Mr. Pennyfeather Indulges in Platitude

I

MR. PENNYFEATHER came into the club — hot, angry, breathing hard, visibly upset about something. He rang at once for beer, according to his custom, and when John the waiter brought it he downed it in two or three powerful gulps, before saying a word. I put his perturbation down to the warmth of the autumn’s first real Indiansummer day. Pennyfeather hates hot weather with a direct personal venom. . . . I was mistaken.

‘Damn all officialdom!’ he burst out, setting down his glass and wiping his moustache with a large linen pocket handkerchief. ‘And curse me for putting up with it. Do you know what’s the matter with this country?’ He glared at me.

‘Yes,’ I replied without hesitation, ‘it’s —’

‘You think you know, but you don’t,’ he retorted, ‘and I’ll tell you: we’re a nation of spineless, pap-fed, slack-bellied milksops. There’s not an ounce of honest vitriol left in our veins. We yield, we swoon, we fold up, we — ’

‘Better tell me what happened,’ I suggested, mildly.

‘I’ll tell you what happened!’ he shouted, pounding the table. ‘I’ll—’

‘And you might lower your voice. Old Mr. Blodgett’s asleep in the reading room.’

Pennyfeather swallowed hard, nodded, mopped his brow, and smiled — a little sheepishly, I was glad to see. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘What happened was I had a run-in with the law.’ His voice was normal again.

‘The law in what form?’ I asked.

‘In the form of a red-headed traffic cop,’ he grinned. ‘And if I had an ounce of gimp in me I’d see that he was suspended from the force.’

‘Tell me what happened,’ I patiently suggested again.

‘Oh, nothing unusual.’ He rang for more beer. ‘I was driving down the avenue on my way here, and this redheaded lad held me up at a side street to let the cross traffic by. After they had passed, he motioned me ahead; I started up — and out of the side street came another car, a long black limousine, going like the devil, trying to make the crossing. I saw him just in time and jammed on my brakes; he swerved and missed me by inches, ran up over the sidewalk, and crashed a fender into a hydrant. I pulled up to the curb beyond the crossing and waited, while the cop started over toward the other chap, who was backing away from the hydrant. Suddenly the cop stopped short, noticing, apparently, what I had already observed: an official emblem on the other car’s rear end, and a familiar official face looking out the rear window. I saw a warning hand raised; then the other car turned and dashed away, crumpled fender and all. The whole thing took only a few seconds. There were n’t many people about, and they had n’t time to do more than open and shut their mouths. Then the cop remembered me, and what did he do but come over and give me a bawling out — me, who had n’t done a thing but what he’d told me. He was frightened, of course, and so he lost his temper, and with it his head. I laughed at him — as ugly a laugh as I’ve ever given vent to. I said, “Do you know who was in that car? I do.” He said, “Never mind that car; it’s you I’m talking to,” and he shoved his ugly mug in through the window. But it was all bluff — he could n’t meet my eye; I laughed again, and told him he was as good as off the force right then. Then I drove away; and by the time I got here I had already carried the case to the Supreme Court, in my mind. I was mad, good and mad!

‘And now I’ve cooled off, and of course I won’t do a thing about it. No: I think of his family; I tell myself he was in a tough spot, and that he’s probably learned a lesson. But what I’m really doing is to evade my ordinary duty. It should n’t matter to me that nobody else would dream of going to so much trouble; but it should matter to me that on account of just such slackness we’ve lost the right to call ourselves free men.’ He broke three matches, one after the other, so savagely did he strike them, and swore each time, before he noticed that I was laughing at him. ‘All right,’ he grumbled, after his pipe finally drew. ‘I mean it, though.’

II

Such was the unpromising start which led Mr. Pennyfeather eventually to talk of politics — by way of a preliminary tirade on the obligations of citizenship, all of which he cynically dismissed. Anyone, he said, with a little pull and a little shrewdness can escape his obligations with ease: the obvious ones, such as bearing arms, paying taxes, performing jury duty, and so on, as well as the good citizen’s moral obligations to vote, help his neighbor, educate his children, keep out of debt. He expressed the opinion

— startling, to me — that such evasions may be considered the natural and inevitable outcome of the fiction of equality on which we are fed from infancy. ‘We’re no more born equal,’ he said, ‘than the trees in the forest are born equal. Human equality is merely a wish in lamb’s clothing; we learn how untrue it is by the time we’re old enough to cut up our own meat. Thereafter we make it our business to equalize things for ourselves, and the natural tools with which to do it — they are almost forced into our hands

— are drag, pull, the inside tip, the friend in court: all shabby expedients through which we do our best to overcome the handicaps we’re born with.’

The average man, Mr. Pennyfeather continued, believes that laws are framed in the expectation of being disregarded, and therefore holds the view that no one but a fool would obey them voluntarily. From this admirable point a short step carries him to his indifference to every kind of civic responsibility, said Pennyfeather with bitterness; and this brought him back to his original theme: the laziness of the average man in standing up for his rights.

‘A foot of snow falls during the night,’ he said by way of illustration, ‘impartially covering the sidewalks of Neighbors Just and Unjust. (In the South it would be a foot of orange blossoms; but the principle’s the same.) By nine o’clock, Just’s pavement has been shoveled off, and he stands at his front window and observes the bumpy little path already trodden through the untouched drifts in front of Neighbor Unjust’s house. He sees, perhaps, an aged charlady hobbling painfully over the treacherous footing, and an officebound stenographer uttering naughty words as she feels the loose snow tumbling into her overshoes. He knows that neither of them could afford the expense of court action against Unjust unless they had something tangible, like a broken hip, to show the jury. And he knows that neither they nor any other casual pedestrian would dream of marching up to Unjust’s front door, ringing his bell, and saying, “Damn your eyes, get a shovel and clear that snow before I have the law on you!”

‘That’s one thing about the British: they don’t stand for any nonsense from the government. They know their rights, and take the trouble to get them. Old purple-nosed General Diehard, encastled in his house and sallying forth only to post indignant letters to The Times, may be a figure of fun; but he also personifies the kind of civic vigilance which has kept the average Briton a relatively free man. If we had done as well during the last hundred years we might not be in our present fix. Now it is almost too late. We’ve lost the will. We’ve gone flabby. We not only refuse to take the trouble to fight for our rights: when we’re tagged for some innocent or deliberate violation of the law, we run to our nearest political friend and get it fixed.

‘Fixed! We’re a nation of fixers. Why? Because it works. We both know plenty of otherwise decent people who think it the most natural procedure in the world. We have the office boy fix the policeman who might tag our parked car; we slip the usher half a dollar to get us in by the side door, ahead of the crowd; we think nothing of calling up an acquaintance in the district attorney’s office to pull us out of a speeding jam; we have a friend who knows the city editor who can kill a story that might look bad to the stockholders; if we happen to be a contractor, we see nothing wrong in giving the city building inspector — just because we love him, of course — a substantial Christmas present. The gentleman who asks his roughneck but influential business acquaintance home to dinner; the canny schoolboy inviting his football coach to Florida for the vacation; flowers to teacher; a cigar to the janitor; even — too often — a necklace to the wife, are all examples of fixing, either before or after the event. Fixing is such standard practice we don’t even know we’re doing it, half the time, much less feel mean about it.

‘Most cases of fixing don’t do much actual harm to anyone else. Nevertheless, each time a man takes the easy short cut he’s guilty of a crime against his own integrity; he issues one more invitation to tyranny to come in and take over. And if we wake up some day to find the Fylfot or the Bloody Shirt —’

‘What’s a fylfot?’ I interrupted. Pennyfeather has a weakness for casually throwing in strange words. I never let him get away with it.

‘Look it up — stop interrupting!’ he exclaimed impatiently.

‘Stop showing off, then,’I retorted.

‘All right, all right: it’s the Swastika. If we wake up some morning and find the Swastika floating over the State House dome, we ’ll have only ourselves to blame.’

‘There’s nothing to be said for fixing, certainly,’ I agreed. ‘But consider the alternative: if you or I as individuals try to buck that slippery, interwoven mass of entrenched political interest which governs us, we’re licked before we start. We’re practically driven to the personal appeal, whether it’s a question of getting out of a jam or of getting common justice. Besides, it’s bad for business to keep stirring things up. Everyone says so.’

III

‘Ah!’ said Mr. Pennyfeather with satisfaction. ‘Business! I’m glad you mentioned it. Look here! I’m supposed to be a liberal. A liberal has been defined as a person who wants freedom above all things, freedom from government interference as well as from domination by the more powerful elements in our commercial civilization. His idea of utopia is a balance of power between these and other forces which will leave him free to manage his own life in his own way — freedom as an end in itself. And what can he do? Damn little — except write books and articles that nobody reads but other liberals. He can hope, and he can kick like the devil when he himself feels the finger, and he can Hatter himself that his vote is used intelligently. But it’s so easy to lose the will to kick; it seems so hopeless. A small example: at the time of the last census, you remember, the canvassers were instructed to ask every householder whether he owned a radio. I refused to answer. I treated the poor devil of a census taker to a magnificent oration on the rights of the individual and the limits of state authority. I told him to bring on his machine guns — my house was my castle, and whether it sported a radio or not was none of the government’s business. He said, “O.K., Jack,” or words to that effect, and wrote down radio or no radio, I don’t know which. (Naturally, he could n’t be bothered about doing his duty.) ’

‘And what’s going to liberate the liberal at last?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. Nobody knows. Nobody can see ahead. If the liberal ever gets what he wants — and it looks doubtful now — it won’t be due to his own efforts. Perhaps he might get it as the result of the slow subterranean growth of public opinion. It is even more likely, however, that he will never be in a position to control his own destiny, much less the world’s. The liberal is a dissenter. Dissenters make rotten demagogues; people prefer affirmers. At present liberalism is as outworn, as old-fashioned, as free trade, disarmament, mutual trust among nations, and other comforting illusions of the recent past. But that the liberal will ever be permanently extinguished is doubtful — certainly he will survive the much advertised conflict between the forces that we vaguely call communism and fascism, with their deafening but still dubious cries of alarm. No, the immediate danger to this country is less the triumph of extreme Right or extreme Left than the process of slow strangulation by political bureaucracy: job holders, spawn of bureaus, entrenched political and semicommercial interests fighting to keep their feet in the trough. (France knows what that’s like!)

‘The voice of the liberal goes unnoticed in the present din. The probability is that it will go unheard for a good many decades or even centuries. Or, say, till we have learned all over again that there are gods more appealing, or more potent, than the God of Business: Business enthroned, with Publicity sitting at his right hand, and at his left a blowzy blonde holding a sheaf of stock certificates, and Mars grinning in the background. You might say we have no other gods at present. You can’t name a sacrifice which business does n’t demand, and get. Take another small example: —

‘The streets are supposed to be for the public use. Actually, they’re for the use of the people who get downtown first in the morning and hog a piece of pavement till evening. Elaborate tagging systems — frankly described as non-fixable, though you’d think we’d blush for shame at the admission — have been tried and failed. Why? Because we’re not law-abiding unless it is to our interest to be; because we know we can fix it, somehow, if we get caught; because the penalties are n’t severe enough; but chiefly because of the timidity of the very merchants whose shops line the streets where the cars are parked. They know as well as anyone else that the nuisance could be dealt with in no time if adequate penalties were imposed. But we don’t want adequate penalties, they don’t want them, nobody wants them — except the public. Why, again? It’s bad for business. Business is such a tender, fragile little flower that the least disturbance is supposed to be fatal to it. It’s inaccurate to say we ’re ruled by big business. We’re not! We’re ruled by business itself, because deep in our hearts we believe that buying and selling is the most important thing in the world, more important than the family, or the law, or honest government, or international peace.

‘Talk to any motorcycle cop out on the state roads. They’ll all tell you they could stop speeding in a month if they had a free hand. But they get no backing. The townspeople don’t want their particular communities to get a bad name for strict enforcement. Steady pressure is brought to bear on the police to go easy. A town can’t splash welcome signs all over its approaches with one hand, so to speak, and pinch all the visitors with the other: it might get a bad name. J. Edgar Hoover — G-man Hoover — has repeatedly said that the two greatest obstacles to the efficient administration of his department were, first, the crooked political machines in every community in the country, and second, but more serious, the unwillingness of local business men to cooperate in any scheme of reform that might unsettle the blessed status quo. We are interested in good government only so long as it does n’t interfere with business.

IV

‘I spoke of politics. Sooner or later we all reach the age at which, on hearing the phrase “schoolboy honor,” we smile uncomfortably — secretly wishing that we might still be governed by its strict and merciless code. We can’t be, of course. Self-interest inevitably replaces esprit de corps. Little by little we forget the rules for “playing the game ” — and take to solitaire, with the deuces wild for choice. We see the race going to the smart, forget the unwritten code that controlled our schoolboy relationships, and fall happily back on the shibboleths we were taught by those in authority: The Battle of Life; Success; Ambition.

‘The schoolboy code overlooks a good many crimes, provided they are committed only against authority. But there are types of sinners who are never forgiven, and of these the sneak, the telltale, the teacher’s pet, — in fact, all those who try to keep a foothold in both camps, — are the blackest. What name has the schoolboy picked out for these untouchables? You know: he calls them politicians. Most other hard names are forgivable. But for one boy to call another a politician, with or without qualifying adjectives, is an insult that can only bo washed out in blood. Boys are never deceived in their slowly formed, instinctive estimates of character. If a boy gets a reputation as a politician, you may be sure he deserves it. Quaint, is n’t it, that the very qualities which boys find intolerable should be rewarded in later life by election to positions of honor and trust. It is no coincidence that boys should look to politics for the word to describe everything they find most loathsome in human conduct.

‘A well-established item of the American credo holds that if a man is n’t frankly in politics for what he can get out of it, at least he is governed in his official capacity by a very different set of principles from those which control his own private dealings. The credo includes another paragraph stating that the best men of a party, the men of real integrity, simply have n’t a chance of reaching office except by luck. The stroke of luck may take the form of an emergency in which the candidate has the opportunity to shine; Calvin Coolidge’s action at the time of the Boston police strike is an example. (Whether or not he deserved the credit does n’t matter; he got the credit, and with it the vice presidential nomination.) Or he may inherit office through the death of the man ahead of him, as T. R. did; or he may be the beneficiary of a compromise between two irreconcilable elements of his party, or of a third-party movement, like Woodrow Wilson. Each of these men doubtless had distinguished qualities of his own. But only luck enabled them to use their talents in the White House.

‘For the ordinary unlucky candidate, the pattern of political necessity almost requires the practice of the slippery arts for reaching and holding office. He must do whatever “the best interests of the party” demand — not the city, or the state, or the country. Oh, no; the Party. And the Party has a way of demanding some pretty unpleasant things, always in the high name of political expediency. Recent American history is crowded with the names of men who have “gone into politics” full of honor, — men of education, background, culture; one thinks offhand of Lodge, Blaine, Penrose, Theodore Roosevelt, Mellon, — and come out of it, well, in slightly different form, to put it politely. Even if they start with a working sense of integrity, with high principles, with a determination to remain honest at least with themselves, they rarely find it possible to stick to their guns, and more rarely still will their parties stand behind them.

‘Even the slightly ludicrous figure called the “gentleman in politics,” from whose sense of noblesse oblige so much is always hoped, has soon enough to choose whether he wants to remain an honest man or become a successful politician. Some, to their great credit, remain honest men, and you and I can name them. But for most the system is just too strong; and it is n’t very long before noblesse oblige — if they remember its meaning at all — is just the name of a cocktail. Or maybe a perfume.

‘In almost any state primary campaign, for instance, you ’re sure to find at least one respectable candidate trying for the nomination against one or more regular streamlined politicians. He may be personally popular, a born leader, and distinguished in ability, humanity, character, and intellect. Well, a man like that is handicapped by his very virtues, and for an excellent reason: his party can never count on him to play ball with the boys after election.

‘You remember the old story — I think it was Mark Twain’s — of the reform candidate for Congress (he was new at the game) who said he did n’t mind being called liar, thief, drunkard, but when his opponent hired a flock of pickaninnies to sit near the platform he was speaking from and call him “Daddy” he was done. There’s nothing new about the whispering campaign. Anything goes, including the newspapers’ self-righteous “denials” of the whispered scandals. It’s all part of the time-honored tactics of the “regulars” to discredit the character of a man who can’t be counted on to be perfectly docile after election.

‘If this same ideal candidate were willing to favor all the shoddy measures backed by his party, and promise the boys all the sugar they could eat, — the two chief constituents of “regularity,” — he’d win in a walk. But by so doing he’d destroy the foundation of his reputation, and with it his real usefulness. The Teachers’ Oath Bill here in Massachusetts — one of the most tragically stupid and dangerous measures, in its implications, ever to be presented to the legislature of any state — was supported by certain gentlemen who ought to have been thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Did their party scold them? Did their newspapers withdraw their support? They did not! Their friends said, “Oh, it’s just politics.” All right! You and I know another name for it. And so the potential statesmen go out, and the hacks go in.

‘We have learned to take “playing politics” for granted. It’s time we learned better. We won’t learn better, of course, until we have found out all over again, from bitter and damned unpleasant experience, what the price of liberty is.’

V

Mr. Pennyfeather paused to get his breath.

‘Have you seen any good plays lately?’ I inquired, a little maliciously, I’m afraid.

‘Plays? No. Of course not. Plays? Why?’ He sounded testy.

‘I thought you were getting a little hoarse.’ I leaned over to look into his glass, and tilted my own suggestively.

‘Don’t interrupt me. Ring the bell. Cocktails. I’m hoarse, yes; naturally,’ I rang the bell. John came, and quietly did his duty.

‘ My ears —’ I began, and paused.

‘Well?’

‘ — are getting a little numb. Holding them in one position too long. I thought the theatre for a change —’

‘Damn your ears!’ he replied. ‘Shut up, now. I’m just getting to the best part.’ He gazed into the clear yellow liquid in his glass, looking there, it seemed, for his train of thought, and failing to find it. ‘Where was I?’ he presently demanded.

‘The word that still rings in my ears,’ I answered, ‘is “liberty.”’

‘Of course — liberty. And the ballot. The ballot! Ha! Historic symbol of individual dignity and independence! Where is its old prestige? Gone! It’s dirty behind the ears, that’s what the ballot is. The founding fathers held the suffrage to be a privilege, if I’m not mistaken, which the voter might use after intelligent reflection on the state of the young Republic. (And this is still the theory.) A good many different factors have helped the ballot to “stain its name,” as the old cockney song has it. I think one of the chief reasons is that party allegiance has deteriorated into a debased kind of attachment which the politicians call party loyalty. I use allegiance in the sense of a practical devotion to party interest — that is, self-interest; and loyalty as a devotion of faith. This loyalty has of course been encouraged by the politicians (and by the press, too, as the greatest sure-fire circulation builder ever devised) in every community.

‘That is an additional reason for questioning the intelligence of the average vote to-day: the independent local newspaper, founded on the convictions of a man or group of men, has pretty well disappeared. Most newspapers actually deplore the independent vote. Like the politicians, they want blind partisanship — or loyalty, as they prefer to call it. They know that once a man has declared himself he is half won over. A question commonly put by an attorney to a prospective juror is whether he has talked about the case before coming into court, the reason being that if a man has discussed it with his friends he is pretty sure to have expressed an opinion, and, having done so, he finds it just so much more difficult to listen to the evidence impartially and change his mind according to its weight. A man hates the taste of his words when he is forced to swallow them. The same is true of the prospective voter. He is urged to join a party to make him declare himself and thus force him out of the ranks of the independents. Partisanship, a blind vote for our side to win: that’s what the boys want.

‘It is a fact that the independent vote comes close to being the only intelligent vote left to-day. It usually holds the balance of power in a national election, and it is notoriously (and blessedly) hard to count on. More often than not it is an angry vote, a vote of disillusionment, a vote against rather than for men or measures; a registration of hopeless disgust. My great-uncle Willoughby used to tell me that I’d get along all right if I read my Bible and voted the straight Republican ticket. (If we’d been Southerners, he’d have said the straight Democratic ticket; but no matter.) That point of view has n’t disappeared. His grandson, my second cousin, told me the other day — right here in this club — that he thought communism “in very poor taste.” (So are earthquakes, I told him.) Of course, after listening to him, my first impulse was to rush out to the Common and find the nearest communist and implore him to accept my vote. And vice versa: five minutes of the communist would have sent me flying, in silk hat and tails, to pray over the tomb of the late honored Warren Gamaliel Harding. As a matter of fact, I believe that since I’ve been old enough to think for myself — and that phenomenon occurred some years after I’d reached voting age (the age of dissent, you might call it; ha!) — I’ve consistently voted against rather than for a given candidate. And I shall probably retain the deplorable habit forever. Of course I’ve never gone in for politics —’

‘Why not?’ I interrupted.

‘I have n’t the qualifications.’

‘You’ve got the first one, anyway.’

‘Such as?’

‘A loud voice,’ I replied truthfully.

‘Yes,’ he agreed, after a pensive moment, ‘a loud voice takes one a long way. But I’ve never wanted to lose my independent vote. I’d have to join a party. They take turns making asses of themselves and monkeys of the people. I’d have to jump from party to party as soon as it got licked, to be sure of belonging to the intelligent opposition, as the outs call themselves. Then where should I be?’

‘Well, you’d be out, too. That’s what you want, is n’t it?’

‘I do now. But if I once got elected to anything I’d surely want to stay elected. That’s the way the germ works.’

‘Everyone says you’re just the type needed in politics: upright, intelligent, et cetera, et cetera — you know.’

‘ I know. My great-uncle Willoughby came across the dogcatcher, one day long ago, maltreating a little cur he’d just captured. He remonstrated. The dogcatcher told him where he could go. Great-uncle said he’d report him, and the threat had a remarkable effect on the dogcatcher’s vocabulary. Greatuncle did report him, in person, at City Hall, and the city father in charge of such matters disarmed him completely by saying, “Sure, now, don’t be severe on the poor man; he does the best he can. You know, it’s a queer thing how hard it is to get real gentlemen for the job — men like yourself, sir.”

VI

‘Great-uncle Willoughby used to say that political reform was a simple matter: it was just a question of the reformers learning to look after the poor as efficiently as the political machines do. There’s no earthly use in people like you and me going into politics unless we’re prepared to leave our front doors unlatched twenty-four hours a day. And even that would be no answer. In fact, there is no single answer, no easy way to decent government. We must simply go on learning by experience, through generation after generation of trial and error (the only way men ever learn anything), that it is better to be free than slaves, and that the only way to avoid slavery is by fighting like hell all day long. You’ve read Rats, Lice and History, by Hans Zinsser, of course?’

‘Of course. I gave it to you, in fact.’

‘So you did. Then you remember his comparison of rats and men. The earth’s most successful animals of prey, he calls them: utterly destructive, and, while alive, of no value to any other species of living thing, they alone take everything that nature offers, and give nothing useful in return, except their dead bodies. Ferocious brutes! But the rat has an excuse for his ferocity: he has n’t developed a soul; he is guided by pure instinct. Men ought to know better, by this time. Yet, says Zinsser, there is hope for the human race. The brief span of recorded history has already demonstrated the evolutionary possibilities of the human spirit in throwing off, in a mere two thousand years, — a negligible period in terms of evolutionary change, — a few men and women of genius. Among others he mentions Shakespeare, Pascal, Newton, Copernicus, I think, and Galileo; and among the moderns, Goethe, Bach, Beethoven. (Why not Pasteur, I wonder?) The race has not only produced these and other superior men, but, a still more hopeful sign, it has somehow managed to breed in every generation a certain number of individuals sufficiently superior to the brutal masses to keep alive a reverence for supreme achievements, and make them a cumulative heritage. And humanity’s sole chance of outdistancing the rat, he suggests, lies in the possibility of an increased velocity of this progressive accumulation with the passage of time. In another hundred thousand years — so he hopefully ends this particular chapter — “the comparison of the race of men with that of rats may be less humiliatingly obvious.”

‘So with politics. The impulse for better things must inevitably come from superior individuals, whence every impulse for good has always come: the individual willing to keep plugging without losing hope or the determination that he himself will never give up. Most of us are n’t equipped to do more than watch our own steps, much less try to guide other people; and we can’t even do that successfully unless we’re let alone — unless we are free men, in other words. That is why liberty is important, and why extreme forms of government which nations fly to in emergencies can never be more than temporary expedients — useful though they may be in crises of hopelessness and fear. But they can’t last, because they usurp for purposes of state that which belongs to man because he is human: the exercise of his free will. Of course, humanity is busily proving, over and over again, that it is n’t yet ready for the exercise of individual free will in the ultimate sense. But if the idea of progress has any meaning whatever, it must mean a groping toward this ideal in the administration of human affairs.‘

VII

I think it was somewhere about this point in his discourse that Mr. Pennyfeather caught my hand moving toward my mouth. He pointed a finger. ‘You’re yawning,’ he accused.

‘That’s because you’re talking platitudes,’ I retorted, getting in a good one. ‘They always make me sleepy.’

‘Well,’ he replied, ‘it’s clear you’re not one of Hans Zinsser’s superior beings, or you could n’t get enough of it. You’re no better than a rat; probably Mus decumanus, the brown rat, worst of the lot! And as for platitudes, did you ever think of the impossibility of discussing politics in any other terms? It’s a dull subject at best; there’s nothing new to be said about it, and if there were it would still have to be expressed in the ghastly jargon of politics or nobody would understand it. The best anyone can do is to translate his platitudes into epigrams, — and what is an epigram? I pause for a reply.’ He smiled, smugly.

‘An epigram,’ I said quickly, but not quickly enough, ‘ is a —’

‘An epigram,’ he interrupted, ‘as you may have been about to remark, though I doubt it, is a platitude with tartare sauce. Exactly! But the sauce only disguises the taste, it does n’t change the dish. The dull flavor of fish still lurks underneath.’

‘But that doesn’t make the sauce less desirable,’ I objected.

‘No; but there’s no nourishment in it. Political talk is meant to be nourishing, not appetizing.’

‘True,’ I agreed.

‘And that reminds me,’ said Mr. Pennyfeather, getting up from the table and looking at his watch. And we went in to dinner, which, I was glad to see, Pennyfeather ate with his usual gusto.