that one of them is the Sunday School--invented by the Fathers as an
ingenious and effective place of torment for this Boy. Through the
week he is intolerable, but the blessed Sabbath is to him a day of
retribution. It is the awful day when his ears are washed and touseled
about; when his eyes are punched out by the towelled but unsparing
hand of a Christian mother; when his shoes are put back on him for a
day, and when, with a neck encircled by a collar starched to maddening
stiffness, and with a pocket handkerchief the consistency of pasteboard,
he is sent to the place of punishment. I have read many beautiful poems
about the sweet quiet of the Sabbath, but few of the poets have given
the right solution of it. It is because all over the civilized world
on that day, millions of Boys have been captured and corraled in Sunday
schools. The very church bells understand it, and in the early hours
ring out triumphantly, "Got-'em-in-here! Got-'em-in-here!"

* * * * *
Of course, as we move on through this alternately delightful and
disagreeable world, we must be brought face to face with bores of many
varieties. Setting aside that pest, the egotist, for whom there can
be no excuse, I should like to mention the man or woman who conceives
that the way to talk about books is to deal with the acts and characters
instead of what they say. It seems to me that it is just one of the
modes, if I may call it that, of talking literature that is little
better than no mode at all. It is a rare thing to meet with even the
most modern work--I am speaking of fiction--by a fairly successful
writer, that does not contain some utterance to arouse thought and
challenge us to mental debate. The acts must of necessity be commonplace
from familiarity, for man has behaved himself for a million of years
from the same motives and only varied his manner with the advancing
material circumstances which surrounded him. But his thoughts are not