confesses he would rather see Asia's millions rise from the ruins of
their ancient civilization to take their part in the future of
humanity, than that half the population of the globe should remain
bound in savagery for the pleasure and the profit of his own
particular species.

   He even goes so far as to think that the white man may have something
to learn. The world has belonged to him now for some thousands of
years. Has he done all with it that could have been done? Are his
ideals the last word?

   Not what the yellow man has absorbed from Europe, but what he is
going to give Europe it is that interests my friend. He is watching
the birth of a new force—an influence as yet unknown. He clings to
the fond belief that new ideas, new formulae, to replace the old worn
shibboleths, may, during these thousands of years, have been
developing in those keen brains that behind the impressive yellow
mask have been working so long in silence and in mystery.

   What is wrong with marriage, anyhow? I find myself pondering this
question so often, when reading high-class literature. I put it to
myself again the other evening, during a performance of Faust. Why
could not Faust have married the girl? I would not have married her
myself for any consideration whatsoever; but that is not the
argument. Faust, apparently, could not see anything amiss with her.
Both of them were mad about each other. Yet the idea of a quiet,
unostentatious marriage with a week's honeymoon, say, in Vienna,
followed by a neat little cottage orne, not too far from Nurnberg, so
that their friends could have come out to them, never seems to have
occurred to either of them.

   There could have been a garden. Marguerite might have kept chickens
and a cow. That sort of girl, brought up to hard work and by no
means too well educated, is all the better for having something to
do. Later, with the gradual arrival of the family, a good, all-round
woman might have been hired in to assist. Faust, of course, would
have had his study and got to work again; that would have kept him
out of further mischief. The idea that a brainy man, his age, was
going to be happy with nothing to do all day but fool round a
petticoat was ridiculous from the beginning. Valentine—a good

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