COMMONSENSE OF MR. ARNOLD BENNETT 129 of the fit. And the qualities in him and his ^tat-major which had commanded the success of the entire enterprise were well shown in the brilliant symbolism of that room's grandiosity. . . . And there was the president's portrait again, gorgeously framed. He came in through another door, an old man of superb physique. ... And then ? Why, then — it really is delicious — he really is a Card — " What do you do with yourself in the evenings ? " asked Mr. Arnold Bennett. It is exactly what we all want to know, of course ; what do these strange creatures, these monsters of legend, in their incredible world of sky-scrapers and gloating trusts — what do they do behind the facade ? What happens at home, when there is no longer any audience, and the seven- leagued shoes are off and the feet on the fender ? But it is a question nobody has hitherto had the courage, lacked the sentimentality, to let drive straight into their skins. In this particular instance, as it happens, it does not get all the way home. " A little disconcerted by this perhaps unaccustomed bluntness," the giant seems to have shuffled rather sheepishly. " Oh," said he absurdly, " I read insurance literature." Perhaps Jack ought to have had at him again, beaten down that clumsy guard — but, indeed, the confession is fairly full. The evasion avows even more than honesty, gives us more of the man : it is easy to translate that "insurance literature" into terms of domesticity; a pretty poor sort of giant, after all. And in other cases the disclosures are of the com- pletest. Very effective, for instance, was Mr. Bennett's raid on the seraglio of the New York Telephone Exchange ; and good, increasingly good, is the long last chapter, called '* Human Citizens." The former reduced the fantastic curse of the telephone (" millions and millions of live filaments uniting all the privacies Men of Letters. J^Q
