“Be careful, sir!  I can’t drive with one eye.”

“How can they, indeed?” went on Mr. Lavender; “they are like athletes, ever in training for their unending conflict with the national life.”

“Well,” answered Joe indulgently, “they ’as their own kind of intoxication, too—­that’s true; and the fumes is permanent; they’re gassed all the time, and chloroformed the rest.

“I don’t know to what you allude, Joe,” said Mr. Lavender severely.

“’Aven’t you never noticed, sir, that there’s two worlds—­the world as it is, and the world as it seems to the public man?”

“That may be,” said Mr. Lavender with some excitement.  “But which is the greater, which is the nobler, Joe?  And what does the other matter?  Surely that which flourishes in great minds, and by their utterances is made plain.  Is it not better to live in a world where nobody shrinks from being starved or killed so long as they can die for their kings and countries, rather than in a world where people merely wish to live?”

“Ah!” said Joe, “we’re all ready to die for our countries if we’ve got to.  But we don’t look on it, like the public speakers, as a picnic.  They’re a bit too light-’earted.”

“Joe,” said Mr. Lavender, covering his ears, and instantly uncovering them again, “this is the most horrible blasphemy I have ever listened to.”

“I can do better than that, sir,” answered Joe.  “Shall I get on with it?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Lavender, clenching his hands, “a public man shrinks from nothing—­not even from the gibes of his enemies.”

“Well, wot abaht it, sir?  Look at the things they say, and at what really is.  Mind you, I’m not speakin’ particular of the public men in this country—­or any other country; I’m speakin’ of the lot of ’em in every country.  They’re a sort of secret society, brought up on gas.  And every now and then someone sets a match to it, and we get it in the neck.  Look ‘ere, sir.  Dahn squats one on his backside an’ writes something in ’igh words.  Up pops another and says something in ‘igher; an’ so they go on poppin’ up an’ squattin’ dahn till you get an atmosphere where you can’t breathe; and all the time all we want is to be let alone, and ’uman kindness do the rest.  All these fellers ’ave got two weaknesses—­one’s ideas, and the other’s their own importance.  They’ve got to be conspicuous, and without ideas they can’t, so it’s a vicious circle.  When I see a man bein’ conspicuous, I says to meself:  ’Gawd ’elp us, we shall want it!’ And sooner or later we always do.  I’ll tell you what’s the curse of the world, sir; it’s the gift of expressin’ what ain’t your real feeling.  And—­Lord! what a lot of us ’ave got it!”