them--the honest working poor if we can't--we hate them too, because they are content and happy. If we reach any of these, and can touch them, then we can draw their vital force out of them into ourselves, and recuperate at their expense. That was about what I was going to do with you. Getting on famous. Nearly solidified into a new man; and given another chance in life. But I've missed it this time. Just like my luck. Miss everything. Always have, except misery and disappointment. Get plenty of that." "What are you all?" asked Square. "Anarchists out of employ?" "Some of us go by that name, some by other designations, but we are all one, and own allegiance to but one monarch--Sovereign discontent. We are bred to have a distaste for manual work; and we grow up loafers, grumbling at everything and quarrelling with Society that is around us and the Providence that is above us." "And what do you call yourselves now?" "Call ourselves? Nothing; we are the same, in another condition, that is all. Folk called us once Anarchists, Nihilists, Socialists, Levellers, now they call us the Influenza. The learned talk of microbes, and bacilli, and bacteria. Microbes, bacilli, and bacteria be blowed! We are the Influenza; we the social failures, the generally discontented, coming up out of our cheap and nasty graves in the form of physical disease. We are the Influenza." "There you are, I guess!" exclaimed Square triumphantly. "Did I not say that all forces were correlated? If so, then all negations, deficiencies of force are one in their several manifestations. Talk of Divine discontent as a force impelling to progress! Rubbish, it is a paralysis of energy. It turns all it absorbs to acid, to envy, spite, gall. It inspires nothing, but rots the whole moral system. Here you have it--moral, social, political discontent in another form, nay aspect--that is all. What Anarchism is in the body Politic, that Influenza is in the body Physical. Do you see that?" "Ye-e-s-e-s," I believe I answered, and dropped away into the land of dreams. I recovered. What Square did with the Thing I know not, but believe that he reduced it again to its former negative and self-decomposing condition. BLACK RAM