Tales of the Long Bow
their own conventional or conservative position. In each one of the stories it was they who were fickle, and we who were fixed. When the Colonel said he would eat his hat, he did it; when he found it meant wearing a preposterous hat, he wore it. But his neighbours didn't even stick to their own conviction that the hat was preposterous. Fashion is too fluctuating and sensitive a thing; and before the end, half of them were wondering whether they oughtn't to have hats of the same sort. In that affair of the Thames factory, Hood admired the old landscape and Hunter admired the old landlords. But Hunter didn't go on admiring the old landlords; he deserted to the new landlords as soon as they got the land. His conservatism was too snobbish to conserve anything. I wanted to import pigs, and I went on importing pigs, though my methods of smuggling might land me to a mad-house. But Enoch Oates, the millionaire, didn't go on importing pork; he went off at once on same new stunt, first on the booming of his purses, and afterwards on the admirable stunt of starting English farms. The business mind isn't steadfast; even when it can be turned the right way, it's too easy to turn. And everything has been like that, down to the little botheration about the elephant. The police began to prose-
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