Our mistress is a little given to philosophy: what disputations shall we have here by-and-by!—Gil Blas.

Dr. Day had introduced Elsworth to a rather singular society, founded by himself and daughter, in the West End of town, and much frequented by medical, literary, musical, and artistic young folk of “advanced” views. One of its members, Arthur Devaux, was a rising physician at the hospital, and his sister Linda soon became impressed with the attentions of young Elsworth, and they met frequently and studied many things together. Both were addicted to philological research; Linda worked at Anglo-Saxon in the library of the British Museum, and, as Elsworth had pronounced tastes in that direction, they were much thrown together. Her father was an artist of French extraction, and, sharing his daughter’s tastes for comparative languages and dialects, they found the young doctor a welcome addition to their family circle. Basque, and CalÓ, the dialect of the gipsies of Spain, were just now occupying some of their attention, and the whole history and customs of the latter interesting people had taken hold of young Elsworth to the extent of making him desirous to visit them as soon as his hospital work would permit. Such studies had by no means interfered with his professional duties, but had assisted them by relaxing the mind when wearied with the strain of long-continued effort in one direction. Philology was one of his modes of unbending the bow, and a latent Bohemianism gave him a strange sympathy with a gipsy’s life. Have not a large proportion of the solemn and respectable folk dwellers in our great cities a taint of this same disorder? Would not that calm, awe-inspiring judge upon the bench, when the fit is on him, like to pitch off his wig and crimson robe, and betake him to a Bedouin’s life, if it were possible? Is it too much to imagine there may possibly be a bishop or two who now and again have to smother a temptation, just the least spice of a desire, say, to doff apron and shovel hat, and have a season or two in a quiet, well-ordered sort of way, where Mrs. Grundy could not find them? Certes, we have known more than a dozen doctors who have neat broughams, and whose manner of entering them is dignified and becoming; who wear well-cut clothes, spotless linen, and the shiniest of hats; who speak in measured tones, and look the very impersonations of propriety; who yet are so heartily sick of your tongues and pulses, your livers and your hearts, your pills and potions, and your horrible stair-climbing, that were it not for the overpowering sense of duty to Mrs. Leech and the little Leeches, they would long ere now have been off out of walled cities, and away from the galling proprieties of civilisation, and betaken themselves to the forest, the moor, and the mountain.

Our Society met every Sunday evening for social intercourse and amusement; combined with the propagation of their advanced ideas. They were all free men and women, that is to say, they had got rid of old-world superstitions, and had dethroned God, setting up Science and the Nineteenth Century in His place. They were a perfectly proper and well-conducted set of people, who, though very revolutionary over tea and biscuits, defending Nihilism, dynamite mission work, and the loosening of mental fetters and actual bricks and mortar generally, would not have rashly upset even a box of crackers, or exploded a match in an unguarded manner. They were well dressed, spoke in subdued society tones, and conducted themselves exactly as other people, only they persisted in letting everybody know how extremely they disapproved of God.

The young ladies were for the most part accompanied by their highly respectable mammas or papas, who did not seem in the least alarmed at their daughters’ sympathy with the violent doings of “men struggling for freedom;” or at the indifference to continued existence on this ill-conducted planet manifested by the young creatures in bewitching evening toilettes who were under their tutelage. The mammas and papas had heard it all before, and knew just what it meant; it made them rather proud, perhaps, when they saw a blushing young curate confronted for the first time with such advanced sentiments, but even the curate got over his alarm when he found how very harmless it all was, and how when the girls married they became just as reactionary as such people usually are when they realize that they have any responsibilities. For the most part the mammas seemed to act on the suggestion of one of the lights of their school of thought, who maintained that it was “the duty of parents to obey their children in all things;” reversing the Mosaic command, as being suitable for the governance of a nomadic tribe of Eastern people who had little or no science, but not a fit code of behaviour for the highly educated and well-convoluted brains of nineteenth-century children. Their mammas looked up to their offspring with a touching pride and awe—they had, from their superior height, been able to overlook and despise the lower ground on which their parents stood. The parents, indeed, still felt in their nerves—however much they might affect to disregard—the potent influence of the old creeds—they could not relegate to the limbo of discarded stage properties all the articles of the Christian faith in which they had been nurtured, but this their sons and daughters could and did; and they admired their superior attainments and often wished they had at their tongues’ ends those caustic and supercilious answers to the objections of the orthodox which came so readily from the lips of their children. It was they who would set the world right on all those points; it was they who would be able to forego prayer without that constantly recurring sense of desolation and orphanhood. It was they who would let the world see how Christ was to be estimated at perhaps a lower standard than Confucius, and certainly as the inferior of Buddha. It was they who would one day explode the Sermon on the Mount, and substitute for it the New Morality, summed up in the motto, “Every one for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.” It had not been quite decided what word to substitute for devil, but it would be something like “reversion to original type,” “degradation of species,” “retrogression,” or some such scientific term. Meanwhile the word devil was used not as implying any theological assent to the personality of unpleasantness, but as a mere phrase like “Good-bye,” which originally, of course, was “God be with ye,” now cut short, or topped and tailed, as cooks prepare radishes. The inner schools of this society were at the time we write of engaged in preparing a list of phrases which advanced people should not be permitted to use,—an index expurgatorius, in which were already placed “Good-bye!” “Adieu!” “Good gracious!” “Bless me!” “Mercy on us!” “Faith!” “Oh law!” (though some were for retaining this), “Heaven send us,” “Providential escape!” and all ejaculations and expressions having their rise in “fables and lying deceits.”

The use of the “big, big D.” and similar exclamations, was inhibited for gentlemen, not merely on account of vulgarity, but because such words implied some latent belief in superstitious dogmas, as Dr. Newman argues that the terrible language used by the Tuscans and Neapolitans is an evidence of the complete orthodoxy of their faith,—just as “By our Ladye,” subjected to an abbreviating process, is in the modern vernacular of the vulgar, a relic of Mariolatry, of which even our enfranchised and much voting mechanics have not yet divested themselves.