Chapter 3

_Mr. George Meredith_. My Lord, I will put it with a convincing brevity, not indeed a dust-scattering brevity fit only for the mumbling recluse, who perchance in this grey London marching Eastward at break of naked morn, daintily protruding a pinkest foot out of compassing clouds, copiously takes inside of him doses of what is denied to his external bat-resembling vision, but with the sharp brevity of a rotifer astir in that curative compartment of a homoeopathic globule--so I, humorously purposeful in the midst, of sallow--

_The Judge_. One moment, Mr. MEREDITH. Have you considered--

_Mr. G.M._ Consideration, my Lord, is of them that sit revolving within themselves the mountainously mouse-productive problems of the overtoppingly catastrophic backward ages of empurpled brain-distorting puzzledom: for puzzles, as I have elsewhere said, come in rattle-boxes, they are actually children's toys, for what they contain, but not the less do they buzz at our understandings and insist that they break or we, and, in either case, to show a mere foolish idle rattle in hollowness. Nor have the antic bobbings--

_Sir Charles Russell_ (_cross-examining_). Really, Mr. MEREDITH, I fail to follow you. Would it not be possible--

_Mr. G.M._ Ay, there you have it. In truth, the question looks like a paragraph in a newspaper, upon which a Leading Article sits, dutifully arousing the fat worm of sarcastic humour under the ribs of cradled citizens, with an exposure of its excellent folly. For the word. That is it. The word is Archon, with extended hand summoning the collaboratorically ordained, misbegotten brood of shock-shilling pamphlets to his regal presence--

_The Judge_ (_testily_). No doubt that would be so, but it brings us no nearer to a decision upon the question of humour in the particular passage of the book which contains the alleged libel.

_Sir Charles Russell_. Perhaps I can shorten matters, my Lord. Now, Mr. MEREDITH, will you be kind enough to explain the following passage from a book with which you may perhaps be acquainted. (_Reads_.) "This he can promise to his points. As for otherwhere than at the festive, Commerce invoked is a Goddess that will have the reek of those boards to fill her nostrils, and poet and alderman alike may be dedicate to the sublime, she leads them, after two sniffs of an idea concerning her, for the dive into the turtle-tureen. Heels up they go, poet first--a plummet he!" Is that humorous, or, if not, what is it?

_Mr. G.M._ Elephantine, I think; yet not elephantine altogether, since of them that crash amid jungle of atrophied semi-consciousness, strivingly set upon an overtopping mastery--

_Sir Charles Russell_ (_interrupting_). Thank you. The passage is from _One of our Conquerors_. Here is another:--"Reverting to the father and mother, his idea of a positive injury, that was not without its congratulations, sank him down among his disordered deeper sentiments, which were a diver's wreck, where an armoured livid subtermarine, a monstrous puff-ball of man, wandered seriously light in heaviness; trebling his hundredweights to keep him from dancing like a bladder-block of elastic lumber." And while you are about it, pray inform the Court what you mean by "the vulgarest of our gobble-gobbets," or by "a trebly cataphractic Invisible."

_Mr. G.M._ Truly, the louder members of the grey public are fraternally instant to spurn at the whip of that which they do not immediately comprehend. But to me, plunged chokingly in translucent profundities of aquamarine splendour, not of a truth that in the heights above splendour resides not, chidingly offering a fat whiskerless cheek to the blows of circumstance, this was ever the problem of problems. How to write. How not to write. This way and that the raging fates tug the hapless reader, pillowed he upon the vast brown bosom of his maternal earth, or lurefully beckoning the dim shadow-shapes of dodecahedronic cataplasmatic centipede fatally conditioned to the everlasting pyramid of a star-pointing necessity. So--

_The Judge_ (_with determination_). Mr. MEREDITH, the Court is sincerely obliged to you for your extremely valuable evidence. We are unwilling to detain you any longer. Besides, after what you have said, the point is as clear as daylight. Good morning, Mr. MEREDITH, good morning. You may become a trebly cataphractic Invisible.

* * * * *

THE THINNING OF THE THATCH.

Oh, the Autumn leaves are falling, and the days are closing in, And the breeze is growing chilly, and my hair is getting thin! I've a comfortable income--and my age is thirty-three; But my Thatch is thinning quickly--yes, as quickly as can be!

I was once a merry urchin--curly-headed I was called, And I laughed at good old people when I saw them going bald; But it's not a proper subject to be lightly joked about, For it's dreadful to discover that your roof is wearing out!

I remember asking Uncle--in my innocent surprise-- How he liked his head made use of as a Skating Rink by flies; But although their dread intrusion I shall manfully resist, I'm afraid they'll soon have got another Rink upon their list.

When invited to a party I'm invariably late, For I waste the time in efforts to conceal my peeping pate-- Though I coax my hair across it--though I brush away for weeks, Yet I _can't_ prevent it parting and dividing into streaks!

I have tried a Hair Restorer, and I've rubbed my head with rum, But the thatch keeps getting thinner, and the new hair doesn't come-- So I gaze into the mirror with a gloomy, vacant stare, For the circle's getting wider of that Open Space up there!

People tell me that my spirits I must not allow to fall. And that coming generations won't have any hair at all-- Well--they'll never know an anguish that can adequately match With the pangs of watching day by day the thinning of your Thatch!

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