In the big, desolate, darkened heart of a nation he had wedged in a God.

* * * * *

I wonder if General Booth-Tucker—­that is, the original, very small edition of General Booth-Tucker—­had been in that memorable crowd, that memorable day in the Strand when nobody (with a report that was heard around the world) stole a penny—­I wonder if General Booth-Tucker would have been A Very Good Little Boy.

One of the pennies might have been missing.

I have no prejudice against the Very Good Little Boy.  It is not his goodness that is what is the matter with him.  But I am very much afraid that if there were any way of getting all the facts, it would not be hard to prove categorically that what has been holding the world back the last twenty-five years in its religious ideals, its business ethics, its liberty, candour, its courage, and its skill in social engineering, is the Very Good Little Boy.  He may be comparatively harmless at first and before his moustache is grown, but the moment he becomes a grown-up or the moment he sits on committees with his quiet, careful, snug, proper fear of experiment, of bold initiative, his disease of never running a risk, his moral anaemia, he blocks all progress in churches, in legislatures, in directors’ meetings, in trades unions, in slums and May-fairs.  One sees The Good Little Boys weighing down everything the moment they are grown up.

They have all been brought up each with his one faint, polite little hunger, his one ambition, his one pale downy desire in life, looking forward day by day, year by year, to the fine frenzy, to the fierce joy of Never Making a Mistake.

If I had been given the appointment and were about to set to work to-morrow morning to make a new world, I would begin by getting together all the people in this one that I knew, or had noticed anywhere, who seemed to have in them the spirit of experiment.  Any boy or girl or man or woman that I had seen having the curiosity to try the different kinds and different sizes of right and wrong, or that I had seen boldly and faithfully experimenting with the beautiful and the ugly so that they really knew about them for themselves—­would be let in.  I would put these people for a time in a place by themselves where the people who want to keep them from trying or learning, could not get at them.

Then I would let them try.

I would put the humdrum people in another place by themselves and let them humdrum, the respectable people by themselves and let them respectabilize.

Then after my try-world had tried, and got well started and the people in it had finished off some things and knew what they wanted, I would allow the humdrums and the respectabilities to be let in—­to do what they were told.

Doing what they are told is what they like.  So they would be happy.

Of course doing what they are told is what is the matter with them.  But what is the matter with them would be useful.