Much of the diversity and nearly all the bitterness of our lives are due to the fact that only rarely do we encounter our exact contemporaries. In any sphere where all start at a prescribed age, as in great universities and public services, there is a tendency to become standardized, to be only one example of a prevalent type. Ambition is coördinated, jealousy is neutralized; and the hot lava-flow of individualist passion cools and hardens to an admirable solidity and composure. One's exact contemporaries are around in throngs. One has no misgivings, no heartburn, no exasperation with fate. The fortunate being whose destiny lies this way takes on the gravity, the immobility, and the polish of an antique statue. The common people pass him as they pass the Elgin marbles--without emotion; but they are aware subconsciously of the cold pure beauty of outline, the absolute fidelity to type, which is the melancholy justification of his existence. But the common people themselves are not like that. They quit their exact contemporaries at school and thence-forth are out upon the sea of life with men of all ages and breedings and nationalities around them and pressing them hard. They act and are reacted upon. Most of them nurse a secret grievance. Very few of them have any code of honour beyond law and decency. They are very largely needy adventurers, living by their wits, and are ready to pay money to those who profess to show them how they can increase their incomes, or obtain a pension, or "better their positions," or cure themselves of the innumerable physical disabilities which their fatuous ignorance and indolence have brought upon them. They love to decipher word competitions, football competitions, racing competitions. They have the high-binder's passion for getting something for nothing, his dislike to real work. And this lack of contemporary associates, this rough-and-tumble aspect of the world, induces them to regard their vices as virtues and themselves as oppressed helots struggling under the iron heels of those whom mere luck and cunning have placed in authority over them. The London School of Mnemonics was making a hundred thousand pounds a year net profit out of these people in England alone. Even the grim witticism of the company promoter, that there is "a sucker born every minute," seems inadequate to account for so monstrous a simplicity of soul. The fact is, the very boldness of the trick rendered it easy. You paid your guinea, and in due course, in due secrecy, and under duly sworn promises to divulge no hint of their contents to a living soul, you received a number of refined-looking pamphlets containing a couple of thousand words each. You thrilled as you joined in the game. Even Captain Meredith, sitting in his chart room and looking through Number Four, which Mr. Spokesly had inadvertently left on the table, was tickled by the subtle atmosphere of the style. This, he divined, was the newly discovered