[Illustration: Robert Keable urging the Automaton called Citizen to turn
on his oppressor.]

ROBERT KEABLE

I knew a man, about a year ago, who published a novel upon which the
critics fell with such fury this side the water at least, that whether
in the body or out of the body, such was ultimately his state of
bewilderment, he could not tell, and if I am asked to discuss
"Prohibitions, Inhibitions and Illegalities" it is natural that the
incident should be foremost in my mind. True, it is becoming
increasingly the fashion for a parson to preach a sermon without
announcing text, but modern preaching, like brief bright brotherly
breezy modern services, does not seem to cut much ice. Therefore we
will hark back to the manner of our forefathers and take the incident
for a text. It affords an admirable example of nonsenseorship.

As is always done in approved sermons (but humbly entreating your
forbearance, which is less common) let us consider the context, let us
review the circumstances of the case in point. Our author left the
lonely heart of Africa for the theatre of war in France. He left a
solitude, a freedom, a beauty, of which he had become enamoured, for
that assemblage of all sorts of all nations, in a cockpit of din and
fury, known as the Western Front. He expected this, that, and the
other; mainly he found the other, that, and this. Being desirous of
serving the God of things as they are, he pondered, he observed, and,
his heart burning within him, he wrote. He had no opportunity of
writing in France, so he wrote on his return, away up in the