For a full minute I could feel the currents of opinion swaying over me, at this infamous proposal; then the old black cock, the one whose tail is in my wife’s hat, said sharply: “Specimen! He’s not good enough!” And once more, for all my indignation at that gratuitous insult, I breathed freely. “Come!” said the lady bear quietly: “Let us dribble on him a little, and go. The ferocious brute is not worth more!” And, during what seemed to me an eternity, one by one they came up, deposited on me a little saliva, looking into my eyes the while with a sort of horror and contempt, then vanished on the moor. The last to come up was the little meerkat without its head. It stood there; it could neither look at me nor drop saliva, but somehow it contrived to say: “I forgive you, ferocious brute; but I was very happy!” Then it, too, withdrew. And from all around, out of invisible presences in the air and the heather, came once more the shivering whisper: “Look at him! The ferocious brute! Oh, look at him!” I sat up. There was a trilling sound in my ears. Above me in the blue a curlew was passing, uttering its cry. Ah! Thank Heaven!—I had been asleep! My day-dream had been caused by the potted grouse, and the pressure of the _Review_, which had lain, face downwards, on my chest, open at the page where I had been reading about the man-eating lions, and the death of those ferocious brutes. It shows what tricks of disproportion little things will play with the mind when it is not under reasonable control. And, to get the unwholesome taste of it all out of my mouth, I at once jumped up and started for home at a round pace. III THE SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS FOR FOOD (Papers in the _Daily Mail_, 1912.)[2] The thing is horrible, but it is necessary. Why then drag it out into the light? Why make our thoughts miserable with contemplation of horrors which must exist? If it were true that the present methods of slaughtering animals for food in this country were necessary, if all the suffering they involve was inevitable, I should be the first to say: “Let us shut our eyes!” For, needless suffering—even to ourselves—is stupid. It is just because this particular suffering is avoidable, and easily avoidable, that one feels we must face the matter if we want to call ourselves a decent people.