contributed in his mind to his own distinction, which was precious to
him. Precious, and encouraged to be so by the press, which--as he well
knew--must print his name several thousand times a year. And yet, as a
man of culture and of principle, how he despised that kind of fame, and
theoretically believed that a man's real distinction lay in his oblivion
of the world's opinion, particularly as expressed by that flighty
creature, the Fourth Estate. But here again, as in the matter of the
gray top hat, he had instinctively compromised, taking in press cuttings
which described himself and his works, while he never failed to describe
those descriptions--good, bad, and indifferent--as 'that stuff,' and
their writers as 'those fellows.'

Not that it was new to him to feel that the country was in a bad way.
On the contrary, it was his established belief, and one for which he was
prepared to furnish due and proper reasons. In the first place he traced
it to the horrible hold Industrialism had in the last hundred years laid
on the nation, draining the peasantry from 'the Land'; and in the second
place to the influence of a narrow and insidious Officialism, sapping
the independence of the People.

This was why, in going to a conclave with his brother John, high in
Government employ, and his brother Stanley, a captain of industry,
possessor of the Morton Plough Works, he was conscious of a certain
superiority in that he, at all events, had no hand in this paralysis
which was creeping on the country.

And getting more buff-colored every minute, he threaded his way on,
till, past the Marble Arch, he secured the elbow-room of Hyde Park.
Here groups of young men, with chivalrous idealism, were jeering at
and chivying the broken remnants of a suffrage meeting. Felix debated