_Drummer._ Ah, there, philosopher! You wouldn't let us in, and I guess you know your business. We've had a good time in life, anyhow. If the religious folk are right, we shall be in it up to our necks. If they're wrong, they've been wasting a lot of valuable time. _Howard Vincent._ We've ridden straight, at all events. (Vincent is an authority on sporting matters.) We haven't pretended to be something we were not. We've never cheated anybody, and we've never lied to anybody, and each, according to his light (this last qualification was for Tom's benefit), has been a gentleman. We've been men of the world, and we have found the world a reasonably satisfactory place. We're in no haste to leave it. _The Philosopher._ And may I add, gentlemen, that each of you has a kind and generous heart? Did you observe how pleased they looked when I said that? It was a little weak of me to say it, but I could not help it. Somehow, it is very difficult to be sufficiently severe to such easy-going, pleasant-natured fellows, who are content to take the world as they find it, laugh and grow fat. Moreover, Tom Johnson has for twenty years supported his old mother and invalid sister, and remained single as a consequence; and Howard Vincent has a habit of giving away delightful sums on Christmas Day without advertising the fact. How often, on the occasion of death, do we hear the aphorism that everything counts for nothing save the kindly deeds of the deceased, until one is tempted to believe that a genial commercial traveller, like our friend, with a benignant soul is more admirable and inspiring than a highly sensitive gentleman and scholar. Indisputably this is so if the gentleman and scholar lacks the humanity for which the other is conspicuous; but, nevertheless, it behooves the soul in search of the ideal to beware of the slough of mere warm-heartedness. It is an attribute which, if relied on too exclusively as a leavening force, is readily made to subserve very ordinary purposes. The two Falstaffian men in the second-class car belong there, even though you might find their kindly ways and their stories attractive up to a certain point. They are of the class of men who, more signally perhaps than any other, bar the path of the world's progress toward the stars by means of the argument that what has been must be, and that what is is good enough. They are of the men who shrug their shoulders when the hope is expressed that the abuse of liquor may be lessened and finally controlled; who sneer at the efforts of the police authorities to shut up all the houses of ill-repute, on the ground that prostitution has always existed and must always exist. (That it will never become "unpopular," as the drummer would tell you in his breezy way.) Assuredly, you need to be on your guard against infatuation with those big, genial and (usually) pot-bellied personages whose large hearts and abundant charity and splendid appetites allow them to discard as