"Pardon me, Mr. Sedgwick—I fear I did not catch your words correctly.
You were saying—?"
Francis Charles brought his chair to level and spoke with great feeling:
"As our host, to whom our bright young lives have been entrusted for a time—standing to us, as you do, almost as a locoed parent—I put it to you—"
"Shut up!" roared Ferdie. "Thompson, you see this—this object? You hear it? Mustn't it go to work?"
"Ab-so-lutissimusly!"
"I protest against this outrage," said Francis Charles. "Thompson, you're beastly sober. I appeal to your better self. I am a philosopher. Sitting under your hospitable rooftree, I render you a greater service by my calm and dispassionate insight than I could possibly do by any ill-judged activity. Undisturbed and undistracted by greed, envy, ambition, or desire, I see things in their true proportion. A dreamy spectator of the world's turmoil, I do not enter into the hectic hurly-burly of life; I merely withhold my approval from cant, shams, prejudice, formulae, hypocrisy, and lies. Such is the priceless service of the philosopher."
"Philosopher, my foot!" jeered Ferdie. "You're a brow! A solemn and sanctimonious brow is bad enough, but a sprightly and godless brow is positive-itutely the limit!"
"That's absurd, you know," objected Francis Charles. "No man is really irreligious. Whether we make broad the phylactery or merely our minds, we are all alike at heart. The first waking thought is invariably, What of the day? It is a prayer—unconscious, unspoken, and sincere. We are all sun worshipers; and when we meet we invoke the sky—a good day to you; a good night to you. It is a highly significant fact that all conversation begins with the weather. The weather is the most important fact in any one day, and, therefore, the most important fact in the sum of our days. We recognize this truth in our greetings; we propitiate the dim and nameless gods of storm and sky; we reverence their might, their paths above our knowing. Nor is this all. A fine day; a bad day—with the careless phrases we assent to such tremendous and inevitable implications: the helplessness of humanity, the brotherhood of man, equality, democracy. For what king or kaiser, against the implacable wind—"
Ferdie rose and pawed at his ears with both hands.
"For the love of the merciful angels! Can the drivel and cut the drool!"