“One can talk for the sake of thinking also,” reminded her the Minor Poet.  “The argument is one that has to be faced.  But admitting that Art has been of service to mankind on the whole, that it possesses one-tenth of the soul-forming properties claimed for it in the advertisement—­which I take to be a generous estimate—­its effect upon the world at large still remains infinitesimal.”

“It works down,” maintained the Girton Girl.  “From the few it spreads to the many.”

“The process appears to be somewhat slow,” answered the Minor Poet.  “The result, for whatever it may be worth, we might have obtained sooner by doing away with the middleman.”

“What middleman?” demanded the Girton Girl.

“The artist,” explained the Minor Poet; “the man who has turned the whole thing into a business, the shopman who sells emotions over the counter.  A Corot, a Turner is, after all, but a poor apology compared with a walk in spring through the Black Forest or the view from Hampstead Heath on a November afternoon.  Had we been less occupied acquiring ‘the advantages of civilisation,’ working upward through the weary centuries to the city slum, the corrugated-iron-roofed farm, we might have found time to learn to love the beauty of the world.  As it is, we have been so busy ‘civilising’ ourselves that we have forgotten to live.  We are like an old lady I once shared a carriage with across the Simplon Pass.”

“By the way,” I remarked, “one is going to be saved all that bother in the future.  They have nearly completed the new railway line.  One will be able to go from Domo d’Orsola to Brieg in a little over the two hours.  They tell me the tunnelling is wonderful.”

“It will be very charming,” sighed the Minor Poet.  “I am looking forward to a future when, thanks to ‘civilisation,’ travel will be done away with altogether.  We shall be sewn up in a sack and shot there.  At the time I speak of we still had to be content with the road winding through some of the most magnificent scenery in Switzerland.  I rather enjoyed the drive myself, but my companion was quite unable to appreciate it.  Not because she did not care for scenery.  As she explained to me, she was passionately fond of it.  But her luggage claimed all her attention.  There were seventeen pieces of it altogether, and every time the ancient vehicle lurched or swayed, which on an average was once every thirty seconds, she was in terror lest one or more of them should be jerked out.  Half her day was taken up in counting them and re-arranging them, and the only view in which she was interested was the cloud of dust behind us.  One bonnet-box did contrive during the course of the journey to make its escape, after which she sat with her arms round as many of the remaining sixteen articles as she could encompass, and sighed.”