arranged it thus. Let the daemon within him reflect upon the
advantage to the community of cheap labour. Let the farm labourer
contemplate the universal good.



CHAPTER III



[Literature and the Middle Classes.]

I am sorry to be compelled to cast a slur upon the Literary
profession, but observation shows me that it still contains within
its ranks writers born and bred in, and moving amidst--if, without
offence, one may put it bluntly--a purely middle-class environment:
men and women to whom Park Lane will never be anything than the
shortest route between Notting Hill and the Strand; to whom Debrett's
Peerage --gilt-edged and bound in red, a tasteful-looking volume--
ever has been and ever will remain a drawing-room ornament and not a
social necessity. Now what is to become of these writers--of us, if
for the moment I may be allowed to speak as representative of this
rapidly-diminishing yet nevertheless still numerous section of the
world of Art and Letters? Formerly, provided we were masters of
style, possessed imagination and insight, understood human nature,
had sympathy with and knowledge of life, and could express ourselves
with humour and distinction, our pathway was, comparatively speaking,
free from obstacle. We drew from the middle-class life around us,
passed it through our own middle-class individuality, and presented
it to a public composed of middle-class readers.