The road after Moutier was not a thing for lyrics; it stirred me in no way. It was bare in the sunlight, had fields on either side; and in the fields stood houses. In the houses were articulately-speaking mortal men. There is a school of Poets (I cannot read them myself) who treat of common things, and their admirers tell us that these men raise the things of everyday life to the plane of the supernatural. Note that phrase, for it is a shaft of light through a cloud revealing their disgusting minds. Everyday life! As _La Croix_ said in a famous leading article: _'La Presse?'_ POOH!' I know that everyday life. It goes with sandals and pictures of lean ugly people all just like one another in browny photographs on the wall, and these pictures are called, one 'The House of Life', or another, 'The Place Beautiful', or yet again a third, 'The Lamp of the Valley', and when you complain and shift about uneasily before these pictures, the scrub-minded and dusty-souled owners of them tell you that of course in photographs you lose the marvellous colour of the original. This everyday life has mantelpieces made of the same stuff as cafe-tables, so that by instinct I try to make rings on them with my wine-glass, and the people who suffer this life get up every morning at eight, and the poor sad men of the house slave at wretched articles and come home to hear more literature and more appreciations, and the unholy women do nothing and attend to local government, that is, the oppression of the poor; and altogether this accursed everyday life of theirs is instinct with the four sins crying to heaven for vengeance, and there is no humanity in it, and no simplicity, and no recollection. I know whole quarters of the towns of that life where they have never heard of Virtus or Verecundia or Pietas. LECTOR. Then-- AUCTOR. Alas! alas! Dear Lector, in these houses there is no honest dust. Not a bottle of good wine or bad; no prints inherited from one's uncle, and no children's books by Mrs Barbauld or Miss Edgeworth; no human disorder, nothing of that organic comfort which makes a man's house like a bear's fur for him. They have no debts, they do not read in bed, and they will have difficulty in saving their souls. LECTOR. Then tell me, how would you treat of common things? AUCTOR. Why, I would leave them alone; but if I had to treat of them I will show you how I would do it. Let us have a dialogue about this road from Moutier. LECTOR. By all means. AUCTOR. What a terrible thing it is to miss one's sleep. I can hardly bear the heat of the road, and my mind is empty! LECTOR. Why, you have just slept in a wood! AUCTOR. Yes, but that is not enough. One must sleep at night. LECTOR. My brother often complains of insomnia. He is a policeman. AUCTOR. Indeed? It is a sad affliction. LECTOR. Yes, indeed. AUCTOR. Indeed, yes. LECTOR. I cannot go on like this.