"I don't mind confessing that all this day I have been unable to banish from my recollection a certain strange adventure which I met with several years ago; and perhaps when the voices within one are loud, the lips are not very apt to open for speech. But I have been attending to all that has been said, and can give a proper account of it all. In the first place, Theodore was quite right in saying that we had been childish in fancying that we could begin again just where we left off twelve years ago, and were sulking with each other because this was not, and could not be, the case. I maintain that nothing could have so established us as Philistines incarnate as to have gone ambling along in our old track. And this reminds me of two savants--but I must tell this story at full length. Imagine two men--whom I shall call Sebastian and Ptolemy--imagine to yourselves these two studying Kant's philosophy as hard as they could at College at K----, and daily carrying on long discussions as to various points of it. Just at the moment when Sebastian was going to deliver his most clenching blow, and Ptolemy pulling himself together to answer it, they were interrupted; and Fate so arranged matters that they never met again in K----, one going off in one direction, the other, in another. Nearly twenty years afterwards Ptolemy saw in the streets of B----, a figure walking, whom he at once recognised as his friend Sebastian. He rushed after him, slapped him on the shoulder, and when he looked round, Ptolemy said: 'Then you maintain that----' "In short, struck the (argumentative) blow which he had lifted his arm to deliver twenty years before! Sebastian sprung the mines which he had laid in K----. They argued for two hours, three hours, walking up and down the streets, and in the heat of their discussion, agreed to submit the question to the Professor for his decision, never recollecting that poor old Emanuel had been many a year in his grave. They parted, and never met again. Now to _me_ there is something almost terrific about this story (which has this peculiarity, that it is strictly true). My imagination _boggles_ at a Philistinism of a depth so ghastly! So we are not going to be Philistines. We are not going to insist on spinning on at the thread which we were spinning twelve years ago, nor be annoyed with each other for having on different hats and coats. We will be different to what we were then, and yet the same; so that is settled. What Lothair, without much relevancy, said of clubs is, I dare say true enough, and proves how prone poor Humanity is to dam up the minutest remnants of its freedom, and build an artificial roof to prevent it looking up to the clear blue sky. But what have we to do with this? For my part, I adhere to Ottmar's proposal, that we meet every week on a certain day."