“You! and all those other people who believe in minding their own business.” “Really,” I said; “you must not attack people on that ground. We cannot all be busybodies!” “The saints forbid!” he answered. “But when a thing exists which you really abhor—as you do this—I do wish you would consider a little whether, in letting it strictly alone, you are minding your own business on principle, or because it is so jolly comfortable to do so.” “Speaking for myself——” “Yes,” he broke in; “quite! But let me ask you one thing: Have you, as a member of the human race, any feeling that you share in the advancement of its gentleness, of its sense of beauty and justice—that, in proportion as the human race becomes more lovable and lovely, you too become more lovable and lovely?” “Naturally.” “Then is it not your business to support all that you feel makes for that advancing perfection?” “I don’t say that it isn’t.” “In that case it is _not_ your business to stop your ears, and shut your eyes, and hold your tongue, when you come across wild song-birds caged.” But we had reached my rooms. “Before I go in,” I said, “there is just one little thing I’ve got to say to you: Don’t you think that, for a man with your ‘sense of proportion,’ you exaggerate the importance of beasts and their happiness?” He looked at me for a long time without speaking, and when he did speak it was in a queer, abstracted voice: “I have often thought over that,” he said, “and honestly I don’t believe I do. For I have observed that before men can be gentle and broad-minded with each other, they are always gentle and broad-minded about beasts. These dumb things, so beautiful—even the plain ones—in their different ways, and so touching in their dumbness, do draw us to magnanimity, and help the wings of our hearts to grow. No; I don’t think I exaggerate, my friend. Most surely I don’t want to; for there is no disservice one can do to all these helpless things so great as to ride past the hounds, to fly so far in front of public feeling as to cause nausea and reaction. But I feel that most of us, deep down, really love these furred and feathered creatures that cannot save themselves from us—that are like our own children, because they are helpless; that are in a way sacred, because in them we watch, and through them we understand, those greatest blessings of the earth—Beauty and Freedom. They give us so much, they ask nothing from us. What can we do in return but spare them all the suffering we can? No, my friend; I do not think—whether for their sakes or our own—that I exaggerate.” When he had said those words he turned away, and left me standing there. II REVERIE OF A SPORTSMAN (From the _Fortnightly Review_, 1915.)