"Judith told me that they had been overworking you, my boy. Judith, as usual, was right," he remarked. "You appear to me to be in grave danger of becoming most satisfactorily morbid. Liver! Almost certainly liver! But about this procession of yours. 'Pon my soul, the figure, the fancy, is not unworthy of 'Cynthia' herself. It would make a useful purple passage. Not for serial publication, of course. We cut them out there. But we put them in again, when the time comes for the stuff to go into book form. The procession of life! Yes. The idea is quite sufficiently threadbare. The one essential, for the successful production of money-making fiction is, of course, to be threadbare. Give the public what they have had before! But you are interested in the procession, not in the literary market. Can a man, or a woman, choose their place in the files? I say 'yes!' "Once or twice, in the life of every man and woman, I believe, come moments, when they must choose their place in the files, moments when they have to decide whether they will stay where they are, whether they will fight to hold the place they have, whether they will shoulder their way forward, or whether they will fall out, to one side, or to the rear. All my life, I have been watching the procession, my boy. That is why I have grown so fat! It is many years, now, since I decided to step out of the procession, to one side, and I have been watching it sweep past, ever since. A brave show! But we have been talking glibly of the head and the tail of the procession. Where are they? I have never found them. I have never seen them. All I have ever seen is that the procession is there, and that it moves. But, no doubt, the band is playing--somewhere-- "But you are young, and they have just given you--promotion! You are in the procession, sweeping through the market-place, with all the flags flying, and the band, as I say, playing--somewhere. But I, and Judith, we are a little to one side, in the background, watching you, in the procession, from one of the windows of the quiet, old-fashioned inn, at the corner of the market-place, the quiet, old-fashioned inn on the signboard of which is written, in letters of gold, 'Content.' Your instinct will probably, and very properly, prompt you to fight for your place in the files, when the other fellows tread too hard on your heels. But, whether you fight for your place or not, whether you come out at the head or the tail of the procession, wherever the head and tail may be, whether you step to one side, or fall out altogether, whatever happens to you, my boy, Judith and I will always be glad to welcome you to the inn at the corner, and give you a seat at our window. You will remember that?