"Play cricket?" I asked him. "A bit," he confessed. "Ever stopped a rot?" "Sometimes," he replied warily. "How did you do it?" I inquired. He laughed again. "Now you're getting at me, aren't you?" he said. "Of course I am. Haven't you been trying to get at me?" "Do you think you're going to score?" he asked. "I shouldn't wonder," I told him; "because you didn't encourage those panicky fellow-batsmen of yours to talk about their nerves, did you? On the contrary, you swaggered a bit yourself, and told 'em that the bowling was poor stuff. You didn't even tell 'em to forget that growing excavation behind their belt-buckles. You were subtler. You took it for granted that they hadn't got one. You surrounded 'em with the proper atmosphere. You were more than half a nerve specialist already--the better half. You infected them with your own health. But what are you proposing to do now?" The journalist in him died hard. "Then you think there _is_ a rot?" he asked. "I didn't say so." He put his pipe in his pocket, and picked up his hat and gloves. "After all," he smiled, "you've only been preaching the old doctrine of responsibility, you know. And the modern journalist is a detached person." But I shook my head. I repeat that he was a nice boy, and had borne my little pi-jaw with admirable fortitude. "Only semi-detached," I ventured, "with a half-educated brother next door." I fancy that I can see you lying snugly aft upon the "Nautilus" at anchor--a bronzing cynic, smiling gently over this ingenuous little duel. And perhaps you have already made up your mind to transfer this incomplete disciple of yours to some other department, or even (according to a fundamental Franciscan tradition) to dispense with his services altogether. For if he cannot bring himself to demolish one prehistoric physician, what can he do? And I shall be sorry if he is put to any real inconvenience. But on the other hand I shall rejoice openly to see him save his soul alive. For though I didn't tell him so, and though I am convinced that at the core--the germ-plasm, if you like--the race is still happily sound enough, yet if there is a rot, a temporary epidemic of nervous instability, it is largely confined to those who draw their mental nourishment from Franciscan House, and whose twitterings you are now proposing to exploit. _Autres temps, autres moeurs_, for while there was a time when our more ignorant forefathers were wont to scoff (mistakenly, no doubt, but on balance with a tonic effect) at the possessors of "weak nerves," now that we have learned just enough to talk about them in bad Greek "neurasthenia" is an affection of which no man need be ashamed. "Poor chap," we say, and begin to wonder if we are not sufferers ourselves.