"Tie this muffler round your neck."  
It was the president who . Andrew held his thesis in his hand.
 
"But the rooms are so close," he said.
 
"That has nothing to do with it," said the president. The blood rushed to his head, and then left him pale.
 
"But why?" asked Andrew.
 
"For God's sake, do as I bid you," said his companion, pulling himself by a great effort to the other side of the room.
 
"You have done it?" he asked, carefully avoiding Andrew's face.
 
"Yes, but—"
 
"Then we can go in to the others. Remember what I told you about omitting the first seven pages. The society won't stand introductory remarks in a thesis."
 
The committee were assembled in the next room.
 
When the young Scotchman entered with the president, they looked him full in the neck.
 
"He is suffering from cold," the president said.
 
No one replied, but angry eyes were turned on the speaker. He somewhat placed his young friend in a bad light, with a table between him and his hearers.
 
Then Andrew began.
 
"The Society for Doing Without," he read, "has been tried and found wanting. It has now been in existence for some years, and its members have worked , though unostentatiously.
 
"I am far from saying a word against them. They are as true as ever petitioned against the Channel Tunnel."
 
"No compliments," whispered the president, warningly. Andrew hastily turned a page, and continued:
 
"But what have they done? Removed an individual here and there. That is the extent of it.
 
"You have been pursuing a half-hearted policy. You might go on for centuries at this rate before you made any perceptible difference in the streets.
 
"Have you ever seen a farmer thinning ? Gentlemen, there is an example for you. My proposal is that everybody should have to die on reaching the age of forty-five years.
 
"It has been the wish of this society to avoid the prejudices of party . But though you are a social rather than a political , you cannot escape politics. You do not call yourselves , but you work for . What is Radicalism? It is a desire to get a chance. This is an inherent in the human breast. It is felt most keenly by the poor.
 
"Make the poor rich, and the hovels, the , the , and the crime of the East End disappear. It is , say the , that this is not done at once. Yes, but how is it to be done? Not, as they hold, by making the classes and the masses change places. Not on the lines on which the society has hitherto worked. There is only one way, and I make it my text to-night. Fortunately, it presents no considerable difficulties.
 
"It is well known in medicine that the simplest—in other words, the most natural—remedies may be the most efficacious.
 
"So it is in the social life. What shall we do, Society asks, with our boys? I reply. Kill off the parents.
 
"There can be little doubt that forty-five years is long enough for a man to live. Parents must see that. Youth is the time to have your fling.
 
"Let us see how this plan would revolutionise the world. It would make statesmen hurry up. At present, they are nearly fifty before you hear of them. How can we expect the country to be properly governed by men in their ?
 
"Again, take the world of letters. Why does the literary have such a struggle? Simply because the profession is over-stocked with seniors. I would like to know what Tennyson's age is, and Ruskin's, and Browning's. Every one of them is over seventy, and all writing away yet as lively as you like. It is a crying scandal.
 
"Things are the same in medicine, art, divinity, law—in short, in every profe............