whether he should oppose his body to their bodies, his tongue to theirs,
or whether he should avert his consciousness and hurry on; but, that
instinct which moved him to wear the gray top hat prevailing, he did
neither, and stood instead, looking at them in silent anger, which
quickly provoked endearments--such as: "Take it off," or "Keep it
on," or "What cheer, Toppy!" but nothing more acute. And he meditated:
Culture! Could culture ever make headway among the blind partisanships,
the hand-to-mouth mentality, the cheap excitements of this town life?
The faces of these youths, the tone of their voices, the very look of
their bowler hats, said: No! You could not culturalize the impermeable
texture of their vulgarity. And they were the coming manhood of the
nation--this inexpressibly distasteful lot of youths! The country
had indeed got too far away from 'the Land.' And this essential towny
commonness was not confined to the classes from which these youths were
drawn. He had even remarked it among his own son's school and college
friends--an impatience of discipline, an insensibility to everything but
excitement and having a good time, a permanent mental indigestion due
to a permanent diet of tit-bits. What aspiration they possessed seemed
devoted to securing for themselves the plums of official or industrial
life. His boy Alan, even, was infected, in spite of home influences
and the atmosphere of art in which he had been so sedulously soaked. He
wished to enter his Uncle Stanley's plough works, seeing in it a 'soft
thing.'

But the last of the woman-baiters had passed by now, and, conscious that
he was really behind time, Felix hurried on....


In his study--a pleasant room, if rather tidy--John Freeland was
standing before the fire smoking a pipe and looking thoughtfully at