Kitabı oku: «The King of Schnorrers: Grotesques and Fantasies», sayfa 9
An Honest Log-Roller
Louis Maunders was writing an anonymous novel, and a large circle of friends and acquaintances expected it to make a big hit. Louis Maunders was so modest that he distrusted his own opinion, and was glad to find his friends sharing it in this matter. It strengthened him. He carried the manuscript unostentatiously about in a long brief bag, while the book was writing, and worked at it during all his spare moments. Even in omnibuses he was to be seen scribbling hard with a stylus, and neglecting to attend to the conductor. The plot of the story was sad and heartrending, for Louis was only twenty-one. Louis refused to give those roseate pictures of life which the conventional novelist turns out to please the public. He objected to "happy endings." In real life, he said, no story ends happily; for the end of everybody's story is Death. In this book he said some bitter things about Life which it would have winced to hear, had it been alive. As for Death, he doubted whether it was worth dying. Towards Nature he took a tone of haughty superiority, and expressed himself disrespectfully on the subject of Fate. He mocked at it through the lips of his hero, and altogether seemed qualifying for the liver complaint, which is the Prometheus myth done into modern English. He taught that the only Peace for man lies in snapping the fingers at Fortune, taking her buffets and her favours with equal contempt, and generally teaching her to know her place. The soul of the Philosopher, he said, would stand grinning cynically though the planetary system were sold off by auction. These lessons were taught with great tragic power in Maunders' novel, and he was looking forward to the time when it should be in print, and on all the carpets of conversation. He was extremely gratified to find his friends thinking so well of its prospects, for it was pleasing to him to discover that he had chosen his circle so well, and had such intelligent friends. It did not seem to him at all unlikely that he would make his fortune with this novel; and he hurried on with it, till the masterpiece needed only a few final touches and a few last insults to Fate. Then he left the bag in a hansom cab. When he remembered his forgetfulness, he was distracted. He raved like a maniac – and like a maniac did not even write his ravings down for after use. He applied at Scotland Yard, but the superintendent said that drivers brought there only articles of value. He sent paragraphs to the papers, asking even of the Echo where his lost novel was. But the Echo answered not. Several spiteful papers insinuated that he was a liar, and a high-class comic paper went out of its way to make a joke, and to call his book "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab." The annoying part of the business was that after getting all this gratuitous advertisement, in itself enough to sell two editions, the book still refused to come up for publication. Maunders was too heart-broken to write another. For months he went about, a changed being. He had put the whole of himself into that book, and it was lost. He mourned for the departed manuscript, and generously extolled its virtues. For years he remained faithful to its memory; and its pages were made less dry with his tears. But the most intemperate grief wears itself out at last; and after a few years of melancholy, Maunders rallied and became a critic.
As a critic he set in with great severity, and by carefully refraining from doing anything himself, gained a great reputation far and wide. In due course he joined the staff of the Acadæum, where his signed contributions came to be looked for with profound respect by the public and with fear and trembling by authors. For Maunders' criticism was so very superior, even for the Acadæum, of which the trade motto was "Stop here for Criticism – superior to anything in the literary market." Maunders flayed and excoriated Marsyas till the world accepted him as Apollo.
What Maunders was most down upon was novel-writing. Not having to follow them himself, he had high ideals of art; and woe to the unfortunate author who thought he had literary and artistic instinct when he had only pen and paper. Maunders was especially severe upon the novels of young authors, with their affected style and jejune ideas. Perhaps the most brilliant criticism he ever wrote was a merciless dissection of a book of this sort, reeking with the insincerity and crudity of youth, full of accumulated ignorance of life, and brazening it out by flashy cynicism.
A week after this notice appeared, his oldest and dearest friend called upon him and asked him for an explanation.
"What do you mean?" said Maunders.
"When I read your slashing notice of 'A Fingersnap for Fate,' I at once got the book."
"What! After I had disembowelled it; after I had shown it was a stale sausage stuffed with old and putrid ideas?"
"Well, to tell the truth," said his friend, a little crestfallen at having to confess, "I always get the books you pitch into. So do lots of people. We are only plain, ordinary, homespun people, you know; so we feel sure that whatever you praise will be too superior for us, while what you condemn will suit us to a t. That is why the great public studies and respects your criticisms. You are our literary pastor and monitor. Your condemnation is our guide-post, and your praise is our Index Expurgatorius. But for you we should be lost in the wilderness of new books."
"And this is all the result of my years of laborious criticism," fumed the Acadæum critic. "Proceed, sir."
"Well, what I came to say was, that if my memory does not play me a trick after all these years, 'A Fingersnap for Fate' is your long-lost novel."
"What!" shrieked the great critic; "my long-lost child! Impossible."
"Yes," persisted his oldest and dearest friend. "I recognised it by the strawberry mark in Cap. II., where the hero compares the younger generation to fresh strawberries smothered in stale cream. I remember your reading it to me!"
"Heavens! The whole thing comes back to me," cried the critic. "Now I know why I damned it so unmercifully for plagiarism! All the while I was reading it, there was a strange, haunting sense of familiarity."
"But, surely you will expose the thief!"
"How can I? It would mean confessing that I wrote the book myself. That I slated it savagely, is nothing. That will pass as a good joke, if not a piece of rare modesty. But confess myself the author of such a wretched failure!"
"Excuse me," said his friend. "It is not a failure. It is a very popular success. It is selling like wildfire. Excuse the inaccurate simile; but you know what I mean. Your notice has sent the sale up tremendously. Ever since your notice appeared, the printing presses have been going day and night and are utterly unable to cope with the demand. Oh, you must not let a rogue make a fortune out of you like this. That would be too sinful."
So the great critic sought out the thief. And they divided the profits. And then the thief, who was a fool as well as a rogue, wrote another book – all out of his own head this time. And the critic slated it. And they divided the profits.
A Tragi-Comedy of Creeds
Not much before midnight in a midland town – a thriving commercial town, whose dingy back streets swarmed with poverty and piety – a man in a soft felt hat and a white tie was hurrying home over a bridge that spanned a dark crowded river. He had missed the tram, and did not care to be seen out late, but he could not afford a cab. Suddenly he felt a tug at his long black coat-tail. Vaguely alarmed and definitely annoyed, he turned round quickly. A breathless, roughly-clad, rugged-featured man loosed his hold of the skirt.
"'Scuse me, sir – I've been running," gasped the stranger, placing his horny hand on his breast and panting.
"What is it? What do you want?" said the gentleman impatiently.
"My wife's dying," jerked the man.
"I'm very sorry," murmured the gentleman incredulously, expecting some conventional street-plea.
"Awful sudden attack – this last of hers – only came on an hour ago."
"I'm not a doctor."
"No, sir, I know. I don't want a doctor. He's there and only gives her ten minutes to live. Come with me at once, please."
"Come with you? Why, what good can I do?"
"You're a clergyman!"
"A clergyman!" repeated the other.
"Yes – aren't you?"
The wearer of the white tie looked embarrassed.
"Ye-es," he stammered. "In a – in a way. But I'm not the sort of clergyman your wife will be wanting."
"No?" said the man, puzzled and pained. Then with a sudden dread in his voice: "You're not a Catholic clergyman?"
"No," was the unhesitating reply.
"Oh, then it's all right!" cried the man, relieved. "Come with me, sir, for God's sake. Don't let us waste time." His face was lit up with anxious appeal.
But still the clergyman hesitated.
"You're making a mistake," he murmured. "I am not a Christian clergyman." He turned to resume his walk.
"Not a Christian clergyman!" exclaimed the man, as who should say "not a black negro!"
"No – I am a Jewish minister."
"That don't matter," broke in the man, almost before he could finish the sentence. "As long as you're not a Catholic. Oh, don't go away now, sir!" His voice broke piteously. "Don't go away after I've been chasing you for five minutes – I saw your rig-out – I beg pardon, your coat and hat – in the distance just as I came out of the house. Walk back with me, anyhow," he pleaded, seeing the Jew's hesitation, "Oh! for pity's sake, walk back with me at once and we can discuss it as we go along. I know I should never get hold of another parson in time at this hour of the night."
The man's accents were so poignant, his anxiety was so apparently sincere, that the minister's humanity could scarcely resist the solicitation to walk back at least. He would still have time to decide whether to enter the house or not – whether the case were genuine or a mere trap concealing robbery or worse. The man took a short cut through evil-looking slums that did not increase the minister's confidence. He wondered what his flock would think if they saw their pastor in such company. He was a young unmarried minister, and the reputation of such in provincial Jewish congregations, overflowing with religion and tittle-tattle, is as a pretty unprotected orphan girl's.
"Why don't you go to your own clergyman?" he asked.
"I've got none," said the man half-apologetically. "I don't believe in nothing myself. But you know what women are!"
The minister sniffed, but did not deny the weakness of the sex.
"Betsy goes to some place or other every Sunday almost; sometimes she's there and back from a service before I'm up, and so long as the breakfast's ready I don't mind. I don't ask her no questions, and in return she don't bother about my soul – leastways, not for these ten years, ever since she's had kids to convert. We get along all right, the missus and me and the kids. Oh, but it's all come to an end now," he concluded, with a sob.
"Yes, but my good fellow," protested the minister, "I told you you were making a mistake. You know nothing about religion; but what your wife wants is some one to talk to her of Jesus, or to give her the Sacrament, or the Confession, or something, for I confess I'm not very clear about the forms of Christianity; and I haven't got any wafers or things of that sort. No, I couldn't do it, even if I had a mind to. It would ruin my position if it were known. But apart from that, I really can't do it. I wouldn't know what to say, and I couldn't bring my tongue to say it if I did."
"Oh, but you believe in something?" persisted the man piteously.
"H'm! Yes, I can't deny that," said the minister; "but it's not the same something that your wife believes in."
"You believe in a God, don't you?"
The minister felt a bit chagrined at being catechised in the elements of his religion.
"Of course!" he said fretfully.
"There! I knew it," cried the man in triumph. "None of us do in our shop; but, of course, clergymen are different. But if you believe in a God, that's enough, ain't it? You're both religious folk."
"No, it isn't enough – at least, not for your wife."
"Oh, well, you needn't let out, sir, need you? So long as you talk of God and keep clear of the Pope. I've heard her going on about a Scarlet Woman to the kids. (God bless their little hearts! I wonder what they'll do without her!) She'll never know, sir, and she'll die happy. I've done my duty. She whispered I wasn't to bring a Roman Catholic, poor thing. I fancy I heard her say once they're even worse than Jews. Oh, I don't mean that, sir. You're sure you're not a Roman Catholic?" he concluded anxiously.
"Quite sure."
"Well, sir, you'll keep the rest dark, won't you? There's no call to let out you don't believe the same other things as her."
"I shall tell no lie," said the minister firmly. "You have called me in to give consolation to your dying wife, and I shall do my duty as best I can. Is this the house?"
"Yes, sir – right at the top."
The minister conquered a last impulse of mistrust, and looked round cautiously to be sure he was unobserved. Charity was not a strong point with his flock, and certainly his proceedings were suspicious. Even if they learnt the truth, he was not at all sure they would not consider his praying with a dying Christian akin to blasphemy. On the whole he must be credited with some courage in mounting that black, ill-smelling, interminable staircase. He found himself in a gloomy garret at last, lighted by an oil-lamp. A haggard woman lay with shut eyes on an iron bed, her chilling hands clasping the hands of the "converted" kids, a boy of ten and a girl of seven, who stood blubbering in their night-attire. The doctor leaned against the head of the bed, the ungainly shadows of the group sprawling across the blank wall. He had done all he could – without hope of payment – to ease the poor woman's last moments. He was a big-brained, large-hearted Irishman, a Roman Catholic, who thought science and religion might be the best of friends. The husband looked at him in frantic interrogation.
"You are not too late," replied the doctor.
"Thank God!" said the atheist. "Betsy, old girl, here is the clergyman."
The cloud seemed to pass off the blind face, and a wave of wan sunlight to traverse it; slowly the eyes opened, the hands withdrew themselves from the children's grasp, and the palms met for prayer.
"Christ Jesus – " began the lips mechanically.
The minister was hot with confusion and a-quiver with emotion. He knew not what to say, as automatically he drew out a Hebrew prayer-book from his pocket and began reading the Deathbed Confession in the English version that appeared on the alternate pages.
"I acknowledge unto Thee, O Lord, my God, and the God of my fathers, that both my cure and my death are in Thy hands…" As he read, the dying lips moved, mumbling the words after him. How often had those white lips prayed that the stiff-necked Jews might find grace and be saved from damnation; how often had those poor, rough hands put pennies into conversionist collecting-boxes after toiling hard to scrape them together; so that only she might suffer by their diversion from the household treasury.
The prayer went on, the mournful monotone thrilling through the hot, dim, oil-reeking attic, and awing the weeping children into silence. The atheist stood by reverently, torn by conflicting emotions; glad the poor foolish creature had her wish, and on thorns lest she should live long enough to discover the deception. There was no room in his overcharged heart for personal grief just then. "Make known to me the path of life; in Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore." An ecstatic look overspread the plain, careworn face, she stretched out her arms as if to embrace some unseen vision.
"Yes, I am coming … Jesus," she murmured. Then her hands dropped heavily upon her breast; the face grew rigid, the eyes closed. Involuntarily the minister seized the hand nearest him. He felt it respond faintly to his clasp in unconsciousness of the pagan pollution of his touch. He read on, "Thou who art the Father of the fatherless and the Judge of the widow, protect my beloved kindred with whose soul my own is knit."
The lips still echoed him almost imperceptibly, the departing spirit lulled into peace by the prayer of the unbeliever. "Into Thy hand I commend my spirit. Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth. Amen and Amen."
And in that last Amen, with a final gleam of blessedness flitting across her sightless face, the poor Christian toiler breathed out her life of pain, holding the Jew's hand. There was a moment of solemn silence, the three men becoming as the little children in the presence of the eternal mystery.
It leaked out, as everything did in that gossipy town, and among that gossipy Jewish congregation. To the minister's relief, his flock took it better than he expected.
"What a blessed privilege for that heathen female!" was all their comment.
The Memory Clearing House
When I moved into better quarters on the strength of the success of my first novel, I little dreamt that I was about to be the innocent instrument of a new epoch in telepathy. My poor Geraldine – but I must be calm; it would be madness to let them suspect I am insane. No, these last words must be final. I cannot afford to have them discredited. I cannot afford any luxuries now.
Would to Heaven I had never written that first novel! Then I might still have been a poor, unhappy, struggling, realistic novelist; I might still have been residing at 109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras. But I do not blame Providence. I knew the book was conventional even before it succeeded. My only consolation is that Geraldine was part-author of my misfortunes, if not of my novel. She it was who urged me to abandon my high ideals, to marry her, and live happily ever afterwards. She said if I wrote only one bad book it would be enough to establish my reputation; that I could then command my own terms for the good ones. I fell in with her proposal, the banns were published, and we were bound together. I wrote a rose-tinted romance, which no circulating library could be without, instead of the veracious picture of life I longed to paint; and I moved from 109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras, to 22, Albert Flats, Victoria Square, Westminster.
A few days after we had sent out the cards, I met my friend O'Donovan, late member for Blackthorn. He was an Irishman by birth and profession, but the recent General Election had thrown him out of work. The promise of his boyhood and of his successful career at Trinity College was great, but in later years he began to manifest grave symptoms of genius. I have heard whispers that it was in the family, though he kept it from his wife. Possibly I ought not to have sent him a card and have taken the opportunity of dropping his acquaintance. But Geraldine argued that he was not dangerous, and that we ought to be kind to him just after he had come out of Parliament.
O'Donovan was in a rage.
"I never thought it of you!" he said angrily, when I asked him how he was. He had a good Irish accent, but he only used it when addressing his constituents.
"Never thought what?" I enquired in amazement.
"That you would treat your friends so shabbily."
"Wh-what, didn't you g-get a card?" I stammered. "I'm sure the wife – "
"Don't be a fool!" he interrupted. "Of course I got a card. That's what I complain of."
I stared at him blankly. The social experiences resulting from my marriage had convinced me that it was impossible to avoid giving offence. I had no reason to be surprised, but I was.
"What right have you to move and put all your friends to trouble?" he enquired savagely.
"I have put myself to trouble," I said, "but I fail to see how I have taxed your friendship."
"No, of course not," he growled. "I didn't expect you to see. You're just as inconsiderate as everybody else. Don't you think I had enough trouble to commit to memory '109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras,' without being unexpectedly set to study '21, Victoria Flats – ?'"
"22, Albert Flats," I interrupted mildly.
"There you are!" he snarled. "You see already how it harasses my poor brain. I shall never remember it."
"Oh yes, you will," I said deprecatingly. "It is much easier than the old address. Listen here! '22, Albert Flats, Victoria Square, Westminster.' 22 – a symmetrical number, the first double even number; the first is two, the second is two, too, and the whole is two, two, too – quite æsthetical, you know. Then all the rest is royal – Albert, Albert the Good, see. Victoria – the Queen. Westminster – Westminster Palace. And the other words – geometrical terms, Flat, Square. Why, there never was such an easy address since the days of Adam before he moved out of Eden," I concluded enthusiastically.
"It's easy enough for you, no doubt," he said, unappeased. "But do you think you're the only acquaintance who's not contented with his street and number? Bless my soul, with a large circle like mine, I find myself charged with a new schoolboy task twice a month. I shall have to migrate to a village where people have more stability of character. Heavens! Why have snails been privileged with a domiciliary constancy denied to human beings?"
"But you ought to be grateful," I urged feebly. "Think of 22, Albert Flats, Victoria Square, Westminster, and then think of what I might have moved to. If I have given you an imposition, at least admit it is a light one."
"It isn't so much the new address I complain of, it's the old. Just imagine what a weary grind it has been to master – '109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras.' For the last eighteen months I have been grappling with it, and now, just as I am letter perfect and postcard secure, behold all my labour destroyed, all my pains made ridiculous. It's the waste that vexes me. Here is a piece of information, slowly and laboriously acquired, yet absolutely useless. Nay, worse than useless; a positive hindrance. For I am just as slow at forgetting as at picking up. Whenever I want to think of your address, up it will spring, '109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras.' It cannot be scotched – it must lie there blocking up my brains, a heavy, uncouth mass, always ready to spring at the wrong moment; a possession of no value to anyone but the owner, and not the least use to him."
He paused, brooding on the thought in moody silence. Suddenly his face changed.
"But isn't it of value to anybody but the owner?" he exclaimed excitedly. "Are there not persons in the world who would jump at the chance of acquiring it? Don't stare at me as if I was a comet. Look here! Suppose some one had come to me eighteen months ago and said, 'Patrick, old man, I have a memory I don't want. It's 109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras! You're welcome to it, if it's any use to you.' Don't you think I would have fallen on that man's – or woman's – neck, and watered it with my tears? Just think what a saving of brain-force it would have been to me – how many petty vexations it would have spared me! See here, then! Is your last place let?"
"Yes," I said. "A Mr. Marrow has it now."
"Ha!" he said, with satisfaction. "Now there must be lots of Mr. Marrow's friends in the same predicament as I was – people whose brains are softening in the effort to accommodate '109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras.' Psychical science has made such great strides in this age that with a little ingenuity it should surely not be impossible to transfer the memory of it from my brain to theirs."
"But," I gasped, "even if it was possible, why should you give away what you don't want? That would be charity."
"You do not suspect me of that?" he cried reproachfully. "No, my ideas are not so primitive. For don't you see that there is a memory I want – '33, Royal Flats – '"
"22, Albert Flats," I murmured shame-facedly.
"22, Albert Flats," he repeated witheringly. "You see how badly I want it. Well, what I propose is to exchange my memory of '109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras'" (he always rolled it slowly on his tongue with morbid self-torture and almost intolerable reproachfulness), "for the memory of '22, Albert Square.'"
"But you forget," I said, though I lacked the courage to correct him again, "that the people who want '109, Little Turncot Street,' are not the people who possess '22, Albert Flats.'"
"Precisely; the principle of direct exchange is not feasible. What is wanted, therefore, is a Memory Clearing House. If I can only discover the process of thought-transference, I will establish one, so as to bring the right parties into communication. Everybody who has old memories to dispose of will send me in particulars. At the end of each week I will publish a catalogue of the memories in the market, and circulate it among my subscribers, who will pay, say, a guinea a year. When the subscriber reads his catalogue and lights upon any memory he would like to have, he will send me a postcard, and I will then bring him into communication with the proprietor, taking, of course, a commission upon the transaction. Doubtless, in time, there will be a supplementary catalogue devoted to 'Wants,' which may induce people to scour their brains for half-forgotten reminiscences, or persuade them to give up memories they would never have parted with otherwise. Well, my boy, what do you think of it?"
"It opens up endless perspectives," I said, half-dazed.
"It will be the greatest invention ever known!" he cried, inflaming himself more and more. "It will change human life, it will make a new epoch, it will effect a greater economy of human force than all the machines under the sun. Think of the saving of nerve-tissue, think of the prevention of brain-irritation. Why, we shall all live longer through it – centenarians will become as cheap as American millionaires."
Live longer through it! Alas, the mockery of the recollection! He left me, his face working wildly. For days the vision of it interrupted my own work. At last, I could bear the suspense no more and went to his house. I found him in ecstasies and his wife in tears. She was beginning to suspect the family skeleton.
"Eureka!" he was shouting. "Eureka!"
"What is the matter?" sobbed the poor woman. "Why don't you speak English? He has been going on like this for the last five minutes," she added, turning pitifully to me.
"Eureka!" shouted O'Donovan. "I must say it. No new invention is complete without it."
"Bah! I didn't think you were so conventional," I said contemptuously. "I suppose you have found out how to make the memory-transferring machine?"
"I have," he cried exultantly. "I shall christen it the noemagraph, or thought-writer. The impression is received on a sensitised plate which acts as a medium between the two minds. The brow of the purchaser is pressed against the plate, through which a current of electricity is then passed."
He rambled on about volts and dynamic psychometry and other hard words, which, though they break no bones, should be strictly confined in private dictionaries.
"I am awfully glad you came in," he said, resuming his mother tongue at last – "because if you won't charge me anything I will try the first experiment on you."
I consented reluctantly, and in two minutes he rushed about the room triumphantly shouting, "22, Albert Flats, Victoria Square, Westminster," till he was hoarse. But for his enthusiasm I should have suspected he had crammed up my address on the sly.
He started the Clearing House forthwith. It began humbly as an attic in the Strand. The first number of the catalogue was naturally meagre. He was good enough to put me on the free list, and I watched with interest the development of the enterprise. He had canvassed his acquaintances for subscribers, and begged everybody he met to send him particulars of their cast-off memories. When he could afford to advertise a little, his clientèle increased. There is always a public for anything bizarre, and a percentage of the population would send thirteen stamps for the Philosopher's Stone, post free. Of course, the rest of the population smiled at him for an ingenious quack.
The "Memories on Sale" catalogue grew thicker and thicker. The edition issued to the subscribers contained merely the items, but O'Donovan's copy comprised also the names and addresses of the vendors, and now and again he allowed me to have a peep at it in strict confidence. The inventor himself had not foreseen the extraordinary uses to which his noemagraph would be put, nor the extraordinary developments of his business. Here are some specimens culled at random from No. 13 of the Clearing House catalogue when O'Donovan still limited himself to facilitating the sale of superfluous memories: —
1. 25, Portsdown Avenue, Maida. Vale.
3. 13502, 17208 (banknote numbers).
12. History of England (a few Saxon kings missing), as successful in a recent examination by the College of Preceptors. Adapted to the requirements of candidates for the Oxford and Cambridge Local and the London Matriculation.
17. Paley's Evidences, together with a job lot of dogmatic theology (second-hand), a valuable collection by a clergyman recently ordained, who has no further use for them.
26. A dozen whist wrinkles, as used by a retiring speculator. Excessively cheap.
29. Mathematical formulæ (complete sets; all the latest novelties and improvements, including those for the higher plane curves, and a selection of the most useful logarithms), the property of a dying Senior Wrangler. Applications must be immediate, and no payment need be made to the heirs till the will has been proved.
35. Arguments in favour of Home Rule (warranted sound); proprietor, distinguished Gladstonian M.P., has made up his mind to part with them at a sacrifice. Eminently suitable for bye-elections. Principals only.
58. Witty wedding speech, as delivered amid great applause by a bridegroom. Also an assortment of toasts, jocose and serious, in good condition. Reduction on taking a quantity.
Politicians, clergymen, and ex-examinees soon became the chief customers. Graduates in arts and science hastened to discumber their memories of the useless load of learning which had outstayed its function of getting them on in the world. Thus not only did they make some extra money, but memories which would otherwise have rapidly faded were turned over to new minds to play a similarly beneficent part in aiding the careers of the owners. The fine image of Lucretius was realised, and the torch of learning was handed on from generation to generation. Had O'Donovan's business been as widely known as it deserved, the curse of cram would have gone to roost for ever, and a finer physical race of Englishmen would have been produced. In the hands of honest students the invention might have produced intellectual giants, for each scholar could have started where his predecessor left off, and added more to his wealth of lore, the moderns standing upon the shoulders of the ancients in a more literal sense than Bacon dreamed. The memory of Macaulay, which all Englishmen rightly reverence, might have been possessed by his schoolboy. As it was, omniscient idiots abounded, left colossally wise by their fathers, whose painfully acquired memories they inherited without the intelligence to utilise them.
