Then I was introduced to another young man who said he belonged to a movement called Toynbee Hall, where, I gathered, young gentlemen took an indecent interest in the affairs of another caste, whom, with rare tact, they called "the poor," and told them generally how to order their lives. Such was the manner and general aggressiveness of this third young gentleman, that if he had told me that coats were generally worn and good for the protection of the body, I should have paraded Bond Street in my shirt. What the poor thought of him I could not tell, but there is no room for it in this letter. He said that there was going to be an upheaval of the classes--the English are very funny about their castes. They don't know how to handle them one little bit, and never allow them to draw water or build huts in peace--and the entire social fabric was about to be remodelled on his recommendations, and the world would be generally altered past recognition. No, he had never seen anything of the world, but close acquaintance with authorities had enabled him to form dispassionate judgments on the subjects, and had I, by any chance, read the novels of Guy de Maupassant, Pierre Loti and Paul Bourget? It was a mean thing to do, but I couldn't help it. I had read 'em. I put him on, so to speak, far back in Paul Bourget, who is a genial sort of writer. I pinned him to one book. He could not escape from Paul Bourget. He was fed with it till he confessed--and he had been quite ready to point out its beauties--that we could not take much interest in the theories put forward in that particular book. Then I said: "Get a dictionary and read him," which severed our budding friendship. Thereafter I sought our Mutual Friend and walked up and down his room sobbing, or words to that effect. "Good gracious!" said my friend. "Is that what's troubling you? Now, I hold the ravaging rights over half a dozen fields and a bit of a wood. You can pot rabbits there in the evenings sometimes, and anyway you get exercise. Come along." So I went. I have not yet killed anything, but it seems wasteful to drive good powder and shot after poor little bunnies when there are so many other things in the world that would be better for an ounce and a half of number five at sixty yards--not enough to disable, but just sufficient to sting, and be pricked out with a penknife. I should like to wield that penknife. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 26: "Turnovers," No. IX.] MY GREAT AND ONLY[27]