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Betwixt two evils, Mr. Fairford chose that which was in his own apprehension the least; and, like a brave officer sending forth his son to battle, rather chose he should die upon the breach, than desert the conflict with dishonour. Neither did he leave him to his own unassisted energies. Like Alpheus preceding Hercules, he himself encountered the Augean mass of Peter Peebles' law-matters.
When the States around us shall be so far advanced, there will be a chance for new stateswomen to spring up, and fill Mrs. Whiston's place, and we shall then, I firmly believe, devise a plan to cleanse the great Augean stable of politics by turning into it the river of female honesty and intelligence and morality.
For accumulated nastiness that waiting room was an Augean stable and the two soldiers who dawdled about in it with brooms lacked woefully in the qualities of Hercules. Putting a broom in a man's hands is the best argument in favor of woman's suffrage that I know of, anyhow.
That is the real question for the powers that be to answer, and no sentiment should enter into it. Four thousand workmen are busy to-day with ropes and axe, pick and shovel. But the task is vast, it is herculean, like unto the cleaning of the Augean stables. "To clean up this town properly," said General Hastings to-day, "we shall need twenty thousand workmen for three months."
When the Continental Nations have once got to the bottom of their Augean Stable, and begun to have real enterprises based on the eternal facts again, our Foreign Office may again have extensive concerns with them. And at all times, and even now, there will remain the question to be sincerely put and wisely answered, What essential concern has the British Nation with them and their enterprises?
Only the author of Man and Superman knew enough about the modern world to caricature the educated upstart the man Straker who can quote Beaumarchais, though he cannot pronounce him. This is the second real and great work of Shaw the letting in of the world on to the stage, as the rivers were let in upon the Augean Stable. He has let a little of the Haymarket into the Haymarket Theatre.
It was a labor of Hercules, a cleansing of Augean stables; but the scared savages were ready to make any promise that might stay the pestilence. One of their principal sorcerers proclaimed in a loud voice through the streets of the town, that the God of the French was their master, and that thenceforth all must live according to His will. Their joy was short.
The real and serious difficulty, and one which at present seems insurmountable, is to secure cleanliness and safety in that Augean stable the cook-house.
"Hillo, my men," he exclaimed, in no very amiable tone. "I thought the ship was wrecked, with all that splashing and scrubbing. One would suppose that the vessel was as dirty as those Augean stables that fellow Hercules had to clean, by all the water you use."
The result, even with my experience, appalled me. But while there is life in a young patient there is always hope, and we at once set to work on our Augean task. By the strangest coincidence it was an inky dark night outside, with a low fog hanging over the water, and the big trap boat, with a crew of some six men, among them the skipper's sons, had been missing since morning.
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