passed, proceeding on their way when the interest flagged, as is usual to such open-air assemblies.  I followed two of those who pushed their way to within a short distance of the stage, and who were strong, big men, more fitted to elbow the crowd aside than I, after my rough treatment in the first place, and the agitation I had passed through, could be.  I was glad, besides, to take advantage of the explanation which one was giving to the other.  ‘It’s always fun to see this fellow demonstrate,’ he said, ’and the subject to-day’s a capital one.  Let’s get well forward, and see all that’s going on.’

‘Which subject do you mean?’ said the other; ‘the theme or the example?’ And they both laughed, though I did not seize the point of the wit.

‘Well, both,’ said the first speaker.  ’The theme is nerves; and as a lesson in construction and the calculation of possibilities, it’s fine.  He’s very clever at that.  He shows how they are all strung to give as much pain and do as much harm as can be; and yet how well it’s all managed, don’t you know, to look the reverse.  As for the example, he’s a capital one—­all nerves together, lying, if you like, just on the surface, ready for the knife.’

‘If they’re on the surface I can’t see where the fun is,’ said the other.

’Metaphorically speaking.  Of course they are just where other people’s nerves are; but he’s what you call a highly organized nervous specimen.  There will be plenty of fun.  Hush! he is just going to begin.’

‘The arrangement of these threads of being,’ said the lecturer, evidently resuming after a pause, ’so as to convey to the brain the most instantaneous messages of pain or pleasure, is wonderfully skilful and clever.  I need not say to the audience before me, enlightened as it is by experiences of the most striking kind, that the messages are less of pleasure than of pain.  They report to the brain the stroke of injury far more often than the thrill of pleasure; though sometimes that too, no doubt, or life could scarcely be maintained.  The powers that be have found it necessary to mingle a little sweet of pleasurable sensation, else our miserable race would certainly have found some means of procuring annihilation.  I do not for a moment pretend to say that the pleasure is sufficient to offer a just counterbalance to the other.  None of my hearers will, I hope, accuse me of inconsistency.  I am ready to allow that in a previous condition I asserted somewhat strongly that this was the case; but experience has enlightened us on that point.  Our circumstances are now understood by us all in a manner impossible while we were still in a condition of incompleteness.  We are all convinced that there is no compensation.  The pride of the position, of bearing everything rather than give in, or making a submission we do not feel, of preserving our own will and individuality to all eternity, is the only compensation.  I am satisfied with it, for my part.’