Every day one may have experience of people living in the midst of such distorted perspective--fancying that the commonplace insects that move before them are creatures of enormous proportions and importance, and quite as frequently assuming that because an object appears small to them, being far away from them, it is quite insignificant. If one cannot find humour in observing the attitude of people who ignore the conditions of perspective in this way, one must be stolid indeed. A typical inhabitant complained to me very bitterly some time ago of having just discharged a very thankless duty in respect of a stranger who, at the instigation of his brother--a London barrister of some repute--had called upon him in motoring through the county. He admitted that the stranger was a nice enough sort of man, but wholly devoid of appreciation of the relative importance of the persons whose houses were pointed out to him from the summit of the old castle which the stranger had been anxious to visit. “I showed him Lord Riverland's place--as much of it as we could see through the trees--but all he said was, 'Who is Lord Riverland?'” continued the man, pouring his complaint into my ear. “And then I told him that just beyond Eglam Church was the Shillingdales' place. 'Funny name, Shillingdale!' was all that he remarked; but when we were leaving the castle he saw the gable of Maxfield's house sticking out, and he took a fancy to that tumbledown place and asked who lived there. I told him. 'Maxfield,' he said. 'Not Laurence Maxfield, I suppose?' I said that I believed his name was Laurence. 'What! Laurence Max-field, the painter?' Yes, I said, I heard he was something in that line. Well, you should have seen his face at that. 'How can I ever thank you sufficiently for pointing out that house to me?' he cried. And when we got down to the road he kept hovering about that place, and once he said, 'What kind fate led me here to-day? And yet I might have gone away without so much as glancing at the house of Laurence Max-field!' Now, is it any wonder that I almost lost my temper? I had pointed out to the fellow Riverland Park and Shillingdale Hall, and yet I don't believe he ever heard of Lord Riverland, or knew that Captain Shillingdale had been made a D.L. for the county! But he almost became maudlin over the two old cottages that Maxfield knocked into one! A painter! The idea of making a fuss over a painter!” “You forget that the man was a total stranger to our neighbourhood,” said I. “You must make allowances: he knew no better.” He said he supposed the fellow really did know no better; and I am convinced that in his own way he abused his visitor to his wife for the man's deplorable lack of all sense of proportion, to ignore the privilege of having a distant view of the mansion of a deputy-lieutenant of an English county and feasting his eyes on the cottage of a painter! II.--THE INSECT AND THE MAMMOTH