"If I ask you any questions, sir," said I, "they will not be very
severe; but since I hear that you are a weaver, I should like to ask
you something about that craft, as I am--or was--interested in it."

"Oh," said he, "I shall not be of much use to you there, I'm afraid.
I only do the most mechanical kind of weaving, and am in fact but a
poor craftsman, unlike Dick here. Then besides the weaving, I do a
little with machine printing and composing, though I am little use at
the finer kinds of printing; and moreover machine printing is
beginning to die out, along with the waning of the plague of book-
making, so I have had to turn to other things that I have a taste
for, and have taken to mathematics; and also I am writing a sort of
antiquarian book about the peaceable and private history, so to say,
of the end of the nineteenth century,--more for the sake of giving a
picture of the country before the fighting began than for anything
else. That was why I asked you those questions about Epping Forest.
You have rather puzzled me, I confess, though your information was so
interesting. But later on, I hope, we may have some more talk
together, when our friend Dick isn't here. I know he thinks me
rather a grinder, and despises me for not being very deft with my
hands: that's the way nowadays. From what I have read of the
nineteenth century literature (and I have read a good deal), it is
clear to me that this is a kind of revenge for the stupidity of that
day, which despised everybody who COULD use his hands. But Dick, old
fellow, Ne quid nimis! Don't overdo it!"

"Come now," said Dick, "am I likely to? Am I not the most tolerant
man in the world? Am I not quite contented so long as you don't make
me learn mathematics, or go into your new science of aesthetics, and
let me do a little practical aesthetics with my gold and steel, and