that you see no moral difference between the em-
ployment of a horse and a motor car would, at a 
time when your services were less necessary than 
at present, expose you to the gravest reprimand 
from the Censor of Plays, or possibly the London 
County Council, while I myself as a scientist 
should feel obliged to remind you that in the pre-
sent state of our knowledge we are not acquainted 
with any means by which the motor car is able to 
reproduce its species.  So he spoke, while I la-
boured at the foaming oyster-catcher before me.  I 
was now — it was the fifteenth day since the last 
relief party had fallen, for all England was now up 
in arms against what their freeborn spirit consid-
ered an unwarrantable and tyrannical demand on 
their manhood — it is a good thing, said George 
W.....m himself, to have a giant’s strength, but tyr-
annous to use it like a giant — while the sporting 
instinct of the race was equally aroused, and they 
were as one man (so the Pink ’Un voiced the gener-
ous feeling of the community) in their resolve “ to 
stand away, and let’s see the Frenchy have his 
whack out ” — I was now, in the words of the sweet 
singer of Israel, faint yet pursuing, (I was but a 
boy !) when a yell of rage, like that of a famished 
tiger, resounded through the palace.  Dashing 
aside all opposition, passive though it was, for the 
waiting-women could not get out of the way quickly 
enough, there rushed into the room a dark and 
gigantic mass of brawn.  I was torn, regardless of 
the ligature, from my unsavoury perch, flung, in 
spite of my tender years, to the floor, and with a 
roar like the crash of a universe in its death-pang, 
a vast and hairy gut-stick plunged into the yawn-
ing abyss which the lobster-pot of the gluttonous 
Guelph offered to its raging lust.  Instantly a volley 
of viscous baby-juice spurted from the loose cor-
ners of the now delighted whim-wham, and a yell 
of obscene bawdy-talk from the crapulous and 
[40]