The optimist retorted by telling the story of a man being carried down to purgatory and the Devil laying his victim up against a bank while he got a drink at a spring—temperature very high. An old friend accosted him:
"Well, Jim, how's this? No remedy possible; you're a gone coon sure."
The reply came: "Hush, it might be worse."
"How's that, when you are being carried down to the bottomless pit?"
"Hush"—pointing to his Satanic Majesty—"he might take a notion to make me carry him."
Morley, like myself, was very fond of music and reveled in the morning hour during which the organ was being played at Skibo. He was attracted by the oratorios as also Arthur Balfour. I remember they got tickets together for an oratorio at the Crystal Palace. Both are sane but philosophic, and not very far apart as philosophers, I understand; but some recent productions of Balfour send him far afield speculatively—a field which Morley never attempts. He keeps his foot on the firm ground and only treads where the way is cleared. No danger of his being "lost in the woods" while searching for the path.
Morley's most astonishing announcement of recent days was in his address to the editors of the world, assembled in London. He informed them in effect that a few lines from Burns had done more to form and maintain the present improved political and social conditions of the people than all the millions of editorials ever written. This followed a remark that there were now and then a few written or spoken words which were in themselves events; they accomplished what they described. Tom Paine's "Rights of Man" was mentioned as such.
Upon his arrival at Skibo after this address we talked it over. I referred to his tribute to Burns and his six lines, and he replied that he didn't need to tell me what lines these were.
"No," I said, "I know them by heart."
In a subsequent address, unveiling a statue of Burns in the park at Montrose, I repeated the lines I supposed he referred to, and he approved them. He and I, strange to say, had received the Freedom of Montrose together years before, so we are fellow-freemen.