the arbitrariness of our local governors, the decline of morality among the masses, the faulty organization existing among our subordinate officials, and the necessity of drastic, but legal, measures to counterbalance these evils. 'Tis a novel idea for a story, is it not?"
"Certainly; and to me who read so little a peculiarly novel one."
"True, I have never once seen you with a book in your hand. Nevertheless, I beseech you to read a poem which, I may say, is shortly to appear. It is called 'The Love of a Blackmailer for a Fallen Woman.' The identity of the author I am not at liberty to disclose—at all events yet."
"Pray give me an idea of this poem."
"It exposes, as you will see, the whole mechanism of the social movement—but a mechanism that is painted only in poetic colours. Each spring of that engine is touched upon, and each degree of the social scale held up to the light. We see summoned to the bar, as it were, a weak, but vicious, lord, with a swarm of blackmailers who are engaged in cheating him. Also various categories of fallen women are dissected—French women, German women, and others; the whole being done with vivid
