“Bills! I get enough of them in there!”
“Didn’t you even hear them?”
He answered coldly:
“My dear Sir, I am a matter-of-fact and hard-worked man, with no time to ‘see’ things; I have seen and heard nothing. I came out here for a breath of air after sitting there all night!” And pounding with his clenched fist at the air, he added:
“We have just had a glorious scrap!”
Understanding then that I must have dreamed, I begged his pardon and moved towards home, passing the Clock Tower.
IV
The Modern Stoic: An Ill-natured Duologue.
(From the Outlook, 1913.)
“Well, I can only say that to my mind it’s just another appeal to false emotion; pandering to the softness of our times. This mawkish humanitarianism is undermining our virility. I protest against all this agitation and rot about suffering.”