"My dear," I explained, "that _is_ the point. Once get your name in the papers at the end of a two-column letter and you are the friend of all the world--it gives one an _entree_ to the castle of the Duke and the cottage of the crofter." "Even before you've written it?" "I have written it!" "Oh, how splendid! Where?" "In here," I said, tapping the best bit of my head. "Oh, _that_!" And then, pensively: "Next time Mary Jane has a brainstorm, I'll tell her to call you 'Charley.' Poor girl!" "I don't think you quite appreciate," I remarked. "I don't. What exactly do we stand to gain?" "There's the rub. Not lucre. Perish the thought! But one begins to be a power, an influence. People whisper in the Tube, 'Who's that?' '_That!_ Don't you know? Why Him--He! The man who is making the Government a laughing-stock. The man who holds the Empire in the palm of his hand. The man who----'" "Thanks," said Enid. "We had better buy a gramophone. I thought you were getting fidgety at home." "Dearest," I explained, "it is not that. It is because I feel in me a spirit that will not be denied. Give me the opportunity and I will make this land, this England----" "Hush, Squawks. Was'ms frightened then, poor darling!" "That dog----" "Hush!" said Enid to me. "How are you going to begin?" "It is quite simple. Somebody writes something to the papers." "Yes; so far it sounds easy." "Now that something is hideously disparaging to my class and calling. I promptly answer him." "That is, if you can be funnier at his expense than he at yours." "I shan't be funny at all." "No?" said Enid thoughtfully. "Mine will be a scathing indictment, and of course I shall bring in the political situation. He writes back, evading the point at issue. I crush him with figures and statistics, and make him a practical offer--a few deer-forests, a paltry township, or my unearned increment, as the case may be." "The mowing-machine is out of order," Enid remarked. "I quote passages in his letter as the basis of negotiation. He pretends to accept. I point out how, when and why he has been guilty of paltry quibbling, and show that the Party he supports fosters such methods and manners." "Is that all?" "No. And that is just where I shall differ from everybody else. I shall go on where they have stopped. Having made one individual ridiculous, I shall broaden the basis of operation. With consummate skill I shall gradually draw the public officials down into the arena." "Don't forget the gas-man; he was very rude last month." "Not that kind," I explained. "Cabinet Ministers, Secretaries of State, the whole machinery of government shall writhe under the barbed shafts of my mockery. Ridicule is the power of the age. Ridicule in my hands shall be as bayonets to NAPOLEON, as poison to a BORGIA." I gasped. "Help!" said Enid, taking up _The Daily Most_. "Here's the very thing," she went on. "Somebody called 'A. Lethos'----" "Pah! A pseudonym."