Philistia

x Schurz, the chief of the London Social

could stroll round, pipe in mouth, from their printing-houses, their ham-and-beef shops, or their naturalists' chambers, where they stuffed birds or set up exotic butterflies in little cabinets-for most of them were more or less literary or scientific in their pursuits; and his few English sympathisers, chiefly dissatisfied philosophical Radicals of the upper classes, could drop in

ere he carried on his trade of a microscope-lens grinder would not have sufficed to hold one-tenth of the eager half-washed crowd that pressed itself enthusiastically upon him every Sunday. But a large room on the ground floor of the tenement, opening towards the main street, was used during the week by one of his French refugee friends as a dancing-saloon; and in this room on every Sunday evening the uncrowned king of the proleta

mised to introduce Oswald to Max Schurz's reception; and it was now past eight o'clock, getting rather a late hour for those simple-minded, early-rising Communists. 'I'm afraid, Herbert,' said Ernest to his brother, 'he forgets that Max is a working-man who has

riate before he can set things fairly on the roll for better arrangement. The proletariate's all very well in its way, no doubt, but the unproductive happen to hol

not a conve

wait and watch the progress of the game, backing the winner for the time being at all the critical moments, and hedging if necessary wh

and thumb. 'Goodness gracious, Oswald!' Ernest exclaimed as his friend stepped in, 'why, you've actually come in evening dress! A white tie and all! What o

ruculent sans-culotte as that comes to. As it was an evening recept

ties themselves, to be sure; they mostly do their own washing, I believe, in their own basins.' ('And not much at that either,' put in Herbert, parenthetically.) 'But as to evening clothes, why, they'd as soon th

first time in the course of my existence of being aristocratic. It's quite worth while going t

d you a blue tie, which will at once transform your upper man entirely. But you show the cloven hoof below; the trousers will surely betray you. They're absolutely inadmissible under any circumstances whatsoev

omnibus conductor out for a holiday than a gentleman of the period in correct evening dress. 'Now mind,' Ernest said seriously, as he opened the door, 'whatever you do, Oswald, if you stew to death for it-and Schurz's rooms are often very close and hot, I can assure you-don't for heaven's sake go a

e. Tirard. Salon de Danse.' Ernest opened the door without ringing, and turned down the passage towards the salon. 'Remember,' he said, turning to Harry Oswald by way of a last warning, with his h

he fair sex. Not that they were intentionally rude or boorish; that they never were; except where an emperor or an aristocrat is concerned, there is no being on earth more courteous, kindly, and considerate for the feelings of others than your exiled Socialist. He has suffered much himself in his own time, and so miseris succurrere discit. Emperors he mentally classes with cobras, tarantulas, and scorpions, as outside the pale of humanitarian sympathies altogether; but, with this

, whom you know already, to see you, as well as another Oxford friend of mind, Mr. Harry Oswald, Fellow and Lecturer of O

n introduced to Max Schurz he might have felt a little abashed one minute at the old Socialist's royal disdain, but he could not have failed to say to himself as he looked at him from head to foot, 'Here, at least, is a true man.' So Harry Oswald felt, as the spare grey thinker took his hand in his, and grasped it firmly with a kindly p

must first secure the perfect undivided confidence of the brain-workers, the thinkers, and the writers. At present everything is against us; we are but a little leaven, trying vainly in our helpless fashion to leaven the whole lump. The capitalist journals carry off all the writing talent in the world; they are timid,

of your own people! When the cause of Jehovah seemed most hopeless, there were still seven thousand left

gone, so little, so very little done. It will come, it will come as surely as the next glacial period, but I shall not live to see it. I stand like Moses on Pisgah; I see the promised land before me; I look down upon the equally allotted vineyards, and the glebe flowing with milk and honey in the distance; but I sh

st, 'perhaps the greatest mathematician amo

n, ardent men, full of fire, full of enthusiasm, ready to do and dare anything-but they lack ballast. You can't take the kingdom of heaven by storm. The social revolution is not to be accomplished by violence, it is not even to be carried by the most vivid eloquence; the victory will be in the end to the clearest

learned much from it, and thought more. I won't say you have quite converted

t conclusions. It's intellectual dishonesty to do that. Wait till you have convinced yourself. Spell out your problems slowly; they are not easy ones; try to see how the present

est!' said Max Schurz, drawing himself up a little more stiffly; 'he has found the light already, I believe, but he neglec

on and hold the balance evenly, not to throw my own weight too lightly into either stale. The object

is philosophy of you

her name for a kind o

d man solemnly. 'It s

r heart, your he

at the board is too full of counters, and as each counter is not responsible for its own presence and position on the board, having been put there without previous consultation by the players, we must each do the best we can for ourselves in our own fashion. My sympathies, as you say, are on your side, but perhaps my interests lie the other way, and after all, till you start your millennium, we m

their Demases. The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches. He's bursar of his college, isn't he, Ernest? I thought so. "He had the bag, and

, reverentially, 'have kept you

g-bearded new-comer who advanced to meet him. 'Impossible!' he said quickly;

s?' asked Ernest

ed him with a marked

attempt on the life of A

o say so!' cried

he Russian, 'and it ha

the peculiar vocabulary of the Socialists, and not

ovitch,' answered the

' Oswald inqui

of tongues seemed to be treated as a small matter at Max Schurz's receptions, for everybody appeare

d down upon him commiseratingly. 'He is of the Few?' he asked of Ernest, that being

do not realise Siberia and Poland and the Third Section, and all the rest of it; they think only of Alexander as of the benevolent despot who freed the serf and befriended the Bulgarian. They never remember that they have all the freedom and privileges themselves which you poor Russians ask for in vain; they do not bear in mind that he has only to sign his name to a cons

uld forget your virtuous indignation against Nihilist assassins in the white heat of your anger against unendurable tyranny. You had a King C

peasant won over, every student enrolled, every mother engaged to feed her little ones on the gospel of Socialism together with her own milk, is worth a thousand times more to us and to the people than a dead Czar. If your friends had really blown him up, what then? You would have had another Czar, and another Third Section, and another reign of terror, and another raid and massacre; and we should have lost twenty

cal tribunals, ensnared by all the chicanery, and lying, and treachery, and ferreting of the false bureaucracy, with its spies, and its bloodhounds, and its knout-bearing police-agents; and then are we not to make war the only way we can-open war, mind you, with fai

our energies to the best possible advantage for the proletariate. What we have really got to do is to gain over every man, woman, and child of the working-classes individually, and to array on our side all the learning and intellect and economical science of the thinking classes individually; and then we can present such a grand united front to the banded monopolists that for very shame they will not dare to gainsay us. Indeed, if it comes to that, we can leave th

ainst our will and without our leave, to treat us as if we existed, body and soul, and wives and children, only as chattels for the greater glory of his own orthodox imperial majesty? If we may justly slay the highway robber who meets us, arms in hand, in the outskirts of the city, and demands of us our money or our life, may we not justly slay Alexander Nicolaiovitch, who comes to our homes in th

lf-undertone,' and it never struck me to think what they might

with all you hear, but at least you learn to see others as they see themselves; whereas if you mix a

t fancy that this Borodinsky, or whatever his name may be, has himself very likely helped in dynamite plots, or manufactured nitro-glycerine

burg office clique, and at the bottom of half the trouble in Poland for the last ten years or so. Grant even that Borodinsky is quite wrong in his way of dealing with noxious autocrats, and yet which do you think is the worst criminal of the tw

assably good Radical, but you're positivel

'and perhaps you'll begin to think a

he said; 'you know I always like to find out all about people's political antecedents; it helps one to fathom t

, I believe,' Ernest answered; 'and he himself is a good genera

tincts, but not wholly and entirely sound. A fibre wrong somewhere, socially speaking, a false note suspected in his ideas of life; too much acquiescence in the thing that is, and too little faith or enth

, 'and I believe the

tter you wi

hets?' asked Herbert Le Breton of Oswald as the

care for all of them-the Nihilists and Communards took my breath away at first; but

that

or wrong, but he's a perfectly splendid old fellow, as honest and transparent as the day's long. He believes in

e, his gospel's all true; but it doesn't matter a sou to you or me, for it will never come about in our time, no nor for

dship's the one thing in my life that has been really and truly worth living for. If a pessimist were to a

ou have your own trousers tonight, Oswald, or will you wear mine back to your lodgi

ink I'll go home as I am at present, and I'll recover the marks of the Beast aga

, each of them going his own