Is it not strange, though, how customs vary? In the Middle Ages one went to church to see the mystery play; now one goes to the music-hall to hear a sermon. "Pronounced by clergymen and others to be the most powerful sermon ever preached from the stage," etc. I wonder, as I scan my programme, whether the monastic playwrights of old ever published encomiums on their weird productions by prominent highwaymen. I say highwaymen because I can think of none who had a better right to criticise dramatic performances from the practical and moral standpoints. But the noise of the undergraduate as he goes crashing through his ruinous nightmare recalls me. I proceed to examine my companions in distress. All are engaged in the Road to Ruin. I think they like stage ruin--it is so thrilling. Moreover, it leaves out all that is at all middle class. Even our wicked undergraduate never falls as low as the middle class. He starts as a university man, and ends in a slum, but he is saved from the second-class season ticket. I am still puzzling with this question of the middle class as I quit the theatre and make my way down to the docks. There is a mild, misty rain falling, and I turn into my favourite tavern in Wind Street for a glass of ale. The Middle Class! Why, I ask myself, are they so strange in their intellectual tastes? The wealthy I understand; the workmen I understand; but O this terrible Middle Class! I sit musing, and four men come in upon my solitude. Obviously they are actors, rushing in for a "smile" between the acts. Obviously, I say, for their easy manners, _savoir faire_, and good breeding stamp them men of the world, and their evening dress does the rest. "Ah, you read the _Clarion_?" observes one. I start guiltily. Yes, I had bought a copy, and I have unconsciously spread it on the table by my side. "Will you drink with us, sir?" adds another. He is not of the Middle Class. "Thank you, I will," I answer, and my first interlocutor glances over the paper. "Are you a Socialist?" he inquires. "Yes," I reply. "So am I." I rise, and we shake hands. This, my friend, was beyond all my imagining. It is, moreover, _not_ middle class. I have ridden in a suburban train day after day for years, with people who lived in the same street, without exchanging a word. Here, in this tavern, convention dares not to show her head. And I am warmed as with the cheerful sun. "Have you been in?" asks the man who hands me my beer, and he flings his head back to indicate the theatre. "Not yet," I answer. "What have you on this week?" "_A Sister's Sin_. You should see it. Come to-morrow." * * * * * "_A Sister's Sin_!" I shall not go to see it. I dare not. I had intended to ask my Socialist whether he could solve the problem of the Middle Class for me, but he has done it. "_Au théâtre on exagère toujours._" I hardly know which are the more baffling--the Middle Ages or the Middle Classes. XV