"Poor—devil! Did he know you, Prentice?"
"Not at first. It was too foggy to recognize the house."
"What did you do?"
"Grabbed him as he turned to run, and held him. He wouldn't come in, but let me go to fetch him some clothes. When I came out, he'd bolted."
"Bravo!" said Smeaton, and clapped his pudgy little hands.
"Why do you say that?" I asked, voicing a surprise I think we all shared.
"Because it confirms a judgment of my own upon Ingram. He was the logical animal par excellence, and to take money or substance one hasn't been allowed to earn, if it's only a penny to buy a loaf or a rag to cover nakedness, is to sell logic as Esau sold his birthright. If there were more like Ingram, the tangle of this filthy old kaleidoscope we call life might straighten out. He'll die, of course, but at least he'll die with a man's soul in him."
"Listen to Satan rebuking sin!" said Waldron of the Hemisphere.
Smeaton brought his fist down on the table. "Yes," he thundered. "I know what you mean. Yes, I've given charity. I've cast bread on the waters—to drowning men that were begging for a rope. I've helped lame dogs—over stiles that led to nowhere. And every time I've done it, Waldron, I've been ashamed of myself. For I know I'm helping to protract an agony and perpetuating a state of things that ought to have been done with twenty years ago. Literature isn't paying its way to-day: that's the cold fact we must face. And a thing that isn't paying its way is a sham, no matter if it's as brilliant as the last ten years of the old French monarchy. It's falling more and more into the hands of men and women who either eke out a little private means by scribbling, or else eke out their hire by borrowing. Journalism's not so rotten; but, by the Lord Harry, after a morning in Fleet Street I sometimes think half of us are living by taking in one another's washing."
"You're taking rather a black view," said Waldron.