"It is the passing of an imbecile society," declaimed Westguard--"the dying sounds of its meaningless noise--the first omens of a silence which foretells annihilation. Out of chaos will gradually emerge the elements of a real society--the splendid social and intellectual brotherhood of the future----" "See my forthcoming novel," added Lacy, "$1.35 net, for sale at all booksellers or sent post-paid on receipt of----" "You little fashionable fop!" growled Westguard--"there's a winter coming for all butterflies!" "I've seen 'em dancing over the snow on a mild and sunny day," retorted Lacy. "Karl, my son, the nobly despairing writer with a grouch never yet convinced anybody." "I don't despair," retorted Westguard. "This country is getting what it wants and what it deserves, ladled out to it in unappetising gobs. Year after year great incoming waves of ignorance sweep us from ocean to ocean; but I don't forget that those very waves also carry a constantly growing and enlightened class higher and higher toward permanent solidity. "Every annual wave pushes the flotsam of the year before toward the solid land. The acquaintance with sordid things is the first real impulse toward education. Some day there will be no squalor in the land--neither the physical conditions in our slums nor the arid intellectual deserts within the social frontiers." "But the waves will accomplish that--not your very worthy novels," said Lacy, impudently. "If you call me 'worthy' I'll bat you on the head," roared Westguard, sitting up on the sofa where he had been sprawling; and laughter, loud and long, rattled the windows in the Irish Legation. The May night was hot; a sickly breeze stirred the curtains at the open windows of Westguard's living room where the Legation was entertaining informally. Quarren, Lacy, O'Hara, and Sir Charles Mallison sat by the window playing poker; the Earl of Dankmere, perched on the piano-stool, was mournfully rattling off a string of melodies acquired along Broadway; Westguard himself, flat on his back, occupied a leather lounge and dispensed philosophy when permitted. "You know," said Lacy, dealing rapidly, "you're only a tin-horn philosopher, Karl, but you really could write a good story if you tried. Get your people into action. That's the game." O'Hara nodded. "Interestin' people, in books and outside, are always doin' things, not talkin'," he said--"like Sir Charles quietly drawin' four cards to a kicker and sayin' nothin'." "--Like old Dankmere, yonder, playing 'Madame Sherry' and not trying to tell us why human beings enjoy certain sounds known as harmonies, but just keeping busy beating the box----" "--Like a pretty woman who is contented to be as attractive and cunnin' as she can be, and not stoppin' to explain the anatomy of romantic love and personal beauty," added O'Hara. "--Like----"