"Still," said Sir Paul. "They might give us a rest from prunes and
rice."

"This club," said Mr. Prohack, "like all other clubs, is managed by a
committee of Methuselahs who can only digest prunes and rice." And
after a lot more talk about the idiosyncrasies of clubs he said, with a
casual air: "For myself, I belong to too many clubs."

Said Hunter, a fellow official of the Treasury:

"But I thought you only had two clubs, Arthur."

"Only two. But it's one too many. In fact I'm not sure if it isn't two
too many."

"Are you getting disgusted with human nature?" Sims suggested.

"No," said Mr. Prohack. "I'm getting hard up. I've committed the
greatest crime in the world. I've committed poverty. And I feel guilty."

And the truth was that he did feel guilty. He was entirely innocent; he
was a victim; he had left undone nothing that he ought to have done; but
he felt guilty, thus proving that poverty is indeed seriously a crime
and that those who in sardonic jest describe it as a crime are deeper
philosophers than they suppose.

"Never say die," smiled the monocled Mixon, a publisher of scientific
works, and began to inveigh against the Government as an ungrateful and
unscrupulous employer and exploiter of dutiful men in an inferno of
rising prices. But the rest thought Mixon unhappy in his choice of