private delectation--by anticipating the electrical discoveries
of half a century. Glorious eccentrics! Every age is enlivened
by their presence. Some day, my dear Denis," said Mr Scogan,
turning a beady bright regard in his direction--"some day you
must become their biographer--'The Lives of Queer Men.' What a
subject! I should like to undertake it myself."

Mr. Scogan paused, looked up once more at the towering house,
then murmured the word "Eccentricity," two or three times.

"Eccentricity...It's the justification of all aristocracies. It
justifies leisured classes and inherited wealth and privilege and
endowments and all the other injustices of that sort. If you're
to do anything reasonable in this world, you must have a class of
people who are secure, safe from public opinion, safe from
poverty, leisured, not compelled to waste their time in the
imbecile routines that go by the name of Honest Work. You must
have a class of which the members can think and, within the
obvious limits, do what they please. You must have a class in
which people who have eccentricities can indulge them and in
which eccentricity in general will be tolerated and understood.
That's the important thing about an aristocracy. Not only is it
eccentric itself--often grandiosely so; it also tolerates and
even encourages eccentricity in others. The eccentricities of
the artist and the new-fangled thinker don't inspire it with that
fear, loathing, and disgust which the burgesses instinctively
feel towards them. It is a sort of Red Indian Reservation
planted in the midst of a vast horde of Poor Whites--colonials at
that. Within its boundaries wild men disport themselves--often,
it must be admitted, a little grossly, a little too flamboyantly;