THE LOST WORLD I have wrought my simple plan If I give one hour of joy To the boy who's half a man, Or the man who's half a boy. By SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE COPYRIGHT, 1912- THE LOST WORLD OF DEBT BY SOCRATES

THE LOST WORLD

I have wrought my simple plan

If I give one hour of joy

To the boy who's half a man,

Or the man who's half a boy.

  

 

Foreword

Mr. E. D. Malone desires to state that

both the injunction for restraint and the

libel action have been withdrawn unreservedly

by Professor G. E. Challenger, who, being

satisfied that no criticism or comment in

this book is meant in an offensive spirit,

has guaranteed that he will place no

impediment to its publication and circulation

 There Are Heroisms All Round Us"

Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person

upon earth,a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man,

perfectly good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his own

silly self. If anything could have driven me from Gladys, it

would have been the thought of such a father-in-law. I am

convinced that he really believed in his heart that I came round

to the Chestnuts three days a week for the pleasure of his

company, and very especially to hear his views upon bimetallism,

a subject upon which he was by way of being an authority.

 

For an hour or more that evening I listened to his monotonous

chirrup about bad money driving out good, the token value of

silver, the depreciation of the rupee, and the true standards of exchange.

 

"Suppose," he cried with feeble violence, "that all the debts in the world were called up simultaneously, and immediate payment

insisted upon,--what under our present conditions would happen then?"

I gave the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man,

upon which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habitual

levity, which made it impossible for him to discuss any

reasonable subject in my presence, and bounced off out of the

room to dress for a Masonic meeting.

  My instincts  are all against a woman being too frank and at her ease with me.

It is no compliment to a man. 

 Where the real sex feeling begins,timidity and distrust are its companions, heritage from old wickeddays when love and violence went often hand in hand.

 The benthead, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure 

these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the true signals of passion.

 Even in my short life I had learned as much as that--or had inherited it in that race memory which we call instinct.