It is all there. That dream of the good Joseph was the strange nutshell in which lay the germ of all the multitudinous Churches, Popes, Cardinals, Archbishops, bishops, confessors, priests, parsons, and last (not least), curates. One wonders (when one is a doomed and damned "masquer" like myself) what would have happened if Joseph had dreamed a different dream? or, as might have chanced, if he had slept so profoundly as not to have dreamed at all? We should have perhaps been under the sway of Mahomet (another dream), or Buddha (another dream); for certain it is we cannot do without dreams at any period of our lives, from the celebrated "deep sleep" of Adam, when he dreamt he lost a rib to gain a wife, down to the "hypnotic-trance" schools of to-day, where we are gravely informed we can be taught how to murder each other "by suggestion." The most abandoned of us has an Idea--or an Ideal--of something better (or worse) than ourselves, according to whether our daily potations be crushed out of burgundy grape, or made of mere vulgar gin-and-water. Even Hodge, growing stertorous and sleepy over his poisoned beer and _Daily Telegraph_ at his favourite "public," takes his turn at castle-building, and drowsily muses on a coming time of Universal Uproar, which _till_ it comes is proudly called Socialism, when the "sanguinary" aristocrat will be laid low in the levelling mire, and he, plain Hodge, will be proved a more valuable human unit than any educated ruler of any realm. Alas for thee, good Hodge, that thou should'st boozily indulge in such romantic flights of fancy! Thou, who in uninstructed thirsty haste dost rush to vote for him who most generously plies thee with beer, what would'st thou do without the aristocrat or rich man thou would'st fain trample upon? Who would employ thee, simple Hodge? Another Hodge like thyself? Grant this, and lo! Hodge Number Two, by possessing the means, the will and the power to make thee work for him, tacitly becomes thy master and superior. Wherefore the Equality thou clamourest after, is wholly at an end if thou, Hodge Number One, dost hire thyself out as labourer or servant to Hodge Number Two! This is a plain statement, made plainly, without Gladstonian periods of eloquence; think it over, friend Hodge, when thou art alone, _sans_ beer and cheap news-sheet to obfuscate thy simple intelligence.