and we should be utterly cloyed and sickened with the names of the Great Dead. I have never met an inveterate quoter, a really devotee of these dictionaries. He would be more amusing as a character in fiction than as a companion in life. . . . My eye

catches another quotation. It is from Goethe, and runs: 'Can it be maintained that a man thinks only when he cannot think out of that which he is thinking.' I cannot go on after that. I shall ring for a wet towel and settle down to it.

It is, we suppose, some far-off derivative of the group instinct which makes it so painful to 'fall out of things.' We hate to feel that our particular associates can do without us, that we no longer count among the initiated; we hate to take our place with the strangers who require explanations and are no longer consulted, however kindly the explanations may be given.

A man whose income is halved at one financial blow is a strong man indeed if he is not knocked down by his misfortune, if he suffers no more than a physical or nervous upset. Unimaginative people, if they have never had more than a tenth of his income, often reflect rather pleasantly upon the worldliness and love of luxury which have rendered him downcast. They are perfectly happy, they say to themselves, and so might he be if he were a little less proud and earthy. Standing close to what we may call the central hearth of their own group, they laugh at a man who has fallen out of another. It seems very wrong that a loss of money should cut a man off from his friends; and, indeed, in the true sense of friendship it does not do so. The luckiest of us, however, have few friends in the strictest sense of the word. Three outside of one's own

family is a common computation, and it would surely be difficult to find a man or a woman who has half a dozen.

One may not actually lose one's friends and yet feel very sadly out of it. It is not that a man's former associates cold-shoulder him because he is poor; it is simply that he no longer lives the same life, follows the same pursuits, or thinks, so far as money is concerned, upon the same scale that they do. In a sense he is an accidental exile. He no longer lives, metaphorically speaking, in the same place, and in the nature of things he is forgotten, or, to be more correct, he becomes a pleasant recollection occasionally revived by the sight of his corporeal presence at a distance.

An Englishman who through loss of money falls out of things may be said never to get back. In America one hears that this is not the case. Americans, especially American women, often appear to be very worldly, but it is certain that they take loss of fortune in better part than we do and are far less discouraged by it. It is no doubt largely a case of 'light come, light go,' but there is something very admirable about the sight of a middle-aged American getting up after he has 'fallen out of it' and determining to be in it' again.

Loss of money, however, is not the only thing which leads people away from the warm centre of their former environment. Any very unpopular opinion which a man cannot keep to himself will lead to his falling out, or perhaps even to his being thrown out of his group. If he can stand ridicule he may possibly preserve his place; if not, he must leave it. There is nothing much sadder than to see a man drifting further and further away from his companions in company with some adored theory or fancy or conviction which he not only will not let go, but will force upon the notice of every one whom he meets. He becomes the subject of a kind of unconscious persecution; and whether it is his conscience or his vanity which has thrown him outside of his world, the result is the same. As a rule he becomes a fanatic, and is spoken of by his former friends either contemptuously or affectionately as 'Poor so-and-so.'

Excessive industry is another peculiarity which leads straight to exile. If a man has no leisure to bestow upon anyone, and none, as it were, to throw away, the tacit trade union of his acquaintance will turn him out. His constant occupation with his avocations is a sort of reproach. There is something didactic in the rare companionship of a man who almost never relaxes. Those who live for their work and for nothing else are almost always proud of the fact, and it is one of the most disagreeable forms of pride. Too hard work, too long hours, too great a devotion to output, is a penal offense in almost every society. The offender will feel his punishment if ever he comes to retire. He will suddenly realize that he has fallen out of things, that with his work his social life has ended. Many strenuous people realize this, and dare no more stop than they dare committ suicide. They had rather

watch the deterioration of their own powers, rather spoil the prospects of a younger man, rather see their own job for which they have lived badly done, than accept what might cynically be called the punishment of their good deeds, and 'settle down' in the place they have made for themselves, that wretched place known as 'out of it.'

Extremes meet, and there is an innate laziness which is quite as likely to float us into a backwater as feverish industry. A great many men and women are endowed with a moral forc which enables them to make almost any exertion which duty demands of them and no more. They will not take the slightest unnecessary trouble. They are as a rule excellent people, and they are not unnaturally inclined to think that the world treats them badly. They will go out of their way to do a good turn to anyone who is in need, but they will not move a finger to amuse him or give him pleasure; neither will they exert themselves to get amusement or pleasure for themselves. They suffer from a form of mental inertia. They cannot realize that those who would not drift outside the charmed circle must exert themselves to keep within it. Often they become very bitter, these lazy folks. All the interest of life, they say, falls to the lot of pushing, bustling persons, who get everything for themselves. If you do not push and shoulder your way you are left behind, they complain; and that though you have never turned your back on a friend in trouble. They forget how often they have turned it on a friend in luck. They have condoled with their world; they have not congratulated it. They have been too lazy to attend the feasts of life, and the feasters have forgotten them. People who will do nothing but rest in their leisure will be left plantés là, and all the fun of the fair will go on too far off for

them to see it. They are such good sorts, these mentally inert people, that it is a pity they should not all come together and form a world of their own; a dull world it would be, but better than loneliness.

Perhaps the complaint, 'We have somehow fallen out of it,' was never so general as it is to-day. In some sense we have all been away and come back strangers. During the war almost every social circle was broken up. Great causes and small causes have left almost all the groups, all the mental and spiritual townships, as it were, more or less in ruins. The fires of society, in the lighter sense of the word, are out. If we are not in the great movement, in the world where reputations are

made and everybody is conspicuous, we are apt to feel as if we were in no world at all. It is a state of things which cannot last. We are not only social, we are parochial animals; we sigh in the midst of a general sense of disintegration and dream of some new and delightful feudal system which, without tyranny and without such great diversity of fortunes as the term usually implies, should assign to us all a place somewhere in some system so that the average man and woman can once more be part of a whole, a cog in a well-defined little wheel within a wheel. The machinery of social life is all clattering and out of gear, and most people would rather it were set going again anyhow than nohow.

'BUT listen, my dear sir, I come directly from the Mélèzes mountains, I have forty-five kilometres in my legs, and your inn is the only one anywhere about; you are surely not going to send me out to sleep in the snow under the pretext that you have no room?'

'But, monsieur,' answered M. Gargousse, 'my Hotel du Chapeau de Paille is not an inn; moreover, as I have already told you a hundred times, I have let my last room, and the only thing left for you is the barn.'

'Ah no! not the barn. I hate stable smells. Come now, have n't you a billiard table? Put a mattress and some blankets on it and I will get along well enough.'

VOL. 21-NO. 1056

'No, monsieur, I have n't a billiard table, but I have a player piano. . . .'

It was at this point that M. Hirouic, who had been listening carefully to the conversation, approached the two speakers.

'Monsieur,' said he to the traveler, 'I am the fortunate tourist to whom the last room has been let. I myself have traveled a rather difficult road, and judging by my own weariness, you must need rest as much as I do. Will you in all frankness share my quarters with me? I offer them to you with good will.'

'Really, I am confused; confused and grateful, but shall I not be a nuisance to you?'

'Monsieur, on that subject it is enough to say that I am Léon Hirouic, of the Philanthropic League of Paules-Bains.'

At the foot of an obscure and sordid corridor, M. Gargousse, candle in hand, opened the door and said in a sombre voice:

"There it is.'

M. Hirouic and his companion entered. The room was tiny, dirty, and fearfully cold. A stuffy odor floated therein.

"The bed is not very large,' said M. Gargousse, 'but you will have to get on just the same, both of you.'

Although the narrowness of the bed disturbed M. Hirouic he did not wish to deny his beau geste, and he exclaimed with good humor:

'Why, we shall sleep in it like pashas,' and he rubbed his hands together as much to warm them as to manifest the serenity of his soul.

'And now, monsieur,' said he, 'monsieur

'Yes, I forgot that I haven't told you my name. Please excuse my forgetfulness. I am Luc-Marc-Roch Affre de Maffre, de Bagnères.'

'Charmed,' answered the philosopher amiably. By the way, have you had dinner yet? I advise you to go down and have something. While you are below I will go to bed.'

'A wise counsel, for I am dying of hunger. I shall try not to wake you on my return. At any rate I shall not be long.'

At the end of an hour M. Hirouic suddenly sat up, interrupted in his dream. Shivering and shaking M. de Maffre appeared, ready for the night. 'Ha! Ha! Ha!' he laughed, gesticulating, 'I'm cold, I'm cold, br-r-r!'

Jumping into the bed, he tossed the blankets briskly back, freezing as he did so the unfortunate M. Hirouic.

Then he stretched out and extinguished the candle. M. Hirouic groaned and shivered. M. de Maffre had introduced with him an Arctic atmosphere.

'Ah, how good and warm it is! M. Hirouic, you are indeed my benefactor. Do not protest, my benefactor! How warm and comfortable it is here!' As he spoke he shoved M. Hirouic to the very edge and punched the entire pillow under his own head.

'How warm it is! Ah, dear monsieur, we are going to sleep the sleep of the just.'

M. Hirouic, in whose heart a tiny spark of rancor was awaking, held on with all his force to the little stretch of blanket which he seized, and in spite of the glacial presence of M. de Maffre managed to lie quiet. His companion had already managed this, and was completely at ease, with his nose in the air, breathing heavily. Little by little the breathing took on a sonorous rhythm. An intermittent roll escaped from his jaws, a roll which gradually became a thunder. M. Hirouic, thoroughly awakened, sat up again:

'Ah, indeed!' he thought, 'now he is going to snore.' But he managed to put aside any so calamitous a notion, and looked forward with hope to a prompt sleep. But the thunder grew and grew and reverberated from the four corners of the tiny room.

In an explosion of rage M. Hirouic sat up still another time and cried out aloud:

'But, monsieur, you are preventing me from going to sleep! It is intolerable! And see, I am sleepy!'

The concert died away; little by little the thunder became a trombone. Reassured, M. Hirouic stretched out again. Alas! With added vigor the noise presently began once more. This time directly into M. Hirouic's very ear. At length the poor man in despair made use of the ancestral protection.

He began to whistle. He whistled for a long while; twenty minutes perhaps, till a cramp seized his lips and the hollow of his cheeks. He whistled with intensity. He whistled as he would have screamed, cried, or roared. But it did no good. The thunder remained sonorous, rhythmic, and resolved. Tears gathered in M. Hirouic's eyes, in those poor eyes swollen with a desire to go to sleep. He lit the candle and consulted his watch. It was midnight.

'Midnight; it is dreadful! And he sleeps; he snores,' and M. Hirouic contemplated with poisonous hatred the calm, sleeping face of M. de Maffre.

M. Hirouic had quite forgotten his philosophy. With a Red Indian joy he pinched the arm of his adversary.

'Aie.. Bah! Bah! Bah! . . .

M. de Maffre shook in his sleep, turned over, and fell asleep again, laughing a silly laugh. M. Hirouic blew out the candle, and covered himself up again. 'Now,' thought he, 'he will be quiet. I have mastered him, and I can get to sleep.'

A vain hope. At the end of a short instant the snoring began again and gradually grew to the same volume of sound it had reached before. M. Hirouic trembled with cold and anger. Finally, full of fury he began to whistle again.

Then another idea seized upon him; he began to think himself a martyr of fraternity. He lifted the curtains of the windows and looked out into the moonlight and the fog by the mountains.

'Yes, there is beauty in that,' he murmured, trying hard to comfort himself.

Then he opened the window, but a steely cold blew upon him and he closed it precipitously. This material contact had blown away all his poetry. Another surge of revolt swept over him. The snoring had not diminished, and the only possible way of stopping it seemed to lie in the extermination of M. de Maffre. Freezing from head to foot, M. Hirouic fell into the only chair in the room, rolled himself up in a traveling rug, seized nervously a greasy newspaper lying on the table, and tried to read. But the words ran together under his eyes. He then crossed his arms and glared at the sleeping figure. The snoring, he decided, had died down a little. Entirely done up, he lowered his head and fell asleep in the chair.

On the following morning, about seven o'clock, the daylight awoke him, astounded to find himself very cramped and frozen. He rose from his chair and approached the bed. M. de Maffre, stretched out comfortably and blessedly, was still asleep. M. Hirouic gazed upon him and sought to still an angry desire to shake him. Presently M. de Maffre opened his satisfied eyes. A sarcastic glare covered the face of M. Hirouic, and he said with sharpness: 'I suppose, monsieur, that you have slept very well?'

'Peuh,' answered the other, 'only so so.'

M. Hirouic closed his fist indignantly: 'What do you mean, only so so?' 'Well, my dear sir,' replied M. de Maffre, 'you have a habit which is rather unpleasant for those who share your quarters. Do you know that you whistle while you sleep?'