often watched a ploughman, with two horses harnessed to the plough, doing his best to get it forwards; while the opposition-ploughman, with three donkeys harnessed at the other end, was doing his best to get it backwards! And the plough never moving an inch, either way!'

`But we never did anything like that!' I exclaimed.

`Simply because you were less logical than we were,' replied Mein Herr. `There is sometimes an advantage in being a donk--Excuse me! No personal allusion intended. All this happened long ago, you know!'

`Did the Dichotomy-Principle succeed in any direction?' I enquired.

`In none,' Mein Herr candidly confessed. `It had a very short trial in Commerce. The shop-keepers wouldn't take it up, after once trying the plan of having half the attendants busy in folding up and carrying away the goods which the other half were trying to spread out upon the counters. They said the Public didn't like it!'

`I don't wonder at it,' I remarked.

`Well, we tried "the British Principle" for some years. And the end of it all was--' His voice suddenly dropped, almost to a whisper; and large tears began to roll down his cheeks. `--the end was that we got involved in a war; and there was a great battle, in which we far out-numbered the enemy. But what could one expect, when only half of our soldiers were fighting, and the other half pulling them back? It ended in a crushing defeat--an utter rout. This caused a Revolution; and most of the Government were banished. I myself was accused of Treason, for having so strongly advocated "the British Principle". My property was all forfeited, and--and--I was driven into exile! "Now the mischief's done," they said, "perhaps you'll kindly leave the country?" It nearly broke my heart, but I had to go!'

The melancholy tone became a wail: the wail became a chant: the chant became a song--though whether it was Mein Herr that was singing, this time, or somebody else, I could not feel certain.

`And, now the mischief's done, perhaps
You'll kindly go and pack your traps?
Since two (your daughter and your son)
Are Company, but three are none.

A course of saving we'll begin:
When change is needed, I'll invent it.
Don't think to put your finger in
This pie!' cried Tottles (and he meant it).

The music seemed to die away. Mein Herr was again speaking in his ordinary voice. `Now tell me one thing more,' he said. `Am I right in thinking that in your Universities, though a man may reside some thirty or forty years, you examine him, once for all, at the end of the first three or four?'

`That is so, undoubtedly,' I admitted.

`Practically, then, you examine a man at the beginning of his career!' the old man said to himself rather than to me. `And what guarantee have you that he retains the knowledge for which you have rewarded him--before-hand, as we should say!'

`None,' I admitted, feeling a little puzzled at the drift of his remarks. `How do you secure that object?'

`By examining him at the end of his thirty or forty years--not at the beginning,' he gently replied. `On an average, the knowledge then found is about one-fifth of what it was at first--the process of forgetting going on at a very steady uniform rate--and he, who forgets least, gets most honour, and most rewards.'

`Then you give him the money when he needs it no longer? And you make him live most of his life on nothing!'

`Hardly that. He gives his orders to the tradesmen: they supply him, for forty, sometimes fifty years, at their own risk: then he gets his Fellowship--which pays him in one year as much as your Fellowships pay in fifty--and then he can easily pay all his bills, with interest.'