Page:Robert Barr - Lord Stranleigh Philanthropist.djvu/149

 Blake looked up from his reading, and saw that Lord Stranleigh was gazing dreamily out at the blue Channel, probably not listening to the end of the long letter.

"I'm afraid," he ventured, "that this does not interest you."

His lordship woke up with a smile.

"Oh, yes, it does, but it is merely 's township community plan over again, or Fourier's system of phalanges uncomplicated by the family question."

"Then it has been tried before?"

"In a sort of way, yes, but never by a man of sense like myself."

"You think you could do the trick?"

"I'm perfectly certain that I couldn't."

"Oh! Why?"

"Because there is a missing ingredient that I am not allowed to use, while the Sergeant in Kipling's poem was given that liberty. Kipling's intensely practical mind, an odd quality in a poet, indicates the vital point, and as you finished the letter I was just trying to remember those lines in the poem which hit the nail on the head. I cannot remember the first line, but the second, third and fourth were something like this:—