grubbing a life lower than that of the brutes. Children and savages have better wits than civilised mankind to-day. Look at your West End art—the damnable architecture, the damnable furniture, and the detestable dress of men and women. Look at the damnable callosity of the rich and educated who swill themselves in the rottenness of their wealth in the face of the horrible want and misery of the poor: and the poor who not only suffer the misery and insult of it, but grovel before the ruffians who souse them in it. They haven't the sense or pluck of rabbits. But we must "think about environment!"—oh, must we! Damn environment! Don't think if the devil pulls me by the ears I'm going to hell with him without kicking his shins.'
In this strain he continued for I don't know how long, flashing his wrath in my face, and moving round the room like a caged lion. For a time I felt as though I had in some way merited his terrible outburst, but I remember recovering my wits and sitting back in the bed, saying to myself 'Well, be he ever so much a great man of genius, he is really misbehaving badly towards me as his guest. I simply won't mind him—let him blaze away.' But I believe he was for the time being oblivious of me except that I was one of mankind. He was really in a sort of 'prophecy' against the scarlet woman of civilisation, and although I had been unwittingly the cause of his frenzy, I was not the object of it. Eventually there was a tap at the bedroom door, and it was opened slightly from the outside, and a voice expostulated: 'Really, the whole house is awakened. What is the matter? Do speak more quietly and let us get to sleep.'
This interruption acted as an exorcism. Morris quietened down as suddenly as he had flared up. He lifted 'Huckleberry Finn,' which he had tossed on the bed in the course of his fulmination, and making a turn round the room, he offered me his hand in a most friendly manner, remarking simply: 'I have been going it a bit
