I shall never forget the dry way and pitiful manner in which Robert Louis Stevenson passed a funeral oration on Matthew Arnold. It was on a Sunday evening, in the early spring of 1888, at a reception given at the house of Edmund Clarence Stedman, whose poetry and scholarly attainments excite as much admiration as his warm heart excites love in those who, like myself, can boast of his friendship. Someone entered and created consternation by announcing that a cablegram had just reached New York with the news that Matthew Arnold was dead. 'Poor Matthew!' said Stevenson, lifting his eyes with an air of deep compassion; 'heaven won't please him!'

And it is true that on many occasions that great English writer had hinted that if the work of the Creation had been given to him to undertake, it would have proved more successful than it has been. For that matter, many philosophers of a more or less cynical turn of mind have criticised the work of Creation.

Voltaire said that if he had been Jehovah 'he would not have chosen the Jews.' My late friend, Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, a Voltairian to the core, said that if he had been consulted 'he would have made health, not disease, catching.' Ninon de Lenclos, the veriest woman that ever lived, said that, had she been invited to give an opinion, 'she would have suggested that women's wrinkles be placed under their feet.'

'Everything is for the best in the best of worlds!' exclaims Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire's famous novel, 'Candide,' but few people are as satisfied with the world as that amiable philosopher. There are people who are even dissatisfied with our anatomy, and who declare that man's leg would be much safer and would run much less risk of being broken if the calf had been placed in front of it instead of behind. Some go as far as to say that man is the worst handicapped animal of creation—that he should have been made as strong as the horse, able to run like the stag, to fly like the lark, to swim and dive like the fish, to have a keen sense of smell like the dog, and one of sight like the eagle. Not only that, but that man is the most stupid of all, the most cruel, the most inconsistent, the most ungrateful, the most rapacious, the only animal who does not know when he has had enough to eat and to drink, the only one who kills the fellow-members of his species, the only one who is not always a good husband and a good father.

'Man, the masterpiece of creation, the king of the universe!' they exclaim. 'Nonsense!' There is hardly an animal that he dares look straight in the face and fight. No; he hides behind a rock, and, with an engine of destruction, he kills at a distance animals who have no other means of defence than those given them by nature, the coward!

There is not the slightest doubt that the genius of man has to reveal itself in the discovery of all that may remedy the disadvantages under which he finds himself placed. Boats, railways, automobiles, balloons, steam, electricity, and what not, have been invented, and are used to cover his deficiencies. Poor man! he has to resort to artificial means in every phase of life. Even clothes he has to wear, as his body has not been provided with either fur or feathers.