“It’s only a matter of time for that man to come a cropper. The first big affair he gets to handle, look out! I’m not prejudiced. He’s a very good fellow, and I like him—besides being amused at him. But what I say is true.” He spoke with an uncanny certainty.
“What makes you say it?”
Kirby took my arm. “The man is constitutionally incapable of thinking in the right order. It’s always the same with him, I don’t care whether it’s an article about North Africa or that book of his about primitive man. He always—not occasionally, but always—starts with his conclusion and works backwards to the premises. North Africa ought to be that shape—it is! Primitive man ought to have thought that—he did! You see? The result is that the facts have to adapt themselves to these conclusions of his. Now that habit of mind, Wynne, makes a man who has to do with public affairs a dangerous and pernicious fool. He oughtn’t to be allowed about. What, I should like to know, does he think the Almighty made facts for! Not to be looked at, evidently!”
I was much refreshed by this lively indignation of the intellect. But, “You’re quite sure you’re not prejudiced?” said I.
“I said it all in a review of his book before I ever met him, or came into——”
“Conflict with him?” I ventured to interpose.
He looked at me gravely. I thought he was going to tell me to mind my own business. I have so little that I never welcome that injunction. Then he smiled.
“I forgot that I’d met you at the Lexingtons’,” he said.
“I don’t think you need have told me that you’d forgotten.”
“Well, I had,” said he, staring a little.