress and 
 return to dine. I looked at her in sheer amazement.' 
 
 ' Well, old fellow,' I said, ' have you succeeded in clear- 
 ing up the case at all ? I am growing interested in that 
 dead child.' 
 
 ' I have succeeded. I returned to Paradise Street, and I 
 got the poor woman to go with me , and, after many inquiries, 
 we found the coroner's clerk, who promised that the coroner 
 would be there early to-morrow morning." 
 
 'And where have you left the woman, and the other 
 children ?' 
 
 ' I did my best to get them other lodgings, but they posi- 
 tively refused to leave the house where the child was. As 
 another room, however, was empty, I took that for a week. 
 They let their houses on an extraordinary system. This 
 house has six rooms, and in each room lives a family of not 
 less than four persons. For the two lower rooms they pay four 
 shillings and sixpence per week each, for the next two, four 
 shillings a week each, and for the top two, three shillings a 
 week each, which is a rent of nearly sixty pounds per annum. 
 The landlord refuses to repair these dwellings so long as 
 they will hold together. There was not a bedstead in the 
 whole six rooms, or an average of two chairs to each family. 
 These people live on the very verge of savagery. Either 
 they have never acquired the art of using furniture or they 
 have lost it. I had a long talk with Mrs. Black ; I saw her 
 children ; and when I turned the corner of Paradise Street, 
 into the busy thoroughfare that seems to run for miles 
 through all the squalor of vice and want, I felt the saddest 
 man in Fogham. After walking a great distance, I arrived
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 149 
 
 at a large square, in which stands their gorgeous temple. 
 Shop-windows and warehouses were packed with the best of 
 food and dress. I came to the river. There were strange 
 noises and many lights. I was greatly struck by the weird 
 scene, and my imagination wandered to a time when 
 Fogham was a quiet, unknown village on the banks of a 
 river whose name has been forgotten. I thought of all the 
 misery that I had witnessed. I tried to settle whether it 
 was a mistake on my part, and whether Lord Gooseberry 
 and Lady Guy were correct in their estimate of these people. 
 It seemed so exceedingly hard (if they should be mistaken) 
 that these victims of a crude civilization should first of all 
 be deprived of every chance of knowledge, or refinement, or 
 religion ; and then, when the nation to which they belong 
 has succeeded in placing them in a position of fixed 
 savagery, their statesmen should join in debate and listen 
 to formal appeals to heaven, and attribute all the wrong- 
 doing and misery of this class to their own seeking. That 
 is the answer I got in both cases, and it is the answer I 
 have had given many times. When I inquired about such 
 matters in Rock Castle, I was told that these people are 
 poor because they create their own poverty, that they are 
 hated because they create their own crime, that they are 
 despised because they will live like beasts. And yet I can- 
 not deny to myself that the whole system of Toddle Island 
 appeared to be specially framed to create vast numbers who 
 resemble swine, and who, by every known law in existence, 
 could resemble nothing else. I think I could forgive all the 
 set I meet at Lord Guy's if they would frankly admit that 
 these swine are creatures of their own making and at once 
 proceed to treat them as useful animals are treated either 
 use them or slaughter them.' 
 
 I perceived that Dick had not lost that old look of his, 
 with which he used to gaze upon the stars and the waves
 
 i$o TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 when we sailed from England. In fact, there seemed a 
 deeper intensity as he dwelt on this painful subject. 
 This is one of the points where there is no possible resem- 
 blance between us. Dick is ever raving about reality, and his 
 reality always turns out to be something one cannot see or 
 touch, and something unknown to the majority of people. 
 I am never able to follow him in these moods, any more 
 than he can comprehend the fathomless enjoyment with 
 which I see a clever man delude himself, or a clever nation 
 outwit itself. In fact, burlesque seems to supply my life 
 with all that he finds in his ' deeper meaning ' of nature and 
 religion. 
 
 Now, I could only say : ' We must be quick and get a 
 cab, if we are going to the Duchess of Cotton's party this 
 evening.' 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WE hurried to Cotton Mansion in Monad Square. It was 
 one of those parties that never begin, apparently, and, I 
 suppose, never end. At least, Dick and I were never able 
 to be first, and we certainly were never last. The Duchess 
 of Cotton was a leader of fashion, who believed in all the 
 attributes and glories of the Sacred Ass. Her grandparents, 
 for an untold period, had groomed and worshipped him, 
 goaded and bled him in turns, always to the advantage of 
 the Cottons. 
 
 When we arrived at Monad Square, we found the large 
 rooms full to overflowing. Various young people of both 
 sexes were wedged in amongst the flower-pots on the large 
 staircase leading to the drawing-room. Sundry older people 
 had acquired a grim, statuesque fixity, and looked like 
 models of patience frost-bitten. So we waited our turn, and
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 151 
 
 soon there came the usual departure of the more industrious 
 citizens, who go to two dinners and three parties in the 
 same evening, and read their letters in bed next morning 
 with the profound satisfaction that they belong to the 
 busiest and most fashionable nation in the universe. 
 
 We were presented to the Duke and Duchess of 
 Cotton. 
 
 The Duke was one of the rulers of Fogham. He owned 
 so large a part of the Capital that he considered he con- 
 ferred a public boon upon the nation by allowing other 
 people to build large houses and grand shops, which in a 
 few years would become his property by a legal system 
 which the wealthier Toddlers have long established. There 
 were some people sufficiently mean to dislike the Duke 
 on this account, and some few who even went so far as to 
 regard him as taking away their own property ! 
 
 As the ball-room had little attraction for me, I lingered 
 rather a long time in the refreshment-room. Lord Bootts 
 was there, and asked whether I had seen Dr. Squires. I 
 was surprised to learn that he remembered that I had 
 sought that interview, but I suppose his first introduction to 
 science was a landmark in his history. 
 
 Lord Bootts was explaining to Sir Top Sawyer something 
 about the 'beggarly wretches' for whom he had to pay 
 rates, when Dick asked the Earl : 
 
 1 Is there no plan for alleviating this large class of the 
 islanders ?' 
 
 ' None,' said the Earl very emphatically. 
 
 ' Why not ? Are they not a part of the nation ? Could 
 they not be made to contribute to its welfare ?' 
 
 ' Certainly not. They are of no use either to the world 
 or to themselves. No plan could alleviate their condition ; 
 first of all because they like it ; and secondly, because they 
 are in such infinite numbers that a sea of beer, and
 
 152 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 mountains of bread and beef, would fail to supply them 
 for a single generation. They have no care, no thrift, 
 no recollections of the past, and no sense of the 
 future.' 
 
 ' But I suppose they are, at least, a part of the original 
 inhabitants of the island.' 
 
 ' They may be ; but I think some fellow has discovered 
 that all the world is under a law by which the best always 
 comes to the top, and we could furnish the clearest example 
 of this in Fogham.' 
 
 ' But there must have been some cause of their unnatural 
 misery. Granted that they are a part of the inhabitants of 
 the country, and granted that the more decent get to the 
 top, either their nature or their surroundings must explain 
 their failure.' 
 
 ' What is the use of looking for causes ? It won't make 
 them richer. The first step in the development of character 
 in our climate is wealth.' 
 
 'So it seems. But are not these people the source of 
 your wealth ?' 
 
 ' Heaven forbid that we should be dependent upon any 
 such creatures.' 
 
 ' But are they not willing to work ; and are not the 
 workers, in the beginning, those who have created a wealthy 
 nation out of bare and barren soil ? If at a single stroke it 
 were possible for the island to lose a million of its workers, 
 pray where would its wealth be ?' 
 
 ' Ah ! you don't understand us. There are families in 
 this island to whom kind Providence has given the charge 
 of the country. The land and the possessions of the island 
 have been placed in the hands of these few families. You 
 begin at the wrong end when you say that the many support 
 the few. We know the truth is, that the few allow the many 
 the privilege of working, and if they cannot live it is not the
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 153 
 
 fault of the few. One set works, another set thinks ; we are 
 privileged to be? 
 
 I saw an angry flush rise to Dick's face, and I should 
 have been glad if some fair Toddler would have diverted 
 his attention. 
 
 I looked around in vain. There were four of us appar- 
 ently in a deserted room, barring a few waiters and innumer- 
 able empty bottles. 
 
 'Thank you,' said Dick, 'for giving me a lesson in the 
 Political Economy of your island. I begin to understand 
 why the rich censure the poor, and why the poor curse the 
 rich. The two lives are entirely apart. You will probably 
 tell me that these people in the back streets of Fogham are 
 morally or physically maimed. Then so much the greater 
 need that the strong and the wealthy should bear their 
 burdens. But take your vast army of artizans in regular 
 employment, or the thousands of day-labourers in your 
 rural districts, what provision do you make for them ?' 
 
 The Earl bowed, and said : ' The workhouse.' 
 
 'Is it true that in many trades and professions if the 
 weather is bad or a man is ill for a week he does not suffer 
 loss of income, whilst your day-labourers in winter may be 
 reduced to earning half a crown a week, or not even that, 
 simply because the weather is such that they cannot follow 
 their occupation, though they are quite willing to do so. Is 
 not this rather hard on them ?' 
 
 ' It may be so ; but we really cannot pretend to provide 
 sumptuous repasts for thousands upon thousands of people, 
 whom we in no wise want.' 
 
 ' That would be quite true, //"they did not belong to the 
 same race as yourself; //the island was not as much their 
 property as yours ; //"they did not earn the rich banquets of 
 other people at the price of their own starvation. These are 
 three big ifs.'
 
 154 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 I observed that Sir Top Sawyer was more and more 
 impatient. Lord Bootts probably envied the position of 
 the founder of his line, when, barefooted, he mounted the 
 Sacred Ass. 
 
 ' However,' he said, with a great deal of contempt, ' I 
 entirely agree with you, Mr. Spooner. They are three big 
 ifs, and I am happy to say that we should term them in- 
 ventions.' 
 
 With this he led the way to the ball-room, and Sir Top 
 Sawyer said to me : 
 
 ' You had better be careful of your young friend, and tell 
 him when he comes to the gatherings of the Stockstillers 
 that he should leave his Runaway notions in his port- 
 manteau.' 
 
 The old Duke of Cotton excited my imagination. I 
 could not help wondering how he would fare if some of 
 Dick's principles of measurement were applied to him. His 
 was one of those histories which appear to be only a bundle 
 of accidents. It was an accident that he was the eldest son 
 of a third brother, and that both his uncles cleared the way 
 for his obtaining the Dukedom, the eldest by never marry- 
 ing, and the second by being killed in a tiger-hunt in India. 
 It was an accident that their grandfather's great-grandfather 
 possessed a house with a big stable-yard and a few dog- 
 kennels in a small village which has long since disappeared 
 and become the centre of Fogham. It was the merest 
 accident that that remote ancestor owned this farm instead of 
 one of the neighbouring gang of poachers, to which probably 
 he was allied by the ties of blood and crime. It seemed 
 even more accidental still that when one of his ancestors, 
 later on, had lost this little farmstead, with two or three 
 larger ones, at a single sitting with some gambling friends, 
 they kept the larger one, but allowed him to regain the 
 smallest, because he won a bet by riding his favourite mare
 
 TODDLE ISLAND iS5 
 
 ten miles across the country. Allowing for these two or 
 three accidents, as Dick calls them, all the rest was natural. 
 The village disappeared. Fogham began to increase. The 
 farm, the stables, the kennels, and the little paddock where 
 the pony used to be kept became worth their weight in 
 gold. Fogham must have houses, and the citizens must 
 dwell somewhere ; and by a clever trick, which a lunatic 
 must have invented, the Duke's ancestor was able to get 
 other people to build the houses on the distinct understand- 
 ing that they should become his property soon. And now 
 this shaky old man, with a rent-roll that is every day increas- 
 ing, is a powerful ruler of Fogham. He controls a vast 
 army of dependants. Industrious people who are his 
 tenants are entirely at his mercy. He is the friend and 
 counsellor of princes ; and whilst other people toil and 
 groan to earn a living, the poor Duke is nearly worn out by 
 the multifarious devices which are necessary to spend a 
 fortune of which he never earned or made a penny. 
 
 I hurried away from the scene, as I felt that there was 
 some extraordinary contagion, either in the Duke's presence 
 or in Dick's highly-excited condition. 
 
 I fled for personal safety. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WE reached our hotel in the early morning. The madness 
 of Fogham had subsided into an imitation silence. When 
 I awoke next morning I was conscious that life had received 
 a new burden. In addition to the danger which I foresaw 
 might overtake Dick in his matrimonial alliance with one of 
 these semi-savages, a new alarm presented itself, in the form 
 of a public execution, should he continue his mad course of
 
 156 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 inquiry with regard to either the rights or the wrongs of the 
 poor. I had been told of the unbridled savagery of the 
 Toddlers. In their Capital I often passed the scene where 
 they had removed the head of their King with as little cere- 
 mony as if he had been a wooden image. 
 
 Dick was in a great hurry over his breakfast. He was 
 determined to go to Paradise Street, to see the wretched 
 Mrs. Black and her children, and find out whether the 
 coroner had been or not. So we each took our own course. 
 As I was driving to Gilt Street, where Professor Crutch 
 resided, I had a strong suspicion that Dick and I were 
 becoming living proofs of Dr. Squire's theory about the 
 influence of climate. 
 
 I was encouraged by the appearance of Professor Crutch. 
 He was a tall man, about seventy, with remarkably fine 
 eyes, very thin compressed lips, and a brow with so many 
 furrows that you might suppose he had sown in them all the 
 seeds of all the sciences. He received me in his inner 
 room, a large place full of various curiosities. If his intelli- 
 gence was half as universal as his museum, I felt that the 
 man must know something on my subject. I wasted no 
 time in making known the object of my search, then I 
 asked : 
 
 ' Can you tell me whether there is any reason to suppose 
 that there is a madness in this island peculiar to married 
 women ?' 
 
 ' Undoubtedly. But I am amazed that a visitor should 
 have discovered it.' 
 
 ' I have not discovered it, but Professor Gritt informed 
 me of the terrible plague.' 
 
 Then followed a long explanation who Professor Gritt 
 was, where I met him, etc. After this, Professor Crutch 
 slightly yawned, and said languidly : 
 
 ' I think I have met with the name.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 157 
 
 Then I continued : ' Do you attribute this madness to 
 physiology or to climate ?' 
 
 'The fact is that the madness, in so far as it is peculiar 
 to Toddle Island, arises from several causes. There is 
 something like it in other parts of the world, and I am 
 hoping to bring out my biggest work soon on the compara- 
 tive madness of the civilized globe.' 
 
 I besought the Professor to explain the causes of so 
 dreadful a pestilence. 
 
 He said : ' I fear it would be difficult to make quite clear 
 to you what the causes are, they are so complex and so 
 insular. There is a form of madness through which nations 
 pass as they emerge from savagery. It is a sort of mental 
 derangement, like that derangement of the nerves which 
 accompanies the cutting of our second teeth. In many 
 cases civilization is a second consciousness. The greatest 
 invention of ancient literature is that man is a social animal. 
 As a fact, after centuries of civilization he can with difficulty 
 be kept from setting up his own form of cannibalism, and 
 many miseries of our modern life arise from the impossibility 
 of two families living together.' 
 
 Now this to me was delightful. 
 
 He continued : ' The bulk of the inhabitants of this 
 island have not yet passed beyond that stage where the 
 savage is left behind and civilization begins. Further, we 
 are composed of so many different tribes that the disease is 
 rendered highly complex ; and it is a serious question for 
 our young politicians whether such undigested masses of 
 tribal fragments will ever coalesce into a nation. Finally, 
 all men, even the most thoughtful, have some peculiar form 
 of madness. I assure you, my lord, it took me thirty years 
 to collect the data for these three sources of mania.' 
 
 I smiled when the Professor spoke of everybody being 
 mad.
 
 158 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 He continued : ' It was the discovery of my own madness 
 which first of all led me to take a great interest in the mad- 
 ness of my fellow-men. The subject of my madness is 
 angels. I began as a mere boy to disbelieve that the angels 
 had wings, and then I began to disbelieve that they had 
 feet ; and so my mania continued, until there was nothing 
 left but a formless cloud, which drifted away. Now it is no 
 longer possible for me to reason on the subject, as no 
 proofs of any kind are of the slightest avail with me. I had 
 my attack of madness, and I had it very acutely. For 
 awhile it became unsafe to refer to angels in my presence. 
 It is very painful, because it renders it impossible for me to 
 go with my people to any form of religious worship. Even 
 when I walk through the temples of the gods, and see the 
 stone figures that are black with an ancient patience, which 
 I should think would be the chief virtue of angelic life, I 
 can scarcely refrain from prodding the creatures with my 
 umbrella. But here you will recognise the advantage of my 
 discovery. Knowing that I am mad, and the subject upon 
 which I am mad, I have been able to lift up mine eyes and 
 behold all things, whether on earth or in the heavens. I 
 have the serene satisfaction of knowing that upon every one 
 of these subjects I can form a correct opinion.' 
 
 By this personal disclosure Professor Crutch interested 
 me greatly. 
 
 I hastened to bring the Professor back to the one subject. 
 He went over the three points again ; he referred to the 
 derangement caused by passing from savagery to civilization, 
 to the many tribes which struggled for life in this birth 
 of a nation, and to the peculiar derangement of the 
 individual. 
 
 Then he continued : ' You now realize how susceptible 
 we are to madness, and, therefore, you cannot be surprised 
 if you discover that the most susceptible islanders, namely
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 159 
 
 our women, should also be the victims of some peculiar 
 mania.' 
 
 I wondered that Professor Crutch was not recognised as 
 the greatest genius in Fogham. 
 
 Still, the critical point in my inquiry had not been made 
 plain. So I asked : 
 
 ' How is it that there should be an undeveloped madness, 
 which is brought out only by marriage ?' 
 
 ' Ah ! Yes,' said the Professor, ' we have forgotten the 
 point from which we started. This one branch alone will 
 occupy volumes ten to fifteen of my new work. It arises 
 chiefly from the maltreatment of women. Only a few years 
 since women were the absolute property of the men. They 
 were sold as slaves. The whole hope of their lives depended 
 upon their being able to cajole their masters, the husbands. 
 For centuries they developed the instincts of slaves, and 
 this was their only relationship with the outer world. Their 
 inner world was very aptly described as an overgrown pin- 
 cushion. You are aware that all human beings write their 
 history upon the cells of the brain, and transmit them from 
 generation to generation. In the case of our women, their 
 brains contain those instincts which centuries of slavery 
 have been slowly forming. We have given up the name 
 " slave," because it was no longer deemed respectable by 
 some of our neighbours. Still, no woman in the island 
 knows what it is to be really free. She is an artificial flower 
 or weed from the day upon which -she puts away her last 
 doll to the hour when she discovers that her husband is not 
 an angel. If she is young, beautiful, and rich, she is 
 flattered in an insidious manner, till she is absolutely 
 unable to know what is true. If she is rich without being 
 beautiful, she is flattered still more insidiously. If she is 
 beautiful without being rich, she is offered in the market by 
 some form of sale unknown to her.'
 
 160 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 I could merely ejaculate, ' How odd to expect them to 
 be the friends and wives of men later on.' 
 
 'It is peculiar, and you will not marvel, when you re- 
 member the susceptibilities of the feminine organization and 
 the ill effects of reaction, that there should come a time in 
 the life of all married women when a new and subtle disease 
 is manifest.' 
 
 I could scarcely restrain my delight at the lucid dis- 
 disclosures which Professor Crutch had made. I was full 
 of the joy which I believe students of science have felt, 
 when they have been conscious that there was only one 
 step between them and the origin of life. 
 
 He continued : ' There is a much deeper cause. All the 
 other causes might be remedied by time and fair play, but 
 there is one insuperable difficulty : this madness appears 
 to be inseparable from the continuity of the race.' 
 
 I think I started visibly, but the Professor continued 
 mechanically : ' All the best authorities are agreed upon 
 this. It is the penalty of sex. You will not be surprised 
 at this, if you have ever inquired into that extraordinary 
 relationship between reason and fertility ; apparently these 
 two capacities vary inversely. This is true of all human 
 beings. The more capable they are of reasoning, the less 
 likely are they to be of assistance in the continuity of the 
 race. Still more is it true in the case of women. Some 
 observers have marvelled that there should have come a 
 time in the history of human growth when the burden of 
 the child and its life was shifted to one sex only. But it 
 does not seem to have occurred to them that on this 
 condition alone there could be a development of reason.' 
 
 I was seized with an epilepsy of astonishment. It seemed 
 so utterly cruel, that in addition to all the slavery, the 
 misery, and the helplessness, which had made the women 
 of the island the victims of barter, greed, and brutality,
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 161 
 
 there should be added by an iron law this horror that to 
 be a mother was to be mad. I appealed to the Professor 
 whether there were not some higher sources of hope and 
 peace, which might come by means of a purer moral 
 atmosphere or a true religion. 
 
 The Professor shrugged his shoulders, and mechanically 
 felt for a cigar. He said : ' On these subjects I have no 
 opinion. They have something to do with angels. I 
 have told you that there my opinion is not worth 
 having. What the eyes may see, what the dissecting-knife 
 can show, what you can read in the rocks and squeeze 
 out of the mud, I claim to have learned. But all the rest 
 is a cloud a miracle of convoluted cloud. If you wish to 
 know anything in that line, I urge you to call upon Sir 
 Cloud Drummer. He is a fashionable doctor and the 
 leading Fogham light on this branch of speculation. Sir 
 Cloud Drummer will explain it all, perhaps. He has taken 
 out a patent for language, and he enjoys the sole right of 
 self-contradiction. Still, he might explain your difficulty. 
 Charming man, Sir Cloud Drummer ; he would have known 
 something had he had time for reflection. I will give you 
 a note of introduction.' 
 
 I mused in profound melancholy whilst he wrote the 
 note, and thanking him for his great help, I departed. He 
 saw me to the door, and, as he held my hand, he remarked : 
 
 ' If I could find out the fellow who invented angels I 
 should be the happiest man in Fogham.' 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 WHEN I left Professor Crutch I was by no means hopeless 
 with regard to my inquiry. I had always been taught that 
 religion was chiefly helpful because it stepped in where the 
 
 ii
 
 1 62 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 sciences and the philosophies were unable to plod along 
 any further. I had heard among many of the platitudes of 
 Fogham that women were more capable of the ennobling 
 influences of religion than men. I still hoped, therefore, 
 that in a life of true morality and pure religion there might 
 be a remedy for this madness. 
 
 I lunched alone, and mused on my morning's visit. I 
 pondered much upon Dick. He had seen many varieties 
 of life. He started as a country boy in one of the smallest 
 of English hamlets. He was an only son, and he had spent 
 a great deal more time with his father than many sons do. 
 His father was a gamekeeper, and had charge of extensive 
 forests. Probably the romance of this life, the gloom of 
 the woods, the beauty of the birds and the flowers, the 
 lonely hours spent in waiting for game, had written their 
 own biography on the too susceptible nature of the young 
 lad. Deprived of play and playmates, he had been forced 
 into that inner world which his vivid imagination had 
 peopled with the unearthly and the beautiful. When I first 
 knew him he was a village schoolmaster, where he was 
 slowly being ground into powder between the managers 
 and the children, an upper and a nether millstone of 
 blockheadism. Knowing the struggle of his early life, the 
 instincts of his nature, and the treadmill work which had 
 crushed many of his best years, I was not surprised to 
 discover that he took a view of life differing from that of 
 most men. I longed for his return. I wondered how he 
 was going to harmonize a life that was to swing like a pen- 
 dulum between Paradise Street and Sedgemoor. 
 
 It was considerably later when Dick returned. He 
 seemed somewhat excited. I was glad to receive him safe 
 and sound, and to find that he was neither depressed with 
 melancholy nor fuming with red revolt. I asked him 
 whether the coroner had been to see Mrs. Black's dead
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 163 
 
 child, and upon learning that he had, I wondered very 
 much how they received him in Paradise Street. Dick said 
 that the coroner had increased Mrs. Black's anguish by the 
 many terrible things he had said about the poor. 
 
 Mrs. Black said : ' All the suffering that we have endured 
 the last four years in Fogham has not so crushed my heart 
 as the horrors of the last few days. I should have thought, 
 years ago, that it was a terrible thing for my children to lie 
 down on the floor to sleep every night until the cold awoke 
 them ; and I should have thought it impossible with one of 
 them dead in the corner, and my dear husband away in the 
 infirmary, that we should be able to live. Yet we did. It 
 was not half so hard to bear as to hear this man curse us 
 for our poverty and for our impatience, when all we desired 
 was to be allowed to carry out the worn body and leave it 
 in the grave.' 
 
 Dick commented on this freely. It had evidently 
 aroused some almost forgotten anguish. 
 
 He said : ' I sat down on one of the boxes in that room, 
 and I looked at the woman's blanched face, the bare walls 
 and the solitary cupboard empty and the brow of the 
 dead child just visible from under the ragged coverlet. I 
 thought of some bitter scenes in my own life. The man 
 Black, it seems, was a gamekeeper in the country only three 
 or four years ago, when the estate changed hands and he 
 was no longer required. After seeking work here and 
 there, his friends advised him to come up to Fogham. He 
 did so, and greatly regretted it. Being a countryman, and 
 not used to the ways of town life, all he could do was to try 
 and get unskilled labour. At last he drifted down to the 
 Docks, and there he had to fight six mornings a week for 
 bread, and deemed himself lucky if he obtained work two 
 mornings out of the six. All this came home to me keenly. 
 I remember a morning in a cottage on a moor, where I had
 
 1 64 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 lived until I was about fifteen ; I remember the sudden 
 news that came to us, that ' the family ' was going to shut 
 up the hall and leave the neighbourhood, because they had 
 had heavy losses through betting, that the game would no 
 longer be preserved, and that in six months we should have 
 to leave the cottage, and my father would have to get work 
 elsewhere. It was so exactly like my own life ; and as Mrs. 
 ] 5 lack wept in the back room in Paradise Street I could see 
 my own mother's tears falling as she stood by the little 
 window looking out on the moorland. 
 
 ' My father was unable to get employment, and soon he 
 ceased even to try. He gave up and died. We left him in 
 a little graveyard on the moor. I carried away a thousand 
 memories that spring up as fresh to-day as then. Here were 
 the Blacks in even a worse condition. They had entered 
 into the rush and madness of town life. Character, religion, 
 humanity, the very sacredness of home itself, all had melted 
 in the fiery lava which fools call civilization. I looked on 
 this misery and suffering, and I thought of the crowded 
 staircase, the brilliant drawing-room, the tables laden with 
 luxury in the dining-room last night. I thought of all the 
 strong idle people with too much money, too much food, 
 too much time, with both hands full of every treasure of the 
 earth, which they keep throwing away with reckless extrava- 
 gance, merely in self-defence, to protect themselves from 
 being choked with luxury. 
 
 ' Then I thought of a different scene, another home, 
 humble, poor, probably bare, in a small street of an Eastern 
 village, where Christ spent His boyhood, where He had all 
 those silent communings by which He grew, till, pale and 
 haggard, hooted by the best earls and the chief priests of 
 his time, He tottered down the streets of Jerusalem, and 
 fainted in the early morning, as heart-broken and as helpless 
 $is this woman with her dead child.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 165 
 
 No words can convey the depth of feeling which the 
 misery of the Blacks had roused in Dick. After a pause 
 I asked him how his mother managed when his father died. 
 He replied : ' When we had been turned out of our 
 cottage we had to remove to a new village where no one 
 knew us, and where we wished to hide our poverty. My 
 mother tried to earn her bread by any form of labour, such 
 as charing, washing, or nursing ; and I at length got into a 
 school. I remember the unutterable joy which that message 
 gave me. I was going to earn something; I should be able 
 to help her, and we would have a home again. I remember 
 we sat up by the fire, and talked in the dim light, and gave 
 ourselves up to re-living the old days. We talked about my 
 father, until there seemed a third person in the room, so 
 near, so real was his presence. Next morning I left her to 
 make my first march to the great battle. It was a bright 
 morning in the last week of September, and I had to walk 
 seven miles to a railway-station. Some of the villagers were 
 astir, going to their work ; and perhaps none of them could 
 have comprehended the tragedy of the last twenty-four 
 hours in our little cottage. Certainly none of them could 
 have measured the boundless hope which filled my life. 
 After parting from my mother, and hurrying down the one 
 street of the village, it was like the opening scene of fairy- 
 land. The sun had just risen over some low, richly-wooded 
 hills. Here and there bands of toilers were going out to 
 finish gathering in the harvest. The early light fell on the 
 sheaves as they stood, and the birds awoke, and the dawn 
 was sweet. I felt that the fears and the miseries of poverty 
 were coming to an end. My path skirted a wood for some 
 distance ; and I remember the strange silence, the late wild- 
 flowers, and the deep shadows. Here and there a rabbit 
 crossed my path ; and, brighter than the sunlight that kissed 
 them all, there was hope streaming in splendour.
 
 1 66 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 1 My new life was not easy. The schoolmaster was a 
 nervous, overworked man, with a good many domestic 
 cares. The room was not well ventilated, and the grinding 
 life, coupled with the absence of exercise, fresh air, and free 
 light, almost rendered him an irresponsible being ; but all 
 this I endured. I not only did my teaching, but mastered 
 my own lessons and passed my examinations. Every 
 holiday was full of the delight of childhood. I was not 
 able to help my mother much, but, at any rate, I was no 
 burden to her, and her dim eyes were full of a new light 
 when I used to return home. I had passed all my exam- 
 inations, and was ready to take a much better position ; but 
 the strain had been great, and I was below par. I caught a 
 fever from some of the children at school. I struggled for 
 some days, and told myself every morning that I should 
 soon be better ; but at last the awful horror forced itself 
 upon me that I was really ill. It was so near the end of 
 the year that nothing would satisfy the master but sending 
 me home. 
 
 'I had very little money, and I tried to walk a great 
 part of the distance. I was unable to eat. I was physi- 
 cally miserable ; and when at last I did reach home, I 
 was so utterly ill that my mother was frightened. This 
 lasted for days ; the days stretched to weeks. The doctor 
 was called in, and he prescribed for me apparently in jest, 
 for he ordered things which might have been possible for 
 the Squire's son, but not one in ten of which could have 
 been obtained for me. We struggled on. I was a great 
 burden to my mother. She was worn with anxiety and toil 
 and watching, and I would have died with the thankfulness 
 of a grateful child. We were reduced to the most abject 
 condition of physical misery. Work was difficult to obtain. 
 Everything was dear in the depth of winter, and at the 
 urgent entreaty of neighbours my mother sought help from
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 167 
 
 " the relieving officer." We both remembered, for ever 
 after, his undisguised contempt when he asked : 
 
 ' " Do you suppose, Mrs. Spooner, that the guardians of 
 the poor have nothing else to do but to keep your son when 
 he chooses to get ill ?" 
 
 ' He received no answer to that question, but four eyes 
 were turned upon him that certainly were full of the un- 
 utterable. He may possibly have felt uncomfortable. At 
 any rate, he hastened to say : 
 
 ' " Of course I will report the case, and I suppose you 
 must have a little bread until next week, when I can tell you 
 the decision of the guardians." 
 
 'We refused the little bread, and we waited for the 
 decision. The decision was that there was a workhouse 
 seven miles away and we might both enter it. 
 
 ' I was young then, and inexperienced in the world. I 
 supposed that we had no right to favours. I would have 
 believed it had anyone told me I had no right to live. 
 There was a great life surging round and above me, of 
 which I knew nothing, where people seemed to work when 
 they liked and as they liked, where they always had plenty 
 of food and always had money and leisure. These people, 
 I supposed, were those for whom the world was made. I 
 never questioned their power. I knew no politics. I had 
 read no Political Economy. I had not grasped any of the 
 greater problems which are wider and more enduring than 
 the oldest civilizations ; but my mother and I, at any rate 
 did not accept the offered workhouse. How I recovered I 
 could not quite make out. I know it was a slow process, 
 and I know that my mother was an old woman ever after- 
 wards. This happened long before you met me. How well 
 I remember when you used to come in and spend the 
 evenings at chess, or sit smoking and talking over your 
 worries and your wants, when Lord Bottsford was a name
 
 168 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 of ill-omen, a sort of malicious phantom that danced before 
 your eyes !' 
 
 I was greatly moved at the intense pathos and misery 
 with which Dick had re-lived this stage of his life. It 
 seemed to me that such an experience would unveil many 
 secrets to most men ; and from a man of his sensitive 
 organization, which retained for ever the slightest impression 
 of every event, I could imagine that no future success would 
 absolutely banish the gloom of such a beginning. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 AFTER Dick's history we had a little quiet talk. I learnt 
 that everything had been arranged for the burial of this 
 child. He had also made some temporary provision for 
 Mrs. Black and her children. 
 
 Dick succeeded, after the funeral, in moving the family. 
 He had taken two rooms for them. He had been to the 
 infirmary and seen the unhappy Black. As he was nearly 
 well, the authorities of the infirmary were hastening his 
 departure. The poor fellow, not by any means restored 
 to health, was asked to go out and face a life in which the 
 strongest daily meet with defeat and death. 
 
 Dick had, however, the means of coping with this difficulty 
 by giving the man rest, and by supplying him with food. 
 Mrs. Black, too, by having a little hope infused into her life 
 and necessary food, sought work and found it. 
 
 I asked him for a detailed account of this family, because 
 he assured me that it was only one among tens of 
 thousands. 
 
 We frequently sat and discussed the social conditions
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 169 
 
 which fostered such organized starvation and ready-made 
 death. 
 
 I cannot relate the scenes of horror which he used to 
 come home and describe, because English people, in reading 
 my book, would forget that it is a history, and would suppose 
 that I had written the biographies of fiery dragons. 
 
 We were exceedingly busy : we were leaving the hotel, 
 because we had secured lodgings in a more western part of 
 the city. There was also a great function, from which I was 
 hoping much. 
 
 It was the day upon which the Grooms and the Jockeys 
 assembled from all parts of the country to make new laws 
 for the island, or to determine what wars should be waged, 
 and to hold long debates as to how they should spend the 
 public money, which they had wrung , from hundreds who 
 had no power whatever, and no right of voting, for, by 
 a very clever trick, they confer power upon the rich. I 
 have not yet been able to trace any design in their ' Consti- 
 tution ' known as the Sacred Ass. But if there is any lead- 
 ing principle, it consists in this, that when they have created 
 several rich people, they must at all hazards support them, 
 protect them, and give them the best of everything out of 
 sheer gratitude. So that when some evil-minded persons 
 desired to pass a law, by which all islanders might take part 
 in the governing of the nation, it became the pressing duty 
 of paid officials to discover a way to prevent this, without 
 openly thwarting the will of the People. So they cajole and 
 hoodwink the Workers. Thus they settled this voting. 
 
 On various occasions they had long debates and riotous 
 gatherings, and then proclaimed with a blare of trumpets 
 that the People were free, and that they were to take part 
 in governing the nation. But they immediately devised 
 some very strong checks upon this freedom. First of all, 
 they attach votes to land in each province of the island ; s
 
 i;o TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 that any rich man possessing land in twelve different 
 provinces has twelve votes. Next, they used to attach 
 a rent value to the vote, so that if one man paid a rent 
 per annum which was only half a crown below the fixed 
 rent it would not matter how intelligent, or patriotic, or 
 useful he might be, still he had no right to vote because he 
 did not pay this half a crown a year. 
 
 With the landlords, in some districts, where they thought 
 the artizans might be unmanageable, it was a favourite trick 
 to build cheap houses, and let them at a rent which fell 
 below the amount required. By this means the landlord 
 was able to suppress three or four hundred unruly voters. 
 For centuries they disbelieved in the intelligence and the 
 citizenship of any man who lived in lodgings. If he took a 
 house, and paid the proper rent, then no one doubted 
 either his intelligence or his rights ; but he might live in 
 lodgings with no more social or political influence than a 
 stray cat. 
 
 Nothing filled me with greater astonishment than to see 
 how the poor islanders lived. Why they lived is a mystery 
 to me to this day. Everything has been taken away from 
 them ; life has been reduced to the agony of the treadmill. 
 Why these creatures should live twenty or forty years 
 merely toiling to enrich a class whom .they never see, and 
 from whom they receive nothing whatever, is one of the 
 strongest proofs, to my own mind, that Professor Crutch 
 was right when he said, ' There is a stage of madness through 
 which people have to pass on their way from savagery 
 to civilization.' 
 
 I think I have explained elsewhere that the Jockeys were 
 a distinct race altogether. They were made up of misfit 
 kings, surviving specimens of wholesale pillagers, and a few 
 retired tradesmen, who had changed their names, with a 
 certain number of official gentry, who cooked the laws of
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 171 
 
 the island, after they had been mixed by the Grooms and 
 watered by the Jockeys. These law-cooks were very in- 
 fluential, and, if I have time, I shall return to them, to show 
 the extreme beauty of their calling. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SHORTLY after my visit to Professor Crutch I met the 
 learned specialist, Dr. Bead. 
 
 I asked Dr. Bead whether he considered that marriage 
 was an artificial system or a fixed law of nature. 
 
 He replied : ' It is not exactly either. It certainly is not 
 a law of nature, because it takes contradictory forms. This 
 also proves that it is not an artificial system.' 
 
 I told the Professor I did not quite understand. 
 
 ' It is artificial, but it is not a system, for were it a system 
 we should expect that there would be some indications 
 of method. The chief characteristic of all marriage-laws is 
 that the weak are made subservient to the pleasure of the 
 powerful. This is the history of most marriage-customs.' 
 
 ' To what, then, do you attribute their great variety ?' 
 
 ' That is a question very difficult to answer. Man is so 
 complex, and climate is so variable, that it is almost impos- 
 sible to attribute any part of human conduct to a fixed 
 principle ; but, as far as I have been able to discover, the 
 chief influence in determining the forms of marriage has 
 been the domestic animals of the country.' 
 
 This was new to me. 
 
 He continued : ' The two forces which have moulded the 
 destiny of all tribes are accident and imitation. Through 
 some accident a man finds out how to make a fire, or to 
 make glass, or to roast pork. Then the human animal
 
 172 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 indulges his baboon faculty, and takes up this accident as a 
 new sport, and in time you have a whole tribe moulded by 
 customs, which the superstitious venerate as fixed laws. It 
 might be called the consecration of the mimetic faculty, or 
 the canonization of apes. Now, you will see the bearing 
 of the life of the domestic animals upon marriage-customs.' 
 
 I had to confess that I did not quite see. 
 
 ' Ah ! I forgot you have not accustomed yourself to the 
 early state of things, by which we learn that man is an 
 animal among other animals. Unless you are clear upon 
 this point, we may as well give up inquiry, and spend our 
 time in horse-racing, or debating in the House of Grooms.' 
 
 'Granted, man is an animal,' I said. 
 
 ' Very well. If he is an animal, living in common, in 
 every sense, with all other animals, without a single idea in 
 his life outside the animal experience, what strikes you as 
 the one solitary fact which causes man to differ from all 
 animals around him ?' 
 
 I was puzzled by this question. I thought of the ' erect 
 position,' of which I had heard a great deal at a lecture. I 
 also tried to think of the various physical parts of man, such 
 as the thumb, the nose, and the weight of the brain or the 
 jaw. I was just on the point of saying ' the power of speech,' 
 when I saw that that would be ridiculous. Dr. Bead came 
 to my help, and continued : 
 
 ' The one distinguishing feature of man in that early 
 stage was power in some form or other. He was stronger 
 than all the creatures amongst whom he dwelt, so that you 
 have to realize a state of nature where this strong animal 
 treated all the other animals as his inferiors, including women. 
 Are you clear upon that point ?' 
 
 ' Quite clear, and judging from Toddle Island he still 
 continues to include women in the same catalogue.' 
 
 'Then you will note the immense influence that the
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 173 
 
 habits of other animals would have upon this strong animal, 
 whilst as yet he was not severed from them either by a suit 
 of clothes or a banking account. Remember also that he 
 possesses a rare imitative faculty and the power of seizing 
 upon accidents ; and when untold ages have passed away, 
 and this strong animal with this rare faculty has grown up 
 with different animals as domesticated as himself, the one 
 would react upon the other. In those countries where 
 birds are chiefly kept, marriage is gay, blithe, and careless, 
 and if one loses a mate, the mate is as easily replaced as if 
 they were birds, and the family is of no concern. In other 
 countries where only beasts of burden are kept, the women 
 are beasts of burden, and the wives do the hard work, 
 whilst the men lounge about. And so among all the nations. 
 I believe you might even find that different localities of this 
 island have different opinions of marriage, and the opinion 
 is largely modified by the favourite animals of that region. 
 In those ranks of life, for instance, where the fox-terrier is a 
 favourite animal, because he fawns and lavishes his love 
 upon the brute who kicks him, you will find exactly the 
 same methods adopted towards the wife and with exactly 
 the same effect. This is an interesting subject, and has 
 thrown more light on the difficult problem of the origin of 
 marriage than anything I know. You see, my lord, all 
 marriage is a form of slavery, and the only question is, 
 which form.' 
 
 I found Dr. Bead so entertaining on the history of 
 marriage that I invited him to luncheon. I asked him 
 what he considered to be the clearest proof that woman 
 had been kept in a servile condition through all the early 
 ages. 
 
 He replied : ' The fact that she has reduced fraud to a 
 private religion. During the generations of her brutal 
 slavery, she lived by deception only, practised on the
 
 174 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 cruellest master her husband. You will find that the 
 weakest-minded woman is able to make excuses and sham 
 reasons more subtle than those of a successful barrister or 
 a leading statesman.' 
 
 ' But do not women receive honour now ?' 
 
 ' Far from it. They are of small account among the 
 Toddlers except to serve man, to have children, and to 
 support religious worship.' 
 
 ' You astonish me. Does it not exert a baneful influence 
 on the national life ?' 
 
 ' Doubtless. The Toddlers can never hope to abolish 
 crime whilst the legalized murder of woman continues to 
 receive the support of their Government and the blessing of 
 their religion. To thousands of women marriage is murder. 
 And monogamy is supported by the murder of tens of 
 thousands who are not married. This murder of woman 
 in every form warps the judgment and blasts the sense of 
 justice.' 
 
 ' Do you then regard their system of marriage as another 
 survival of the savage state ?' 
 
 ' Certainly. It is curious to note how persistent the early 
 forms are. When cannibalism was sufficiently developed 
 to have a code of fashionable rules, any enterprising young 
 man could determine whether he might marry a girl out of 
 another tribe by simply ascertaining whether one of his 
 tribe might eat one of hers. The prohibited degrees were 
 the same for marrying and eating.' 
 
 Here Dr. Bead chuckled, and I own I was fascinated, so 
 perhaps I said with some emphasis : 
 
 ' How deeply interesting ! Am I to infer that you think 
 these two still act and react upon each other ?' 
 
 ' Exactly. They are the animal twins, which have made 
 the human race. This is explained by the fact that the 
 appetite which makes a hundred fellows want one pretty
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 175 
 
 girl has the same origin as the hunger which causes a 
 hundred men to desire the same beef-steak. These two 
 hungers keep the human race going.' 
 
 ' What a pity that man has not managed his matrimony 
 as well as his cooking !' 
 
 ' But you see the two cases are not equally simple ; 
 marriage is not with the dead. And in some strange way 
 two opposing forms contest the field, known as polygamy 
 and polyandry. Some girls like many lovers, and society 
 calls them flirts ; it only shows that their remote ancestors 
 lived in a cave with more than one husband. There are 
 men whom no marriage service can bind, and the prudish 
 are angry with them ; it is only the eruption of a buried 
 instinct from the ages when the respectable magnate gloried 
 in his flock of wives as well as other cattle. Then there is 
 a much greater difficulty from a much older source. All 
 life on this globe springs from inorganic matter, and the 
 inorganic has no sex, so there is a constant tendency to go 
 back to the primal condition, where there are no sexual 
 relationships. Thus we get the third order of creature : 
 neither man nor woman a prude of the neuter gender.' 
 
 * Would that life could again sleep in an unsexed con- 
 dition !' 
 
 ' That would be the sleep of death.' 
 
 And the Doctor laughed as if he had invented a new 
 order of fossils. I asked what was the chief disturbing 
 element of marriage in the island. 
 
 ' Money. We have a public office to which we compel 
 copies of all wills to be sent, showing what girls are worth 
 as soon as their fathers are dead. It is a very clever insti- 
 tution, and acts as a useful deterrent to marriage. I never 
 go down to see my friend who keeps the papers without a 
 hearty laugh. It is such fun to see some cautious old man 
 in search of a wife, hunting through the most recent wills.
 
 i;6 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 Or a father comes for his son, and you can read his little 
 drama on the old man's face, as he makes the plot to catch 
 the gold. I think we may yet survive cannibalism when 
 we have reduced marriage to machinery.' 
 
 As Dr. Bead rose to depart, I said to him : ' My friend 
 informs me that the Toddlers lay a great stress on the 
 " Fall of man." What is that ?' 
 
 ' Some unknown event which is said to have made a bad 
 impression on the human race. The phrase is theological, 
 and consequently but few attach any meaning to it. Accord- 
 ing to theologians it is the key to human character.' 
 
 ' How do they explain it ?' 
 
 ' In their usual way. First they quarrel over it, then the 
 more imaginative of them devise theories to explain it. 
 They offer three favourite solutions, viz., that the " Fall of 
 man " is a phrase to conceal the first coining of money, the 
 discovery of the art of getting drunk, or the first wedding.' 
 
 ' What a medley !' 
 
 ' Yes ; but I believe there is truth in the statements at 
 any rate ; money, drink, and sex are the chief barriers to 
 progress in Toddle Island.' 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 THE BRAYING OF THE SACRED ASS. 
 
 THE gathering of the Jockeys and Grooms was a great 
 event in Fogham. They came up from various parts of the 
 country, and brought with them their horses and their dogs, 
 their wives and families, and an array of servants, some of 
 which were hired or borrowed for the occasion, in order to 
 make a goodly show and win the admiration of the mob in
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 177 
 
 Fogham. Many of them came to spend large sums of 
 money, which they had carried away as natural plunder 
 from farm-labourers or quarrymen, navvies or colliers. 
 
 The Grooms are not so neat in their ways of obtaining 
 money as the Jockeys. The Jockeys and their ancestors, 
 having for centuries directed their strongest instincts to this 
 end, viz., obtaining wealth without work, are perfect marvels 
 of the development of a single faculty. A man cannot find 
 fish in their rivers, or treasure on their seacoast, or wealth 
 many yards below the earth, even though he may have 
 bought the field in which it is found, but down comes the 
 Jockey's steward and demands a share for his master, by 
 virtue of an old law, which says, ' If you do not pay dues 
 you will have your head chopped off.' 
 
 All these things are classed under the head of Stable 
 Dues, and the right to exact them depends upon an ancient 
 tradition that the Jockey's great-grandfather had a great- 
 grandfather whose remote ancestor had the only stable 
 in a district of some scores of miles ; and he exacted a toll 
 from all persons in that neighbourhood who might wish to 
 shelter their cattle for the night. It seems a vague begin- 
 ning for such a substantial benefit. 
 
 This is one out of a thousand exceedingly clever devices 
 by means of which the Jockeys are able to come to Fogham 
 year by year and spend more hundreds of pounds at a 
 single banquet than the people in the country, who create 
 the wealth, would spend on their dinners in twenty years. 
 They are able to carry out this piece of simple selfishness 
 with ease, because their demands are so exacting and cease- 
 less that the poor slaves in the provinces have no leisure or 
 opportunity either to become intelligent or to know anything 
 about their own rights. They live and slave like the toiling 
 cattle. 
 
 Fogham, therefore, is glad to see the assembly of the 
 
 12
 
 i;8 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 Grooms and Jockeys. The first day is known as the bray- 
 ing of the Sacred Ass. 
 
 I had allowed my anxiety for Dick to divert my attention 
 to the extraordinary pestilence transmitted from a line of 
 endless grandmothers in Toddle Island. Therefore my 
 other object of enquiry, the Sacred Four-footed God, had 
 been neglected. 
 
 Dick and I hurried to the Guys, who had obtained tickets 
 for the Stable of Jockeys, where the Sacred Ass was to 
 BRAY. Some months earlier this would have created an 
 interest in my mind. I should have thought that at length 
 I was about to accomplish my desire, and see this wonder- 
 ful animal, but I knew them better now. 
 
 The fair Miss Guy was radiant in the most novel costume, 
 and flushed with excitement, because for the first time in 
 her life she was to enter the House of Jockeys. 
 
 We entered a small room made dim by its richly-painted 
 windows, all of which seemed to be more suited to the 
 funeral service of a venerable superstition than to the bray- 
 ing of an Ass. Slowly the Peers assembled, and I was 
 surprised at the absence of grandeur. The men lounged in 
 some few of them as reluctantly as if they had come to 
 have their consciences photographed. 
 
 Several of the Jockeys were remarkable for their history, 
 if not for their appearance. Miss Guy amused me by tell- 
 ing me of some of the Peers. The Duke of Marrowfat, a 
 small, haggard, bowed old man, entered as if he were a 
 wooden image which goes in and out of a box to indicate 
 change of weather. All he did was mechanical, and I am 
 told that this automatic indifference is the loftiest ideal of 
 the islanders, as being most remote from savagery. Miss 
 Guy said that his was the oldest family in the peerage, and 
 that there had been a Duke in that family for two hundred 
 years.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 179 
 
 Near him sat a large portly person, Lord Snappemup, 
 completely under the influence of his tailor. Miss Guy 
 said he was one of the new Peers, who had made his fortune 
 by supplying bottled beer to the colonies. Immediately 
 behind him sat Lord Wingwag, a sharp-faced person with 
 small twinkling eyes, and a nose in the air. He had 
 received his peerage because he originated balloons, for by 
 this means it was supposed that the islanders would take 
 the lead in all future warfare. 
 
 To my surprise, there entered several persons in long 
 flowing robes, like grandmothers in their Sunday frocks 
 with enormous aprons. These are the Peers of Nazareth. 
 They are the fragments of a crude attempt to Christianize 
 the State by Act of Parliament. That notion has been 
 abandoned long ago, but the Peers of Nazareth are retained 
 by the Government, chiefly to marry the daughters of the 
 Nobility with becoming pomp, and to lend due dignity to 
 the baptism of Royal infants. 
 
 Possibly the State may have preserved their office because 
 it wished to awe the savages by combining the superstition 
 of religion with the tyranny of government. It is a rare 
 combination. Judging from effects, this combination can 
 do marvels in the way of embalming, and I should say the 
 compound, if applied at a pre-natal stage, would preserve the 
 conscience of a lawyer. 
 
 The chief officers of the State took their seats, and the 
 business of the day began. One gentleman occupied an 
 entire bench, which appeared to be as broad as it was long. 
 Dick suggested that this might be the square box in which 
 they kept the Sacred Ass. 
 
 A body of Grooms had to be in attendance to learn of 
 their betters. A herald arose and read this piece of self- 
 glorification, which I am told is the oldest verse in the 
 literature of the island :
 
 i8o TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 ' He brayeth best who cheateth best 
 
 All beings weak and small ; 
 For the dear State, which keepeth us, 
 Doth slay and plunder all.' 
 
 After this prayer there followed the reading of a sacred 
 document, called the ' Speech from the Throne,' because it 
 was not a speech, and did not come from the Throne. 
 Then we listened to a little official gabble that had less 
 meaning and weight than the baaing of lambs on their way 
 to slaughter. 
 
 Nothing could be more orderly or more meaningless. 
 Guy told me afterwards that centuries ago the Governor 
 used to summon the barons of the islands, and proclaim to 
 them his royal will. That was before the Grooms and 
 Jockeys had any regular times and places of meeting. In 
 those days the monarch always rode on the Ass to which he 
 owed his fortune. So that now, though there was no King, 
 and consequently no Ass, yet the same form had to be 
 endured, because by means of this trick the nation preserves 
 its continuity. The chief difference, apparently, was that in 
 olden times the King used to announce what he intended to 
 do, and had it done ; but now a paper was read on each 
 occasion, known as the Braying of the Sacred Ass. This 
 was drawn up by the Grooms who were in charge of the 
 tradition ; and the value of this document depended upon 
 its referring to the past in such language that no one could 
 identify the facts ; and in referring to the future in such 
 terms that no facts could falsify the language. 
 
 The ceremony was short. First one Peer and then 
 another rose, and made complimentary remarks about the 
 paper they had just heard, and congratulated the wise gentle- 
 men who had perpetrated the fraud. The function was 
 over. We had thirty-five minutes of an ancient ceremony, 
 and I was considerably surprised that there should exist any 
 set of men who should so far forget themselves as to take
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 181 
 
 part in a public pantomime which would be considered 
 exceedingly dull and feeble at the breaking-up of a ladies' 
 school. 
 
 The evening was remarkably fine for the early season. I 
 was told that usually Fogham is involved in clouds and 
 darkness, but on this particular evening, as we drove across 
 the park, a beautiful sunset made the houses look picturesque. 
 We arrived at Sedgemoor to join a large party. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THIS party was remarkably brilliant. I had never felt the 
 force of the old saying about the necessity of slavery to 
 human progress until I came to Fogham. It is wonderful 
 how brilliant and amiable a number of people can be, who 
 have unlimited money and leisure, and to whom the world 
 is a stored warehouse. There were scores of people in 
 Lady Guy's drawing-room, and apparently not one of them 
 had a care or a vice. They seemed to have discovered a 
 patent to turn life into perpetual youth, set to the sweetest 
 music. They attached not the least importance to the 
 event which had been occupying my attention. My 
 thoughts were diverted by some of the best violin music 
 that I had heard during my visit. I could not have 
 believed that any aristocrat of the island could have 
 played with such complete mastery, and I longed to make 
 his acquaintance, especially as he seemed to be feted by 
 the ladies. I concluded he must be a person of great 
 eminence in the social world ; for I have been told again 
 and again that the one point which outweighs every virtue 
 and every qualification with the ladies of the island is 
 Social Position.
 
 1 82 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 No sooner had the unknown duke finished charming 
 that gay assembly with exquisite music, than a lady, pro- 
 bably the heiress of one of the oldest of the earls, sang 
 some foreign songs, with the perfection of a native. She 
 was of a rare and brilliant beauty ; dark, with sparkling 
 eyes and flashing teeth, and her tresses seemed black 
 with fathomless passion. Again I marvelled at this 
 sparkling scene. 
 
 No sooner was the singing over, than the whole room 
 was full of the most dainty babble, in accents of such 
 refinement, that probably classical poets would have gone 
 mad at their utter inability to attain to such brilliant 
 polish. 
 
 In one corner a young nobleman was discoursing on the 
 savagery of people who could give orders to their servants 
 without due regard to trochaic rhythm ; and he declared that 
 on many occasions he had turned pale with horror when he 
 had heard the ' middle-class ' woman ask about the weather 
 without rounding the question into an anapest. 
 
 I was amazed. The ladies hung upon his accents. 
 More than one ancient dame blushed through the crust 
 of her withered experiences. It was an amount of culture 
 for which I had never given the islanders credit. Presently 
 our young nobleman, of trochaic and anapestic refinement, 
 rose languidly, and tried to brush back an irrepressible 
 curl, which completely hid a rather small and aristocratic 
 forehead. He repeated some lyric poetry from a remote 
 northern island. There arose a subdued applause, as 
 refined as the chatter, probably also in anapestic 
 measure. Presently the old duke again awoke ravishing 
 delights from the violin, and the young heiress sang, and 
 my cultured noble recited. Here was wealth and leisure 
 turned to a beautiful and ennobling end. I asked who the 
 young nobleman was.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 183 
 
 They replied : ' He is one of Professor Scrapi's artistes.' 
 
 ' And who is Professor Scrapi ?' I inquired. 
 
 ' The wrinkled old gentleman whose daughter has sung. 
 He is just going to play again on the violin, whilst a 
 German accompanies him on the piano.' 
 
 Again the young heiress of the oldest of the peers (as I 
 had supposed) entranced the audience with her singing. 
 I was taken by surprise, but my surprise turned into loath- 
 ing. Of all the rich people with measureless leisure 
 assembled in that room there were not to be found four 
 who could render an hour and halfs gathering passable. 
 Professor Scrapi and his daughter had struggled from an 
 Italian village, and meeting in the mad hunting-ground of 
 Fogham with a German pianist, and a young man who had 
 failed on the stage, formed the troupe which was hired at 
 so much an hour to keep the drawing-rooms of the nobility 
 from becoming as heavy as a lead coffin stuffed with 
 sermons. 
 
 We departed. 
 
 Life appeared considerably altered, now that we had our 
 own quarters, not more than fifteen minutes' walk from Sedge- 
 moor. We were able to see vastly more of society from the 
 fact that we found it possible to get in a dozen afternoon 
 calls, a dinner, and three parties the same day. 
 
 The dull life of the average Toddler cannot be described. 
 The dull life of the fashionable Toddler is a horror worse 
 than death. Therefore to escape from it they indulged in 
 any form of excitement that is purveyed They imposed 
 upon themselves intolerable burdens. Yet, to hear their 
 criticisms upon the absurdity and the difficulty of attending 
 so. many parties, one might suppose that these parties were 
 organized to prevent swearing from becoming a lost art. 
 Still, on the following day invitations were accepted just as 
 freely as State officials spend the money which is not theirs.
 
 1 84 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 On this particular evening we dined at home. I had 
 been disappointed in the ceremony, or farce, which I had 
 witnessed in the House of Jockeys. Dick had been greatly 
 indignant that we should be led to expect so much from this 
 function and learn nothing. However, the music and the 
 charm of another presence, which was evidently becoming 
 more enthralling week by week, had done something to 
 quell the indignation roused in him. 
 
 After dinner we went by special invitation to an Exhibi- 
 tion of Home Industries in a remote part of Fogham. A 
 great deal of the life of Fogham is underground, and I have 
 heard that some of the old aristocracy have begun to build 
 their mansions below the earth. There is this peculiar 
 advantage about Fogham : that it makes no difference 
 whether the houses are below ground, or above, as they 
 have no daylight. Were it not for their natural perversity, 
 which prevents any two people from doing the same thing, 
 they might agree to grow potatoes and cabbages on the lost 
 acreage of Fogham, and put all their houses underneath. 
 But as the aristocracy owns nearly all the land in Fogham, 
 and seeing that their ancestors knew nothing of the climate 
 of this city, which they had never seen, they continue to 
 build their houses on the top, in obedience to those fixed 
 instincts which make them the aristocracy. 
 
 On our arriving at the Hall where the exhibition was to 
 take place, we found a large number of persons assembled 
 to see the Lord Mayor of Fogham distribute prizes. They 
 had wrought some very beautiful things in brass and iron. 
 They had done some wood-carving, which would have been 
 the envy of all beholders had it been a little darker 
 coloured, not quite so clean, and placed in an old hall. 
 Few well-dressed people were amongst the crowd, and it 
 was singular that though not one of these people could have 
 accomplished any of the work which had been done by the
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 185 
 
 poor present, yet they condescended to give their praise, 
 and expected the poor workers to feel nobler and better, 
 because some ignoramus had told them that it was well done. 
 The well-dressed Toddler seemed to suppose that he had 
 developed into a patron of the arts and the sciences. His 
 fur coat and his clean linen were the patents which stamped 
 his nobility. I should think after such an evening he would 
 go home and dine a second time the same day because 
 of the new relish which would be imparted to his luxury, 
 while the odour of starvation was fresh upon him. 
 
 I was examining a remarkable piece of repousse work, 
 and wondering by what means a labourer, with two or three 
 tools, was able to make a sheet of brass bloom with grape 
 clusters, or alive with fairy scenes, when I was accosted by 
 one of the visitors belonging to the large class in Fogham 
 known as c the Middlers.' 
 
 Some people regard them as pillars of Society, others as 
 the mere props of an idle and luxurious aristocracy ; whilst 
 others have told me that they are the only people who 
 successfully reduce the workers to a state of slavery. 
 
 This particular visitor greatly impressed me with his 
 intelligence. He answered every question about this piece 
 of work, and repousse work in general. In fact, he gave me 
 so much information about the history and greatness of 
 such work that if I had been inclined to form a new 
 religion, or to settle down in Toddle Island in order to 
 cherish my own private craze, I certainly should have 
 bought a few tools and a leather apron, and devoted the 
 rest of my life to repousse work. 
 
 He referred to some specimens which I had not seen, 
 and as I was anxious to make his acquaintance, I accepted 
 his offer to come and show them to me, whereupon I 
 learned that his name was Mr. Carr. I expected to gain 
 much information from Mr. Carr.
 
 186 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 WE had Mr. Carr to luncheon. He showed us some 
 remarkable specimens of repousse work. We told him 
 about the gorgeous ceremony known as the 'Braying of 
 the Sacred Ass.' 
 
 He seemed highly amused that we should have expected 
 it to be in any way interesting. Apparently he had never 
 been, and when I expressed my astonishment that one who 
 took so great an interest in art should leave out the highest 
 of all arts, viz., the art of Government, he replied : 
 
 ' My world is practical. Anything that will help to 
 make life nobler, or more comfortable, I am willing to take 
 up ; but the art of Government, as you style our national 
 Chickerypokery, does not come under either head. In 
 fact there seems nothing left in any Government but a 
 little grandmotherly sentiment.' 
 
 ' What is grandmotherly sentiment ?' 
 
 1 There are many mysteries in the Constitution of Toddle 
 Island, but none are so singular as the odd ways in which 
 the Government of the country has been brought into line 
 with the order of nature by our unique system of Govern- 
 ment by Grandmothers. In the long run we find that they 
 have complete power, for just as in the order of nature the 
 beginning of human life has no distinction of sex, so it is 
 well known at the end of life there comes a period when 
 the same distinction disappears. We have a proverb in 
 the land that every man becomes an old woman if he lives 
 long enough. We call these persons, of whatever appear- 
 ance, the Grandmothers of a nation, and we are entirely 
 under their control.' 
 
 We found Mr. Carr very interesting. He seemed to 
 know the island so completely, and he contradicted every-
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 thing that we had heard about the origin of things. He 
 was a giant in strength and stature, with a massive head 
 and eagle eyes, and we learnt long after he had the heart 
 of a mother. 
 
 I never met anyone so full of facts, and so ready with 
 theories. His familiarity with science and nature amounted 
 to a wonder. He interested me on the origin of passion, 
 because at one time I hoped for great things from a proper 
 direction of that passion, which is the source of life. He 
 got up and walked about in my room, and chuckled with 
 such laughter as only a vigorous Toddler can enjoy. 
 
 It appears to be the vigour of these animals which causes 
 all their trouble. I suppose that is why the chief part of 
 the education of their aristocratic ladies is to teach them 
 the pose and fixity of a fossil in a marble slab. They must 
 be conscious that their excessive energy threatens to break 
 through all the gilded paste-board forms which they nick- 
 name civilization. 
 
 Mr. Carr was violent, I should have said, and asked : 
 
 'What is passion? Like every other uncontrollable, 
 life-giving energy, it has its source in electricity. There is 
 no life or form conceivable, apart from electricity. If one 
 planet has rings round it, and another has not, it is due to 
 the different electric conditions. If one nation arises from 
 savagery and the other does not, you may be quite sure 
 electricity causes it. So with individuals. One man has 
 so much temper that he lives the life of a wild beast, and 
 another man has so much intellect that he looks like a 
 fungus in a brown study ; and all depends upon their 
 electric condition.' 
 
 I was interested in hearing of this source of all things. 
 As these islanders have no fixed account of the origin of 
 anything, they are perpetually sowing their wild oats in that 
 sea of yeast styled speculation. Therefore any supposition,
 
 1 88 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 however insane, is popular, if it claims to be a new account 
 of the origin either of life or death. They continually 
 invent new apologies for the past, and new designs for the 
 future. I told Mr. Carr that I failed to see, even if elec- 
 tricity were the true explanation, how his theory clashed in 
 any way with mine about the grandeur of that passion 
 which gilds the portal of youth. 
 
 He replied : ' It is of the utmost importance. You will 
 have observed that all true poets agree, when describing 
 the fascination which lovers exert over each other, that it 
 has been entirely unreasonable and unreasoning. It lies 
 outside the control of either of them. It has all the 
 suddenness and irresistible power of magic. Now it is 
 manifest that the greater contains the less, that the loves 
 and hates of mankind are not originated by human will, 
 or human life. They have a source far more permanent. 
 That source is what Ve term the negative and positive in 
 electricity. We know that neither two negatives nor two 
 positives have any effect upon each other, but the moment 
 the negative finds its positive, there is set in motion an 
 illimitable force, and it may be so great that no human 
 power can resist it. That negative and positive state is the 
 history of all passion. ' 
 
 Mr. Carr was so very earnest that I durst not smile. 
 The suggestion was new, and opened a fresh enquiry with 
 regard to conduct. I thought of all the martyrs to theories 
 about the will, and the theological volumes which had 
 buried generations whilst advocating the freedom of the 
 will. I could hardly restrain my delight. I saw such a 
 fund of amusement for the summer days when I should lie 
 amongst the long grass, and think over my visit to this 
 unique island. Men and women reduced to twopenny- 
 halfpenny magnets seemed too amusing. 
 
 After Mr. Carr had explained theories enough to fill a
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 189 
 
 volume, I asked, ' Have you observed that there is any 
 special difficulty in getting the people of this island to 
 admit a fact ?' 
 
 He replied, ' The majority of the people know no more 
 about a fact than a Groom knows about law.' 
 
 ' I am glad to hear you say that, because I thought it 
 must be due to some personal difficulty of my own ; but I 
 am surprised at your reference to the Grooms. Don't they 
 make laws ?' 
 
 ' Not quite ; they talk about them. The Jockeys handle 
 them, and pass them round to one another. Then the 
 King looks at them. When all these three operations have 
 been carried out, a Bill is called law. You are right ; the 
 islander has an immense difficulty with facts. You see, a 
 fact is savage ; it gives no alternative. The mind of an 
 ordinary Toddler can no more hold a fact than he could 
 hold a well-oiled rattlesnake.' 
 
 ' It is a most painful thing. I suppose it depends upon 
 climate, the influence of the stars, and the form of the 
 liver, and that sort of thing.' 
 
 ' Don't believe any of those excuses ; they are the 
 inventions of a materialistic age. A man is stronger than 
 the climate ; otherwise, he would have died under its 
 influence. The stars never interfere with him, because 
 they have something much better to do. As for the form 
 of his liver, every man makes his own liver.' 
 
 ' Really, Mr. Carr, I cannot quite assent to that last 
 statement.' 
 
 He was quite unperturbed, and asked, ' Pray, then, tell 
 me, does a man's spirit-life form his body, or does his body 
 form his spirit-life ?' 
 
 ' I have not been driven to either of these alter- 
 natives.' 
 
 ' But you must be aware that I am a little planet, with a
 
 190 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 population of ten thousand millions upon me, that microbes, 
 and bacilli, and phagocytes, are so many legions of con- 
 tending armies ever battling within me, asleep or awake ? 
 Now, my life-spirit collects matter from various sources, and 
 controls this planet called me.' 
 
 He dilated on his theory of life-spirit the mysterious 
 power that takes up amorphous matter, and weaves it into 
 the smiles of childhood or the loveliness of brides. Mr. 
 Carr was merry ; he went away, laughing like Thor. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 WE were invited to a party that evening by Lady Sandbank. 
 Dick remarked on the way that we might expect an un- 
 usually brilliant gathering, because Lord Sandbank was the 
 first of his family who had been raised to the peerage ; and 
 Dick declared that the intelligence of the peers in Toddle 
 Island was always greatest where the peerage was the newest. 
 I sincerely hoped that his generalizations were true ; but I 
 had serious misgivings that it was only another proof that 
 we were both rapidly catching the various diseases which 
 infest the climate, for I have observed that to generalize is 
 a strange weakness on the part of the Toddlers. They 
 have, in their law and customs, disregarded the natural 
 order of things. They have deprived themselves of the 
 possibility of making such observations as are necessary 
 for evolving general principles. They have a Constitution 
 which has come from nowhere, unless the Sacred Ass 
 carried it under one of his tails. 
 
 This Constitution tends to no definite end, except to 
 make one man in a hundred thousand a peer. With laws 
 that are like the sand of the sea-shore for multitude, but
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 191 
 
 not quite so useful and coherent ; with a theology that is 
 the invention of a class, whose chief force lies in the denial 
 of every-day experience ; with a population in which women 
 form the majority, and yet have been dominated by the 
 minority for thousands of years because the minority had 
 bigger fists there seems no hope for the nation. Their 
 law has taught the majority of the islanders every trick of 
 fraud, which has been developed to a genius. It is im- 
 possible to give the islanders a plain fact. The average 
 islander must have his fact carved and painted till it looks 
 like his favourite prejudice. Nowhere do you find them 
 engaged in the harmonious pursuit of the beautiful and 
 the true. Whenever the kind-hearted amongst them read 
 fragmentary Gospels, and wish to realize in their lives 
 something of the kindness and mercy which those Gospels 
 teach about the poor and erring, they immediately organize 
 committees to set in motion the innate rivalry which human 
 beings share with fighting-cocks and bull-dogs, and they 
 tear each other to pieces in the holy war as to how much 
 soup and how many blankets they shall give to ' God's 
 poor.' When they have finished, I am told that their 
 prayers are beautiful. 
 
 I must have copied a great part of the above out of 
 Dick's diary, and I apologize for its being so serious. We 
 arrived at Lord Sandbank's, and found a most brilliant 
 gathering. Our hired vehicle had much difficulty in finding 
 a way through the numerous carriages that surrounded the 
 square, and blocked every by-street leading to it. Young 
 people, fresh and lovely as the rare exotics they wore, were 
 already engaged -in dancing. Lord Sandbank was a good 
 host. He was the successful evolution of three generations 
 His large hands told a homely story about his grandparents, 
 but his large mansion was gilded by a new crest for himself. 
 His father had been successful in growing cocoanuts on
 
 192 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 some remote island, and by supplying them almost at first- 
 hand to be used in a fashionable game for the country- 
 people of the island three sticks a penny he had been 
 able to realize immense profits. The darkies who reared 
 them lived chiefly on the nutritious diet of fresh air and a 
 riding-whip. He succeeded in shipping his cargoes as 
 ballast, and was said to be a gentleman of such winning 
 graces that on more than one occasion he received pay for 
 sending his own goods to the markets of Toddle Island. 
 It appears to be a well-known and organized method of 
 success to take possession of some part, either of a foreign 
 island or sea-coast. Powder and shot are fairly cheap, a 
 party of men are easily armed, and if they carry one Bible 
 amongst them they can call themselves missionaries. Any 
 physical inconvenience which may be caused to the natives 
 is counterbalanced, in the opinion of Fogham, by the 
 spiritual privileges that a single Bible in a foreign tongue 
 may have conferred upon the savages. 
 
 I find great trouble in going to the numerous gatherings, 
 because I cannot remember the names of the many people 
 I meet ; so that it usually ends in my making up to one or 
 two of those whom I know best. I received a bow from 
 Lord Gooseberry. He looked as bright as a snake in a 
 new skin. Lord Bootts had taken possession of a window- 
 recess, and was knitting his bushy eyebrows as he looked 
 upon the flashing forms of youthful beauty that whirled 
 past him in an excitement which Time had blotted out for 
 ever from his own life. Miss Guy was dancing magnificently, 
 and I thought looked better than I had ever seen her. I 
 confided to the Earl my satisfaction that my friend had 
 found in the island the treasure of a lovely and loving 
 woman. 
 
 The Earl croaked, 'All's well that ends well. These 
 things are very changeable.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 193 
 
 Then he knitted his shaggy eyebrows, and suggested that 
 I might like some refreshment 
 
 Whilst waiting outside the refreshment-room and watching 
 the struggling Toddlers, I mused on their peculiar ideas of 
 economy. In some cases they hire servants, in other cases 
 the servants hire them. The older families, into which new 
 ideas are slow to enter, continue to pay some small wages 
 to their servants as a retaining fee. If the servants show 
 any signs of rebellion, or indicate their desire to leave, a 
 large party is immediately invited, and, when all the guests 
 have tipped the servants freely, they manage to struggle on 
 for a few months longer. To show how completely they are 
 distorted in all their views, I may relate that I never heard 
 of any lady or gentleman who would admit that their own 
 servants were capable of taking a tip, though the same 
 lady and gentleman, for the last quarter of a century, 
 would rather have lost their conscience than have paid 
 a visit to any of their neighbours without feeing their 
 servants. 
 
 In Fogham, where the old ideas of master and servant 
 have been dissolved, the servants hire the masters. If a 
 man keeps a large hotel, dining-room, music-hall, or any- 
 thing where servants can be employed publicly, they go 
 round and interview the masters, and hire their situations at 
 so much a day. 
 
 I dare say, as a matter of fact, it is one of the various 
 ways devised for the support of crime. 
 
 If a rising reciter or a musician desires to make a fortune, 
 instead of waiting to be hired for an entertainment, he 
 will at once proceed to hire the entertainer, and will pay 
 him a round sum of money without receiving a farthing in 
 return, especially in the case of a duke or duchess. This 
 continues in a thousand and one ways, and these are only 
 samples of the numerous devices to which the Toddlers
 
 resort to prevent any straightforward dealing and to in- 
 capacitate the mind from grasping a fact. 
 
 At last one could enter the refreshment-room, and I was 
 enjoying the luxury of the comparative solitude, when Miss 
 Guy surprised me by coming to have a chat. Lately I had 
 seen very little of her. We had met again and again at 
 dinner-parties, and bowed to each other across rooms, or 
 driven for a few hours in the same carriage. More than 
 once I have returned to my solitary room and been stupid 
 enough to sigh for the years that were lost and the hopes 
 that were murdered. I believed her to be amiable and 
 clever, and I was afraid lest she should discover that I was 
 inclined to banter the Toddlers, so I carefully abstained 
 from criticism. I listened to her praises of Dick, and I 
 extolled his virtues. On this occasion she was simply 
 charming. She was slightly embarrassed for a few moments. 
 The fact was that she was entirely unable to understand 
 why Dick should spend so much time in Paradise Street. I 
 could not refrain from thinking that her simple mind had 
 been poisoned by someone. 
 
 She asked me if it were possible to prevail upon Dick to 
 leave these people alone. She used all the familiar expres- 
 sions of her race and her childhood, namely, that the Gospel 
 said, ' we must always have the poor with us ;' that the 
 'poor were a thriftless, ungrateful class ;' that to give them 
 anything which they had not earned was to degrade and 
 pauperize them. 
 
 I asked : ' Do I understand that to pauperize people 
 means to reduce them to the level of those who are kept by 
 the nation ?' 
 
 She answered : ' I suppose it must, because I know an 
 old coachman of ours always maintained that no person 
 with a grain of self-respect ever went into the workhouse.' 
 
 ' But,' I replied, ' I thought that the workhouse was
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 195 
 
 supported by all the ratepayers to help their unfortunate 
 neighbours, and that it was a recognised form by which the 
 nation did its duty to the poor.' 
 
 ' I believe it is,' she replied eagerly. 
 
 ' Then, am I to understand that when the nation deter- 
 mined to offer help to a large class of the citizens, not out 
 of its own coffers, but at the expense of the ratepayers, it 
 invented a way by which it might destroy the self-respect 
 and usefulness of those who should accept it ?' 
 
 She appeared confused, and said : 
 
 ' It seems so, and yet I am quite sure it cannot be, be- 
 cause our laws are the kindest in the world to the poor. I 
 suppose it is as Guy often tells me, that the poor, with that 
 strange, ungrateful perverseness which marks our Lower 
 Orders, have turned this good into evil, and then blamed 
 the rich for making it so.' 
 
 I remembered my early instructions in Toddle Island, 
 and I bowed to the lady, and again she expressed her wish 
 that I would show Dick it was quite hopeless to attempt to 
 confer any benefit upon this class. Then she hurried off to 
 dance. 
 
 Radiant, fascinating child, little did she dream that her 
 grandmother, two thousand years ago, performed her toilette 
 by accident in some woodland stream, or skulked into a 
 cave in the winter, glad of a sheepskin to keep her from 
 shivering. Still less did it occur to her that twelve months 
 in Paradise Street would take off her veneer and leave her 
 in a state of brutality which would be a disgrace even to her 
 most ancient grandmother. 
 
 I was longing to leave the Sandbanks, with their musty 
 cocoanuts and their modern coat-of-arms, when I met the 
 Rev. John Josiah. I should not have known him but for 
 his recognition. We talked of Cable, and I invited him to 
 lunch with me on the morrow.
 
 196 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 4 
 
 WHEN we returned, Dick was in no mood to be advised 
 with regard to ' the large and perverse class,' for he had 
 ?een the Blacks that day. The man Black had been at 
 work now and again for a few weeks. On that particular 
 morning he had struggled forth to fight for a few hours' 
 employment. He had succeeded ; but as they were paid 
 so much an hour, the foreman of the gang took care to 
 arrange that the strongest men were last in the long row of 
 fellows who had to wheel heavy barrows on narrow planks. 
 It was a clever artifice. The foremen (as, indeed, all 
 managers) are selected for their skill in grinding the weak. 
 They place these strong men with the last two or three 
 barrows, so that the weaker must hold their place in hurry- 
 ing along the planks, or be knocked into the docks below. 
 For two hours, without breakfast, the unfortunate Black 
 managed to do his work ; then he turned dizzy, and either 
 lost his footing or was cannoned by the barrow that followed 
 into the water below. They fished him out, bruised and 
 gasping, and took him home. 
 
 All the horrors of poverty were let loose when Dick 
 arrived in the afternoon, after calling at other places and 
 making many inquiries. I believe that he had formed the 
 plan of writing a history of the people, in order to show 
 that everything comes from the workers. 
 
 When he arrived Black was unconscious, and so he 
 remained till his death, two hours later. 
 
 Could the fair Miss Guy understand for one moment the 
 anguish and despair which overwhelmed Mrs. Black, it 
 would be a revelation in her life as terrible as the apocalypse 
 of truth. Dick was much perturbed, and in answer to my
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 197 
 
 enquiries, after I had grasped the details of the situation, 
 he said : 
 
 1 There are endless streets in that locality with thousands 
 upon thousands of houses, where all the horrors of can- 
 nibalism are continually perpetrated. Even the successful 
 and the strong have a life of hardship and degradation 
 which is not shared by cattle. But once let there be a 
 single flaw, and life becomes a veritable Tophet. If the 
 man is ill, if he is unable to find work, if he is less clever 
 than his neighbours, if the wife or children are ill, or if the 
 price of bread should go up, any one of these things, over 
 which he has no control, scathes his life with horror, and in 
 consequence of this helplessness there are whole streets in 
 which no one has a single hope for the future, either in this 
 life or the other. They are worse than savages, because 
 they are deprived even of the consolation of superstition, 
 and they are more cruel than cannibals, because their 
 instincts are interfered with by law, which has the effect of 
 making their murders methodical. The fabled monsters of 
 the classics were beautiful and benign fairies compared 
 with the daily horrors that are enacted in this part of 
 Fogham.' 
 
 I began to feel very guilty, because I, a foreigner in this 
 large city, had never given a moment's thought to the 
 thousands of people by whose toil and industry I was able 
 to enjoy my sumptuous breakfasts and my luxurious dinners. 
 It is an uncomfortable feeling. 
 
 I wondered whether there were any truth in this state- 
 ment. I almost desired to look into it more closely myself, 
 but I suggested sleep. 
 
 I had thought that Lord Guy was one of the few people 
 in his circle who looked over the charmed hedge occasion- 
 ally, and that he had a dim sort of consciousness that there 
 was another world outside his own.
 
 198 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 Next morning, as Dick was going to Sedgemoor, I went 
 with him, and suggested that he might accompany the 
 ladies out riding, and that I would have a little talk with 
 Lord Guy. 
 
 I found Guy in his smoking-room, with ten or eleven 
 newspapers lying about in a disordered profusion, especially 
 the comic and the illustrated. The Toddlers are exceed- 
 ingly economical of their wit, and if a man is able to invent 
 anything which could make another man laugh, he sells it 
 at so much a letter. There are regular companies who 
 purvey wit and comedy, just as other companies are cele- 
 brated for their sausages, or their pork-pies. In the island 
 everything has to be arranged, and everything has to be 
 paid for, and the man who can do anything for the Nobility 
 of Toddle Island, which will either supply their lack of 
 intelligence or relieve their lives of dreary time, is sure to 
 make a fortune. 
 
 If he has a real talent for buffoonery, it is possible that he 
 may be invited to luncheon with a Peer. A man who wrote 
 comedies in five acts, that were able to keep people from 
 going to sleep for three hours, was on one occasion so far 
 honoured as to receive a silver snuff-box from a Ducal 
 hand. 
 
 Guy had got through his papers, at least he had looked at 
 the pictures. He offered me a cigar, and we were presently 
 at ease. The chief advantage of cigars is that they place 
 man in the condition of happy equilibrium, when he can 
 either discuss the most important business, or afford to 
 dispense with business altogether. 
 
 I referred to the success of the party last night in flatter- 
 ing terms, and Guy said : 
 
 ' Yes, it was pretty good. Sandbank is an awfully lucky 
 beggar, coin without end, and the health and strength of 
 three people. He is always doing something. I suppose it
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 199 
 
 is because the beggar has so much money that he is asked 
 to be the chairman of everything. If a society is brought 
 out to ship children into lands where fresh air is cheap, or 
 to start a company for getting gold out of African tree-roots, 
 or to purchase ivory to make covers for devotional books, it 
 is all the same, Sandbank must be the chairman of the 
 committee ; and I suppose he makes every one of them 
 pay.' 
 
 ' Really,' I replied, ' that is an interesting way of investing 
 one's time and money. But I thought your aristocrat never 
 interfered with commerce.' 
 
 'That is quite true, he never does, but he condescends 
 occasionally to receive a few thousand pounds from com- 
 merce.' 
 
 ' I thought that the chairman of these various societies 
 for religious and philanthropic purposes had to contribute 
 handsomely to their support.' 
 
 ' By no means. The chairman has to guarantee that the 
 company is respectable. Then the old ladies, who had too 
 much money to get married, are formed into a committee. 
 They subscribe in order to have the sole privilege of tearing 
 out each other's eyes in wrangling ; and I should think they 
 are dear at the price.' 
 
 I wished to lead on Lord Guy to the question of the con- 
 dition of the workers, so I said : 
 
 ' I am surprised at the amount of energy which so many 
 Toddlers expend in making the world better everywhere 
 except in the island.' 
 
 ' What do you mean ?' 
 
 I 1 understand that the Toddlers take a keen interest in 
 any nations whose skin has a different colour from their 
 own. For instance, a wealthy Toddler would think nothing 
 of getting fifteen per cent, dividend upon his money, because 
 he succeeds in making a few hundred of his countrymen
 
 200 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 work eighteen hours a day. But if you told him that some 
 black men were being compelled to work fourteen hours a 
 day, with no prospect of a pension, he would very likely 
 form a society to rescue the black from his unhappy lot.' 
 
 ' Oh, that is quite true. We are swamped with organiza- 
 tions for the improvement of people whom we have never 
 seen. It acts upon the imagination. But we never interfere 
 with our own people. You see, we are all free in the island 
 and we have equal rights. We have no slaves to set free. 
 In fact, there is nobody whom we could really help among 
 ourselves.' 
 
 * But suppose a man cannot find food ?' 
 
 ' Ah ! that is awkward. I suppose he must emigrate, or 
 he must go to some place in the island, where there is more 
 work, or perhaps, he ought not to have been born at all.' 
 
 I am afraid I smiled at this last suggestion, and ventured 
 to say : 
 
 ' I am dealing with the case of those alive, rightly or 
 wrongly, and, apparently, thousands of them have great 
 difficulty in finding food, and tens of thousands who find 
 food have neither time nor energy left to find anything 
 else.' 
 
 ' I don't think there are many in that condition. Our 
 people are very happy and contented ; the few who are 
 really miserable have created their own misery. They are 
 agitators, or rebellious in some form or other, and the only 
 process that acts upon them in a wholesome manner is 
 starvation. If they were well fed, holding such views, we 
 should have a riot once a week.' 
 
 I next suggested that a large number of these people 
 seemed to be outside the nation, because they had no share 
 in the Government. 
 
 ' Pardon me,' he said, ' that is a slight mistake. Every 
 householder has a vote, or pretty nearly every one. If they
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 have not, it is because they do not live in better houses. 
 Several of the people are contented to live in such sties that 
 really we can do very little for them.' 
 
 1 1 am surprised to learn this, and I am equally surprised 
 that the wealthy people manifest so little concern for the 
 miseries and the wants, no less than for the rights, of the 
 workers.' 
 
 ' You must not suppose that we do nothing, because you 
 do not see us actually taking part in it. Experience shows 
 us that all these things are better done by agents. We have 
 officers in every district, police and such like, who take care 
 of the poor, and who see as far as possible that they do 
 not kill each other. In fact, I think with more emigration 
 and less reading no country could possibly be better off. 
 Everything works like machinery, and when a thing works 
 as well as that, it is manifest that there cannot be much left 
 to desire.' 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 I TURNED away despondent from Sedgemoor after my con- 
 versation with Lord Guy, for I had hoped to learn some- 
 thing from him. I was thinking over a remark of Dick's, 
 that the Toddler's mind possesses many qualities, but it 
 never possessed a fact, when I met Dick, alone on horse- 
 back. He was greatly excited. Whilst they were riding, 
 Miss Guy's horse had shied and she had sustained a severe 
 fall. He had procured a carriage, in which he had placed 
 her and Lady Guy, and he was riding in advance to prepare 
 for their arrival. Great consternation followed. I was 
 unable to be of any help, therefore I returned to my lodgings 
 when I had learnt that she had received no serious injuries. 
 The severe shock and fright were the causes of anxiety.
 
 202 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 However, it greatly broke in upon our daily life. Many 
 engagements had to be abandoned. Dick was constantly at 
 Sedgemoor, and he no longer wandered among the people 
 who had committed the unpardonable crime of being 
 poor. 
 
 The accident succeeded in bringing out a different side of 
 Dick's nature. His devotion almost became a by-word 
 amongst a few of the wits, who harmonized their life of doing 
 nothing by inventing a creed of believing nothing. The 
 event threw such a disturbing element into my thoughts that 
 this entry of my diary is almost as soberly real as if Dick 
 himself had written it. 
 
 However, the Rev. John Josiah came to lunch, and, as 
 Dick was away, I asked questions and allowed him to tell 
 me of the oddities of the island. He had come up to 
 attend some annual gathering and shake off the dust of 
 Cable. I enquired after old friends there in detail, and 
 smiled at the smart sketches which Mr. Josiah drew of their 
 foibles. 
 
 I then told him of the horrors of Paradise Street, and 
 asked him how he accounted for such degradation. He 
 answered : 
 
 ' There are many causes at work, and some of them are 
 so secret that to name them would provoke a smile. For 
 instance, most of the nation has been corrupted by a fetish 
 worship of the Bible, which prevents correct thinking and 
 creates that false sentiment mistaken for morality. Senti- 
 mental prejudice and sham morals, when backed up by 
 power and public opinion, are a pestilence.' 
 
 ' Is there any explanation of this blind reverence for the 
 Bible.' 
 
 ' Yes. It is the mature superstition of paganism trans- 
 ferred to the pious records of different ages. It is very 
 strange that this book is made up of fragments badly trans-
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 203 
 
 lated, often interpolated, bearing evidences of the passion 
 and prejudice of the different ages : yet our folk call it the 
 Bible, as if it were written by a single man, with Deity look- 
 ing over his shoulder to guide his hand.' 
 
 ' How ridiculous ! Can no teaching correct notions which 
 defy all common-sense ?' 
 
 ' None. The Bible is " inspired " and that settles all. I 
 laugh when I see sucking doves, who believe that God, 
 wrote every word of the Bible in Toddle dialect, pondering 
 over a contradiction, and then hear them furiously apologiz- 
 ing for God's private character and personal mistakes. 
 Yesterday was the meeting of the Electric Guild, of which I 
 am a member, and we had a paper read by Brother Searchum 
 on " The Damned Fathers." It was a striking paper, and 
 proved clearly that the Fathers were all damned because they 
 had no fixed creeds and no fixed scriptures. For in the 
 early centuries every man made his own creeds and his own 
 Bible, and as none of them agreed with our creeds and 
 Bible, which are the right ones, those poor beggars must be 
 damned.' 
 
 ' What do you mean by " damned " ?' 
 
 ' It is a word, invented a few centuries ago, to express the 
 future state of the majority of mankind. It means that the 
 poor beggars can't die, and can't live ; but exist in a con- 
 dition where they yell all day, and eat fire all night.' 
 
 ' I suppose it is a relic of the former cannibalism of the 
 islanders ?' 
 
 ' Not quite. It is too awfully fierce and too unspeakably 
 cruel to come from any source but one.' 
 
 ' What source is that ?' 
 
 'The theological instinct. There is no word in the 
 Bible with that " damned " meaning attached to it ; but it 
 is in general use now, and the mob of all ranks would 
 rather give up their private sins than part from it. I
 
 204 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 imagine Brother Searchum's paper will make a stir. Fancy 
 the poor old Fathers being damned because they did not 
 use the right Bible !' 
 
 ' But what did they use ?' 
 
 ' One man one sort, and another, another. The fact is, 
 they made their own. Between the years 200 and 400 
 there were fifteen or more catalogues of Divine books. 
 Six agree with ours, but nine do not. Suppose one of the 
 nine had won, we should have had a different set of writings 
 called the Bible. Three of the lists, including that of the 
 Council of Laodicea, omitted Revelation ; another omits 
 Hebrews and Revelation, and so on.' 
 
 ' The Bible, then, grew up very much like other books, it 
 seems ?' 
 
 ' Searchum showed how utterly absurd it is that one age 
 should collect a few scattered letters, leaving out one or 
 two, as the case might be, and then that a following age 
 should believe that each word was of Divine origin, and 
 that the form was revealed by a special inspiration.' 
 
 ' Truly, that is a merry jest ; it looks like Truth standing 
 on her head. Where do the Toddlers get their love of form ?' 
 
 ' From Moses, I think. They repeat his Commandments 
 every Sunday ; but seldom read the Sermon of Christ. 
 The religion of the islanders may be divided into two sects 
 the formal, who believe in Moses ; the informal, who 
 believe in themselves. Moses, plus the Eastern despot, is 
 gorgeous, and takes the Toddler by storm. He feels better 
 when he has taught his children that the Lord came down 
 from heaven, and stood and said, " Take gold and silver 
 and brass, and blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen, 
 and goats' hair and rams' skins dyed red, and badgers' skins 
 and Shittim wood." ' 
 
 ' I see. Really, it is astonishing what curious beliefs 
 these people have ! No wonder they have no morality !'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 205 
 
 ' True. To repeat Commandments every Sunsday which 
 the most devout worshipper has no intention of observing, 
 and to recite a code which everybody denies out of church, 
 is terrible beyond words. Society is but a heap of sawdust 
 saturated with prejudice.' 
 
 I marvelled that there was no basis of exact morals, no 
 principles from which they could be deduced. The Rev. 
 J. Josiah said : 
 
 ' In looking for a basis of morals, we are often told that 
 there are no first principles of exact morals ; but, at any 
 rate, there is one first principle self-interest I know it 
 may be argued "that just as " the point " of geometry has 
 no existence in nature, so self-interest has no existence in 
 human life, because every man is too intimately bound up 
 with his race to completely sever either his advantages or 
 his losses from those of his fellow-men. Yet just as " a 
 point " is thinkable, so self-interest is thinkable ; and though 
 neither of them is found in the universe, yet each has been 
 made a fraudulent basis of an artificial system which threatens 
 to grip the human race by the throat, until man shall arrive 
 at a stage of growth where there are no mathematics and 
 no morals.' 
 
 ' If self-interest is the only basis of morals, no wonder 
 they have long since toppled over into the mud !' 
 
 'I can think of no other basis. Take any of the Ten 
 Commandments, and you will find they are regarded as 
 binding, in proportion as they appeal to the Toddler's self- 
 interest.' 
 
 ' Poor Toddlers !' 
 
 I wished Dick could have been at the lunch, for Mr. 
 Josiah had much to tell of interest ; and I cannot deal with 
 these subtleties of theology, but Mr. Josiah revelled in 
 them, and in the fact that he was the most unorthodox 
 Masker in Toddle Island. He certainly handled their
 
 206 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 sacred books very freely, though with an earnest desire to 
 find a meaning in them. He thought the Ten Command- 
 ments by far the oldest part of the Bible, for they clearly 
 come from a period when woman had not lost her position 
 in the human race. These Commandments, like all religion, 
 are man's attempt to make a god in his own image ; and 
 the universal jealousy and undying revenge jihown _in tji_ 
 Ten Commandments prove, without doubt, that women 
 chiefly compiled them. He said that he was going to read 
 
 ^^-^ ~ N -^~X7~- X ^-' T -i 
 
 a paper on TVIan s Lit 
 
 paper on '"Man's Life History' as shown in Genesis. 
 This was his view : 
 
 We know that the early chapters of Genesis are an 
 allegory, but what it means we do not know. It might 
 intend to teach us that the Adam was man complete, both 
 sexes in one, which may have been shared by all animals 
 then as it is by some now. Eve marks the next distinct 
 stage the separation of sex. This broke life into the 
 beauty of yearning and the horror of indulgence. A long 
 tumultuous period succeeded. Then the new animal Eve, 
 whose own existence was an epoch in development, acquired 
 a new form of consciousness, communicated it to the slower 
 sex, and, lo ! the Human Animal for the first time could 
 blush ; he had acquired a new faculty a kind of reason 
 and a rudimentary moral sense. 
 
 The laborious ages toiled after each other. Man lavished 
 his energies in various directions in ape-like cruelties, in 
 search of sex, in perversions of reason, in ideals of moral 
 grandeur. 
 
 Another Eve appeared at Nazareth. She reverted to 
 type ; and just as the first Eve arose from a state where sex 
 was not separate, so the second Eve gave birth to One who 
 combined both sexes, and who offers a life where intelligence 
 is intuitive, and reason and the moral sense are laid aside, 
 and the new body is free from sex.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 207 
 
 I cannot do Mr. Josiah justice in a summary, but he 
 regarded the sex difficulty as settled, and maintained that 
 man comes from an asexual condition, and is advancing to 
 another asexual condition that inorganic nature reposes 
 because sex is absent ; but in the evolution from lower 
 forms, the division of labour demanded sex Then came 
 the struggle of life, with its false moralities and its ever- 
 yawning hell. Generations tossed in the nets which other 
 generations had woven ; every age elaborated a system of 
 hanging for the next age. Then the New Man appeared 
 perfect, without sex. He was neither a man nor a woman ; 
 but the Man, in whom both sexes met, and there was no 
 struggle. He heralded a life where men and women neither 
 marry nor are given in marriage. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Sir Cloud Drummer had stayed away on mountain 
 summits collecting flowers and writing papers upon snow 
 crystals. He was one of those awkward men who do not 
 fit into Fogham society, because it was impossible to ask 
 him to an ordinary gathering without recognising that they 
 had present a man of such attainments and ability that he 
 must at least be respected. On the other hand, no chronicler, 
 living or dead, could have told you anything of his grand- 
 father. 
 
 Not to have a grandfather, in Fogham, is much worse 
 than being a curate or an atheist, and is nearly as bad as to 
 be without money. 
 
 Poor old Fogham ! I smile as I think over the scenes in 
 which I took part, and sometimes when I am falling asleep 
 I feel confident that the whole island had been set up as a 
 gigantic pantomime for my amusement. The thin disguises 
 through which one saw every day ; the patent falsehoods 
 that one accepted without question : the supposed secrets 
 of individual life that were talked of openly round the table
 
 208 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 of a club whilst the man was smoking in a corner of the 
 same room ; the imitation morality, that mysterious mosaic 
 of small stones which one age has thrown at another ; their 
 garters, ribbons, spurs, and drums, mighty regiments, and 
 militant priests, which all started from an Ass ; their treat- 
 ment of other- world mysteries, the secret quackeries of 
 various superstitions which lack the coherence of Pagan 
 mythology, and have no more meaning or interest than the 
 dust in one's own coffin ten thousand such things flutter 
 around me in the^ sacred hall of memory, either late at night 
 or in the delicious half-awakening of morning. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 As the days rolled on our life became normal Miss Guy 
 had recovered. There was a tradition that the spring 
 sunshine had been seen in some of the outskirts of Fogham. 
 Sir Cloud Drummer had arrived. I secured a note from 
 Lord Bootts, who seemed to think that he was engaged in 
 some scientific investigation, because he had given me 
 notes of introduction to three specialists. I had obtained 
 an appointment, and was looking forward to seeing Sir 
 Cloud Drummer to-morrow morning. Dick had degenerated 
 for the first time for some weeks. He had gone to see the , 
 people, who have no grandfathers, no money, no land, no / 
 religion, no God, in Paradise Street. 
 
 When he returned from his long visit in the neighbour- 
 hood of Paradise Street, he seemed dejected. He had 
 provided for Mrs. Black and her children, as he thought. 
 But not knowing the ways of the island, and the many 
 devices for ensuring the misery of the poor, he had taken a 
 small house so that the unhappy woman might live in one
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 209 
 
 or two rooms, and let the other two, until he should be 
 able to provide for her children. She had let her rooms 
 during the last five or six weeks, apparently five or six 
 times. In Fogham there is a rambling crowd who possess 
 the rapidity of flight and the devouring appetite of locusts. 
 I suppose they are the descendants of the primary savages 
 who used to scour the island, and end their pleasure trips 
 in a war-dance round the bare bones of the foe. They are 
 satisfied if they can lodge for one week or one night with- 
 out payment, and then flee; or if they can succeed in 
 obtaining scraps of food by the lying tricks which they have 
 reduced to the most subtle art by generations of gathering 
 instinct. A robbery just holds the same place in their 
 lives as a Roman triumph or promotion at the Bar in well- 
 regulated minds. 
 
 Dick told me all this in detail, and I am bound to say 
 that I shared with him in his astonishment that such a 
 class of people was allowed to hang on the skirts of 
 civilization like thick mud, every grain of which was a 
 germ of pestilence. 
 
 Mrs. Black had derived no benefit from letting her 
 lodgings. On the contrary her rooms had grown dirty and 
 unfit for tenants. The landlord had threatened her with 
 proceedings unless she put the whole house into such a 
 condition as she found it. Her rent had to be paid 
 punctually every week. I really thought for a few minutes 
 that Dick must have seen something that had turned his 
 brain. 
 
 It was in every way such a burlesque. Here was a 
 foreigner trying to help a feeble woman in a desperate 
 struggle for mere life in a seething ocean that was full of 
 devouring sharks. And when by holding out a friendly 
 hand he had succeeded in placing her on a plank of safety, 
 first one fiend in human shape and then another attacked 
 
 14
 
 2io TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 her, knocking her off the plank into the boiling waters 
 again. Then these officials walked off with the plank which 
 was not theirs, and smilingly told her they were going to 
 take it to rescue somebody worse than herself. It was 
 eminently farcical. But Dick, with that short-sightedness of 
 his, will not see the burlesque. 
 
 I had to give up banter, for Dick sat mournfully gazing 
 upon the fire, instead of dressing for dinner. The attrac- 
 tion of misery was to him a true case of like to like. It is 
 a horrible thought that a man never escapes from his 
 experience. Treat him as a puppet, or a slave, or a martyr 
 for the first twenty years of his life, and he will never be 
 able to flee from it. He does not wear his experience as a 
 slave wears his fetters, but it is written upon the living cells 
 of the brain. The only lamp which a man has to cast light 
 upon the miseries of the world is that of early experience. It 
 becomes his lamp for ever. The reason so few of us are 
 able to comprehend the miseries around us is because we 
 have either made a lamp incapable of shedding light, or we 
 hold it in such wise .that we see only the black time 
 shadows in an inverted position. 
 
 I am writing this veritable history of an unknown country 
 fully recognising this fact. Dick's experience was a lamp 
 from which intense light radiated upon all the fixed condi- 
 tions of human life. He knew only the fixed conditions, 
 such as struggling, poverty, sorrow and misery. The 
 artificial conditions were unknown to him, by which the 
 privileged classes live on the degraded masses and call their 
 gilded cannibalism culture. 
 
 My own lamp of experience gave a lurid ray upon which 
 I could never rely. It was marked by the special charac- 
 teristic, that it seemed to burn best bottom upwards. 
 Therefore, I am accustomed to look on all men and things 
 in that inverted condition which drives away our tears and
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 211 
 
 creates laughter My few readers must take their choice 
 between these two lamps, and either weep away an early 
 existence, or laugh themselves into mellow old age. 
 
 When Dick had gazed upon the fire, and watched ' the 
 resurrection troops ' stealing in procession from the 
 sepulchral past, and when he had anointed these early dead 
 friends which to most of us are only faded memories 
 with the bitter tears of manhood, he was able to talk about 
 the actual experience of the day. 
 
 I asked him what he had done for Mrs. Black and her 
 children. 
 
 He replied : ' I found her, if possible, in a worse condi- 
 tion than on the first day I saw her. Then she was poor 
 enough, wretched enough, helpless and starving; but she 
 was at one with her surroundings. But when her husband 
 was buried, and she had a home some hundred times better 
 than that of any one of her former friends, she became a 
 mark for every species of slander and cruelty. Every 
 woman with a brutal husband envied this widow. Every 
 woman with one miserable room and one chair, no table 
 and no bed, whose children slept on rags, envied this 
 woman who had a bed for her children. They also invented 
 every possible slander because she owed all this to some 
 unknown foreigner of the other sex. Her children were 
 worried in the streets. She was hooted when she showed 
 herself out of doors. My plan completely failed, and I 
 have spent this day in trying to place the case in the hands 
 of some philanthropic natives, who would know how to 
 help her.' 
 
 After Dick had detailed his difficulties I began to regret 
 more deeply than ever that he had undertaken to help this 
 family. The money was nothing. I had insisted upon 
 paying all the expenses of this trip, and Dick, of course, 
 was free to do what he liked. But the extraordinary
 
 212 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 company into which it was leading him, the painful reflections 
 which it awoke, seemed to me to do harm to my friend, 
 and very little good to anyone else. With some difficulty I 
 prevailed upon him to dress for Lady Vera Falseacre's 
 ball. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ALL these gatherings are so much alike that I need not 
 describe this. A ball is an invention either to get rid of 
 your own money, or to rouse envy, hatred, and malice in 
 the hearts of your neighbours. The success of a ball is 
 measured by the number of carriages that block the streets, 
 and the number of dances that the prettiest young lady is 
 able to crowd in between night and dawn. Lady Vera 
 Falseacre's drawing-room was one of the landmarks of social 
 life in Fogham. Her name indicated by a peculiar law of 
 contradiction that she owned her vast property in her own 
 right. By the judicious arrangement of marriages in former 
 generations that property extended many miles in more 
 than one district in the island. She had so many houses 
 that she seldom spent more than a month in the same 
 mansion. 
 
 The aristocracy of Toddle Island have long believed that 
 change of scene promotes longevity because it prevents 
 thought ; therefore an old aristocratic family takes care to 
 have a town house, a country house, an old castle, and two 
 or three shooting-boxes, so that they are able to leave any 
 one of them the moment it becomes the least dull and likely 
 to permit reflection. 
 
 To-night there was an unusual stream of carriages. Lady 
 Vera Falseacre had invited some foreign princess, and
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 213 
 
 Fogham had come out in all its splendour of paint and 
 nakedness. There were the usual jostling and clamour of a 
 market-place, and all the chatter of six ladies' schools at a 
 railway-station. 
 
 I was not prepared for such a blaze of beauty, art, and 
 elegance. I discovered, when once I had succeeded in 
 struggling into the crowded saloon, that Lady Vera False- 
 acre had a distinguished presence, and had reached the 
 immortal age of women, which is fixed between thirty and 
 sixty, at which she will remain until the obituary notice in 
 the morning paper. She had been left a widow, years 
 before, with no children, and with the control of a fortune 
 that made her the envy of all who knew her. These estates 
 would pass, by some circuitous route known only in the 
 island, to a remote relative. Her rooms were crowded with 
 the heirlooms of her ancestors the spoliage of long genera- 
 tions of plunder. 
 
 Her vast wealth, instead of declining, had increased by 
 the discovery of slate quarries on one estate, and coal mines 
 on another, and by the absolute necessity of conducting 
 a railway through a long, barren, sandy tract, which was 
 called hers because no one had disputed the matter when 
 some wily steward annexed it. All the brilliant jewels, 
 handed down from generations, glittered upon her person, 
 and she moved like a pillar of light. 
 
 Our most distinguished guest was a princess from the 
 Isle of Harkaway. Around her were clustered a group 
 of young men, whose one desire in life was to be extrava- 
 gant, and who would have lost their right hands for a 
 new sensation. Eaten up with the desire for distinction in 
 the vain years of youth, they clustered round the dark 
 Princess, whose jewellery was second only to that of Lady 
 Vera Falseacre. 
 
 The Princess of Harkaway had been brought to Fogham
 
 214 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 with the same object that caused ostriches, savage lions, and 
 other such objects of natural history to be imported. 
 
 Fogham was weary of the pale-faced figures that formed 
 its society, who had recourse to every process, whether of 
 paint or jewellery, of dress or undress, in order to delude 
 themselves for a few hours by gas-light. It was the nearest 
 approach to a new sensation of which they were capable, to 
 have a dark-skinned, bright-eyed princess in the ball room, 
 especially as tradition affirmed that her grandfather had 
 lived very much like a tiger. 
 
 In fact, the sentimental young Toddlers who lounged 
 round the Princess, would as soon have met the tiger as the 
 grandfather in the jungle that was the native home of both. 
 On a lucky occasion, some old barbarians had found a rare 
 diamond, and, with savage love for finery, had cherished it, 
 and polished it, and carved it in wondrous fashion, till, by 
 some process of Royal theft, it had passed to the King of 
 the island. Now it was of European fame, and for that 
 diamond more than one Toddler would have bartered an 
 estate that would keep ten thousand people. 
 
 During the evening I told Lord Bootts I felt gratified 
 that Dick and I had been invited to so brilliant a gathering. 
 My pride received a fall when Lord Bootts playfully sug- 
 gested that it was a reception of distinguished foreigners. 
 Notwithstanding all the articles of card-board philosophy, 
 which I have studied and practised for some years, I am 
 afraid that 1 did something unpardonably like a blush, when 
 I reflected that my sole right to be in this brilliant gathering 
 fell immeasurably short of that of the Princess from Hark- 
 away, whose grandfather probably would have used her 
 diamonds for knocking down cocoanuts, or for preparing 
 his next-door neighbour for dinner. 
 
 The crowd gathered, and space was annihilated. Lady 
 Vera Falseacre had commissioned the tradesmen on a most
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 215 
 
 extravagant scale. Two thousand pounds had been spent 
 on flowers. The rarest delicacies were provided for the 
 banquet on the same lavish scale. Fruits that would 
 naturally be in season a month hence were in abundance. 
 All the world was said to be present. 
 
 I had often wished to see the world of Fogham, and I 
 was glad that at the last moment I had not allowed Dick to 
 remain at home. There we were, both of us, with our tiny 
 ' lamps of experience ' to throw their flickering light on these 
 pantomimic splendours. I wondered whether Dick had 
 forgotten Mrs. Black and her anguish, as he gazed upon the 
 brilliant and savage Princess, or received the gracious 
 favours which Lady Vera Falseacre showered indiscrimin- 
 ately. 
 
 As usual on these occasions, Dick and I soon parted. 
 He joined the Guys, and I was pleased to note that Miss 
 Guy seemed to have completely recovered from her accident, 
 and to be more than ever brilliant. Lord Gooseberry had 
 laid aside the care of state, and was in the merriest possible 
 mood. He informed me with evident satisfaction that the 
 Government of the country had never been so stable. One 
 of their most noted generals had succeeded in outwitting an 
 African chief, and had hoisted the flag of Toddle Island on 
 the forest tree, five minutes before the German army, con- 
 sisting of six professors and one soldier, had reached the 
 scene of action. Lord Gooseberry chuckled. 
 
 ' Now,' he said, ' on the next occasion when we act that 
 little charade, which our people call an election, we shall 
 refer to the ability and skill of our general in securing the 
 cocoanut before any other nation could lay claim to it. We 
 shall invite the African chief over here, and console him 
 with three dinners a day, or by placing him on view in one 
 of our music-halls, and then we shall ride to power with the 
 cries of popular applause. There is no Government like
 
 2i6 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 " popular Government " ; it is the easiest thing in the world 
 to gull the People.' 
 
 ' Will your lordship explain to me how it is you should 
 allow your time to be wasted, and the Government to be 
 deluded, by the Grooms ?' 
 
 ' Hush !' said his lordship. ' There are several of those 
 fellows here to-night, and some of them are very praise- 
 worthy. You see, we are almost bound to have them. We 
 pick out the best and create them Jockeys, but we cannot 
 absorb all of them at once. It would give us a sort of 
 indigestion which would be fatal to our " constitution." 
 Then they are very useful, for they will fag half a century, 
 if now and then one drops a hint that they will receive a 
 title.' 
 
 I replied that I had not thought of it in that light, and 
 that if his lordship did not think it derogatory to the dignity 
 of Lady Vera Falseacre, I should be glad to know one or 
 two of these Grooms. His lordship promised to introduce 
 me. He inquired about the health of Dick, and then 
 said : 
 
 ' It is a pity that a young man of his position and ability 
 should throw away every chance.' 
 
 I failed to see to what his lordship referred. Then he 
 told me in the blandest manner that there was a rumour 
 that Dick belonged to some secret conspiracy for the destruc- 
 tion of all society. 
 
 He continued : ' Our motto is to let things be ; and as 
 you look round upon a brilliant gathering like this, I think 
 we shall have your approval of our sagacity. This scene is 
 repeated, in the same form and magnitude, in many places 
 night after night for months, and you cannot deny that it is 
 more like the festal hall of the gods than a workshop in the 
 mill of Time.' 
 
 I left Lord Gooseberry as early as possible. I was weak
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 217 
 
 enough to be disturbed for a moment. I saw that his lord- 
 ship was of opinion that difficulty might arise and prevent 
 Dick's marriage. 
 
 I could imagine nothing more deplorable. 
 
 He had awakened from a long trance into life, and had 
 again become human, and his character had grown and 
 developed with the growth of his attachment for this 
 girl. 
 
 I was speaking to Mr. Dragg, to whom Lord Gooseberry 
 had introduced me as a respectable member of the House 
 of Grooms, when I saw Professor Crutch. I expressed my 
 surprise to Mr. Dragg at finding him in such a brilliant 
 assembly. 
 
 He remarked : ' You see, their profession brings them 
 very near the dignity of statesmen. But Professor Crutch 
 once rendered a distinguished service to Lady Vera False- 
 acre by giving her the only specimen of a strange weed that 
 grows nearer the sky than any plant in the world. There 
 was a learned discussion about it in her ladyship's drawing- 
 room, and a full notice of it in the press, which said that 
 Lady Vera Falseacre had accomplished more in the realm 
 of practical science than all the professional botanists of two 
 centuries. She had got an Alpine weed, which grew so 
 near the sky that its leaves reflected the colour of the 
 heavens, and this she had naturalized by her womanly tact 
 and her inborn scientific faculty, so that it could be seen in 
 a drawing-room at Fogham, reflecting the cloudless blue of 
 its pure home. 
 
 ' Now this, you see, greatly pleased Lady Vera Falseacre. 
 She has wealth and position, jewellery and genealogy, and 
 all that, but no one suspected her of knowing any science, 
 and, therefore, she added a new gem to her crown. Some 
 foreign ambassadors called upon her, on behalf of their 
 blear - eyed countrymen, who were engaged in making
 
 218 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 complete editions of botany, and wanted a sketch of this 
 flower to make the frontispiece of a hundredth volume. 
 
 4 1 respected Crutch very much after that little event. 
 He got no honour out of it. But you will easily understand 
 why Crutch is here ; in fact, we think that if the present 
 Government remains in office, Crutch will be the man to 
 have a title when the next batch of brewers and bookmakers 
 are presented for that honour.' 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 I LEFT Mr. Dragg to find Professor Crutch. I rather took 
 to the man. I pursued him into the refreshment-room ; it 
 was easy to keep him in sight, because the size and shape 
 of his head were both conspicuous in this gathering. 
 
 I said I should be greatly pleased if Professor Crutch 
 would help me to understand the respective positions of the 
 Grooms and the Jockeys. I thought that in a gathering of 
 this kind they would not have mixed. 
 
 The Professor's eyes twinkled as he said : 
 
 4 Ordinarily they do not mix, but, you see, there are a few 
 of them who are always ripening off for the Aristocracy, and 
 on all such occasions as this they are invited that the Peers 
 may see them, Then, after a few secret enquiries as to 
 their banking account, they are placed on a list to enrich 
 the peerage of the island.' 
 
 I asked him if he thought that the Grooms were in any 
 way useful to the State. 
 
 ' I suppose they are. Many of them believe in the wind- 
 bag profession, as a friend of mine used to say. Occasion- 
 ally they do make a law by accident, which does not contra- 
 dict another law and which is workable.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 219 
 
 ' Are you, then, continually engaged in forming new laws 
 in this country ?' ^ 
 
 ' Certainly ; the poor think they will be benefited by fresh 
 laws, and, as the rich know by experience that no law makes 
 any difference to them, it is a harmless sop which is given 
 to the poor. These Grooms come to Fogham and hold a 
 solemn conference, and if you were compelled to read the 
 speeches you would deride every Groom you meet, for they 
 devote their nights to discussing the most extravagant 
 subjects. We have a dependency thousands of miles away 
 from the Capital of the island, and last night was spent in 
 debating whether it was permissible to whitewash the statue 
 of a former naval commander, who gained a victory near that 
 station. Now, the Stockstillers do not believe in disturbing 
 anything, even the soot and grime which settle upon our 
 heroes; therefore they took hours to set forth the various 
 arguments in favour of leaving the statue as it is. Carbon 
 is good for preserving it, they said. To whitewash his 
 statue is to cast a reflection upon his character. To remove 
 the covering of ages, said a third, is to interfere with the 
 order of nature, and to cast a slur upon the inscrutable 
 mysteries of Providence. 
 
 ' When they had finished their arguments, the Runaway 
 party answered every one of these points and demanded a 
 vote. 
 
 ' Then, somewhere about dawn, they hurried home, and 
 the only thing upon which they could congratulate them- 
 selves was, that they had had a nightmare without the 
 trouble of going to bed.'
 
 220 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 PROFESSOR CRUTCH had scarcely finished his account of the 
 Grooms when an old man, in a peculiar attire invented to dis- 
 close the legs of the wearer, entered for some refreshment. 
 
 ' Mark that old gentleman,' said Professor Crutch. ' You 
 see his happy smile. He is the Lord Boss of Settledown, 
 and rules the Unoiled Machine in some country district ; 
 but he spends much of his time in Fogham, and he 
 supports that sweet smile upon a childish belief in angels." 
 
 Then I remembered, of course, that Professor Crutch had 
 special difficulty on this subject. 
 
 He continued : ' He does not know me from the primal 
 Anthropoid, which probably he would call Adam ; but some 
 years ago we had a long discussion in a magazine, and 
 I tried to pin him on points of detail, such as the colour of 
 the angels' wings, and whether their feathers were longer in 
 their youth or in their old age. With all the sweet confi- 
 dence of the nursery, he brushed aside these scientific 
 points, and was quite satisfied to take his angels on trust.' 
 
 ' Did you triumph ?' 
 
 ' He triumphed, of course, in the opinion of his country- 
 men. The majority of the Toddlers never give a moment's 
 thought to either angels or demons. They believe in both, 
 and in the shapes of both, just as they did when they were 
 three years old.' 
 
 We went back to the ball-room, where we found brilliance 
 and mirth. The hour of midnight was gone, and if these 
 people had been roused from a refreshing slumber in order 
 to greet the dawn of the world's jubilee, they could not have 
 been more enthusiastically expectant or energetic. The 
 whole room was a magnificent kaleidoscope of human
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 221 
 
 figures, and had that appearance of endless gaiety and 
 misdirected effort which the history of this world would 
 present to any superior being, could he look down the tube 
 of sixty thousand years, and see the national wars and 
 national rejoicings of the millions who provide misery or 
 merriment in every generation. Such morbid reflections were 
 arrested by Professor Crutch asking me if I had devoted 
 much attention to the fragmentary forms of old religions 
 which still survive in the island. 
 
 I replied : ' It is a subject in which my friend is more 
 interested than myself. I have heard something about the 
 patchwork of the forms of worship.' 
 
 ' Patchwork it is indeed, beyond the belief of man. All 
 these different tribes, which go to make up the nation, 
 brought with them a little bit of their own superstition. The 
 singularity of their religion is, that though they contradict 
 each other on all other points, they agree in their caricature 
 of the devil. They all agree in representing him as a 
 deformed, half-brutalized, clever, ubiquitous animal, wearing 
 hojns and hoofo They refer to this as their purest religion, 
 entirely unaware that they are indebted to Paganism even 
 for the caricature. The Christian's devil is the Pagan 
 Nimrod deified.' 
 
 I made some vague remark about the persistence of 
 superstition, which fired the Professor instantly. 
 
 He said : ' It is a case of the fixity of instincts, which we 
 observe in all forms of animal life. Within a certain margin 
 creatures can direct their own habits ; but there is a point, 
 after countless generations, where fixity supervenes, and the 
 race and the individual are alike powerless to shake off the 
 fetter. In many ways it is humiliating to belong to the 
 human race. Their development is neither beautiful nor 
 wise. All through, the history of man has been a struggle 
 between growth and murder. The races that grew became
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 the prey of the races that murdered, until plunder was 
 exalted to a virtue and massacre became self-preservation.' 
 
 ' Really, Professor Crutch, you horrify me. Do you wish 
 me to understand seriously that this brilliant gathering, 
 where the loveliest forms flash in the dance to the sound of 
 music that would have ravished the ears of the most cultured 
 nation two thousand years ago, is not a proof of progress, 
 but a brilliant stroke of murder ?' 
 
 ' I certainly mean it, and am only amazed that you should 
 doubt my commonplace remark. Why, it is the history of 
 all the world, just as the beautiful coral reefs owe their 
 loveliness to the death and massacre of ten thousand 
 thousand generations ; so is everything in the world, espe- 
 cially everything human. You have only to consider for a 
 moment how these people have received every advantage, 
 and you will recognise that they owe it to some form of 
 steady, silent massacre, which, for refined torture and 
 methodized cruelty, was never equalled on the scaffold. 
 Their dresses are made in the attics and cells of_ this 
 city at the price of the health and the_ eyesight ^2>f 
 numerous women anci children, for whom some of these 
 flippant young ladies will probably pray next Sunsday ; and 
 even whilst they are here, enjoying warmth, and society, and 
 refreshments, the very coachmen who brought them sit 
 shivering on their boxes in a condition which a Siberian 
 wolf would not endure for five minutes ; and they expect 
 these men to be profoundly grateful for their slavery.' 
 
 I had to recognise that there was much truth in what the 
 Professor said, though it cuts both ways ; and if he were to 
 pursue his arguments still further, he might arrive at the 
 conclusion that the Aristocratic class is a natural product of 
 natural laws. I state this because if once the Aristocracy 
 could feel that they had that assured position which belongs 
 to planetary motion, gravitation, and all the other fixed
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 223 
 
 grandeurs of nature, they might walk with a still firmer step 
 over the bones of their fellow-men across the gangway of 
 Time. 
 
 The Right Rev. the Lord Boss of Settledown smiled 
 benignly upon the dance, as if in the whirling forms of 
 beauty he discovered some new proof of his favourite theory 
 of angels. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 NEXT morning I arose conscious of a pleasant sensation, 
 which often comes in early life, when we have fallen asleep, 
 dreaming over some delightful event that is to occur on the 
 morrow. I was to see Sir Cloud Drummer. So I looked 
 up the entries in my diary in order that I might remember 
 what Professor Gritt and the rest had said about Married- 
 woman-madness . 
 
 There was a brighter light than usual, as if one might 
 expect the sun to shine soon, though a long experience 
 had told me that it never did shine in Fogham. I arrived 
 punctually in Myrtle Square. 
 
 I put before Sir Cloud Drummer as clearly as possible 
 what Professor Gritt had told me. 
 
 He faltered at the sound of Professor Gritt's name, 
 evidently in doubt whether he should denounce him as a 
 quack, or declare him to be at the head of European 
 science. 
 
 I informed him that Professor Gritt was going to read a 
 paper before a Science Congress in Germany. Then Sir 
 Cloud felt at ease, and remembered that he was a rising man. 
 
 I continued : ' The points that I particularly wish to 
 know, Sir Cloud Drummer, are whether there is such a 
 specific disease as the madness of married women in the
 
 224 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 island, whether you think it is on the increase, and whether 
 you regard it as curable ?' 
 
 ' Your first and last points,' he replied, ' may be answered 
 instantly. There is such a disease, and it is not curable. 
 Whether it is on the increase or not, requires far more 
 careful examination. I incline to the opinion that it is, and 
 possibly it will have its run and disappear like everything 
 else connected with the race of man.' 
 
 ' That indeed would be good news, Sir Cloud Drummer.' 
 
 ' It has its painful side ; it includes all that is good as 
 well as all that is bad. You see, we live in a spheroid 
 condition. Our earth is spheroidal ; a great many other 
 worlds are in the same condition, and the arrangement 
 seems to entail of necessity that everything which we have, 
 and know, and suffer, should also go round. Ultimately it 
 comes upon us for a period, and then disappears till the 
 next time.' 
 
 ' Do you think there is some absolute connection between 
 motherhood and this madness ?' 
 
 ' Well, there may be. But where did you get that idea 
 from ?' 
 
 ' I think it was one of the solutions offered by Professor 
 Crutch.' 
 
 ' Fancy Crutch getting an idea so near truth as that ! It 
 is remarkable how Crutch in his endless speculations seems 
 occasionally to kick the threshold of a practical truth. 
 Fancy Crutch knowing that ! If he had had the strict 
 methodical training necessary for general practice, Crutch 
 would have attained to eminence.' 
 
 ' Then you think there is some real bond between these 
 two conditions ?' 
 
 'Well, yes, there may be. But I think the bond is much 
 deeper. It arises probably from that broad first principle 
 that everything in human life has a physical origin. One
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 225 
 
 fellow writes an epic poem ; another is a walking repertory 
 of running streams and charming sunsets, and occasionally 
 favours the public by putting them on canvas ; another 
 finds an ecstasy in music, which is nothing more or less 
 than a delicious form of madness ; another is bewitched by 
 every pair of lovely she-eyes that he may meet. Yet the 
 boobies who succeeded the Schoolmen in their heritage of 
 aimless speculation have written volumes about the cultiva- 
 tion of art, the beauty of poetry, and the act of falling in 
 love. They have supposed all these things to be under 
 some sort of control of the will, or to be a part of religion 
 or education anything, in fact, except the truth.' 
 
 ' The truth being ?' 
 
 ' Well, the truth is that they are all fragments of that 
 great kaleidoscope, the phenomenal. A little extra phos- 
 phorus in the brain, something one-sided with a man's 
 liver, a too delicate or too dull mucous membrane, and the 
 whole thing is changed. Any one of these and a thousand 
 other conditions would drape the sunset in a funeral pall 
 and render the loveliest she-eyes as unattractive as a second- 
 hand coffin. We do not know much, but we have settled 
 this that the physical is everything.' 
 
 ' That being so, Sir Cloud, there must be a physical cause 
 for this madness. I should have hoped, therefore, that 
 there would have been a physical cure.' 
 
 1 Ordinarily there would, but the cause is intensely com- 
 plicated. The constitution of woman is feminine by virtue 
 of its greater receptive power. There is probably the secret 
 of this disease of civilization, respecting which you are 
 making inquiry. We have no assurance whatever that in 
 the course of generations it will not be transferred from 
 them, and be taken up entirely by the men. The origin of 
 sex is doubtless the division of labour ; and that being so, 
 we never know what tricks there may be in the growth of
 
 226 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 future generations. As man advances he specializes all 
 work, and each person becomes, not a working man, but a 
 machine who can produce so many pin-points a minute ; 
 but when this machine has had its day, he advances the next 
 step in civilization by reverting to the primary type. So it 
 is with a hundred other things, and so it will be probably 
 with the relation of the sexes.' 
 
 ' I do not see much hope from that, Sir Cloud. It is no 
 great comfort to think married women may become less 
 mad at the expense of making married men more so.' 
 
 ' True, but that may be only speculation. Marriage is an 
 attempt to force life according to an artificial standard, and 
 this accounts for the failure of monogamy. Great efforts 
 are made to force monogamy upon the islanders, so far 
 without success, and, judging from the past, if that is still 
 retained as the ideal, a hundred thousand years may bring it 
 within sight. But at present the animalism of the savage is 
 far too strong.' 
 
 ' Does this animalism form a real social difficulty ?' 
 
 ' Undoubtedly. It threatens to disrupt society. In this 
 one city we have twenty thousand women who are prowling 
 animals, and do not know where they will sleep to-night. 
 In many cases, where families have been centuries under 
 civilizing influences, the old animal instincts break out in 
 the evening, when it begins to be dark, and the women 
 appear at dinner as nearly in a state of nature as the men 
 will allow, and we are utterly unable to induce our women 
 to take any interest in art unless we hang up nude figures 
 which would make a man blush in his bath-room.' 
 
 I was considerably surprised. I began to see how it was 
 that some of the grave abuses which had so scandalized 
 Dick were allowed to remain. 
 
 I asked : ' To what cause do you assign the absence of 
 morality in the island ?'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 227 
 
 ' You see, marriage is not natural.' 
 
 I visibly started. Marriage not natural ! By the shades 
 of my maiden aunts, were they right in the whole teaching 
 of their lives as well as practice ? I murmured : 
 
 ' Not natural !' 
 
 However, Sir Cloud was not at all perturbed, and con- 
 tinued in a dreamy sort of monologue : 
 
 ' No ; marriage is a pure invention. It has this advantage 
 over all other inventions, that every form and variety has 
 already been tried. The human race may discover things 
 in many other departments, but marriage has already ex- 
 hausted the round both of ingenuity and cruelty. Marriage 
 as now fixed is the luxury of the rich and the curse of the 
 poor. Periods and nations fluctuate in their choice, in- 
 fluenced usually by material considerations. If bread is 
 cheap and land abundant, there appears an inclination to 
 the patriarchal methods. If competition is keen and popu- 
 lation teeming, with all the land absorbed, then monogamy 
 receives some attention, as in the later stages of Greek 
 civilization.' 
 
 ' But is not monogamy a statute law of Toddle 
 Island ?' 
 
 ' Statute law ?' sneered Sir Cloud. ' Yes, it is statute law, 
 but seeing that statute law is seventeen generations in arrear 
 of the facts of social life, that throws no light on the 
 question. If you wish to know how completely monogamy 
 rules in this island, you must study the streets by night 
 and the divorce courts by day. Monogamy is the greatest 
 fabrication of our national history. That is why we Toddlers 
 always prefer a foreigner to write our history, because he is 
 sure to shut himself up in a museum, and devour statute- 
 books as if they were sauerkraut. Then we get a history of 
 England which fascinates the respectable believers in them- 
 selves, because it is so beautiful and true.'
 
 228 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 ' How very difficult this subject is !' I groaned. ' It eludes 
 me at every step.' 
 
 He continued : ' Of course the whole question of mar- 
 riage merges into the greater question of evolution, and 
 evolution itself is the history of the continuity of life in 
 time, and the continuity of life is a much older necessity 
 than marriage. Probably the earliest idea of marriage in 
 any form is a notion of possession.' 
 
 ' Legal possession ?' 
 
 ' No, more than that, because there was possession before 
 there was any law to regulate it. It is well known that 
 a common form of marriage was capture ; and the man 
 possessed his wife just in the same way as he possessed 
 a wild bird or a wild beast which he had captured. That is 
 the earliest notion of marriage. It is proved by many other 
 facts in history, which show that there was no idea of 
 morality unless someone had taken possession, and there- 
 fore claimed the right of property. Many believe this idea 
 is the basis of the Ten Commandments. This, however, 
 you had better not tell anybody in Toddle Island.' 
 
 ' Do you mean the Hebrew decalogue ?' 
 
 ' Yes, we say them very often in this island. They are 
 ancient and meaningless, and they fit in well with a form of 
 worship which is a mosaic of fragments accumulated by 
 accident. People like to be told on Sunsday that they must 
 keep the Sabbath in the name of Deity, attended by the 
 blare of an organ and solemn posturation ; but they have 
 not the slightest idea of obeying "the Commandments," 
 To obey them literally never enters the head of anyone 
 during the service.' 
 
 ' Sir Cloud, you bewilder me. I have marked many 
 inconsistencies in the island, but I had no idea that it was 
 so universally given up to fiction. Still, it seems a long 
 way from the strong, fist and brawny arm by which a man
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 229 
 
 captures his wife, to a nationalized system of monogamy. 
 Why does not the original savage break loose and assert the 
 old free and easy methods of capture ?' 
 
 ' He does break loose. Capture still exists. The hunt 
 for a wife is carried on with the same instincts and with the 
 same artifices in the drawing-rooms of Fogham as among 
 the bushes of cannibal countries thousands of years ago. 
 The production of a form of monogamy is largely due to 
 jealousy on the part of the wife, which grew until it became 
 the first duty of wives to suppress any rivals. You can see 
 with what rapidity the idea would spread, till at last 
 monogamy was accepted as the outward and visible sign of 
 a lie.' 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 I THANKED Sir Cloud Drummer, and I rose to depart, when 
 he said : ' Will you stay to luncheon and meet my brother- 
 in-law ? I think you might be interested in him, for he has 
 just been made a Boss.' 
 
 ' I should indeed be interested to meet one of those men. 
 Do many Maskers live in Fogham ?' 
 ' Several hundreds, I dare say.' 
 ' Then, how is it one so seldom sees them ?' 
 ' They are to be seen everywhere, but you do not recog- 
 nise them. Their day is almost gone, though it used to be 
 rather a good profession. However, my brother-in-law has 
 managed to make it answer. When my sister was engaged 
 to him I thought it was a silly girl's folly, for he was not 
 rich, and he was a Fellow of his college, and he would lose 
 his Fellowship when he married.
 
 230 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 ' Without a fortune, and with that small amount of know- 
 ledge necessary for a Fellowship, it seemed to me a poor 
 investment that my sister should annex her life to his. 
 However, he made some brilliant discoveries. He found 
 out by accident, so he said, that there was a law regulating 
 the use of Greek accents ; and he discovered that the parti- 
 ciples were accented in the same way as the adjectives or that 
 they were not, I forget which. He wrote a large volume on 
 this, and received a doctor's degree in consequence from 
 an unknown village in a German forest; and, though he 
 declares to me that he has forgotten all about the book, 
 upon this invention he made his fame and his fortune. He 
 took the precaution to obtain admission into the secrets of 
 the Unoiled Machine, and when he was fully qualified for 
 preferment, he was appointed Professor. He retained the 
 Professorship, and afterwards obtained a parish in the 
 country, where there was a small village, an empty church, 
 a beautiful residence, and a large income. He still re- 
 mained Professor at his University, and when the nobility 
 sent their sons to college, he was careful to give them that 
 attention which a Professor can easily give, and, after 
 becoming the bosom friend of one or two elder sons of the 
 Aristocracy, he was lucky enough to find a fellow with a 
 longer memory than the rest, who nominated him to a post 
 of command in the Unoiled Machine, which entitled him 
 to the dignity of Canon. 
 
 ' The income derived from these three posts enabled him 
 to bring up his children in good style, and to float them out 
 in the world knowing as much of high life as if they were 
 born Aristocrats. They have frequently offered to make 
 him Boss ; but it was only last week that they offered him 
 preferment sufficiently lucrative to counterbalance the loss 
 he would sustain by giving up all his three posts. He is a 
 very good fellow ; knows a heap of things in a way.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 231 
 
 I gladly stayed to luncheon. I wished to see one of 
 these men. I wanted to know more of their lives, and to 
 gain some account of the religions of the island, because 
 Dick was always assuring me that there were two religions 
 which divided the islanders : one, personal and sincere, had 
 a great influence upon the character, and may be called 
 Christian religion ; the other, he maintained, was public 
 and mechanical, something 'to be done,' and when it was 
 over it had no more effect upon the future conduct than a 
 cannibal's dance after dinner. 
 
 I had no clear view on either subject. 
 
 When the Boss came, to my great surprise there was 
 Professor Morass, with whom I had breakfasted in Oxferry, 
 or, rather, who had read his letters whilst the breakfast was 
 getting frozen. I wondered how long his wife had argued 
 with him, before she prevailed upon him to become a 
 Boss. 
 
 He had changed very little, except that he had tied up 
 his legs a little tighter, and put some buttons all thg way___ 
 down each side to keejD_put the colcf; he also wore a large 
 black apron, which gave him a gFandmotherly appearance. 
 He did not remember me, but that was hardly to be 
 wondered at, seeing that his experiences had been exciting 
 since we parted. 
 
 Fortunately, Lady Cloud Drummer was unable to be 
 present at lunch, so that we had a tete-a-tete, I had tried 
 to pick up some information about the Toddlers. I was 
 greatly struck by Sir Cloud's statement that there was no 
 morality in the island, and I naturally thought that a pro- 
 fessor who had had the charge of youth all his life, who 
 came from a University, and who belonged to the 
 reverend order, would be able to correct that statement if 
 it were untrue. So I told the Boss that we had discussed 
 many subjects in which I was deeply interested and that
 
 232 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 Sir Cloud Drummer had said that there was no morality in 
 the island. 
 
 The Boss remarked in the gentlest and most polite tones, 
 as if he were arguing with a Greek accent, and afraid it 
 might run away : 
 
 ' I think that is rather a strong statement. Sir Cloud 
 probably means that there is no morality on a physical 
 basis.' 
 
 Here the Boss gave Sir Cloud a patronizing smile, as if 
 to say he knew the weaknesses of that eminent man of 
 medicine. 
 
 ' I repeat my charge. We have no morality, whether on 
 a physical or any other basis. Morality, as I understand it, 
 is a fixed and true standard of conduct. Do you accept 
 that ?' 
 
 ' Yes,' said the Boss ; ' that is what we are always preach- 
 ing.' 
 
 ' Then,' retorted Sir Cloud, ' if Lord Bottsford knew our 
 island, the preaching would be a sufficient proof to him that 
 we have none of the article.' 
 
 And he in his turn smiled patronizingly on the Boss ; but 
 his brother-in-law said : 
 
 ' That I deny. It is only your imperfect habits of 
 thought which cause you to say that preaching has no 
 effect except in a few hysterical cases. However, we have 
 agreed upon what morality is to be. Have you been tell- 
 ing this gentleman that we have no such morality in the 
 island ?' 
 
 ' Certainly, and I am prepared to prove it. All our 
 morality is nothing more than a species of caste gummed 
 on to a little self-preservation by a very sticky sort of re- 
 spectable cant.' 
 
 ' That is your old story, ever deriding your race, as if you 
 were a carrion crow, and wished to make foul flesh of the
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 233 
 
 human family; but it is not true with regard to our 
 morality.' 
 
 ' Well, now, let us take a case or two. Take, for instance, 
 theft. If you were told that your coachman's boy had 
 stolen a sovereign, would you have the same feelings of 
 deep anguish as if you were told that your eldest son had 
 forged a cheque ?' 
 
 The little Boss started in his chair, and clutched at his 
 big apron, and denied that there was any comparison 
 between the two acts, as forgery was so much worse than 
 stealing. 
 
 1 Stop !' said Sir Cloud. ' If morality is true conduct, 
 theft is theft, and_ it does not matter whether the thing_ 
 stolen is^ one, poumT or a hijijdxed, and it ought not Jto__ 
 rrlatter whether the boj who does it is the Qn o. ^coach- 
 man ox of a BossJ"" Then turning to me, he said : ' There 
 you have an illustration of the morality to which we 
 have attained. Now, I will take another case which 
 you reverend people are always repeating, and which you 
 declare to be a direct divine law, so much so that a 
 violation of it is called by old ladies " immorality," as if 
 there were no other form of that evil possible. I refer to 
 what you call seduction. Now, if this happened to an un- 
 protected girl working in a factory, would it fill your 
 reverend minds with the same horror as it would if it 
 happened in the case of a duke's daughter ?' 
 
 ' Certainly not,' said the indignant little man. 
 
 ' Very well, then ; I have proved my point, namely, that 
 we have no morality. We have a great deal of sentiment 
 about the relative value of those in different grades of life, 
 but if you people had a divine law which gave a fixed 
 standard of character, then, at any rate, your abhorrence of 
 a breach of that law ought to apply equally to all classes of 
 human beings.'
 
 234 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 After this little passage of arms, which Sir Cloud seemed 
 greatly to enjoy, luncheon passed on quietly. It was 
 scarcely over, when Sir Cloud was called away, as a patient 
 had come. I took the opportunity of cultivating friendly 
 relationships with the little Boss. I was really anxious to find 
 out what they thought of their own religion, as I had seen 
 so little of it during my stay in the island, and Dick's idea 
 of religion was like his idea of life in general, rather lofty. 
 
 After some conversation, in which the new Boss showed 
 a knowledge of several subjects in nowise connected with 
 the Unoiled Machine, I gathered assurance, and felt that 
 he was an intelligent man. So at last I asked : 
 
 ' Do you think, my Lord Boss, that religion is progressing 
 in the island ?' 
 
 There was a singular nervous twitch about his mouth ; 
 then he looked me fully in the face, and said : 
 
 ' I do not understand what you mean by the progress of 
 religion. Various individuals may progress in it, but 
 religion itself is perfected and fixed.' 
 
 I apologized for my awkwardness, and said that probably 
 I had not stated my question fairly, and that I meant to 
 ask if he thought the islanders were rapidly becoming 
 religious. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders, and said : 
 
 ' Our people have always been very religious, and have 
 been always ready to die for the true faith. Christianity 
 has had noble martyrs from Toddle Island.' 
 
 ' Then, you have adopted Christianity as a religion in this 
 country ?' 
 
 I think he must have concluded that I was afflicted with 
 an outbreak of insanity. He did not start from his chair 
 in wild alarm the weight of his years and his new dignity 
 prevented that but for a moment he appeared to lose his 
 mental balance, and then said :
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 235 
 
 ' I am truly alarmed that you should have spent so many 
 weeks in the capital of this island without discovering the 
 character of its religion. Christianity was introduced into 
 this country, amongst the very first, by one of the Apostles 
 themselves. It has been cherished by every law and 
 endowment which could keep it pure.' 
 
 ' But is it not true that you have many religions in the 
 island ?' 
 
 ' A few misguided people now and again make a new 
 sect, but through all the centuries the Catholic Church 
 holds her sway, and remains the fixed witness of the 
 faith.' 
 
 ' By the Catholic Church am I to understand you mean 
 the one which has an endowment, and which may be_called 
 the Aristocratic Church ?' 
 
 ' We do not state it in that way. Providence has given 
 many benefactors to the Catholic Church, but she was the 
 Catholic Church before she had benefactors, and will always 
 be the same by virtue of the truth she holds.' 
 
 ' Is that truth her sole monopoly ?' 
 
 ' In its entirety, yes ; it was entrusted to her keeping, and 
 the spirit of truth guides her councils.' 
 
 ' Does this spirit of truth give any new developments ?' 
 
 ' No. How can it ? The fixity of faith defends us from 
 the fetishisms of the savage, which wear out, and from the 
 fanaticisms of the sectary, which are fed by violence. Truth 
 is^lovely and immortal. It changes never. Its form does 
 not wear out.' 
 
 ' Do I understand, then, that you hold the pure faith of 
 the Founder of Christianity as held by the Apostles ?' 
 
 ' That is it, and that only, untarnished and unaltered ; 
 and, what is more, we have had it directly in an unbroken 
 line through the Apostles themselves.' 
 
 ' Excuse me, but I am bewildered. I come to your
 
 236 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 capita], 1 am intimate with your Aristocracy, and I have 
 never once heard the name of Christ mentioned, and IJail 
 to see how a money-loving, luxurious caste could claim to 
 be the direct followers and living images of a Man jvho 
 lived a pauper, and was murdered because of his fanatical 
 and revolutionary teachings.' 
 
 I quite forgot for the moment that I was in respectable 
 Fogham ; that I was in a land where all things are a dream, 
 and where to present an idea or a fact in its unvarnished 
 state is considered worse than treason or murder ; that for 
 ages all the pious respectabilities, called the Classes, had 
 hired spies and executioners to deliver each generation from 
 the man who had ventured to speak the truth. For a 
 moment all this had escaped me. 
 
 I had just been told the history of this little man, who, 
 by following the life and doctrine of pauperism and socialism, 
 had cleared a fortune, and obtained a peerage. To find 
 myself face to face with him, and hear his simple avowal of 
 a simple faith, which apparently stood still like a pillar of 
 salt which had lost its savour, caused me to speak far too 
 frankly. The result was that I nearly added the little Boss 
 to the roll of Toddle martyrs. He gasped for breath, and 
 if he had not had the presence of mind to apply to the 
 decanter, and secure a liberal allowance of good sherry, Sir 
 Cloud Drummer would have returned to open a post-mortem 
 examination upon his distinguished brother-in-law. I was 
 very sorry, and the situation was truly awkward. I could 
 not for the moment even think of an apology. The stolid 
 whiteness and the paralyzed gaze of this man looked like 
 the photograph of a shock. I suppose it was the shock of 
 a new idea. 
 
 I had many other questions to put, but before I could 
 recover courage to renew the conversation, Sir Cloud re- 
 turned, and, knowing nothing of the awkward position of
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 23? 
 
 affairs, he immediately began to banter his brother-in-law 
 and asked if he had received his peer's robes. 
 
 He said : ' I think I shall come to hear your maiden 
 speech in the House of Jockeys. What subject do you 
 think you shall take up ? Shall you stick to the Greek 
 accents, or will you have a new missionary enterprise to 
 remove all the poor of this island ?' 
 
 This banter was out of place. 
 
 The Right Reverend the Lord Boss left the room. 
 
 I then told Sir Cloud Drummer how very unfortunate I 
 had been, and entreated him to explain to the Boss, and I 
 called upon Sir Cloud to bear witness how often, from the 
 first moment I arrived in Fogham, I had seen the aban- 
 doned luxury, the nights of riot, the indifference to the poor, 
 the contempt that one class poured upon every other class ; 
 and that I had been entirely misled with regard to the 
 Unoiled Machine. The people who had spoken to me 
 about it treated it as a bungle. Everywhere I had heard the 
 same contradictory accounts of its origin and its function ; 
 therefore how in the world was I to know that this was the 
 same pure religion which Dick thought would regenerate 
 the island ? 
 
 I think Sir Cloud felt for me somewhat, and he under- 
 took to convey my apologies.
 
 238 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 I HAD the slightest possible misgiving that I was going 
 mad in this island-home of madness, as I groped my way 
 back from Sir Cloud's residence through a sulphurous fog 
 that would have killed the heroes of ancient battle. I 
 began to lose confidence in my own judgment after I 
 had taken the wrong turning a dozen times, so, in order 
 to be sane, I smoked and laughed until I had reached 
 my favourite point of equilibrium, where no possible inter- 
 ference with the laws of society or nature would have caused 
 me to put down my pipe. This point of equilibrium, which 
 is the outcome of a long experience, is an attitude of the 
 judgment which combines all prudence, all defiance, all 
 despair. For many years it has been my secret solace. It 
 is an attitude that grows upon me. The longer I live, the 
 more respect I have for stoicism, which I am confident is 
 the only means of preserving a sound judgment. I had 
 often reflected at home that the chief cause of so little 
 correct thought and so many failures in character is the fact 
 that we place people in a slavish position. We make their 
 living, if not their very life, dependent upon someone who 
 is placed over them. Then we turn to these poor drivelling 
 wretches and ask them to form correct judgments, when 
 their lives are subjected to paroxysms of alarm which would 
 deteriorate the highest intelligence in less than four-and- 
 twenty hours.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 239 
 
 When I have attained to this balance, I am sure to be 
 restored to a healthy outlook, because from that absolute 
 equilibrium, to which life and death are only figures of 
 speech, I can view all things and remain unmoved. Then 
 some well-meaning friend is sure to suggest either that my 
 conduct is influenced by fear or desire of gain. 
 
 I am quite well. 
 
 I had smoked and laughed and recovered. 
 
 I had thought over all the possibilities of Miss Guy's 
 catching this terrible disease and going mad on some future 
 occasion ; but in my present elated condition the disease 
 seemed less terrible than it had appeared formerly. 
 
 As Dick had not returned, I mused over the peculiarities 
 of the Toddlers. 
 
 I began to feel that his life of intense reality amongst 
 these gingerbread images was itself the most grotesque 
 thing I had witnessed. 
 
 Poor Toddlers ! They had the inborn faculty of seeing 
 everything round a corner. They butchered their brethren 
 in a profusion of piety, and never realized that it was comic ; 
 or they acted charades on a gallows and forgot they were 
 desecrating hallowed ground. They seemed to be chloro- 
 formed by the aroma of their own prejudice. 
 
 They were the most unnatural people in the world, and 
 to most of them life was a methodized artifice ; yet, when- 
 ever they opposed any plan to benefit others, they had 
 recourse to an overwhelming argument, viz., that it was 
 contrary to Nature. 
 
 Life in the island was cramped and dull, so that a few 
 men invented most terrible plagues and eternal fires as 
 penalties of conduct in order to derive some stimulus for 
 life from an infinite horror. The rest of the islanders found 
 an exhilarating amusement in seeing how near they could 
 run the risk of incurring these unchanging woes.
 
 240 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 Though they attached but little importance to practical 
 religion, yet they cherished its form, either as a tonic to 
 business or a cloak for fraud. 
 
 Any man who believed in prayer and prosperity -would 
 buy a few acres of land in a suburb of Fogham, build cheap 
 houses, and let them at exorbitant rents ; but he could not 
 fully enjoy this unless he also built a church in the middle 
 of the land : without the church an air of respectability 
 would be wanting, which is more necessary to a Toddler 
 than his lungs. 
 
 As a rule, this church is privately sold to some widow, 
 who thus makes provision for her son, unless the original 
 investor has a son whom he wishes to turn into a gentleman. 
 In the latter case he keeps the church as an heirloom for 
 his own family. 
 
 THE TODDLERS ADMIRE NO MAN. 
 
 Many of the evils in the island arose from the fact that 
 no man respected any other man. In consequence of this 
 the Toddler's mind was perverted, and he directed his 
 admiration to the accidents or diseases of a man. 
 
 They have a great admiration for Warts.'-' A man with 
 his hands full of Warts would be treated with respect even 
 at a wedding. 
 
 Should a man have a large Tumour,^ several admire him 
 on that account to such a degree that they will wish to be 
 his devoted slaves ; and if his father had a Tumour before 
 him, he is considered to be a superior being. Large 
 Tumours in the same family for three generations entitle a 
 man to a peerage. 
 
 The Toddlers showed their special reverence for Ulcers. \ 
 An Ulcer is generally on the surface, and arises from some 
 
 * Money. t Estate. J Titles.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 241 
 
 constitutional disorder, which in itself is a sort of proof that 
 the man's father had, or ought to have had, an Ulcer. This 
 delights the Toddler, because it shows that the man has no 
 disease, but the disease has the man. There used to be a 
 theory that a man could not have two Ulcers at once, but 
 experience cast its baleful shadow over that theory. 
 
 Any man with more than one Ulcer is a friend of the great, 
 and receives a label for each Ulcer, which indicates that 
 they are in different parts of the body, as when they call 
 one man the Duke of Granite, Lord Feathers, and the 
 Right Honourable Chief Masher of his Majesty's Bed- 
 stead, etc. 
 
 THE TODDLERS HAVE RESPECTABLE ' SORES.'* 
 
 After showing that the Toddlers respected men for their 
 accidents and diseases only, the exactitude of history compels 
 me to say that the Toddlers were true to themselves on this 
 point also. They had delicate distinctions which no man 
 can know. Some diseases, which I should have thought 
 would have been catalogued as symptoms of honour, I 
 found were called Sores, and according to their usual con- 
 tradiction, whether a Sore was honourable or not depended 
 on the part of the body upon which it was found. 
 
 All Sores were deemed honourable if a man said he had 
 
 been eating wild oats. For this reason they never allowed 
 
 ^ 
 girls to eat wild oa^S. This was one of their many forms of 
 
 injustice to woman. 
 
 All sorts of Sores in the hands were considered re- 
 spectable, because they could be easily covered. Boils 
 were only respectable on the neck, and a man with a Boil 
 
 * Sins. 
 
 16
 
 242 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 on the leg was treated as a criminal. In the same way a 
 man with an Abscess* on the arm thought it a proof of good 
 breeding, but he loathed another with an Abscess on the 
 foot. 
 
 A lady would not be admitted into Society if she suffered 
 from housemaid's-knee, and, on the other hand, a maid- 
 servant would be hired by no one if she had a stiff neck ; 
 whilst stiff-necked ladies were supposed to have royal blood 
 in their veins if the stiffness were stiff enough. 
 
 A BIG RELIC OF BARBARISM. 
 
 The Toddlers probably had official instincts long before 
 they developed into cannibals. 
 
 There is a tradition, told at weddings in the northern- 
 most part of the island, where cannibalism lingered long, 
 that the first shock to man-eating customs was given by 
 the fact that a^ prince declined to eat his grandmother 
 because she had accidentally braided" her hair with red 
 tapg. 
 
 This is regarded as proof positive by the hard-headed 
 northman that officialism is the older and the more power- 
 ful instinct. 
 
 I always laugh when I think of the story, but still more 
 when I recollect that it garnishes a truth. 
 
 The Toddlers cannot move without officials. If a man 
 is to take charge of the parcels at the end of a train, he 
 must be clad in official costume. In the same way, 
 whenever they require water or gas for a large town, 
 they will not use either unless it is conveyed by official 
 sanction. 
 
 * This shows the difference between stealing the goose and stealing 
 the common.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 243 
 
 At one time they refused to employ light unless officials 
 took charge of the sun and made them pay tax for it. Tax- 
 paying proves to the Toddler that he is respectable because 
 an official gives him a receipt. 
 
 Instead of the Government providing water, gas, railways, 
 and such-like, and thereby deriving profit with which to 
 enrich the citizens, as all sensible Governments do, it allows 
 a few to become officials and make fortunes at the expense 
 of the People, and then persuades the nation that these 
 official images are benefactors of Society and asks the rest 
 to fall down and worship. The devotion of the People to 
 their officials is touching in its simplicity. Whilst they are 
 at the point of starvation, they pay an exorbitant water-rate ; 
 whilst fruit and vegetables are rotting in country districts, 
 they will starve in towns rather than part with officials and 
 directors, who prevent the fruit from coming by their heavy 
 charges. I suppose it is because the People have always 
 had some officials between them and Nature. The baron 
 or the feudal lord, the tax-gatherer or the police, have been 
 the buffers which kept them from crushing prosperity. 
 
 Such barbarian love of the official trick seems to show an 
 arrested intelligence, which has prevented the Toddlers from 
 taking their place in Nature. 
 
 HOW THE TODDLERS CREATE CRIME. 
 
 I gave my heart to know the mysteries of these people, 
 and to understand their madness and folly. Could the 
 reader realize the trouble I had to find out only vanity and 
 vexation, he would mistake me for a preacher and give me 
 his pity. 
 
 He will, however, gather from this history that the 
 Toddlers differ from all men in their patient industry to
 
 244 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 produce crime and to quench morality. The islanders 
 spend unlimited effort in manufacturing criminals. 
 
 They license thousands of men and women to have the 
 privilege of creating an idle, vicious class (at least so their 
 own judges told me), and in order to secure an unfailing 
 supplying of criminal subjects, they make the license- 
 holders' living depend upon selling Drink in such quantities 
 as to spread beggary and vice through vast areas. 
 
 In these areas the children are neglected, ill-fed, cruelly 
 abused, and those who have not the good fortune to be 
 killed enter upon life with all the instincts of mature fiends. 
 
 Then the man-beast is ready for the State to take in hand. 
 His first small crime places him outside of man-kind. 
 
 Instead of being mercifully killed, he is fair game for 
 every official bully. 
 
 He is sent to prison for a few days. 
 
 Then let loose. 
 
 Another offence, then the official dogs hunt him. 
 
 Great sport. 
 
 Imprisonment with hard labour a week or two. 
 
 Turned loose again. 
 
 Greater offence. 
 
 Grander hunt by the dogs. 
 
 Big trial. 
 
 Penal servitude. 
 
 By this time the criminal is fairly well developed, so they 
 let him loose for one grand hunt. 
 
 Right they are. 
 
 He commits a murder. 
 
 Respectable horror. Holy consternation. 
 
 All the dogs of the law are loose. 
 
 Great is the sport and gnashing of the official teeth. 
 
 Men laugh. 
 
 Women weep.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 245 
 
 Some mother's son is hanged. 
 
 But I doubt not the worm will feed sweetly on him as if 
 he had been the most favoured prince, and for the rest 
 well, we hope he has a better start next time. 
 
 THE TODDLERS' INGENUITY IN PREVENTING MORALITY. 
 
 The Toddlers pride themselves on their morals. They 
 are convinced that the morality of the island is purer than 
 light and stronger than the East wind. 
 
 Consequently they apply morality only to one question 
 the relationship of the sexes. Murder, drunkenness, theft, 
 slander, envy, hatred, and malice have nothing to do with 
 their morality. Such things are proofs of civilization. 
 
 They prefer to stake their character on one phase of 
 morality, and that the one they least intend to observe. 
 The Toddler has one virtue, affectation. It amounts to a 
 virtue with him because it enables the observer to know 
 that whatever a Toddler praises he does not mean to 
 practise. 
 
 I was familiar with this, and yet they took me in, though 
 they did praise morality so loudly, for I was not prepared 
 for the ingenious and public methods organized to prevent 
 the possibility of ' morality.' 
 
 Their pet device was to bring up all their women in total 
 ignorance of any physiology. This science was sacred to 
 men, and kept jealously by them so that they might have 
 power over women. 
 
 Then in their religious services they continued to read 
 indecent narratives and allusions, which would have made 
 their primal ancestors blush had they not been hairy savages. 
 They also allowed girls the use of a bad translation of a lot 
 of ancient books for their private devotions. So that with
 
 246 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 ignorance on one side, and an itching curiosity on the other, 
 their daughters fell easy victims to the nobler and more 
 intelligent animal. 
 
 The most defenceless women in the island were the 
 servant-girls. There were thousands upon thousands of 
 them. They were taken straight from school at thirteen or 
 fourteen, and kept hard at work, without training, without 
 leisure, without protection for their character, with no 
 chance to read, with no systematic diversions. 
 
 Should such a girl be misled and have an infant, she is at 
 once hounded from her friends, and all the machinery 
 of the nation is turned against her for the sole end of driving 
 her down to the filthiest sties of the filthiest civilization. 
 
 She has only one chance of partial escape, viz., if she will 
 go into open court and name the father, stating every 
 circumstance of how, when, and where. 
 
 I remember such a scene when I was staying at Barnside, 
 though I did not grasp its full significance then. 
 
 The gentry of the neighbourhood, who in waggery are 
 called the Great Unpaid, because, as a rule, they have taken 
 possession of everything worth having in the district, sit 
 on a raised platform. With the soberness of experienced 
 murderers, they ask the girl every question which can titillate 
 a lewd fancy, and then the accused father produces his 
 lawyer, a hired pimp, who proceeds to find three or four 
 other fathers for her child, and, in order to confuse her, he 
 invents a few indecent scenes in her life. She weeps, and 
 if somebody has given the accused a good character he gets 
 off. And she, after a public catechising, which would blot 
 out the moral sense of an ordinary angel, and degrade the 
 devil, goes to a new hell. All the men in court retire to 
 drink, discuss the details, and go and do likewise. 
 
 I said to one of the magistrates afterwards at Barnside : 
 
 ' What happens to the girl ?'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 247 
 
 He gave his official reply : 
 
 ' The girl ? Oh, damn the girls ! they like it.' 
 
 I fear I have written too fiercely on this pious custom, 
 but, as I witnessed an organized army arrayed against a 
 helpless girl under twenty, I felt they were a crew of 
 dastardly cowards, and my English blood boiled. I hope 
 the reader will accept that as an apology this once. I am 
 not often too serious. 
 
 These Toddlers, with their delicate distinctions between 
 one sort of murder and another sort of murder, would turn 
 the brain of a gingerbread man, and make even a married 
 woman merry. 
 
 ***## 
 
 My musings over these strange people, amongst whom 
 Dick and I sojourned, have led me into something so like a 
 digression that I am not without hope, should this book 
 ever reach Toddle Island, this feature will go far towards 
 causing them to think it is a classical production. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 AT length Dick arrived, exceedingly depressed, and yet with 
 the fire glowing in his eyes, which all sights of unnecessary 
 cruelty and unnecessary misery used to kindle. It was 
 almost ludicrous for us to meet when I was in one of these 
 moods. I had realized that the whole Universe was of 
 exactly the same value as a halfpenny air-balloon, which 
 pleases the child for the five seconds before he runs a pin 
 into it, and here was my noble prophet Dick, with indigna- 
 tion suffusing his cheeks, and some mighty faith glowing like 
 a live coal in hi s^ eyes. It~was odd.
 
 248 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 So I greeted him : ' Well, old fellow, have you been to 
 Paradise Street ?' 
 
 ' I have spent the day in the neighbourhood. I should 
 like to go and live there.' 
 
 ' You had better not declare that sentiment at Sedge- 
 moor.' 
 
 ' I suppose they "would hesitate ; and yet the difference 
 when once a man is inside a hearse is so remarkably small 
 that the Sedgemoor lot might as well claim their brother- 
 hood before that.' 
 
 ' This is all very well for you, but the Sedgemoor lot has 
 made up its mind never to accept the bamboozling lie which 
 poets call the brotherhood of man.' 
 
 'Then I am afraid I shall quarrel with the Sedgemoor 
 lot.' 
 
 ' But why ? Wjg are all so many ripples of shadow, passing 
 over a measureless dial, and we know neither the dial 
 on which we lie, nor the infinite Sun that throws the fleeting 
 shadow. So why bother ? We can enjoy cigars at present, 
 and, as far as one can read the experience of others, there 
 comes a time when you cannot enjoy a cigar, or, put it the 
 other way, we know that some people are suffering hunger, 
 disease, and pain, yet, as far as we can translate the 
 experience of others, there comes a time when none of these 
 things give the least annoyance ; so I would not quarrel. 
 Twp men quarrelling are more grotesque than two small 
 shadows struggling on a measureless dial as to which of, 
 them fell there first, and it is still more ridiculous when 
 classes of men quarrel.' 
 
 ' Your doctrine of shadows cannot be true, except in a 
 universe of shadow, but as a universe of shadow is a contra- 
 diction in thought, your doctrine of shadows is valueless. 
 Three things, at any rate, have to be real to get even a 
 shadow. You must have an object, you must have a light
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 249 
 
 falling on that object, and the shadow must have somewhere 
 upon which to rest. Therefore, I think shadow-making is 
 very expensive, and to set up a shadow philosophy would 
 make far greater demands upon human ingenuity and 
 credulity than the baldest religion that ever terrorized or 
 tantalized dying men and women.' 
 
 ' Ah, Dick, you will take these things so seriously. Let 
 the shadows come and go. Why should we worry about the 
 light that casts them, or the hiding-places where they scuttle 
 off to sleep ? Tut ! you are tired. Let us have some tea ; 
 and tell them to hurry on dinner.' 
 
 My remedies for the afflicted mind were material. Perhaps 
 Sir Cloud Drummer was right : everything may be physical. 
 At any rate, these little remedies had a wholesome effect 
 upon Dick's prophetic indignation, which was ready to boil 
 over and scorch poor shadow-land, and then blaze its way 
 through into that unknown hall, which he calls the Immortal 
 Life, and where he fancies he is going to commune with 
 pure spirit in a perfect body. It almost cheers me to 
 remember thatQi thousand frailties and follies might be 
 cured by a bright fire, an easy-chair, and a little tea and 
 toast. A proper application of this principle would probably 
 abolish the criminal class in any country, and would help a 
 nation to discover such a religion as would admit of 
 practice^When I told Dick that Sir Cloud declared that the 
 whole nation had no morality, to my great surprise, he said : 
 
 ' I entirely agree with him ; and I go further : not only 
 have they no morality, but they have adopted such a form of 
 life as renders morality impossible. I have passed through 
 parts of this capital to-day where the ordinary decencies of 
 life could not be practised by the most careful and refined 
 of persons.' 
 
 I answered : ' Really, Dick, I do not see what good you 
 do by prowling about among those people, all of whom
 
 250 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 would take your watch, and half of whom would take your 
 life. They have been centuries in this condition, and you 
 will no more alter them than you would change the nature 
 of a wolf, or bring a wild boar under civilizing influences.' 
 
 ' There, again, you are wrong, because something very 
 like a wolf has been made the friend of man, and something 
 very like a wild boar has been reduced to a condition 
 of great service to man. I do not complain half so bitterly 
 of the savagery of the people whom I have seen to-day, as I 
 complain of the cannibalism that places them in a position 
 where it is impossible for them to act otherwise.' 
 ' But, my dear fellow, who are the cannibals ?' 
 'The cannibals are the selfish people who make their 
 fortunes and glut themselves with luxury at the expense of 
 these miserable beings. They are the rich employers of 
 labour, who have a gang of people from whom they can 
 choose, and seeing that these hundreds upon hundreds of. 
 men do not possess eighteenpence amorigsT them, they are 
 
 ^V ^ ^ ^^k "J^*"* 
 
 entirely at the mercy of the employers. Now the rich 
 employer of labour has everything ; he has all the machinery ; 
 he has every possible advantage of food, clothing, and educa- 
 tion ; the law is entirely on his side ; he has walled in the 
 free river, and calls it his dock, and when his ships come 
 laden with the produce of other lands, he can drive these 
 starving gangs to do his work for a miserable few pence. 
 The cargo is delivered, the men are starving till the next 
 ship comes ; but the ship and the cargo are taken care of. 
 It is_only^ the_ me,n their brother men who are left to 
 curse their way to an early death. Then, as if something 
 more were wanting to render tBe horror a pleasant ragout 
 to the wealthy man in his well-furnished club or his distant 
 mansion, they induce the Government of the island to set 
 traps for these poor fellows. Having reduced the condition 
 of the labourer to such a state of beggary that a man and
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 251 
 
 his wife and six children as a rule live in one room and \ 
 sleep on the floor, they still seem afraid that they may rise I 
 from their lair and cease to be wild beasts, so they set traps 
 at every street- corner, and snare them in the same way as 
 savages do wild animals.' 
 
 ' I do not understand what you mean by the traps, 
 Dick.' 
 
 ' Well, it is in this way. These poor starving people, 
 having no knowledge of what to eat and drink, and being 
 led only by their appetites, take Drink, which helps them to 
 forget their miseries for a few hours ; and in order that 
 another class may make money, the Government licences a 
 large number of houses to fellows, some of whom are not 
 over-scrupulous, and who sell a liquid to these poor wretches 
 which often produces madness.' 
 
 ' More madness/ I thought. ' What an island this is for 
 madness !' Then I remembered that I had heard about 
 this, that I had seen some of the people mad both at Barn- 
 side and at Cable ; and I remembered what the Consul had 
 told me about the National See-saw. So I said : 
 
 ' I heard about these " traps," but that is not the proper 
 name. They have a man in the House of Grooms who 
 must make so much money a year to give the chaps dinners, 
 pay for their gold lace, supply them with pensions, and 
 endow Generals, Admirals, and others of the nobility, who 
 are unwilling to risk their lives for their country unless they 
 have a jolly big pension ; and these "traps," as you call them, 
 are one of the grandest things that the islanders have 
 invented. They are so proud of the invention that they 
 give to the people who own them (that is, if they own plenty) 
 a seat in the House of Jockeys. It really is very clever. 
 Thousands of people pay the Government to have these 
 houses in which to sell Drink. This enables the Govern- 
 ment to have a large army to collect all the money, and to
 
 252 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 employ another army of police to look after them, and to 
 have a third large army of officials to keep the prisons and 
 asylums and such places. In fact, this See-saw is a source 
 of the island's wealth, and the cleverest thing about it is, 
 that the fellow who keeps the public purse would clear 
 nothing on the See-saw at all, if he had to pay a shilling a 
 head for the lives that are sacrificed by it. However, as 
 population is plentiful, especially in Fogham, and as nobody 
 cares what happens to a hundred thousand of these creatures, 
 he is able to play See-saw at a small profit. It seems rather 
 cruel to us ; and I believe some wag of a painter drew a 
 sketch of the two chief officers of the Crown, riding one at 
 each end of a long plank over a mountain-ridge of skeletons 
 which he called 'The Toddlers' Pathway to Glory,' but, on 
 the whole, it seems to work well; and I am assured that 
 the people would break up the Unoiled Machine and 
 abandon the Sacred Ass before they would give up their 
 National See-saw.' 
 
 'Come, lay aside your banter. Is there any sense or 
 civilization in tradyig on the_ appetites of thousands oj^ 
 peopTe~so that a few may ride to wealth arioTfame? It is 
 nofgovern raven t, it is massacre.' 
 
 'My dear fellow, you don't grasp the situation. We 
 have been told that the Aristocracy of the island is the result 
 
 J w .. * * 
 
 of murder in some form, and that centuries ago the Nobles 
 were the fellows who could knock out other men's brains. 
 Those who could reflect and remember it was not worth 
 while to throw away life for the sake of a bit of common- 
 land, became the Lower Orders. All this is clear enough. 
 We have seen it everywhere since we came. Now, those 
 "traps" are the same thing under another form. Lord 
 Guy assures me that the people who make and sell this 
 drink are the only patriotic guild in the nation, and between 
 them they pay piles of money to the Government. Upon
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 253 
 
 my word, I do not know whether one ought to weep at the 
 national tragedy or to rejoice at the national prosperity.' 
 
 ' You are at your banter again.' 
 
 ' But, soberly, Dick, I can conceive no greater farce than 
 that they should owe their wealth to the drunkard who sacri- 
 fices his business, his family, and his life for the good of the 
 State, and yet that they should punish him for doing it. A 
 Government which pays officers to punish drunkards, which 
 its own laws create, is not quite so intelligent as the 
 monkey who lost his temper because he bit his own tail 
 in mistake.' 
 
 I thought Dick was looking at the every-day business of 
 other people through the magnifying-glass of his own 
 intensity. Therefore, to correct his views, I arranged that 
 I would go with him some evening. I was not able to go 
 at once, as we were pledged three deep for some weeks, 
 either to concerts or theatres, dinners or dances.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 EVER since my interview with Sir Cloud Drummer, I had 
 longed to see one of the fashionable weddings for which the 
 capital is noted. It is the strangest proof of the Toddlers' 
 crude civilization that they have women who are private 
 auctioneers of girls, and whose work it is to sell a girl to the 
 highest bidder. 
 
 By this means, toward the end of the season, a few start- 
 ling surprises are annually prepared, and in this show of 
 excitement Society hides its weariness; and then, having 
 buried its folly beneath a few bridal wreaths, its most dis- 
 tinguished members flee to the uttermost parts of the earth, 
 and leave Fogham a wilderness. 
 
 Lord Guy told me that a great sensation had been aroused 
 by the announcement that a marriage had been arranged 
 between Lady Felicia Bones and the Honourable Gape 
 Fledgling. Lady Felicia Bones was a patron of the arts ; 
 and in order to catch a glimpse of her wedding, every coign 
 of vantage was eagerly contended for. 
 
 I joined Lord Guy at the wedding. The ceremony was 
 gorgeous. The church was a living tableau of the peerage. 
 Rich music and rare flowers threw a glamour over the scene. 
 It was a triumph of civilization. Art had banished nature, 
 and the meanness of mankind was hidden beneath the 
 splendour of pomp.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 255 
 
 When the bride arrived there was a great commotion. 
 We waited. Conferences were held in excited whispers. 
 At length a young man began to perform the ceremony. 
 
 He lectured the guilty pair, and asked the Fledging to 
 lie, and say he endowed the lady. Next he called upon 
 Lady Felicia Bones, who obeyed no man and had no inten- 
 tion of doing so, to declare publicly that she would become 
 the slave and chattel of Gape Fledgling. 
 
 I am bound to say they all seemed conscious of the 
 guilt of these nefarious doings, for they knelt down and 
 said with some heartiness and repetition, ' Lord, have mercy 
 upon us.' 
 
 The young priest turned to any stray verse of Scripture 
 that asserted the inferiority of woman, and insisted upon 
 her placing body and soul at the absolute disposal of her 
 lord ; then he declared they were no longer two persons, but 
 one, and let him-her go. 
 
 We lunched at Sedgemoor. 
 
 Dick and I remained after lunch, and I saw more of Miss 
 Guy than I had done for weeks. She appeared more 
 restful ; the reckless energy which used to mar her conduct 
 had vanished. She showed us photographs of the family 
 and views of Rock Castle with the sweetest charm of 
 manner. She seemed far more lovely than I could have 
 thought it possible for her to look, but evidently her affec- 
 tion for Dick had not only brought peace and rest, but also 
 filled her with hope. 
 
 Dick was charming. He was chivalrously tender. His 
 imagination, fired with passion, flooded life with more than 
 human splendour. 
 
 They were natural to each other, and seemed to read each 
 other's wishes and thoughts by the intuition of love and 
 with the devotion of idolatry. It was a scene such as I
 
 256 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 can imagine in early married life, when the sweet rosebud 
 is opening and the thorns have not grown. 
 
 She asked me to call her Edith. 
 
 Then Dick and she wove dreams of how they would live, 
 and that there would always be a chair and a room sacred 
 to myself only. I have never witnessed such happiness, 
 and I felt towards them as my own children. Edith played 
 sweet sonatas ; then Dick sang. I realized that in a few 
 months we should be called upon to repeat the scene 
 of to-day. It was a luxury of loveliness. 
 
 Afternoon tea broke in upon our joy, but there was much 
 bright chatter, and the clouds of life had vanished. 
 
 As we walked back, I was proud of my handsome friend, 
 and I felt he was worthy of life's bliss.
 
 fiook IH. 
 
 ' He is guilty of high treason against the faith who fears the result of 
 any investigation, whether philosophical or scientific or historical. And 
 therefore nothing should be more welcome than the extension of know- 
 ledge of any and every kind for every increase in our accumulations of 
 knowledge throws fresh light upon these, the real problems of our day. 
 If geology proves to us that we must not interpret the first chapters of 
 Genesis literally ; if historical investigation shall show us that inspiration, 
 however it may protect the doctrine, yet was not empowered to protect 
 the narrative of the inspired writers from occasional inaccuracy ; if 
 careful criticisms shall prove that there have been occasional interpola- 
 tions and forgeries in that Book, as in many others the results should 
 still be welcome. ' FREDERICK TEMPLE, D.D. , in ' Essays and Reviews,' 
 afterwards the Right Honourable and the Right Reverend the Lord 
 Bishop of London. 
 
 ' It was the boast of Augustus it formed part of the glare in which 
 the perfidies of his earlier years were lost that he found Rome of brick 
 and left it of marble ; a praise not unworthy a great prince, and to which 
 the present reign also has its claims. But how much nobler will be the 
 sovereign's boast, -when he shall have it to say, that he found law dear, 
 and left it cheap ; found it a sealed book left it a living letter ; found 
 it the patrimony of the rich left it the inheritance of the poor ; found 
 it a two-edged sword of craft and oppression left it the staff of honesty 
 and the shield of innocence !' Close of Speech of LORD BROUGHAM 
 in the House of Commons, 1828. 
 
 ' Man's life is all a mist, and in the dark 
 Our fortunes meet us.' DRYDEN.
 
 258 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 AFTER awhile we were able to get a free night, on which it 
 was arranged that I should accompany Dick to the slums. 
 It was miserable ; a drizzling rain with intense cold rendered 
 life wretched to all who had to be in the streets. 
 
 Dick and I changed our attire and set forth. We 
 journeyed by one of those long, circuitous routes through 
 fire and brimstone in a tube underground, and at last, with 
 sore eyes, a burning throat, and a splitting headache, we 
 were in Slum-land. To me it was revolting. One was no 
 sooner out in the street than the fact was evident that you 
 had left life and all that was worth having. The people, 
 hungry-looking, pale, starved, rushed in crowds like so many 
 dying tadpoles carried away with the stream ; the odour of 
 the streets, the class of the houses, the kind of food exposed 
 for sale all told the same story. Here were wild beasts, 
 and it concerned no man to feed them. We walked miles, 
 and, though the exterior was bad, the interior was very much 
 worse. Again and again we came upon these low drinking- 
 shops, which Dick had called traps. The bad weather, 
 perhaps, had caused the streets to be rather empty; but 
 these places were full. We stood looking in at the door of 
 a corner house full of men and women of the most brutalized 
 type ; women helplessly drunk, with their faces blotched 
 or blackened and cut the marks of a recent fight and, in 
 more than one case, with the fresh blood crusted on the 
 cheek. 
 
 As we looked into this beer-house, I observed a man 
 bring beer to one of the besotted women. He roused 
 her with a kick, and gave her more drink, as I had seen 
 farmers treat fattening pigs on my own estate. As the time
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 259 
 
 advanced we passed through one or two of the lowest and 
 cheapest lodging-houses. Here the people were vultures, 
 men and women watching every opportunity to cheat and 
 rob. Nearly all of them had been often in prison, but were 
 let loose again in order to become a little worse. It was 
 only safe to pass through these dens in company, and by 
 taking the precaution to have little of value in our pockets. 
 Many miserable, starved children, about six or seven years 
 of age, were out in the streets on this wretched night at ten 
 o'clock, gathered round the drinking-shops, or shivering at 
 the doors of their homes, waiting for the time when their 
 parents should reel back. It was indeed sickening. 
 
 It was after ten. We had determined to return home, 
 and were walking down a quiet street, when we saw three 
 objects on the steps of an old building. Had they been 
 perfectly quiet we might not have observed them, but one 
 was crying. The little girl who was crying might be about 
 three years of age, and the other two were a boy about 
 eight, and an elder girl of twelve. We learned that they had 
 been driven out into the streets by a violent quarrel between 
 their father and mother, both of whom were mad drunk. 
 They had crept up these steps to pass the night, and, 
 apparently, the little one, worn out, had fallen asleep and 
 rolled down. This had caused the crying that attracted our 
 attention. Their pale faces and thin hands and arms looked 
 ghastly in the dim light ; and when Dick saw that the head 
 of the little child was cut and bleeding, he picked her up in 
 his arms and said he would take her to the nearest hospital 
 and be back as quickly as possible, if I would only keep 
 guard over the other two. He scarcely seemed to have 
 time to turn the corner of the street, when, as if rising from 
 the earth, a crowd of men and women gathered round me. 
 I was unable to understand much that they said. They 
 were exceedingly fierce, and the vilest-looking lot that I ever
 
 260 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 saw. Before I had time to realize the danger, my pockets 
 had been turned inside out and I had been knocked down. 
 Fortunately, I had only transferred my watch from its 
 ordinary pocket, and upon finding it a large party of them 
 disappeared. 
 
 I struggled to my feet, and instinctively tried to hurry 
 down the street to a main thoroughfare, where I might 
 claim some protection ; but I was prevented by a crowd of 
 men and women, who abused me as if I had committed a 
 crime. One snatched my hat and disappeared, my coat was 
 torn to rags, and again I was left lying on the pavement. I 
 despaired of my life, when there appeared at the end of the 
 street the policeman on his beat. As if by magic these 
 demons fled. Not one of them remained, neither did the 
 policeman. I tried to rise, but the wretches had treated me 
 with such violence, and had kicked me so brutally when I 
 was down, that I reeled when I attempted to walk. I had 
 to sit down where I was. Some time had passed, when an 
 old woman coming down the street discovered me. She 
 seemed to belong to a different order of life, and showed the 
 greatest kindness. She went and fetched some man out of 
 a neighbouring house, and they carried me inside, bruised, 
 bleeding, ragged, and covered with mud. So rapidly had I 
 lost the marks of civilization that I think they took me for 
 one of their own people in distress. The old woman had 
 been out for a pennyworth of coal, a very small portion of 
 which she placed on the smallest and dimmest of fires. The 
 light in the room was insufficient for me to know what 
 it contained, but slowly I learnt that there was in one 
 corner a sick child, whose mother knelt bathing its brow, 
 and this poor old woman, the grandmother, had spent the 
 last penny they possessed in order to help the sick child to 
 bear the cold of the night. I was struck with this room 
 because I could hear in another corner that there were some
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 261 
 
 people sleeping. I could see the shrivelled, bent form of 
 the grandmother in the dim light, and she and the mother 
 exchanged whispers occasionally, and seemed often to turn 
 towards the street door, as if they expected someone to 
 return. It was weird and witch-like, and I think that the 
 entire novelty of it must have roused me. I was certain 
 that some man helped them to convey me indoors, and it 
 was equally certain that he was not there now. 
 
 At length the man returned, and with him a policeman, 
 to whom, apparently, he had told as much of the story as he 
 knew. The policeman paid little attention to the fact of my 
 bruises, and robbery, and maltreatment, but said I was to 
 accompany him to the 'station.' This was no easy matter, 
 but by the help of the man I rose. He was able to shed 
 more light upon the scene in fact, he seemed to me 
 unnecessarily to have thrown an amount of light upon 
 myself and then it was that I saw clearly that there was a 
 very pale, worn child lying on the floor in one corner, and 
 in the other corner, where I had heard sounds, there were 
 five children asleep in a row, covered with the rags they 
 wore in the daytime. It was a miserable sight and a 
 miserable home, and yet they had treated me with kindness. 
 They had got me water to drink, and offered me every help 
 in their power, and the man, tired and worn out, who 
 seemed as if he had risen from his sleep, had taken all the 
 trouble to fetch someone to help me. I mechanically put 
 my hand in my pocket for a sovereign before I turned 
 to leave the room, and then I realized that I was in 
 the poorest part of Fogham, and that I was as poor as 
 the rest, for every pocket had been emptied. 
 
 It was a long, painful journey to the police-station. 
 
 There I gave an account of the assault and robbery, the 
 number of my watch, and other details. I was then allowed 
 to depart. I felt ill and faint. I took a cab, hoping I might 
 find Dick at home.
 
 262 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ON my arrival I had a bath, and resumed my ordinary 
 attire. After a substantial repast, I felt so much better that 
 I began to take a philosophical view of the situation. 
 
 I thought I could not be very seriously injured, notwith- 
 standing I felt stiff and bruised. 
 
 I knew Dick would return as soon as he could. I took 
 my largest pipe, and sat down to muse over my strange 
 experiences. I found my musings getting considerably 
 mixed, and at last the pipe fell on the floor. I was sound 
 asleep. 
 
 When I awoke, I first went to Dick's room. There was 
 no sign of him. This astonished me, and I determined to 
 have a light breakfast, and hurry back in the daylight and 
 see whether it was possible to trace Dick's movements. 
 
 I had taken a ticket and purchased my newspaper, when 
 I saw the placards of the Free Press announced that there 
 had been a startling murder in Fogham of a singularly 
 mysterious and atrocious character. I turned to my paper. 
 There was a full description of all the horrible details, and 
 luckily the wretch had been caught in such unmistakable 
 circumstances as to leave not the slightest possible chance 
 of doubt. It was the one theme of conversation in the 
 carriage. Everywhere there was excitement, because this 
 was supposed to be one of a series of ghastly and atrocious 
 crimes, the rumour of which had surged up from the 
 squalid slums of Fogham, to fill its fashionable circles with 
 alarm and disgust. It was therefore a matter of public 
 rejoicing that the miscreant should have been caught red- 
 handed. The papers were jubilant, because the crime had 
 b_en committed by a foreigner and an educated man, as
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 263 
 
 they had always maintained before. But my philosophy 
 forsook me, and the paper fell from my hands, when the 
 report said that the foreigner was a gentleman of high 
 social position, allied to the peerage, and bore the name of 
 Richard Spooner ! 
 
 This was a new sensation indeed ! After years of un- 
 disturbed calm, I again received a shock. It overwhelmed 
 me. I had known nothing like it since the day on which 
 my father's will was read, when I learnt that I was penni- 
 less. 
 
 Fortunately, however, long years of habit do avail some- 
 what, even in the greatest crisis. I was able soon to regain 
 my balance so far as to find relief in uttering many curses 
 upon Fogham and its abominable slums. I blamed myself 
 because I had not taken stronger measures to prevent Dick's 
 haunting those streets, that were full of such vice and crime 
 as could not be found in any savage country, and would not 
 be tolerated in any properly-constituted state. 
 
 Of course, I knew that the whole charge was groundless ; 
 but I also knew that we were two strangers in a land of 
 half-savages, whose law was the most clumsy machine ever 
 yet invented. I knew that it was the interest of thousands 
 of professionals to bring this crime home to Dick. I 
 arrived in the neighbourhood where the savages were 
 already beginning to prowl about with that haggard, hungry 
 look which might be picturesque in winter wolves, but 
 which certainly had no charm in man. 
 
 I knew not how I should proceed. However, upon ask- 
 ing an officer of the law where I should see Dick, and 
 stating that I knew a great deal about him, these difficulties 
 were at an end. He instantly took me into his special care, 
 and conveyed me to one of those ' stations,' or receiving- 
 houses of crime. When they had finished asking questions, 
 and expressed their unmistakable astonishment at my
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 interest in the most notorious character who had set all 
 Fogham in alarm by his brutal murders, I again repeated 
 that I wished to see him. They then told me that it was 
 impossible. 
 
 I was utterly bewildered. I was told that on that morn- 
 ing at half-past ten he would be brought up in one of their 
 Courts, and that then I also must appear and give my 
 evidence. In fact, it was proposed to detain me as an 
 accomplice, until I asked to be allowed to go and see Lord 
 Guy. They thought it very unlikely I even knew him ; 
 they imagined that either it was a trick, or it might lead to 
 some unexpected revelations the people in Fogham are 
 always on the look-out for some sort of crime or immorality 
 amongst their nobility. 
 
 They sent one of the officers with me to Sedgemoor. I 
 was not a little fatigued ; and when I arrived at Sedgemoor, 
 after the faintest, most aristocratic surprise on the part of 
 Lord Guy, he suggested breakfast. He was alone ; as they 
 had been up far into the morning, the ladies were not 
 down. 
 
 I thought it better to steady my nerves and support my 
 reason by a good breakfast. I had very little trouble with 
 the officer of the law when he really found that I meant to 
 call upon Lord Guy; and when he discovered that the 
 servants knew me, he allowed me to leave him in the hall. 
 
 I commenced to tell my story to Lord Guy. He was 
 greatly shocked, and disregarded his breakfast, and declared 
 that he had always predicted it, that he would not have 
 had it happen for any money, etc. 
 
 He said : ' I am attached to Dick, and I know that he is 
 
 as innocent as I am ; but ' (here he faltered and grew 
 
 pale, and seemed as embarrassed as Lord Broomdepath did 
 at breakfast at Barnside, when the representatives of the 
 Free Press Association were about to swoop down and
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 265 
 
 devour him and his reputation). 'But,' he faltered, 'he 
 can never be the same to Edith. There will be the publicity 
 of the trial and the scandal, and we may have to shut up 
 Sedgemoor for the season and go to the Funk Islands till 
 the storm blows over.' 
 
 I was at first perturbed that Lord Guy should feel so 
 deeply disgraced ; but when he talked about the attachment 
 and the devotion of Edith being broken to atoms by an 
 accident of this kind, which might happen to any man, I 
 was indignant. However, his reference to the Funk Islands 
 called up the burlesque of Toddle civilization so vividly 
 that I was almost savage enough to laugh. 
 
 I believe Lord Guy never forgave me for enjoying my 
 breakfast. 
 
 As I had returned and looked more accurately at the 
 charge brought against Dick as stated by the press, I had 
 been struck by one item, which I thought would solve all 
 the difficulty. It stated that a messenger had arrived as it 
 was striking ten to report the atrocious crime which had 
 just been discovered. Now, as I was well aware that Dick 
 was inspecting the byways of Fogham with me when it 
 struck ten, I hoped there would be no difficulty in establish- 
 ing this point and setting him free. 
 
 I told all this to Lord Guy, but he shook his head, and 
 said that was a common trick in the island, which now was 
 never even listened to in a court of law. It had been a good 
 trick, and it had freed many a criminal and hanged many an 
 innocent man. 
 
 However, as the time was pressing when Dick would be 
 charged in a police court, I begged Lord Guy to come with 
 me to ensure a fair hearing, and to offer the help of his 
 counsel. He took the precaution to call upon his own 
 solicitor, Mr. Mountboy, an authority in law, who had 
 received certain rewards at the hands of the State, and was
 
 266 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 a distant connection by marriage. We three drove in Lord 
 Guy's brougham to the scene of the trial. 
 
 We drove through endless streets, and I saw more of Fog- 
 ham than I had ever seen before. There were thousands 
 upon thousands of cabs, carts, carriages, and every possible 
 form of vehicle. It was truly amazing to see Fogham 
 awaking from its slumber and setting out for its day's work. 
 'Mr. Mountboy asked me many questions, and was particu- 
 larly pleased that there was no possible doubt with regard 
 to the hour when the crime was committed, and when I 
 last saw Dick. It was wonderful to see how this man, who 
 was accustomed to the mazes of the law and the tricks of 
 the officials, was able to find out secrets which they refused 
 to divulge to anyone else. He had a private interview with 
 the magistrate when we arrived, though it was by no means 
 easy to gain admission into the Court. An immense crowd 
 of biped hyaenas had assembled to gloat over poor Dick, 
 and they would doubtless have torn him to pieces if he had 
 had to pass through them. 
 
 After Mr. Mountboy's interview with the magistrate, I 
 was taken to see Dick in his cell in the company of an 
 officer, who remained. I found him less agitated or 
 depressed than I had expected. He was a little indignant 
 at the treatment he had suffered, but he said he had learnt 
 such a lesson as no other opportunity could have afforded 
 him, and he trusted that when free he should be able to 
 make known several of the facts of the wretched neighbour- 
 hood, and so bring help to the thousands of miserable, weak 
 poor who were being driven to death by the cruelty of 
 neglect. He grew quite cheery, and defied all the surround- 
 ings, though he looked pale and worn. I told him that I 
 had brought Lord Guy with me. At the mention of Lord 
 Guy's name his countenance changed, and he anxiously 
 asked what Edith had said.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 267 
 
 I was glad to be able to tell him that I had seen Lord 
 Guy quite privately, and no one else knew. 
 
 His gratitude for this was the pure gratitude of a child. 
 Meanwhile Mr. Mountboy had informally taken up several 
 points of evidence. He was able to find the two children, 
 because they had been detained, and were also to appear in 
 the same police-court, charged with the crime of sleeping 
 on doorsteps. There was every reason to believe that they 
 knew absolutely nothing of the crime with which Dick was 
 charged, and therefore their evidence would be worth 
 much. 
 
 When at last in a crowded court Dick appeared in the 
 dock, there was a great sensation and some audible utter- 
 ances, which were instantly silenced. Lord Guy and myself 
 sat with the magistrate on his official bench. 
 
 The officer having charge of the case stated the reasons 
 for apprehending Dick. The whole neighbourhood was in 
 a state of wild excitement upon the news that a terrible 
 murder had just been committed, such as had rendered 
 Fogham notorious for the last twelve months. No one 
 could imagine why these murders were committed ; they 
 had long suspected that they were done by a skilled hand. 
 About eleven o'clock an officer had discovered the prisoner 
 hurrying through one of the worst streets of Fogham 
 apparently very excited. When interrogated, he was unable 
 to say where he was going. When he was detained, a large 
 amount of blood was discovered on his coat and hands. 
 The circumstances were so strange that he was immediately 
 charged with murder, which he merely denied. 
 
 Then came Dick's own evidence, which was a simple 
 narrative of what had taken place from eight o'clock in the 
 evening till the moment when he had found the child, who 
 had fallen down the steps and severely cut' its head. This 
 child he had carried, and the distance to the hospital was
 
 268 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 so great he had supported the bleeding head by frequently 
 changing its position. This accounted for the amount of 
 blood that was found on his garments and upon his hands. 
 
 The story was incredible, apparently, to the official mind ; 
 but fortunately, at the suggestion of Mr. Mountboy, various 
 proofs were brought forward steadily which strengthened his 
 statement. He was removed, and the two children who 
 had been sleeping with their little sister were brought into 
 court. They were asked why they were sleeping there, and 
 how many of them, and so forth, and they told exactly the 
 same story which Dick had told ; and of this there could be 
 no doubt, that after ten o'clock he had found these children, 
 and that he had carried the little one for shelter to a 
 hospital. A doctor from the hospital testified that the 
 amount of blood found on Dick's coat and hands would be 
 likely to be the result of carrying anyone bleeding so 
 profusely as was this child when she arrived at the hospital. 
 
 Then Mr. Mountboy, by some trick of the islanders, had 
 me placed in the same wretched small box, where I was 
 asked to kiss a very dirty book, and then I was catechized 
 as if I had been a professional liar from my birth. I was 
 interrogated as to my relationships with Dick, whether he 
 was a friend, or a brother, or a cousin, how long I had 
 known him, why I had been led to attend him on that 
 particular night, what object we had in view, etc. 
 
 When I tried to convey some idea of the real object of 
 our visit, I only provoked laughter. Still, the evidence that 
 I gave was unimpeachable, and after scores of questions 
 had been put and other witnesses had been called, the 
 magistrate declared Dick to be not guilty of the charge, to 
 the great disappointment of the majority in court. With- 
 out an apology from any single officer, the unhappy Dick 
 was allowed to leave. 
 
 We expressed onr thanks to Lord Guy, and I hurried 
 Dick away to give him some food and rest.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 269 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 IT was evident to me before we reached home that Dick 
 was altered. Experience writes its history on the face of 
 man, and no doubt writes it also by some indelible process 
 on that mysterious organism which constitutes the individual. 
 Most faces are ordinary, and so are most experiences, which 
 may account for the fact that this observation of mine will 
 be of no interest to many readers. But granted an extra- 
 ordinary, subtle constitution, as in the case of Dick, let that 
 individual be moulded in the hardest school of fortune, and 
 then baked in the fiercest fires of social life, and slowly, every 
 mark that has moulded it, every scar that has been uncon- 
 sciously given, will show. This was the most trying period 
 of my life abroad. Dick looked as if he had witnessed an 
 Apocalypse of truth, and he was so stung with the reality 
 that, instead of being cured of his desire to mingle with 
 misery, he seemed to have been initiated into some in- 
 scrutable mystery, which made him at once a prophet and 
 a high-priest to all the miserable men of all the miserable 
 ages. 
 
 He was of opinion that it had brought before his own 
 mind, clearly and for ever, the essential distinction between 
 Christianity and civilization. Christianity came to the 
 individual who was bankrupt, helpless, and dying, and 
 offered him everything because he was in this deplorable 
 condition, sought him for his weakness, tended him for his 
 badness, and loved him for his disease. This seemed the 
 simple method of giving the highest life to the worst. But 
 civilization stood still and frowned upon the struggling 
 masses who were without health, without wealth, and with a 
 low form of life. It did not even condescend to place them
 
 270 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 in its gorgeous fabric, but slowly and eternally had ground 
 their bodies to powder and smeared its rotten foundations 
 with their blood, as it reared its towers to the stars ; and 
 when the individual for one moment had broken one law of 
 this iron tyranny, every force which had protected life, and 
 every friendship which had made it worth having, were 
 turned against the unfortunate victim, and he was hunted 
 as the vilest vermin. Christianity is God ripening to revela- 
 tion in the weak ; civilization is the devil ramping to mad- 
 ness in the strong. 
 
 A mere flaw in the evidence, and more than half Fogham 
 would have learnt with greater glee than even a legacy or a 
 dinner could have inspired that Dick's dead body was 
 swinging in the air. 
 
 He had seen a great deal of the best social life of 
 Fogham, but it had produced no real impression upon 
 him ; he had never even valued it at its own tinsel. He 
 altogether failed to recognise that it could have any place 
 either in the growth of the nation or of the individual ; and 
 I felt that he was entirely unconscious that his late dif- 
 ficulties might cause a complete transformation with regard 
 to his admission to that society, and, above all, with regard 
 to Edith. 
 
 I had not ventured to say anything to him since he had 
 inquired whether Edith knew, and on the afternoon of the 
 same day he received a kind note from her, saying her 
 dearest friend was so ill in the country that she had to hurry 
 away, and would write again to him. There was no refer- 
 ence whatever to his present difficulty, which greatly relieved 
 his mind. I fancied that Edith knew every circumstance of 
 the case, and had made up her own mind what plan to 
 pursue. It was like the islanders to change their abode 
 immediately anything unpleasant arose, and this in itself 
 proved to me that she was hiding away from the storm.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 271 
 
 Poor misguided girl ! I do not wish to misjudge her 
 conduct ; I do not wish to suggest that she was capable 
 of falsehood. I would not even assert that it would have 
 been better for her, and that it would have been better for 
 Fogham in general, if they could set apart one day in the 
 year when they would say what they mean. She had been 
 taught for the last twenty-five years that the whole duty 
 of woman was to be able to become unconscious of life 
 around her at a moment's notice, should there be anything 
 which her small world thought she ought not to see or to 
 hear, to know or to feel. She had given twenty-five years 
 to practising the most perfect art of putting up the shutters 
 and becoming a serene statue in the cruellest circumstances 
 that could ever befall human life. So that her sweet, kind 
 note, which Dick cherished, and which added a deeper 
 anguish to his sufferings, was only a careful manifestation of 
 the highest art which the women of the island acquired. 
 Still, it was a relief to me. It gave us time. It did not 
 necessitate my going with Dick instantly to see her, so that 
 we were able to realize the facts of the case more fully. I 
 prevailed upon Dick to go to bed. I tried to take an after- 
 noon sleep in my chair, but an extraordinary curiosity pre- 
 vented me, and I went out. I was truly glad that I had 
 gone out alone. The Free Press had taken advantage of the 
 startling situation of a foreigner. They had placarded the 
 fact in every way, which only the perfection of lying could 
 accomplish. 
 
 The whole place was positively hideous, and had it been 
 in my power to depart from the island instantly, I would not 
 have remained another night. 
 
 I returned home to find Dick fast asleep, and, as I had 
 an invitation to a very fashionable gathering at Sir John 
 Toppem's, I determined to go in order to discover whether 
 this difficulty in which we had been landed was likely to
 
 272 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 make any difference in my reception. Very few people 
 knew me sufficiently well to recognise me, and of those few 
 possibly some would be absent, for, as Sir John had only 
 been knighted a year, I thought probably many of the older 
 aristocracy would not come. He had obtained his wealth 
 from some desert island as a manure manufacturer, and 
 though at first he worked on board ship in a menial position, 
 he had come to possess a fleet and many agents. He had 
 built two churches, and endowed two Stockstill clubs, one 
 in his native town and the other in Fogham, and his friends 
 began to be considerably irritated that the Government did 
 nothing for him. It was therefore arranged that he should 
 erect a statue in memory of a hero of a little skirmish with 
 savages, because the hero's grandfather used to live in the 
 town of which Sir John was at that time Mayor. The Prime 
 Minister took some distant offshoot of the Royal Family 
 with him, and an assembly came to witness the supreme 
 athletic feat of the royal hand drawing aside the curtain, at 
 which they cheered most lustily, for the islanders were 
 always very proud of this proof of the undiminished muscular 
 power of the Royal Family. The statue glittered in this 
 remote corner of the island. John Toppem was made a 
 knight. I hope the artist was well paid, and that everybody 
 gained something out of the job, barring the poor old 
 fellow whose name was associated with the statue. 
 
 Great was the splendour of Sir John's town-house. He 
 had compelled Nature to render him so much service that 
 he was said to have lodged a complaint with the authorities 
 because they did not keep his street clear of fog. A man, 
 who had transported and transmuted the dung of unknown 
 wild birds from a lonely desert island to enrich the vegeta- 
 tion and the peerage of the Toddlers, felt that he was 
 entitled to some degree of supremacy over the ' confounded 
 elements,' and if Sir John had not made such a large sum of
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 273 
 
 money by this easy process, it is just probable that he might 
 have devised some scheme for selling the fog of the Capital 
 to the members, who thronged the Stables of Grooms and 
 Jockeys, in the form of ready-made speeches. 
 
 Had I known Sir John better, I would have made this 
 suggestion to him. To have seen Fogham cleared of this 
 sulphurous nuisance, and the peerage enriched by another 
 man who had done something useful, would take away the 
 blush of shame from many a page of my diary. 
 
 As I anticipated, there were not many at Sir John 
 Toppem's who knew me, and, as I anticipated, they all knew 
 about Dick and ' his scandal.' I passed amongst the crowd, 
 often alone, sometimes halting in a recess, or behind one 
 of the gigantic statues, which probably represented the tute- 
 lary deities of dung ; one certainly had wings that were 
 sufficiently expansive to be symbolical of the whole feathered 
 tribe which had ungrudgingly rained the riches of our host. 
 Perhaps this particular statue was an exuberant form 
 of angel. As I admired his breadth of pinion, and won- 
 dered in what strange habitat these abnormal feathers grew, 
 my attention was diverted from his snowy plumage by 
 hearing an ancient lady say : 
 
 ' I am sorry for the Guys ; but there is one mercy Miss 
 Guy has been well brought up, and will be sure to do what 
 is right and proper.' 
 
 Then the other replied with a feline softness : 
 
 ' Don't you think it was very wrong of Lord Bottsford to 
 bring the young fellow into our society. Why, he is not 
 even his cousin !' 
 
 'No,' replied the other; 'that is the worst of these 
 foreigners, they have no sense of decency. Here is a 
 creature who, for aught we know, may simply be his 
 secretary. It is evident he is some low-bred creature, from 
 
 18
 
 274 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 the fact that nothing can ever keep him out of those slums. 
 It makes me shudder to think of it. And poor Miss Guy ! 
 What would have happened if she had married him ? Just 
 fancy a girl with well-developed tastes being tied for life to 
 some wretched foreigner with no more sense of the sublime 
 than a German sausage !' 
 
 ' It is indeed awful. If Lord Bottsford had only said that 
 this man was no relative, of course the engagement would 
 not have taken place. I know that Miss Guy is not rich. 
 She certainly has less than a thousand a year.' 
 
 ' Well, that is perhaps a blessing, because it is most likely 
 more than he has, and they cannot marry on that. So 
 Lord Guy will have the whip hand, and he will act rightly. 
 They are not here, I think, to-night.' 
 
 ' I think not.' 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 I LOOKED upon these two dispensers of fortune and fame 
 with feelings of such extraordinary interest that I must have 
 become dazed. The huge bird seemed to stretch its wings, 
 and I was carried away to the lonely island whose putrid 
 matter had laid the foundation for the brilliant fortune 
 which had brought this assembly together. Amongst the 
 filthy ruins I saw two vulture-like creatures, too large for 
 birds. They had the faculty of speech, and were gabbling 
 about the two young lives united by a passion beyond their 
 comprehension. 
 
 I was startled from this reverie by Lord Bootts, who must 
 have come in late. He greeted me, I thought, a trifle 
 coldly, but that may have been due to my absent-minded 
 condition. I was going to inquire of him respecting these
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 275 
 
 two sibyls of an earth-born curse, but they had gone. They 
 were partaking of refreshments, and probably introducing 
 some rather fine specimens of matter to the million microbes 
 which they call themselves. I should have felt better could 
 I have transported them to some undiscovered island, where 
 they might have laid the foundation for an entirely new 
 fortune to some lucky bargee, whose eldest son would have 
 created a new line of peers. My attention was now entirely 
 taken up by Lord Bootts. I had found him a very valuable 
 friend. He had been willing to help me with introductions, 
 and on this occasion I intended to find out whether the 
 sentiments of these two august ladies were the current coin 
 of society in Fogham or not. 
 
 I said quite carelessly to Lord Bootts : 
 
 ' The Guys are not here to-night, I think.' 
 
 ' No. I hear that they have been called away from town 
 suddenly.' 
 
 ' Have they left ?' 
 
 ' They will, I imagine, presently.' 
 
 And then the noble Earl looked darkly, like an ancient 
 bronze statue. 
 
 I believe that is deemed aristocratic. 
 
 ' But,' I said, ' I must see Lord Guy before he goes. I 
 wish to thank him for his great kindness to me, and the 
 help he gave me this morning.' 
 
 ' Excuse me, but I would advise you not to try to see him 
 at present.' 
 
 ' I do not understand.' 
 
 ' Well, it is a source of great annoyance to Guy that that 
 inconsiderate young friend of yours should have rushed into 
 publicity.' 
 
 ' But could I not see him and frankly talk out the whole 
 question ? It seems rather hard that an innocent man 
 is in danger of suffering a torture worse than death itself.'
 
 276 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 ' That is all very well from your point of view ; but come 
 with me into the conservatory.' 
 
 We found a secluded corner after passing through rows 
 upon rows of the rarest flowers, that seemed still more lovely 
 in the dim light. We had disturbed here and there either 
 a couple of young people or two or three old politicians who 
 were discussing the simplest way of stopping a new Bill, or 
 trying to settle which horse they should back at the next 
 race. When we had taken our seats, the Earl began : 
 
 ' I am really sorry for you ; but you will remember I 
 always said that your young friend would be wiser to let 
 these things alone. We in Fogham know a great deal 
 better than he does. Our Aristocracy ruled Toddle Island 
 before Fogham was, and this scum is only a later product. 
 We were silly enough for a short period to listen to those 
 few who maintain that all men are of the same family. 
 Therefore, any half-savage scoundrel whose sole privilege 
 was to be hanged, has been petted and reformed, prayed 
 for and supplied with soup, until he thinks that the island 
 was created for his special benefit, and that the only advan- 
 tage of a peerage is that he may have a private Duchess to 
 wait upon him. However, we have seen our folly; that 
 form of sentiment has had its day. It was only sentiment 
 I should say, rotten sentiment. Now, it is exceedingly bad 
 form that Mr. Spooner, a complete stranger in the place, 
 should assume airs of superiority and venture to read us a 
 lecture on how to treat our Criminal Class. It is doubly 
 awkward for Guy, because he is a young fellow with large 
 ideas and a small income, and he wants to make a sputter 
 in the frying-pan, so that some sympathetic old lady or 
 speculating old gentleman may take him up and stick him 
 on his feet, with a salary of ten thousand a year. Then 
 Guy would wrap himself up in sober respectability and be 
 as quietly brilliant as a blackleaded fossil.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 277 
 
 I tried to explain to Lord Bootts my deep regret that 
 such a thing should have occurred, but I pointed out that 
 an aspersion arising from an accident did not seem to me 
 to warrant such severe treatment. 
 
 He replied : ' Of course I cannot tell what Guy may 
 settle ; I only know that he is greatly disturbed, and you 
 had better not see him to-night. I called and left Lady 
 Bootts there as I came, because she is a great friend of 
 Edith's, and is spending the evening with her.' 
 
 So they had not left Fogham. 
 
 After the last remark of Lord Bootts I felt better. This 
 sweet, charming, affectionate Miss Guy, who had written her 
 tender note to Dick, saying she was called away to see a 
 friend dangerously ill, was at this moment clumsily trying 
 to carve out her own fortune by the aid of Lady Bootts, 
 very much as a child tries to clip its first angel out of card- 
 board. The jest was too exquisite. I thanked Lord Bootts 
 for his kind suggestions, and I think he must have detected 
 a merry twinkle in my left eye as I shook hands with him, 
 and turned to flee from this hot-house where the only pure 
 souls were the flowers. I found my bejewelled hostess, 
 hanging in ecstatic rapture over the piano, where a young 
 man was giving the most famous whistling solo of the 
 season in Fogham. He had been summoned by one of 
 the Princes to perform this delightful imitation of wild 
 nature; and it was said that the Prince would have kept 
 him as a pensioner to whistle the time away, but that his 
 favourite dog had such an aversion to this form of music 
 that it was impossible to have both animals. So, to the 
 great disappointment of the Prince, this human shrieking- 
 machine had to return to the professional haunts of Fogham. 
 It was even said that the Prince would have parted from 
 his favourite dog, but there is an ancient law in the island 
 that a prince can dismiss no servants without a special 'Act '
 
 278 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 by the House of Grooms. However, as the Prince, only a 
 week before, had asked the House of Grooms to double his 
 pocket-money, pay his tailor's bill, and give him a new start 
 in life, he was afraid to come forward and so soon trespass 
 upon their bounty. I give these statements as the current 
 facts of Fogham. I do not profess to understand them. 
 
 I turned to go, tearing myself away from the exquisite 
 carol. I left Lady Toppem suffused with content and 
 glory. I bowed my adieus to Sir John, who seemed 
 grandiose and powerful, as if he had a stock of dignity big 
 enough to found a fresh line of European emperors, or a 
 new official department of the English Civil Service. 
 
 In the hall I found Mr. Dragg. I had long wished to 
 see him, and had intended writing to ask him to take me to 
 the House of Grooms. He was arguing with the servants 
 as to what had become of his new umbrella. 
 
 I arranged to call upon him and to see this House of 
 Grooms, the peculiar glory of the island. 
 
 On arriving home I found Dick awake. He was greatly 
 benefited by his rest, and he had been able to take some 
 refreshment, and talked about getting up early in the morn- 
 ing. Though he was much rested, still the man's face had 
 not regained its freshness. There was that peculiar look in 
 his eyes which I cannot describe, except as the hunger of 
 tenderness. I have occasionally seen it in the eyes of 
 neglected women. I never saw it in the face of anyone 
 young and prosperous. It is apparently the fixed expres- 
 sion of an unutterable anguish that stops short of despair. 
 I wondered in what age of the world it was first developed. 
 The old painters do not show it. It may, however, have 
 been there, because when an artist wished to paint the face 
 of some female martyr, as likely as not he got the loan of 
 his neighbour's cook. Judging from many religious paint- 
 ings, the artist, when unable to find a human figure, appears
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 279 
 
 to have practised a rigid economy and to have bought a 
 gigantic doll and let it pose or repose in the sunshine of his 
 genius. I was alarmed at Dick's proposal to call upon Lord 
 Guy the first thing in the morning, and he did not tend to 
 decrease that alarm when he said : ' That dear girl has not 
 given me any address, and I cannot write to thank her. I 
 think it is so sweetly simple and unselfish that she should 
 have written me a few tender lines ; and though I know her 
 first impulse would be to come to me, yet that she should 
 have crushed down her sorrow and her longing, and should 
 have gone into the country, at such a moment, merely to 
 nurse a sick friend, is really womanly.' 
 
 I believe I said it was truly womanly. I had never 
 encouraged Dick to talk about the tender relationship 
 between Miss Guy and himself. They appeared to be 
 happy, and I was gratified with the development in Dick of 
 a keener interest in life ; and though I recognised it was 
 something entirely outside of my own experience and possi- 
 bility, I rejoiced that fie, at any rate, should be a human 
 being and have a share in the interests, the sorrows, and the 
 affections of human beings ; and when he spoke thus, and 
 those great hungry eyes were suffused with tenderness, I felt 
 possibly that I had been misled, so I said nothing of what 
 I had heard, and I insisted upon his taking more rest. I 
 left him to seek sleep myself. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 BUT sleep did not come quickly, so I rose and made notes 
 for my diary. I wrote many pages for future use. 
 
 It must have been nearly dawn, or what would have been 
 dawn anywhere except in Fogham, when I fell asleep.
 
 2 8o TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 Owing to this, I slept until the afternoon, and all uncon- 
 sciously brought about a terrible event. 
 
 Whilst I slept Dick had risen and had his breakfast, and 
 probably felt considerably better, and having no letter from 
 Miss Guy, he set out for Sedgeraoor to see Lord Guy and to 
 inquire for her address. By some unhappy blunder, as he 
 was crossing the hall to go to the library, Miss Guy passed 
 from the dining-room, and they met. He greeted her with 
 the unfeigned surprise of delight, which was instantly 
 changed into the unfeigned surprise of horror. I am unable 
 to write the particulars, because he would never disclose 
 them. She conveyed to him that he had outraged the 
 whole ideas of Fogham, that he had insulted her and 
 treated her with cruelty. Then she left him. 
 
 I think he was too dazed and stunned to know whether 
 Lord Guy was insolent or not. He was quite certain that 
 Lord Guy had expressed a very strong opinion on the case. 
 
 I had awoke feeling remarkably better for a long sleep. 
 My philosophy was at its highest point, and after my late 
 breakfast I felt sufficiently bold not only to have defied 
 fortune, but to have married the three Sisters of Fate at one 
 and the same time. It was later when I saw Dick .and 
 learnt what had taken place at Sedgemoor. I have never 
 seen a human being so completely and helplessly crushed, 
 and, as I had introduced him to the Guys, my indignation 
 knew no bounds. I determined to go and see Lord Guy. 
 
 It was the idlest hour of idle men, namely, two hours 
 before dinner. I found that Lord Guy was alone, and I 
 paused at the door of his room before it was opened, and 
 fortified myself with an inward chuckle and a wholesome 
 recollection that the world was a shadow, and that no instru- 
 ment had yet been discovered to measure the microscopic 
 point labelled Lord Guy. There is no such introduction to 
 a great man as to reflect for a moment upon his absence ot
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 281 
 
 position ' in the chart of the universe. He is less than a 
 mathematical point; he has not even 'position.' His dot- 
 shadow is entirely swallowed up by three thousand other 
 dot-shadows that lie nearest to him on the infinite dial. 
 Shadow-philosophy is true, whatever Dick may say about 
 the existence of a shadow-world. The only doubt I have is 
 whether the shadow itself is not a make-believe. 
 
 Lord Guy received me with a rigid ceremony which would 
 be cold enough to throw an impervious screen between two 
 furnaces heated seven times more than they were wont to 
 be heated. He seemed to be imitating the popular concep- 
 tion of 'Daniel in the lions' den.' There was a slightly 
 embarrassed composure, as if art were reaching after its 
 highest ideal, which is to imitate an accident. He pointed 
 to an empty chair, and then said quietly : 
 
 ' Lord Bottsford, I am surprised that you should call. I 
 have expected for twenty-four hours to receive a note from 
 you to say that you had left Fogham ; and, indeed, I 
 should have thought you would have left Toddle Island.' 
 
 'But, Lord Guy, why should we be in such haste to 
 depart from a place which has wronged us ? We should 
 have considered it cowardly and sneaking to have left 
 without seeing you ; and I should have supposed that 
 there was at least one person in this house who would 
 have felt a pang of sorrow at our sudden disappearance.' 
 
 The young man tried to imitate the scowl of his 
 ancestors. 
 
 His failure was complete. 
 
 His grimaces were entertaining. 
 
 I determined to make him answer, so I studied him with 
 interest, and whilst he was looking for a fitting term with 
 which to cloak his unutterable venom, I was engaged in a 
 mathematical problem, wondering what newly-devised term 
 of minus quantity would express my contempt for him.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 At length, slowly out of the cavernous heat, he said : 
 
 'You mistake our customs. This man can never marry 
 my sister. He has subjected her to public humiliation, and 
 given me the annoyance of a scandal in the height of the 
 season. I have had to send a telegram to a friend of mine 
 in one of the Funk Islands, and as soon as I can get a reply 
 from him, I shall put it in the morning paper and disappear. 
 All this he has brought upon me, yet Mr. Spooner has had 
 the audacity to call here.' 
 
 One might have thought Lord Guy was hatching night- 
 mares at so much a dozen. 
 
 At first I threw myself into the grotesqueness of the 
 situation, and enjoyed myself with banter. Then Lord Guy 
 entirely lost his temper. I tried to lose mine, and, with 
 some emphasis of indignation, I pointed out to him that it 
 was we who had been wronged, that we were not aware 
 that the Toddlers hawked their affections at so much a yard, 
 or bought their wives and husbands at so much a pound, 
 and threw them up the moment they did not pay ! I 
 pointed out to him that, recognising as we ever did the 
 mercantile greatness of Toddle Island, yet we had supposed 
 that the race would have some schoolboy conception of 
 copy-book honour, and that that honour, coupled with 
 affection, might have survived a greater shock than the 
 groundless accusation of a crime. 
 
 Poor Lord Guy ! 
 
 He grew very much like other men. 
 
 The veneer scaled off. 
 
 The mask fell to the ground. 
 
 The savage sat revealed. 
 
 I was unable to discern any difference between Lord Guy 
 and the fellows who knocked me down in the slums and took 
 my watch. My indignation may have clouded my vision. 
 I left him, with enough frozen ceremony to have created
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 283 
 
 a thousand peers amongst the Toddlers, at a moment's 
 notice. 
 
 There are few firmer allies in the battle of life than a bit 
 of genuine, natural scorn. My contempt for Lord Guy was 
 so measureless that I could have examined him under a 
 lens, with as much care and with as much indifference as if 
 he had been a new microbe brought over in the blood of a 
 savage. When I had left him I began to see that many 
 difficulties were before me. I thought of the two young 
 lives that were wrecked. I had been raging with a ferocious 
 hatred against Miss Guy, who in a moment of such supreme 
 disappointment and anguish could write a sham note to the 
 man who would have counted it a privilege to die for her, 
 or even to live with her. Possibly I wronged her. It 
 seemed to me the Guys were creating their own misfortunes 
 they had thrown their house into unnecessary hubbub, 
 in deference to a custom with which these poor savages 
 varnish their ulcers. Yet, upon reflection, I concluded that 
 the poor girl was helpless. She was only a floating mote in 
 the strong current of ages, and any little fancy of hers, 
 opposed to the savagery of such a stream, would not have 
 produced even a ripple ; on that stream her blasted life was 
 no more than a drifting petal torn from a flower in a gale. 
 She had the misfortune to live in an age and place which 
 demanded that you should buy a husband whose grand- 
 fathers and grandmothers had spelt their names on fixed 
 principles, and whose character was pure gold, until you 
 secured him by law, when you might discover his character 
 to be that of a puppet or a demon. Then your friends 
 would congratulate you upon your marriage, and have a fit 
 if you should wince. Poor wretched girl ! I wondered 
 whether she required pity, or whether she would walk with 
 a cool intrepidity to death, like the Trojan maiden who was 
 beheaded to give a holiday to a few brutal Greek sailors,
 
 284 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 because they declared that they had seen the ghost of 
 a king. 
 
 I was far more deeply concerned about Dick. I trembled 
 to think what might be the effect of such a shock upon such 
 a heart. It seemed a cruelty on the part of Dame Nature 
 to have placed a living, palpitating responsiveness in such a 
 world of shadows cast by paste-board scenery. Any stuffed 
 dummy might have given the same shadow as Dick gave ; 
 and that infinite dial which swallows up all that we are, and 
 all that we seem, would have been just as well satisfied with 
 the shadow of a dummy for breakfast as it was with the 
 constant agony which had been wrung from the heart of my 
 sensitive friend. Dick's nature was complex. He seemed 
 to have enough of matter, of animal brotherhood, to carry 
 him over the sandy track which fools call time. But, on the 
 other hand, he was rich in susceptibilities, imaginations, and 
 spiritual yearnings. He seemed more like a hungry seraph 
 pining for brotherhood than anything which was attached to 
 an animal shape. I could quite understand why the ancient 
 poets made their fabled creatures half animal and half 
 human, or half human and half divine. They were probably 
 writing their own biographies. They wrote under the bitter 
 reflections upon all they had suffered, because they had 
 been cursed with an animal shape. They had been the 
 slaves of some brutal lordling, whose stagnant nature could 
 only be roused by the maiming and murdering of his fellow- 
 men, and who took the old bard to see this butchery that 
 he might do more than the butchers themselves could do or 
 comprehend, namely, set it to music, and throw the glamour 
 of greatness over the barbarity of brutes. Whilst the bard 
 stood apart, and the animals forgot the music, he was wrapt 
 in spiritual converse or thrilled by the beauties of Nature, as 
 imagination peopled the clouds of Time with the living 
 splendour of divine companionship. Then, as he turned
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 285 
 
 from the noble brotherhood that had soothed him, to the 
 rulers of men who were picking the bones of their feast, a 
 new idea thrilled from the old harp, and he created the first 
 fable, that somewhere there dwelt a Being who was God and 
 man ; and that fable was the bard's own biography the 
 adumbration of the potential in man. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 WHEN I arrived home my worst fears were realized. There 
 was no longer any hope in Dick. His face was a tablet of 
 anguish. I was entirely beaten. This was a form of sick- 
 ness of which I knew nothing and for which I had no 
 remedy. I longed to apply the Toddlers' method and flee. 
 That afternoon and evening were the weariest monotony 
 that I have experienced. It seemed impossible for us to 
 refer to anything in the past, or make any plan for the 
 future, without in some way or other referring to the 
 Guys. 
 
 Miss Guy had become a part of his future, and though 
 there was a large portion of his past in which she had 
 not lived, yet the halo of this devoted attachment seemed 
 to spread over his past likewise. He declined all food, and 
 retired to his room early. 
 
 It was not so easy to get out of Fogham as I had supposed. 
 We waited some days before I could obtain any tidings of 
 the departure of the Guys. However, one morning their 
 telegram arrived, and the impatient young aristocrat dis- 
 appeared. I hoped that I should soon be able to remove 
 Dick altogether ; but there was a silent, brooding melancholy, 
 which I knew must be fatal if it overpowered him. I am so
 
 286 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 firmly convinced that all the valour and imagination and 
 achievements of man depend upon his breakfast, that I was 
 quite certain we should not long maintain this unequal 
 struggle, which had reduced Dick's life to an existence 
 without breakfast. I had more than once suggested medical 
 advice, but he had a rooted aversion to placing himself in 
 the hands of any of the eminent persons of Fogham, for fear 
 their prescriptions should be half as erroneous as their 
 speculations. I endeavoured to induce him to go out with 
 me, for I would gladly have taken him to Paradise Street 
 and hired lodgings for him there. I remained indoors a 
 great deal, and wrote many hours a day. Twice I had put 
 off my promised visit with Mr. Dragg to the House of 
 Grooms. 
 
 One morning a note came from him saying that they 
 expected a very lively debate in the House that night, and 
 he hoped I would go down early in the afternoon and stay 
 to dine with him Dick urged me to go, and I thought it 
 might be possible to bring him news which would help to 
 divert him from his melancholy thoughts. We were both 
 interested in this House of Grooms, for they were supposed 
 to be elected by the People all over the island, and they 
 came together with their own public avowal ringing in their 
 ears, that they would grant all the people wished. Yet, when 
 they arrived in Fogham, they appeared to spend their time 
 regardless of everything, except that they studiously en- 
 deavoured to turn night into day. 
 
 Early in the dull, leaden afternoon I found myself in the 
 vestibule of the House of Grooms. 
 
 Mr. Dragg awaited me. On this occasion he was a great 
 man. All that littleness which had led him to argue the 
 point with waiters had disappeared. He had the right to 
 walk where he would, and those very officials who probably 
 would have driven over him if they had been in a pony-
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 287 
 
 carriage were obsequiously attentive. He took me at once 
 to a seat from which I could see all the proceedings. 
 
 There was a large gathering, as if they expected some 
 great speech. A big table was placed in the middle of the 
 room, and on either side were benches where the Grooms 
 reclined or sat. Some of them spent a considerable time in 
 arranging their bodies, not having room for their legs, or 
 being particularly troubled with an eyeglass, or in mortal 
 fear lest their best hats should be damaged. These 
 trivialities came to an end when a certain antiquated 
 gentleman took his seat in a high chair, and immediately the 
 whole gathering appeared transformed into living interroga- 
 tive particles. One gentleman rose and asked if it were true 
 that a war had broken out in Central Africa because of the 
 bad gin that was sold there. Another gentleman inquired 
 whether it was generally known that a private letter had 
 been received by the Prime Minister from a convict in the 
 North of Asia. Then came a whole string of questions, of 
 which the following are some : 
 
 ' Has the new prison which was built for men been 
 appropriated for the use of women ?' 
 
 ' Have the Commissioners in Lunacy determined to set free 
 all female inmates of asylums in the island ?' 
 
 ' Does the gentleman of the Home Department know that 
 Mr. Richard Spooner, accused of a notorious crime some 
 weeks ago, has been described as having one eye blue ?' 
 
 Upon this there were shouts of ' Order !' and an ex-professor 
 of ethnology rose and pointed out that the English ought 
 not to be spoken of as a one-eyed race. 
 
 The President therefore called upon the interrogator to 
 withdraw his statement, otherwise he felt sure that the 
 English Consul would demand a fleet and blockade Fogham, 
 and the whole of their Capital might be reduced to starva- 
 tion by siege. He pointed out that John Bull was so fond
 
 288 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 of fighting that if you called him anything that was true he 
 would be sure to declare war at once. 
 
 Then there arose shouts and yells of the infuriated 
 Grooms, some cheering the interrogator, others saying, 
 'Vide, vide, vide !' 
 
 At last the gentleman in the chair rose, and, reducing his 
 face to the calm rigidity of a well-bred doorstep, brought 
 them to order. The gentleman who had inquired tried to 
 explain that the whole point of his question was to know 
 why this foreigner had not been properly described in the 
 Public Press ; he was not casting any aspersions ; he yielded 
 to no honourable member in his sincere and profound 
 admiration of the English nation, and for this reason he 
 sought to correct such a gross misstatement. The whole 
 scene became a hubbub. Whilst the member was explain- 
 ing his question there were frequent interruptions of ' With- 
 draw.' At last he withdrew and apologized, and the House 
 of Grooms felt that they had risen in social etiquette by 
 having prevented this member from doing the very thing 
 which they had intended to do themselves. But this, I soon 
 discovered, was the usual process in this assembly, and the 
 point was not what a man required or meant, but to which 
 party he belonged. There were two or three parties in this 
 crowded room, and each kept a few paid wags, who were 
 introduced into this blind ' representative assembly ' by one 
 of the numerous subterfuges for which the island is famous. 
 I believe such members used to be called ' pocket members,' 
 because in olden times they were secretly introduced by 
 some rich man. 
 
 I realized, as I sat, that of all animals man alone has 
 the power to form standing committees to retard his own 
 
 progress. 
 
 *****
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 289 
 
 THE ISLE OF PIGS. 
 
 After some hours had been given to asking questions of 
 the sort recorded, the great debate of the evening com- 
 menced. It had reference to an outlying island which was 
 under the dominion of the Toddlers, known in poetry and 
 drama as the 'Isle of Pigs.' It was celebrated for many 
 things, but nothing was so well known in history (or in 
 fiction) as its pigs. They were famous throughout the 
 world. Perhaps the reason is that the islanders, being so 
 poor, have no houses, and live with their pigs. Some think 
 that the islanders, being a very kind-hearted set and warmly 
 affectionate, endeavour to realize the ideal of a universal 
 brotherhood with the animal world, and give the pigs a 
 place in their affection which other people give their 
 children. Of course there were one or two people, in a 
 mercantile country like Toddle Island, who declared that 
 the whole thing was a matter of bacon, and that they 
 cherished these animals because they were desirous of 
 making money or enjoying their breakfasts. 
 
 I do not think that any research will ever settle this vexed 
 question, but the fact remains that the island is celebrated, 
 first of all, for its pigs. It is next celebrated for its very 
 beautiful women. They are the original Toddle women, 
 and as such are highly esteemed. Toddlers used to sell 
 their women to the isle ; now they buy them from it. 
 Young lords whose estates are not encumbered by their 
 fathers' debts, or railway navvies who have made a fortune 
 by inducing some thousand other navvies to work for them, 
 and who are on the very edge of a peerage, prize the women 
 of the island very highly, and usually buy one that is, they 
 get an introduction, make a display of their wealth, and 
 then marry her. The island was also famous for a remark- 
 able system of rent. The people who owned it had long 
 since got tired of its loveliness, and had left it, having first 
 
 19
 
 290 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 of all let it to a number of agents. These agents, who 
 thought it was a great sin that the day labourers or small 
 farmers should pay such low rents that they might be 
 tempted to become idle, doubled the rent, and sublet the 
 farms to these unfortunate individuals, who were thus 
 rendered industrious and virtuous by the steady force of 
 slow starvation ; but latterly the question had arisen as to 
 whether it was fair to interfere with the tillers of the soil 
 to this extent. So long as the original landowners, the 
 aristocracy of the island, had drawn their rents without 
 even the trouble of fetching them, and remained in luxury 
 in such a place as Fogham, there had been very little out- 
 cry ; but the day-labourer began to murmur when he had 
 to support cruel slave-drivers in addition to those migratory 
 cormorants, who lived everywhere except on their own land. 
 The unfortunate people were reduced to such a state of 
 beggary that it seemed no longer possible for them to cherish 
 their favourite pigs. 
 
 ***** 
 
 PIG'S FRY.* 
 
 As the pig occupied the position of interest in the nation's 
 history, so the killing of the pig was the event in family life. 
 It seems to have been the custom to make, on that occasion, 
 a large amount of pork-pies or mince-pies, and this, as usual, 
 led to new factions in the government of Toddle Island, 
 known as the Porker s\ and the Mincers.\ 
 
 These factions were at daggers drawn. Each proved that 
 the other intended to ruin the country. The Porkers said, 
 ' Let only the Mincers carry their point, and Pigs will cease 
 to be useful, and pork-pies will be nowhere found. The 
 life of the Toddler will be a starvation.' The Mincers said, 
 
 * Home Rule. t Whigs. J Tories.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 291 
 
 ' If the Porkers have their way taste will cease, the delicacy 
 of the table will disappear, and the Toddlers will degenerate 
 into savages.' 
 
 These sentiments they uttered on all occasions, with 
 every variety of illustration and application yet known to 
 falsehood. Delicacies of detail in the history of pork-pies 
 and mince -pies were brought to light, which would have 
 galvanized the palate of a fashionable diner-out. The 
 whole case became serious, and for a pork-pie or a mince- 
 pie Cabinet Ministers bartered their rags of office. The 
 names were no longer understood, and, though in the 
 mouths of all, no one knew their meaning. The subject 
 excited the House of Grooms, till a young lord felt it his 
 duty to deliver his nation. He had never been to the Isle 
 of Pigs, and he was profoundly ignorant of pies ; but he 
 asked his farmer in the northern part of Toddle Island what 
 dish was always made after killing a pig. 
 
 Now, unfortunately, in that part of the island the custom 
 is to cut up various soft parts, and send a big plate of the 
 mixture round to each neighbour. This is called Pig's Fry. 
 When the young lord heard of this, he was charmed with 
 the novelty, for he knew nothing of it ; he had only eaten 
 Fry. He at once thought to put an end to the factions of 
 Porkers and Mincers by a process of synthetic philosophy, 
 which he called harmonizing truth. When the next debate 
 on the Isle of Pigs rent the House asunder, he adjusted his 
 eyeglass, stowed his hands away into his pockets, and 
 declared that the whole thing was beneath their contempt, 
 for it was a question of Pig's Fry. 
 
 The House was first startled, then delighted, and the 
 ringing cheers were drowned in laughter. It was a dis- 
 covery in politics. Pig's Fry was the name of every 
 measure, every proposal, every reform, anyone dared to 
 bring forward for the Isle of Pigs.
 
 292 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 As the Toddlers are swayed by names, especially those 
 without a meaning, truth and common-sense were lost at 
 the discovery of the political term Pig's Fry. 
 
 PIG-STIES.* 
 
 The strongest opinions were held on the subject of Pig's 
 Fry that ever convulsed the history of the world. One set 
 of politicians maintained that the native who bought his 
 own pig had the right to keep it, or kill it, or do whatever 
 he liked with it. But many of the Toddlers held exactly 
 the opposite view. They said that this island had been 
 annexed under the Imperial sway of the Sacred Ass, that if 
 the people were allowed to have control over their own pigs, 
 the time would surely come when the Pig would be regarded 
 as the sacred animal, which was quite contrary to the Bible, 
 and that then all the life and traditions of the Sacred Ass 
 would some day be exposed to laughter. 
 
 Great was the excitement of Fogham over this subject. 
 One man would not even speak to another at a ball, when 
 it was known that he was favourably inclined towards the 
 Pigs of the neighbouring island. The interest of the debate 
 on this particular night centred in the fact that a leading 
 Groom was going to bring forward a proposition that the 
 islanders should be allowed to build their own Pig-sties. 
 When the member rose to advocate this in a vehement but 
 well-delivered speech, the whole of his audience seemed to 
 be electrified. They laughed and hooted, and showed the 
 signs of approval or disapproval known to every animal on 
 the earth, from a snake upwards. The gentleman continued 
 his speech. He tried to appeal to the facts of history, to 
 their own common-sense. He pointed out that the people 
 
 * Local administration.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 293 
 
 in the locality must know far better what they needed for 
 their own Pigs than the Grooms, who had never seen this 
 remote island. He showed that it would be far more 
 economical for the people to settle these affairs on the spot, 
 and he concluded by maintaining that there could be no 
 possible danger, because self-interest would induce them to 
 treat their Pigs well, and that there was nothing in the world 
 so content and idle as a well fed pig, unless it were the 
 House of Jockeys (cheers and laughter) ; therefore he would 
 anticipate the worn-out objection that in future the Pigs 
 might become formidable, and swim across interminable 
 seas, and eat up the last mouldy effigy of the Sacred Ass. 
 
 He sat down amidst laughter and loud applause. 
 
 The House adjourned for dinner. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 I WOULD rather not have dined, but I felt that Dragg had 
 been remarkably kind in bringing me to witness this great 
 event of the year. 
 
 I gathered that hundreds of the inhabitants of Fogham 
 were unable to obtain admission to the debate. 
 
 Dinner appeared lively. The Toddlers have a remark- 
 able trick of enlivening their gatherings, when ladies are not 
 present, by reciting improvised fiction. I suppose it is a 
 relic of those days when the poor old bard was stuck up to 
 sing a ditty whilst his masters were eating and drinking. 
 This improvised fiction takes the form of short stories, and 
 the more unfit the story is to be told in 'mixed company,' 
 the more uproarious is the laughter which it produces. 
 
 All who have attained to the dignity of dining join in this 
 form of amusement if they are able to do so. In fact, many
 
 294 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 men get their invitations to dinner for this sole reason, that 
 they have an unbridled imagination and a tarnished mind. 
 Beyond the usual little fictions of this kind there appeared 
 to be two engrossing themes. Of those at dinner, one party 
 created a good deal of amusement by ' confounding ' in plain 
 terms the Isle of Pigs, because, on account of this debate, 
 they had been brought from their horse-racing. This, I 
 thought, was very reasonable, as everybody must admit that 
 the horse is a far nobler animal than the pig ; besides, there 
 is the fact that the islanders breed horses in order to extort 
 money from their friends, who dine with them, by concealing 
 the bad points of a horse and inducing their neighbours to 
 ' back ' it. In fact, it was suggested that the Isle of Pigs 
 would remain a problem to all statesmen, until some law 
 should be passed that people might bet on the Pigs, and 
 thus create an interest in the breed ; for by this means 
 Toddle Island has become famous for its horses, and I have 
 no doubt that the Isle of Pigs would meet with considera- 
 tion, and the women of the Toddlers themselves would 
 receive much better treatment, if only both these subjects 
 could once become of sufficient national interest to attract 
 the serious attention of the gambler. Men who are quite 
 dull and loutish, in all other respects, have been known to 
 acquire a kind of intelligence on horsey subjects under the 
 stimulus of betting. In addition to horse-racing, much 
 amusement was created at dinner by some rumours of a 
 great scandal at cards. The islanders have found that the 
 weather so often interferes with their racing and betting, 
 that card-playing is one of the favourite methods by which 
 the idle Toddler reaches the grave without being conscious 
 of the journey. Some of them pass days and nights and 
 stake large fortunes on these bits of paper ; and though it is 
 well known that various forms of trickery are practised, yet 
 when some members of the Toddle Aristocracy indulge in
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 295 
 
 clumsy cheating, they make a great fuss, and by one of the 
 oldest methods known to the islanders, they cleanse them- 
 selves by covering somebody else with mud. 
 
 Wonderful Toddlers ! That dinner, its mirth and buf- 
 foonery, its brilliant lights and laughter, luxury in every 
 form and variety, are all present to me now as then. It 
 was a new experience, and I was in one of those moods 
 when experience writes itself deep in the consciousness, 
 and stays there. 
 
 When the hour for debate arrived, the crowd left their 
 wine, their cigars, and their stories, and arranged them- 
 selves in this little uncomfortable Stable, which they dared 
 not alter, because the Grooms of so many generations had 
 used it. They were, indeed, in a fit condition to prolong 
 the discussion. Some of them, at least, must have been 
 able to enter into the inner consciousness of that sacred 
 content which is the charm of Pig-life. I expected much 
 amusement, and I was not disappointed. A gentleman 
 adjusted his eyeglass and rose to oppose the motion which 
 had been made. He contended that he knew Pigs, which 
 statement was greeted by roars of derisive laughter. He 
 maintained soberly and in due form that to grant to the 
 neighbouring island control over its own Pig-sties would be 
 the most fatal step in the history of the Toddlers. He 
 treated them to volumes of history, which, I am told, is the 
 favourite weapon on these occasions, because each historian 
 makes a point of contradicting every other historian, or he 
 would not be considered original. This contradiction the 
 islanders call research. 
 
 By history he showed that the whole trouble of this 
 adjacent island had arisen from the fact that the Toddlers 
 had allowed any Pigs to remain at all. This he proved 
 most learnedly, and, in fact, was so long and slow in giving 
 evidence that dinner triumphed, and a large number of the
 
 2Q6 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 Grooms were fast asleep, and, as we should say to children 
 in this country, were ' driving their pigs to market.' At last 
 he came to his own personal experience. He had travelled 
 through the most beautiful parts of the isle with his own 
 carriage, horses, and servants, and he declared that he had 
 dined as well in the Isle of Pigs as he had dined in the 
 House of Grooms. 
 
 This statement was greeted by loud applause from his 
 own side. They recognised it as an unanswerable argu- 
 ment to some gentleman who was perpetually talking about 
 the misery and starvation which prevailed in the Isle of 
 Pigs. After this his speech became more lively. Ringing 
 cheers greeted many of his statements. I should have 
 thought that several of them were doubted, but as I was 
 unaccustomed to the habits of these men, I may not have 
 been able to discern between the cheers and the counter- 
 cheers. He related his own original observations ; he had 
 twice been in the isle in times of peace and plenty. His 
 first visit was at a remote date, before this ill-advised sugges- 
 tion had been brought under their notice. But during his 
 second visit he regretted to say there were clear signs of 
 riot, and he believed the whole island to be on the very 
 verge of rebellion. He admitted that in travelling a few 
 months before, scores of miles, he had only seen one pig- 
 sty, but the swine in it were larger and fiercer than anything 
 he could have imagined possible; and though honourable 
 members might think it a trifling sign, yet he himself had 
 witnessed the scornful riot manifesting itself in one of those 
 very pigs by the mere curl of his tail. 
 
 This statement completed his speech. The laughter and 
 applause were without measure, and the last snorer rubbed 
 his eyes and cried, ' Vide ! vide ! vide !' 
 
 After this the debate became general. Seven people rose 
 at once from different parts of the Stable, and it was with
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 297 
 
 the utmost difficulty that the sage person who presided over 
 these gambols was able to secure a hearing, in turn, for these 
 gentlemen. Some of them were exceedingly angry. The 
 clock struck twelve, and one spare, thin, frowning gentle- 
 man arose to move that the word 'that' should be left 
 out and the word ' and ' should be put in its place. I felt 
 frivolity could go no further, and I feared that the whole 
 thing would end in a riot, for I had heard that these vener- 
 able statesmen could indulge in a free fight, and that hats 
 had been smashed and ' black eyes ' received. 
 
 I never went to the House of Grooms again. Horse-play 
 was never a favourite amusement of mine, and I could only 
 be sorry for the dwellers in the Isle of Pigs if they expected 
 to get either justice or common-sense from a body of men 
 who began by directing Providence, and who ended by dis- 
 cussing the word ' that ' and tearing off each other's coat- 
 buttons. 
 
 Dick was in bed and unfeignedly pleased to see me 
 return ; I was sorry that I had been away so long. His 
 face was flushed, and his eyes seemed literally to shine, so 
 bright were they. He was restless, and as he could not 
 sleep, he insisted upon my telling him something of the 
 evening's performance. At some of the things I was happy 
 to see him laugh, though his serious nature objected to 
 buffoonery on a question which concerned the lives and 
 rights of human beings. He appeared to know a good deal 
 about the Isle of Pigs, and his opinion was that the 
 Toddlers had acted upon the uniform principle of tramp- 
 ling them in the mud and then deriding them because they 
 were dirty. I was not aware that this small island had 
 played so important a part in history, and that the Pig was 
 supposed to be in any way a rival of the Sacred Ass. I left 
 Dick with a heavy heart ; there was no disguising the fact 
 that he was seriously ill.
 
 298 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 THE HIERARCHY OF NAZARETH. 
 
 When I visited the House of Grooms I noticed a large 
 public building, a kind of national mausoleum of great 
 antiquity. The next day I went to see it, when I dis- 
 covered that it /fov/been one of the temples of their religion, 
 and was still partly used for that purpose. It is a truly 
 national building; its tombs and its statues display that 
 mixture and contradiction which the Toddler loveth. 
 Immoral kings and intriguing politicians, men of might to 
 murder in battle, writers of libellous or lewd books, men of 
 genius and imbecile kings, are all mingled together. I grew 
 interested in this show place set apart for the worship of the 
 Man of sorrows ; so I stayed and listened to a kind of 
 chant and some public readings. The performance was 
 full of beauty and stately decorum. 
 
 One of the readings described Jesus of Nazareth and His 
 lowly condition. This set me musing on the doings of 
 the Toddlers, and I tried to remember what Professor 
 Crutch had told me of their great discovery, called the 
 Hierarchy of Nazareth. The Professor was of opinion that 
 the Toddlers were distinguished by a marvellous latent 
 hypnotic force, by which they often rose to tragic grandeur. 
 Even their ceremonies are so overdone that sometimes they 
 topple over and become serious. They have elaborated a 
 series of grand displays, which they say are founded upon 
 the simple life of an Eastern Carpenter, though they admit 
 that He lived and died in conditions of pauperism, despised 
 by all the great and rich of His time, and, in fact, that He 
 was put to death as a criminal. 
 
 These displays may be called a national hierarchy in 
 honour of this Peasant, who numbers among His followers 
 all the great and respectable people of the island.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 299 
 
 This is the more wonderful because the original tradi- 
 tions of the religion seem to show that it was entirely in the 
 hands of the poor, taken up by fishermen and by women of 
 no social position. 
 
 Whether this excited the envy of the powerful, or whether 
 it was because His followers magnified the Jewish notion 
 that He was descended from Jewish kings, and thereby 
 roused His enemies, I have not been able to discover. 
 Years after, this foreign nation undertook to gild this worn, 
 emaciated religion, which seemed to claim the sympathy of 
 the poor by virtue of its own poverty, and whose very 
 rags possessed the power to charm away the poison of 
 pauperism and the sting of death. This pale image they 
 decked with a triple crown and surrounded with power, 
 enrolled kings among its defenders, and paid standing 
 armies to murder those who opposed it, and with the real 
 earnestness of thorough deception they employed fire and 
 sword to extend the kingdom of Peace ; they venerated as 
 martyrs those men who had most completely violated the 
 spirit of His teaching, and in order to advertise to the world 
 the extent of their own self-deception, they called it the 
 Hierarchy of Nazareth. As the generations passed away, 
 and some of the traditions were forgotten, much of the 
 teaching came to be misunderstood. 
 
 At last it was almost impossible to find an artist who 
 could paint a picture of the Founder of this religion. 
 
 The simple, haggard Peasant had been so misrepresented 
 and gilded, that a mere caricature, in purple and fine linen, 
 seated on clouds, survived in the popular mind. He had 
 been crucified by splendour and buried beneath emolu- 
 ments. 
 
 So Crutch thought; and if he were right, I do not 
 wonder that he considered this Eastern Hierarchy the most 
 striking marvel of religious organization, and that he should
 
 300 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 add with some bitterness, ' Verily, verily, I say unto you, the 
 temporal prosperity of the Church has been the gallows of 
 truth.' 
 
 I am unable to describe the change which had come to 
 our lives. Had we fallen from some neighbouring planet 
 into the boundless barrenness of a full moon we should not 
 have been more completely isolated. Cards of invitation, 
 that used to come like a fall of snow, never arrived now. 
 Many engagements that I had booked were cancelled in the 
 most ingenious manner. In fact, when Dick was not 
 present, it was one great source of amusement to me to 
 receive a little gilt-edged card from a Duchess, saying that, 
 owing to the sudden change of the wind or the absence of 
 her shadow, she would be unable to be ' at home ' on the 
 day fixed, 'with profound regrets,' etc. So one after the 
 other they got rid of us. 
 
 To this circumstance I am greatly indebted for some of 
 the most accurate information I obtained in the island. 
 Above all, it left me a great deal of leisure, so that I could 
 pursue the most extraordinary objects side by side with 
 Toddlers of any rank or of no rank at all. I almost felt 
 sometimes that if the vices of man had been treated as a 
 branch of natural science, human nature might possibly 
 have been interesting. 
 
 Our landlady, Mrs. House, had been recommended to us 
 by friends. We had found her in every way satisfactory. 
 '1 he usual jests which appeared in the Daily Press of Fog- 
 ham about the iniquities of the ' lodging-house cat ' were 
 unknown to us. Next to the enormities practised by
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 301 
 
 servants and the organized swindle called tips, perhaps 
 nothing was so terrible in the history of the island as the 
 lodging-house cat. Mrs. House had a few apartments to 
 let, and as we had taken all of them, and lived a great deal 
 out of the house, we had not had the opportunity of know- 
 ing very much of her and her family. Dick, of course, knew 
 them all by name, but, then, he believed in the brotherhood 
 of man. I turned to Mrs. House for advice about a 
 physician. I informed her that I did not want one of 
 those gentlemen who, from the mere accident of having 
 lanced an aristocratic boil, had been promoted to the 
 Peerage. I wanted a plain, practical man with both eyes 
 open. She suggested that no one would do so well as a 
 middle-aged practitioner in her own neighbourhood, 
 Dr. Links. I called upon Dr. Links, and explained to him 
 rapidly the situation, and asked him to call and make his 
 own observations. I was struck with the plain, every-day 
 shrewdness, combined with an almost maternal kindness, in 
 this man. He seemed not only to concern himself about 
 the bodies of his patients and the materials of medicine, but 
 was still a human being, though he had been in the medical 
 profession for many years. 
 
 Dr. Links remained a long time, and, as arranged, I called 
 upon him later to know his opinion. He was grave, and 
 said : 
 
 ' Your young friend is deeply wounded. The great thing 
 is not medicine, but life. Can you divert his attention ? 
 Can you create any powerful interest that will lift him out of 
 his own experience ?' 
 
 And much more to this effect. 
 
 I recognised the gravity of the case, and I hesitated as to 
 what would be the best plan, for Dr. Links did not advise 
 our immediate departure. I determined to consult Mr. 
 Carr.
 
 302 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 DICK was often melancholy. It was almost impossible to 
 rouse him. I wished that I could have disbelieved in my 
 own philosophy of tea and toast, because he took so little 
 food. I was convinced he was losing ground every day. 
 Dr. Links came frequently and established a friendship, but 
 still we made no real progress. When Mr. Carr arrived, he 
 treated Dick very much as a schoolboy, and seemed to 
 suppose that by this means he would be able to rouse him. 
 I told Mr. Carr about my visit to the House of Grooms, 
 and the grotesque discussion on the Isle of Pigs. He was 
 greatly amused. I asked Mr. Carr to explain certain forms 
 of expression and certain rules in the House of Grooms. 
 
 He replied : ' Bless you, sir, I know nothing about these 
 things ! We do not attach the least importance to them in 
 the way of business. These poor fellows, who by giving big 
 dinners and by laying claim to public criticism have obtained 
 the right to sit up half the night in that Stable instead of 
 in their own houses, are regarded by business men as quite 
 uninteresting.' 
 
 ' But surely, Mr. Carr, you have been to the House of 
 Grooms !' 
 
 ' Yes ; I once took an old lady there from the country. 
 She had lived so long in the sweet companionship of spring 
 wallflowers and autumn cabbages that she thought a Groom 
 was a great man, and she verily believed, before she came 
 to Fogham, that these people made the laws. I took her 
 on a favourable afternoon, and she was greatly amused ; but 
 her sense of their dignity was entirely blotted out, and I 
 believe, had she met one of the Grooms in the Lobby, she 
 would have asked him to carry her luggage.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 303 
 
 Here Mr. Carr laughed, as only the man should laugh 
 who has no care, or who carries fate in his waistcoat-pocket. 
 
 I asked Mr. Carr if he were able to tell me where I could 
 have all these matters explained, because I found it very 
 difficult to write about them in my diary. They had such 
 antiquated phrases. They used ' vide ' when they meant a 
 man to stop, they ' reported progress ' when they stood 
 stock-still, and they ' counted out the House ' when nobody 
 was left in it, and other such tricks, which I suppose had 
 an official meaning. Perhaps it was the language of ' the 
 Secret Service.' I heard they had a Secret Service Depart- 
 ment, though I have never met anyone who belonged to it. 
 
 Mr. Carr said, 'No one of my set troubles about these 
 things. The yarns are printed every morning in the Free 
 Press, but we never read them. The duty on a pound of 
 tea or the price of a box of herrings is a matter of far 
 more importance than the most solemn utterances in the 
 Grooms' Stable.' 
 
 ' But will nothing be done with regard to the Isle of 
 Pigs ?' 
 
 ' Nothing whatever. It is pure fiction. They are in no 
 misery. They do not want any change. They are agitating 
 to be allowed to build their own sties, and if we grant them 
 permission to do so, they would then get up a riot and 
 refuse to build one, and declare that we were using coercion 
 because we wished to force a foreign civilization upon them, 
 and that presently we should want to interfere with their 
 religion.' 
 
 Here Dick chimed in : ' Their religion is different, I 
 believe, from that of the Toddlers, and yet it is a part of 
 the Unoiled Machine, is it not ?' 
 
 ' That is doubtful at any rate, it is more unoiled and 
 more mechanical. I don't think that they ever found out 
 our principle of " the square peg in the round hole," which
 
 304 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 made the greatness of Toddle Island, in the opinion of all 
 the persons who were lucky enough to find a good living in 
 the Creed.' 
 
 'I have never understood that principle,' said Dick. 
 ' What do you mean by " the square peg in the round 
 hole"?' 
 
 Mr. Carr chuckled, and said : ' Well, you see, if a country 
 squire, or a boss, or a millionaire, should have a son who 
 " for family reasons " is compelled to study that ancient 
 branch of mechanics called the Unoiled Machine, it is 
 necessary to provide for him ; and most likely it turns out 
 that he is the wrong man in the wrong place, but he draws 
 his large income, employs a jobber, and smiles. He is the 
 " square peg in the round hole." ' 
 
 This subject of the Isle of Pigs had so tickled my fancy 
 that I had thought of it continually, and tried to discover 
 on what principle of buffoonery the debate had been regu- 
 lated. I do not pretend to know anything about the Isle 
 of Pigs. They might be ' brutes that deserved extermina- 
 tion ' ; or it might be the ' Isle of Saints ' and the ' birth- 
 place of heroes.' Of all this I profess to know nothing; 
 but I became silent from sheer astonishment to think that 
 a party of well-fed men many of them in the prime of life, 
 some of them of decent social position should be so far 
 infatuated by the tricks of antiquity, that they must meet to 
 rehearse the burlesques of their ancestors, which had no 
 interest except to the antiquary, and no meaning even to 
 him. 
 
 Dick asked (and I was only too thankful that he should 
 take part in the discussion) : ' Is it not true that every 
 Toddler who has ruled over the Green Isle has made it his 
 first object to trample the people under foot ? Did not these 
 very Grooms or, at any rate, their fathers meet and hold 
 solemn discussions, and pass resolutions to prevent the Isle
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 305 
 
 of Pigs from having a commerce of its own, because two or 
 three millionaires from Cable, and one or two other sea- 
 ports, thought that their grandchildren might be reduced to 
 the ignominy of having to live in one house instead of 
 three, unless the Green Isle was prevented from extending 
 its commerce ?' 
 
 ' I think I have heard something about that,' said Mr. 
 Carr ; ' but then, you see, commerce belongs to us it is 
 our natural birthright.' 
 
 ' By the same law,' said Dick, ' that the goods of the 
 traveller become the natural birthright of the highwayman. 
 Did you not also from Toddle Island again and again send 
 hired ruffians who were quartered upon the people, and who 
 hunted them down with far more severity than would have 
 been used had they been the swine to which your historians 
 are so fond of referring ?' 
 
 ' There again,' said Mr. Carr, ' I am unable to answer 
 you. That is a matter of history. We men of business 
 never read history. Histories, as a rule, are hearsay tales, 
 faked up by a few pale-faced fellows who live on books 
 and chaw their own consciences instead of breathing the 
 fresh air like other men.' 
 
 'But,' said Dick, 'you have, your own opinion with 
 regard to the Isle ? Do you consider that it is fairly 
 governed, and has met with justice or not ?' 
 
 ' Oh, certainly,' he replied, ' it is not fairly governed ; 
 but no part of the world is. It has not met with justice, 
 because justice is heaven, and we are far enough from 
 that.' 
 
 Then Mr. Carr laughed like a pagan such a laugh as 
 might almost have awakened old Homer, though I believe, 
 as a matter of fact, he was an exceedingly melancholy 
 person, and picked up most of his stories when listening to 
 the sighing of the wind in secret places, and watching the 
 
 20
 
 306 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 procession of his heroes and his gods pass like a panorama 
 across the sea-beach. 
 
 I saw that Dick was not satisfied with the position which 
 Mr. Carr took, and I personally was gratified, because it 
 proved that Mr. Carr was, after all, merely a frail Toddler. 
 He knew so much, that I was delighted to find there 
 were some regions, if even they were those of burlesque, 
 which he had not investigated. Dick turned upon him 
 rather sadly, and said : 
 
 ' Don't you think, Mr. Carr, that there will ever come a 
 day in Toddle Island when the principles of religion will 
 be applied to government ?' 
 
 This was the only occasion when I remember to have 
 seen Mr. Carr astonished. 
 
 He said slowly : ' My dear sir, you had much better try 
 to apply the principles of religion to stop the motion of the 
 planets.' 
 
 ' But is it not possible that the various people in the 
 House of Grooms should conduct public business in the 
 same spirit of Christianity in which, I suppose, some of 
 them conduct their own private lives ?' 
 
 ' No ; it is not. Business is business, and religion is 
 religion, and politics are neither. That, you see, is our 
 maxim. If a politician wishes to deal with business men, 
 he makes-believe that he is doing business. If he wishes 
 to gull a country Recumbent, he talks about the Bible like 
 a converted countess. But when he comes up to Fogham, 
 he leaves behind both the business and the religion, and, 
 fixing his eyes steadily on the House of Jockeys, he con- 
 stantly talks about the Sacred Ass, gives good dinners, and 
 endows a club with as much pious unction and ten times 
 more money than his grandfather's grandmother would 
 
 have bestowed on a church.' 
 
 * -x- * * *
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 307 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 I WAS surprised to find how much Dick knew of Mrs. House 
 and her history. He sat after dinner and told me that she 
 was one of the many martyrs of the social system of Toddle 
 Island, thus : 
 
 ' I first discovered the condition of the family by observing 
 that very early in the morning there was a stir, which 
 always ended in someone leaving the house. This was a 
 lame, haggard-looking man, about thirty, Mrs. House's only 
 son George. He had some situation in the City, miles from 
 here, so that in all weathers he had to leave home at half- 
 past eight. Wondering how he could possibly fare in some 
 of the very trying weather which we have had, I went out one 
 morning before he did, and watched him take his stand to 
 wait for a bus. The weather being unusually bad, it was 
 extraordinarily difficult to obtain a seat. Two buses had 
 pulled up and gone, for having only two or three seats vacant, 
 these were immediately taken by stronger and more active 
 men than George. When at last I saw the crippled invalid 
 climb to the top of an omnibus, with difficulty, and to the 
 only place he could obtain, I returned home to our 
 sumptuous breakfast, for which I had no relish, and I 
 wondered what could be done to help this sufferer. 
 
 ' I soon had a talk with Mrs. House, when I discovered 
 that she was one of those women for which the island will 
 surely be celebrated. She started life as a lady in a very 
 good position, and married a Masker, who also obtained a 
 good professional position, and early in life was made a 
 Recumbent ; but he fancied that provincial work did not suit 
 his health, and having changed first from one house, and 
 then another, to the great mortification of his family, and at
 
 308 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 considerable loss, he determined to abandon his profession, 
 and to spend his time partly in Fogham, and partly in hotels 
 on the Continent. His fits of temper and morbid suspicion 
 rendered life unbearable, and Mrs. House, with indomitable 
 spirit, determined she would no longer live the life of a 
 slave, subject to the whims of a madman. 
 
 'They parted. The two children remained with the 
 mother, and, though all the money was hers, and came 
 through her family, yet, by a law of Toddle Island, only 
 recently altered, which used to hand over, not only the pos- 
 sessions, but the body and soul of the wife to the husband, 
 he claimed the money, and upon his wife's income he still 
 continues to live as a gentleman at large, having left her 
 with absolutely nothing except the house in which she lives, 
 which was her own before her marriage, and of which he can 
 take possession at any moment. I was greatly moved by the 
 calm intrepidity of this injured woman, and I determined 
 to try and help her, because she was anxious about her 
 crippled son. He was a great solace to her, and his miser- 
 able wages, though only twenty-four shillings a week, were 
 nevertheless a fixed, necessary part of their income. I had 
 hoped, by speaking to someone of influence, to find him 
 a lighter situation nearer home. I called upon Lord Bootts, 
 and spoke to him about it. He received me very kindly, 
 and offered me a cigar, which probably had cost more than 
 George would earn in half a day, and took me into his con- 
 servatory to show me the rarest orchid in Toddle Island, for 
 which he had given five hundred pounds the day before. 
 He expressed a passing murmur of discontent because the 
 plant was not flourishing, and he thought that, after all, 
 " the beggar was going to die." He smiled when I told 
 him about the horrors of this cripple, whilst struggling for a 
 place on an omnibus, and frequently having to walk miles 
 when no omnibus could be got. He said :
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 309 
 
 ' " You are unaware of life in Fogham. George is lucky i 
 and well off; for, by your own showing, he has got some I jJ M >i 
 work to do, and he has a home. These are luxuriegjGor- ' 
 people of that class. Why, you might stand at any of the 
 corners of our great thoroughfares, and, if it were possible 
 to see for fog, you would discover young ' business ' girls of 
 all ages, many of whom have been well brought up, fighting 
 in the early morning hours for a place, even outside an 
 omnibus, in the pouring rain or the driving snow.x^Tassure' 
 you there is no need to bother about George ; besides, if the 
 case were ever so pressing, I believe my secretary has five 
 thousand and odd names on his list now. There they are, ' 
 and there they must be till the grave opens.'' 
 
 ' I left Lord Bootts profoundly saddened, and as I was 
 unable to help George, I made a friend of him, and got to 
 know all about his work, and lent him books, though 
 I found he had not much leisure. They have the whole 
 work of the house to do amongst them, and George spends 
 his evenings when he comes home in making up all manner 
 of arrears, such as cleaning extra boots and knives, carrying 
 coal and laying fires, and any such little things as could be 
 got ready for the future day ; and that was why they 
 welcomed us as lodgers because we usually went out in the 
 evening. 
 
 ' George's sister, Amy, has a morning appointment, which 
 enables her to stay at home the early part of the day, and 
 go to her place of business at half past ten. So that between 
 them they share all the burdens of Mrs. House, and these 
 people manage to live. I have envied George over and 
 over again. He is one of the few people I have met in the 
 island who proves to me without doubt that, notwithstand- 
 ing all the mechanical formalism of their worship and the 
 pagan frivolities of their social life, yet these people have 
 heard of the Christian religion.'
 
 310 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 I could merely add : ' It is a great pity that a little of it 
 could not extend to those corners where strong men run 
 over the weak ones and get all the vacant seats.' 
 Dick smiled sadly at my criticism, and said : 
 ' What a revolution there would be in Fogham if its whole 
 business and pleasure could once come under the full sway 
 
 of Christian unselfishness !' 
 
 #...,,*...,.*..* 
 
 I was very glad to hear of George, and I sincerely hoped 
 he would have just the influence on Dick which both Dr. 
 Links and myself were seeking. 
 
 We wanted someone who would interest him, divert him 
 from the one calamity ; for Dr. Links was far from satisfied 
 with the progress which we were making. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 As the days wore slowly on, it became more and more 
 difficult to get Dick to stir out of doors. The fogs which 
 had been our most constant friends for long months came 
 with less power, and the black floating brimstone which 
 gives the atmosphere of Fogham its unearthly taste was not 
 quite so potent. 
 
 I called upon Sir Cloud Drummer. This busy man 
 had not heard of our many misfortunes ; and though the 
 Guys had disappeared, his life seemed much the same. 
 I mentioned his Right Rev. brother-in-law and other 
 topics, but I gained nothing in particular from him. He 
 seemed slightly anxious lest I should remain half a day. I 
 had learnt that I had committed an enormity against the 
 proprieties of Fogham in believing that the man intended to
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 311 
 
 give me luncheon when he asked me. In fact, this was the 
 chief reason for my calling upon Sir Cloud. I had got one 
 eye on the clock, and I called to let him see that I could ask 
 forty-five questions and be out of the house within fifteen 
 minutes. I smiled often. Having absolutely nothing at 
 stake, I was prepared to amuse myself by placing not only 
 Sir Cloud, but the whole of the fashionable life of Fogham, 
 in one of those lines of shadow which mark almost imper- 
 ceptibly the lives of nations and of centuries on the infinite, 
 inscrutable dial. 
 
 The life of a nation, I felt, was only the shadow cast by 
 a wreath of smoke ; but I note this call upon Sir Cloud 
 Drummer, because it brought about a very pleasant event. 
 
 When I made some remark about the possibilities of sun- 
 shine in Fogham, he suggested that I should explore the 
 beauties of the river on whose banks stands the Capital. 
 
 I did my best to induce Dick to accompany me, and 
 rejoiced not a little when I succeeded. When we arrived at 
 a piece of lovely wooded country, where there were birds 
 and sunshine, there was a smile in the light and a freshness 
 in the May Green which I do not remember to have 
 noticed before. We lunched in a quaint old inn, where 
 many great events appeared to have taken place in the 
 various squabbles of former times, when every Toddler was 
 seized with a burning desire to cut the throat of every other 
 Toddler, because each had discovered the truth, and wanted 
 to turn it into a national religion. I was inclined to make a 
 mockery of some of these things, but I determined that if 
 possible the day should be Dick's; I would yield myself 
 up (as far as my contradictory nature would allow me) to 
 Dick's point of view. Afterwards we strolled leisurely away 
 down an old avenue which skirted an ancient common, 
 where once highwaymen were the terror of Fogham's 
 aristocracy. The walk seemed to fatigue my companion, so
 
 312 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 we sat down and gave ourselves up to the sunlight and the 
 sweet carolling of birds. The scene inspired Dick, and I 
 learnt more completely than ever how great was the power 
 of natural scenery over his heart. When we had given our- 
 selves up to the full enjoyment of this scene, he said : ' If it 
 were possible to describe the awakening response in my life 
 to a scene of this kind, I should feel that an immense step 
 had been taken towards universal kinship. I suppose there 
 are thousands of people who feel moved by such scenes, 
 and yet have never been able to express a single thought 
 which they evoke. I am convinced that the thrilling joy 
 caused by the awakening of Nature at spring-time results 
 from some hitherto unexplained kinship with Nature in its 
 widest sense.' 
 
 I pointed out to him that association had a good deal to 
 do with our feelings on all these matters, and asked him to 
 tell me of his early life. 
 
 He said : ' All the spring-times of my boyhood were 
 spent where I could see the first wild-flower and the earliest 
 buds upon the trees ; watch the first bird's nest, and count 
 the eggs in it. These pleasures seemed to unfold year by 
 year, and became dearer as time advanced. I never felt 
 lonely when the wild-flowers were out, or when the birds 
 were singing over my head, and the visions which gleamed in 
 those early seasons were perfectly untranslatable. They 
 were not ambitions, they were not yearnings for success, 
 they were not myths or fairy-tales, but they were the 
 throbbings of a life that was unknown to me then, and 
 which has brought me more sorrow than joy. It seemed 
 to me on those spring mornings, with the cloud-shadows 
 flying over the moorland, or later on, when the sun cast 
 fantastic traceries of leaves and boughs in the forest, that I 
 had entered into the hall of life. Care and toil, and even 
 the infirmities and limits which mark our bodily existence,
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 313 
 
 had no part in such a scene. After we were turned out of 
 the cottage where I had lived so long, I used to go every 
 spring to stay with an old gardener who had a great regard 
 for my father. At those times it was so extraordinary to see 
 the early violets growing on my father's grave. A thousand 
 things, of which I should have said I was absolutely 
 unconscious, used to awaken to life and pass before me as 
 vividly, and apparently with the same reality, as the trees 
 waving in the breeze or the sun traversing his course. I 
 lived in mystery. I have never found anyone to explain 
 this mystery that thousands of scenes, even the shapes 
 of trees and the tints of flowers associated with my father's 
 life and love, should have been as completely dead and 
 buried as the leaves embedded in rock, and yet years after, 
 at the breath of a tender recollection, should all come to 
 life, and bring with them their surroundings.' 
 
 I was glad to listen to his monologue. It seemed a pain- 
 ful way, but it might be the only one by which Dick was to 
 become natural. I wanted to get him away from the 
 recent horrible calamity, and I thought that possibly he 
 would regain life by reviving that early time, when a 
 susceptible heart takes its abiding lessons, and when _a 
 susceptible nature either expands in the sunlight or is 
 seared in the furnace of wretchedness. 
 
 So I encouraged him to proceed, and after speaking of 
 memory, he continued : ' Another mystery of that time was 
 the vividness and the reality of spirit companionship. 
 Those people who deny the reality of the visions that used 
 to attend my pilgrimages in the early spring-time would be 
 shocked, if I denied the existence of the sun or the change 
 of the trees when they bud beneath its influence. This is 
 the perversity of what men call reason. A reasoning man 
 has_ frequently the most unbalanced mind to be met with. 
 Instead of developing the whole mind, he has developed
 
 3 i4 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 certain calculating faculties, and he is no more to be trusted 
 than the man who allows his benevolence or his self-esteem 
 to run away with him.' 
 
 We sat and talked, and enjoyed so much discourse that 
 at last we had to hurry to our boat. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 WE arrived home safely. I felt more hopeful during that 
 day, but Dick seemed exceedingly weary. Dr. Links 
 appeared greatly puzzled by his patient. He never remem- 
 bered to have seen a man so strangely afflicted. He said 
 that the only cases of a similar kind which he had met with 
 were women who were the wives of soldiers or sailors. He 
 was not cynical, and did not turn Dick's illness into one of 
 those things which the patient ' could cure if he would,' as 
 doctors often do when the nerves are completely exhausted. 
 He recognised the force of organization more than any 
 doctor I had met. I admired Dr. Links I wished I 
 could know more of the inner workings of his own mind. 
 )He seemed to have reduced the philosophy of life to one 
 word, ' Do,' and the creed of his religion added only another 
 ' single word to it, which made it read, ' Do good.' 
 
 ***** 
 
 CHRISTIAN COURAGE. 
 
 The Toddlers are very proud of their standing army. 
 They maintain that they have the finest fighters in the 
 world. 
 
 Dr. Links invited me to a quiet dinner, and I learnt a 
 great deal on this subject from General Thunder, who sat
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 315 
 
 next to me. He looked upon me with speechless and com- 
 passionate contempt when I inquired whether the Toddlers 
 ever found their religion interfere with their fighting, and 
 replied : 
 
 ' Not in the least. Ours is a Church militant in fact, I 
 sometimes think we might say military. There is nothing 
 like religion to give courage and ardour. You know it is 
 the birthright of the Toddlers never to know when they are 
 beaten~7~ 
 
 Tsmiled at his little insular prejudice, but did not contra- 
 dict him; I recognised that he was a man who for more 
 than fifty years had had his reign in the world, and I should 
 no more think of contradicting such a man, than I should 
 expect intelligence or friendship to be found in a com- 
 mittee. 
 
 He then gave me remarkable examples of the bravery of 
 regiments and of individuals. After I had listened with 
 great astonishment, I remarked quietly : 
 
 ' Then, your religion is not that which was taught in the 
 Gospels, or, as it used to be called, Christianity ?' 
 
 'That is exactly what it is,' he said snappishly. 
 
 ' Pardon me,' I said, ' I really thought it was rather a 
 form of Mohammedanism set to the Psalms of David.' 
 
 'There is no Mohammedanism in our religion; but, of 
 course, we believe all the Old Testament, and few people 
 can fight better than the Jews did. I think that the 
 Toddlers owe their fighting power to the fact that our 
 nation has always believed that every word of the Old 
 Testament was inspired in their native tongue.' 
 
 This really seemed a jest to me, and I doubted whether 
 General Thunder was in earnest. My evil genius took 
 possession of me, and I began to answer him after his own 
 manner. 
 
 'Such a faith as that,' I said, 'might not remove moun-
 
 316 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 tains, but it certainly would create them ; and when once a 
 man got over the difficulty of so large a belief, I should 
 imagine he would have the strength and the courage to 
 fight any other monster.' 
 
 ' You jest,' said the General sharply. ' You jest with our 
 most sacred beliefs. We may doubt some things, and we 
 may disagree about a few ; but we have no manner of doubt 
 on verbal inspiration and the value of a standing army ; and 
 perhaps there is more connection between the two than the 
 nation is aware of.' 
 
 I said : ' You are a most remarkable race. Small things, 
 that would be forgotten in the childhood of an ordinary 
 savage tribe, are cherished by you until they become the 
 wellspring of untold noble principles and lead you to 
 national triumph.' 
 
 I thought I would try what this style of thing would do 
 with General Thunder. However, with the stolidity of a- 
 nation that even prays over a marriage, and says grace 
 before getting drunk, he failed to see that my burlesque 
 had taken a solid form. 
 
 ***** 
 
 To my great surprise, on returning from dinner very late, 
 I found Mr. Carr. He was full of jubilation because he 
 had succeeded in solving some historical riddle, which had 
 to do with a fulfilled prophecy, in an obscure book called 
 the ' Revelation.' Such a book had naturally a special 
 fascination for a Toddler. The name Revelation had 
 been invented for several long chapters about lions, sea- 
 serpents, and golden candlesticks, upon the meaning of 
 which no two people could agree. Such a book was sure 
 to be called the ' Revelation ' by a Toddler. 
 
 I listened to Mr. Carr's explanation of the riddle. It 
 seemed to me of very little consequence. Its centre was 
 the massacre of a few hundred peasants in a valley some-
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 317 
 
 where. That, again, was so like the Toddlers. They love 
 tragedy. They must have some sort of butchery, otherwise 
 literature is meaningless and life is flat. Often they get 
 drunk because there is nothing to be killed. 
 
 This fascinating mixture of prophecy and wholesale 
 butchery and four -headed tigers seemed even to charm 
 away the common - sense of Mr. Carr. He forgot his 
 mechanical inventions, and showed that he was a Toddler. 
 
 When he had exhausted his enthusiasm about so charming 
 a theme, I was relieved, because it was a great effort to me 
 to keep my spirit of burlesque from running riot. 
 
 I had just come from a lesson on the peculiar religious 
 instincts of the nation, whose believers in a free Gospel of 
 Peace delight in war ; and now to find a man of Mr. Carr's 
 attainments trying to fit a mythological rhapsody and some 
 historical massacre into a golden proof of some bigger 
 massacre that was sure to happen soon, made me regard 
 the religious attempts of this extraordinary race as a little 
 cant buffoonery with which they juggle one another when 
 they wish to sell a bad article for twice its value. 
 
 However, I kept quiet. I knew that when Mr. Carr had 
 let off his first steaming enthusiasm we should get to some- 
 thing reasonable. I was greatly struck with one deduction 
 which the General had forced upon me, though he did not 
 know it, namely, that religion reduces man to a state of 
 ferocity which even drumcenness fails to produce. I can 
 only marvel that no professor of theology has taken this as 
 an abiding proof of the naturalness of religion. When the 
 cannibal was a gentleman of leisure, and his instincts were 
 of the selfish and superstitious sort, he was a highly religious 
 man according to his darkness; so that cannibalism and 
 religion are man's oldest instincts. Then, afteT long years 
 of struggling, sometimes making in the direction of civiliza- 
 tion, it is quite natural that religion should let loose the
 
 3 i 8 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 other ancient instinct, by the law of association, and fill a 
 man with the steady, burning ferocity which is supposed to 
 be impossible even in a tiger, unless he is hungry. 
 
 I wanted to get more facts before making such a general 
 statement as the above, and therefore I determined to ask 
 Mr. Carr, as I thought he knew various ranks of life. He 
 had forgotten his prophecy. He had talked a little about 
 machinery, and was complacently discussing his third cigar, 
 when I asked : 
 
 'Can you tell me whether the ordinary religion in the 
 island makes the people peaceable or quarrelsome ?' 
 
 ' Quarrelsome.' 
 
 ' But does it not strike you as strange that any religion 
 should render people less peaceable ?' 
 
 ' Most strange ; and that is why I am convinced that our 
 current religions are of human origin.' 
 
 ' But how do you come to the conclusion that ordinary 
 religion engenders strife ?' 
 
 ' We have in this country thousands of sects. Every sect 
 means a big quarrel. Then, within every sect there are 
 constant feuds. One man believes that all the letters in the 
 Bible are inspired ; another man believes that only the 
 words are ; the third man believes that only the sense is ; 
 and a fourth believes that all three are wrong. Then, these 
 people take their daily pleasure in trying to tear out each 
 other's eyes. I know all these sects well ; and there is no 
 order of starving wild animal that could in any way approach 
 them for unabated ferocity, three hundred and sixty-five days 
 every year.' 
 
 I was much struck by this evidence, and I could merely 
 encourage Mr. Carr by saying : 
 
 ' That is truly wonderful ! You have spoken chiefly of 
 the sects. Do you include the Unoiled Machine in that 
 statement ?'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 319 
 
 ' Certainly. It is only because the big men of that con- 
 cern wish to devour the little men that all the sects have 
 arisen ; and I am told by friends of mine, who are Jobbers 
 or Recumbents, that life is a burden and a misery. Every 
 act of their lives, the colour of their garments, the length of 
 their hair, whether they walk fast or slow, whether their 
 voice goes up or down at the end of a sentence these, and 
 a thousand other details, are the sources of constant fighting. 
 These men tell me that the only peaceable people in their 
 parishes are those who never go to church. The moment 
 men and women become tinctured with two or three of the 
 outside doctrines which are taught, they begin to fly at 
 each other, and never unite, except it be to worry the 
 Recumbent.' 
 
 ' Really, Mr. Carr, this is too refreshing !' 
 Mr. Carr almost dropped his cigar, and re-echoed the 
 word : 
 
 ' Refreshing !' 
 
 ' Yes, I have a theory which will account for all this. I 
 am sure, as you are an inventor yourself, you will bear me 
 out, there is not anything so charming as to invent a theory 
 and find it true.' 
 
 'I should like to know that theory,' he said gloomily. 
 Evidently he was aghast at my finding joy and merriment 
 in such a woeful state of things. 
 
 I then explained to him how it was that man, starting life 
 as a cannibal, with no customs to bias his mind and no 
 prejudices to darken his vision, had, nevertheless, filled up 
 his leisure by superstitious observances, which he called 
 religion. Century after century these cannibal instincts have 
 decreased, and yet the moment we apply the old conditions 
 of religion to the old animal, man, the two combine, and 
 then we see the cannibal gorging on his brother. 
 
 Mr. Carr laughed and beamed like an Apollo fresh from a
 
 320 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 Turkish bath. I believe he relished this bit of invention as 
 much as if I had discovered how to drill a square hole. He 
 shook hands enthusiastically, and I could hear him laughing 
 far down the street. For myself, I was in a high state of 
 merriment. Here was another instance in which I had 
 taken the common prejudices and the common customs of 
 these remarkable people, and hunted them down to a first 
 principle, fixed as the centre of gravity. I rejoiced. 
 
 Not many days after our visit to the country, the house 
 was greatly disturbed by the arrival of George in a cab. He 
 had gone to his work as usual, and though it must have 
 been nearly summer-time in any other place, yet that morn- 
 ing there was a dense fog and a cold wind. 
 
 George had gone to the office, having waited for his 
 chance to struggle to the top of a bus. He had not been 
 long at his employment before he had a serious attack of 
 haemorrhage. 
 
 His sister had gone to her morning work, and poor 
 Mrs. House was alarmed. Great was the disorder. But 
 soon she regained her calm, which was the shield of some 
 unknown Pallas Athene. Behind this shield sj}e had fought 
 life's battle, and no one had seen the heart's blood trickling 
 from many a secret wound. 
 
 Dick heard of the arrival, and it acted upon him with 
 electric speed. He soon helped to place George in his 
 room, and ran for the neighbouring doctor as if he himself 
 possessed all the vigour of youth. 
 
 Now a fresh life set in. Dick had. something to do. 
 Every morning he used to read to George and talk to him. 
 There appeared to be some secret means of communication 
 between them hopes, longings, regrets, all the deeper 
 mysteries of life, and some extraordinary spiritual com- 
 panionship, whose terms sound like the language of Pagan 
 mysteries. Soon a third person was introduced into these
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 321 
 
 mysterious conferences. This was a middle-aged man 
 called Stone, who was the Jobber of the parish. 
 
 Dick grew very enthusiastic over Mr. Stone, and Dr. Links 
 and myself were fully persuaded that George's illness was 
 doing more to restore the fibre called Hope than anything 
 which could have happened. After one of Mr. Stone's visits 
 Dick said : 
 
 ' I think I have at last discovered a man who can tell me 
 something about the religion of the island. Mr. Stone 
 is only a poor underling in the service of the Unoiled 
 Machine ; but he has a rich experience, and he possesses 
 great insight into the eternals.' 
 
 ' But,' I said, ' I thought Mr. Stone was a man of fifty 
 years of age or more ? Is there not something wrong that 
 he has not been made a Recumbent long since ?' 
 
 ' Why something wrong ?' asked Dick. 
 
 ' Because I was assured either by Lord Bootts or Sir 
 Cloud Drummer, or it may have been the little Boss I met 
 there, that if a man should adopt the Unoiled Machine as 
 his profession, and should have reached fifty years of age 
 without receiving the ease and dignity of a Recumbent, 
 either he has offended his Boss, is of no social standing, 
 or has no money, any one of which means that there is 
 something wrong.' 
 
 'Why will you talk like these Pagans ?' asked Dick. ' Do 
 those accidents mean something wrong ? I dare say some 
 of them constitute a great part of Mr. Stone's life, yet he 
 appears to have been the stay of this family in many ways 
 for years. His name causes Mrs. House to lay aside her 
 stern self-possession.' 
 
 'What a hard woman she is !' I murmured. 
 
 ' No, she is not hard,' said Dick ; ' but she is just like 
 some sensitive being whose nerves have been cauterized. 
 Trouble came upon her with such violence, such unwonted 
 
 21
 
 322 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 heat, that all the outer life was calcined; and she set to 
 work to march to the grave in that stolid silence which con- 
 ceals her nobler nature, just as ashes cover any fragmentary 
 bones of a martyr. She and George are truly Christian. 
 George knows more about the real life and character of 
 Christ than any person I have met.' 
 
 Poor Dick ! He had clear ideas about religion, and 
 sometimes marvelled at the absence of that faculty in myself. 
 I think he regretted my fatal habit of banter, and was 
 shocked to find that the ragged Paganism, which the Toddlers 
 call religion, had considerably developed my sense of the 
 ridiculous. I merely replied to his statement : 
 
 ' I am glad that you have found a kindred spirit, and 
 that you are likely to solve your most interesting problem.' 
 
 He wanted to know a great deal about my difficulty, 
 which I could not explain to him. I felt how ridiculous I 
 had been in wearying the experts in Fogham about a 
 disease which, after all, could have no influence on Dick's 
 life. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 IT made a considerable difference to me now Dick had 
 two acquaintances who took up a great deal of his time, 
 because in proportion as he was taken out of himself, 
 improvement was manifest. I felt that I could turn my 
 attention to some of my old pursuits. I was surprised to 
 receive about this time a note from Lord Bootts. It stated 
 that, Lady Bootts being out of town, he would be glad if I 
 would come and have lunch with him before I left the 
 island. 
 
 I felt it would be a flat denial of my doctrine of shadows 
 in shadow-land if I allowed my feelings to prevent me from
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 323 
 
 accepting his invitation. It was no more use bdng angry 
 with the Toddlers for their wooden ideas than to be angry 
 with a man for having a wooden leg. They were the 
 creatures of their day, as much as the gnats that dance in 
 the late autumn sunshine, and to expect them to be con- 
 scious of anything beyond their own day and generation 
 would be as foolish as to expect a child to feel his hair 
 grow ; so I went to see the Earl. 
 
 As I waited for the door to open, I muttered one of my 
 favourite mottoes about the infinite dial, and the shadows 
 which have not even 'position.' I had left Dick and 
 Mr. Stone talking over mysteries connected with the Lake 
 of Galilee. I entered the presence of the Earl with some 
 of the serenity of the infinite dial, which remains the same 
 whether shadows fall on it or not. 
 
 Lord Bootts was unchanged. He ' confounded ' the 
 weariness of Fogham, the House of Jockeys, the endless 
 dinner-parties of the season. He speculated on the possi- 
 bility of getting away from the Capital early, and wondered 
 whether the cold spring, which seemed to have eaten up 
 half summer, would have destroyed all the game; and he 
 thought that if once more he might have a gun and a 
 turnip-field, with a few men to mind the dogs, drive the 
 game into a comfortable place for shooting, and take it up 
 when it was shot, then life might be endurable. 
 
 I could hardly doubt but that Lord Bootts would have 
 been a fairly sensible man if he had lived in any order of 
 civilization less artificial and contradictory than that with 
 which he was familiar. He certainly did not bother himself 
 about the speculations which wore out the brains of abler 
 men. He wanted to live, but chiefly wished to be let alone, 
 though he took a good deal of waiting upon. 
 
 But with his theory that nature had provided a superfluous 
 amount of men and women whose sole privilege and only
 
 324 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 apology for being alive consisted in being allowed to wait 
 upon other folk, I do not think he was so unreasonable as 
 some men I have met in Toddle Island. 
 
 I told him of my visit to the House of Grooms, which 
 amused him. I asked : 
 
 ' Why do you not settle this Pig question in the House 
 of Jockeys ?' 
 
 He replied : ' That is one great advantage of having a 
 House of Grooms. All these dirty questions have to be 
 put in shape by them before they reach us. I wish I had 
 known that the subject was up for discussion ; I certainly 
 would have gone. I heard a good story at dinner yesterday 
 about the House of Grooms. They said that an enter- 
 prising theatrical manager went down last week to see if he 
 could make terms to rent the place, and offered to do the 
 acting for them at a reasonable rate. They were greatly 
 taken by his proposal, because, as one fellow pointed out, 
 " it would not interfere with dinner." But an old Parlia- 
 mentary hand refused the offer, because, he said, if any 
 stage company took it up, the acting would lack variety, 
 and it would mean the death of the comic element, which 
 now was the life of the House.' 
 
 I joined in the laughter of the Earl, and I felt once more 
 that I was enjoying the breezy burlesque of this wonderful 
 island. 
 
 I asked the Earl whether he seriously thought that nothing 
 could be done to avert the impending revolution in the Isle 
 of Pigs. He said quite gravely : 
 
 'Lord Bottsford, do not suppose that anything fresh is 
 going to take place in that island. Riot is the native air 
 of its population. It continues to decrease in numbers and 
 to increase in rebellion, until I suppose a day will come 
 when, by some process of combustion, the whole country 
 will become a desert.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 325 
 
 ' Do you think that the best use you can make of a 
 country which appears to have natural advantages, and, as 
 far as I can make out, might have been governing Toddle 
 Island at this moment but for one or two accidents such as 
 occur in the history of nations, as well as in the lives of 
 individuals ?' 
 
 ' I know nothing about the Green Isle myself, for I have 
 never been there. A nephew of mine fetched his wife 
 thence ; and they have some uncommonly pretty women, 
 who make better wives than our women do.' 
 
 ' But I fail to grasp the difficulty. Their proposal seems 
 so very innocent. Surely, if people keep swine, they may 
 be allowed to build sties for them ; and why should the 
 Toddlers bother ?' 
 
 ' This may sound a trifle to you ; but we have one 
 profound maxim which guides our national conduct, and 
 averts those dangers which the young and the poor call 
 reforms.' 
 
 ' Pray what is your maxim of safety ?' 
 
 ' It is simply this : The moment anyone makes a proposal 
 and sets forth its advantages, we disregard his facts and his 
 meaning, and, looking soberly about half-way down the 
 length of our noses, we say in a low, soft kind of chant : 
 " That is the thin end of the wedge." ' 
 
 His lordship solemnly stopped. I was waiting for his 
 revelation of the maxim, especially as I have a private 
 theory that the history of nations is found written in their 
 maxims ; and supposing his lordship to have fallen into 
 one of those absent-minded reveries common to people 
 who don't think, I said sharply : 
 
 ' And then, my lord ?' 
 
 ' And then,' he said, with the dreamy placidity which I 
 suppose no one could rival except a descendant from the 
 first Earl, who sat bootless on the bare back of the Ass,
 
 326 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 which was not then sacred 'and then they are frightened. 
 They do nothing. Believe me, we have stopped more 
 changes by that single phrase than either fire, or faggots, or 
 ropes of hemp, or automatic beheading-machines could ever 
 accomplish. We make the same remark with regard to 
 this Pigsty-building in the Green Isle. We don't care a 
 button whether the island belongs to the Pigs or the People. 
 We are aware they have lived together so long that we 
 treat them as so many swine ; but we are certain if once we 
 allowed them to take any action on their own impulse, then 
 farewell to the safety of Toddle Island, and perhaps the 
 civilized world.' 
 
 ' You astonish me ! I never saw such a discriminating 
 people !' 
 
 ' In this case, at any rate, we have experience on our side. 
 There was one stupid old Earl on the Green Isle who, in 
 spite of many warnings, continued to live upon his estate. 
 His tenantry were a lawless, half-savage lot; and one day 
 some stray traveller introduced to their notice the luxury of 
 a comb. It seemed a harmless thing, and he allowed this 
 people to comb their own hair. The result was that within 
 a week they had formed two secret societies, and in a 
 calendar month from the arrival of the pedlar they had 
 shot the Earl's agent, and threatened to drown the Earl 
 himself in his own whisky-vat. He is a wiser man, and 
 lives in Fogham now ; and the foiled savages from whom 
 he derives his income comb their hair in another sense.' 
 
 This was my last visit to Lord Bootts, and therefore I 
 defied all the rules of Fogham, and remained a long time 
 admiring his flowers and enjoying his conversation. 
 
 His mansion was superb, and would have converted a 
 French anarchist into a believer in the value of slavery. 
 Notwithstanding the smoke and soot of Fogham, everything 
 in the house sparkled, and was as brilliant as if he had
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 327 
 
 dwelt amongst meadows or in some sunny valley of Southern 
 Europe. By what process it was accomplished I know not. 
 I only know that when one arrived at the house, the vast 
 army of people who must have been employed to do the 
 work had disappeared, except one or two who looked like 
 respectable statues, with difficulty learning to walk. There 
 was a peculiar charm about the Earl's conversation and 
 manner. I think I have noticed it before, and I always 
 admired Guy's set for this charm. It was something 
 between the indifference of the shareholders in a special 
 Providence and the bullying of school lads in the upper 
 form. 
 
 George House was a long time ill. Mr. Stone came 
 frequently, and Dick and he became such friends that I 
 almost wished to inquire what could be the bond of union 
 between them. Mrs. House was considerably worried about 
 the illness of her son. She wore the aspect which one 
 always fancies must have marked the struggling heroes who 
 died for the cause of justice or truth at the hands of a 
 howling mob, unable to comprehend either quality. 
 
 Mr. Stone sometimes stayed to lunch with us. Ordinarily, 
 he was exceedingly quiet and thoughtful. He seemed shy ; 
 but as we got to know him more intimately, I discovered 
 that he had had a varied experience he had thought 
 much, and suffered more. As the Jobber in a large 
 parish, he had to stay there while the Recumbent went 
 abroad and sought the change and dignity necessary for a 
 Recumbent, so that he might come back to Fogham in the 
 late autumn with some photographs of strange places, and 
 be able to talk about a few remarkable ' bits of scenery ' at 
 dinner in the season. 
 
 Mr. Stone seemed to me to occupy a very servile 
 position. 
 
 After he had taken luncheon with us one day, I ventured
 
 328 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 on some such remark, and I fear Dick was hurt by it. After 
 defending Stone, he said : 
 
 ' In Mr. Stone you have a man who is possessed by his 
 faith, and lives it. Most men's creed and faith are only 
 small parts of a complex life ; but Mr. Stone has a single 
 life, and that is his faith.' 
 
 ' And pray what is his faith ?' I asked. 
 
 ' It seems to me the faith of the early Apostles the 
 faith in the actuality of Christ's life in this world. To 
 him Christ is a real Person who lived once in human form, 
 subjected to all the weaknesses of that form, but who 
 lives now in the human body, free from any weakness, except 
 that of local limitation.' 
 
 ' I do not follow your last remark.' 
 
 ' It is not necessary. I merely put it in to be accurate. 
 It may not be a weakness of form to be confined in one 
 locality at one time ; but it seems as if it were, and there- 
 fore I admit the one weakness of limit. Beyond that, 
 there is no weakness in the new body which men acquire by 
 the resurrection.' 
 
 ' And is Mr. Stone, in the strength of this faith, hoping 
 to produce any effect upon the lives of the Toddlers ?' 
 
 'You will observe the strong point of this faith, viz., it 
 contains the abiding germ of all Christian truth, which is 
 the Incarnation repeating itself without limit of time or 
 place, working in the hearts and in the lives of all people who 
 accept it fully, as Mr. Stone has done ; and as for the lives 
 of the Toddlers, it may not have produced any effect in the 
 drawing-rooms which you know, or in the counting-houses of 
 the City, or in the slums when taken as a whole, but I have 
 told you before that there are many separate cases where 
 it does produce a remarkable effect, and that there are 
 hundreds, and perhaps thousands, in the island who are 
 followers of the Nazajene.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 329 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 I HAD given much attention to the Unoiled Machine and 
 kindred subjects since we had dropped out of Society. 
 
 I found that many of the islanders revered the Sacred 
 Ass and the Unoiled Machine, but I was greatly surprised 
 to learn that though they might hold different opinions 
 with regard to these institutions, yet they appeared to be 
 almost unanimously superstitious in worshipping a collec- 
 tion of ancient scrolls and letters, which they called the 
 Bible. I thought I must be mistaken, and therefore I con- 
 sulted Dr. Links, because in all my inquiries I carefully 
 obtained information, at first hand, from intelligent natives. 
 
 Dr. Links praised the Bible as the most wonderful col- 
 lection of sacred literature in the world, but he thought that 
 the paid agents and the ignorant had regarded the book as 
 a fetish, and thereby done truth a great injury. 
 
 He said : ' This collection was made by a number of 
 men centuries ago, and because it was old, the Toddlers 
 thought the arrangement was as Divine as the contents. 
 The compilers left out some books and put in others, accord- 
 ing to accident or their own judgment, but now any man 
 leaving out a verse, or putting one in, is supposed to incur 
 the unending wrath of our God. They put one of the 
 books, not written last in the order of time, at the end, 
 and the writer in his exultant enthusiasm said, " If any 
 man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him 
 the plagues that are written in this book ; and if any man 
 shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, 
 God shall take away his part out of the Book of Life." ' 
 
 Dr. Links was of opinion that this was scarcely fair, as it 
 left an impression on the mind that the closing anathema 
 referred to every portion between the two covers of the
 
 330 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 book. He said many things which it is not lawful that the 
 historian should repeat. I was astonished when he told me 
 that, though in one part of the book two angels are said 
 to be present at the sepulchre, and in another part only 
 one, yet to say that two is not the same as one would be 
 blasphemy. 
 
 The doctor seemed to enjoy my astonishment, and said : 
 'Yea, verily, we are a mysterious race, and religion is our 
 most marvellous production. The aspirations and the 
 alarms of men sublimate themselves in fantastic forms, and 
 the timid in after-ages tremble at the accidental conjectures 
 of their ancestors, till the reverent fall in silent awe before 
 the dusty idols of the past, and mistake these dumb figures 
 for reigning Destinies. So is man evolved, and sometimes 
 we buy reverence at the cost of accuracy, and for our holiest 
 emotions we pay away the hardest coin of experience.' 
 
 When he ceased, I said : ' Perhaps this is one of the 
 avenues out of savagery. Our most unreasoning super- 
 stition may be a natural consequence of the impenetrable 
 horrors of that dark period when man was tortured by his 
 emotions, and had not acquired reason.' 
 
 'I often think of that period,' said the doctor, 'and it 
 makes me shudder. Nowhere else can I find an apology 
 for our strange cruelties and our equally strange inconsis- 
 tencies. It requires an almost superhuman cause to account 
 for the bitter quarrels of men who believe the Christian 
 religion.' 
 
 ' Do you mean the cruelties inflicted in the name of truth ?' 
 
 ' I was thinking rather of the butcheries over mere forms. 
 You may never have heard of our most solemn religious 
 ceremony called " the breaking of bread." Often there is 
 no bread used, so there is none to break ; but it is usual to 
 drink out of a cup, though half the Christians have given 
 this up also. If I were to tell you of the quarrels over this
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 331 
 
 ceremony (merely the form, mark you), I should seem to be 
 pouring ridicule upon a most solemn institution.' 
 
 I said : ' Please tell me ; I won't misjudge you, and I rather 
 believe in ridicule, or, at any rate, in laughing at folly.' 
 
 ' Well, in this holy ceremony some lifted the cup an inch 
 from the table, some a foot, some a yard. Over this point 
 our Maskers fought and murdered each other. The Inchers 
 would not speak to the Footers or look at the Yarders, but 
 they all used the same words at different hours in different 
 postures. 
 
 ' The Inchers are bold men. They fear nothing, except 
 toleration and a man's back at the sight of a man's back 
 they tremble and turn away. 
 
 'The Yarders are equally brave, but they are very 
 frightened of taking Supper at night. So they get up quite 
 early in the morning to have Supper. A man may take his 
 Supper at eight in the morning, which is the usual hour, and 
 on special occasions at seven or five. 
 
 ' The Maskers discovered that no one could say whether 
 Supper was taken before midnight or after in the first 
 instance ; they therefore acted on their universal principle, 
 and concluding that what was unnatural must be true, they 
 fixed Supper at eight o'clock in the morning.' 
 
 The doctor had risen to go, when he said : ' It is wonder- 
 ful how similar all religions are in one respect, i.e., the sup- 
 port they yield to the enthusiast in time of trial. The world 
 has seen no greater miracle than our sect called 
 
 ' THE BLOBB-FLOPPERS. 
 
 'This singular name admits of more than one explanation. 
 Some say it is from Lady Blobbs, who had great influence 
 in her day, and who was a sort of Mother Shipton in reli- 
 gious matters. Lady Blobbs had a knack of suddenly
 
 ir-u 
 
 332 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 falling down to pray in season and out of season, especially 
 out; she would pray about subjects which others found 
 out by inquiry. This falling down to pray is known as 
 ^"flopping." 
 
 ' Without the slightest warning, at the most inconvenient 
 times, if a difficulty presents itself, the Blobb-Floppers at 
 once become emotional and flop. One of my lady patients 
 told me that a friend of hers arrived in the middle of dinner, 
 and after embracing her hostess, she exclaimed, "_I hear 
 that my sister is going to a ball to-morrow night; do join me 
 earnestly at the throne of grace, and let us ask God to pre- 
 vent it/| 
 
 f Ordinarily you and I would say that such people could 
 have no good influence, yet some of them have. They 
 employ a hypnotic formula by which they have been able 
 to change the whole course of life in many cases, I am 
 told. They will take hold of an ungodly man, and tell him 
 again and again that if^he believes that he kngws, he will 
 then know that he believes ; and knowing that he believes, 
 and believing that he knows, then he will feel ; and granted 
 a sudden death, it will only be sudden glory. 
 
 'Now, this formula has been known to convulse the popu- 
 lation of an entire locality, and the history of the Blobb- 
 Floppers is waiting for a scientific explanation.' 
 
 Had I not known that Dr. Links was a man of sound 
 sense, I should have felt that he was telling me of some 
 trick of mesmerism, and not of a religious order. 
 
 Many volumes would fail to set forth the varieties of 
 Toddle religion. Even the quarrels in the Unoiled Machine 
 itself are beyond the capacity of one life to record. 
 
 The Inchers and Yarders deluged each other with blood 
 to settle the question whether the door of the engine fire- 
 place should open from left to right or from right to left. 
 
 On another occasion the Inner Brotherhood of the
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 333 
 
 Inchers formed the Association for the utter massacre of the 
 Yarders. These men thought their own prejudice the only 
 pure ferment in the world, so they formed an association 
 for the preservation of truth and the glorification of self. 
 
 They called a committee to invent the unity of truth, but 
 could not agree what colour it ought to be. At length one 
 sage suggested that it would rouse the conscience if expressed 
 as a vulgar fraction. It was one of the epoch-making dis- 
 coveries in the Island. The compound was rich in in- 
 gredients. They deliberated a week, and prayed in all two 
 months. This seems rather disproportionate in a matter of 
 pure business, but we must remember that committees in 
 Toddle Island are overflow lunatic asylums, and that on any 
 point, however remotely connected with religion, they never 
 agree on principle ; and when difference of opinion became 
 a personal quarrel, the chairman called for prayer, that the 
 two opponents might sleep off their temper. The reader 
 will now clearly see why so much more prayer than delibera- 
 tion was needed. 
 
 If I could give a detailed history of this newly-discovered 
 unity, my countrymen would understand the Toddlers. 
 
 When they had agreed upon the form of the fraction, the 
 only youth present proposed that one part should be the 
 milk of human kindness. This led to much discussion, but 
 an old gentleman moved an amendment that all the cream 
 should be taken off to show that it was the genuine work of 
 the committee. They sat till midnight, and made many 
 committee references to the shape of the bowls and the 
 peculiar forms of biliousness produced amongst the poor by 
 eating cream ; then the amendment was carried. The refer- 
 ence to biliousness alarmed the committee, because they 
 must have some poor, or their association would fail. They 
 were, however, encouraged when they remembered that in 
 the milk of Fogham they had a ready standard of indecent 
 blueness.
 
 334 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 The next ingredient proposed was an element known as 
 blow-your-own-trumpet. This was passed at once, on the 
 assurance of the only theologian present that a trumpet was 
 a necessary part of revealed truth. 
 
 Prejudice, cant, and revenge were proposed and passed 
 in block as necessary ingredients, though a brother, who 
 arrived late, asked if it were not contrary to the Bible, where 
 it bids them ' do all things decently and in order,' to pass 
 three items in one vote ; but the theologian assured him with 
 much pomp of circumstance that all these were ' incident to 
 our fallen nature.' 
 
 The brother was satisfied. 
 
 The Sacred Ass and the Unoiled Machine were accepted, 
 after saying grace, without any deliberation. 
 
 There was a long dispute as to whether truth should be 
 named. It was thought to be a slur on the committee to 
 name truth, for it ought to be understood that everything 
 the committee did was true. How they settled it will be 
 seen below. 
 
 Every man voted for respectability, and a lot of it. A 
 retired oilman moved a rider that the respectability should 
 beTvarnished, for it would give it a gloss, and make it as 
 attractive as a new widow. This reference moved the 
 company to tears. 
 
 The rider was passed. 
 
 The chairman had risen to bless the meeting and send it 
 on its way rejoicing, when a middle-aged man, tremulous 
 with emotion, exclaimed : 
 
 ' We have not accomplished our allotted task. Brethren, 
 there is nothing vital, nothing solid, in the ingredients you 
 have named !' 
 
 He sank exhausted. 
 
 They began to inquire for something at once vital and 
 solid. My informant declares that the committee would be
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 335 
 
 sitting now, but an inspired tallow-chandler suggested solid 
 yeast. 
 
 It was accepted. 
 
 The mixture was complete, and the most marvellous 
 features were that the only solid article was yeast, and the 
 total result unity, with a minus sign. 
 
 I. The proportions adopted by committee were : 
 
 SKIMMED MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS - I 
 
 BLOW-YOUR-OWN-TRUMPET - I 
 
 PREJUDICE - I 
 
 CANT - 3 
 
 REVENGE - - 3 
 
 THE SACRED ASS J 
 
 THE UNOILED MACHINE - - 
 TRUTH 
 
 RESPECTABILITY- - 
 
 SOLID YEAST - - - - - 
 
 1 
 
 Tl 
 
 IT. The Unity was arrived at thus : 
 
 i 
 
 i + 
 
 - _ 
 
 3 + TT f I0 
 
 Answer: - i 
 
 I am assured by a grave and shrewd man that this is a fair 
 specimen of the work and method of a religious committee, 
 and as such I give it. I do not profess to understand its 
 meaning ; that I leave to the ecclesiastically learned.
 
 336 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 GEORGE HOUSE was somewhat better ; still, Mr. Stone was a 
 constant visitor, and Dick had many conferences with both 
 of them. No three men, who were carefully trying to 
 decipher the faded chart of an unknown world, could have 
 shown a greater interest than these three manifested in 
 trying to understand the possibilities and conditions of 
 that world named the future life. 
 
 This future life, as ordinarily taught amongst the Toddlers, 
 is a faded remnant of gross Paganism. It is regarded not 
 as a part of the individual, but as a mere external condition. 
 They regard death as the door into a corner cupboard. 
 You open the door, and there are revealed all the stored-up 
 delights, or the skeleton, as the case may be, which has 
 been carefully prepared for you, and over which you have 
 no longer any control. The corner cupboard full of sweets, 
 which used to be associated with nursery dreams of delight, 
 is perhaps the truest figure that I can use to convey any 
 idea to my reader of a Toddler's notion of heaven. To 
 him heaven was a place entered by means of a door. In it 
 were all manner of ravishing delights plenty of music and 
 nothing to do ; and if only he could get inside and sit on 
 the edge of a cloud, he was bound to be happy for ever, for 
 he could not grow sore with sitting on a cloud. 
 
 Lest anyone should think I exaggerate the case, I give 
 the following Christian epitaph, which was a great favourite 
 with the poor : 
 
 ' Here lies a poor woman who always was tired, 
 For she lived in a house where help was not hired. 
 
 ' Her last words on earth were : " Dear friends I am going 
 Where washing ain't done, nor sweeping nor sewing !
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 337 
 
 ' " And everything there is exact to my wishes, 
 For where they don't eat there's no washing of dishes. 
 
 ' " I'll be where loud anthems will always be ringing, 
 But, having no voice, I'll get clear o' the singing. 
 
 ' " Don't mourn for me now, don't mourn for me never ; 
 I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever." ' 
 
 The ordinary Toddler held such doctrines about the 
 place of his future dwelling. In addition to this, he taught 
 his children that they went straight to such a heaven at the 
 moment of death. 
 
 He believed also in another place ; but its chief use was 
 to interlard his conversation on emphatic occasions, and to 
 send his neighbours there when convenient. I gathered 
 that Mr. Stone regarded this theory of heaven as one of the 
 many patches which the Toddlers had clumsily sewed upon 
 the seamless robe of revealed truth. 
 
 I looked at these men, and I admit they did some- 
 what interest me. There was George, pale and weak, who 
 could not be said to know what either life or pleasure 
 meant. To him Vice had never appeared with her bright 
 eyes, clad in loveliness. As for Mr. Stone, though he was 
 an abler man, with a more varied experience, yet he knew 
 little more of the real delights of this world than an organ- 
 blower knows of the origin of music. 
 
 With regard to Dick, his life had been one of paroxysms. 
 He started with a paroxysm of hope ; he expected a great 
 deal too much. His boyhood was like a summer dawn, 
 when the sunlight clothes hard reality with glamour. Then 
 came a paroxysm of grief, want, and despair. The free, un- 
 fettered lad was captured. He awoke from the sunny dawn 
 to find himself clutched by that vile hag, Necessity. She 
 dropped him into that heated furnace, nineteenth century 
 civilization. For years he endured the experience of a 
 grindstone scorching hot by its own friction ; and when I
 
 338 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 found him, we became friends, because we neither of us 
 believed in life, hope, affection, beauty, or any of the things 
 of which poets jabber, and which form the chief cackle of 
 pulpit oratory. That was long years ago. Since then we 
 had both changed. Position, power, and wealth had fallen 
 to my lot. It had brought me only two advantages. One 
 was that I was able to show my intense regard for Dick ; I 
 would have shared everything or anything with him, and 
 that was the bond of our life. However, the second 
 advantage would not be called such by the shallow. I had 
 known what it was to be trodden under foot of man, and to 
 be blasted by the unutterable scorn of women. When rank 
 and wealth became mine, these fantastic fools of each sex 
 stopped their jibing, and changed it to adoration. Thus it 
 was that they developed in me the over-mastering passion of 
 burlesque ; and when they were solemn and ready to enter, 
 in some business-like way, into a bargain for my affections, 
 they only awoke at my laughter my laughter terrified them. 
 It was fiendish laugther, and they knew its source from their 
 own secret experience. 
 
 I joined these wonderful three. I had one fixed inten- 
 tion, and that was to get away from Fogham, and away 
 from Toddle Island. I had carefully studied their railways 
 and steamers, and I only waited for a chance to make the 
 proposal to Dick. In fact, I was prepared to take George 
 House and Mr. Stone to bear him company, if only I could 
 succeed in removing him ; but at present I quietly entered 
 the room and listened as they tried to decipher the chart 
 which guides you out of the shadow-land of the infinite 
 dial to that far-off region where light-rays fall and are 
 recognised. Dick seemed, as far as I could make out, a 
 leader in this exploration. He had mastered spiritual 
 science even more completely than the religious teacher, 
 and he was saying :
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 339 
 
 ' This is clear, at any rate, that in the life of Christ we 
 read the possibilities of human life. The world has believed 
 many things of Him, but it has been too ready to forget 
 that He is literally " the first-fruits." When I am invited 
 into a garden in the summer, my friend may assure me of 
 the rich fruit that will abound. If he has a rare tree of 
 apricots, such as I have never seen, he is able to demon- 
 strate the whole thing to me. Should there chance in 
 some corner to be one ripe, three days earlier than the rest, 
 he will say, " This is the colour, this is the flavour, this is, 
 in fact, the first fruit ; and now you can see what dozens 
 will be ripe next week." 
 
 ' To understand Christ's teaching, we should say after every 
 act of His life, " This is how man grows into manhood ; just 
 as you see Him develop, so may all men develop." ' 
 
 A volume might set forth what these three men had to 
 say to encourage each other in their own fight in life. 
 
 Later I said to Dick : ' How do you account for the 
 fact that you three men, of such different training and 
 experience, should have come to anything like an agreement 
 upon such a subject as religion ?' 
 
 ' That is quite easy of explanation. We have all learned 
 in the same school.' 
 
 ' Indeed ! What school is that ? Can't you take in any 
 more pupils ?' 
 
 ' It is the school of- misery,' Dick said sadly ' the slow 
 crucifixion which appears to be the doom of all who reveal 
 the truth or find it.' 
 
 ' But has Mr. Stone had a life of misery ? He looks 
 well.' 
 
 'Stone has told me .so much of his own experience at 
 different times that I am convinced he has endured a 
 crucifixion of the severest type. He started life with fair 
 prospects, as the son of a wealthy islander. His boyhood
 
 340 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 had the usual joys which a rich man's son obtains. His 
 amusements were varied, his school was carefully selected, 
 and he was sent up to his University to enjoy that most 
 golden time of life in the most golden fashion. It was 
 whilst there that his father died. He was discovered not to 
 be rich, and Stone was stranded. There was just enough 
 to enable his mother to live in a humble way. His youngest 
 brother had to leave school and go into an office. His two 
 sisters, who had been admired for their beauty and their 
 accomplishments, were now regarded as a burden to a 
 home without money, and in a civilization not made for 
 women. 
 
 ' The sudden change in Mr. Stone's fortune became the 
 means of revealing the truth. He had lived the artificial 
 life which deludes the Toddlers. His every difficulty had 
 been overcome by an extra cheque from home. It might 
 be called a deluge of truth rather than a revelation which 
 now overtook him. 
 
 ' He wrote his experience for me at my request : " This 
 great shock was the first revelation to me. For a long time 
 I despaired. The organized prize-fighting, which a life of 
 earning wages must be, left me battered and blackened day 
 after day. Being unable to remain at my University, I 
 entered a school where I was expected to practise unheard- 
 of barbarities calculated to kill all childhood. Inferior 
 food, miserable beds, wretched bare rooms all tended to 
 degrade the boys. Had the schoolroom been designed as 
 a slaughter-house, it could not have been more devoid of 
 anything artistic. In this way a large number of lads were 
 driven through various horrors. A few words of some 
 foreign language, arranged on an artificial plan, were 
 drummed with difficulty into brains that had been pre- 
 viously weakened by the absence of human treatment. 
 This appeared in the prospectus as 'a classical education.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 341 
 
 Futile and unaided attempts to work out problems, the 
 principles of which had never been explained, went by the 
 name of mathematics. It was a methodical effort to quench 
 the thirst for knowledge, and it succeeded. My miseries 
 were so many that the whole of my character changed. 
 Upon my first visit home, I believe my mother was in- 
 clined to suppose that I had committed some secret crime, 
 because she could not otherwise explain my unprecedented 
 melancholy. 
 
 ' " I felt compelled to leave this school. Soon after I met 
 with a man who for one term had been my tutor. He 
 recognised the melancholy frame of mind in which I was, 
 and in consequence recommended me to qualify for service 
 in the Unoiled Machine. He knew a Boss in one of the 
 provinces, and thought there would be no difficulty. Luckily 
 I was able to prove that at my University I had heard 
 lectures on theology. I knew the names of two of the 
 Professors, so the difficulty was overcome, and I started a 
 professional career. I had been fortunate, as I supposed, 
 in securing service under a Recumbent of considerable 
 ability and great wealth. The Recumbent, the Rev. St. 
 John Walters, kept a large number of us for various official 
 transactions in his parish, and we received very good 
 training in the Funeral Service and the Marriage Service. 
 Many of the others soon disappeared. New ones came 
 and went. I remained again and again the only representa- 
 tive of the old staff. In my ' good ' days I had formed 
 what is called an unfortunate attachment. I had become 
 fond of a young woman who was devoid of money ; but 
 when calamity overtook us, there was no longer any difference 
 in our condition. She did not feel this a shock to her 
 affection ; consequently we fell into further imprudences 
 we married. As the years rolled on we experienced the 
 horrors of poverty. We were unable to get away for any
 
 342 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 holiday, or even change, unless I was fortunate enough to 
 secure Duty in some other part of the island for a Sunsday 
 or two. We never knew what it was to go abroad. We 
 were unable to enjoy the luxury and the refining influence 
 of either books, pictures, or music. We lived the life of 
 peasants, and did the work of slaves. I was inclined to 
 rebel. I saw younger men again and again placed in 
 positions which increased their income, though I had been 
 years without the offer of any change or any increase of 
 stipend. I thought a great deal about the teaching of the 
 Nazarene. I looked into the Gospels with a desire to 
 understand their meaning. I could nowhere find that 
 sublime hierarchy which combines the luxury of an Oriental 
 monarch with the power of a despot, and calls it the Church 
 of Christ. Whilst I was thinking over these problems, one 
 of my little girls, four years of age, was taken seriously ill. 
 For the first time in fourteen years the Recumbent entered 
 my house. He gave orders for some game to be sent. I 
 was still much struck with the simple avowal of brother- 
 hood and the self-denying humility which formed the 
 beauty of Christ's character. I was trying to discover at 
 what stage of the Church's history those virtues had dis- 
 appeared from the lives and teaching of the men who have 
 made Christianity pay. 
 
 ' " It was the loveliest of very early autumn days, and 
 Mr. Walters was going away to shoot, which, you know, is 
 the mark of the Aristocracy in the island. True nobility 
 is proved by the distance you go to shoot. Mr. Walters 
 always went a great distance, and I had been to him for 
 final directions with regard to the work during the two 
 months that he would be away. As I passed through the 
 hall to depart, he was giving instructions to his valet for a 
 special brand of cigars, two boxes of which would have 
 been a fortune to my feeble children. 
 
 *****
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 343 
 
 ' " I don't know the precise moment when truth came to 
 me, but it was before midnight on that very autumn day. 
 I returned to find my little girl much worse, and we were 
 unable to do more for her than a day labourer. As she 
 was exceedingly ill I sat up, and as I watched her struggles 
 and moistened her forehead, a new thought with regard to 
 the place assigned to misery in this world took possession 
 of me. I saw for the first time the absolute folly of men's 
 talking and preaching about a crucifixion eighteen hundred 
 years ago when they steadily refuse to admit any crucifixion 
 now. As if the great crucifixion had been a patent lever 
 to lift the world at one swing upon some new plane where 
 luxury would become a regenerating influence ! I think I 
 read the lesson in the light of the stars that Misery, Suffering, 
 Want, are in reality the three sisters of Fate, and that to one 
 of them every man will owe his destiny. I saw it all more 
 clearly when the dawn broke on the farthest horizon, and I 
 had just time to rouse my wearied wife to witness her child 
 die. 
 
 ' " This second apocalypse found me somewhat prepared, 
 and I learnt considerably more truth from it than I had 
 done at my first stage. Many horrors thickened upon me 
 after that death in the dawnlight, ending in the loss of two 
 other children and my wife. My surviving child was placed 
 in an orphanage, and then, a year after, at her death, when I 
 passed a night in watching the stars come to view, and the 
 moon move over the hill-tops in the far distance, I took up 
 the blank cheque of Time, and filled it in with the unknown 
 miseries and sorrows of the future. I sat in real discourse 
 with the Nazarene Himself. I noted the forces of His life, 
 the unassailable immortality of His character. In that 
 dawn I awoke to a new life, and made a new compact by 
 which everything ease-loving and luxurious was bound in 
 fetters and driven in slavery for evermore. I was able from
 
 344 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 that moment to welcome misery, suffering, or want. The 
 calumnies and indignities with which men harry each other 
 day by day fell beside me powerless. Desirous of challenging 
 my new strength, I came to Fogham, and placed myself at 
 the absolute service of an absolute tyrant in whose parish 
 thousands were choked and degraded with misery and want. 
 Here I settled down, and here I work." ' 
 
 Dick added : ' Now you will understand why the man 
 fascinates me. George and I are both confident that Mr. 
 Stone's doctrine of Universal Crucifixion is the only doctrine 
 of redemption that is worth a moment's consideration, and 
 the only redemption that can renew men. Any theory of a 
 religion merely outside of us provokes derision.' 
 
 ' But surely,' I said, ' you are talking the most astounding 
 heresy, and if you were in England you would be regarded 
 as worse than an atheist !' 
 
 ' Possibly,' said Dick calmly ; ' but I am only explaining 
 a well-known verse, in which Christ declares that the only 
 path to immortality is that a man shall " take up his cross 
 and follow Me." ' 
 
 I had heard this verse before, but it had never produced 
 the slightest effect on my thoughts. 
 
 Dick retired to rest, and gave me the following paper to 
 read, in which Mr. Stone puts the same matter in a different 
 way. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 ' ONE Saturday evening in May, after a day of severe toil, I 
 was called to a scene of great distress. As I mused on the 
 work of to-morrow, and looked out on the trees dripping 
 from a recent shower, I felt the depression of life's struggle.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 345 
 
 My reverie was banished by news of a fearful colliery 
 explosion. This had taken place some hours before, and 
 wounded men were writhing in the nearest shelter that could 
 be found, whilst shrieks and moans of friends told where the 
 dead lay. It was confusion, horror, and brutality. At the 
 news of the calamity the inmates of hundreds of houses had 
 fled to the spot, and there was no force that could organize 
 the frenzied mass. Night closed on the scene, and added 
 to the difficulty and the misery. What lights could be 
 brought only served to add a weird unearthliness to the 
 horror. The blanched faces of the living stooped over the 
 rigid and repulsive features of the dead, whilst their cries of 
 anguish were broken only by the moans of the dying. 
 Some of those who had come were in a state of intoxication, 
 and their oaths and their prayers blended indiscriminately. 
 After some hours of effort the wounded were attended to 
 and removed. The dead were identified and left in one 
 ghastly row in a shed. The living had gone, many of them 
 to live no more. That one shock had broken life into 
 fragments, and all that remained was to cover them in the 
 grave. The effort had roused me from depression, but as I 
 walked back a reaction came, and sadness crushed me- 
 The clouds had fled and the stars were bright; but the 
 voice of a mocking spirit seemed to jeer down their eternal 
 silence, and to say : " Man is the toy of plague, the sport of 
 chance, the slave of necessity ; he possesses the doom of all 
 natures and the peace of none. He can neither revel in the 
 mud with the reptiles nor sleep in light like the stars. The 
 fiend-essence lurks in his foul dust, and his momentary 
 relief is madness." 
 
 ' I could not deny it. I tried to scrutinize the steps of 
 human progress, but whilst I examined a nation, the earth 
 opened and swallowed it up, and the wild-flowers bloomed, 
 and birds sang in thickets where once had been their
 
 346 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 market-places, in which man had cheated his brother. Their 
 religions had vanished into fable, and the monuments of 
 their glory into grains of sand. They had left one lesson 
 to succeeding ages : that life is an illusion bounded by 
 darkness. 
 
 ' No words can describe my misery or my helplessness. 
 Sleep was driven away, and the night air was thick with 
 melancholy. I was not far from home, but I turned aside 
 into the church-yard, and sought a quiet corner where lay 
 my child. Even in the dim light I could find that grave I 
 could discern the ivy on the old wall, and those sad-winged 
 visions came back, which had turned the autumn sunshine 
 into blood when that grave was open. Was it the quick 
 throbbing of overcharged life or the dull pulse of approach- 
 ing death that crushed out consciousness ? 
 
 ' Some hours had passed when I recovered from my 
 stupor. 
 
 ' I seemed still in a dream. 
 
 ' Near me stood a Child of unearthly beauty. His smile 
 was one of such radiance that it enthralled the beholder. 
 The dawn-light fell on grave and tombstone, and its soft 
 breath shook not the tiniest dewdrop. Was this mysterious 
 Child the first-born of the Dawn ? Was that subtle sweet- 
 ness the light of immortal Daybreak ? 
 
 ' Or hush ! was it my child come back with the impress 
 of everlasting joy on every feature ? No, no ! He was human. 
 But He was more than human. The light on His brow was 
 of such dazzling purity that the dawn rays and the dewdrops 
 lost their brightness. He carried in His hand a wreath of 
 fairest flowers, from which He took a rose of Sharon, and 
 with it swept away the tears that had settled on my cheeks 
 in my hour of despair. The odour of that flower breathed
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 34? 
 
 an enchantment This mysterious Child spake not, and 
 before I could question the wondrous silence and the mean- 
 ing of those speaking eyes, He beckoned me to follow, and, 
 as if with the wings of dawn, I followed. His smile filled 
 the meadows with light, the birds sang, the flowers scattered 
 perfume, the buds flew open to offer their first odours, and 
 life had no shadow. 
 
 ' He took the way to the scene that I had left in darkness. 
 I could scarcely believe the transfiguration. He paused at 
 the open shed. I thought, " Now, mysterious Child, your 
 smile will be clouded." But no ! He led me through, and 
 that ghastly row, which but a few hours since lay a hideous 
 wreck, seemed only to slumber and sleep, waiting for another 
 dawn. 
 
 ' He stopped at a cottage door. I knew it. All was 
 silent. The children were asleep, unaware that they had 
 been made orphans ; but I had seen their mother in 
 the frantic group last night. She was not asleep, but sat 
 watching a cradle, in which lay her sick baby. She seemed 
 to know the mysterious Child, and as He, still smiling, 
 scattered a few flowers on the dying infant, the mother 
 ceased to weep, and on her features fell some of the radiance 
 of my silent Guide. 
 
 ' We passed through scenes of toil and want, where the 
 victims of war or famine blackened ; but the radiant dawn 
 never faded from His brow, nor the love-light from those 
 eyes of wondrous tenderness. 
 
 ' We had left many cities, we had seen of human sorrow 
 and struggle all that was heart-breaking, all that was 
 revolting ; yet this Child spake no word, offered no interpre- 
 tation, seemed to feel no sorrow, made no attempt to check 
 the mad murder of life's loveliness. Oft had He paused 
 where the heart-broken lay fallen, oft in the crowded streets 
 of the cities had He bent over the young starving children
 
 348 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 and kissed them with His own infant lips ; but He wept not. 
 He did never appear weary. 
 
 ' We had reached a secluded village Nazareth where I 
 thought He meant to rest, so quiet was it. He ceased His 
 flight, and lingered over each common object, as an old man 
 would linger over the home of his childhood. He entered 
 a carpenter's shop, and approached a bench, no longer in 
 use. He touched familiarly a few scattered tools, and for 
 an instant seemed lost in thought or absorbed in memories. 
 
 ' Soon we left and continued our journey. 
 
 ' At length we came to the foot of a mountain wrapt in 
 darkness. It was a mysterious gloom as if gathered 
 miasma hung in a dense mass. For one instant a shadow, 
 as of morning cloud, swept over the face of my Guide. I 
 shook with fear. He turned, and said : " This is the dark- 
 ness of suffering. Follow Me." He entered the gloom ; I 
 followed. Then, it seemed to me, I could not live. The 
 air was a quivering misery ; low moans or fierce cries startled 
 me ; men and women and infants lay writhing. Their agony 
 filled this region with speaking horror ; but my Guide halted 
 not, and I must follow. I sighed for one ray of dawn in this 
 land of night ; but, to my alarm, when we had passed a 
 weary distance, I saw instead a deeper gloom. 
 
 ' Then my heart fainted as again my Guide spake : " This 
 is the darkness of sorrow. Follow Me." Without Him I 
 was unable to return, and though I felt it was only to perish, 
 I followed. The air was a stifling anguish, and melancholy 
 oppressed all the senses ; but for the Child-light there 
 had been no hope. There were only wailings and tears, 
 sighs and helplessness ; fair young forms with eyes staring 
 into darkness, whose bleeding hearts had blanched their 
 cheeks. 
 
 'Long did we walk in silence, when I saw Him stoop, 
 and there arose a woman, bowed and wasted with some
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 349 
 
 secret grief. She joined us, and I felt grateful for her 
 human presence. 
 
 ' The laden air grew insupportable, when suddenly we 
 came to a still deeper gloom, and the Child said : " This is 
 the darkness of death. Follow Me." I felt the woman 
 shudder, and for the first time I marked the settled 
 anguish of her soft eyes as she turned them piteously 
 to me. 
 
 'No words can describe the dread, silent horror that 
 choked this region of fixed and stagnate awe. There lay 
 the dead, stark, repulsive, of every age, from every clime 
 the countless unburied of the earth-mother. It was the 
 Golgotha of the world, and the faces of the slain on every 
 generation's battlefield lay upturned, mute and rigid, as if the 
 cloud of death had scattered its snowflakes on that one hill- 
 side. But this strange Child, with His unclouded radiance, 
 was as serene as on that first instant when He seemed to have 
 risen from the dewdrops. I advanced long in silence and 
 fear. The Child paused. There was a cross standing in 
 the centre of the encircling darkness. Here the woman 
 swooned, but the Child placed His wreath of flowers on the 
 bare cross. At His touch the woman opened her eyes, and 
 a smile of fond recognition flooded her face with serene 
 loveliness. Still, the gloom abated not in this realm of 
 infinite darkness ; at times I heard sounds, articulate terror, 
 that seemed to boom in some yet denser darkness, girding 
 the unearthly night through which we sped. I sickened to 
 think there could yet be some zone of outer darkness through 
 which we must go ; I sought to touch our Guide and learn 
 from Him, but He glided as a beam of light, and it was with 
 difficulty that I could overtake Him. When at length He 
 turned at my touch, oppressed and terror-stricken, I could 
 scarcely frame a question. To my inquiry He whispered, 
 with a look of majesty and love : " That is the darkness of
 
 350 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 ignorance, and despair is its thunder. No, we do not pass 
 through that." As He finished, our way seemed blocked by 
 a barrier of stone ; He touched it, when, lo ! a door opened 
 and we entered a spacious hall, with a far-reaching vista, 
 filled with a gentle light that made me think we had come 
 to another world with another dawn ; a cool air fanned 
 every recess, balmy, as if wafted from the River of Life. 
 
 ' I breathed. 
 
 ' I exulted. 
 
 ' I looked around. 
 
 'In a moment I was chilled and speechless. It was a 
 tomb hewn out of living rock. There lay the grave-clothes 
 the dumb trophies of the final conquest. There also was 
 a crown of thorns, as if this were the palace of the King of 
 Terrors, and these the insignia of his hideous majesty. As 
 I stood in silent terror, the Child took the crown of thorns 
 and placed it on His brow. Instantly it flashed into re- 
 splendent beauty. He turned to the woman, and said, 
 " Mary." The maiden Mother took the Child in her arms, 
 and the mortal kissed the immortal. 
 
 ' Peace and beauty transfigured her until mortality was 
 swallowed up in life. Then the meaning of the human 
 struggle was clear. I wandered to the further side of this 
 tomb, which was now verily a hall of light, the mansion of 
 the blessed. Here I saw ever-extending plains, full of flash- 
 ing life. The air of this realm was joy. It fluttered and 
 fed every heart like the breath of spring amidst the buds of 
 the forest. 
 
 'They all spake one language, and that language was 
 praise to the Child crowned with thorns, for He had guided 
 them through the darkness into this marvellous light. 
 * * * * * 
 
 ' The dawn had fled, and the sun flashed on the church- 
 tower, when an early mourner aroused me to the work of the
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 351 
 
 day. The Divine effulgence of the vision flooded the 
 earthly struggle, and neither suffering, nor sorrow, nor 
 death eould swallow up its radiance.' 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 SINCE our crime of being falsely accused of a crime, our 
 mode of life was so changed that we were rapidly sinking 
 into the dregs of society. Days which had been all too 
 short for half the wonders offered to us were now weary and 
 doleful. I began to realize how a long affliction or solitary 
 confinement might change the character. I could imagine 
 myself even turning into a Biblical commentator if I were 
 kept in one room for twenty years. 
 
 I had so many serious talks with Dick that sometimes I 
 felt half a theologian. I tried to gain his opinion on all 
 subjects, so as to banish his moping. Frequently I made 
 notes of our conversations, thinking they might help me 
 to understand the islanders. 
 
 He had not adopted any philosophic system, and he was 
 of opinion that systems had impeded thought, for when they 
 had sunk into decay men continued to sift their dust, and 
 called this the search for truth. 
 
 Human faculties and experience are very small, and yet 
 they are the only kaleidoscope with which we group frag- 
 ments of the infinite into limited and ever-varying patterns. 
 Then we blaspheme, and call these haphazard skeletons of 
 misfit bones the Divine Design. 
 
 Some fellow invents the Design Argument, and for 
 thousands of years it blocks out truth, because it makes God 
 into a man (a bad one), and the world into a toy-shop (a 
 second-hand one).
 
 352 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 This is a fair sample of the way in which wise men have 
 made the iron bars of their cages. Most thinkers have been 
 cage-makers for the human race. 
 
 On the other hand, they have often forgotten the slavery 
 which arises from material life the slavery of propensity 
 plus habit ; the inherited tendency and the self-created 
 fixity. No deliberate self-organized volition leads a boy of 
 twelve to commit crime it is propensity; some riot of 
 microbes, a cell burst, or a nerve relaxed and inoperative. 
 Then follow all the horrors of ignorance. 
 
 He has never been told that every act tends to fixity the 
 microbes breed, the bad cells multiply, the relaxed nerve 
 degenerates till too dead to give any response. 
 
 The only hope for such a being is a decent funeral, and 
 a new start, where he is free from the environment of 
 depraved cells and criminal nerves. I think this is why 
 Dick derived his chief hope from the doctrine of the resur- 
 rection. It seemed the only means of lifting defective man 
 by a process of growth out of the crushing environment of 
 body, which has ossified diseased habits, and much else. 
 * * * * * 
 
 I remember on one occasion I asked him to tell me 
 candidly what he thought of the civilization of the Toddlers. 
 
 He began with his favourite maxim that civilization sjiys 
 to every man. How much have you got? but Christianity 
 
 ^^^ ,,- A liii w * MH ^M^^ 
 
 asks, How much do you want? This he regarded as a 
 fundamental distinction between all known civilization and 
 the highest religion. 
 
 He said : ' The Toddlers stagger under a bundle of 
 false customs which they call morality, and this has no 
 hold upon the mind and conscience of the nation, because 
 conventional morality and truth are not the same. Con- 
 ventional morality is usually an improvised makeshift, and 
 when it is dead popular prejudice canonizes it ; then cant
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 353 
 
 and knavery unite to rear its altars, and all succeeding 
 generations pay a tax to this toy of their dead ancestors.' 
 
 I suggested, ' In order to have the fun of laughing up 
 their sleeve.' 
 
 Dick continued : ' The forms of civilization and power 
 divert nations from true government just as other forms 
 divert them from true religion.' 
 ' What forms of civilization ?' 
 
 ' Large houses, carriages, every form of display, in fact, for 
 they impede all human progress because they lead to a kind of 
 idolatry which diverts the attention from the true man, as 
 certainly as images ever diverted his attention from the true 
 God. Instead of developing character and joy, the islanders 
 spend their best energy in placing coronets on dummies. 
 The onejdol which hides the brotherhood of man as well 
 as theTatherhood ofjGod is money. Christ had no money; 
 He escaped the rich everywhere except in the grave. Money 
 is_ the root of all evil, and the death of all good.' 
 ' Really, you surprise me, Dick.' 
 
 ' Money is a public hearse. It conveys to oblivion the 
 corpse of every virtue and every affection. No State with 
 a current coin can ever be free or moral. It is as impossible 
 as affection in the wives of the Toddlers.' 
 ' How do you mean ?' 
 
 ' The present order of marriage in this island makes it 
 such an advantage to the woman that pure affection has 
 almost disappeared. The wives are dependent on their 
 husbands' money, and there is too much self-interest to be 
 much love.' 
 
 I had known this a long time, but I wondered that Dick 
 
 had noticed it. I asked him how he accounted for the fact 
 
 that hitherto the Toddlers had been like the sand on the 
 
 sea shore for multitude, for cohesion, and for barrenness. 
 
 He replied : ' They are disintegrated by selfishness, which
 
 354 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 prevents their becoming a State. In fact, selfishness has 
 paralyzed their science, and caused their sense of justice to 
 rot away.' 
 
 ' What can selfishness have to do with either science or 
 justice ?' 
 
 ' This much : They have a few men of science in the 
 medical profession, but these men are not available to the 
 nation. Not one in a thousand can consult them because 
 of their fees. The barbarians educate a few specialists to 
 sit in their own rooms, like national curiosities, whom no 
 man can see without a private tip. 
 
 ' As for justice, it is nearly banished. It has long been 
 a class luxury. If it were not for their utterly blind stupid 
 selfishness, they would have both free medicine and free law. 
 
 ' Selfishness has stultified the efforts of government 
 throughout all the world, for it creates class, and class dis- 
 tinctions are the national gallows for the execution of pro- 
 gress and prosperity.' 
 
 I am afraid Dick is right, though he is rather too serious 
 on these subjects. 
 
 In religion Dick was most heterodox and most hopeful. 
 He accounted for the power of ecclesiastical officialism in 
 the island by the influence of military discipline the 
 Roman soldier's obedience to his captain. I think this 
 explanation is not sufficient to show how the Toddler's 
 church-officialism came to surpass that of the Pharisees in 
 its rigid punctiliousness. 
 
 If the ancient Pharisees could know the perfection to 
 which their art has since been brought by ecclesiastical 
 officials in this island, they would riot in their graves, and 
 claw their way back to the upper air to wear the robes of 
 office for five minutes. Phylacteries ! They were the small 
 clothes of creeping humility compared with the sacred 
 blazonry of a Christian priest.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 355 
 
 I remember he said : ' No wonder Christ was put to 
 death by the hands of the chief red-tapists of His time. 
 He chose Apostles without the slightest regard to official 
 pedigree. He despised their functions. He set at naught 
 their performed prayers, their sabbaths, their ceremonies, 
 as gravestones emblazoned with falsehood. No wonder He 
 was crucified, for He despised their oldest religious instinct, 
 and smashed their favourite idol respectable officialism. 
 It was not the sinner and the criminal, but the respectable 
 and the official, who crucified Christ, and lest this should 
 seem incredible to any succeeding generations, the drama 
 is repeated publicly. In every age the chief priests and the 
 rulers of the people crucify Him.' 
 
 Good Dick, your sentiments would have earned you a 
 martyrdom in any capital of Europe ! I often wonder that 
 it never occurred to one ecclesiastical mind that amid the 
 ignominies which crowd the closing hours of Christ's life, 
 there stand prominently forth the refined cruelty and 
 blasphemy of a Church Committee. These were, in fact, 
 the last dregs of humiliation. 
 
 Sometimes these Toddlers almost made me forget the 
 triumph of laughter and the comfort of scorn as I looked 
 at the sleek saints of both sexes, who thought their selfish- 
 ness the milk of human kindness and themselves the cream 
 of godliness, and I was tempted to say : ' You solemn 
 buffoons, veneered with a thousand lies, come and see this 
 bleeding world, where bleach the bones of the brothers you 
 have eaten, and where broken-hearted sisters lie poisoned 
 by your cant, whilst you are buttoning your kid-glove 
 creeds !' 
 
 I ask the reader to believe I never wrote this passage. 
 Blame Dick. 
 
 I have not fallen so low. 
 
 I know these Toddlers. I believe their death-asronies
 
 356 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 are tricks merely trying which attitude would look respect- 
 able in a coffin. 
 
 But I must not forget that Dick was often very hopeful. 
 He revelled in the fact of a fuller life as revealed by Christ. 
 He had found no physical difficulties to bar his faith. He 
 maintained that just as an old man may have outgrown his 
 bones, so he may come to outgrow his thoughts, his 
 emotions, his memory. We do know that each being has 
 survived the shock of complete change of environment, and 
 so much better was he for the change that we call it birth. 
 
 I remember his boyish delight when he explained to me 
 how Christ had revealed the continuity of life : 
 
 'There is no break, no hurry of impatience. His life 
 unfolded in the sweet silence of growth. It was not 
 bounded by Earth, either at its beginning or ending here ; 
 it was like the branch of an unseen tree reaching over the 
 wall of Time, that men might gather the fruit thereof and 
 hope. 
 
 ' Christ is life, and Christ's earthly life is in itself im- 
 mortality, as all men know, who will receive the life and 
 live it.' 
 
 He often mourned that Christ's followers had darkened 
 His simple life with a nimbus of system and theory till the 
 loveliness of His character was lost in funereal decoration, 
 and he once wrote : 
 
 ' THE CHRIST OF LIFE. 
 
 ' Christ is constantly rising again. Every generation 
 crucifies Christ in its own particular way. 
 
 ' In one age His enemies withdraw into the wilderness, 
 and leave dying men and women, whilst they practise idle 
 attitudes on solitary pedestals, all the while saying, This is 
 the Christ who led an industrious life as a servant to all 
 men ; in another age His enemies have decked Him in
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 357 
 
 purple and gold, painted Him like a King, stuck a wand of 
 office in His hand, and seated Him on choice clouds, all 
 the while saying, This is the Christ who was a ragged 
 peasant, unknown to kings, hated by the official of every 
 profession, and hunted through life like a scared pauper; 
 in another age His enemies discovered that every letter of 
 the fragments recording His life and ministry was inspired 
 in whatever language they might be copied, and they foisted 
 later monstrosities of prejudice and passion into the 
 fragmentary records, all the while saying, This tender- 
 hearted, pure-minded Man bids you receive these fragments 
 as the whole and final truth, and unless you receive our 
 inventions as His gospel of mercy, He will cast you into 
 the hell which we have made. 
 
 ' These Enemies are legion. 
 
 ' They have used His own cross to hide His life. 
 
 ' They have burnt His caricature, and asked men to 
 worship the ashes. 
 
 ' They have girded the Man with mountains of contradic- 
 tions, and said unless you have faith to swallow these 
 mountains you shall never see God. He has been 
 systematized by one age and catalogued by another. The 
 former said the whole is in every part, and unless you can 
 swallow this system you shall die in your sins; the latter 
 said every fragment is vital, and unless you can recite the 
 list, and digest the vellum labels on which it is written, you 
 have neither part nor lot in the matter. 
 
 ' Yet the real Christ continues to live. He has rolled 
 away the stone from the sepulchre each generation has 
 built, and announced His own resurrection. His Divine 
 life is proved by the absence of human system and the 
 presence of immortality. He came to men ; He became 
 Man ; He taught the truth ; He lived unselfish and pure ; 
 then died that He might break the power of selfishness,
 
 358 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 and rose that He might rise again in every generation and 
 in every heart. 
 
 ' But the whole was natural, and, compared with the 
 systems in which man embalmed Him, He is like the 
 tender shoot of a tree springing through the cracks of a 
 tomb, whose stones its own life has burst asunder. Perhaps 
 this the prophet partly foresaw when writing, " He shall 
 grow up as a root out of a dry ground." 
 
 ' Christ brought to light a force for social regeneration, 
 because social life includes all that makes and mars man. 
 So great was the force of this life revealed by Christ that 
 all the dying superstitions of the world stretched out their 
 hands to Him. The medicine-man, the priest, the tyrant, 
 every bogey-maker of every age, sought the new force for his 
 bride, as the only way to avoid bankruptcy and death. The 
 warfare of eighteen centuries has been the history of this 
 wooing, but the radiant young life has been bound by the 
 fetters of no unholy marriage. Mankind has been often 
 hoodwinked, but a regenerated world may yet march in 
 triumph through the ruins of king-makers and creed-makers, 
 whose bones will be shown as relics that prove a forgotten 
 superstition.' 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 I BEGAN to see how easy it was in Toddle Island to get 
 mixed up with differences in theology. I believe that 
 island has been the happy hunting-ground of contradictions, 
 ever since the native savages deemed it necessary to cloak 
 their enormities under the guise of religion. It has been 
 sufficient apology on all occasions for cutting off your
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 359 
 
 neighbour's ears, or branding his cheek, or burning him to 
 ashes, if only you are able to say the ' grace after meat ' 
 that you are doing it on behalf of Truth. 
 
 I wondered with what laughter my friends in England 
 would have greeted me in my present position. I had so 
 long smiled my contempt upon their little factions at home 
 that it would have been to them amazing could they have 
 seen me being slowly drawn into the vortex of religious 
 inquiry. Mr. Dragg had asked me to go to his chapel, and 
 hear the Rev. Wonner Fakem preach ; but I wrote letters, 
 and joined him at lunch instead. 
 
 Guests were present, and among them a lady of con- 
 siderable conversational powers Mrs. Egg-Turner. Mr. 
 Dragg told her where he had spent the morning, and she 
 said with some banter : 
 
 ' Do you still keep up that old custom, Mr. Dragg, of 
 going out every Sunsday morning to allow a man to teach 
 you, upon whose advice you would refuse to act on Moons- 
 day morning ?' 
 
 ' You know,' he replied, ' that I am old-fashioned ; and 
 though I try to keep pace with Fogham when I come up, 
 yet this is one of the things that I have been unable to 
 shake off.' 
 
 'Very old-fashioned indeed,' said the lady. 'Why, last 
 week I lunched with Mrs. Newthought, and she told me 
 that she had been amusing herself during the whole of the 
 season by keeping a private album, in which she had got 
 all the people to write their names, and what church they 
 attended. To her great delight she discovered that ninety- 
 nine out of a hundred went nowhere. Now, that is what I 
 call clever. If she had asked them straight out, they 
 would have declared that they went to this or that " some- 
 times " ; but, you see, in a writing album where they were 
 sked to name their favourite flower, their favourite occupa-
 
 360 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 tion, and what coloured eggs they preferred, they were off 
 their guard, and spoke the truth.' 
 
 Here Mrs. Egg-Turner laughed delightfully, with the 
 breezy, gay indifference which a man may imitate but never 
 attain. 
 
 Mrs. Egg-Turner then enlivened us with an anecdote of 
 her friend Mr. Small Clothes, who had settled his religious 
 difficulties by joining the Unitarymethodists. ' For,' he 
 said, ' the prayers are shorter, and there is no devil.' 
 Again the breezy laughter refreshed the company, and we 
 were dumb with admiration. 
 
 Mrs. Egg-Turner revelled in the future. ' Life will have 
 a new charm when German criticism is taught in the 
 elementary schools. We shall see a nation shaking off its 
 superstition as filthy rags. There will be no miracles, no 
 Gospel, no anything but historic facts seen by one's own 
 eyes, and corroborated by one's own consciousness.' 
 
 Poor Mr. Dragg seemed unequal to the contest, and as I 
 wished to hear all that Mrs. Egg-Turner had to say, I 
 ventured to ask : 
 
 'Are you, then, of opinion that all forms of religion are 
 on the wane in the island ?' 
 
 ' Speaking broadly,' she said, ' I am. Of course, where 
 there are special causes, several people still continue to 
 keep up the old forms. For instance, people of Mr. 
 Dragg's turn of mind are compelled in the country, I know, 
 for the sake of decency, to maintain the outward show in 
 which their great-grandfathers may have believed ; and in 
 our towns I know there are several instances where, if the 
 Mayor happens to be a draper or something of that kind, he 
 is able to utilize the first day in the week by seizing upon 
 this public occasion to display the latest fashions. I am 
 also informed that in many places where it is difficult for 
 the sexes to meet, in common employment or pleasure,
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 361 
 
 these places of worship are of great benefit in promoting 
 matrimonial alliances. But I wish it to be distinctly under- 
 stood that I regard all these as side-influences; yet they 
 might easily deceive anyone unaccustomed to the ways of 
 the island.' 
 
 I bowed, and said : ' I quite recognise it ; and am I to 
 understand that you think as a guiding force religion in the 
 island is exhausted ?' 
 
 ' Oh, entirely so. In fact, nearly all my best friends 
 refuse to employ servants who are religious. They find that 
 it makes them so bitter and jealous. Religion used to be 
 considered a good thing to restrain the lower orders ; but 
 now, when every ignoramus makes his own religion, with a 
 view to contradicting that of his fellow-servant, it only leads 
 to wrangling.' 
 
 'I suppose that these many varieties of religion have 
 exhausted the original stock, to borrow a term from horti- 
 culture.' 
 
 ' Partly ; but, you see, religion was attacked from the top. 
 When German criticism came in, literally the heavens fell. 
 All the curious sects in this country now are only so many 
 holes in the broken ecclesiastical vat, through which 
 prejudice is running out.' 
 
 ' That is a charming figure, and pray what do you think 
 will be the next step in the development of the Toddlers ?' 
 
 Mrs. Egg-Turner beamed with the light of an enthusiast, 
 and said : 
 
 ' Our next development will be freedom. We are on the 
 very verge of an era in the island such as the world has 
 never witnessed. Fancy all the charm of life without that 
 horrible Pentateuch to degrade our thoughts and fetter our 
 opinions, and then to get rid of miracles will be a new 
 heaven and a new earth ! When I think of it I lie awake 
 during the night, and I can fancy I hear the stars singing a
 
 362 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 song of deliverance from all the prejudice and poison of 
 every religion which the world has invented.' 
 
 Mrs. Egg-Turner was so rapt in her enthusiasm that she did 
 not notice that Mr. Dragg was aghast, and that Mrs. Dragg sat 
 at the head of the table as if she were waiting for the dentist. 
 
 Some of the guests laughed very much at Mrs. Egg- 
 Turner's brilliancy. Nearly all seemed greatly to enjoy her 
 vivacious style and the fearless way in which she hewed 
 down ' the carved images which had served instead of a 
 conscience to former generations.' 
 
 I told her that I hoped she might live to see this great 
 progress, and that I was certain, if alive, to come back and 
 visit the island under its changed condition. 
 
 I then inquired on many points of detail. I found that 
 she was especially hopeful, because for the first time in the 
 island women were to grow up into human beings. Land 
 which had been stolen for generations was to be restored 
 to its rightful owners. There was to be no overcrowding, 
 no poor-houses, no criminal class ; everything was to be 
 transformed at the touch of ' clean linen once a week, and 
 houses limewashed once a quarter.' She repeated frequently 
 her favourite motto, that ' a sanitary State meant a moral 
 State.' She said that_crime__was impossible among wild 
 animals, and almost among wild men. It was the lack of 
 oxygen that blurred the brain and made the criminal mis- 
 take theft or murder for an honourable occupation. It was 
 the mixture of TalseTngredients in milk and bread, and the 
 absence of fresh fruit, which caused children to have a lean- 
 ing to crime, which hitherto had defied all education. 
 
 Mrs. Egg-Turner had written many volumes and given 
 many lectures. I discovered afterwards that she was well 
 known in Fogham ; and I laughed much at many of her 
 statements, and I laugh yet when I remember the child-like 
 innocence with which she believed in German criticism.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 363 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ON my return home I found Dick very listless and feeble. 
 I had had a long talk with Dr. Links the day before, and 
 that estimable man was by no means hopeful. 
 
 I told him also of the airy theories of Mrs. Egg-Turner, 
 and the amusement she had created, and of the terror which 
 had seized Mrs. Dragg. 
 
 Mrs. Dragg is what they call an old-fashioned woman 
 the kind that poets and painters might delight in. She 
 was strong at mending stockings and making dumplings, 
 and preferred these ennobling pursuits to the nude in art or 
 the speculative in religion. Poor old dame ! She thought 
 that there was some fixed connection between religion and 
 morality. She had some antiquated ideas about the dignity 
 of motherhood. However, such ideas have nearly had their 
 day in Toddle Island, and now young ladies with fixed 
 fortunes speak of the slavery of wives and the degradation 
 of mothers with a cultured horror, which indicates they 
 would just as soon be polar bears and rear cubs as descend 
 to the animal vulgarities of motherhood. 
 
 THE SATISFACTION OF THE AGNOSTIC. 
 
 When Dr. Links came in the evening, I told him of the 
 interesting characters I had met at Mr. Dragg's. He knew 
 Mrs. Egg-Turner, and told me that she was the apostle of 
 the latest sect in the island, the Flabbergasters. 
 
 The sect originated to meet the demand for a mechanical 
 contrivance to frighten schoolgirls. Its chief beauty is its 
 simplicity, for there is only one condition of membership,
 
 364 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 viz., its devotees are on no occasion to say Yes or No. The 
 Flabbergasters are of opinion that the terms Yes and No 
 especially yes are calculated to increase hysteria in girls 
 who have recently left school. 
 
 Some attempt has been made also to raise the sect to the 
 rank of a philosophy. Their cardinal principle is that no 
 man can think any further than he can see, and that all 
 emotion should be regulated by the number of figures a man 
 can draw on a blackboard in a day. Some call this the 
 science of demonstration, others the philosophy of ex- 
 perience. 
 
 It is an economical sect. All it asks of the world is, 
 Destroy Yes and No, and give every man a blackboard.* 
 
 I was greatly interested in this account, but I told 
 Dr. Links it seemed rather bald, and that I had learnt 
 at Oxferry that this sect had two articles towards a universal 
 creed. He brushed that aside contemptuously, and said : 
 
 'Oxferry is sure to be more elaborately confused and 
 more anciently useless than the rest of the island, because of 
 its aversion to education.' 
 
 ' Still, I am surprised that the islanders, who like to have 
 even their hearses well painted and richly gilded, should 
 find a new idol in such a one-eyed corpus-morpus.' 
 
 ' It is a case of like to like. Everything is single ; that is 
 why the Flabbergasters are known as the one-eyed sect. It 
 is simplicity on a stilt (for they only use one). Note, they 
 have a single condition of membership, Never say Yes or 
 No. There is only a single requisite for the true disciple, 
 a blackboard. There is only a single faculty, Reason. 
 And in order to win people who find a blackboard too much 
 for them to carry, they have a single hymn, which for 
 simple pathos would serve as a dirge at the funeral of 
 Hope: 
 
 * Means of demonstration.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 36; 
 
 ' Man's life 's a vapour, 
 
 And full of woes ; 
 He cuts a caper, 
 And down he goes. 
 
 And down 
 
 And down 
 
 And down 
 
 And down 
 
 He 
 
 Goes 
 
 Da capo. 
 Ad lib. 
 Ad infin. 
 
 'The oddest thing is, they worship the judgment of man, 
 though it is the source of more mistakes than all the other 
 faculties together.' 
 
 ' Perhaps that is the charm ; for these people love nothing 
 simple, unless it be simple contradiction.' 
 
 ' That might be so ordinarily, but this is the fashion just 
 now, and the Flabbergaster has so many other advantages.' 
 
 ' Pray explain.' 
 
 ' Few people have seen an unvarnished Flabbergaster. 
 He is a difficult article to produce. She is still more 
 difficult to manufacture. The physiological temperament 
 necessary to produce such a one is not universal, for it 
 needs a certain amount of daring, a certain disdain for the 
 opinion of others, a certain dogmatic belief in one's own 
 judgment large enough to devour all other dogma. There 
 must be an absence of doubt, which makes* the individual 
 superior to former generations, and gives him a right to 
 despise any generation that may follow. There are other 
 difficulties ; but the sect offers powerful attractions by virtue 
 of the many obvious advantages of the situation. 
 
 ' The real Flabbergaster enjoys calm ; it may be the calm 
 of a heathen God who knows everything, or of a mummy
 
 366 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 which knows nothing. But there is the calm, and no one 
 could deny that to be calm, in an age of rampant and 
 infectious madness, is a luxury to be purchased at any 
 cost. 
 
 ' We see how many difficulties he avoids. He cannot be 
 invited to sit on Christian committees, because they are 
 familiar with mysteries, such as "the dispensation of 
 Providence," "the intentions of the Divine mind," and 
 " things ordained by Deity." These phrases have no mean- 
 ing to the Flabbergaster. I should hesitate to advise any 
 young man to become a Flabbergaster, to avoid a Christian 
 committee ; but if anything which maligns the Christian 
 religion would warrant such advice, it would be the 
 committee of a religious society. 
 
 ' There can be no greater test of the religious character 
 than for a man to be a member of such a committee and 
 still respect his own religion. 
 
 ' The Flabbergaster is spared this humiliation. He is 
 not worried to become the patron of endless societies, 
 which are often invented to conceal our own malice, or 
 to hide the skeletons which would betray our many murders. 
 It is impossible to draw the Flabbergaster into the fiery 
 furnace of faction or the lions' den of theological schools. 
 Doctrines are of less importance to him than the dying buzz 
 of summer flies. 
 
 ' When he sees that one man refuses to speak to another 
 because they hold different opinions about some isolated 
 verse of Scripture, it must be an intense relief for him to be 
 able to smoke a cigarette and murmur : 
 
 ' " I don't know, and I don't care." '
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 367 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 I WAS much interested one day when Mr. Dragg asked me 
 to call with him upon Mr. Smiler, who lived in a suburban 
 residence in great state. Fortunately for the islanders, their 
 religion never makes any difference to their mode of life. 
 They keep many servants, and throw themselves heartily 
 into making fortunes by which they may enjoy a lavish 
 display, and so eclipse their neighbours. In fact, the com- 
 mercial habits of the country have triumphed over the 
 religious instincts of their ancestors, and to those interested 
 in the growth of mankind it presents one of the deepest 
 problems the world could desire to solve, that an acquired 
 habit like commerce should have completely triumphed 
 over an hereditary instinct like superstition, but so it is. 
 These remarkable people, who have furnished me with 
 amusement to the end of my days, tenaciously hold to 
 religion. They have been known to burn each other rather 
 than have no religion. They would regard with horror any 
 human being who declared that he was free from the 
 trammels of such a superstition ; they pray like automatic 
 bellows, but they themselves will rise from prayer, relax the 
 muscles of their face, turn their eyes down from the ceiling 
 to all the fair and beautiful things in the world, and will run 
 the race that is set before them so as to outstrip all com- 
 petitors, but that race is always for the golden apple. 
 
 Mr. Smiler was out when we called, but Mrs. Smiler re- 
 ceived us. 
 
 Mr. Smiler was in Fogham amassing more money with 
 which to startle his neighbours either by a banquet, or the 
 upholstering of his drawing-room, or a subscription for the 
 conversion of cannibals. For some time I could not quite
 
 368 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 make out what Mr. Smiler did in Fogham, what form of 
 latent fraud he was using to increase his wealth. I learnt 
 at last that he employed people to keep shops to receive 
 the goods and the garments of the needy. I paid particular 
 attention to this, because I thought at first it was one of 
 their odd forms of philanthropy. However, in that I was 
 mistaken. It was evidently a business ; and instead of 
 being a form of philanthropy, I should regard it as a 
 vestige of that cannibalism which the Toddlers find they 
 can never shake off, for I discovered that though he re- 
 ceived the goods and the garments from the poor and the 
 miserable and gave them a small sum of money for the 
 same, yet the law allowed him to detain the goods, and if 
 they were not claimed within a few months he had the right 
 to sell them. By this means, seeing that he gave for them 
 what he liked, and sold them for their market value, he was 
 enabled to amass a fortune in a very short time, without 
 stooping to the degradation of labour. 
 
 Mrs. Smiler conversed with Mr. Dragg on various points 
 which I could not comprehend. It seemed to me that 
 Mr. Dragg was making a small complaint. He said : 
 
 ' The butler we took from you does not always speak the 
 truth. Did you ever discover anything of the kind when 
 he was in your service ?' 
 
 ' I always supposed there was a danger on that side,' she 
 replied. 
 
 ' I am very sorry, because it is such a serious flaw in the 
 character of a servant? 
 
 'But,' said Mrs. Smiler rather earnestly, 'John was a 
 remarkably good servant. He never missed prayers.' 
 
 ' Just so, and because you thought so well of him, we 
 have been rather disappointed that he is not more accurate. 
 I won't say that he is not truthful, especially as we under- 
 stand from you that he is a very religious man.'
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 369 
 
 ' But religion has nothing to do with accuracy. I know 
 many people who are most religious, and yet they are 
 very shifty, or deceitful, or drunken. The things don't go 
 together. Deceitfulness may be a habit which is forced on 
 anyone by his unfortunate position ; but to be " saved " 
 is within the power of everybody in a moment. This is the 
 blessed comfort of free salvation.' 
 
 Mr. Dragg tried to murmur something about it being 
 more important for servants to be accurate than to be 
 religious ; but a strange fire gleamed in the eyes of Mrs. 
 Smiler, and she led Mr. Dragg into mazes of emotional 
 theology. Everything was backed up with a ready refer- 
 ence to Deity by name, and some of the sweetest of 
 utterances were made about the ' blessedness of the privi- 
 lege of salvation.' I wondered how it was that Mr. Dragg 
 had brought me to see a person who was evidently a victim 
 of one of the numerous forms of lunacy for which the 
 island is notorious. 
 
 As we rose to depart, Mrs. Smiler called Mr. Dragg's 
 attention to an old print which her husband had brought 
 home a few days previously. 
 
 The subject was peculiar to the island ; it represented a 
 wicked man dying and some gentlemanly demons in attend- 
 ance, waiting to conduct him personally. 
 
 ' Don't you think it a peculiar subject for a picture, Mr. 
 Dragg? I detest the lewd in art, but this is too well, 
 ah, solemn for art. Don't you think so ?' 
 
 ' It is powerful,' said Mr. Dragg. and he adjusted his eye- 
 glass, and noted the points of the devils with the skill of a 
 connoisseur. 
 
 'Too powerful, don't you think? It is better not to 
 familiarize the eye with iheform of the Devil.' 
 
 'Yes, we cannot be too careful. As a nation we all 
 have a vested interest in the Devil.' 
 
 24
 
 370 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 1 Yes. it is a blessed doctrine. I think the subtlety of 
 the Evil One was never permitted to be so great as when he 
 persuaded man to deny that there is a devil.' 
 
 ' That is truly terrible. Perhaps a picture like this may 
 do good and rouse the conscience by its stern reality.' 
 
 ' Do you think so ? Then, I will send it across to General 
 Specksight. It may do his eldest son good. You know he 
 is dangerously ill, and he was a terribly wild young fellow 
 in the army ; the General consulted me yesterday, and we 
 prayed and wept together more than an hour.' 
 
 ' Really, I am deeply sorry ; is he very hardened ?' 
 
 ' Not actually that ; oh no, he is saved ; but he has 
 doubts about any eternal damnation. Poor General ! he is 
 awfully cut up. He has wept and prayed, read the whole 
 of Revelation and most of Spurremon's sermons to him, and 
 yet the lad won't see.' 
 
 ' What blindness !' said Dragg. 
 
 I wondered whether he referred to the General or the 
 lunatic woman. As I looked stolidly at the picture and 
 marked the companions of the dying, I realized how 
 superior art is to real life. 
 
 We turned to go, and Mrs. Smiler said : 
 
 ' I will send the picture, and, in God's own good time, it 
 may open his eyes. Do you think it ought to have a new 
 frame ? A darker colour would look more suitable for a 
 sick-room ; but God can bless any frame.' 
 
 I could only hope that the last remark was true, and as I 
 shook hands with this tender-hearted mother of children, I 
 marvelled at the mysterious madness which could cause 
 her to find solace in ' eternal damnation.' 
 
 Mr. Dragg was elated by his visit, and said Mrs. Smiler 
 was such a good woman, and spent the whole of her days 
 in preaching the Gospel to working women. 
 
 I inquired if she worshipped at the church of Reverend
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 371 
 
 Wonner Fakem. Mr. Dragg's countenance was changed, 
 and his speech smacked of cucumber, when he said : 
 
 ' Mrs. Smiler left our church and joined the Freefeeling 
 Brethren. I am deeply sorry ; the Freefeeling Brethren 
 set at naught the intellect. The whole sect is a slosh of 
 emotion. It takes with retired officers, for it contradicts 
 any truth they may have learnt in the days when they 
 practised no truth. So now they think the denial of truth 
 and an unlimited amount of free feeling will make up for 
 lost time, In fact, the fire of their emotion burns so 
 fiercely, that the smoke blinds their eyes. Their religion 
 is like a witch's kettle boiling in a whited sepulchre, and in 
 that temple every man is his own priest and manufactures 
 his own Bible.' 
 
 ' Are they a very new sect ?' 
 
 . ' Yes ; they are Blobb-Floppers run mad. Theirs is the 
 Gospel without common-sense. I own everybody cannot 
 have intellect, but I hate a religion without common-sense. 
 Why Mrs. Smiler should have taken up this craze I can't 
 think. She and Mrs. Egg-Turner are both old friends of 
 ours, and used to come and listen to Rev. Wonner Fakem, 
 but see where they are, now they have broken from their 
 old moorings.' 
 
 ' They are widely different, certainly. It would be difficult 
 to say which has left Truth furthest behind.' 
 
 ' I am an old-fashioned man, and deliver me from the 
 Egg-Turning set. They turn Truth up and down till it is 
 addled. A Flabbergaster is even less reasonable than a 
 Freefeeling Brother. But they show us the two raging 
 extremes of modern life ; one represents woman trying to 
 acquire reason, and the other shows her as a priestess in 
 her own right, and in either case she is true to her sex 
 nil tertium? 
 
 Poor Mr. Dragg seemed to feel it keenly that these ladies
 
 372 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 had joined two sects three days newer than his own. In 
 fact, he was almost bitter enough to be brilliant, such 
 an inspiring muse is sectarian fermentation among the 
 Toddlers. 
 
 If Mr. Dragg had not been so excited, I meant to have 
 asked him who discovered Hell. I think I heard some- 
 where that it originated by transferring the senseless tortures 
 of Toddle prison-life to another world, where all its evils 
 can be enlarged without limit. Then they got some fellow 
 to set it out in an epic poem, and hired street preachers to 
 make the vulgar stare. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 I DETERMINED to take steps to remove Dick, and next 
 morning I called upon Mr. Stone to find out whether it 
 was possible to prevail upon him to accompany us. 
 
 Mr. Stone lived in the middle of an interminable terrace 
 of small, dingy houses. I found a few people inside the 
 house, waiting to see him. They were of the wretched 
 order the people who have not succeeded in Fogham, 
 who never will succeed in_this world. One hopes that they 
 will have a fair start in the next. 
 
 I was shown in ; and there was Mr. Stone listening to 
 such a tale of woe from Jane Stick, a poor miserable dirty 
 old woman, who was one of the many thousand in Fogham 
 for whom no man cared. She had sunk through the mud 
 of modern civilization down to the bare rock of immovable 
 necessity, and thereby she had succeeded in accomplishing 
 what no philosopher ever yet achieved. 
 
 Instead of a face she appeared to carry a limited amount
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 373 
 
 of parchment, on which had been traced an illimitable 
 number of wrinkles. Wretched, ragged, and black, she was 
 mumbling out her misery. Apparently some grand-daughter 
 had allowed her to live in one corner of the same room 
 where the whole family dwelt; but the grand-daughter's 
 husband had done his patriotic best to increase the revenue 
 of Toddle Island by heavy drinking. Consequently he had 
 been sentenced to a month's imprisonment. The grand- 
 daughter, within one day's march of absolute and utter 
 starvation, had disappeared and taken her brood of children 
 to some neighbouring district to seek work. The poor old 
 woman was unable to take the journey. She would have 
 kept house, but there was nothing to keep. She would 
 have fished bread-crusts out of the gutter, and would have 
 lived on them till the return of her grand-daughter, but a 
 week's rent was due, so she had been thrown into the 
 street together with the other crusts. 
 
 That man of fable who lived in a tub, and was indepen- 
 dent of the world, barring cold water and sunshine, would 
 have blushed for a week if he could have seen this old 
 woman. In the very heart of the highest civilization of the 
 island she was absolutely independent of all civilization. 
 Her trouble was not how to live j her only care was how to 
 avoid civilization. Had some wave of revolution passed over 
 the whole earth and taken off every crowned head in the 
 world, this poor old woman would have known nothing at all 
 about it, unless one of the heads had knocked her down as it 
 rolled past. There was no order of civilization that affected 
 her in the least, except those official pranks, which seem 
 mainly indulged in to tease and worry the poor. 
 
 She was perfectly willing to sleep on a doorstep, or under 
 a hand-cart, and to find her own food in the public streets, 
 just as a stray sparrow or a wandering beetle ; and she cared 
 no more about civilization than either of them, only she
 
 374 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 suffered the same curse in common with them civiliza- 
 tion interfered with her. I watched her with an amusement 
 not unmingled with reverence. For seventy years had she 
 defied civilization, and though toothless and nearly blind, 
 she was still ready to wage her own war, and was seeking 
 advice, not food. 
 
 Her difficulties would have been overcome if only the 
 police would have allowed her to sleep out of doors. 
 
 Mr. Stone listened to this old woman with the attention 
 that a shopman usually gives to a duchess ; I learnt much. 
 As I watched his conduct and treatment of the poor who 
 came to him, I began to be afraid of Stone. He had got 
 such a hold on the ' future life ' that it made one shudder. 
 He seemed a citizen of the other world already. I dis- 
 covered that he had succeeded in interpreting the inner- 
 most life and motive power of the most remarkable village 
 character which the world has to show, and that he was 
 carrying into daily practice that Gospel theory of brother- 
 hood of which I had heard occasionally. The condition of 
 these people never seemed to strike Stone as one of caste. 
 Their miseries, their complaints, and even their utterances, 
 which openly censured the social order of Fogham, were all 
 received with the same smile of brotherhood. He either 
 instructed them where they would find a home, or where 
 they might apply for work, or where they might get a loaf 
 for the day. 
 
 Whilst he was holding this extraordinary reception, I was 
 able to mark his surroundings, and to take stock of the 
 man more completely. It was a small room, clean and 
 tidy, with perhaps a dozen books, but nothing superfluous. 
 It was like the halting-place of a veteran who, having passed 
 through many campaigns, was waiting for the word of com- 
 mand to move forward. There was none of that feeling 
 which seems to mark the lives of all, namely, that they must
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 375 
 
 get a home and turn it into a nest, and deck and drape 
 it, until they have proved to their poor, deluded senses that 
 they are going to stay there for ever. Then comes the day 
 when marching orders are given; the poor, disillusioned 
 victim moans, weeps, and shrinks from going out into the 
 cold night. He shudders at the huge skeleton, who has a 
 scythe, a sand-glass, and a fixed grin. 
 
 I thought again that Mr. Stone had the best of it. 
 There he was, ready packed up for the summons relating 
 to this or any other world. He had no preparations to 
 make. There would come a stage in the march when he 
 must strip and lay aside the body before taking his post 
 in the new kingdom. 
 
 That was all which remained to be done. 
 
 When these remarkable guests had disappeared, Mr. 
 Stone turned to me with an easy indifference, as if I had 
 merely come to ask for a ticket for coal or tea. It is 
 astonishing what can be done, either by a great idea or 
 a great law, when you carry it to its furthest heights. There 
 was the old, brown, wrinkled woman who, by absolute 
 poverty, had acquired the serene indifference of a Govern- 
 ment official. There was Mr. Stone, with his fixed faith 
 in the spiritual life. He had more than the ease of manner 
 and the unbiased charm of any duke whom I had seen in 
 Fogham. 
 
 I told him of the plan which I wished to carry out with 
 regard to Dick. I was greatly puzzled when I wished to 
 ask his co-operation ; and I partly understood why his 
 kind of religion would not be countenanced by the upper 
 classes in Toddle Island, because if you had a large number 
 of men who practised it, they would be absolutely in- 
 dependent. It would be impossible to buy their votes, or 
 to bribe them into that passing obeisance which allowed 
 the rich to speak of them as ' the happy contented peasant
 
 376 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 classes,' just as it would be impossible to induce them 
 to riot. 
 
 A body of men holding Mr. Stone's views would be no 
 more use for the ordinary purposes of money-grubbing in 
 Toddle Island than the same number of archangels. They 
 would be superior to the inducements of cheating and 
 murder. I felt the difficulty myself. Had Stone been an 
 ordinary man, with no money and no position, I could 
 have held out to him some prospect of increasing his wealth 
 and his pleasure. But to do business with a creature 
 who was superior to both wealth and pleasure was no 
 light task. 
 
 In my despair I went straight to the interrogative 
 method, which is, perhaps, the greatest invention that 
 man ever made. I asked : 
 
 ' Do you care to travel, Mr. Stone ?' 
 
 'I have never travelled; I have never been out of 
 Toddle Island.' 
 
 ' Would you like to come and see Dick and myself in 
 England ?' 
 
 ' I should like it very much, but I see no possibility of 
 carrying out the plan.' 
 
 ' But why not come with us when we return ?' 
 
 ' For many reasons ; but chiefly this that I am unable 
 to leave my present work. The Recumbent is away, and 
 he will not return for some weeks. In his absence I am 
 responsible, and in his presence, as a matter of fact, because 
 I hold my levee, such as you have seen this morning, 
 every day in the week throughout the year.' 
 
 ' But I suppose the Recumbent takes his turn, and lets 
 you go away like himself? If he takes three months, surely 
 you might have two.' 
 
 ' I am allowed three weeks, but I seldom take even that. 
 I have no longer any ties which bind me to any particular
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 377 
 
 spot, except my fellow-sufferers in this parish ; and I suppose 
 I shall go on here to the end of the chapter unless the 
 Recumbent leaves or I grow infirm.' 
 
 I felt inclined to try and infuse a little pluck into this 
 good man. It seemed to me that he might, at any rate, 
 have been as good a Christian, and still have remained a 
 human being. I pointed out that Dick would take it as 
 a great kindness to have the pleasure of his society. 
 
 He spoke kindly of Dick, and declared his great attach- 
 ment to him ; but at the same time he said it was impossible 
 for him to leave the work which he had undertaken. 
 
 As Mr. Stone had to go to his church, he asked if I 
 would accompany him. 
 
 I felt baffled, and at my wits' end. I remembered Lord 
 Guy had said that the main use of a church was that you 
 could make your plans for the future there, because it was 
 fairly quiet, and there was no need to attend to anything ; 
 so I went with Mr. Stone, hoping that I might hit upon 
 some plan whilst he was taking the usual routine. It was 
 a brilliant July morning, and the empty church seemed 
 quietly sepulchral, as the light fell in rich profusion through 
 the stained windows. We passed down the central aisle, 
 and turning to the left, behind a curtain, we found a small 
 church within a church. Here were waiting three women, 
 and Mr. Stone presently appeared arrayed like a Flamen 
 of old. I tried to think out a plan. I have already con- 
 fessed that this man somewhat fascinated me. It struck 
 me as sublime that he should be able, by virtue of a spiritual 
 life, to rise above all the fears and alarms, the weakness 
 and the wickedness, of men and women, yet at the same 
 time to live among them with all the simplicity of the day- 
 labourer. It was a form of independence and isolation 
 which few people can acquire, and for which I would gladly 
 barter the whole of my estates.
 
 378 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 The service over, I waited for Mr. Stone, and did my 
 utmost to prevail upon him to return with me to lunch ; 
 but he declared that to be impossible, as he must visit the 
 sick. 
 
 I left him, and soon found myself in an indignant frame 
 of mind. It seemed to me such an act of outrageous in- 
 justice on the part of the Unoiled Machine, and the Sacred 
 Ass that drew it, that both of them should take advantage 
 of his ready slavery to make capital out of him. In the 
 profession which he had adopted, he was absolutely un- 
 known and disregarded. The State knew him not, though 
 he was preventing her poor from becoming criminal, and her 
 criminals from rioting. Her Ministers would have been as 
 astonished, had anyone asked them to recognise his services, 
 as if they had heard the original bray of the Sacred Ass. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 WHEN I reached home, I was inclined to reorganize the 
 Constitution and Church of the Toddlers. I asked Dick if 
 he could explain to me how it was that Mr. Stone passed 
 his life in the condition of a slave. 
 
 ' Is it because he likes it ?' 
 
 ' The peculiar character of his slavery is that he chooses 
 it, but a Jobber is a slave in any case. I am told he is one 
 of the many orders of islanders who is devoid of rights. He 
 offers his service to a Recumbent, who agrees to pay him 
 a fixed sum of money per annum, which he does with more 
 or less regularity ; but though the remuneration is fixed, the 
 work is not. He may be called upon to do much or little. 
 The Recumbent may be absent or ill, and the poor Jobber
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 379 
 
 may have to do all the work. Should he thus increase his 
 labours, it makes no difference whatever to his remunera- 
 tion. He may even take a house, furnish it, make a home, 
 and devote himself for years to work in any particular 
 district ; but should the Recumbent grow weary of his 
 parish, or find a better, the next Recumbent would ask him 
 to leave. He could, in fact, be dismissed at six weeks' 
 notice, with less ceremony than we dismiss our housemaids 
 in England.' 
 
 Dick then told me of more slavery. This Toddle Island 
 seems to be the home of slavery. 
 
 He said that Mrs. House was much worried because, 
 owing to his illness, George had lost the situation which he 
 had had for thirteen years. Dick was indignant that a 
 man willing to do his duty should now be reduced to 
 pauperism. 
 
 I tried to show him that the employers might take another 
 view. They might say that they had suffered inconvenience 
 owing to George's absence, that the business would not 
 stand still, that the books must be kept, and that if 
 commerce were to wait for the sick and the afflicted, the 
 glory of Toddle Island would go out in darkness. 
 
 Dick seemed pained. At last he said : ' I do not suppose 
 that you really mean that. When a social system grants 
 starvation wages, without holidays, without possibility of 
 saving, and without any organized insurance, what is to 
 happen to those whose health breaks down ?' 
 
 Here Dick became exceedingly sad, and there was that 
 horrible far-away look in his eyes which seemed to come 
 oftener than ever. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 We chatted much about George, and determined to find 
 some plan by which we could help him. 
 
 I said that I would have a little talk with Mrs. House.
 
 380 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 I was no longer inclined to think that she made mountains 
 of mole-hills. I soon fell into my old vein when I contem- 
 plated her hard case. Here was a woman brought up in 
 wealth, prevented from knowing the world by the laws of 
 the land in which she lived and the custom of Society in 
 which she moved. She was debarred from any profession 
 or from acquiring any knowledge that would have been the 
 least use in the market. She had been born and bred for 
 the sole object of being some man's chattel. She had had 
 the misfortune to fall into the hands of a man who did not 
 value his chattels, and he had disposed of her with the rest. 
 She had been first robbed of her chances in the world, then 
 robbed of her money, and left to sink into the grave by any 
 one of the numerous openings which all countries afford to 
 a woman. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 DICK no longer came down to breakfast, and this morning 
 he was so late that I went to see if he were worse. I sent 
 for Dr. Links. When he came he was exceedingly grave. 
 We had now been waiting some months for Dick to be well 
 enough, or the weather to be fine enough, to advise his 
 removal. Both had moved remarkably slowly. 
 
 I prevailed upon the doctor to remain. I was glad to 
 have his presence at luncheon, for the shadows on the infinite 
 dial seemed rather thick. As the doctor betrayed no alarm, 
 I endeavoured to discuss various subjects with him, so as to 
 prevent my brooding over terrible possibilities. It is the 
 first secret of the medical profession, I believe, that they 
 should be able to go about their duties with the fixed ex- 
 terior of a fire-proof safe. I prized Dr. Links' opinion
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 381 
 
 because he saw human nature with as much of the veneer 
 off as most people ; he saw the Toddlers at a time when the 
 motives for disguise no longer existed. I could imagine 
 that many of them looked forward to death with a peculiar 
 feeling of welcome. Rich old men who had been watched 
 and worried for several years by people who took an interest 
 in their wills ; old women who had been hated because 
 they remained long in the world, and stood in the way 
 of enjoyment ; young, worn invalids, who had been 
 trampled upon from the moment that they had left their 
 cradles, because they were not strong enough to fight all 
 these, and thousands of others, I could imagine, enjoy one 
 hour of death. It must be so delightful to lay aside the 
 mask which has veiled life, and which has grown thicker 
 and heavier and filthier every year. It must be like laying 
 aside leprosy, and feeling the young vigour of a wild horse. 
 The last audience of such people with the world would form 
 an interesting book, and make the fortune of a new daily 
 paper. I wonder no interviewer has ever tried it ; but 
 I suppose it would be too real to be tolerated by the paste- 
 board Punch and Judy shows which compose Society in 
 Fogham. 
 
 We return to Dr. Links and his thousand secrets. 
 
 CATHOLIC TRUTH. 
 
 I had pondered much over a phrase I had heard in the 
 island. It had more than the mysterious charm of the 
 Sacred Ass to some minds. This phrase was ' Catholic 
 Truth.' I asked Dr. Links if he could help me to under- 
 stand it. 
 
 He said it was a sort of ancient Flabbergastology, but 
 with a different application. The modern Flabbergaster
 
 382 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 had a single creed, the ancient a complex one. The 
 modern wished to destroy both Yes and No; the 
 ancient faith was known in history as ' The Doctrine of the 
 Infinite Yes.' They assented too readily, and con- 
 sequently they made Catholic Truth very large a huge 
 bundle of faggots tied up in a black elastic band. 
 
 I asked him by what means such an ancient device was 
 introduced into a new nation like the Toddlers. 
 
 ' Centuries ago,' he said, ' this island was in such a 
 pauperized condition that it possessed only one religion. 
 Nobody now knows what that religion was. We only know 
 that some people from Rome introduced an entirely different 
 religion, which they called "Catholic Truth." This 
 "Catholic Truth " differed from all other kinds of truth.' 
 
 Hereupon I expressed my great desire to know more of 
 the wonder. 
 
 He continued : ' It is the history of two powerful religions 
 that differed in their origin. One was called Paganism, and 
 the other was called Christianity. Paganism consisted of 
 pomp and show. It dazzled its worshippers, and was a great 
 thing to do or look at, like fireworks or anything of that 
 kind. Christianity, on the other hand, appears to have had 
 a very poor beginning, and seems to have been so devoid of 
 show that it was hardly decent. Now, these two were 
 joined together at the expense of both. Some of the show 
 disappeared from the one, and a great deal of vigour from 
 the other ; but the result was striking. A certain number 
 of officials, who began life in quite a humble way, some of 
 whom were appointed by accident, settled the doctrines and 
 usages for all succeeding generations. If one official wrote 
 a letter to another, and expressed an opinion on the shape 
 of shoes, that was immediately taken as settled for all time, 
 and the faithful would wear no other shape of shoes so long 
 as they might live.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 383 
 
 / ' Should an old official have a very large corn upon one 
 Abot, so that he had to cut out the side of his shoe, all 
 /officials of his rank had to cut out the side of one shoe in 
 / every land. 
 
 ' In Toddle Island, if an official has no corn, he buys an 
 artificial one. Corns are necessary for the sanctity of the 
 office. Other officials are made by shoe-buckles ; some fix 
 all their right reverence on the calf of the leg. 
 
 ' Should a district manager, afflicted with baldness, wear 
 a red cap with a tassel in which were three pig-bristles, all 
 such managers must wear the same for ever. It was truly 
 comic, centuries later, to see the black locks of some young 
 man peeping from under the red cap of office, or to see 
 a strong youth hunting for pig-bristles because he could 
 not be made manager of a mission station without the 
 orthodox cap. 
 
 ' If an official in writing to another described a particular 
 kind of service which was agreeable in a very warm country, 
 that service became fixed as a sacred model to be copied 
 minutely for ever after, even amid snow and ice.' 
 
 ' But this must have led to a great many inconveniences, 
 and must have prevented the adaptation necessary for life 
 and progress !' 
 
 For the first time Dr. Links laughed in my presence. It 
 was a cheerful sort of convulsion. Some time after he said : 
 ' To them, adaptation is the feminine of devil. They main- 
 tain there is no need of adaptation where they have the 
 fixity of beauty and the dogma of divine order. 
 
 ' In the first place, these men discovered that all officials 
 are perfect. Anything an official said or did was without a 
 flaw. "An official never makes a mistake," says the first 
 article of their creed. 
 
 'If an old priest fell going down the altar-steps, soon 
 there was a rumour that the altar-steps rose up and smote
 
 384 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 him by special order of the devil. Upon examination, of 
 course, the steps were found to be just as they always had 
 been. This he explained by saying that he took the devil 
 by the horn and tail, swung him through a stained-glass K/ 
 window, and piously made the sign of the cross. \fc . Vu/^ 
 
 ' These altar-steps became a shrine. 
 
 ' Miracles were wrought there. 
 
 ' Should another priest put his hat on wrong-side first, it 
 was not a mistake. He had seen a vision a sort of seraphic 
 hatter had appeared in the dead of the night, and as the 
 man had scarcely slept himself sober when he saw the 
 vision askew, hat and all, so in future he and all pious 
 priests wore their hats askew by the miraculous interposition 
 of Providence. 
 
 ' Where there can be no mistake there need be no 
 change. A priest is the most remarkable animal in the 
 world ; if he can carry the ashes of his grandmother's grand- 
 mother round a painted idol once a year, he calls that the 
 development of a divine ideal.' 
 
 ' Were these men jesters the unadorned fools of Time ?' 
 I asked. 
 
 ' No ; they were in fiery earnest, and would have answered 
 you with a red-hot poker, and would have shown your ashes 
 as proof positive of Catholic Truth. 
 
 ' Their second great discovery was like unto the first. If 
 an official said anything in one age which did not harmonize 
 with an official utterance in some other age, instead of 
 examining into the difference and coming to some arrange- 
 ment as ordinary people in the world would do, they used 
 to procure thousands of people who, without any inquiry, 
 were willing to say that both statements meant the same 
 thing, and that there was no contradiction. Thus it came 
 to pass, after many centuries, that these people were able to 
 look back upon a very long history devoid of any contradic-
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 385 
 
 tion, where every generation had copied the doctrines and 
 practices of a former generation, and where the most com- 
 pletely false statement was pronounced to be true because 
 thousands of people who had never examined it declared 
 it must be sacred. By this means was it found possible to 
 manufacture the Catholic Truth. I am sure you must agree 
 that it differs from all other truth, both in its manufacture 
 and in its smug complacence; on the latter point there is 
 nothing to touch it in the world except a female Flabber- 
 gaster.' 
 
 I thanked Dr. Links sincerely for his help. He is a man 
 of sterling common-sense, and I always think of him with 
 gratitude. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 IT was a brilliant morning late in July, and Dr. Links had 
 just left, when some woman called to inquire for Dick. 
 When Mrs. House came and told me, for a moment I was 
 interested. I was not aware that any woman in the island 
 knew his address except Miss Guy; therefore with a little 
 more eagerness than was quite consistent with strict shadow 
 philosophy, I rushed into the hall to see for myself. There 
 was a respectable-looking average woman, to save all further 
 description, who might be in any rank of the serving class. 
 
 For an instant I was almost disappointed that I did not 
 find Miss Guy there eagerly inquiring after the noblest man 
 in Fogham. Then I thought, at any rate, this woman must 
 have been sent ; so in reply to the inquiry, ' How is Mr. 
 Spooner to-day, sir?' I asked her into my room. I was 
 justly punished for having deviated from my fixed rule 
 about shadow-land. These abominable Toddlers are eternally 
 
 2 5
 
 386 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 playing pranks, and if they can find anybody who believes 
 them, they are sure to afflict that person with hysterics. 
 
 The woman had not come from Miss Guy. It was Mrs. 
 Black, of that terrible Paradise Street. I was glad to see 
 Mrs. Black, because Dick had often wondered where she 
 was, and why we did not hear from her. In fact, on one 
 occasion he was about to go to Paradise Street to make 
 inquiries ; but I think the memories of the past were too 
 bitter, for I saw in the mirror as he took off his hat and 
 coat that he had the utmost difficulty in restraining his 
 tears, and he retired for some hours afterwards. 
 
 Mrs. Black was radiant with hope, success, and health. 
 I could scarcely believe that this could be the miserable 
 woman whom Dick had found occupying a bare room with 
 her starving children, whilst her husband was dying in an 
 infirmary. 
 
 She told me that by means of the help which Dick had 
 given her, and the influence of those to whom he had 
 applied, one child had been placed in a situation, two others 
 had been got into schools, and that for the two youngest she 
 had been able to make provision by her own exertions in 
 laundry work ; and now she had come to find out whether 
 Mr. Spooner had left Fogham. 
 
 Her praises of Mr. Spooner were the sweetest things I 
 ever heard in Toddle Island. There was something so 
 mixed with reverence, such an absolute unreserve of 
 gratitude, that it showed me the possibilities of life in the 
 island. 
 
 It was a cruel thing to cloud all her radiance with one 
 single sentence, which told her Mr. Spooner was danger- 
 ously ill. I left her to go and tell Dick she had come. It 
 gave him intense pleasure, and he seemed to completely alter 
 for a few hours under this tonic. As I sat musing late in 
 the evening I felt convinced that if Miss Guy would have
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 387 
 
 come the springs of life would have responded, and hope 
 would have done what medicine had failed to do. 
 
 I encouraged Mrs. Black to call again, and she promised 
 to do so. 
 
 Some time during next day Dick said : 
 
 ' I feel weak and foolish to have abandoned Paradise 
 Street. Had I forced myself to return immediately after 
 that terrible charge, possibly I should have been able to 
 shake off this weight. I feel like a slave to the physical 
 part of me. Believing as I do in the People, and the power 
 and the possibilities of the People, I regret day by day now 
 that I am not dwelling amongst them.' He continued : 
 ' Fogham requires a civilization on a sound commercial 
 footing, which should allow the possibility of the spiritual 
 development to all classes.' 
 
 ' I don't quite understand,' I remarked, ' what you mean 
 by civilization on a commercial footing.' 
 
 ' At present civilization is a great success for a few ; but 
 it means, and must mean, the slavery and misery of the 
 majority. KTow, that is a bungling invention, which can 
 only achieve a little good at such an enormous expense. 
 We should call a man a very poor mechanic who was only 
 able to make one good machine by spoiling a hundred. We 
 should despise an inventor who might elaborate one or two 
 parts of an engine had he left the other parts, and those the 
 most important, in such a condition that the engine could 
 not be worked. Every human being in a State ought to 
 have a commercial interest in the success of the State ; and 
 all civilizations have failed hitherto, on the material side, 
 from this simple fact, that they were the private property of 
 a few, and when they toppled over by their own decay, it 
 made no difference to anybody in the world except the 
 private few who lived in the upper stories and tried to stifle 
 those who were below.'
 
 3 88 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 ' Would you, then, reduce the State to a kind of co- 
 operative system ?' 
 
 ' If you like the term, yes. All trades and professions. alL 
 natural advantages and discoveries, should be given to_thg, 
 ge*neral service, so that instead of having a hungry mob 
 howling their defiance against a few who live in a lotus-laden 
 atmosphere, there would be a stalwart army marching on to 
 a definite victory the victory of man, the animal, over 
 want, his enemy.' 
 
 ***** 
 
 Mr. Carr called upon us, and I tried to interest him in 
 procuring something for George House. He had come to 
 fetch me to see a new machine. I prevailed upon Dick to 
 accompany us. We took a boat, and the scene was truly 
 lovely as we followed the winding stream, which was flooded 
 with the August sunshine. I think Mr. Carr was not par- 
 ticularly anxious that I should comprehend his mechanical 
 device. He had really only fetched me in order that we 
 might have one of those long strange talks which I always 
 enjoyed. Being skilled in all things mechanical, he was 
 ever ready to point out some peculiar weakness in the 
 Unoiled Machine. He seemed to have made up his mind 
 that it was altogether a Pagan invention. 
 
 I asked Mr. Carr to explain the strange contradictions in 
 the Machine. 
 
 He answered : ' There are two classes of people all over 
 the world. I suspect we should find, if we could examine 
 them, that all depends upon the different position of their 
 microbes. One class may be called the inside passengers, 
 and the other the outside passengers, through life. The 
 inside passengers refer everything to themselves. They 
 measure the outer world by their own experience ; they are 
 said to believe in the subjective method. Now, when these 
 people take up religion, they talk eternally about what they
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 389 
 
 see, or feel, or know, or believe ; all the words mean the 
 same to them. These folk are quite independent of every- 
 thing. Place them on a lonely island, and they will tell you 
 that they have all society, and they have a temple more 
 glorious than man ever made. They rear their altars on 
 their own emotions, and they create their own attendant 
 angels. Now, the outside passengers are a different lot ; 
 they look on everything around them first, and they correct 
 their own experience by the natural objects which they see 
 and the larger experience outside. Knowing the tricks 
 which are played by the liver and the nerves, and that a few 
 dead microbes may blur the finest vision, they distrust the 
 words " feel," " know," and " see," and even their faith is 
 an outside faith, and takes hold of the things which are not 
 found in the individual emotions.' 
 
 I laughed at Mr. Carr's suggestion about these passengers. 
 It seemed such a translation of transcendentalism as only a 
 practical mechanic could have made, and I asked, ' Do 
 you believe, then, that the differences between the various 
 islanders, which led them to devote their spare time to 
 praying and burning one another, depended upon the 
 physiological distinction which you have represented as 
 inside and outside passengers ?' 
 
 ' Exactly that. One man prayed a great deal if he could 
 see a crucifix. Another man could not pray at all with the 
 same object before him, but took violently to cursing. We 
 shall never settle these difficulties unless some day we dis- 
 cover a process for the transfusion of microbes. If once 
 we could get the inside passengers to take an outside view, 
 the island would probably be happy.' 
 
 I noted that even Mr. Carr admitted the island was not 
 happy. Miserable, perverted beings, at war with themselves, 
 tearing each other asunder with vows of love before, and 
 prayers and psalms after, I shall never forget those raven- 
 ing Toddlers.
 
 390 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 No wonder their Unoiled Machine was a mystery to me, 
 a confused jumble of all the vagaries of inside and outside 
 passengers. 
 
 Poor Unoiled Machine, creak no more till the Sacred 
 Ass shall blow off thy rust as he gives his last terrible 
 bray! 
 
 I gave myself up to the lovely autumn sunlight and 
 watched the effect on Dick. To my great surprise, he 
 entered into a long conversation with Mr. Carr, whilst I 
 basked in the sunshine and gave free rein to my scorn of 
 the miserable jumble which the Toddler calls life. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 DICK grew animated, and asked Mr. Carr's advice on some 
 very practical plans for helping the workers to help them- 
 selves. Mr. Carr did not seem sanguine, and I heard 
 several pieces of worldly wisdom about the inborn thriftless- 
 ness of vagabonds. But Dick replied : 
 
 ' I am not pleading for vagabonds, except that I would 
 like an order of life where it is difficult to become a 
 vagabond, instead of your present method, which creates 
 vagabonds. Don't you admit that the conditions of life 
 could be made far easier for the toilers ?' 
 
 ' Of course I do,' replied Mr. Carr ; ' but that is not the 
 difficulty. The rich hold the_land_jind the capital, and they 
 are not eager t improve anyjbody's condition. The earth 
 jTtridrs and tte fulness thereof, and the workers may dwell 
 in scarceness.' 
 
 ' But, Mr. Carr, you cannot think that is just.' 
 
 ' I have said before that a tost social life is heaven. I
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 391 
 
 don't deal with Utopias. I tell you what I see. A few 
 people have got everything, and they mean to keep it. 
 
 'As for improvements, anybody with one eye open could 
 improve Toddle Island. But the moment anything is found 
 which is good, the wealthy bag it as a necessary perquisite 
 for the man who has plenty. 
 
 ' For instance, thjsjich never invented education, and it 
 would be quite easy to give a free education to all, including 
 the Universities. It would be possible to nationalize the 
 children feed, clothe, and educate them, so as to make 
 them into citizens instead of vermin. 
 
 ' Now, if any set of men really meant to do justly and 
 love mercy, they would help the industrious struggling poor 
 by loan-banks. It would be perfectly easy for a few people 
 to start a bank in their own neighbourhood, all contributing 
 a little each week. 
 
 ' This would create capital, and those who wished to 
 borrow money to buy seed, tools, etc., could do so at a 
 nominal interest and without any legal expenses. Nothing 
 could be easier than that, and nothing could confer such a 
 boon upon this island. It would help to get the land 
 under cultivation, and vastly increase the products of the 
 island. But our Government wags an^l strutting Maskers 
 would rather argue, or dine, or even go to heavetf, than 
 
 - v>r ^4* '^B 9^ ^^^ *** * ^^^^ ^^ 
 
 labour for anything so sensible. A few hundred farm
 
 392 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 colonies, in which everybody had a fair chance of the profit, 
 would work like a miracle. 
 
 ' We are overwhelmed by two self-created curses : we have 
 thousands of acres uncultivated, and we have thousands of 
 poor out of work. The acres would be worth farming if 
 only we would put sufficient digging into them. You see 
 those patches, rich with corn and vegetables ; they are 
 allotments, and because they are small they are well tilled. 
 Now, the very straw grown on those small plots is worth 
 more than that which is grown on big farms ; and as for the 
 quantity of produce, I should think it is more than double 
 hat raised on the same acreage of a farm ; still, it has often 
 been so difficult for the labourer to obtain a piece of ground, 
 that, instead of multiplying allotments, we have actually 
 stopped them. And yet some spend their time in organizing 
 meetings to benefit the unemployed.' 
 
 We stayed in the country till sunset, and as I gazed on 
 the rich verdure and noted the happy cattle grazing in the 
 fields, and met merry troops of children, I could not help 
 feeling that if man would cease paying so much attention to 
 himself he would fare much better. In fact, if he would be 
 an outside passenger, he would be all the stronger for the 
 fresh air. 
 
 Mr. Carr could not return with us, but he promised to 
 come and help Dick with his plans when wanted.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 393 
 
 Life had changed in a few days. 
 
 Dick enjoyed his dinner, and began to make plans for 
 aiding Mrs. Black in developing her work, yet he seemed 
 extremely tired, and went to bed early. 
 
 I could scarcely believe my own senses. The man was 
 transfigured with hope. The shadows and the infinite dial 
 seemed to be swallowed up in light. Surely it was not a 
 mocking dream which the morning would dispel ! 
 
 Morning came, and, strange to say, there was Dick down 
 to breakfast. He was not so radiant as last night, but still 
 he could eat, and that was my test of recovery. He seemed 
 to be pondering gloomily, and at length he said : 
 
 ' I have been living over that happy Christmas time of 
 last year. It seems even yet a delicious dream. I could 
 not have believed that hope had such power over human 
 beings. I was steeled, as I thought, to an isolated life, 
 which you know had lasted for many years under most try- 
 ing conditions ; but this new vision of life's possibilities, in 
 the presence of the most charming woman I have known, 
 caused me to feel instantly the dread issue of life. Love 
 and hope gave a loveliness which one could hardly suppose 
 that mortals could enjoy. I have said but little of this, 
 because I fear that you must fail to feel its force and to see 
 its beauty, as I certainly should have done six months 
 before. After even a few weeks' association the very name 
 of Edith became a charm. It looked, when written down, 
 somehow as if it were not composed of the ordinary letters 
 of the alphabet. Her presence was a delight, and when we 
 took long rambles to see the morning frost or to watch a sun- 
 set, I could only compare my joy to the dawn of a new life, 
 transfigured by love and hope. Especially do I remember 
 one afternoon, when a few snowflakes drifted through the 
 air and filled it with beauty. I gathered leaves painted by 
 frost and sunshine with exquisite hues. Before dinner I
 
 394 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 arranged them in the form of a heart for Edith to wear. It 
 all seemed then natural and lovely. It may now seem to 
 you foolish. Imaginative passion is sweet poison.' 
 
 He paused, overcome by emotion. 
 
 I own I was deeply moved. I only regret now that the 
 passing years have so scathed my own life that I am unable 
 even to tell the story of another's passion. However, I 
 recognised that there were the elements of a most pathetic 
 tragedy. I am unable on any principle to account for 
 Dick's life. That a lad born of parents who were occupied 
 in menial work should have been endowed with a highly 
 sensitive, poetic nature ; that snowflakes and stars, babbling 
 brooks and half-faded leaves, should all have sung him the 
 music of the Universe; that he should be sensitive and 
 imaginative when he ought rather to have been callous, 
 energetic, and animal, are mysteries. What part such a 
 strange offspring of Nature could play in a world of matter 
 with a dying faith and a despairing creed, I fail to see. 
 Had he possessed those early advantages which tend to 
 literary or artistic form, he might have interpreted the fleet- 
 ing dreams that passed like electric flashes through his 
 brain at a single touch of natural beauty, or at the sound of 
 music. It was interesting to me to listen to such ex- 
 periences. They were outside my life. I was glad that he 
 had made a reference to Miss Guy. It was the first time 
 her name had passed his lips since his inquiry in the prison 
 cell. I felt that she was less spectral from the mere fact 
 that we could refer to her. Now we might be said to have 
 buried her, and few things are more healthy than a simple 
 funeral. 
 
 It is usually the most natural event in a man's life. 
 
 After our private funeral, we settled down to various 
 pursuits of a trivial character, in which a pipe and a paper 
 formed my most important items.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 395 
 
 Mrs. Black called, and I took the opportunity of seeing 
 her, and pressing upon her the importance of giving Dick 
 anything to do which would interest him. I was not, there- 
 fore, surprised when he came, a short time after, and said 
 he was going to see Mrs. Black's laundry and learn how 
 it was managed ! 
 
 By all the gew-gaws of time, here was amusement ! This 
 man with the visions of a prophet and enough fervour to 
 invent a new order of saintliness had gone to study the 
 management of a laundry ! 
 
 I smoked. 
 
 Anything rather than mope. I suppose all persons of 
 Dick's temperament will be victims to the end of time. It 
 is only a choice of illusion whether they shall chase pure 
 moonshine or its mirage. 
 
 I chuckled. 
 
 I grunted. 
 
 Perhaps Dick will come back with an idea that he is 
 going to benefit somebody going to change human 
 history. Poor fellow ! If he knew the venom of jealousy 
 and murder which fills the heart of every human being, 
 he would give up this childish nonsense of helping any- 
 body. 
 
 For the mass of men there is no change. Glaring varie- 
 ties of individuals may appear only to dazzle and perish. 
 They are not types of progress, but wandering fire-flies in 
 the darkness. 
 
 No matter what may be the origin of man, he bears the 
 impress of eternal slavery on his brow. He must die early ; 
 he can never shake himself free from prenatal influence ; 
 as an individual the forces of Nature and the fetters of 
 civilization are against him. Any great thing that he can 
 do must depend on the co-operation of masses of his 
 species; but the masses of his race never rise above the
 
 396 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 apish imitation and the swinish selfishness which to this 
 moment have held in check every nation. 
 
 In religion he can only mouth his shibboleths, and mock 
 his senses ; in all else he deifies power and falls down to 
 worship the lucky. I see no hope for such a grovelling 
 idiot. I listen to the canting repetitions of paid agents, 
 whether priests, or lawyers, or doctors ; I stand dumb- 
 founded as I watch the juggling tricks of the powerful and 
 the rich, gulling their fellow-men into slavery in the name 
 of a loving God, who gave a special Providence to the Aris- 
 tocrat ; I watch the countless mob murdering each other in 
 the scramble for the dirty crumbs which the successful 
 thieves of Society leave behind, when, by a little co-opera- 
 tion and a little hanging, the mob might take an orderly 
 possession of their own heritage in the whole earth. Then 
 I grow dizzy with despair. I have seen the vision and the 
 fact of human achievement. Civilized men are a^race of 
 maniacs in fetters. In their moments of jubilee they rattle 
 their chains against the coffins of their ancestors, and mis- 
 take the sound for triumphal music. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 IN the afternoon Dick returned. He had seen the laundry 
 at work, and he had also seen some of the misery of the 
 district, and he writhed at the recollection of it. 
 
 Mrs. Black had taken him to see some cases of ' sweating,' 
 which is ajbrm of cannibalism. The first was Mrs. Bate- 
 man, a widow, with four children. For three years she had 
 struggled to keep her family, and paid half a crown a week 
 for one little room. She made match-boxes at 2|d. a
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 397 
 
 gross; seven gross a day, is. sfd, being her great ambition. 
 When she had made eighty-four dozen boxes, by working 
 from six in the morning till ten at night, she went to sleep 
 in peace with a thankful heart. She had to find her own 
 paste, and sometimes she only received 2d. a gross, i.e., 
 made eighteen boxes for a farthing. She worked seven 
 days a week, and she never went outside the house. She 
 was ill and weak, and perspiration rolled off her face. 
 
 ' But,' said Dick, ' I saw a worse case than this. As we 
 turned out of the street, and I expressed my horror at this 
 murder, Mrs. Black said, " We will go up here and see 
 Mrs. Laitch. She is much worse off. Her husband was a 
 clever mechanic, and manager of the works, and received 
 good pay. He was often charged at the police-courts for 
 assaulting his wife. In his drunken fury he has thrown her 
 downstairs, kicked her, and jumped upon her. For this he 
 was often sent to prison. At last the magistrate granted a 
 judicial separation, and ordered him to pay 153. a week. 
 When he came out of gaol his business was gone ; he wept 
 and professed to be ' converted,' and the wife allowed him 
 to go back to her. In a short time he was worse than ever, 
 and as he had received some stolen property, he was sent to 
 prison for six months, and his wife was left with eight 
 children to keep. She makes ladies' blouses at lod. a 
 dozen, and finds her own needles and thread, and makes 
 them throughout. I called two Sundays ago, and there she 
 was surrounded with blouses, stitching, stitching for life. 
 When she saw me unexpectedly, she fainted away and rolled 
 down amongst her work. Though near her confinement, 
 she worked nineteen hours a day and seven days a week." 
 
 ' We arrived at the door, and we went in. To our surprise, 
 we found the poor woman in bed, with an infant thirty 
 hours old. There was not a penny in the house, no milk, 
 no sugar ; there was a little gruel without either milk or
 
 398 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 sugar in it, and she was looked after by her daughter, 
 eleven years of age. 
 
 ' I bowed in silence in presence of this victim. After 
 Mrs. Black had made some arrangements, I said something 
 about the wretchedly small amount of money earned. 
 
 ' The poor woman replied, as if in apology : 
 
 ' " By rising at four and working till eleven I could make 
 two dozen a day, and that was is. 8d. ; but, you see, I 
 did not feel very well the first thing in the morning, and 
 I dare say it was often nearly five o'clock before I made a 
 good start." 
 
 ' I felt a choking sensation, and I left i with Mrs. 
 Black for her, and hurried out.' 
 
 Dick's face wore the old look of anguish, and I said 
 rather carelessly : 
 
 ' That is one of the ten thousand cases which money 
 cannot help.' 
 
 ' But it may relieve the worst horrors for the day, and 
 then we may do something to help permanently. I am 
 quite aware that no outside help will put all such cases 
 right.' 
 
 ' True ; it is^ not charity, bujt justice,, that is__needed by 
 these people. The Toddler is beset by two ever-pressing 
 difficulties hunger and character. He must alter his mode 
 of business, and he must alter his code of morals, right 
 down to the foundations, if prosperity and righteousness 
 are to become universal.' 
 
 ' I think you are right, and co-operation seems to offer 
 the hest way o^t of the present darkness, for it would 
 prevent sweating and tyranny in many forms.' 
 
 As he drank tea he related the history of the laundry. 
 It occupied nearly thirty women, and was so conducted 
 that everyone had a share in the management and the 
 profits. There was no owner, no master, and no difference
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 399 
 
 in the profit which fell to each person, whatever kind of 
 work she might do. At first necessary funds had been 
 loaned, but these they were repaying monthly out of the 
 profits. Mrs. Black had begun with two women, but 
 someone had found her more funds, and given her a set 
 of simple rules, by which each woman became a partner in 
 the firm. Dick grew enthusiastic over the justice of this 
 plan. He said : 
 
 'Consider how life is altered with these women. The 
 best of them were laundresses before, and worked from 
 twelve to sixteen hours a day. If any were ill, and stayed 
 away a week, they lost the place, and might go and seek 
 work elsewhere. They were too tired to do anything, 
 except to get drunk, and every week only rendered them 
 more brutalized. Now, they are not allowed to work more 
 than eight hours a day, and the interest of each in the profits 
 prevents waste of time, or material, and causes all the work 
 to be done carefully. Shorter hours of work leave them 
 time to read or sing, and, above all, they have plenty of 
 food and rest. To see their bright, orderly lives, nobody 
 would suppose that they were doing most menial work. 
 One of them worked in a laundry where your friend Mrs. 
 Smiler used to preach; but they don't seem to believe 
 much in preaching.' 
 
 Dick expatiated long on the fairness of this system, and 
 I am bound to say it conferred so many advantages that I 
 wonder the siUv islanders did not adopt it universally. It 
 seems a scurvy trick that some fellow, who has got hold of 
 ^1,000, by doubtful means probably, should conduct 
 business in such a way as to make a fortune out of the 
 lives of a few helpless women, and in the end he retires 
 to a life of godliness and luxury, and leaves the women to 
 starve and rot. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Smiler, with her fixed faith in devils, would go
 
 400 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 and see this kind of daily misery and injustice, and fancy 
 that an emotional prayer and a tract, administered for 
 twenty minutes once a week, were going to undo the 
 brutalizing effects of six days' iniquitous slavery. And the 
 amusing part was that Smiler and her lot believed it, and 
 thought it proved the Fatherhood of God that they should 
 be called to minister to their ' less favoured sisters.' 
 Charming Toddlers ! I cannot long be angry for laughter 
 at the farce which you play, making your God the Stage- 
 manager. 
 
 We dined and discussed many plans. Dick was positive 
 that the justice of this equitable co-operation could bring 
 sunlight into thousands of homes in the island. 
 
 I tried to believe it, but I was going to take no part in 
 the business. I only wished to leave Toddle Island to its 
 own devices, and if its statesmen chose to make it a wild- 
 beast show, that was no concern of mine. If Dick was 
 really going to gain strength, I should soon set sail for 
 England. 
 
 At breakfast next morning Dick seemed remarkably 
 rested. The tonic of something to do had given him 
 vigour. He said he was going to see Mr. Stone, and ask 
 if the same thing could not be done for men and families 
 which Mrs. Black was accomplishing for women. 
 
 Then we talked of England, and autumn, and harvest. 
 
 The sunshine falling upon our window awoke all the old 
 sensations of the season in Dick's mind. Dick felt it was 
 harvest-time, and he amused himself by drawing sketches 
 of the fields full of nodding corn, and gave me pictures 
 of the men sitting upon the sheaves under a tree or behind 
 a hedge eating their dinners. The women also turned out 
 to harvest ; the children were having a holiday of supreme 
 summer, and during the dinner-hour were either gathering 
 flowers or chasing each other in the sunlight. Wonderful
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 401 
 
 were these sketches to me. They revealed that strange 
 power of his nature by which the very setting and surround- 
 ings of his vision tabulated themselves on his conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 On these lovely mornings I almost grieved that human 
 life should be a fragment. I expressed my pessimism at 
 human calamity. He glowed with excitement, and said : 
 
 ' But consider the many delights of which no calamity 
 can rob us. The schools may wrangle about its explana- 
 tion, but the fact abides. Visions flood my life at the 
 sound of distant bells, or when listening to music. I 
 cannot speak of these they are the ineffable ; but they 
 are the hard facts of my experience. The loveliness of 
 natural scenery enchants my senses. I can also dream for 
 countless hours over the joys of childhood, till I feel there 
 could be no calamity that left me time. I know nothing 
 of loneliness, for I am encircled with companions. I have 
 with me still the visitants who came when my mother died 
 in the summer dawn. These and many such delights are 
 mine for ever, and no calamity can blight their beauty or 
 spoil their enchantment.' 
 
 He seemed inspired by the incense of memory. I was 
 relieved that the wakeful nights had no dreariness for him ; 
 but when I said so, a strange sadness clouded that radiant 
 face. He answered : 
 
 ' I lie awake in the long dawns, and I think of the 
 thousands of families by the docks here stretched on the 
 floor. I know they are not warm even at this season ; and 
 I think of the children the murdered children, life without 
 a childhood and I weep. Then I hear a chorus of voices 
 not human voices uttering one message : The children 
 are murdered ! now in the roaring streets, now in the 
 crowded drawing-rooms, but always the same message : 
 The children are murdered !' 
 
 26
 
 402 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 It was indeed pathetic. 
 
 I realized how nearly this man had been submerged by 
 his own intensity of feeling. I wished he would start a 
 hundred laundries, or factories, or farms anything that 
 would stop him from feeling. When he rose to go and 
 consult Stone, I told him that ^50,000 was at his disposal 
 for any project he might wish to commence. He thanked 
 me warmly, and said that with such a sum he was sure he 
 could benefit 50,000 human beings shortly. 
 
 When he had gone, I pondered over plans for myself. 
 It seemed as if I must leave Dick in Toddle Island. I knew 
 his strong endurance ; I could see that an outlet for his 
 intense feeling was the only thing which could keep him 
 sane. 
 
 I had often wondered at the absolute calm of the man. 
 I am not surprised that anyone who has fully grasped 
 shadow philosophy should lie calmly waiting for the intro- 
 duction into another phase of shade (for aught we know) 
 where blind shadows travel over the unknown dial. We 
 have no distinct assurance that the supposed light is not 
 some intenser form of darkness, or the roaring furnace for 
 whose existence we are shadows. However, I knew that 
 Dick did not hold these views. To him everything was too 
 real. I very much question whether time and space even 
 were shadows to him. They had made such an impression 
 upon his own history, and marked so sharply his own 
 development, that probably he thought they were realities, 
 or it is still more likely that he had never asked a question 
 about either of them. Happy fellow ! He had never felt 
 those two fetters which bind all men hand and foot ; so 
 that instead of living and breathing in the vast universe, 
 comprehending its realities and its infinitude, we are bound 
 by time and space like so many shrouded mites, only 
 conscious that we are in a grave.
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 403 
 
 Dick's religion was singular. He believed and revered 
 the Bible, but it made no difference to him that some book 
 of doubtful authorship had been retained, whilst another 
 equally valid had been rejected. He had none of that 
 paganism which regards the Atonement as a trick to let a 
 man off punishment, and convey him to some place where 
 he must be happy whether he will or not. He believed 
 that Christ was the Pioneer of immortality, and that by a 
 process of evolution living growth from within He had 
 given this boon to all men. He positively revelled in the 
 glorious vision of vast, surging life and the endless possi- 
 bilities of growth. This life and the next were to him one, 
 with only a very thin curtain between them. He prayed 
 for the dead, and lived with them in much closer com- 
 munion than the majority of us do with the living. 
 
 It was an odd creed to end in running a laundry for un- 
 fortunate women, and a farm for men who had failed in 
 life. 
 
 When he returned, I knew that he had succeeded. Stone 
 was delighted with the prospect of getting some of his half- 
 starved relics of men into the country, with regular work and 
 regular food. 
 
 For many days there was great excitement over the new 
 schemes. 
 
 Mr. Stone and Dr. Links came often to contribute 
 their share to the plan. Mr. Carr gave whole evenings 
 to raising practical difficulties and then settling them. Mrs. 
 Black was visited for details. George House had so much 
 correspondence that he was regarded as chief clerk. 
 
 It was amusing to witness the eagerness of these men in 
 their task of setting the island right. To me it was so 
 simple that I expected to hear every morning that the whole 
 thing had been tried before and failed. I naturally thought 
 that at least a few wealthy Toddlers would be wise enough
 
 404 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 to loan the funds necessary to enable people to earn their 
 living and enrich the nation ; but, apparently, the islanders 
 had wasted so much energy in checkmating each other's 
 religion, and spent so much capital in decorating Christ, lest 
 He should be taken for a working man, that they had neither 
 energy nor capital to spend on a common- sense plan of 
 national regeneration. 
 
 Though they had thousands of acres uncultivated, and 
 thousands of able-bodied men sinking into pauperism and 
 vice in the large towns, yet the Sacred Ass brayed its eternal 
 hunger, and the Unoiled Machine creaked its own rusty 
 doom, without any organized effort on their part to restore 
 man his natural right the soil. 
 
 I began to regard Dick as something more than a prophet, 
 or a martyr, or a saint. He evidently had a genius for the 
 salvation of his fellow-men. 
 
 I was almost growing interested, and I can't say to what 
 depths I might have fallen, had not a letter from my 
 steward announced that Bottsford Hall had been burnt to 
 ashes. 
 
 The fools had let the fire destroy everything. Not an 
 ancestor of the Bottsfords was left. They had become 
 smoke which did not even cast a shadow on the infinite 
 dial. 
 
 I gave orders to pack. 
 
 I said farewell to the little set to whom fate had bound 
 me awhile. 
 
 I sailed out of Fogham Harbour on a drizzling September 
 morning, too hopeless to be miserable. 
 
 Dick saw me off, promising to report all about his plans, 
 and he was hopeful ; but I had seen crowds of starving, 
 ruined men and women as we journeyed to the docks ; and 
 what use was one man or one God to cope with the eternal 
 curse of hunger which glittered in their glassy eyes T
 
 TODDLE ISLAND 405 
 
 I missed Dick dreadfully on the voyage, and I do not 
 know what I should have done, had it not been for the task 
 of writing out my diary with some connection. 
 
 I reached England, [and proceeded to see the ashes 
 of Bottsford Hall. It was a ruin. For a moment I was 
 almost weak enough to feel a little sentiment at the loss ; 
 but it was heavily insured, and as a railway company 
 wished to make a new line through my favourite park, I 
 sold. 
 
 But I was a long time completing the negotiations, for 
 each of us had a very skilled lawyer, who exhausted all his 
 ingenuity in preventing the other man from finishing the 
 business. 
 
 Whilst I waited I received some cheering letters from 
 Dick, of which the following was the last : 
 
 ' We have now six laundries in Fogham, all on the same 
 principle of co-operation. Those women, who were hope- 
 less or slaves two years ago, are now taking an intelligent 
 interest in business and in the welfare of women. We have 
 six shelters for destitute boys, from which we draft them to 
 learn farming or market gardening in the country. 
 
 ' We are sadly hampered by many of the laws and 
 customs of the old system of greed and slavery, but I am 
 assured that some politicians are turning their serious atten- 
 tion to these matters, and that we may hope to see the time 
 when railways and trams, gas and water companies, will all 
 be worked by the People for the good of the nation. We 
 want a free or nominal tariff, so that fruit and vegetables 
 shall not rot in one district whilst people are starving in 
 another part of the island. Some simple system of electric 
 tramways might be worked from many centres, and bring 
 the rural population within reach of the advantages of town 
 life without compelling people to live in stifling crowds.
 
 406 TODDLE ISLAND 
 
 ' Our watch-cry is, the Divine Right of the Workers to 
 share in all natural privileges and in the wealth which their 
 own toil has created. 
 
 ' Amongst the many marvels of this strange life, I have 
 found nothing so remarkable as the readiness of men and 
 women to toil and be thrifty, if capitalists and Governments 
 would only stand put of the way ; but it seems scarcely 
 possible to permanently benefit a nation in which men are 
 allowed to hoard money and amass fortunes. 
 
 ' George House is doing first - rate, and he is such a 
 different man you would hardly know him. Mr. Stone and 
 Mr. Carr help me much, and several others have rallied 
 round me. 
 
 ' I am feeling strong, and I rejoice daily, for I yet believe 
 that Toddle Island may become the home of plenty, instead 
 of a charnel-house attached to the Stock Exchange.' 
 
 I hope Dick is not being mocked. 
 
 I wonder whether this can be the voice of Hope speak- 
 ing to the future,- or is it one more knell to tell the 
 mourners that the last corpse is being borne to the Morgue 
 of Time ? Perhaps not. 
 
 There is some foundation for this hope, because the 
 greatest Discoverer, of humanity in man adopted this 
 method. Instead of creating priests or toadying to kings, 
 He fed the hungry, and gave help to the weary and heavy- 
 laden. 
 
 I sent Dick ^100,000 more for his scheme, and 1 took 
 the first ship to America, hoping to be let alone in the quiet 
 shade of a shadow. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUII.DFORD. 
 
 ., C. <& CO.
 

 
 
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