May it please the Company—Worthies, Worships, Elders and all my Betters : you know how a chance-found quotation will sometimes fish up from one’s subconscious mind a haul of impressions which, when they come to the surface, prove to be a valuable addition to one’s philosophy of life?

That has just happened to me, when, searching through one of my Common Place Books for Somebody’s terse and pertinent remark about Something, I came upon these words of Ernest Hello; whereupon I had to leave my other occupation to haul up the overwhelming catch of ideas and impressions it gave me.

‘Little men,’ he says, ‘borrow all their importance from their actions, which they accomplish. Without these actions they would be absolutely nothing.’