Know, Nature’s children all divide her care; The fur that warms a monarch warmed a bear. One would have thought that the bear who grew the skin had somewhat more right to it than the monarch! Politicians may talk of “one man, one vote”; but really, if there is ever to be a civilized state, a programme of “one man, one skin” seems fairer and more democratic. XII A FADDIST’S DIVERSIONS No greyhound loves to cote a hare, as I to turn and course a fool.--SCOTT’S _Kenilworth_. I wonder how many times, during the past thirty years, we humanitarians were told that we were “faddists,” or “cranks,” or “sentimentalists,” that our hearts were “better than our heads,” and that we were totally lacking in a sense of humour. I feel sure that if I had kept all the letters and press-cuttings in which we found ourselves thus described, they would amount not to hundreds but to thousands; for it seemed to be a common belief among the genial folk whose unpleasant practices were arraigned by us that the Committee of the Humanitarian League must be a set of sour Puritans, sitting in joyless conclave, and making solemn lamentation over the wickedness of the world. Our opponents little knew how much we were indebted to them for providing a light and comic side in a controversy which might otherwise have been just a trifle dull. It was said by Gibbon, that it was the privilege of the medieval church “to defend nonsense by cruelties.” Nowadays we see the patrons of sport, vivisection, butchery, and other time-honoured institutions, adopting the contrary process, and defending cruelties by nonsense. And by _what_ nonsense! I do not know where else one can find such grotesque absurdities, such utter topsy-turvydom of argument, as in the quibbling modern brutality which gives sophisticated reasons for perpetuating savage customs. Of some of the fallacies of the cannibalistic conscience I have already spoken: a volume could easily be filled with not less diverting utterances culled from kindred fields of thought. The apologists of the Royal Buckhounds, for instance, were comedians of the first rank, a troupe of entertainers who long ago anticipated “The Follies.” Did they not themselves assure us that, in hunting the carted stag, they “rode to save the deer for another day”? Such devotion needed another Lovelace: Did’st wonder, since my love was such, I hunted thee so sore? I could not love thee, Deer, so much, Loved I not Hunting more.