spread nets, food, bait, trap, and lime. They hail stones and shot and
arrows at them. They cause some by a perpetual discipline to live near
them, to lay eggs and to be killed at will; of this sort are hens, geese,
turkeys, ducks, and guinea-fowls. Nothing eludes the careful planning of
man.

"Moreover, they can build. They do not build this way or that, as a dull
necessity forces them, not they! They build as they feel inclined. They
hew down, they saw through (and how marvellous is a saw!), they trim
timber, they mix lime and sand, they excavate the recesses of the hills.
Oh! the fine fellows! They can at whim make your chambers or the Tower
prison, or my aunt's new villa at Wimbledon (which is a joke of theirs),
or St. Pancras Station, or the Crystal Palace, or Westminster Abbey, or
St. Paul's, or Bon Secours. They are agreeable to every change in the wind
that blows about the world. It blows Gothic, and they say 'By all means'--
and there is your Gothic--a thing dreamt of and done! It suddenly veers
south again and blows from the Mediterranean. The jolly little fellows are
equal to the strain, and up goes Amboise, and Anet, and the Louvre, and
all the Renaissance. It blows everyhow and at random as though in anger at
seeing them so ready. They care not at all! They build the Eiffel Tower,
the Queen Anne house, the Mary Jane house, the Modern-Style house, the
Carlton, the Ritz, the Grand Palais, the Trocadero, Olympia, Euston, the
Midhurst Sanatorium, and old Beit's Palace in Park Lane. They are not to
be defeated, they have immortal certitudes.

"Have you considered their lines and their drawings and their cunning
plans?" said Wandering Peter. "They are astonishing there! Put a bit of
charcoal into my dog's mouth or my pet monkey's paw--would he copy the
world? Not he! But men--my brothers--_they_ take it in hand and make
war against the unspeaking forces; the trees and the hills are of their