The Master Spirit

THE MASTER SPIRIT
By SIR WILLIAM MAGNAY Author of “The Red Chancellor,” “A Prince of Lovers,” etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY JOHN CAMERON
BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1906
Copyright, 1906 , By Little, Brown, and Company. All rights reserved Published October, 1906 Printers S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U. S. A.
THE MASTER SPIRIT
THE light on the Clock Tower, that cheerful beacon which assures Britons that good and picked men are kept from their beds to raise the standard of their liberties, and, incidentally, their taxes, had just gone out, sharply, as though glad to announce to yet-stirring London a respite from the babble of lawmaking; and the great workshop of Westminster where the artisans are so many and busy, and the results perhaps so meagre, discharged its crowd into the illuminated night. Out they came hurrying, for the hour was late: the sitting had been animated and prolonged, and even professional, to say nothing of casual, politicians are nowadays too busy in wasting the nation’s time not to set a high value on their own. Out they streamed, still chattering and arguing, as became the priests in that great Temple of the Tongue, those of them whose voices were seldom heard and never listened to in the House talking the loudest outside; a varied crew typifying the component parts of their country’s greatness. Ministers, bent, fine-drawn and unkempt, as men whose ceaseless rolling of Sisyphian stones gave no time to spare for the clothes-brush, superior Under-Secretaries, some dapper, others affecting a soul and a mission above the niceties of costume, all far more important than any Prime Minister who ever lived, and displaying a pretty contempt for those of the rank and file who took upon themselves to criticise the conduct of the debate; then the mob of hungry politicians, keen hustlers; here sharp-faced wood-cutters in the tangled forests of the Law, each with his axe to grind; there egotistical, opulent tradesmen, members by virtue of contributions to the Party coffers, and with a never-sleeping eye on the Birthday Honours list; now smart men of leisure gained by their fathers’ toil, merely adding the House of Commons to their clubs; and so on, with here and there a single-minded politician who imagined, misguided man, that he served his country by supporting his own shade of opinion, seeking nothing for himself, and getting nothing—but influenza and the privilege of leaving to his party the legacy of an inconvenient bye-election.