The sparrow-hawk fights the hen: he seeking food for his brood, she defending hers with her life. The spider sucks the fly to feed its myriad young; the cat tortures the mouse to give its still throbbing carcase to her kittens, and man wrongs man for children’s sake. Perhaps when the riot of the world reaches us whole, not broken, we shall learn it is a harmony, each jangling discord fallen into its place around the central theme, Motherhood. ON THE INADVISABILITY OF FOLLOWING ADVICE I WAS pacing the Euston platform late one winter’s night, waiting for the last train to Watford, when I noticed a man cursing an automatic machine. Twice he shook his fist at it. I expected every moment to see him strike it. Naturally curious, I drew near softly. I wanted to catch what he was saying. However, he heard my approaching footsteps, and turned on me. “Are you the man,” said he, “who was here just now?” “Just where?” I replied. I had been pacing up and down the platform for about five minutes. “Why here, where we are standing,” he snapped out. “Where do you think ‘here’ is—over there?” He seemed irritable. “I may have passed this spot in the course of my peregrinations, if that is what you mean,” I replied. I spoke with studied politeness; my idea was to rebuke his rudeness. “I mean,” he answered, “are you the man that spoke to me, just a minute ago?” “I am not that man,” I said; “good-night.” “Are you sure?” he persisted. “One is not likely to forget talking to you,” I retorted. His tone had been most offensive. “I beg your pardon,” he replied grudgingly. “I thought you looked like the man who spoke to me a minute or so ago.” I felt mollified; he was the only other man on the platform, and I had a quarter of an hour to wait. “No, it certainly wasn’t me,” I returned genially, but ungrammatically. “Why, did you want him?” “Yes, I did,” he answered. “I put a penny in the slot here,” he continued, feeling apparently the need of unburdening himself: “wanted a box of matches. I couldn’t get anything put, and I was shaking the machine, and swearing at it, as one does, when there came along a man, about your size, and—you’re _sure_ it wasn’t you?” “Positive,” I again ungrammatically replied; “I would tell you if it had been. What did he do?”