I prefer the café of the people, and never visit any that has an exclusive atmosphere unless I am obliged. I do not care to see many rich people at one time. It was ordained that the percentage of rich should always be small, therefore a crowd of them in one spot is bad form, often bad colour, and mostly confusion. A group of artisans never gives me any unpleasant thoughts: it is the natural order of things; the poor were regarded by Our Lord as the multitude. 17. The Middle-class That I belong to the middle-class is my chief misfortune; it is better to be born an aristocrat, but better still an artisan. To the middle-class belong all the money makers: builders of monopolies, political wire-pullers, and all that spells greed. These people buy everything and sell everybody. With them lying is an art, whereas for the poor it is only a pastime. The aristocrat--the product of luxury and idleness--is as much above any mean action as he is at loss in managing his own affairs. He must employ agents: _enter the middle-class_! To them he entrusts all his worldly belongings, with an intuitive knowledge that he is robbed always and will be as long as he lives. He knows they pursue his money with all the zest that he pursues sport. But he always carries the same bright face, the same kind heart; and he would pay to the last penny. O but how strange, his agents save him from ruin! and the people on the land contribute more to the miserable business than is known to my lord, more than they themselves ever realise: and so the middle-class remains the back-bone of the Empire. But what does this mean? The truth is that God made the lord and the labourer: the rest is mainly the work of the devil! 18. The Masterpiece I once told a young artist to attempt no masterpiece. The thing cannot be done. The moment you think of doing a masterpiece you are befooled. Providence does not allow you to arrange anything of that kind. All you must do is paint with a generous heart--paint _colour_--and leave to the next generation the selection of your masterpiece. The painter, above all men, must be himself, without any regard for the world’s judgment. Do not be deceived: Time will decide the masterpiece--_Time will destroy it!_ From out the ageless oceans in the west, Where lazily the gods of new worlds rise And stretch their mighty limbs across the skies-- Insatiate giants roused from out long rest-- Uprose a Titan whose dark arms and breast Blackened the sea and drew the gull’s shrill cries; In his dark head he rolled his gloating eyes And kept his cruel lips together pressed. The sea that bore him was the eternal pit; Into its depths he threw the dreams of men-- Threw with one stroke ten thousand tomes of rhyme, As many works of art, each once deemed fit To live. One was a masterpiece! Ah, then These words came forth: _I am the Tomb of Time!_ 19. Mission