That story contains a fine moral. I don't exactly know what the moral is, but I hazard the opinion that the moral is this:--Never buy a hotel in order to get a plate of sausage and mashed. Millionaires might be defined as men who buy hotels in order to get sausage and mashed ... and they can't digest the sausage when they have got it. When a Carnegie builds a great organ in a great hall he is really buying the whole hotel. He is taking an unfair advantage of his fellow music-lovers. A plate of sausage and mashed would be of far greater moment to G. K. Chesterton than to the millionaire, but G. K. couldn't buy the whole hotel; he would merely swear volubly and tighten the belt of his waistcoat ... if that were possible. The millionaire should not have this advantage over Chesterton. So a millionaire should not have any advantage over a music-lover. Collinson, the Edinburgh University organist, has no doubt a greater appreciation of organ music than a Carnegie, but he has to go down to his church organ on a winter night if he wants to play a Bach fugue. Money is power, they say, but money is worse than power; it is tyranny. A successful pork-merchant whose one talent is his ability to tell at a glance how much pig it takes to fill a thousand tins of lamb cutlet, may buy up half the treasures of the world if he likes. Priceless pictures and violins lie in millionaires' halls, while students of genius study prints and practise on two guinea fiddles. At first sight this seems a problem that Horatio Bottomley would handle eagerly and popularly, but the problem is really a deep one. When humanity abolishes the power to amass millions who is to have the priceless treasures? In the case of art the community of course. (I see in to-day's paper that Rodin has bequeathed all his works to France.) But what of the Stradivarius violins? I would have them lent to the geniuses. Who is to decide who the geniuses are? That is a question of fundamentals, and if I had left the question to Mr. Bottomley I think he would have recommended his readers to "write to John Bull about it." I begin to feel that I am talking through my hat as the vulgar phrase has it. My baccy's finished, and I can't concentrate my attention on any subject. What I meant to do was to show that a millionaire is a man to be pitied. To buy a Titian painting when your tastes lie in the direction of Heath Robinson's _Frightful War Pictures_ is as pathetic a thing to do as to sit out a classical concert when your tastes lead you to a passionate love for ragtime. And buying a Titian is a simple case of buying the hotel in order to get the sausage and mashed that you can't eat. Millionaires ... no, it's no good; I'll have to fold up my typewriter till I get some more baccy. XV. Margaret was reading a few pages of my diary to-night. "Why," she said, "it's all about yourself!"