"Thank you, thank you; no sugar."
"Should advise sugar, Drabble," growled the Major, insolently. "Sweeten your nature."
"My nature, sir, is that of primeval man--simple, childlike----"
"And lawless!" put in Carson, smiling.
The doctor mounted his hobby at once. "If by lawless you mean the obedience of man to the dictates of his own noble nature independent of a tyrannical government, then I am lawless," he said, oratorically. "I and my fellow-workers wish to reinstate the simplicity of primeval days."
"I thought you went even further," said Olive, "and wished to revive chaos."
"Chaos reigns now," proclaimed the reformer. "Chaos means disorder; and what is the world now but a disordered mass? Look at the military burdens of Europe, at the overtaxed poor, at the insolent rich; and tell me if things are as they should be."
"No one said they were, doctor," remarked Carson; "but it is not by pitching bombs at people that you are going to mend them."
"Bombs, sir? There is no such word; there are no such articles in my scheme of reform. I would enlighten those in power by pen and speech. If they will not listen, then their blood must be upon their own heads; for the masses will rise and sweep them from out their counting-houses; hurl them from their thrones; tear them from the bench of justice on which they sit to administer evil laws. To stamp out tyranny the earth, as it now is, must be churned up, deluged with the blood of the unjust; devastated, in short, from pole to pole."
"You bring, a torch for burning, but no hammer for building," quoted Olive, who had read her Carlyle and remembered him.