“plain man” turned up at intervals like the “theme” of a symphonic movement.  “I am only a plain man and I want to know.”  It was a phrase that sabred the spider-webs of logical refinement, and held them up scornfully on the point.  When Crowl went for a little recreation in Victoria Park on Sunday afternoons, it was with this phrase that he invariably routed the supernaturalists.  Crowl knew his Bible better than most ministers, and always carried a minutely printed copy in his pocket, dog’s-eared to mark contradictions in the text.  The second chapter of Jeremiah says one thing; the first chapter of Corinthians says another.  Two contradictory statements may both be true, but “I am only a plain man, and I want to know.”  Crowl spent a large part of his time in setting “the word against the word.”  Cock-fighting affords its votaries no acuter pleasure than Crowl derived from setting two texts by the ears.  Crowl had a metaphysical genius which sent his Sunday morning disciples frantic with admiration, and struck the enemy dumb with dismay.  He had discovered, for instance, that the Deity could not move, owing to already filling all space.  He was also the first to invent, for the confusion of the clerical, the crucial case of a saint dying at the Antipodes contemporaneously with another in London.  Both went skyward to heaven, yet the two travelled in directly opposite directions.  In all eternity they would never meet.  Which, then, got to heaven?  Or was there no such place?  “I am only a plain man, and I want to know.”

Preserve us our open spaces; they exist to testify to the incurable interest of humanity in the Unknown and the Misunderstood.  Even ’Arry is capable of five minutes’ attention to speculative theology, if ’Arriet isn’t in a ’urry.

Peter Crowl was not sorry to have a lodger like Denzil Cantercot, who, though a man of parts and thus worth powder and shot, was so hopelessly wrong on all subjects under the sun.  In only one point did Peter Crowl agree with Denzil Cantercot—­he admired Denzil Cantercot secretly.  When he asked him for the True—­which was about twice a day on the average—­he didn’t really expect to get it from him.  He knew that Denzil was a poet.

“The Beautiful,” he went on, “is a thing that only appeals to men like you.  The True is for all men.  The majority have the first claim.  Till then you poets must stand aside.  The True and the Useful—­that’s what we want.  The Good of Society is the only test of things.  Everything stands or falls by the Good of Society.”

“The Good of Society!” echoed Denzil, scornfully.  “What’s the good of Society?  The Individual is before all.  The mass must be sacrificed to the Great Man.  Otherwise the Great Man will be sacrificed to the mass.  Without great men there would be no art.  Without art life would be a blank.”

“Ah, but we should fill it up with bread and butter,” said Peter Crowl.

“Yes, it is bread and butter that kills the Beautiful,” said Denzil Cantercot, bitterly.  “Many of us start by following the butterfly through the verdant meadows, but we turn aside—­”