anywhere else (after, possibly, that imperishable dissertation of the
great Dean's--or was it Sir William Temple's?--"On a Broomstick"), but
also because it was one pure flower in our day of a kind of art little
cultivated any more. "As to Bears." All, me! How engaging, simple,
gracious, and at ease; what perfection of literary breeding; what an
amused and genial wave of the finger tips; how marked by good-humoured
acuteness, and animated nonchalance; how saturated with a
distinguished, humane tradition of letters--that title!

That is just the note I would strike in the great book I have been
brooding for years, "Bums I Have Known." It has been my felicity to
have known more bums, I think, than any living man. But I fear I shall
never get that book written. And this is a pity. It is a pity because
this book would be of great value in the years to come. With our
modern passion for efficiency, and with efficiency rapidly becoming
compulsory everywhere, that colourful class of ancient lineage, the
bums, is quickly becoming _persona non grata_ to our civilisation, and
will soon be extinct. To the next generation, in all probability, the
word bum will be but an empty name. I doubt whether it would be a
feasible plan for Dr. Hornaday to undertake to preserve a small number
of this species in the Bronx Park. The bum nature, I fear, would
languish in captivity. The creature would likely lose its health, and,
worse, its spirits. It is a nomad, a child of nature. It takes no
thought for the morrow, as our modern prophets teach us to do. I
remember well an excellent bum (I mean excellently conforming to type),
one Bain, who, growing restive under restraint, lost a position which
he happened to have. I asked him what he was going to do now. There
was something sublime about that being. He had faith that the Lord
would provide. His simple reply was: "Well, the ravens fed Elijah."