The _Daily Telephone_, in desperation, started a correspondence under the title: ARE WE AFRAID? Letters from all sorts and conditions of people descended like a postal avalanche upon the editorial offices; and while the selected correspondence was published from day to day, a series of special articles dealt with Crazes of the Past--Law and his Mississippi Scheme; Blunt and the South Sea Bubble; the Jabez Balfour fiasco; the Whitaker Wright boom, with many other examples of chicanery, folly, and consequent disaster, receiving elaborate notice. The moral was illustrated, the application was solemnly rubbed in; but all to little purpose. The sale of the metal disc still increased by leaps and bounds. Inborn inclination to abbreviate asserted itself, in accordance with abundant precedent, and one person would ask another: “Are you a Spider?” and the answer would be, “Yes,” “No,” or “I mean to be.” Thus the League, though having, it was believed, many inner circles or subdivisions, became sectionised into two great classes--the Leaguers proper (or improper) unemployed, unemployable, and hosts of discharged prisoners; and those others--the respectable “spiders,” holders of the metal disc as a species of insurance against the terrorism and depredation which were expected from the original Leaguers. What, precisely, the “Spider” meant was the subject of much controversy. But what purported to be an explanation was given in one of the leading articles in the _Standard_; a totally different theory being put forward with equal prominence in the _Daily Chronicle_, in an article headed, “The Mystery of the Metal Disc.” At about the same time, in the _Morning Post_, the pen of a well-known author and journalist, whose versatile talents were constantly employed in surveying the world from St Andrews to the Antipodes, airily instructed the public concerning the Real Significance of the “Spider.” The writer, being of that nation which an English writer has declared “unspeakable,” naturally enough commenced with an allusion to the famous spider of a famous king of Scotland. He pointed out, however, that that particular spider was not of Scottish origin, because the insect really appeared to Robert Bruce in the little island of Rathlin, which is off the coast of Ireland. The writer then went on to treat of the spider at Sans Souci, which fell into the cup of chocolate prepared for Frederick the Great, whose life it was instrumental in saving. From Sans Souci he passed lightly to Mecca, and told of the spider that spun the web that hid Mahomet from his enemies. From that to the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury was only a step, and the theory of poison made from spiders’ bodies was aptly illustrated by a quotation from the _Winter’s Tale_. More pertinent, perhaps, was the reference to the old wives’ fable, which held that certain physical ills might be averted by wearing a spider in a nutshell round the neck. Finally, the versatile