“Well,” he said slowly, “I admit that neither on horse nor on man would long tails go at all well with that bowler hat of yours. Odd how all of a piece taste is! From a man’s hat, or a horse’s tail, we can reconstruct the age we live in, like that scientist, you remember, who reconstructed a mastodon from its funny-bone.” The thought went sharply through my head: Is his next tirade to be on mastodons? Till I remembered with relief that the animal was extinct, at all events in England. § 4. With but little further talk we had nearly reached my rooms, when he said abruptly: “A lark! Can’t you hear it? Over there, in that wretched little gold-fish shop again.” But I could only hear the sounds of traffic. “It’s your imagination,” I said. “It really is too lively on the subject of birds and beasts.” “I tell you,” he persisted, “there’s a caged lark there. Very likely, half-a-dozen.” “My dear fellow,” I said, “suppose there are! We could go and buy them and set them free, but it would only encourage the demand. Or we could assault the shopmen. Do you recommend that?” “I don’t joke on this subject,” he answered shortly. “But surely,” I said, “if we can’t do anything to help the poor things we had better keep our ears from hearing.” “And our eyes shut? Suppose we all did that, what sort of world should we be living in?” “Very much the same as now, I expect.” “Blasphemy! Rank, hopeless blasphemy!” “Please don’t exaggerate!” “I am not. There is only one possible defence of that attitude, and it’s this: The world is—and was deliberately meant to be—divided into two halves: the half that suffers and the half that benefits by that suffering.” “Well?” “Is it so?” “Perhaps.” “You acquiesce in that definition of the world’s nature? Very well, if you belong to the first half you are a poor-spirited creature, consciously acquiescing in your own misery. If to the second, you are a brute, consciously acquiescing in your own happiness, at the expense of others. Well, which are you?” “I have not said that I belong to either.” “There are only two halves to a whole. No, my friend, disabuse yourself once for all of that cheap and comfortable philosophy of shutting your eyes to what you think you can’t remedy, unless you are willing to be labelled ‘brute.’ ‘He who is not with me is against me,’ you know.” “Well,” I said, “after that, perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me what I can do by making myself miserable over things I can’t help?”