But refreshing though it was thus to throw off the signs and symbols of Respectability, it is not so easy to drop “the gentleman” as one could wish, for the tattoo-marks of gentility are almost as ineffaceable as those of the barbarous ritual in which the islanders of the Pacific delight. Once a gentleman, always a gentleman: the imputation, like that of criminality, is hard to live down. I once met the author of _Towards Democracy_ walking and talking with a very ragged tramp whom he had overtaken on the high road. The tramp accosted me, as if wishing to explain matters: “This gentleman----” he began, indicating Mr. Carpenter. “I’m _not_ a gentleman,” sharply interjected the philosopher; whereupon the tatterdemalion, with a puzzled look, and a shake of the head that showed entire bewilderment, forsook us and went shambling on his way. As an organized movement, Simplification has not been so successful as the importance of the subject might have warranted. The Fellowship of the New Life, a society established in 1883, had the services of many thoughtful men, among them Mr. Maurice Adams, Mr. W. J. Jupp, Mr. Herbert Rix, Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald, and Mr. Percival Chubb; but though its protagonist, Mr. Adams, brought to the cause an exceptional knowledge and ability, the Fellowship, after lasting a good many years, gradually flagged and expired. This was the more to be regretted, because simplification of life is peculiarly liable to misunderstanding and cheap ridicule, and therefore needed to be set permanently before the public in a rational form; whereas now it is largely associated in people’s minds with Pastor Wagner’s book, _The Simple Life_, and similar banalities. For it is stupid, nothing less, to represent Simplification as merely a personal matter, and as amounting to little more than moderation and sincerity in the various departments of life: there is a _social_ aspect of the question which cannot thus be ignored. As Thoreau says: “If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders.” Simplicity is not only “a state of mind”: it implies action as well as taste.