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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow, by 
+Jerome K. Jerome
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow
+
+Author: Jerome K. Jerome
+
+Posting Date: November 7, 2008 [EBook #1915]
+Release Date: October, 1999
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SECOND THOUGHTS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Les Bowler
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SECOND THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW
+
+By Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+1899 Hurst and Blackett edition
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+   On the art of making up one's mind.
+   On the disadvantage of not getting what one wants.
+   On the exceptional merit attaching to the things we meant to do.
+   On the preparation and employment of love philtres.
+   On the delights and benefits of slavery.
+   On the care and management of women.
+   On the minding of other people's business.
+   On the time wasted in looking before one leaps.
+   On the nobility of ourselves.
+   On the motherliness of man.
+   On the inadvisability of following advice.
+   On the playing of marches at the funerals of marionettes.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE ART OF MAKING UP ONE'S MIND
+
+"Now, which would you advise, dear? You see, with the red I shan't be
+able to wear my magenta hat."
+
+"Well then, why not have the grey?"
+
+"Yes--yes, I think the grey will be MORE useful."
+
+"It's a good material."
+
+"Yes, and it's a PRETTY grey. You know what I mean, dear; not a COMMON
+grey. Of course grey is always an UNINTERESTING colour."
+
+"Its quiet."
+
+"And then again, what I feel about the red is that it is so
+warm-looking. Red makes you FEEL warm even when you're NOT warm. You
+know what I mean, dear!"
+
+"Well then, why not have the red? It suits you--red."
+
+"No; do you really think so?"
+
+"Well, when you've got a colour, I mean, of course!"
+
+"Yes, that is the drawback to red. No, I think, on the whole, the grey
+is SAFER."
+
+"Then you will take the grey, madam?"
+
+"Yes, I think I'd better; don't you, dear?"
+
+"I like it myself very much."
+
+"And it is good wearing stuff. I shall have it trimmed with--Oh! you
+haven't cut it off, have you?"
+
+"I was just about to, madam."
+
+"Well, don't for a moment. Just let me have another look at the red.
+You see, dear, it has just occurred to me--that chinchilla would look so
+well on the red!"
+
+"So it would, dear!"
+
+"And, you see, I've got the chinchilla."
+
+"Then have the red. Why not?"
+
+"Well, there is the hat I'm thinking of."
+
+"You haven't anything else you could wear with that?"
+
+"Nothing at all, and it would go so BEAUTIFULLY with the grey.--Yes, I
+think I'll have the grey. It's always a safe colour--grey."
+
+"Fourteen yards I think you said, madam?"
+
+"Yes, fourteen yards will be enough; because I shall mix it with--One
+minute. You see, dear, if I take the grey I shall have nothing to wear
+with my black jacket."
+
+"Won't it go with grey?"
+
+"Not well--not so well as with red."
+
+"I should have the red then. You evidently fancy it yourself."
+
+"No, personally I prefer the grey. But then one must think of
+EVERYTHING, and--Good gracious! that's surely not the right time?"
+
+"No, madam, it's ten minutes slow. We always keep our clocks a little
+slow!"
+
+"And we were too have been at Madame Jannaway's at a quarter past
+twelve. How long shopping does take I--Why, whatever time did we start?"
+
+"About eleven, wasn't it?"
+
+"Half-past ten. I remember now; because, you know, we said we'd start at
+half-past nine. We've been two hours already!"
+
+"And we don't seem to have done much, do we?"
+
+"Done literally nothing, and I meant to have done so much. I must go to
+Madame Jannaway's. Have you got my purse, dear? Oh, it's all right, I've
+got it."
+
+"Well, now you haven't decided whether you're going to have the grey or
+the red."
+
+"I'm sure I don't know what I do want now. I had made up my mind a
+minute ago, and now it's all gone again--oh yes, I remember, the red.
+Yes, I'll have the red. No, I don't mean the red, I mean the grey."
+
+"You were talking about the red last time, if you remember, dear."
+
+"Oh, so I was, you're quite right. That's the worst of shopping. Do you
+know I get quite confused sometimes."
+
+"Then you will decide on the red, madam?"
+
+"Yes--yes, I shan't do any better, shall I, dear? What do you think?
+You haven't got any other shades of red, have you? This is such an ugly
+red."
+
+The shopman reminds her that she has seen all the other reds, and that
+this is the particular shade she selected and admired.
+
+"Oh, very well," she replies, with the air of one from whom all earthly
+cares are falling, "I must take that then, I suppose. I can't be worried
+about it any longer. I've wasted half the morning already."
+
+Outside she recollects three insuperable objections to the red, and
+four unanswerable arguments why she should have selected the grey. She
+wonders would they change it, if she went back and asked to see the
+shopwalker? Her friend, who wants her lunch, thinks not.
+
+"That is what I hate about shopping," she says. "One never has time to
+really THINK."
+
+She says she shan't go to that shop again.
+
+We laugh at her, but are we so very much better? Come, my superior male
+friend, have you never stood, amid your wardrobe, undecided whether, in
+her eyes, you would appear more imposing, clad in the rough tweed suit
+that so admirably displays your broad shoulders; or in the orthodox
+black frock, that, after all, is perhaps more suitable to the figure of
+a man approaching--let us say, the nine-and-twenties? Or, better still,
+why not riding costume? Did we not hear her say how well Jones looked
+in his top-boots and breeches, and, "hang it all," we have a better leg
+than Jones. What a pity riding-breeches are made so baggy nowadays. Why
+is it that male fashions tend more and more to hide the male leg? As
+women have become less and less ashamed of theirs, we have become more
+and more reticent of ours. Why are the silken hose, the tight-fitting
+pantaloons, the neat kneebreeches of our forefathers impossible to-day?
+Are we grown more modest--or has there come about a falling off,
+rendering concealment advisable?
+
+I can never understand, myself, why women love us. It must be our
+honest worth, our sterling merit, that attracts them--certainly not our
+appearance, in a pair of tweed "dittos," black angora coat and vest,
+stand-up collar, and chimney-pot hat! No, it must be our sheer force of
+character that compels their admiration.
+
+What a good time our ancestors must have had was borne in upon me when,
+on one occasion, I appeared in character at a fancy dress ball. What I
+represented I am unable to say, and I don't particularly care. I only
+know it was something military. I also remember that the costume was two
+sizes too small for me in the chest, and thereabouts; and three sizes
+too large for me in the hat. I padded the hat, and dined in the middle
+of the day off a chop and half a glass of soda-water. I have gained
+prizes as a boy for mathematics, also for scripture history--not often,
+but I have done it. A literary critic, now dead, once praised a book
+of mine. I know there have been occasions when my conduct has won the
+approbation of good men; but never--never in my whole life, have I felt
+more proud, more satisfied with myself than on that evening when, the
+last hook fastened, I gazed at my full-length Self in the cheval glass.
+I was a dream. I say it who should not; but I am not the only one who
+said it. I was a glittering dream. The groundwork was red, trimmed with
+gold braid wherever there was room for gold braid; and where there was
+no more possible room for gold braid there hung gold cords, and tassels,
+and straps. Gold buttons and buckles fastened me, gold embroidered belts
+and sashes caressed me, white horse-hair plumes waved o'er me. I am
+not sure that everything was in its proper place, but I managed to get
+everything on somehow, and I looked well. It suited me. My success was
+a revelation to me of female human nature. Girls who had hitherto been
+cold and distant gathered round me, timidly solicitous of notice. Girls
+on whom I smiled lost their heads and gave themselves airs. Girls who
+were not introduced to me sulked and were rude to girls that had been.
+For one poor child, with whom I sat out two dances (at least she
+sat, while I stood gracefully beside her--I had been advised, by the
+costumier, NOT to sit), I was sorry. He was a worthy young fellow, the
+son of a cotton broker, and he would have made her a good husband, I
+feel sure. But he was foolish to come as a beer-bottle.
+
+Perhaps, after all, it is as well those old fashions have gone out. A
+week in that suit might have impaired my natural modesty.
+
+One wonders that fancy dress balls are not more popular in this grey age
+of ours. The childish instinct to "dress up," to "make believe," is
+with us all. We grow so tired of being always ourselves. A tea-table
+discussion, at which I once assisted, fell into this:--Would any one of
+us, when it came to the point, change with anybody else, the poor man
+with the millionaire, the governess with the princess--change not only
+outward circumstances and surroundings, but health and temperament,
+heart, brain, and soul; so that not one mental or physical particle
+of one's original self one would retain, save only memory? The general
+opinion was that we would not, but one lady maintained the affirmative.
+
+"Oh no, you wouldn't really, dear," argued a friend; "you THINK you
+would."
+
+"Yes, I would," persisted the first lady; "I am tired of myself. I'd
+even be you, for a change."
+
+In my youth, the question chiefly important to me was--What sort of man
+shall I decide to be? At nineteen one asks oneself this question; at
+thirty-nine we say, "I wish Fate hadn't made me this sort of man."
+
+In those days I was a reader of much well-meant advice to young men,
+and I gathered that, whether I should become a Sir Lancelot, a Herr
+Teufelsdrockh, or an Iago was a matter for my own individual choice.
+Whether I should go through life gaily or gravely was a question the
+pros and cons of which I carefully considered. For patterns I turned to
+books. Byron was then still popular, and many of us made up our minds
+to be gloomy, saturnine young men, weary with the world, and prone to
+soliloquy. I determined to join them.
+
+For a month I rarely smiled, or, when I did, it was with a weary, bitter
+smile, concealing a broken heart--at least that was the intention.
+Shallow-minded observers misunderstood.
+
+"I know exactly how it feels," they would say, looking at me
+sympathetically, "I often have it myself. It's the sudden change in the
+weather, I think;" and they would press neat brandy upon me, and suggest
+ginger.
+
+Again, it is distressing to the young man, busy burying his secret
+sorrow under a mound of silence, to be slapped on the back by
+commonplace people and asked--"Well, how's 'the hump' this morning?"
+and to hear his mood of dignified melancholy referred to, by those who
+should know better, as "the sulks."
+
+There are practical difficulties also in the way of him who would play
+the Byronic young gentleman. He must be supernaturally wicked--or rather
+must have been; only, alas! in the unliterary grammar of life, where
+the future tense stands first, and the past is formed, not from the
+indefinite, but from the present indicative, "to have been" is "to be";
+and to be wicked on a small income is impossible. The ruin of even the
+simplest of maidens costs money. In the Courts of Love one cannot sue in
+forma pauperis; nor would it be the Byronic method.
+
+"To drown remembrance in the cup" sounds well, but then the "cup," to be
+fitting, should be of some expensive brand. To drink deep of old Tokay
+or Asti is poetical; but when one's purse necessitates that the draught,
+if it is to be deep enough to drown anything, should be of thin beer at
+five-and-nine the four and a half gallon cask, or something similar in
+price, sin is robbed of its flavour.
+
+Possibly also--let me think it--the conviction may have been within
+me that Vice, even at its daintiest, is but an ugly, sordid thing,
+repulsive in the sunlight; that though--as rags and dirt to art--it
+may afford picturesque material to Literature, it is an evil-smelling
+garment to the wearer; one that a good man, by reason of poverty of
+will, may come down to, but one to be avoided with all one's effort,
+discarded with returning mental prosperity.
+
+Be this as it may, I grew weary of training for a saturnine young man;
+and, in the midst of my doubt, I chanced upon a book the hero of which
+was a debonnaire young buck, own cousin to Tom and Jerry. He attended
+fights, both of cocks and men, flirted with actresses, wrenched off
+door-knockers, extinguished street lamps, played many a merry jest upon
+many an unappreciative night watch-man. For all the which he was much
+beloved by the women of the book. Why should not I flirt with actresses,
+put out street lamps, play pranks on policemen, and be beloved? London
+life was changed since the days of my hero, but much remained, and the
+heart of woman is eternal. If no longer prizefighting was to be had, at
+least there were boxing competitions, so called, in dingy back parlours
+out Whitechapel way. Though cockfighting was a lost sport, were there
+not damp cellars near the river where for twopence a gentleman might
+back mongrel terriers to kill rats against time, and feel himself indeed
+a sportsman? True, the atmosphere of reckless gaiety, always surrounding
+my hero, I missed myself from these scenes, finding in its place
+an atmosphere more suggestive of gin, stale tobacco, and nervous
+apprehension of the police; but the essentials must have been the
+same, and the next morning I could exclaim in the very words of my
+prototype--"Odds crickets, but I feel as though the devil himself were
+in my head. Peste take me for a fool."
+
+But in this direction likewise my fatal lack of means opposed me. (It
+affords much food to the philosophic mind, this influence of income
+upon character.) Even fifth-rate "boxing competitions," organized by
+"friendly leads," and ratting contests in Rotherhithe slums, become
+expensive, when you happen to be the only gentleman present possessed
+of a collar, and are expected to do the honours of your class in
+dog's-nose. True, climbing lamp-posts and putting out the gas is
+fairly cheap, providing always you are not caught in the act, but as a
+recreation it lacks variety. Nor is the modern London lamp-post adapted
+to sport. Anything more difficult to grip--anything with less "give"
+in it--I have rarely clasped. The disgraceful amount of dirt allowed to
+accumulate upon it is another drawback from the climber's point of view.
+By the time you have swarmed up your third post a positive distaste for
+"gaiety" steals over you. Your desire is towards arnica and a bath.
+
+Nor in jokes at the expense of policemen is the fun entirely on your
+side. Maybe I did not proceed with judgment. It occurs to me now,
+looking back, that the neighbourhoods of Covent Garden and Great
+Marlborough Street were ill-chosen for sport of this nature. To bonnet
+a fat policeman is excellent fooling. While he is struggling with his
+helmet you can ask him comic questions, and by the time he has got
+his head free you are out of sight. But the game should be played in
+a district where there is not an average of three constables to every
+dozen square yards. When two other policemen, who have had their eye
+on you for the past ten minutes, are watching the proceedings from just
+round the next corner, you have little or no leisure for due enjoyment
+of the situation. By the time you have run the whole length of Great
+Titchfield Street and twice round Oxford Market, you are of opinion
+that a joke should never be prolonged beyond the point at which there is
+danger of its becoming wearisome; and that the time has now arrived
+for home and friends. The "Law," on the other hand, now raised by
+reinforcements to a strength of six or seven men, is just beginning to
+enjoy the chase. You picture to yourself, while doing Hanover Square,
+the scene in Court the next morning. You will be accused of being drunk
+and disorderly. It will be idle for you to explain to the magistrate (or
+to your relations afterwards) that you were only trying to live up to
+a man who did this sort of thing in a book and was admired for it. You
+will be fined the usual forty shillings; and on the next occasion of
+your calling at the Mayfields' the girls will be out, and Mrs. Mayfield,
+an excellent lady, who has always taken a motherly interest in you, will
+talk seriously to you and urge you to sign the pledge.
+
+Thanks to your youth and constitution you shake off the pursuit at
+Notting Hill; and, to avoid any chance of unpleasant contretemps on
+the return journey, walk home to Bloomsbury by way of Camden Town and
+Islington.
+
+I abandoned sportive tendencies as the result of a vow made by myself
+to Providence, during the early hours of a certain Sunday morning, while
+clinging to the waterspout of an unpretentious house situate in a side
+street off Soho. I put it to Providence as man to man. "Let me only
+get out of this," I think were the muttered words I used, "and no more
+'sport' for me." Providence closed on the offer, and did let me get out
+of it. True, it was a complicated "get out," involving a broken skylight
+and three gas globes, two hours in a coal cellar, and a sovereign to
+a potman for the loan of an ulster; and when at last, secure in my
+chamber, I took stock of myself--what was left of me,--I could not
+but reflect that Providence might have done the job neater. Yet I
+experienced no desire to escape the terms of the covenant; my inclining
+for the future was towards a life of simplicity.
+
+Accordingly, I cast about for a new character, and found one to suit me.
+The German professor was becoming popular as a hero about this period.
+He wore his hair long and was otherwise untidy, but he had "a heart of
+steel," occasionally of gold. The majority of folks in the book, judging
+him from his exterior together with his conversation--in broken English,
+dealing chiefly with his dead mother and his little sister Lisa,--dubbed
+him uninteresting, but then they did not know about the heart. His chief
+possession was a lame dog which he had rescued from a brutal mob; and
+when he was not talking broken English he was nursing this dog.
+
+But his speciality was stopping runaway horses, thereby saving the
+heroine's life. This, combined with the broken English and the dog,
+rendered him irresistible.
+
+He seemed a peaceful, amiable sort of creature, and I decided to try
+him. I could not of course be a German professor, but I could, and did,
+wear my hair long in spite of much public advice to the contrary, voiced
+chiefly by small boys. I endeavoured to obtain possession of a lame
+dog, but failed. A one-eyed dealer in Seven Dials, to whom, as a last
+resource, I applied, offered to lame one for me for an extra
+five shillings, but this suggestion I declined. I came across an
+uncanny-looking mongrel late one night. He was not lame, but he seemed
+pretty sick; and, feeling I was not robbing anybody of anything
+very valuable, I lured him home and nursed him. I fancy I must have
+over-nursed him. He got so healthy in the end, there was no doing
+anything with him. He was an ill-conditioned cur, and he was too old to
+be taught. He became the curse of the neighbourhood. His idea of sport
+was killing chickens and sneaking rabbits from outside poulterers'
+shops. For recreation he killed cats and frightened small children by
+yelping round their legs. There were times when I could have lamed him
+myself, if only I could have got hold of him. I made nothing by running
+that dog--nothing whatever. People, instead of admiring me for nursing
+him back to life, called me a fool, and said that if I didn't drown the
+brute they would. He spoilt my character utterly--I mean my character
+at this period. It is difficult to pose as a young man with a heart of
+gold, when discovered in the middle of the road throwing stones at your
+own dog. And stones were the only things that would reach and influence
+him.
+
+I was also hampered by a scarcity in runaway horses. The horse of our
+suburb was not that type of horse. Once and only once did an opportunity
+offer itself for practice. It was a good opportunity, inasmuch as he was
+not running away very greatly. Indeed, I doubt if he knew himself that
+he was running away. It transpired afterwards that it was a habit of
+his, after waiting for his driver outside the Rose and Crown for what he
+considered to be a reasonable period, to trot home on his own account.
+He passed me going about seven miles an hour, with the reins dragging
+conveniently beside him. He was the very thing for a beginner, and I
+prepared myself. At the critical moment, however, a couple of officious
+policemen pushed me aside and did it themselves.
+
+There was nothing for me to regret, as the matter turned out. I should
+only have rescued a bald-headed commercial traveller, very drunk, who
+swore horribly, and pelted the crowd with empty collar-boxes.
+
+From the window of a very high flat I once watched three men, resolved
+to stop a runaway horse. Each man marched deliberately into the middle
+of the road and took up his stand. My window was too far away for me to
+see their faces, but their attitude suggested heroism unto death. The
+first man, as the horse came charging towards him, faced it with his
+arms spread out. He never flinched until the horse was within about
+twenty yards of him. Then, as the animal was evidently determined to
+continue its wild career, there was nothing left for him to do but to
+retire again to the kerb, where he stood looking after it with evident
+sorrow, as though saying to himself--"Oh, well, if you are going to be
+headstrong I have done with you."
+
+The second man, on the catastrophe being thus left clear for him,
+without a moment's hesitation, walked up a bye street and disappeared.
+The third man stood his ground, and, as the horse passed him, yelled at
+it. I could not hear what he said. I have not the slightest doubt it
+was excellent advice, but the animal was apparently too excited even to
+listen. The first and the third man met afterwards, and discussed the
+matter sympathetically. I judged they were regretting the pig-headedness
+of runaway horses in general, and hoping that nobody had been hurt.
+
+I forget the other characters I assumed about this period. One, I know,
+that got me into a good deal of trouble was that of a downright, honest,
+hearty, outspoken young man who always said what he meant.
+
+I never knew but one man who made a real success of speaking his mind. I
+have heard him slap the table with his open hand and exclaim--
+
+"You want me to flatter you--to stuff you up with a pack of lies. That's
+not me, that's not Jim Compton. But if you care for my honest opinion,
+all I can say is, that child is the most marvellous performer on the
+piano I've ever heard. I don't say she is a genius, but I have heard
+Liszt and Metzler and all the crack players, and I prefer HER. That's my
+opinion. I speak my mind, and I can't help it if you're offended."
+
+"How refreshing," the parents would say, "to come across a man who is
+not afraid to say what he really thinks. Why are we not all outspoken?"
+
+The last character I attempted I thought would be easy to assume. It was
+that of a much admired and beloved young man, whose great charm lay in
+the fact that he was always just--himself. Other people posed and acted.
+He never made any effort to be anything but his own natural, simple
+self.
+
+I thought I also would be my own natural, simple self. But then the
+question arose--What was my own natural, simple self?
+
+That was the preliminary problem I had to solve; I have not solved it to
+this day. What am I? I am a great gentleman, walking through the world
+with dauntless heart and head erect, scornful of all meanness, impatient
+of all littleness. I am a mean-thinking, little-daring man--the type
+of man that I of the dauntless heart and the erect head despise
+greatly--crawling to a poor end by devious ways, cringing to the strong,
+timid of all pain. I--but, dear reader, I will not sadden your sensitive
+ears with details I could give you, showing how contemptible a creature
+this wretched I happens to be. Nor would you understand me. You would
+only be astonished, discovering that such disreputable specimens of
+humanity contrive to exist in this age. It is best, my dear sir, or
+madam, you should remain ignorant of these evil persons. Let me not
+trouble you with knowledge.
+
+I am a philosopher, greeting alike the thunder and the sunshine with
+frolic welcome. Only now and then, when all things do not fall exactly
+as I wish them, when foolish, wicked people will persist in doing
+foolish, wicked acts, affecting my comfort and happiness, I rage and
+fret a goodish deal.
+
+As Heine said of himself, I am knight, too, of the Holy Grail, valiant
+for the Truth, reverent of all women, honouring all men, eager to yield
+life to the service of my great Captain.
+
+And next moment, I find myself in the enemy's lines, fighting under
+the black banner. (It must be confusing to these opposing Generals, all
+their soldiers being deserters from both armies.) What are women but
+men's playthings! Shall there be no more cakes and ale for me because
+thou art virtuous! What are men but hungry dogs, contending each against
+each for a limited supply of bones! Do others lest thou be done. What is
+the Truth but an unexploded lie!
+
+I am a lover of all living things. You, my poor sister, struggling with
+your heavy burden on your lonely way, I would kiss the tears from your
+worn cheeks, lighten with my love the darkness around your feet. You, my
+patient brother, breathing hard as round and round you tramp the
+trodden path, like some poor half-blind gin-horse, stripes your only
+encouragement, scanty store of dry chaff in your manger! I would jog
+beside you, taking the strain a little from your aching shoulders; and
+we would walk nodding, our heads side by side, and you, remembering,
+should tell me of the fields where long ago you played, of the gallant
+races that you ran and won. And you, little pinched brats, with
+wondering eyes, looking from dirt-encrusted faces, I would take you in
+my arms and tell you fairy stories. Into the sweet land of make-believe
+we would wander, leaving the sad old world behind us for a time, and you
+should be Princes and Princesses, and know Love.
+
+But again, a selfish, greedy man comes often, and sits in my clothes. A
+man who frets away his life, planning how to get more money--more food,
+more clothes, more pleasures for himself; a man so busy thinking of the
+many things he needs he has no time to dwell upon the needs of others.
+He deems himself the centre of the universe. You would imagine, hearing
+him grumbling, that the world had been created and got ready against the
+time when he should come to take his pleasure in it. He would push and
+trample, heedless, reaching towards these many desires of his; and when,
+grabbing, he misses, he curses Heaven for its injustice, and men and
+women for getting in his path. He is not a nice man, in any way. I wish,
+as I say, he would not come so often and sit in my clothes. He persists
+that he is I, and that I am only a sentimental fool, spoiling his
+chances. Sometimes, for a while, I get rid of him, but he always comes
+back; and then he gets rid of me and I become him. It is very confusing.
+Sometimes I wonder if I really am myself.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE DISADVANTAGE OF NOT GETTING WHAT ONE WANTS
+
+Long, long ago, when you and I, dear Reader, were young, when the
+fairies dwelt in the hearts of the roses, when the moonbeams bent each
+night beneath the weight of angels' feet, there lived a good, wise man.
+Or rather, I should say, there had lived, for at the time of which I
+speak the poor old gentleman lay dying. Waiting each moment the dread
+summons, he fell a-musing on the life that stretched far back behind
+him. How full it seemed to him at that moment of follies and mistakes,
+bringing bitter tears not to himself alone but to others also. How much
+brighter a road might it have been, had he been wiser, had he known!
+
+"Ah, me!" said the good old gentleman, "if only I could live my life
+again in the light of experience."
+
+Now as he spoke these words he felt the drawing near to him of a
+Presence, and thinking it was the One whom he expected, raising himself
+a little from his bed, he feebly cried,
+
+"I am ready."
+
+But a hand forced him gently back, a voice saying, "Not yet; I bring
+life, not death. Your wish shall be granted. You shall live your life
+again, and the knowledge of the past shall be with you to guide you. See
+you use it. I will come again."
+
+Then a sleep fell upon the good man, and when he awoke, he was again a
+little child, lying in his mother's arms; but, locked within his brain
+was the knowledge of the life that he had lived already.
+
+So once more he lived and loved and laboured. So a second time he lay an
+old, worn man with life behind him. And the angel stood again beside his
+bed; and the voice said,
+
+"Well, are you content now?"
+
+"I am well content," said the old gentleman. "Let Death come."
+
+"And have you understood?" asked the angel.
+
+"I think so," was the answer; "that experience is but as of the memory
+of the pathways he has trod to a traveller journeying ever onward into
+an unknown land. I have been wise only to reap the reward of folly.
+Knowledge has ofttimes kept me from my good. I have avoided my old
+mistakes only to fall into others that I knew not of. I have reached the
+old errors by new roads. Where I have escaped sorrow I have lost joy.
+Where I have grasped happiness I have plucked pain also. Now let me go
+with Death that I may learn.."
+
+Which was so like the angel of that period, the giving of a gift,
+bringing to a man only more trouble. Maybe I am overrating my coolness
+of judgment under somewhat startling circumstances, but I am inclined to
+think that, had I lived in those days, and had a fairy or an angel come
+to me, wanting to give me something--my soul's desire, or the sum of my
+ambition, or any trifle of that kind I should have been short with him.
+
+"You pack up that precious bag of tricks of yours," I should have said
+to him (it would have been rude, but that is how I should have felt),
+"and get outside with it. I'm not taking anything in your line to-day. I
+don't require any supernatural aid to get me into trouble. All the worry
+I want I can get down here, so it's no good your calling. You take that
+little joke of yours,--I don't know what it is, but I know enough not to
+want to know,--and run it off on some other idiot. I'm not priggish.
+I have no objection to an innocent game of 'catch-questions' in the
+ordinary way, and when I get a turn myself. But if I've got to pay
+every time, and the stakes are to be my earthly happiness plus my future
+existence--why, I don't play. There was the case of Midas; a nice,
+shabby trick you fellows played off upon him! making pretence you did
+not understand him, twisting round the poor old fellow's words, just for
+all the world as though you were a pack of Old Bailey lawyers, trying
+to trip up a witness; I'm ashamed of the lot of you, and I tell you
+so--coming down here, fooling poor unsuspecting mortals with your
+nonsense, as though we had not enough to harry us as it was. Then there
+was that other case of the poor old peasant couple to whom you promised
+three wishes, the whole thing ending in a black pudding. And they never
+got even that. You thought that funny, I suppose. That was your fairy
+humour! A pity, I say, you have not, all of you, something better to do
+with your time. As I said before, you take that celestial 'Joe Miller'
+of yours and work it off on somebody else. I have read my fairy lore,
+and I have read my mythology, and I don't want any of your blessings.
+And what's more, I'm not going to have them. When I want blessings I
+will put up with the usual sort we are accustomed to down here. You know
+the ones I mean, the disguised brand--the blessings that no human being
+would think were blessings, if he were not told; the blessings that
+don't look like blessings, that don't feel like blessings; that, as a
+matter of fact, are not blessings, practically speaking; the blessings
+that other people think are blessings for us and that we don't. They've
+got their drawbacks, but they are better than yours, at any rate, and
+they are sooner over. I don't want your blessings at any price. If you
+leave one here I shall simply throw it out after you."
+
+I feel confident I should have answered in that strain, and I feel it
+would have done good. Somebody ought to have spoken plainly, because
+with fairies and angels of that sort fooling about, no one was ever safe
+for a moment. Children could hardly have been allowed outside the door.
+One never could have told what silly trick some would-be funny fairy
+might be waiting to play off on them. The poor child would not know, and
+would think it was getting something worth having. The wonder to me is
+that some of those angels didn't get tarred and feathered.
+
+I am doubtful whether even Cinderella's luck was quite as satisfying
+as we are led to believe. After the carpetless kitchen and the black
+beetles, how beautiful the palace must have seemed--for the first year,
+perhaps for the first two. And the Prince! how loving, how gallant, how
+tender--for the first year, perhaps for the first two. And after? You
+see he was a Prince, brought up in a Court, the atmosphere of which is
+not conducive to the development of the domestic virtues; and she--was
+Cinderella. And then the marriage altogether was rather a hurried
+affair. Oh yes, she is a good, loving little woman; but perhaps our
+Royal Highness-ship did act too much on the impulse of the moment. It
+was her dear, dainty feet that danced their way into our heart. How they
+flashed and twinkled, eased in those fairy slippers. How like a lily
+among tulips she moved that night amid the over-gorgeous Court dames.
+She was so sweet, so fresh, so different to all the others whom we knew
+so well. How happy she looked as she put her trembling little hand in
+ours. What possibilities might lie behind those drooping lashes. And we
+were in amorous mood that night, the music in our feet, the flash and
+glitter in our eyes. And then, to pique us further, she disappeared as
+suddenly and strangely as she had come. Who was she? Whence came she?
+What was the mystery surrounding her? Was she only a delicious dream,
+a haunting phantasy that we should never look upon again, never clasp
+again within our longing arms? Was our heart to be for ever hungry,
+haunted by the memory of--No, by heavens, she is real, and a woman. Here
+is her dear slipper, made surely to be kissed. Of a size too that a
+man may well wear within the breast of his doublet. Had any woman--nay,
+fairy, angel, such dear feet! Search the whole kingdom through, but find
+her, find her. The gods have heard our prayers, and given us this clue.
+"Suppose she be not all she seemed. Suppose she be not of birth fit to
+mate with our noble house!" Out upon thee, for an earth-bound, blind
+curmudgeon of a Lord High Chancellor. How could a woman, whom such
+slipper fitted, be but of the noblest and the best, as far above us,
+mere Princelet that we are, as the stars in heaven are brighter than thy
+dull old eyes! Go, search the kingdom, we tell thee, from east to west,
+from north to south, and see to it that thou findest her, or it shall
+go hard with thee. By Venus, be she a swineherd's daughter, she shall be
+our Queen--an she deign to accept of us, and of our kingdom.
+
+Ah well, of course, it was not a wise piece of business, that goes
+without saying; but we were young, and Princes are only human. Poor
+child, she could not help her education, or rather her lack of it.
+Dear little thing, the wonder is that she has contrived to be no more
+ignorant than she is, dragged up as she was, neglected and overworked.
+Nor does life in a kitchen, amid the companionship of peasants and
+menials, tend to foster the intellect. Who can blame her for being shy
+and somewhat dull of thought? not we, generous-minded, kind-hearted
+Prince that we are. And she is very affectionate. The family are trying,
+certainly; father-in-law not a bad sort, though a little prosy when
+upon the subject of his domestic troubles, and a little too fond of his
+glass; mamma-in-law, and those two ugly, ill-mannered sisters, decidedly
+a nuisance about the palace. Yet what can we do? they are our relations
+now, and they do not forget to let us know it. Well, well, we had
+to expect that, and things might have been worse. Anyhow she is not
+jealous--thank goodness.
+
+So the day comes when poor little Cinderella sits alone of a night in
+the beautiful palace. The courtiers have gone home in their carriages.
+The Lord High Chancellor has bowed himself out backwards. The
+Gold-Stick-in-Waiting and the Grooms of the Chamber have gone to their
+beds. The Maids of Honour have said "Good-night," and drifted out of
+the door, laughing and whispering among themselves. The clock strikes
+twelve--one--two, and still no footstep creaks upon the stair. Once it
+followed swiftly upon the "good-night" of the maids, who did not laugh
+or whisper then.
+
+At last the door opens, and the Prince enters, none too pleased at
+finding Cinderella still awake. "So sorry I'm late, my love--detained on
+affairs of state. Foreign policy very complicated, dear. Have only just
+this moment left the Council Chamber."
+
+And little Cinderella, while the Prince sleeps, lies sobbing out her
+poor sad heart into the beautiful royal pillow, embroidered with the
+royal arms and edged with the royal monogram in lace. "Why did he ever
+marry me? I should have been happier in the old kitchen. The black
+beetles did frighten me a little, but there was always the dear old
+cat; and sometimes, when mother and the girls were out, papa would call
+softly down the kitchen stairs for me to come up, and we would have such
+a merry evening together, and sup off sausages: dear old dad, I hardly
+ever see him now. And then, when my work was done, how pleasant it was
+to sit in front of the fire, and dream of the wonderful things that
+would come to me some day. I was always going to be a Princess, even in
+my dreams, and live in a palace, but it was so different to this. Oh,
+how I hate it, this beastly palace where everybody sneers at me--I know
+they do, though they bow and scrape, and pretend to be so polite.
+And I'm not clever and smart as they are. I hate them. I hate these
+bold-faced women who are always here. That is the worst of a palace,
+everybody can come in. Oh, I hate everybody and everything. Oh,
+god-mamma, god-mamma, come and take me away. Take me back to my old
+kitchen. Give me back my old poor frock. Let me dance again with the
+fire-tongs for a partner, and be happy, dreaming."
+
+Poor little Cinderella, perhaps it would have been better had god-mamma
+been less ambitious for you, dear; had you married some good, honest
+yeoman, who would never have known that you were not brilliant, who
+would have loved you because you were just amiable and pretty; had your
+kingdom been only a farmhouse, where your knowledge of domestic economy,
+gained so hardly, would have been useful; where you would have shone
+instead of being overshadowed; where Papa would have dropped in of an
+evening to smoke his pipe and escape from his domestic wrangles; where
+you would have been REAL Queen.
+
+But then you know, dear, you would not have been content. Ah yes, with
+your present experience--now you know that Queens as well as little
+drudges have their troubles; but WITHOUT that experience? You would have
+looked in the glass when you were alone; you would have looked at your
+shapely hands and feet, and the shadows would have crossed your pretty
+face. "Yes," you would have said to yourself--"John is a dear, kind
+fellow, and I love him very much, and all that, but--" and the old
+dreams, dreamt in the old low-ceilinged kitchen before the dying fire,
+would have come back to you, and you would have been discontented then
+as now, only in a different way. Oh yes, you would, Cinderella, though
+you gravely shake your gold-crowned head. And let me tell you why. It is
+because you are a woman, and the fate of all us, men and women alike, is
+to be for ever wanting what we have not, and to be finding, when we have
+it, that it is not what we wanted. That is the law of life, dear. Do you
+think as you lie upon the floor with your head upon your arms, that you
+are the only woman whose tears are soaking into the hearthrug at that
+moment? My dear Princess, if you could creep unseen about your City,
+peeping at will through the curtain-shielded windows, you would come
+to think that all the world was little else than a big nursery full of
+crying children with none to comfort them. The doll is broken: no longer
+it sweetly squeaks in answer to our pressure, "I love you, kiss me." The
+drum lies silent with the drumstick inside; no longer do we make a brave
+noise in the nursery. The box of tea-things we have clumsily put our
+foot upon; there will be no more merry parties around the three-legged
+stool. The tin trumpet will not play the note we want to sound; the
+wooden bricks keep falling down; the toy cannon has exploded and burnt
+our fingers. Never mind, little man, little woman, we will try and mend
+things tomorrow.
+
+And after all, Cinderella dear, you do live in a fine palace, and you
+have jewels and grand dresses and--No, no, do not be indignant with
+ME. Did not you dream of these things AS WELL AS of love? Come now,
+be honest. It was always a prince, was it not, or, at the least, an
+exceedingly well-to-do party, that handsome young gentleman who bowed
+to you so gallantly from the red embers? He was never a virtuous young
+commercial traveller, or cultured clerk, earning a salary of three
+pounds a week, was he, Cinderella? Yet there are many charming
+commercial travellers, many delightful clerks with limited incomes,
+quite sufficient, however, to a sensible man and woman desiring but each
+other's love. Why was it always a prince, Cinderella? Had the palace and
+the liveried servants, and the carriages and horses, and the jewels and
+the dresses, NOTHING to do with the dream?
+
+No, Cinderella, you were human, that is all. The artist, shivering in
+his conventional attic, dreaming of Fame!-do you think he is not hoping
+she will come to his loving arms in the form Jove came to Danae? Do you
+think he is not reckoning also upon the good dinners and the big cigars,
+the fur coat and the diamond studs, that her visits will enable him to
+purchase?
+
+There is a certain picture very popular just now. You may see it,
+Cinderella, in many of the shop-windows of the town. It is called "The
+Dream of Love," and it represents a beautiful young girl, sleeping in a
+very beautiful but somewhat disarranged bed. Indeed, one hopes, for the
+sleeper's sake, that the night is warm, and that the room is fairly
+free from draughts. A ladder of light streams down from the sky into the
+room, and upon this ladder crowd and jostle one another a small army of
+plump Cupids, each one laden with some pledge of love. Two of the Imps
+are emptying a sack of jewels upon the floor. Four others are bearing,
+well displayed, a magnificent dress (a "confection," I believe, is the
+proper term) cut somewhat low, but making up in train what is lacking
+elsewhere. Others bear bonnet boxes from which peep stylish toques and
+bewitching hoods. Some, representing evidently wholesale houses,
+stagger under silks and satins in the piece. Cupids are there from the
+shoemakers with the daintiest of bottines. Stockings, garters, and
+even less mentionable articles, are not forgotten. Caskets, mirrors,
+twelve-buttoned gloves, scent-bottles and handkerchiefs, hair-pins, and
+the gayest of parasols, has the God of Love piled into the arms of his
+messengers. Really a most practical, up-to-date God of Love, moving with
+the times! One feels that the modern Temple of Love must be a sort of
+Swan and Edgar's; the god himself a kind of celestial shop-walker; while
+his mother, Venus, no doubt superintends the costume department. Quite
+an Olympian Whiteley, this latter-day Eros; he has forgotten nothing,
+for, at the back of the picture, I notice one Cupid carrying a rather
+fat heart at the end of a string.
+
+You, Cinderella, could give good counsel to that sleeping child.
+You would say to her--"Awake from such dreams. The contents of a
+pawnbroker's store-room will not bring you happiness. Dream of love
+if you will; that is a wise dream, even if it remain ever a dream. But
+these coloured beads, these Manchester goods! are you then--you, heiress
+of all the ages--still at heart only as some poor savage maiden but
+little removed above the monkeys that share the primeval forest with
+her? Will you sell your gold to the first trader that brings you THIS
+barter? These things, child, will only dazzle your eyes for a few days.
+Do you think the Burlington Arcade is the gate of Heaven?"
+
+Ah, yes, I too could talk like that--I, writer of books, to the young
+lad, sick of his office stool, dreaming of a literary career leading
+to fame and fortune. "And do you think, lad, that by that road you will
+reach Happiness sooner than by another? Do you think interviews with
+yourself in penny weeklies will bring you any satisfaction after the
+first halfdozen? Do you think the gushing female who has read all your
+books, and who wonders what it must feel like to be so clever, will be
+welcome to you the tenth time you meet her? Do you think press
+cuttings will always consist of wondering admiration of your genius, of
+paragraphs about your charming personal appearance under the heading,
+'Our Celebrities'? Have you thought of the Uncomplimentary criticisms,
+of the spiteful paragraphs, of the everlasting fear of slipping a few
+inches down the greasy pole called 'popular taste,' to which you are
+condemned to cling for life, as some lesser criminal to his weary
+tread-mill, struggling with no hope but not to fall! Make a home, lad,
+for the woman who loves you; gather one or two friends about you;
+work, think, and play, that will bring you happiness. Shun this roaring
+gingerbread fair that calls itself, forsooth, the 'World of art and
+letters.' Let its clowns and its contortionists fight among themselves
+for the plaudits and the halfpence of the mob. Let it be with its
+shouting and its surging, its blare and its cheap flare. Come away, the
+summer's night is just the other side of the hedge, with its silence and
+its stars."
+
+You and I, Cinderella, are experienced people, and can therefore offer
+good advice, but do you think we should be listened to?
+
+"Ah, no, my Prince is not as yours. Mine will love me always, and I am
+peculiarly fitted for the life of a palace. I have the instinct and
+the ability for it. I am sure I was made for a princess. Thank you,
+Cinderella, for your well-meant counsel, but there is much difference
+between you and me."
+
+That is the answer you would receive, Cinderella; and my young friend
+would say to me, "Yes, I can understand YOUR finding disappointment in
+the literary career; but then, you see, our cases are not quite similar.
+_I_ am not likely to find much trouble in keeping my position. _I_
+shall not fear reading what the critics say of ME. No doubt there are
+disadvantages, when you are among the ruck, but there is always plenty
+of room at the top. So thank you, and goodbye."
+
+Besides, Cinderella dear, we should not quite mean it--this excellent
+advice. We have grown accustomed to these gew-gaws, and we should miss
+them in spite of our knowledge of their trashiness: you, your palace and
+your little gold crown; I, my mountebank's cap, and the answering laugh
+that goes up from the crowd when I shake my bells. We want everything.
+All the happiness that earth and heaven are capable of bestowing.
+Creature comforts, and heart and soul comforts also; and, proud-spirited
+beings that we are, we will not be put off with a part. Give us only
+everything, and we will be content. And, after all, Cinderella, you have
+had your day. Some little dogs never get theirs. You must not be greedy.
+You have KNOWN happiness. The palace was Paradise for those few months,
+and the Prince's arms were about you, Cinderella, the Prince's kisses on
+your lips; the gods themselves cannot take THAT from you.
+
+The cake cannot last for ever if we will eat of it so greedily. There
+must come the day when we have picked hungrily the last crumb--when we
+sit staring at the empty board, nothing left of the feast, Cinderella,
+but the pain that comes of feasting.
+
+It is a naive confession, poor Human Nature has made to itself, in
+choosing, as it has, this story of Cinderella for its leading moral:--Be
+good, little girl. Be meek under your many trials. Be gentle and kind,
+in spite of your hard lot, and one day--you shall marry a prince and
+ride in your own carriage. Be brave and true, little boy. Work hard and
+wait with patience, and in the end, with God's blessing, you shall
+earn riches enough to come back to London town and marry your master's
+daughter.
+
+You and I, gentle Reader, could teach these young folks a truer lesson,
+an we would. We know, alas! that the road of all the virtues does
+not lead to wealth, rather the contrary; else how explain our limited
+incomes? But would it be well, think you, to tell them bluntly the
+truth--that honesty is the most expensive luxury a man can indulge in;
+that virtue, if persisted in, leads, generally speaking, to a six-roomed
+house in an outlying suburb? Maybe the world is wise: the fiction has
+its uses.
+
+I am acquainted with a fairly intelligent young lady. She can read and
+write, knows her tables up to six times, and can argue. I regard her
+as representative of average Humanity in its attitude towards Fate; and
+this is a dialogue I lately overheard between her and an older lady who
+is good enough to occasionally impart to her the wisdom of the world--
+
+"I've been good this morning, haven't I?"
+
+"Yes--oh yes, fairly good, for you."
+
+"You think Papa WILL take me to the circus to-night?"
+
+"Yes, if you keep good. If you don't get naughty this afternoon."
+
+A pause.
+
+"I was good on Monday, you may remember, nurse."
+
+"Tolerably good."
+
+"VERY good, you said, nurse."
+
+"Well, yes, you weren't bad."
+
+"And I was to have gone to the pantomime, and I didn't."
+
+"Well, that was because your aunt came up suddenly, and your Papa
+couldn't get another seat. Poor auntie wouldn't have gone at all if she
+hadn't gone then."
+
+"Oh, wouldn't she?"
+
+"No."
+
+Another pause.
+
+"Do you think she'll come up suddenly to-day?"
+
+"Oh no, I don't think so."
+
+"No, I hope she doesn't. I want to go to the circus to-night. Because,
+you see, nurse, if I don't it will discourage me."
+
+So, perhaps the world is wise in promising us the circus. We believe her
+at first. But after a while, I fear, we grow discouraged.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE EXCEPTIONAL MERIT ATTACHING TO THE THINGS WE MEANT TO DO
+
+I can remember--but then I can remember a long time ago. You, gentle
+Reader, just entering upon the prime of life, that age by thoughtless
+youth called middle, I cannot, of course, expect to follow me--when
+there was in great demand a certain periodical ycleped The Amateur. Its
+aim was noble. It sought to teach the beautiful lesson of independence,
+to inculcate the fine doctrine of self-help. One chapter explained to a
+man how he might make flower-pots out of Australian meat cans; another
+how he might turn butter-tubs into music-stools; a third how he might
+utilize old bonnet boxes for Venetian blinds: that was the principle of
+the whole scheme, you made everything from something not intended for
+it, and as ill-suited to the purpose as possible.
+
+Two pages, I distinctly recollect, were devoted to the encouragement of
+the manufacture of umbrella stands out of old gaspiping. Anything less
+adapted to the receipt of hats and umbrellas than gas-piping I cannot
+myself conceive: had there been, I feel sure the author would have
+thought of it, and would have recommended it.
+
+Picture-frames you fashioned out of gingerbeer corks. You saved your
+ginger-beer corks, you found a picture--and the thing was complete.
+How much ginger-beer it would be necessary to drink, preparatory to
+the making of each frame; and the effect of it upon the frame-maker's
+physical, mental and moral well-being, did not concern The Amateur.
+I calculate that for a fair-sized picture sixteen dozen bottles might
+suffice. Whether, after sixteen dozen of ginger-beer, a man would take
+any interest in framing a picture--whether he would retain any pride in
+the picture itself, is doubtful. But this, of course, was not the point.
+
+One young gentleman of my acquaintance--the son of the gardener of my
+sister, as friend Ollendorff would have described him--did succeed in
+getting through sufficient ginger-beer to frame his grandfather, but the
+result was not encouraging. Indeed, the gardener's wife herself was but
+ill satisfied.
+
+"What's all them corks round father?" was her first question.
+
+"Can't you see," was the somewhat indignant reply, "that's the frame."
+
+"Oh! but why corks?"
+
+"Well, the book said corks."
+
+Still the old lady remained unimpressed.
+
+"Somehow it don't look like father now," she sighed.
+
+Her eldest born grew irritable: none of us appreciate criticism!
+
+"What does it look like, then?" he growled.
+
+"Well, I dunno. Seems to me to look like nothing but corks."
+
+The old lady's view was correct. Certain schools of art possibly lend
+themselves to this method of framing. I myself have seen a funeral
+card improved by it; but, generally speaking, the consequence was a
+predominance of frame at the expense of the thing framed. The more
+honest and tasteful of the framemakers would admit as much themselves.
+
+"Yes, it is ugly when you look at it," said one to me, as we stood
+surveying it from the centre of the room. "But what one feels about it
+is that one has done it oneself."
+
+Which reflection, I have noticed, reconciles us to many other things
+beside cork frames.
+
+Another young gentleman friend of mine--for I am bound to admit it was
+youth that profited most by the advice and counsel of The Amateur: I
+suppose as one grows older one grows less daring, less industrious--made
+a rocking-chair, according to the instructions of this book, out of a
+couple of beer barrels. From every practical point of view it was a bad
+rocking-chair. It rocked too much, and it rocked in too many directions
+at one and the same time. I take it, a man sitting on a rocking-chair
+does not want to be continually rocking. There comes a time when he says
+to himself--"Now I have rocked sufficiently for the present; now I will
+sit still for a while, lest a worse thing befall me." But this was one
+of those headstrong rocking-chairs that are a danger to humanity, and
+a nuisance to themselves. Its notion was that it was made to rock, and
+that when it was not rocking, it was wasting its time. Once started
+nothing could stop it--nothing ever did stop it, until it found itself
+topsy turvy on its own occupant. That was the only thing that ever
+sobered it.
+
+I had called, and had been shown into the empty drawing-room. The
+rocking-chair nodded invitingly at me. I never guessed it was an amateur
+rocking-chair. I was young in those days, with faith in human nature,
+and I imagined that, whatever else a man might attempt without knowledge
+or experience, no one would be fool enough to experiment upon a
+rocking-chair.
+
+I threw myself into it lightly and carelessly. I immediately noticed
+the ceiling. I made an instinctive movement forward. The window and
+a momentary glimpse of the wooded hills beyond shot upwards and
+disappeared. The carpet flashed across my eyes, and I caught sight of my
+own boots vanishing beneath me at the rate of about two hundred miles an
+hour. I made a convulsive effort to recover them. I suppose I over-did
+it. I saw the whole of the room at once, the four walls, the ceiling,
+and the floor at the same moment. It was a sort of vision. I saw the
+cottage piano upside down, and I again saw my own boots flash past me,
+this time over my head, soles uppermost. Never before had I been in a
+position where my own boots had seemed so all-pervading. The next moment
+I lost my boots, and stopped the carpet with my head just as it was
+rushing past me. At the same instant something hit me violently in the
+small of the back. Reason, when recovered, suggested that my assailant
+must be the rocking-chair.
+
+Investigation proved the surmise correct. Fortunately I was still alone,
+and in consequence was able, a few minutes later, to meet my hostess
+with calm and dignity. I said nothing about the rocking-chair. As a
+matter of fact, I was hoping to have the pleasure, before I went, of
+seeing some other guest arrive and sample it: I had purposely replaced
+it in the most prominent and convenient position. But though I felt
+capable of schooling myself to silence, I found myself unable to agree
+with my hostess when she called for my admiration of the thing. My
+recent experiences had too deeply embittered me.
+
+"Willie made it himself," explained the fond mother. "Don't you think it
+was very clever of him?"
+
+"Oh yes, it was clever," I replied, "I am willing to admit that."
+
+"He made it out of some old beer barrels," she continued; she seemed
+proud of it.
+
+My resentment, though I tried to keep it under control, was mounting
+higher.
+
+"Oh! did he?" I said; "I should have thought he might have found
+something better to do with them."
+
+"What?" she asked.
+
+"Oh! well, many things," I retorted. "He might have filled them again
+with beer."
+
+My hostess looked at me astonished. I felt some reason for my tone was
+expected.
+
+"You see," I explained, "it is not a well-made chair. These rockers are
+too short, and they are too curved, and one of them, if you notice, is
+higher than the other and of a smaller radius; the back is at too obtuse
+an angle. When it is occupied the centre of gravity becomes--"
+
+My hostess interrupted me.
+
+"You have been sitting on it," she said.
+
+"Not for long," I assured her.
+
+Her tone changed. She became apologetic.
+
+"I am so sorry," she said. "It looks all right."
+
+"It does," I agreed; "that is where the dear lad's cleverness displays
+itself. Its appearance disarms suspicion. With judgment that chair might
+be made to serve a really useful purpose. There are mutual
+acquaintances of ours--I mention no names, you will know them--pompous,
+self-satisfied, superior persons who would be improved by that chair.
+If I were Willie I should disguise the mechanism with some artistic
+drapery, bait the thing with a couple of exceptionally inviting
+cushions, and employ it to inculcate modesty and diffidence. I defy any
+human being to get out of that chair, feeling as important as when
+he got into it. What the dear boy has done has been to construct an
+automatic exponent of the transitory nature of human greatness. As a
+moral agency that chair should prove a blessing in disguise."
+
+My hostess smiled feebly; more, I fear, from politeness than genuine
+enjoyment.
+
+"I think you are too severe," she said. "When you remember that the boy
+has never tried his hand at anything of the kind before, that he has no
+knowledge and no experience, it really is not so bad."
+
+Considering the matter from that point of view I was bound to concur.
+I did not like to suggest to her that before entering upon a difficult
+task it would be better for young men to ACQUIRE knowledge and
+experience: that is so unpopular a theory.
+
+But the thing that The Amateur put in the front and foremost of its
+propaganda was the manufacture of household furniture out of egg-boxes.
+Why egg-boxes I have never been able to understand, but egg-boxes,
+according to the prescription of The Amateur, formed the foundation of
+household existence. With a sufficient supply of egg-boxes, and what The
+Amateur termed a "natural deftness," no young couple need hesitate to
+face the furnishing problem. Three egg-boxes made a writing-table; on
+another egg-box you sat to write; your books were ranged in egg-boxes
+around you--and there was your study, complete.
+
+For the dining-room two egg-boxes made an overmantel; four egg-boxes
+and a piece of looking-glass a sideboard; while six egg-boxes, with
+some wadding and a yard or so of cretonne, constituted a so-called "cosy
+corner." About the "corner" there could be no possible doubt. You sat on
+a corner, you leant against a corner; whichever way you moved you struck
+a fresh corner. The "cosiness," however, I deny. Egg-boxes I admit
+can be made useful; I am even prepared to imagine them ornamental; but
+"cosy," no. I have sampled egg-boxes in many shapes. I speak of years
+ago, when the world and we were younger, when our fortune was the
+Future; secure in which, we hesitated not to set up house upon incomes
+folks with lesser expectations might have deemed insufficient. Under
+such circumstances, the sole alternative to the egg-box, or similar
+school of furniture, would have been the strictly classical, consisting
+of a doorway joined to architectural proportions.
+
+I have from Saturday to Monday, as honoured guest, hung my clothes in
+egg-boxes.
+
+I have sat on an egg-box at an egg-box to take my dish of tea. I have
+made love on egg-boxes.--Aye, and to feel again the blood running
+through my veins as then it ran, I would be content to sit only on
+egg-boxes till the time should come when I could be buried in an
+egg-box, with an egg-box reared above me as tombstone.--I have spent
+many an evening on an egg-box; I have gone to bed in egg-boxes. They
+have their points--I am intending no pun--but to claim for them cosiness
+would be but to deceive.
+
+How quaint they were, those home-made rooms! They rise out of the
+shadows and shape themselves again before my eyes. I see the knobbly
+sofa; the easy-chairs that might have been designed by the Grand
+Inquisitor himself; the dented settle that was a bed by night; the few
+blue plates, purchased in the slums off Wardour Street; the enamelled
+stool to which one always stuck; the mirror framed in silk; the two
+Japanese fans crossed beneath each cheap engraving; the piano cloth
+embroidered in peacock's feathers by Annie's sister; the tea-cloth
+worked by Cousin Jenny. We dreamt, sitting on those egg-boxes--for we
+were young ladies and gentlemen with artistic taste--of the days when we
+would eat in Chippendale dining-rooms; sip our coffee in Louis Quatorze
+drawing-rooms; and be happy. Well, we have got on, some of us, since
+then, as Mr. Bumpus used to say; and I notice, when on visits, that
+some of us have contrived so that we do sit on Chippendale chairs, at
+Sheraton dining-tables, and are warmed from Adam's fireplaces; but, ah
+me, where are the dreams, the hopes, the enthusiasms that clung like
+the scent of a March morning about those gim-crack second floors? In the
+dustbin, I fear, with the cretonne-covered egg-boxes and the penny fans.
+Fate is so terribly even-handed. As she gives she ever takes away. She
+flung us a few shillings and hope, where now she doles us out pounds and
+fears. Why did not we know how happy we were, sitting crowned with sweet
+conceit upon our egg-box thrones?
+
+Yes, Dick, you have climbed well. You edit a great newspaper. You spread
+abroad the message--well, the message that Sir Joseph Goldbug, your
+proprietor, instructs you to spread abroad. You teach mankind the
+lessons that Sir Joseph Goldbug wishes them to learn. They say he is to
+have a peerage next year. I am sure he has earned it; and perhaps there
+may be a knighthood for you, Dick.
+
+Tom, you are getting on now. You have abandoned those unsaleable
+allegories. What rich art patron cares to be told continually by his own
+walls that Midas had ass's ears; that Lazarus sits ever at the gate? You
+paint portraits now, and everybody tells me you are the coming man. That
+"Impression" of old Lady Jezebel was really wonderful. The woman
+looks quite handsome, and yet it is her ladyship. Your touch is truly
+marvellous.
+
+But into your success, Tom--Dick, old friend, do not there creep moments
+when you would that we could fish up those old egg-boxes from the past,
+refurnish with them the dingy rooms in Camden Town, and find there our
+youth, our loves, and our beliefs?
+
+An incident brought back to my mind, the other day, the thought of all
+these things. I called for the first time upon a man, an actor, who had
+asked me to come and see him in the little home where he lives with his
+old father. To my astonishment--for the craze, I believe, has long since
+died out--I found the house half furnished out of packing cases, butter
+tubs, and egg-boxes. My friend earns his twenty pounds a week, but it
+was the old father's hobby, so he explained to me, the making of these
+monstrosities; and of them he was as proud as though they were specimen
+furniture out of the South Kensington Museum.
+
+He took me into the dining-room to show me the latest outrage--a new
+book-case. A greater disfigurement to the room, which was otherwise
+prettily furnished, could hardly be imagined. There was no need for
+him to assure me, as he did, that it had been made out of nothing but
+egg-boxes. One could see at a glance that it was made out of egg-boxes,
+and badly constructed egg-boxes at that--egg-boxes that were a disgrace
+to the firm that had turned them out; egg-boxes not worthy the storage
+of "shop 'uns" at eighteen the shilling.
+
+We went upstairs to my friend's bedroom. He opened the door as a man
+might open the door of a museum of gems.
+
+"The old boy," he said, as he stood with his hand upon the door-knob,
+"made everything you see here, everything," and we entered. He drew my
+attention to the wardrobe. "Now I will hold it up," he said, "while you
+pull the door open; I think the floor must be a bit uneven, it wobbles
+if you are not careful." It wobbled notwithstanding, but by coaxing and
+humouring we succeeded without mishap. I was surprised to notice a very
+small supply of clothes within, although my friend is a dressy man.
+
+"You see," he explained, "I dare not use it more than I can help. I am
+a clumsy chap, and as likely as not, if I happened to be in a hurry, I'd
+have the whole thing over:" which seemed probable.
+
+I asked him how he contrived. "I dress in the bath-room as a rule," he
+replied; "I keep most of my things there. Of course the old boy doesn't
+know."
+
+He showed me a chest of drawers. One drawer stood half open.
+
+"I'm bound to leave that drawer open," he said; "I keep the things I use
+in that. They don't shut quite easily, these drawers; or rather, they
+shut all right, but then they won't open. It is the weather, I think.
+They will open and shut all right in the summer, I dare say." He is of a
+hopeful disposition.
+
+But the pride of the room was the washstand.
+
+"What do you think of this?" cried he enthusiastically, "real marble
+top--"
+
+He did not expatiate further. In his excitement he had laid his hand
+upon the thing, with the natural result that it collapsed. More by
+accident than design I caught the jug in my arms. I also caught the
+water it contained. The basin rolled on its edge and little damage was
+done, except to me and the soap-box.
+
+I could not pump up much admiration for this washstand; I was feeling
+too wet.
+
+"What do you do when you want to wash?" I asked, as together we reset
+the trap.
+
+There fell upon him the manner of a conspirator revealing secrets. He
+glanced guiltily round the room; then, creeping on tip-toe, he opened a
+cupboard behind the bed. Within was a tin basin and a small can.
+
+"Don't tell the old boy," he said. "I keep these things here, and wash
+on the floor."
+
+That was the best thing I myself ever got out of egg-boxes--that picture
+of a deceitful son stealthily washing himself upon the floor behind the
+bed, trembling at every footstep lest it might be the "old boy" coming
+to the door.
+
+One wonders whether the Ten Commandments are so all-sufficient as we
+good folk deem them--whether the eleventh is not worth the whole pack
+of them: "that ye love one another" with just a common-place, human,
+practical love. Could not the other ten be comfortably stowed away into
+a corner of that! One is inclined, in one's anarchic moments, to agree
+with Louis Stevenson, that to be amiable and cheerful is a good religion
+for a work-a-day world. We are so busy NOT killing, NOT stealing, NOT
+coveting our neighbour's wife, we have not time to be even just to
+one another for the little while we are together here. Need we be so
+cocksure that our present list of virtues and vices is the only possibly
+correct and complete one? Is the kind, unselfish man necessarily a
+villain because he does not always succeed in suppressing his natural
+instincts? Is the narrow-hearted, sour-souled man, incapable of a
+generous thought or act, necessarily a saint because he has none?
+Have we not--we unco guid--arrived at a wrong method of estimating our
+frailer brothers and sisters? We judge them, as critics judge books, not
+by the good that is in them, but by their faults. Poor King David! What
+would the local Vigilance Society have had to say to him?
+
+Noah, according to our plan, would be denounced from every teetotal
+platform in the country, and Ham would head the Local Vestry poll as a
+reward for having exposed him. And St. Peter! weak, frail St. Peter,
+how lucky for him that his fellow-disciples and their Master were not as
+strict in their notions of virtue as are we to-day.
+
+Have we not forgotten the meaning of the word "virtue"? Once it stood
+for the good that was in a man, irrespective of the evil that might lie
+there also, as tares among the wheat. We have abolished virtue, and for
+it substituted virtues. Not the hero--he was too full of faults--but the
+blameless valet; not the man who does any good, but the man who has not
+been found out in any evil, is our modern ideal. The most virtuous thing
+in nature, according to this new theory, should be the oyster. He is
+always at home, and always sober. He is not noisy. He gives no trouble
+to the police. I cannot think of a single one of the Ten Commandments
+that he ever breaks. He never enjoys himself, and he never, so long as
+he lives, gives a moment's pleasure to any other living thing.
+
+I can imagine the oyster lecturing a lion on the subject of morality.
+
+"You never hear me," the oyster might say, "howling round camps and
+villages, making night hideous, frightening quiet folk out of their
+lives. Why don't you go to bed early, as I do? I never prowl round
+the oyster-bed, fighting other gentlemen oysters, making love to lady
+oysters already married. I never kill antelopes or missionaries. Why
+can't you live as I do on salt water and germs, or whatever it is that I
+do live on? Why don't you try to be more like me?"
+
+An oyster has no evil passions, therefore we say he is a virtuous fish.
+We never ask ourselves--"Has he any good passions?" A lion's behaviour
+is often such as no just man could condone. Has he not his good points
+also?
+
+Will the fat, sleek, "virtuous" man be as Welcome at the gate of heaven
+as he supposes?
+
+"Well," St. Peter may say to him, opening the door a little way and
+looking him up and down, "what is it now?"
+
+"It's me," the virtuous man will reply, with an oily, self-satisfied
+smile; "I should say, I--I've come."
+
+"Yes, I see you have come; but what is your claim to admittance? What
+have you done with your three score years and ten?"
+
+"Done!" the virtuous man will answer, "I have done nothing, I assure
+you."
+
+"Nothing!"
+
+"Nothing; that is my strong point; that is why I am here. I have never
+done any wrong."
+
+"And what good have you done?"
+
+"What good!"
+
+"Aye, what good? Do not you even know the meaning of the word? What
+human creature is the better for your having eaten and drunk and slept
+these years? You have done no harm--no harm to yourself. Perhaps, if you
+had you might have done some good with it; the two are generally to be
+found together down below, I remember. What good have you done that you
+should enter here? This is no mummy chamber; this is the place of
+men and women who have lived, who have wrought good--and evil also,
+alas!--for the sinners who fight for the right, not the righteous who
+run with their souls from the fight."
+
+It was not, however, to speak of these things that I remembered The
+Amateur and its lessons. My intention was but to lead up to the story of
+a certain small boy, who in the doing of tasks not required of him was
+exceedingly clever. I wish to tell you his story, because, as do most
+true tales, it possesses a moral, and stories without a moral I deem to
+be but foolish literature, resembling roads that lead to nowhere, such
+as sick folk tramp for exercise.
+
+I have known this little boy to take an expensive eight-day clock to
+pieces, and make of it a toy steamboat. True, it was not, when made,
+very much of a steamboat; but taking into consideration all the
+difficulties--the inadaptability of eight-day clock machinery to
+steamboat requirements, the necessity of getting the work accomplished
+quickly, before conservatively-minded people with no enthusiasm for
+science could interfere--a good enough steamboat. With merely an
+ironing-board and a few dozen meat-skewers, he would--provided the
+ironing-board was not missed in time--turn out quite a practicable
+rabbit-hutch. He could make a gun out of an umbrella and a gas-bracket,
+which, if not so accurate as a Martini-Henry, was, at all events, more
+deadly. With half the garden-hose, a copper scalding-pan out of
+the dairy, and a few Dresden china ornaments off the drawing-room
+mantelpiece, he would build a fountain for the garden. He could make
+bookshelves out of kitchen tables, and crossbows out of crinolines. He
+could dam you a stream so that all the water would flow over the croquet
+lawn. He knew how to make red paint and oxygen gas, together with many
+other suchlike commodities handy to have about a house. Among other
+things he learned how to make fireworks, and after a few explosions of
+an unimportant character, came to make them very well indeed. The boy
+who can play a good game of cricket is liked. The boy who can fight well
+is respected. The boy who can cheek a master is loved. But the boy who
+can make fireworks is revered above all others as a boy belonging to a
+superior order of beings. The fifth of November was at hand, and with
+the consent of an indulgent mother, he determined to give to the world
+a proof of his powers. A large party of friends, relatives, and
+school-mates was invited, and for a fortnight beforehand the scullery
+was converted into a manufactory for fireworks. The female servants
+went about in hourly terror of their lives, and the villa, did we judge
+exclusively by smell, one might have imagined had been taken over by
+Satan, his main premises being inconveniently crowded, as an annex. By
+the evening of the fourth all was in readiness, and samples were tested
+to make sure that no contretemps should occur the following night. All
+was found to be perfect.
+
+The rockets rushed heavenward and descended in stars, the Roman candles
+tossed their fiery balls into the darkness, the Catherine wheels
+sparkled and whirled, the crackers cracked, and the squibs banged. That
+night he went to bed a proud and happy boy, and dreamed of fame. He
+stood surrounded by blazing fireworks, and the vast crowd cheered him.
+His relations, most of whom, he knew, regarded him as the coming idiot
+of the family, were there to witness his triumph; so too was Dickey
+Bowles, who laughed at him because he could not throw straight. The girl
+at the bun-shop, she also was there, and saw that he was clever.
+
+The night of the festival arrived, and with it the guests. They sat,
+wrapped up in shawls and cloaks, outside the hall door--uncles, cousins,
+aunts, little boys and big boys, little girls and big girls, with, as
+the theatre posters say, villagers and retainers, some forty of them in
+all, and waited.
+
+But the fireworks did not go off. Why they did not go off I cannot
+explain; nobody ever COULD explain. The laws of nature seemed to be
+suspended for that night only. The rockets fell down and died where they
+stood. No human agency seemed able to ignite the squibs. The crackers
+gave one bang and collapsed. The Roman candles might have been English
+rushlights. The Catherine wheels became mere revolving glow-worms. The
+fiery serpents could not collect among them the spirit of a tortoise.
+The set piece, a ship at sea, showed one mast and the captain, and
+then went out. One or two items did their duty, but this only served
+to render the foolishness of the whole more striking. The little girls
+giggled, the little boys chaffed, the aunts and cousins said it was
+beautiful, the uncles inquired if it was all over, and talked about
+supper and trains, the "villagers and retainers" dispersed laughing, the
+indulgent mother said "never mind," and explained how well everything
+had gone off yesterday; the clever little boy crept upstairs to his
+room, and blubbered his heart out in the dark.
+
+Hours later, when the crowd had forgotten him, he stole out again into
+the garden. He sat down amid the ruins of his hope, and wondered what
+could have caused the fiasco. Still puzzled, he drew from his pocket
+a box of matches, and, lighting one, he held it to the seared end of a
+rocket he had tried in vain to light four hours ago. It smouldered for
+an instant, then shot with a swish into the air and broke into a hundred
+points of fire. He tried another and another with the same result. He
+made a fresh attempt to fire the set piece. Point by point the whole
+picture--minus the captain and one mast--came out of the night, and
+stood revealed in all the majesty of flame. Its sparks fell upon the
+piled-up heap of candles, wheels, and rockets that a little while before
+had obstinately refused to burn, and that, one after another, had been
+thrown aside as useless. Now with the night frost upon them, they leaped
+to light in one grand volcanic eruption. And in front of the gorgeous
+spectacle he stood with only one consolation--his mother's hand in his.
+
+The whole thing was a mystery to him at the time, but, as he learned to
+know life better, he came to understand that it was only one example of
+a solid but inexplicable fact, ruling all human affairs--YOUR FIREWORKS
+WON'T GO OFF WHILE THE CROWD IS AROUND.
+
+Our brilliant repartees do not occur to us till the door is closed upon
+us and we are alone in the street, or, as the French would say, are
+coming down the stairs. Our after-dinner oratory, that sounded so
+telling as we delivered it before the looking-glass, falls strangely
+flat amidst the clinking of the glasses. The passionate torrent of
+words we meant to pour into her ear becomes a halting rigmarole, at
+which--small blame to her--she only laughs.
+
+I would, gentle Reader, you could hear the stories that I meant to
+tell you. You judge me, of course, by the stories of mine that you have
+read--by this sort of thing, perhaps; but that is not just to me. The
+stories I have not told you, that I am going to tell you one day, I
+would that you judge me by those.
+
+They are so beautiful; you will say so; over them, you will laugh and
+cry with me.
+
+They come into my brain unbidden, they clamour to be written, yet when
+I take my pen in hand they are gone. It is as though they were shy of
+publicity, as though they would say to me--"You alone, you shall read
+us, but you must not write us; we are too real, too true. We are like
+the thoughts you cannot speak. Perhaps a little later, when you know
+more of life, then you shall tell us."
+
+Next to these in merit I would place, were I writing a critical essay
+on myself, the stories I have begun to write and that remain unfinished,
+why I cannot explain to myself. They are good stories, most of them;
+better far than the stories I have accomplished. Another time, perhaps,
+if you care to listen, I will tell you the beginning of one or two and
+you shall judge. Strangely enough, for I have always regarded myself as
+a practical, commonsensed man, so many of these still-born children of
+my mind I find, on looking through the cupboard where their thin bodies
+lie, are ghost stories. I suppose the hope of ghosts is with us all. The
+world grows somewhat interesting to us heirs of all the ages. Year by
+year, Science with broom and duster tears down the moth-worn tapestry,
+forces the doors of the locked chambers, lets light into the
+secret stairways, cleans out the dungeons, explores the hidden
+passages--finding everywhere only dust. This echoing old castle, the
+world, so full of mystery in the days when we were children, is losing
+somewhat its charm for us as we grow older. The king sleeps no longer in
+the hollow of the hills. We have tunnelled through his mountain chamber.
+We have shivered his beard with our pick. We have driven the gods from
+Olympus. No wanderer through the moonlit groves now fears or hopes the
+sweet, death-giving gleam of Aphrodite's face. Thor's hammer echoes not
+among the peaks--'tis but the thunder of the excursion train. We have
+swept the woods of the fairies. We have filtered the sea of its nymphs.
+Even the ghosts are leaving us, chased by the Psychical Research
+Society.
+
+Perhaps of all, they are the least, however, to be regretted. They were
+dull old fellows, clanking their rusty chains and groaning and sighing.
+Let them go.
+
+And yet how interesting they might be, if only they would. The old
+gentleman in the coat of mail, who lived in King John's reign, who was
+murdered, so they say, on the outskirts of the very wood I can see from
+my window as I write--stabbed in the back, poor gentleman, as he was
+riding home, his body flung into the moat that to this day is called
+Tor's tomb. Dry enough it is now, and the primroses love its steep
+banks; but a gloomy enough place in those days, no doubt, with its
+twenty feet of stagnant water. Why does he haunt the forest paths at
+night, as they tell me he does, frightening the children out of their
+wits, blanching the faces and stilling the laughter of the peasant lads
+and lasses, slouching home from the village dance? Instead, why does
+he not come up here and talk to me? He should have my easy-chair and
+welcome, would he only be cheerful and companionable.
+
+What brave tales could he not tell me. He fought in the first Crusade,
+heard the clarion voice of Peter, met the great Godfrey face to face,
+stood, hand on sword-hilt, at Runny-mede, perhaps. Better than a whole
+library of historical novels would an evening's chat be with such a
+ghost. What has he done with his eight hundred years of death? where has
+he been? what has he seen? Maybe he has visited Mars; has spoken to the
+strange spirits who can live in the liquid fires of Jupiter. What has he
+learned of the great secret? Has he found the truth? or is he, even as
+I, a wanderer still seeking the unknown?
+
+You, poor, pale, grey nun--they tell me that of midnights one may see
+your white face peering from the ruined belfry window, hear the clash of
+sword and shield among the cedar-trees beneath.
+
+It was very sad, I quite understand, my dear lady. Your lovers both were
+killed, and you retired to a convent. Believe me, I am sincerely
+sorry for you, but why waste every night renewing the whole painful
+experience? Would it not be better forgotten? Good Heavens, madam,
+suppose we living folk were to spend our lives wailing and wringing our
+hands because of the wrongs done to us when we were children? It is all
+over now. Had he lived, and had you married him, you might not have been
+happy. I do not wish to say anything unkind, but marriages founded upon
+the sincerest mutual love have sometimes turned out unfortunately, as
+you must surely know.
+
+Do take my advice. Talk the matter over with the young men themselves.
+Persuade them to shake hands and be friends. Come in, all of you, out of
+the cold, and let us have some reasonable talk.
+
+Why seek you to trouble us, you poor pale ghosts? Are we not your
+children? Be our wise friends. Tell me, how loved the young men in your
+young days? how answered the maidens? Has the world changed much, do you
+think? Had you not new women even then? girls who hated the everlasting
+tapestry frame and spinning-wheel? Your father's servants, were they so
+much worse off than the freemen who live in our East-end slums and sew
+slippers for fourteen hours a day at a wage of nine shillings a week?
+Do you think Society much improved during the last thousand years? Is it
+worse? is it better? or is it, on the whole, about the same, save that
+we call things by other names? Tell me, what have YOU learned?
+
+Yet might not familiarity breed contempt, even for ghosts.
+
+One has had a tiring day's shooting. One is looking forward to one's
+bed. As one opens the door, however, a ghostly laugh comes from behind
+the bed-curtains, and one groans inwardly, knowing what is in store for
+one: a two or three hours' talk with rowdy old Sir Lanval--he of the
+lance. We know all his tales by heart, and he will shout them. Suppose
+our aunt, from whom we have expectations, and who sleeps in the next
+room, should wake and overhear! They were fit and proper enough stories,
+no doubt, for the Round Table, but we feel sure our aunt would not
+appreciate them:--that story about Sir Agravain and the cooper's wife!
+and he always will tell that story.
+
+Or imagine the maid entering after dinner to say--
+
+"Oh, if you please, sir, here is the veiled lady."
+
+"What, again!" says your wife, looking up from her work.
+
+"Yes, ma'am; shall I show her up into the bedroom?"
+
+"You had better ask your master," is the reply. The tone is suggestive
+of an unpleasant five minutes so soon as the girl shall have withdrawn,
+but what are you to do?
+
+"Yes, yes, show her up," you say, and the girl goes out, closing the
+door.
+
+Your wife gathers her work together, and rises.
+
+"Where are you going?" you ask.
+
+"To sleep with the children," is the frigid answer.
+
+"It will look so rude," you urge. "We must be civil to the poor thing;
+and you see it really is her room, as one might say. She has always
+haunted it."
+
+"It is very curious," returns the wife of your bosom, still more icily,
+"that she never haunts it except when you are down here. Where she goes
+when you are in town I'm sure I don't know."
+
+This is unjust. You cannot restrain your indignation.
+
+"What nonsense you talk, Elizabeth," you reply; "I am only barely polite
+to her."
+
+"Some men have such curious notions of politeness," returns Elizabeth.
+"But pray do not let us quarrel. I am only anxious not to disturb you.
+Two are company, you know. I don't choose to be the third, that's all."
+With which she goes out.
+
+And the veiled lady is still waiting for you up-stairs. You wonder how
+long she will stop, also what will happen after she is gone.
+
+I fear there is no room for you, ghosts, in this our world. You remember
+how they came to Hiawatha--the ghosts of the departed loved ones. He had
+prayed to them that they would come back to him to comfort him, so
+one day they crept into his wigwam, sat in silence round his fireside,
+chilled the air for Hiawatha, froze the smiles of Laughing Water.
+
+There is no room for you, oh you poor pale ghosts, in this our world.
+Do not trouble us. Let us forget. You, stout elderly matron, your thin
+locks turning grey, your eyes grown weak, your chin more ample, your
+voice harsh with much scolding and complaining, needful, alas! to
+household management, I pray you leave me. I loved you while you lived.
+How sweet, how beautiful you were. I see you now in your white frock
+among the apple-blossom. But you are dead, and your ghost disturbs my
+dreams. I would it haunted me not.
+
+You, dull old fellow, looking out at me from the glass at which I shave,
+why do you haunt me? You are the ghost of a bright lad I once knew well.
+He might have done much, had he lived. I always had faith in him. Why
+do you haunt me? I would rather think of him as I remember him. I never
+imagined he would make such a poor ghost.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE PREPARATION AND EMPLOYMENT OF LOVE PHILTRES
+
+Occasionally a friend will ask me some such question as this, Do you
+prefer dark women or fair? Another will say, Do you like tall women or
+short? A third, Do you think light-hearted women, or serious, the more
+agreeable company? I find myself in the position that, once upon a time,
+overtook a certain charming young lady of taste who was asked by an
+anxious parent, the years mounting, and the family expenditure not
+decreasing, which of the numerous and eligible young men, then paying
+court to her, she liked the best. She replied, that was her difficulty.
+She could not make up her mind which she liked the best. They were all
+so nice. She could not possibly select one to the exclusion of all the
+others. What she would have liked would have been to marry the lot, but
+that, she presumed, was impracticable.
+
+I feel I resemble that young lady, not so much, perhaps, in charm and
+beauty as indecision of mind, when questions such as the above are put
+to me. It is as if one were asked one's favourite food. There are times
+when one fancies an egg with one's tea. On other occasions one dreams of
+a kipper. Today one clamours for lobsters. To-morrow one feels one never
+wishes to see a lobster again; one determines to settle down, for a
+time, to a diet of bread and milk and rice-pudding. Asked suddenly to
+say whether I preferred ices to soup, or beefsteaks to caviare, I should
+be nonplussed.
+
+I like tall women and short, dark women and fair, merry women and grave.
+
+Do not blame me, Ladies, the fault lies with you. Every right-thinking
+man is an universal lover; how could it be otherwise? You are so
+diverse, yet each so charming of your kind; and a man's heart is large.
+You have no idea, fair Reader, how large a man's heart is: that is his
+trouble--sometimes yours.
+
+May I not admire the daring tulip, because I love also the modest lily?
+May I not press a kiss upon the sweet violet, because the scent of the
+queenly rose is precious to me?
+
+"Certainly not," I hear the Rose reply. "If you can see anything in her,
+you shall have nothing to do with me."
+
+"If you care for that bold creature," says the Lily, trembling, "you are
+not the man I took you for. Good-bye."
+
+"Go to your baby-faced Violet," cries the Tulip, with a toss of her
+haughty head. "You are just fitted for each other."
+
+And when I return to the Lily, she tells me that she cannot trust me.
+She has watched me with those others. She knows me for a gad-about. Her
+gentle face is full of pain.
+
+So I must live unloved merely because I love too much.
+
+My wonder is that young men ever marry. The difficulty of selection must
+be appalling. I walked the other evening in Hyde Park. The band of the
+Life Guards played heart-lifting music, and the vast crowd were basking
+in a sweet enjoyment such as rarely woos the English toiler. I strolled
+among them, and my attention was chiefly drawn towards the women. The
+great majority of them were, I suppose, shop-girls, milliners, and
+others belonging to the lower middle-class. They had put on their best
+frocks, their bonniest hats, their newest gloves. They sat or walked in
+twos and threes, chattering and preening, as happy as young sparrows on
+a clothes line. And what a handsome crowd they made! I have seen German
+crowds, I have seen French crowds, I have seen Italian crowds; but
+nowhere do you find such a proportion of pretty women as among the
+English middle-class. Three women out of every four were worth looking
+at, every other woman was pretty, while every fourth, one might say
+without exaggeration, was beautiful. As I passed to and fro the idea
+occurred to me: suppose I were an unprejudiced young bachelor, free
+from predilection, looking for a wife; and let me suppose--it is only a
+fancy--that all these girls were ready and willing to accept me. I have
+only to choose! I grew bewildered. There were fair girls, to look at
+whom was fatal; dark girls that set one's heart aflame; girls with red
+gold hair and grave grey eyes, whom one would follow to the confines
+of the universe; baby-faced girls that one longed to love and cherish;
+girls with noble faces, whom a man might worship; laughing girls, with
+whom one could dance through life gaily; serious girls, with whom life
+would be sweet and good, domestic-looking girls--one felt such would
+make delightful wives; they would cook, and sew, and make of home a
+pleasant, peaceful place. Then wicked-looking girls came by, at the stab
+of whose bold eyes all orthodox thoughts were put to a flight, whose
+laughter turned the world into a mad carnival; girls one could mould;
+girls from whom one could learn; sad girls one wanted to comfort; merry
+girls who would cheer one; little girls, big girls, queenly girls,
+fairy-like girls.
+
+Suppose a young man had to select his wife in this fashion from some
+twenty or thirty thousand; or that a girl were suddenly confronted with
+eighteen thousand eligible young bachelors, and told to take the one
+she wanted and be quick about it? Neither boy nor girl would ever marry.
+Fate is kinder to us. She understands, and assists us. In the hall of a
+Paris hotel I once overheard one lady asking another to recommend her a
+milliner's shop.
+
+"Go to the Maison Nouvelle," advised the questioned lady, with
+enthusiasm. "They have the largest selection there of any place in
+Paris."
+
+"I know they have," replied the first lady, "that is just why I don't
+mean to go there. It confuses me. If I see six bonnets I can tell the
+one I want in five minutes. If I see six hundred I come away without any
+bonnet at all. Don't you know a little shop?"
+
+Fate takes the young man or the young woman aside.
+
+"Come into this village, my dear," says Fate; "into this by-street of
+this salubrious suburb, into this social circle, into this church, into
+this chapel. Now, my dear boy, out of these seventeen young ladies,
+which will you have?--out of these thirteen young men, which would you
+like for your very own, my dear?"
+
+"No, miss, I am sorry, but I am not able to show you our up-stairs
+department to-day, the lift is not working. But I am sure we shall be
+able to find something in this room to suit you. Just look round, my
+dear, perhaps you will see something."
+
+"No, sir, I cannot show you the stock in the next room, we never
+take that out except for our very special customers. We keep our most
+expensive goods in that room. (Draw that curtain, Miss Circumstance,
+please. I have told you of that before.) Now, sir, wouldn't you like
+this one? This colour is quite the rage this season; we are getting rid
+of quite a lot of these."
+
+"NO, sir! Well, of course, it would not do for every one's taste to be
+the same. Perhaps something dark would suit you better. Bring out those
+two brunettes, Miss Circumstance. Charming girls both of them, don't
+you think so, sir? I should say the taller one for you, sir. Just one
+moment, sir, allow me. Now, what do you think of that, sir? might have
+been made to fit you, I'm sure. You prefer the shorter one. Certainly,
+sir, no difference to us at all. Both are the same price. There's
+nothing like having one's own fancy, I always say. NO, sir, I cannot
+put her aside for you, we never do that. Indeed, there's rather a run
+on brunettes just at present. I had a gentleman in only this morning,
+looking at this particular one, and he is going to call again to-night.
+Indeed, I am not at all sure--Oh, of course, sir, if you like to settle
+on this one now, that ends the matter. (Put those others away, Miss
+Circumstance, please, and mark this one sold.) I feel sure you'll like
+her, sir, when you get her home. Thank YOU, sir. Good-morning!"
+
+"Now, miss, have YOU seen anything you fancy? YES, miss, this is all
+we have at anything near your price. (Shut those other cupboards, Miss
+Circumstance; never show more stock than you are obliged to, it only
+confuses customers. How often am I to tell you that?) YES, miss, you are
+quite right, there IS a slight blemish. They all have some slight flaw.
+The makers say they can't help it--it's in the material. It's not once
+in a season we get a perfect specimen; and when we do ladies don't seem
+to care for it. Most of our customers prefer a little faultiness. They
+say it gives character. Now, look at this, miss. This sort of thing
+wears very well, warm and quiet. You'd like one with more colour in it?
+Certainly. Miss Circumstance, reach me down the art patterns. NO, miss,
+we don't guarantee any of them over the year, so much depends on how you
+use them. OH YES, miss, they'll stand a fair amount of wear. People do
+tell you the quieter patterns last longer; but my experience is that one
+is much the same as another. There's really no telling any of them until
+you come to try them. We never recommend one more than another. There's
+a lot of chance about these goods, it's in the nature of them. What I
+always say to ladies is--'Please yourself, it's you who have got to wear
+it; and it's no good having an article you start by not liking.' YES,
+miss, it IS pretty and it looks well against you: it does indeed. Thank
+you, miss. Put that one aside, Miss Circumstance, please. See that it
+doesn't get mixed up with the unsold stock."
+
+It is a useful philtre, the juice of that small western flower, that
+Oberon drops upon our eyelids as we sleep. It solves all difficulties
+in a trice. Why of course Helena is the fairer. Compare her with Hermia!
+Compare the raven with the dove! How could we ever have doubted for a
+moment? Bottom is an angel, Bottom is as wise as he is handsome. Oh,
+Oberon, we thank you for that drug. Matilda Jane is a goddess; Matilda
+Jane is a queen; no woman ever born of Eve was like Matilda Jane. The
+little pimple on her nose--her little, sweet, tip-tilted nose--how
+beautiful it is. Her bright eyes flash with temper now and then; how
+piquant is a temper in a woman. William is a dear old stupid, how
+lovable stupid men can be--especially when wise enough to love us.
+William does not shine in conversation; how we hate a magpie of a man.
+William's chin is what is called receding, just the sort of chin a beard
+looks well on. Bless you, Oberon darling, for that drug; rub it on our
+eyelids once again. Better let us have a bottle, Oberon, to keep by us.
+
+Oberon, Oberon, what are you thinking of? You have given the bottle to
+Puck. Take it away from him, quick. Lord help us all if that Imp has the
+bottle. Lord save us from Puck while we sleep.
+
+Or may we, fairy Oberon, regard your lotion as an eye-opener, rather
+than as an eye-closer? You remember the story the storks told the
+children, of the little girl who was a toad by day, only her sweet dark
+eyes being left to her. But at night, when the Prince clasped her close
+to his breast, lo! again she became the king's daughter, fairest and
+fondest of women. There be many royal ladies in Marshland, with bad
+complexion and thin straight hair, and the silly princes sneer and ride
+away to woo some kitchen wench decked out in queen's apparel. Lucky the
+prince upon whose eyelids Oberon has dropped the magic philtre.
+
+In the gallery of a minor Continental town I have forgotten, hangs a
+picture that lives with me. The painting I cannot recall, whether good
+or bad; artists must forgive me for remembering only the subject. It
+shows a man, crucified by the roadside. No martyr he. If ever a man
+deserved hanging it was this one. So much the artist has made clear.
+The face, even under its mask of agony, is an evil, treacherous face.
+A peasant girl clings to the cross; she stands tip-toe upon a patient
+donkey, straining her face upward for the half-dead man to stoop and
+kiss her lips.
+
+Thief, coward, blackguard, they are stamped upon his face, but UNDER the
+face, under the evil outside? Is there no remnant of manhood--nothing
+tender, nothing, true? A woman has crept to the cross to kiss him:
+no evidence in his favour, my Lord? Love is blind-aye, to our faults.
+Heaven help us all; Love's eyes would be sore indeed if it were not
+so. But for the good that is in us her eyes are keen. You, crucified
+blackguard, stand forth. A hundred witnesses have given their evidence
+against you. Are there none to give evidence for him? A woman, great
+Judge, who loved him. Let her speak.
+
+But I am wandering far from Hyde Park and its show of girls.
+
+They passed and re-passed me, laughing, smiling, talking. Their eyes
+were bright with merry thoughts; their voices soft and musical. They
+were pleased, and they wanted to please. Some were married, some had
+evidently reasonable expectations of being married; the rest hoped to
+be. And we, myself, and some ten thousand other young men. I repeat
+it--myself and some ten thousand other young men; for who among us ever
+thinks of himself but as a young man? It is the world that ages, not we.
+The children cease their playing and grow grave, the lasses' eyes are
+dimmer. The hills are a little steeper, the milestones, surely, further
+apart. The songs the young men sing are less merry than the songs we
+used to sing. The days have grown a little colder, the wind a little
+keener. The wine has lost its flavour somewhat; the new humour is not
+like the old. The other boys are becoming dull and prosy; but we are not
+changed. It is the world that is growing old. Therefore, I brave your
+thoughtless laughter, youthful Reader, and repeat that we, myself and
+some ten thousand other young men, walked among these sweet girls; and,
+using our boyish eyes, were fascinated, charmed, and captivated. How
+delightful to spend our lives with them, to do little services for them
+that would call up these bright smiles. How pleasant to jest with them,
+and hear their flute-like laughter, to console them and read their
+grateful eyes. Really life is a pleasant thing, and the idea of marriage
+undoubtedly originated in the brain of a kindly Providence.
+
+We smiled back at them, and we made way for them; we rose from our
+chairs with a polite, "Allow me, miss," "Don't mention it, I prefer
+standing." "It is a delightful evening, is it not?" And perhaps--for
+what harm was there?--we dropped into conversation with these chance
+fellow-passengers upon the stream of life. There were those among
+us--bold daring spirits--who even went to the length of mild flirtation.
+Some of us knew some of them, and in such happy case there followed
+interchange of pretty pleasantries. Your English middle-class young man
+and woman are not adepts at the game of flirtation. I will confess that
+our methods were, perhaps, elephantine, that we may have grown a trifle
+noisy as the evening wore on. But we meant no evil; we did but our best
+to enjoy ourselves, to give enjoyment, to make the too brief time, pass
+gaily.
+
+And then my thoughts travelled to small homes in distant suburbs,
+and these bright lads and lasses round me came to look older and more
+careworn. But what of that? Are not old faces sweet when looked at by
+old eyes a little dimmed by love, and are not care and toil but the
+parents of peace and joy?
+
+But as I drew nearer, I saw that many of the faces were seared with sour
+and angry looks, and the voices that rose round me sounded surly and
+captious. The pretty compliment and praise had changed to sneers and
+scoldings. The dimpled smile had wrinkled to a frown. There seemed so
+little desire to please, so great a determination not to be pleased.
+
+And the flirtations! Ah me, they had forgotten how to flirt! Oh, the
+pity of it! All the jests were bitter, all the little services were
+given grudgingly. The air seemed to have grown chilly. A darkness had
+come over all things.
+
+And then I awoke to reality, and found I had been sitting in my chair
+longer than I had intended. The band-stand was empty, the sun had set; I
+rose and made my way home through the scattered crowd.
+
+Nature is so callous. The Dame irritates one at times by her devotion to
+her one idea, the propagation of the species.
+
+"Multiply and be fruitful; let my world be ever more and more peopled."
+
+For this she trains and fashions her young girls, models them with
+cunning hand, paints them with her wonderful red and white, crowns them
+with her glorious hair, teaches them to smile and laugh, trains their
+voices into music, sends them out into the world to captivate, to
+enslave us.
+
+"See how beautiful she is, my lad," says the cunning old woman. "Take
+her; build your little nest with her in your pretty suburb; work for her
+and live for her; enable her to keep the little ones that I will send."
+
+And to her, old hundred-breasted Artemis whispers, "Is he not a bonny
+lad? See how he loves you, how devoted he is to you! He will work for
+you and make you happy; he will build your home for you. You will be the
+mother of his children."
+
+So we take each other by the hand, full of hope and love, and from that
+hour Mother Nature has done with us. Let the wrinkles come; let our
+voices grow harsh; let the fire she lighted in our hearts die out; let
+the foolish selfishness we both thought we had put behind us for ever
+creep back to us, bringing unkindness and indifference, angry thoughts
+and cruel words into our lives. What cares she? She has caught us, and
+chained us to her work. She is our universal mother-in-law. She has done
+the match-making; for the rest, she leaves it to ourselves. We can love
+or we can fight; it is all one to her, confound her.
+
+I wonder sometimes if good temper might not be taught. In business
+we use no harsh language, say no unkind things to one another. The
+shopkeeper, leaning across the counter, is all smiles and affability,
+he might put up his shutters were he otherwise. The commercial gent, no
+doubt, thinks the ponderous shopwalker an ass, but refrains from telling
+him so. Hasty tempers are banished from the City. Can we not see that
+it is just as much to our interest to banish them from Tooting and
+Hampstead?
+
+The young man who sat in the chair next to me, how carefully he wrapped
+the cloak round the shoulders of the little milliner beside him. And
+when she said she was tired of sitting still, how readily he sprang
+from his chair to walk with her, though it was evident he was very
+comfortable where he was. And she! She had laughed at his jokes; they
+were not very clever jokes, they were not very new. She had probably
+read them herself months before in her own particular weekly journal.
+Yet the harmless humbug made him happy. I wonder if ten years hence
+she will laugh at such old humour, if ten years hence he will take such
+clumsy pains to put her cape about her. Experience shakes her head, and
+is amused at my question.
+
+I would have evening classes for the teaching of temper to married
+couples, only I fear the institution would languish for lack of pupils.
+The husbands would recommend their wives to attend, generously offering
+to pay the fee as a birthday present. The wife would be indignant at the
+suggestion of good money being thus wasted. "No, John, dear," she would
+unselfishly reply, "you need the lessons more than I do. It would be a
+shame for me to take them away from you," and they would wrangle upon
+the subject for the rest of the day.
+
+Oh! the folly of it. We pack our hamper for life's picnic with such
+pains. We spend so much, we work so hard. We make choice pies, we cook
+prime joints, we prepare so carefully the mayonnaise, we mix with loving
+hands the salad, we cram the basket to the lid with every delicacy we
+can think of. Everything to make the picnic a success is there except
+the salt. Ah! woe is me, we forget the salt. We slave at our desks,
+in our workshops, to make a home for those we love; we give up our
+pleasures, we give up our rest. We toil in our kitchen from morning till
+night, and we render the whole feast tasteless for want of a ha'porth
+of salt--for want of a soupcon of amiability, for want of a handful of
+kindly words, a touch of caress, a pinch of courtesy.
+
+Who does not know that estimable housewife, working from eight till
+twelve to keep the house in what she calls order? She is so good a
+woman, so untiring, so unselfish, so conscientious, so irritating. Her
+rooms are so clean, her servants so well managed, her children so well
+dressed, her dinners so well cooked; the whole house so uninviting.
+Everything about her is in apple-pie order, and everybody wretched.
+
+My good Madam, you polish your tables, you scour your kettles, but the
+most valuable piece of furniture in the whole house you are letting to
+rack and ruin for want of a little pains. You will find it in your own
+room, my dear Lady, in front of your own mirror. It is getting shabby
+and dingy, old-looking before its time; the polish is rubbed off it,
+Madam, it is losing its brightness and charm. Do you remember when he
+first brought it home, how proud he was of it? Do you think you have
+used it well, knowing how he valued it? A little less care of your
+pots and your pans, Madam, a little more of yourself were wiser. Polish
+yourself up, Madam; you had a pretty wit once, a pleasant laugh, a
+conversation that was not confined exclusively to the short-comings of
+servants, the wrong-doings of tradesmen. My dear Madam, we do not live
+on spotless linen, and crumbless carpets. Hunt out that bundle of old
+letters you keep tied up in faded ribbon at the back of your bureau
+drawer--a pity you don't read them oftener. He did not enthuse about
+your cuffs and collars, gush over the neatness of your darning. It was
+your tangled hair he raved about, your sunny smile (we have not seen
+it for some years, Madam--the fault of the Cook and the Butcher, I
+presume), your little hands, your rosebud mouth--it has lost its shape,
+Madam, of late. Try a little less scolding of Mary Ann, and practise
+a laugh once a day: you might get back the dainty curves. It would be
+worth trying. It was a pretty mouth once.
+
+Who invented that mischievous falsehood that the way to a man's heart
+was through his stomach? How many a silly woman, taking it for truth,
+has let love slip out of the parlour, while she was busy in the kitchen.
+Of course, if you were foolish enough to marry a pig, I suppose you must
+be content to devote your life to the preparation of hog's-wash. But are
+you sure that he IS a pig? If by any chance he be not?--then, Madam, you
+are making a grievous mistake. My dear Lady, you are too modest. If I
+may say so without making you unduly conceited, even at the dinner-table
+itself, you are of much more importance than the mutton. Courage, Madam,
+be not afraid to tilt a lance even with your own cook. You can be more
+piquant than the sauce a la Tartare, more soothing surely than the
+melted butter. There was a time when he would not have known whether
+he was eating beef or pork with you the other side of the table. Whose
+fault is it? Don't think so poorly of us. We are not ascetics, neither
+are we all gourmets: most of us plain men, fond of our dinner, as a
+healthy man should be, but fonder still of our sweethearts and wives,
+let us hope. Try us. A moderately-cooked dinner--let us even say a
+not-too-well-cooked dinner, with you looking your best, laughing and
+talking gaily and cleverly--as you can, you know--makes a pleasanter
+meal for us, after the day's work is done, than that same dinner, cooked
+to perfection, with you silent, jaded, and anxious, your pretty hair
+untidy, your pretty face wrinkled with care concerning the sole, with
+anxiety regarding the omelette.
+
+My poor Martha, be not troubled about so many things. YOU are the one
+thing needful--if the bricks and mortar are to be a home. See to it that
+YOU are well served up, that YOU are done to perfection, that YOU are
+tender and satisfying, that YOU are worth sitting down to. We wanted a
+wife, a comrade, a friend; not a cook and a nurse on the cheap.
+
+But of what use is it to talk? the world will ever follow its own folly.
+When I think of all the good advice that I have given it, and of the
+small result achieved, I confess I grow discouraged. I was giving good
+advice to a lady only the other day. I was instructing her as to the
+proper treatment of aunts. She was sucking a lead-pencil, a thing I am
+always telling her not to do. She took it out of her mouth to speak.
+
+"I suppose you know how everybody ought to do everything," she said.
+
+There are times when it is necessary to sacrifice one's modesty to one's
+duty.
+
+"Of course I do," I replied.
+
+"And does Mama know how everybody ought to do everything?" was the
+second question.
+
+My conviction on this point was by no means so strong, but for domestic
+reasons I again sacrificed myself to expediency.
+
+"Certainly," I answered; "and take that pencil out of your mouth. I've
+told you of that before. You'll swallow it one day, and then you'll get
+perichondritis and die."
+
+She appeared to be solving a problem.
+
+"All grown-up people seem to know everything," she summarized.
+
+There are times when I doubt if children are as simple as they look.
+If it be sheer stupidity that prompts them to make remarks of this
+character, one should pity them, and seek to improve them. But if it be
+not stupidity? well then, one should still seek to improve them, but by
+a different method.
+
+The other morning I overheard the nurse talking to this particular
+specimen. The woman is a most worthy creature, and she was imparting
+to the child some really sound advice. She was in the middle of an
+unexceptional exhortation concerning the virtue of silence, when
+Dorothea interrupted her with--
+
+"Oh, do be quiet, Nurse. I never get a moment's peace from your
+chatter."
+
+Such an interruption discourages a woman who is trying to do her duty.
+
+Last Tuesday evening she was unhappy. Myself, I think that rhubarb
+should never be eaten before April, and then never with lemonade. Her
+mother read her a homily upon the subject of pain. It was impressed upon
+her that we must be patient, that we must put up with the trouble that
+God sends us. Dorothea would descend to details, as children will.
+
+"Must we put up with the cod-liver oil that God sends us?"
+
+"Yes, decidedly."
+
+"And with the nurses that God sends us?"
+
+"Certainly; and be thankful that you've got them, some little girls
+haven't any nurse. And don't talk so much."
+
+On Friday I found the mother in tears.
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, nothing," was the answer; "only Baby. She's such a strange child. I
+can't make her out at all."
+
+"What has she been up to now?"
+
+"Oh, she will argue, you know."
+
+She has that failing. I don't know where she gets it from, but she's got
+it.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, she made me cross; and, to punish her, I told her she shouldn't
+take her doll's perambulator out with her."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Well, she didn't say anything then, but so soon as I was outside the
+door, I heard her talking to herself--you know her way?"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"She said--"
+
+"Yes, she said?"
+
+"She said, 'I must be patient. I must put up with the mother God has
+sent me.'"
+
+She lunches down-stairs on Sundays. We have her with us once a week to
+give her the opportunity of studying manners and behaviour. Milson had
+dropped in, and we were discussing politics. I was interested, and,
+pushing my plate aside, leant forward with my elbows on the table.
+Dorothea has a habit of talking to herself in a high-pitched whisper
+capable of being heard above an Adelphi love scene. I heard her say--
+
+"I must sit up straight. I mustn't sprawl with my elbows on the table.
+It is only common, vulgar people behave that way."
+
+I looked across at her; she was sitting most correctly, and appeared to
+be contemplating something a thousand miles away. We had all of us been
+lounging! We sat up stiffly, and conversation flagged.
+
+Of course we made a joke of it after the child was gone. But somehow it
+didn't seem to be OUR joke.
+
+I wish I could recollect my childhood. I should so like to know if
+children are as simple as they can look.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE DELIGHTS AND BENEFITS OF SLAVERY
+
+My study window looks down upon Hyde Park, and often, to quote the
+familiar promise of each new magazine, it amuses and instructs me to
+watch from my tower the epitome of human life that passes to and
+fro beneath. At the opening of the gates, creeps in the woman of the
+streets. Her pitiful work for the time being is over. Shivering in
+the chill dawn, she passes to her brief rest. Poor Slave! Lured to the
+galley's lowest deck, then chained there. Civilization, tricked fool,
+they say has need of such. You serve as the dogs of Eastern towns. But
+at least, it seems to me, we need not spit on you. Home to your kennel!
+Perchance, if the Gods be kind, they may send you dreams of a cleanly
+hearth, where you lie with a silver collar round your neck.
+
+Next comes the labourer--the hewer of wood, the drawer of
+water--slouching wearily to his toil; sleep clinging still about his
+leaden eyes, his pittance of food carried tied up in a dish-clout. The
+first stroke of the hour clangs from Big Ben. Haste thee, fellow-slave,
+lest the overseer's whip, "Out, we will have no lie-a-beds here,"
+descend upon thy patient back.
+
+Later, the artisan, with his bag of tools across his shoulder. He, too,
+listens fearfully to the chiming of the bells. For him also there hangs
+ready the whip.
+
+After him, the shop boy and the shop girl, making love as they walk,
+not to waste time. And after these the slaves of the desk and of the
+warehouse, employers and employed, clerks and tradesmen, office boys
+and merchants. To your places, slaves of all ranks. Get you unto your
+burdens.
+
+Now, laughing and shouting as they run, the children, the sons and
+daughters of the slaves. Be industrious, little children, and learn
+your lessons, that when the time comes you may be ready to take from our
+hands the creaking oar, to slip into our seat at the roaring loom. For
+we shall not be slaves for ever, little children. It is the good law
+of the land. So many years in the galleys, so many years in the fields;
+then we can claim our freedom. Then we shall go, little children, back
+to the land of our birth. And you we must leave behind us to take up the
+tale of our work. So, off to your schools, little children, and learn to
+be good little slaves.
+
+Next, pompous and sleek, come the educated slaves--journalists, doctors,
+judges, and poets; the attorney, the artist, the player, the priest.
+They likewise scurry across the Park, looking anxiously from time
+to time at their watches, lest they be late for their appointments;
+thinking of the rates and taxes to be earned, of the bonnets to be paid
+for, the bills to be met. The best scourged, perhaps, of all, these
+slaves. The cat reserved for them has fifty tails in place of merely two
+or three. Work, you higher middle-class slave, or you shall come down to
+the smoking of twopenny cigars; harder yet, or you shall drink shilling
+claret; harder, or you shall lose your carriage and ride in a penny bus;
+your wife's frocks shall be of last year's fashion; your trousers shall
+bag at the knees; from Kensington you shall be banished to Kilburn, if
+the tale of your bricks run short. Oh, a many-thonged whip is yours, my
+genteel brother.
+
+The slaves of fashion are the next to pass beneath me in review. They
+are dressed and curled with infinite pains. The liveried, pampered
+footman these, kept more for show than use; but their senseless tasks
+none the less labour to them. Here must they come every day, merry or
+sad. By this gravel path and no other must they walk; these phrases
+shall they use when they speak to one another. For an hour they must go
+slowly up and down upon a bicycle from Hyde Park Corner to the Magazine
+and back. And these clothes must they wear; their gloves of this colour,
+their neck-ties of this pattern. In the afternoon they must return
+again, this time in a carriage, dressed in another livery, and for an
+hour they must pass slowly to and fro in foolish procession. For dinner
+they must don yet another livery, and after dinner they must stand about
+at dreary social functions till with weariness and boredom their heads
+feel dropping from their shoulders.
+
+With the evening come the slaves back from their work: barristers,
+thinking out their eloquent appeals; school-boys, conning their
+dog-eared grammars; City men, planning their schemes; the wearers of
+motley, cudgelling their poor brains for fresh wit with which to please
+their master; shop boys and shop girls, silent now as, together, they
+plod homeward; the artisan; the labourer. Two or three hours you shall
+have to yourselves, slaves, to think and love and play, if you be not
+too tired to think, or love, or play. Then to your litter, that you may
+be ready for the morrow's task.
+
+The twilight deepens into dark; there comes back the woman of the
+streets. As the shadows, she rounds the City's day. Work strikes its
+tent. Evil creeps from its peering place.
+
+So we labour, driven by the whip of necessity, an army of slaves. If we
+do not our work, the whip descends upon us; only the pain we feel in our
+stomach instead of on our back. And because of that, we call ourselves
+free men.
+
+Some few among us bravely struggle to be really free: they are our
+tramps and outcasts. We well-behaved slaves shrink from them, for the
+wages of freedom in this world are vermin and starvation. We can live
+lives worth living only by placing the collar round our neck.
+
+There are times when one asks oneself: Why this endless labour? Why this
+building of houses, this cooking of food, this making of clothes? Is the
+ant so much more to be envied than the grasshopper, because she spends
+her life in grubbing and storing, and can spare no time for singing?
+Why this complex instinct, driving us to a thousand labours to satisfy
+a thousand desires? We have turned the world into a workshop to provide
+ourselves with toys. To purchase luxury we have sold our ease.
+
+Oh, Children of Israel! why were ye not content in your wilderness? It
+seems to have been a pattern wilderness. For you, a simple wholesome
+food, ready cooked, was provided. You took no thought for rent and
+taxes; you had no poor among you--no poor-rate collectors. You suffered
+not from indigestion, nor the hundred ills that follow over-feeding; an
+omer for every man was your portion, neither more nor less. You knew
+not you had a liver. Doctors wearied you not with their theories, their
+physics, and their bills. You were neither landowners nor leaseholders,
+neither shareholders nor debenture holders. The weather and the market
+reports troubled you not. The lawyer was unknown to you; you wanted no
+advice; you had nought to quarrel about with your neighbour. No riches
+were yours for the moth and rust to damage. Your yearly income and
+expenditure you knew would balance to a fraction. Your wife and children
+were provided for. Your old age caused you no anxiety; you knew you
+would always have enough to live upon in comfort. Your funeral, a simple
+and tasteful affair, would be furnished by the tribe. And yet, poor,
+foolish child, fresh from the Egyptian brickfield, you could not rest
+satisfied. You hungered for the fleshpots, knowing well what flesh-pots
+entail: the cleaning of the flesh-pots, the forging of the flesh-pots,
+the hewing of wood to make the fires for the boiling of the flesh-pots,
+the breeding of beasts to fill the pots, the growing of fodder to feed
+the beasts to fill the pots.
+
+All the labour of our life is centred round our flesh-pots. On the altar
+of the flesh-pot we sacrifice our leisure, our peace of mind. For a mess
+of pottage we sell our birthright.
+
+Oh! Children of Israel, saw you not the long punishment you were
+preparing for yourselves, when in your wilderness you set up the image
+of the Calf, and fell before it, crying--"This shall be our God."
+
+You would have veal. Thought you never of the price man pays for Veal?
+The servants of the Golden Calf! I see them, stretched before my eyes, a
+weary, endless throng. I see them toiling in the mines, the black sweat
+on their faces. I see them in sunless cities, silent, and grimy, and
+bent. I see them, ague-twisted, in the rain-soaked fields. I see them,
+panting by the furnace doors. I see them, in loin-cloth and necklace,
+the load upon their head. I see them in blue coats and red coats,
+marching to pour their blood as an offering on the altar of the Calf. I
+see them in homespun and broadcloth, I see them in smock and gaiters, I
+see them in cap and apron, the servants of the Calf. They swarm on the
+land and they dot the sea. They are chained to the anvil and counter;
+they are chained to the bench and the desk. They make ready the soil,
+they till the fields where the Golden Calf is born. They build the ship,
+and they sail the ship that carries the Golden Calf. They fashion the
+pots, they mould the pans, they carve the tables, they turn the chairs,
+they dream of the sauces, they dig for the salt, they weave the damask,
+they mould the dish to serve the Golden Calf.
+
+The work of the world is to this end, that we eat of the Calf. War and
+Commerce, Science and Law! what are they but the four pillars supporting
+the Golden Calf? He is our God. It is on his back that we have journeyed
+from the primeval forest, where our ancestors ate nuts and fruit. He
+is our God. His temple is in every street. His blue-robed priest stands
+ever at the door, calling to the people to worship. Hark! his voice
+rises on the gas-tainted air--"Now's your time! Now's your time! Buy!
+Buy! ye people. Bring hither the sweat of your brow, the sweat of your
+brain, the ache of your heart, buy Veal with it. Bring me the best years
+of your life. Bring me your thoughts, your hopes, your loves; ye shall
+have Veal for them. Now's your time! Now's your time! Buy! Buy!"
+
+Oh! Children of Israel, was Veal, even with all its trimmings, quite
+worth the price?
+
+And we! what wisdom have we learned, during the centuries? I talked
+with a rich man only the other evening. He calls himself a Financier,
+whatever that may mean. He leaves his beautiful house, some twenty miles
+out of London, at a quarter to eight, summer and winter, after a hurried
+breakfast by himself, while his guests still sleep, and he gets back
+just in time to dress for an elaborate dinner he himself is too weary
+or too preoccupied to more than touch. If ever he is persuaded to give
+himself a holiday it is for a fortnight in Ostend, when it is most
+crowded and uncomfortable. He takes his secretary with him, receives
+and despatches a hundred telegrams a day, and has a private telephone,
+through which he can speak direct to London, brought up into his
+bedroom.
+
+I suppose the telephone is really a useful invention. Business men tell
+me they wonder how they contrived to conduct their affairs without it.
+My own wonder always is, how any human being with the ordinary passions
+of his race can conduct his business, or even himself, creditably,
+within a hundred yards of the invention. I can imagine Job, or Griselda,
+or Socrates liking to have a telephone about them as exercise. Socrates,
+in particular, would have made quite a reputation for himself out of a
+three months' subscription to a telephone. Myself, I am, perhaps, too
+sensitive. I once lived for a month in an office with a telephone, if
+one could call it life. I was told that if I had stuck to the thing for
+two or three months longer, I should have got used to it. I know friends
+of mine, men once fearless and high-spirited, who now stand in front
+of their own telephone for a quarter of an hour at a time, and never so
+much as answer it back. They tell me that at first they used to swear
+and shout at it as I did; but now their spirit seems crushed. That is
+what happens: you either break the telephone, or the telephone breaks
+you. You want to see a man two streets off. You might put on your hat,
+and be round at his office in five minutes. You are on the point of
+starting when the telephone catches your eye. You think you will ring
+him up to make sure he is in. You commence by ringing up some half-dozen
+times before anybody takes any notice of you whatever. You are burning
+with indignation at this neglect, and have left the instrument to sit
+down and pen a stinging letter of complaint to the Company when the
+ring-back re-calls you. You seize the ear trumpets, and shout--
+
+"How is it that I can never get an answer when I ring? Here have I been
+ringing for the last half-hour. I have rung twenty times." (This is
+a falsehood. You have rung only six times, and the "half-hour" is an
+absurd exaggeration; but you feel the mere truth would not be adequate
+to the occasion.) "I think it disgraceful," you continue, "and I shall
+complain to the Company. What is the use of my having a telephone if I
+can't get any answer when I ring? Here I pay a large sum for having
+this thing, and I can't get any notice taken. I've been ringing all the
+morning. Why is it?"
+
+Then you wait for the answer.
+
+"What--what do you say? I can't hear what you say."
+
+"I say I've been ringing here for over an hour, and I can't get any
+reply," you call back. "I shall complain to the Company."
+
+"You want what? Don't stand so near the tube. I can't hear what you say.
+What number?"
+
+"Bother the number; I say why is it I don't get an answer when I ring?"
+
+"Eight hundred and what?"
+
+You can't argue any more, after that. The machine would give way under
+the language you want to make use of. Half of what you feel would
+probably cause an explosion at some point where the wire was weak.
+Indeed, mere language of any kind would fall short of the requirements
+of the case. A hatchet and a gun are the only intermediaries through
+which you could convey your meaning by this time. So you give up all
+attempt to answer back, and meekly mention that you want to be put in
+communication with four-five-seven-six.
+
+"Four-nine-seven-six?" says the girl.
+
+"No; four-five-seven-six."
+
+"Did you say seven-six or six-seven?"
+
+"Six-seven--no! I mean seven-six: no--wait a minute. I don't know what I
+do mean now."
+
+"Well, I wish you'd find out," says the young lady severely. "You are
+keeping me here all the morning."
+
+So you look up the number in the book again, and at last she tells you
+that you are in connection; and then, ramming the trumpet tight against
+your ear, you stand waiting.
+
+And if there is one thing more than another likely to make a man feel
+ridiculous it is standing on tip-toe in a corner, holding a machine to
+his head, and listening intently to nothing. Your back aches and your
+head aches, your very hair aches. You hear the door open behind you and
+somebody enter the room. You can't turn your head. You swear at them,
+and hear the door close with a bang. It immediately occurs to you that
+in all probability it was Henrietta. She promised to call for you at
+half-past twelve: you were to take her to lunch. It was twelve o'clock
+when you were fool enough to mix yourself up with this infernal machine,
+and it probably is half-past twelve by now. Your past life rises before
+you, accompanied by dim memories of your grandmother. You are wondering
+how much longer you can bear the strain of this attitude, and whether
+after all you do really want to see the man in the next street but two,
+when the girl in the exchange-room calls up to know if you're done.
+
+"Done!" you retort bitterly; "why, I haven't begun yet."
+
+"Well, be quick," she says, "because you're wasting time."
+
+Thus admonished, you attack the thing again. "ARE you there?" you cry in
+tones that ought to move the heart of a Charity Commissioner; and then,
+oh joy! oh rapture! you hear a faint human voice replying--"Yes, what
+is it?"
+
+"Oh! Are you four-five-seven-six?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Are you four-five-seven-six, Williamson?"
+
+"What! who are you?"
+
+"Eight-one-nine, Jones."
+
+"Bones?"
+
+"No, JONES. Are you four-five-seven-six?"
+
+"Yes; what is it?"
+
+"Is Mr. Williamson in?"
+
+"Will I what--who are you?"
+
+"Jones! Is Mr. Williamson in?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Williamson. Will-i-am-son!"
+
+"You're the son of what? I can't hear what you say."
+
+Then you gather yourself for one final effort, and succeed, by
+superhuman patience, in getting the fool to understand that you wish to
+know if Mr. Williamson is in, and he says, so it sounds to you, "Be in
+all the morning."
+
+So you snatch up your hat and run round.
+
+"Oh, I've come to see Mr. Williamson," you say.
+
+"Very sorry, sir," is the polite reply, "but he's out."
+
+"Out? Why, you just now told me through the telephone that he'd be in
+all the morning."
+
+"No, I said, he 'WON'T be in all the morning.'"
+
+You go back to the office, and sit down in front of that telephone and
+look at it. There it hangs, calm and imperturbable. Were it an
+ordinary instrument, that would be its last hour. You would go straight
+down-stairs, get the coal-hammer and the kitchen-poker, and divide it
+into sufficient pieces to give a bit to every man in London. But you
+feel nervous of these electrical affairs, and there is a something about
+that telephone, with its black hole and curly wires, that cows you. You
+have a notion that if you don't handle it properly something may come
+and shock you, and then there will be an inquest, and bother of that
+sort, so you only curse it.
+
+That is what happens when you want to use the telephone from your end.
+But that is not the worst that the telephone can do. A sensible man,
+after a little experience, can learn to leave the thing alone. Your
+worst troubles are not of your own making. You are working against time;
+you have given instructions not to be disturbed. Perhaps it is after
+lunch, and you are thinking with your eyes closed, so that your thoughts
+shall not be distracted by the objects about the room. In either case
+you are anxious not to leave your chair, when off goes that telephone
+bell and you spring from your chair, uncertain, for the moment, whether
+you have been shot, or blown up with dynamite. It occurs to you in your
+weakness that if you persist in taking no notice, they will get tired,
+and leave you alone. But that is not their method. The bell rings
+violently at ten-second intervals. You have nothing to wrap your head up
+in. You think it will be better to get this business over and done with.
+You go to your fate and call back savagely--
+
+"What is it? What do you want?"
+
+No answer, only a confused murmur, prominent out of which come the
+voices of two men swearing at one another. The language they are making
+use of is disgraceful. The telephone seems peculiarly adapted for the
+conveyance of blasphemy. Ordinary language sounds indistinct through
+it; but every word those two men are saying can be heard by all the
+telephone subscribers in London.
+
+It is useless attempting to listen till they have done. When they are
+exhausted, you apply to the tube again. No answer is obtainable. You get
+mad, and become sarcastic; only being sarcastic when you are not sure
+that anybody is at the other end to hear you is unsatisfying.
+
+At last, after a quarter of an hour or so of saying, "Are you there?"
+"Yes, I'm here," "Well?" the young lady at the Exchange asks what you
+want.
+
+"I don't want anything," you reply.
+
+"Then why do you keep talking?" she retorts; "you mustn't play with the
+thing."
+
+This renders you speechless with indignation for a while, upon
+recovering from which you explain that somebody rang you up.
+
+"WHO rang you up?" she asks.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"I wish you did," she observes.
+
+Generally disgusted, you slam the trumpet up and return to your chair.
+The instant you are seated the bell clangs again; and you fly up and
+demand to know what the thunder they want, and who the thunder they are.
+
+"Don't speak so loud, we can't hear you. What do you want?" is the
+answer.
+
+"I don't want anything. What do you want? Why do you ring me up, and
+then not answer me? Do leave me alone, if you can!"
+
+"We can't get Hong Kongs at seventy-four."
+
+"Well, I don't care if you can't."
+
+"Would you like Zulus?"
+
+"What are you talking about?" you reply; "I don't know what you mean."
+
+"Would you like Zulus--Zulus at seventy-three and a half?"
+
+"I wouldn't have 'em at six a penny. What are you talking about?"
+
+"Hong Kongs--we can't get them at seventy-four. Oh, half-a-minute" (the
+half-a-minute passes). "Are you there?"
+
+"Yes, but you are talking to the wrong man."
+
+"We can get you Hong Kongs at seventy-four and seven-eights."
+
+"Bother Hong Kongs, and you too. I tell you, you are talking to the
+wrong man. I've told you once."
+
+"Once what?"
+
+"Why, that I am the wrong man--I mean that you are talking to the wrong
+man."
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Eight-one-nine, Jones."
+
+"Oh, aren't you one-nine-eight?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+How can a man after that sit down and write pleasantly of the European
+crisis? And, if it were needed, herein lies another indictment against
+the telephone. I was engaged in an argument, which, if not in itself
+serious, was at least concerned with a serious enough subject, the
+unsatisfactory nature of human riches; and from that highly moral
+discussion have I been lured, by the accidental sight of the word
+"telephone," into the writing of matter which can have the effect only
+of exciting to frenzy all critics of the New Humour into whose hands,
+for their sins, this book may come. Let me forget my transgression
+and return to my sermon, or rather to the sermon of my millionaire
+acquaintance.
+
+It was one day after dinner, we sat together in his magnificently
+furnished dining-room. We had lighted our cigars at the silver lamp. The
+butler had withdrawn.
+
+"These cigars we are smoking," my friend suddenly remarked, a propos
+apparently of nothing, "they cost me five shillings apiece, taking them
+by the thousand."
+
+"I can quite believe it," I answered; "they are worth it."
+
+"Yes, to you," he replied, almost savagely. "What do you usually pay for
+your cigars?"
+
+We had known each other years ago. When I first met him his offices
+consisted of a back room up three flights of stairs in a dingy by-street
+off the Strand, which has since disappeared. We occasionally dined
+together, in those days, at a restaurant in Great Portland Street, for
+one and nine. Our acquaintanceship was of sufficient standing to allow
+of such a question.
+
+"Threepence," I answered. "They work out at about twopence
+three-farthings by the box."
+
+"Just so," he growled; "and your twopenny-three-farthing weed gives you
+precisely the same amount of satisfaction that this five shilling cigar
+affords me. That means four and ninepence farthing wasted every time I
+smoke. I pay my cook two hundred a year. I don't enjoy my dinner as much
+as when it cost me four shillings, including a quarter flask of Chianti.
+What is the difference, personally, to me whether I drive to my office
+in a carriage and pair, or in an omnibus? I often do ride in a bus: it
+saves trouble. It is absurd wasting time looking for one's coachman,
+when the conductor of an omnibus that passes one's door is hailing one
+a few yards off. Before I could afford even buses--when I used to
+walk every morning to the office from Hammersmith--I was healthier. It
+irritates me to think how hard I work for no earthly benefit to myself.
+My money pleases a lot of people I don't care two straws about, and
+who are only my friends in the hope of making something out of me. If I
+could eat a hundred-guinea dinner myself every night, and enjoy it four
+hundred times as much as I used to enjoy a five-shilling dinner, there
+would be some sense in it. Why do I do it?"
+
+I had never heard him talk like this before. In his excitement he rose
+from the table, and commenced pacing the room.
+
+"Why don't I invest my money in the two and a half per cents?" he
+continued. "At the very worst I should be safe for five thousand a
+year. What, in the name of common sense, does a man want with more? I am
+always saying to myself, I'll do it; why don't I?
+
+"Well, why not?" I echoed.
+
+"That's what I want you to tell me," he returned. "You set up for
+understanding human nature, it's a mystery to me. In my place, you
+would do as I do; you know that. If somebody left you a hundred thousand
+pounds to-morrow, you would start a newspaper, or build a theatre--some
+damn-fool trick for getting rid of the money and giving yourself
+seventeen hours' anxiety a day; you know you would."
+
+I hung my head in shame. I felt the justice of the accusation. It has
+always been my dream to run a newspaper and own a theatre.
+
+"If we worked only for what we could spend," he went on, "the City might
+put up its shutters to-morrow morning. What I want to get at the bottom
+of is this instinct that drives us to work apparently for work's own
+sake. What is this strange thing that gets upon our back and spurs us?"
+
+A servant entered at that moment with a cablegram from the manager of
+one of his Austrian mines, and he had to leave me for his study. But,
+walking home, I fell to pondering on his words. WHY this endless work?
+Why each morning do we get up and wash and dress ourselves, to undress
+ourselves at night and go to bed again? Why do we work merely to earn
+money to buy food; and eat food so as to gain strength that we may work?
+Why do we live, merely in the end to say good-bye to one another? Why
+do we labour to bring children into the world that they may die and be
+buried?
+
+Of what use our mad striving, our passionate desire? Will it matter
+to the ages whether, once upon a time, the Union Jack or the Tricolour
+floated over the battlements of Badajoz? Yet we poured our blood into
+its ditches to decide the question. Will it matter, in the days when the
+glacial period shall have come again, to clothe the earth with silence,
+whose foot first trod the Pole? Yet, generation after generation, we
+mile its roadway with our whitening bones. So very soon the worms come
+to us; does it matter whether we love, or hate? Yet the hot blood rushes
+through our veins, we wear out heart and brain for shadowy hopes that
+ever fade as we press forward.
+
+The flower struggles up from seed-pod, draws the sweet sap from the
+ground, folds its petals each night, and sleeps. Then love comes to it
+in a strange form, and it longs to mingle its pollen with the pollen of
+some other flower. So it puts forth its gay blossoms, and the wandering
+insect bears the message from seed-pod to seed-pod. And the seasons
+pass, bringing with them the sunshine and the rain, till the flower
+withers, never having known the real purpose for which it lived,
+thinking the garden was made for it, not it for the garden. The coral
+insect dreams in its small soul, which is possibly its small stomach,
+of home and food. So it works and strives deep down in the dark waters,
+never knowing of the continents it is fashioning.
+
+But the question still remains: for what purpose is it all? Science
+explains it to us. By ages of strife and effort we improve the race;
+from ether, through the monkey, man is born. So, through the labour
+of the coming ages, he will free himself still further from the brute.
+Through sorrow and through struggle, by the sweat of brain and brow, he
+will lift himself towards the angels. He will come into his kingdom.
+
+But why the building? Why the passing of the countless ages? Why should
+he not have been born the god he is to be, imbued at birth with all the
+capabilities his ancestors have died acquiring? Why the Pict and Hun
+that _I_ may be? Why _I_, that a descendant of my own, to whom I shall
+seem a savage, shall come after me? Why, if the universe be ordered by a
+Creator to whom all things are possible, the protoplasmic cell? Why not
+the man that is to be? Shall all the generations be so much human waste
+that he may live? Am I but another layer of the soil preparing for him?
+
+Or, if our future be in other spheres, then why the need of this planet?
+Are we labouring at some Work too vast for us to perceive? Are our
+passions and desires mere whips and traces by the help of which we are
+driven? Any theory seems more hopeful than the thought that all our
+eager, fretful lives are but the turning of a useless prison crank.
+Looking back the little distance that our dim eyes can penetrate the
+past, what do we find? Civilizations, built up with infinite care,
+swept aside and lost. Beliefs for which men lived and died, proved to be
+mockeries. Greek Art crushed to the dust by Gothic bludgeons. Dreams of
+fraternity, drowned in blood by a Napoleon. What is left to us, but the
+hope that the work itself, not the result, is the real monument? Maybe,
+we are as children, asking, "Of what use are these lessons? What good
+will they ever be to us?" But there comes a day when the lad understands
+why he learnt grammar and geography, when even dates have a meaning for
+him. But this is not until he has left school, and gone out into the
+wider world. So, perhaps, when we are a little more grown up, we too may
+begin to understand the reason for our living.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE CARE AND MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN
+
+I talked to a woman once on the subject of honeymoons. I said, "Would
+you recommend a long honeymoon, or a Saturday to Monday somewhere?"
+A silence fell upon her. I gathered she was looking back rather than
+forward to her answer.
+
+"I would advise a long honeymoon," she replied at length, "the
+old-fashioned month."
+
+"Why," I persisted, "I thought the tendency of the age was to cut these
+things shorter and shorter."
+
+"It is the tendency of the age," she answered, "to seek escape from many
+things it would be wiser to face. I think myself that, for good or evil,
+the sooner it is over--the sooner both the man and the woman know--the
+better."
+
+"The sooner what is over?" I asked.
+
+If she had a fault, this woman, about which I am not sure, it was an
+inclination towards enigma.
+
+She crossed to the window and stood there, looking out.
+
+"Was there not a custom," she said, still gazing down into the wet,
+glistening street, "among one of the ancient peoples, I forget which,
+ordaining that when a man and woman, loving one another, or thinking
+that they loved, had been joined together, they should go down upon
+their wedding night to the temple? And into the dark recesses of the
+temple, through many winding passages, the priest led them until they
+came to the great chamber where dwelt the voice of their god. There the
+priest left them, clanging-to the massive door behind him, and there,
+alone in silence, they made their sacrifice; and in the night the Voice
+spoke to them, showing them their future life--whether they had chosen
+well; whether their love would live or die. And in the morning the
+priest returned and led them back into the day; and they dwelt among
+their fellows. But no one was permitted to question them, nor they
+to answer should any do so. Well, do you know, our nineteenth-century
+honeymoon at Brighton, Switzerland, or Ramsgate, as the choice or
+necessity may be, always seems to me merely another form of that night
+spent alone in the temple before the altar of that forgotten god. Our
+young men and women marry, and we kiss them and congratulate them; and,
+standing on the doorstep, throw rice and old slippers, and shout good
+wishes after them; and he waves his gloved hand to us, and she flutters
+her little handkerchief from the carriage window; and we watch their
+smiling faces and hear their laughter until the corner hides them from
+our view. Then we go about our own business, and a short time passes
+by; and one day we meet them again, and their faces have grown older
+and graver; and I always wonder what the Voice has told them during that
+little while that they have been absent from our sight. But of course it
+would not do to ask them. Nor would they answer truly if we did."
+
+My friend laughed, and, leaving the window, took her place beside the
+tea-things, and other callers dropping in, we fell to talk of pictures,
+plays, and people.
+
+But I felt it would be unwise to act on her sole advice, much as I have
+always valued her opinion.
+
+A woman takes life too seriously. It is a serious affair to most of us,
+the Lord knows. That is why it is well not to take it more seriously
+than need be.
+
+Little Jack and little Jill fall down the hill, hurting their little
+knees, and their little noses, spilling the hard-earned water. We are
+very philosophical.
+
+"Oh, don't cry!" we tell them, "that is babyish. Little boys and little
+girls must learn to bear pain. Up you get, fill the pail again, and try
+once more."
+
+Little Jack and little Jill rub their dirty knuckles into their little
+eyes, looking ruefully at their bloody little knees, and trot back with
+the pail. We laugh at them, but not ill-naturedly.
+
+"Poor little souls," we say; "how they did hullabaloo. One might have
+thought they were half-killed. And it was only a broken crown, after
+all. What a fuss children make!" We bear with much stoicism the fall of
+little Jack and little Jill.
+
+But when WE--grown-up Jack with moustache turning grey; grown-up Jill
+with the first faint "crow's feet" showing--when WE tumble down the
+hill, and OUR pail is spilt. Ye Heavens! what a tragedy has happened.
+Put out the stars, turn off the sun, suspend the laws of nature. Mr.
+Jack and Mrs. Jill, coming down the hill--what they were doing on the
+hill we will not inquire--have slipped over a stone, placed there surely
+by the evil powers of the universe. Mr. Jack and Mrs. Jill have bumped
+their silly heads. Mr. Jack and Mrs. Jill have hurt their little hearts,
+and stand marvelling that the world can go about its business in the
+face of such disaster.
+
+Don't take the matter quite so seriously, Jack and Jill. You have
+spilled your happiness, you must toil up the hill again and refill the
+pail. Carry it more carefully next time. What were you doing? Playing
+some fool's trick, I'll be bound.
+
+A laugh and a sigh, a kiss and good-bye, is our life. Is it worth so
+much fretting? It is a merry life on the whole. Courage, comrade. A
+campaign cannot be all drum and fife and stirrup-cup. The marching and
+the fighting must come into it somewhere. There are pleasant bivouacs
+among the vineyards, merry nights around the camp fires. White hands
+wave a welcome to us; bright eyes dim at our going. Would you run from
+the battle-music? What have you to complain of? Forward: the medal to
+some, the surgeon's knife to others; to all of us, sooner or later, six
+feet of mother earth. What are you afraid of? Courage, comrade.
+
+There is a mean between basking through life with the smiling
+contentment of the alligator, and shivering through it with the
+aggressive sensibility of the Lama determined to die at every cross
+word. To bear it as a man we must also feel it as a man. My philosophic
+friend, seek not to comfort a brother standing by the coffin of his
+child with the cheery suggestion that it will be all the same a hundred
+years hence, because, for one thing, the observation is not true: the
+man is changed for all eternity--possibly for the better, but don't add
+that. A soldier with a bullet in his neck is never quite the man he was.
+But he can laugh and he can talk, drink his wine and ride his horse.
+Now and again, towards evening, when the weather is trying, the sickness
+will come upon him. You will find him on a couch in a dark corner.
+
+"Hallo! old fellow, anything up?"
+
+"Oh, just a twinge, the old wound, you know. I will be better in a
+little while."
+
+Shut the door of the dark room quietly. I should not stay even to
+sympathize with him if I were you. The men will be coming to screw the
+coffin down soon. I think he would like to be alone with it till then.
+Let us leave him. He will come back to the club later on in the season.
+For a while we may have to give him another ten points or so, but he
+will soon get back his old form. Now and again, when he meets the other
+fellows' boys shouting on the towing-path; when Brown rushes up the
+drive, paper in hand, to tell him how that young scapegrace Jim has won
+his Cross; when he is congratulating Jones's eldest on having passed
+with honours, the old wound may give him a nasty twinge. But the pain
+will pass away. He will laugh at our stories and tell us his own; eat
+his dinner, play his rubber. It is only a wound.
+
+Tommy can never be ours, Jenny does not love us. We cannot afford
+claret, so we will have to drink beer. Well, what would you have us do?
+Yes, let us curse Fate by all means--some one to curse is always useful.
+Let us cry and wring our hands--for how long? The dinner-bell will ring
+soon, and the Smiths are coming. We shall have to talk about the opera
+and the picture-galleries. Quick, where is the eau-de-Cologne? where are
+the curling-tongs? Or would you we committed suicide? Is it worth while?
+Only a few more years--perhaps to-morrow, by aid of a piece of orange
+peel or a broken chimney-pot--and Fate will save us all that trouble.
+
+Or shall we, as sulky children, mope day after day? We are a
+broken-hearted little Jack--little Jill. We will never smile again; we
+will pine away and die, and be buried in the spring. The world is sad,
+and life so cruel, and heaven so cold. Oh dear! oh dear! we have hurt
+ourselves.
+
+We whimper and whine at every pain. In old strong days men faced real
+dangers, real troubles every hour; they had no time to cry. Death and
+disaster stood ever at the door. Men were contemptuous of them. Now
+in each snug protected villa we set to work to make wounds out of
+scratches. Every head-ache becomes an agony, every heart-ache a tragedy.
+It took a murdered father, a drowned sweetheart, a dishonoured mother,
+a ghost, and a slaughtered Prime Minister to produce the emotions in
+Hamlet that a modern minor poet obtains from a chorus girl's frown, or
+a temporary slump on the Stock Exchange. Like Mrs. Gummidge, we feel it
+more. The lighter and easier life gets the more seriously we go out to
+meet it. The boatmen of Ulysses faced the thunder and the sunshine alike
+with frolic welcome. We modern sailors have grown more sensitive.
+The sunshine scorches us, the rain chills us. We meet both with loud
+self-pity.
+
+Thinking these thoughts, I sought a second friend--a man whose breezy
+common-sense has often helped me, and him likewise I questioned on this
+subject of honeymoons.
+
+"My dear boy," he replied; "take my advice, if ever you get married,
+arrange it so that the honeymoon shall only last a week, and let it be a
+bustling week into the bargain. Take a Cook's circular tour. Get married
+on the Saturday morning, cut the breakfast and all that foolishness, and
+catch the eleven-ten from Charing Cross to Paris. Take her up the Eiffel
+Tower on Sunday. Lunch at Fontainebleau. Dine at the Maison Doree,
+and show her the Moulin Rouge in the evening. Take the night train for
+Lucerne. Devote Monday and Tuesday to doing Switzerland, and get into
+Rome by Thursday morning, taking the Italian lakes en route. On Friday
+cross to Marseilles, and from there push along to Monte Carlo. Let her
+have a flutter at the tables. Start early Saturday morning for Spain,
+cross the Pyrenees on mules, and rest at Bordeaux on Sunday. Get back
+to Paris on Monday (Monday is always a good day for the opera), and on
+Tuesday evening you will be at home, and glad to get there. Don't give
+her time to criticize you until she has got used to you. No man will
+bear unprotected exposure to a young girl's eyes. The honeymoon is the
+matrimonial microscope. Wobble it. Confuse it with many objects. Cloud
+it with other interests. Don't sit still to be examined. Besides,
+remember that a man always appears at his best when active, and a woman
+at her worst. Bustle her, my dear boy, bustle her: I don't care who she
+may be. Give her plenty of luggage to look after; make her catch trains.
+Let her see the average husband sprawling comfortably over the railway
+cushions, while his wife has to sit bolt upright in the corner left
+to her. Let her hear how other men swear. Let her smell other men's
+tobacco. Hurry up, and get her accustomed quickly to the sight of
+mankind. Then she will be less surprised and shocked as she grows to
+know you. One of the best fellows I ever knew spoilt his married life
+beyond repair by a long quiet honeymoon. They went off for a month to
+a lonely cottage in some heaven-forsaken spot, where never a soul came
+near them, and never a thing happened but morning, afternoon, and night.
+There for thirty days she overhauled him. When he yawned--and he yawned
+pretty often, I guess, during that month--she thought of the size of
+his mouth, and when he put his heels upon the fender she sat and brooded
+upon the shape of his feet. At meal-time, not feeling hungry herself,
+having nothing to do to make her hungry, she would occupy herself with
+watching him eat; and at night, not feeling sleepy for the same reason,
+she would lie awake and listen to his snoring. After the first day or
+two he grew tired of talking nonsense, and she of listening to it (it
+sounded nonsense now they could speak it aloud; they had fancied it
+poetry when they had had to whisper it); and having no other subject,
+as yet, of common interest, they would sit and stare in front of them
+in silence. One day some trifle irritated him and he swore. On a busy
+railway platform, or in a crowded hotel, she would have said, 'Oh!' and
+they would both have laughed. From that echoing desert the silly words
+rose up in widening circles towards the sky, and that night she cried
+herself to sleep. Bustle them, my dear boy, bustle them. We all like
+each other better the less we think about one another, and the honeymoon
+is an exceptionally critical time. Bustle her, my dear boy, bustle her."
+
+My very worst honeymoon experience took place in the South of England in
+eighteen hundred and--well, never mind the exact date, let us say a
+few years ago. I was a shy young man at that time. Many complain of my
+reserve to this day, but then some girls expect too much from a man. We
+all have our shortcomings. Even then, however, I was not so shy as she.
+We had to travel from Lyndhurst in the New Forest to Ventnor, an awkward
+bit of cross-country work in those days.
+
+"It's so fortunate you are going too," said her aunt to me on the
+Tuesday; "Minnie is always nervous travelling alone. You will be able to
+look after her, and I shan't be anxious."
+
+I said it would be a pleasure, and at the time I honestly thought it. On
+the Wednesday I went down to the coach office, and booked two places
+for Lymington, from where we took the steamer. I had not a suspicion of
+trouble.
+
+The booking-clerk was an elderly man. He said--
+
+"I've got the box seat, and the end place on the back bench."
+
+I said--
+
+"Oh, can't I have two together?"
+
+He was a kindly-looking old fellow. He winked at me. I wondered all the
+way home why he had winked at me. He said--
+
+"I'll manage it somehow."
+
+I said--
+
+"It's very kind of you, I'm sure."
+
+He laid his hand on my shoulder. He struck me as familiar, but
+well-intentioned. He said--
+
+"We have all of us been there."
+
+I thought he was alluding to the Isle of Wight. I said--
+
+"And this is the best time of the year for it, so I'm told." It was
+early summer time.
+
+He said--"It's all right in summer, and it's good enough in
+winter--WHILE IT LASTS. You make the most of it, young 'un;" and he
+slapped me on the back and laughed.
+
+He would have irritated me in another minute. I paid for the seats and
+left him.
+
+At half-past eight the next morning Minnie and I started for the
+coach-office. I call her Minnie, not with any wish to be impertinent,
+but because I have forgotten her surname. It must be ten years since
+I last saw her. She was a pretty girl, too, with those brown eyes that
+always cloud before they laugh. Her aunt did not drive down with us as
+she had intended, in consequence of a headache. She was good enough to
+say she felt every confidence in me.
+
+The old booking-clerk caught sight of us when we were about a quarter
+of a mile away, and drew to us the attention of the coachman, who
+communicated the fact of our approach to the gathered passengers.
+Everybody left off talking, and waited for us. The boots seized his
+horn, and blew--one could hardly call it a blast; it would be difficult
+to say what he blew. He put his heart into it, but not sufficient wind.
+I think his intention was to welcome us, but it suggested rather a
+feeble curse. We learnt subsequently that he was a beginner on the
+instrument.
+
+In some mysterious way the whole affair appeared to be our party. The
+booking-clerk bustled up and helped Minnie from the cart. I feared, for
+a moment, he was going to kiss her. The coachman grinned when I said
+good-morning to him. The passengers grinned, the boots grinned. Two
+chamber-maids and a waiter came out from the hotel, and they grinned. I
+drew Minnie aside, and whispered to her. I said--
+
+"There's something funny about us. All these people are grinning."
+
+She walked round me, and I walked round her, but we could neither of us
+discover anything amusing about the other. The booking-clerk said--
+
+"It's all right. I've got you young people two places just behind the
+box-seat. We'll have to put five of you on that seat. You won't mind
+sitting a bit close, will you?"
+
+The booking-clerk winked at the coachman, the coachman winked at the
+passengers, the passengers winked at one another--those of them
+who could wink--and everybody laughed. The two chamber-maids became
+hysterical, and had to cling to each other for support. With the
+exception of Minnie and myself, it seemed to be the merriest coach party
+ever assembled at Lyndhurst.
+
+We had taken our places, and I was still busy trying to fathom the joke,
+when a stout lady appeared on the scene, and demanded to know her place.
+
+The clerk explained to her that it was in the middle behind the driver.
+
+"We've had to put five of you on that seat," added the clerk.
+
+The stout lady looked at the seat.
+
+"Five of us can't squeeze into that," she said.
+
+Five of her certainly could not. Four ordinary sized people with her
+would find it tight.
+
+"Very well then," said the clerk, "you can have the end place on the
+back seat."
+
+"Nothing of the sort," said the stout lady. "I booked my seat on Monday,
+and you told me any of the front places were vacant.
+
+"I'LL take the back place," I said, "I don't mind it.
+
+"You stop where you are, young 'un," said the clerk, firmly, "and don't
+be a fool. I'll fix HER."
+
+I objected to his language, but his tone was kindness itself.
+
+"Oh, let ME have the back seat," said Minnie, rising, "I'd so like it."
+
+For answer the coachman put both his hands on her shoulders. He was a
+heavy man, and she sat down again.
+
+"Now then, mum," said the clerk, addressing the stout lady, "are you
+going up there in the middle, or are you coming up here at the back?"
+
+"But why not let one of them take the back seat?" demanded the stout
+lady, pointing her reticule at Minnie and myself; "they say they'd like
+it. Let them have it."
+
+The coachman rose, and addressed his remarks generally.
+
+"Put her up at the back, or leave her behind," he directed. "Man and
+wife have never been separated on this coach since I started running it
+fifteen year ago, and they ain't going to be now."
+
+A general cheer greeted this sentiment. The stout lady, now regarded
+as a would-be blighter of love's young dream, was hustled into the back
+seat, the whip cracked, and away we rolled.
+
+So here was the explanation. We were in a honeymoon district, in
+June--the most popular month in the whole year for marriage. Every two
+out of three couples found wandering about the New Forest in June are
+honeymoon couples; the third are going to be. When they travel anywhere
+it is to the Isle of Wight. We both had on new clothes. Our bags
+happened to be new. By some evil chance our very umbrellas were new.
+Our united ages were thirty-seven. The wonder would have been had we NOT
+been mistaken for a young married couple.
+
+A day of greater misery I have rarely passed. To Minnie, so her aunt
+informed me afterwards, the journey was the most terrible experience of
+her life, but then her experience, up to that time, had been limited.
+She was engaged, and devotedly attached, to a young clergyman; I was
+madly in love with a somewhat plump girl named Cecilia who lived with
+her mother at Hampstead. I am positive as to her living at Hampstead. I
+remember so distinctly my weekly walk down the hill from Church Row to
+the Swiss Cottage station. When walking down a steep hill all the weight
+of the body is forced into the toe of the boot, and when the boot is two
+sizes too small for you, and you have been living in it since the early
+afternoon, you remember a thing like that. But all my recollections of
+Cecilia are painful, and it is needless to pursue them.
+
+Our coach-load was a homely party, and some of the jokes were
+broad--harmless enough in themselves, had Minnie and I really been
+the married couple we were supposed to be, but even in that case
+unnecessary. I can only hope that Minnie did not understand them.
+Anyhow, she looked as if she didn't.
+
+I forget where we stopped for lunch, but I remember that lamb and mint
+sauce was on the table, and that the circumstance afforded the greatest
+delight to all the party, with the exception of the stout lady, who was
+still indignant, Minnie and myself. About my behaviour as a bridegroom
+opinion appeared to be divided. "He's a bit standoffish with her,"
+I overheard one lady remark to her husband; "I like to see 'em a bit
+kittenish myself." A young waitress, on the other hand, I am happy to
+say, showed more sense of natural reserve. "Well, I respect him for it,"
+she was saying to the barmaid, as we passed through the hall; "I'd just
+hate to be fuzzled over with everybody looking on." Nobody took the
+trouble to drop their voices for our benefit. We might have been a pair
+of prize love birds on exhibition, the way we were openly discussed. By
+the majority we were clearly regarded as a sulky young couple who would
+not go through their tricks.
+
+I have often wondered since how a real married couple would have faced
+the situation. Possibly, had we consented to give a short display of
+marital affection, "by desire," we might have been left in peace for the
+remainder of the journey.
+
+Our reputation preceded us on to the steamboat. Minnie begged and prayed
+me to let it be known we were not married. How I was to let it be known,
+except by requesting the captain to summon the whole ship's company on
+deck, and then making them a short speech, I could not think. Minnie
+said she could not bear it any longer, and retired to the ladies' cabin.
+She went off crying. Her trouble was attributed by crew and passengers
+to my coldness. One fool planted himself opposite me with his legs
+apart, and shook his head at me.
+
+"Go down and comfort her," he began. "Take an old man's advice. Put your
+arms around her." (He was one of those sentimental idiots.) "Tell her
+that you love her."
+
+I told him to go and hang himself, with so much vigour that he all but
+fell overboard. He was saved by a poultry crate: I had no luck that day.
+
+At Ryde the guard, by superhuman effort, contrived to keep us a carriage
+to ourselves. I gave him a shilling, because I did not know what else
+to do. I would have made it half-a-sovereign if he had put eight other
+passengers in with us. At every station people came to the window to
+look in at us.
+
+I handed Minnie over to her father on Ventnor platform; and I took the
+first train the next morning, to London. I felt I did not want to see
+her again for a little while; and I felt convinced she could do without
+a visit from me. Our next meeting took place the week before her
+marriage.
+
+"Where are you going to spend your honeymoon?" I asked her; "in the New
+Forest?"
+
+"No," she replied; "nor in the Isle of Wight."
+
+To enjoy the humour of an incident one must be at some distance from it
+either in time or relationship. I remember watching an amusing scene in
+Whitefield Street, just off Tottenham Court Road, one winter's Saturday
+night. A woman--a rather respectable looking woman, had her hat only
+been on straight--had just been shot out of a public-house. She was very
+dignified, and very drunk. A policeman requested her to move on. She
+called him "Fellow," and demanded to know of him if he considered that
+was the proper tone in which to address a lady. She threatened to report
+him to her cousin, the Lord Chancellor.
+
+"Yes; this way to the Lord Chancellor," retorted the policeman. "You
+come along with me;" and he caught hold of her by the arm.
+
+She gave a lurch, and nearly fell. To save her the man put his arm round
+her waist. She clasped him round the neck, and together they spun
+round two or three times; while at the very moment a piano-organ at the
+opposite corner struck up a waltz.
+
+"Choose your partners, gentlemen, for the next dance," shouted a wag,
+and the crowd roared.
+
+I was laughing myself, for the situation was undeniably comical, the
+constable's expression of disgust being quite Hogarthian, when the sight
+of a child's face beneath the gas-lamp stayed me. Her look was so full
+of terror that I tried to comfort her.
+
+"It's only a drunken woman," I said; "he's not going to hurt her."
+
+"Please, sir," was the answer, "it's my mother."
+
+Our joke is generally another's pain. The man who sits down on the
+tin-tack rarely joins in the laugh.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE MINDING OF OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS
+
+I walked one bright September morning in the Strand. I love London best
+in the autumn. Then only can one see the gleam of its white pavements,
+the bold, unbroken outline of its streets. I love the cool vistas one
+comes across of mornings in the parks, the soft twilights that linger in
+the empty bye-streets. In June the restaurant manager is off-hand with
+me; I feel I am but in his way. In August he spreads for me the table
+by the window, pours out for me my wine with his own fat hands. I cannot
+doubt his regard for me: my foolish jealousies are stilled. Do I care
+for a drive after dinner through the caressing night air, I can climb
+the omnibus stair without a preliminary fight upon the curb, can sit
+with easy conscience and unsquashed body, not feeling I have deprived
+some hot, tired woman of a seat. Do I desire the play, no harsh,
+forbidding "House full" board repels me from the door. During her
+season, London, a harassed hostess, has no time for us, her intimates.
+Her rooms are overcrowded, her servants overworked, her dinners
+hurriedly cooked, her tone insincere. In the spring, to be truthful, the
+great lady condescends to be somewhat vulgar--noisy and ostentatious.
+Not till the guests are departed is she herself again, the London that
+we, her children, love.
+
+Have you, gentle Reader, ever seen London--not the London of the waking
+day, coated with crawling life, as a blossom with blight, but the London
+of the morning, freed from her rags, the patient city, clad in mists?
+Get you up with the dawn one Sunday in summer time. Wake none else, but
+creep down stealthily into the kitchen, and make your own tea and toast.
+
+Be careful you stumble not over the cat. She will worm herself
+insidiously between your legs. It is her way; she means it in
+friendship. Neither bark your shins against the coal-box. Why the
+kitchen coal-box has its fixed place in the direct line between the
+kitchen door and the gas-bracket I cannot say. I merely know it as an
+universal law; and I would that you escaped that coal-box, lest the
+frame of mind I desire for you on this Sabbath morning be dissipated.
+
+A spoon to stir your tea, I fear you must dispense with. Knives and
+forks you will discover in plenty; blacking brushes you will put your
+hand upon in every drawer; of emery paper, did one require it, there
+are reams; but it is a point with every housekeeper that the spoons be
+hidden in a different place each night. If anybody excepting herself can
+find them in the morning, it is a slur upon her. No matter, a stick of
+firewood, sharpened at one end, makes an excellent substitute.
+
+Your breakfast done, turn out the gas, remount the stairs quietly, open
+gently the front door and slip out. You will find yourself in an unknown
+land. A strange city grown round you in the night.
+
+The sweet long streets lie silent in sunlight. Not a living thing is
+to be seen save some lean Tom that slinks from his gutter feast as you
+approach. From some tree there will sound perhaps a fretful chirp: but
+the London sparrow is no early riser; he is but talking in his sleep.
+The slow tramp of unseen policeman draws near or dies away. The clatter
+of your own footsteps goes with you, troubling you. You find yourself
+trying to walk softly, as one does in echoing cathedrals. A voice is
+everywhere about you whispering to you "Hush." Is this million-breasted
+City then some tender Artemis, seeking to keep her babes asleep? "Hush,
+you careless wayfarer; do not waken them. Walk lighter; they are so
+tired, these myriad children of mine, sleeping in my thousand arms.
+They are over-worked and over-worried; so many of them are sick, so many
+fretful, many of them, alas, so full of naughtiness. But all of them
+so tired. Hush! they worry me with their noise and riot when they are
+awake. They are so good now they are asleep. Walk lightly, let them
+rest."
+
+Where the ebbing tide flows softly through worn arches to the sea, you
+may hear the stone-faced City talking to the restless waters: "Why will
+you never stay with me? Why come but to go?"
+
+"I cannot say, I do not understand. From the deep sea I come, but only
+as a bird loosed from a child's hand with a cord. When she calls I must
+return."
+
+"It is so with these children of mine. They come to me, I know not
+whence. I nurse them for a little while, till a hand I do not see plucks
+them back. And others take their place."
+
+Through the still air there passes a ripple of sound. The sleeping
+City stirs with a faint sigh. A distant milk-cart rattling by raises
+a thousand echoes; it is the vanguard of a yoked army. Soon from every
+street there rises the soothing cry, "Mee'hilk--mee'hilk."
+
+London like some Gargantuan babe, is awake, crying for its milk. These
+be the white-smocked nurses hastening with its morning nourishment. The
+early church bells ring. "You have had your milk, little London. Now
+come and say your prayers. Another week has just begun, baby London. God
+knows what will happen, say your prayers."
+
+One by one the little creatures creep from behind the blinds into the
+streets. The brooding tenderness is vanished from the City's face. The
+fretful noises of the day have come again. Silence, her lover of the
+night, kisses her stone lips, and steals away. And you, gentle Reader,
+return home, garlanded with the self-sufficiency of the early riser.
+
+But it was of a certain week-day morning, in the Strand that I was
+thinking. I was standing outside Gatti's Restaurant, where I had just
+breakfasted, listening leisurely to an argument between an indignant
+lady passenger, presumably of Irish extraction, and an omnibus
+conductor.
+
+"For what d'ye want thin to paint Putney on ye'r bus, if ye don't GO to
+Putney?" said the lady.
+
+"We DO go to Putney," said the conductor.
+
+"Thin why did ye put me out here?"
+
+"I didn't put you out, yer got out."
+
+"Shure, didn't the gintleman in the corner tell me I was comin' further
+away from Putney ivery minit?"
+
+"Wal, and so yer was."
+
+"Thin whoy didn't you tell me?"
+
+"How was I to know yer wanted to go to Putney? Yer sings out Putney, and
+I stops and in yer jumps."
+
+"And for what d'ye think I called out Putney thin?"
+
+"'Cause it's my name, or rayther the bus's name. This 'ere IS a Putney."
+
+"How can it be a Putney whin it isn't goin' to Putney, ye gomerhawk?"
+
+"Ain't you an Hirishwoman?" retorted the conductor. "Course yer are. But
+yer aren't always goin' to Ireland. We're goin' to Putney in time, only
+we're a-going to Liverpool Street fust. 'Igher up, Jim."
+
+The bus moved on, and I was about cross the road, when a man, muttering
+savagely to himself, walked into me. He would have swept past me had
+I not, recognizing him, arrested him. It was my friend B-----, a busy
+editor of magazines and journals. It was some seconds before he appeared
+able to struggle out of his abstraction, and remember himself. "Halloo,"
+he then said, "who would have thought of seeing YOU here?"
+
+"To judge by the way you were walking," I replied, "one would imagine
+the Strand the last place in which you expected to see any human being.
+Do you ever walk into a short-tempered, muscular man?"
+
+"Did I walk into you?" he asked surprised.
+
+"Well, not right in," I answered, "I if we are to be literal. You walked
+on to me; if I had not stopped you, I suppose you would have walked over
+me."
+
+"It is this confounded Christmas business," he explained. "It drives me
+off my head."
+
+"I have heard Christmas advanced as an excuse for many things," I
+replied, "but not early in September."
+
+"Oh, you know what I mean," he answered, "we are in the middle of our
+Christmas number. I am working day and night upon it. By the bye," he
+added, "that puts me in mind. I am arranging a symposium, and I want you
+to join. 'Should Christmas,'"--I interrupted him.
+
+"My dear fellow," I said, "I commenced my journalistic career when I
+was eighteen, and I have continued it at intervals ever since. I have
+written about Christmas from the sentimental point of view; I have
+analyzed it from the philosophical point of view; and I have scarified
+it from the sarcastic standpoint. I have treated Christmas humorously
+for the Comics, and sympathetically for the Provincial Weeklies. I
+have said all that is worth saying on the subject of Christmas--maybe a
+trifle more. I have told the new-fashioned Christmas story--you know the
+sort of thing: your heroine tries to understand herself, and, failing,
+runs off with the man who began as the hero; your good woman turns out
+to be really bad when one comes to know her; while the villain, the only
+decent person in the story, dies with an enigmatic sentence on his lips
+that looks as if it meant something, but which you yourself would
+be sorry to have to explain. I have also written the old-fashioned
+Christmas story--you know that also: you begin with a good old-fashioned
+snowstorm; you have a good old-fashioned squire, and he lives in a good
+old-fashioned Hall; you work in a good old-fashioned murder; and end up
+with a good old-fashioned Christmas dinner. I have gathered Christmas
+guests together round the crackling logs to tell ghost stories to each
+other on Christmas Eve, while without the wind howled, as it always does
+on these occasions, at its proper cue. I have sent children to Heaven
+on Christmas Eve--it must be quite a busy time for St. Peter, Christmas
+morning, so many good children die on Christmas Eve. It has always been
+a popular night with them.--I have revivified dead lovers and brought
+them back well and jolly, just in time to sit down to the Christmas
+dinner. I am not ashamed of having done these things. At the time I
+thought them good. I once loved currant wine and girls with towzley
+hair. One's views change as one grows older. I have discussed Christmas
+as a religious festival. I have arraigned it as a social incubus. If
+there be any joke connected with Christmas that I have not already made
+I should be glad to hear it. I have trotted out the indigestion jokes
+till the sight of one of them gives me indigestion myself. I have
+ridiculed the family gathering. I have scoffed at the Christmas present.
+I have made witty use of paterfamilias and his bills. I have--"
+
+"Did I ever show you," I broke off to ask as we were crossing the
+Haymarket, "that little parody of mine on Poe's poem of 'The Bells'? It
+begins--" He interrupted me in his turn--
+
+"Bills, bills, bills," he repeated.
+
+"You are quite right," I admitted. "I forgot I ever showed it to you."
+
+"You never did," he replied.
+
+"Then how do you know how it begins?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know for certain," he admitted, "but I get, on an average,
+sixty-five a year submitted to me, and they all begin that way. I
+thought, perhaps, yours did also."
+
+"I don't see how else it could begin," I retorted. He had rather annoyed
+me. "Besides, it doesn't matter how a poem begins, it is how it goes
+on that is the important thing and anyhow, I'm not going to write you
+anything about Christmas. Ask me to make you a new joke about a plumber;
+suggest my inventing something original and not too shocking for a child
+to say about heaven; propose my running you off a dog story that can be
+believed by a man of average determination and we may come to terms. But
+on the subject of Christmas I am taking a rest."
+
+By this time we had reached Piccadilly Circus.
+
+"I don't blame you," he said, "if you are as sick of the subject as I
+am. So soon as these Christmas numbers are off my mind, and Christmas
+is over till next June at the office, I shall begin it at home. The
+housekeeping is gone up a pound a week already. I know what that means.
+The dear little woman is saving up to give me an expensive present that
+I don't want. I think the presents are the worst part of Christmas. Emma
+will give me a water-colour that she has painted herself. She always
+does. There would be no harm in that if she did not expect me to hang it
+in the drawing room. Have you ever seen my cousin Emma's water-colours?"
+he asked.
+
+"I think I have," I replied.
+
+"There's no thinking about it," he retorted angrily. "They're not the
+sort of water-colours you forget."
+
+He apostrophized the Circus generally.
+
+"Why do people do these things?" he demanded. "Even an amateur artist
+must have SOME sense. Can't they see what is happening? There's that
+thing of hers hanging in the passage. I put it in the passage because
+there's not much light in the passage. She's labelled it Reverie. If she
+had called it Influenza I could have understood it. I asked her where
+she got the idea from, and she said she saw the sky like that one
+evening in Norfolk. Great Heavens! then why didn't she shut her eyes or
+go home and hide behind the bed-curtains? If I had seen a sky like that
+in Norfolk I should have taken the first train back to London. I suppose
+the poor girl can't help seeing these things, but why paint them?"
+
+I said, "I suppose painting is a necessity to some natures."
+
+"But why give the things to me?" he pleaded.
+
+I could offer him no adequate reason.
+
+"The idiotic presents that people give you!" he continued. "I said I'd
+like Tennyson's poems one year. They had worried me to know what I did
+want. I didn't want anything really; that was the only thing I could
+think of that I wasn't dead sure I didn't want. Well, they clubbed
+together, four of them, and gave me Tennyson in twelve volumes,
+illustrated with coloured photographs. They meant kindly, of course. If
+you suggest a tobacco-pouch they give you a blue velvet bag capable of
+holding about a pound, embroidered with flowers, life-size. The only way
+one could use it would be to put a strap to it and wear it as a satchel.
+Would you believe it, I have got a velvet smoking-jacket, ornamented
+with forget-me-nots and butterflies in coloured silk; I'm not joking.
+And they ask me why I never wear it. I'll bring it down to the Club one
+of these nights and wake the place up a bit: it needs it."
+
+We had arrived by this at the steps of the 'Devonshire.'
+
+"And I'm just as bad," he went on, "when I give presents. I never give
+them what they want. I never hit upon anything that is of any use
+to anybody. If I give Jane a chinchilla tippet, you may be certain
+chinchilla is the most out-of-date fur that any woman could wear. 'Oh!
+that is nice of you,' she says; 'now that is just the very thing I
+wanted. I will keep it by me till chinchilla comes in again.' I give
+the girls watch-chains when nobody is wearing watch-chains. When
+watch-chains are all the rage I give them ear-rings, and they thank me,
+and suggest my taking them to a fancy-dress ball, that being their only
+chance to wear the confounded things. I waste money on white gloves with
+black backs, to find that white gloves with black backs stamp a woman as
+suburban. I believe all the shop-keepers in London save their old stock
+to palm it off on me at Christmas time. And why does it always take
+half-a-dozen people to serve you with a pair of gloves, I'd like to
+know? Only last week Jane asked me to get her some gloves for that last
+Mansion House affair. I was feeling amiable, and I thought I would
+do the thing handsomely. I hate going into a draper's shop; everybody
+stares at a man as if he were forcing his way into the ladies'
+department of a Turkish bath. One of those marionette sort of men came
+up to me and said it was a fine morning. What the devil did I want
+to talk about the morning to him for? I said I wanted some gloves. I
+described them to the best of my recollection. I said, 'I want them four
+buttons, but they are not to be button-gloves; the buttons are in the
+middle and they reach up to the elbow, if you know what I mean.' He
+bowed, and said he understood exactly what I meant, which was a damned
+sight more than I did. I told him I wanted three pair cream and
+three pair fawn-coloured, and the fawn-coloured were to be swedes. He
+corrected me. He said I meant 'Suede.' I dare say he was right, but
+the interruption put me off, and I had to begin over again. He listened
+attentively until I had finished. I guess I was about five minutes
+standing with him there close to the door. He said, 'Is that all you
+require, sir, this morning?' I said it was.
+
+"' Thank you, sir,' he replied. 'This way, please, sir.'
+
+"He took me into another room, and there we met a man named Jansen, to
+whom he briefly introduced me as a gentleman who 'desired gloves.' 'Yes,
+sir,' said Mr. Jansen; and what sort of gloves do you desire?'
+
+"I told him I wanted six pairs altogether--three suede, fawn-coloured,
+and three cream-coloured--kids.
+
+"He said, 'Do you mean kid gloves, sir, or gloves for children?'
+
+"He made me angry by that. I told him I was not in the habit of using
+slang. Nor am I when buying gloves. He said he was sorry. I explained to
+him about the buttons, so far as I could understand it myself, and
+about the length. I asked him to see to it that the buttons were sewn on
+firmly, and that the stitching everywhere was perfect, adding that the
+last gloves my wife had had of his firm had been most unsatisfactory.
+Jane had impressed upon me to add that. She said it would make them more
+careful.
+
+"He listened to me in rapt ecstacy. I might have been music.
+
+"'And what size, sir?' he asked.
+
+"I had forgotten that. 'Oh, sixes,' I answered, 'unless they are
+very stretchy indeed, in which case they had better be five and
+three-quarter.'
+
+"'Oh, and the stitching on the cream is to be black,' I added. That was
+another thing I had forgotten.
+
+"'Thank you very much,' said Mr. Jansen; 'is there anything else that
+you require this morning?'
+
+"'No, thank you,' I replied, 'not this morning.' I was beginning to like
+the man.
+
+"He took me for quite a walk, and wherever we went everybody left off
+what they were doing to stare at me. I was getting tired when we reached
+the glove department. He marched me up to a young man who was sticking
+pins into himself. He said 'Gloves,' and disappeared through a curtain.
+The young man left off sticking pins into himself, and leant across the
+counter.
+
+"'Ladies' gloves or gentlemen's gloves?' he said.
+
+"Well, I was pretty mad by this time, as you can guess. It is funny
+when you come to think of it afterwards, but the wonder then was that I
+didn't punch his head.
+
+"I said, 'Are you ever busy in this shop? Does there ever come a time
+when you feel you would like to get your work done, instead of lingering
+over it and spinning it out for pure love of the thing?'
+
+"He did not appear to understand me. I said, 'I met a man at your door
+a quarter of an hour ago, and we talked about these gloves that I want,
+and I told him all my ideas on the subject. He took me to your Mr.
+Jansen, and Mr. Jansen and I went over the whole business again. Now
+Mr. Jansen leaves it with you--you who do not even know whether I want
+ladies' or gentlemen's gloves. Before I go over this story for the third
+time, I want to know whether you are the man who is going to serve me,
+or whether you are merely a listener, because personally I am tired of
+the subject?'
+
+"Well, this was the right man at last, and I got my gloves from him. But
+what is the explanation--what is the idea? I was in that shop from first
+to last five-and-thirty minutes. And then a fool took me out the wrong
+way to show me a special line in sleeping-socks. I told him I was not
+requiring any. He said he didn't want me to buy, he only wanted me
+to see them. No wonder the drapers have had to start luncheon and
+tea-rooms. They'll fix up small furnished flats soon, where a woman can
+live for a week."
+
+I said it was very trying, shopping. I also said, as he invited me,
+and as he appeared determined to go on talking, that I would have a
+brandy-and-soda. We were in the smoke-room by this time.
+
+"There ought to be an association," he continued, "a kind of
+clearing-house for the collection and distribution of Christmas
+presents. One would give them a list of the people from whom to collect
+presents, and of the people to whom to send. Suppose they collected on
+my account twenty Christmas presents, value, say, ten pounds, while on
+the other hand they sent out for me thirty presents at a cost of fifteen
+pounds. They would debit me with the balance of five pounds, together
+with a small commission. I should pay it cheerfully, and there would be
+no further trouble. Perhaps one might even make a profit. The idea might
+include birthdays and weddings. A firm would do the business thoroughly.
+They would see that all your friends paid up--I mean sent presents; and
+they would not forget to send to your most important relative. There
+is only one member of our family capable of leaving a shilling; and of
+course if I forget to send to any one it is to him. When I remember him
+I generally make a muddle of the business. Two years ago I gave him a
+bath--I don't mean I washed him--an india-rubber thing, that he
+could pack in his portmanteau. I thought he would find it useful for
+travelling. Would you believe it, he took it as a personal affront, and
+wouldn't speak to me for a month, the snuffy old idiot."
+
+"I suppose the children enjoy it," I said.
+
+"Enjoy what?" he asked.
+
+"Why, Christmas," I explained.
+
+"I don't believe they do," he snapped; "nobody enjoys it. We excite them
+for three weeks beforehand, telling them what a good time they are going
+to have, over-feed them for two or three days, take them to something
+they do not want to see, but which we do, and then bully them for a
+fortnight to get them back into their normal condition. I was always
+taken to the Crystal Palace and Madame Tussaud's when I was a child, I
+remember. How I did hate that Crystal Palace! Aunt used to superintend.
+It was always a bitterly cold day, and we always got into the wrong
+train, and travelled half the day before we got there. We never had any
+dinner. It never occurs to a woman that anybody can want their meals
+while away from home. She seems to think that nature is in suspense from
+the time you leave the house till the time you get back to it. A bun and
+a glass of milk was her idea of lunch for a school-boy. Half her time
+was taken up in losing us, and the other half in slapping us when she
+had found us. The only thing we really enjoyed was the row with the
+cabman coming home."
+
+I rose to go.
+
+"Then you won't join that symposium?" said B-----. "It would be an easy
+enough thing to knock off--'Why Christmas should be abolished.'"
+
+"It sounds simple," I answered. "But how do you propose to abolish
+it?" The lady editor of an "advanced" American magazine once set the
+discussion--"Should sex be abolished?" and eleven ladies and gentlemen
+seriously argued the question.
+
+"Leave it to die of inanition," said B-----; "the first step is to
+arouse public opinion. Convince the public that it should be abolished."
+
+"But why should it be abolished?" I asked.
+
+"Great Scott! man," he exclaimed; "don't you want it abolished?"
+
+"I'm not sure that I do," I replied.
+
+"Not sure," he retorted; "you call yourself a journalist, and admit
+there is a subject under Heaven of which you are not sure!"
+
+"It has come over me of late years," I replied. "It used not to be my
+failing, as you know."
+
+He glanced round to make sure we were out of earshot, then sunk his
+voice to a whisper.
+
+"Between ourselves," he said, "I'm not so sure of everything myself as I
+used to be. Why is it?"
+
+"Perhaps we are getting older," I suggested.
+
+He said--"I started golf last year, and the first time I took the club
+in my hand I sent the ball a furlong. 'It seems an easy game,' I said
+to the man who was teaching me. 'Yes, most people find it easy at the
+beginning,' he replied dryly. He was an old golfer himself; I thought he
+was jealous. I stuck well to the game, and for about three weeks I was
+immensely pleased with myself. Then, gradually, I began to find out the
+difficulties. I feel I shall never make a good player. Have you ever
+gone through that experience?"
+
+"Yes," I replied; "I suppose that is the explanation. The game seems so
+easy at the beginning."
+
+I left him to his lunch, and strolled westward, musing on the time when
+I should have answered that question of his about Christmas, or any
+other question, off-hand. That good youth time when I knew everything,
+when life presented no problems, dangled no doubts before me!
+
+In those days, wishful to give the world the benefit of my wisdom, and
+seeking for a candle-stick wherefrom my brilliancy might be visible and
+helpful unto men, I arrived before a dingy portal in Chequers Street,
+St. Luke's, behind which a conclave of young men, together with a
+few old enough to have known better, met every Friday evening for
+the purpose of discussing and arranging the affairs of the universe.
+"Speaking members" were charged ten-and-sixpence per annum, which must
+have worked out at an extremely moderate rate per word; and "gentlemen
+whose subscriptions were more than three months in arrear," became, by
+Rule seven, powerless for good or evil. We called ourselves "The Stormy
+Petrels," and, under the sympathetic shadow of those wings, I laboured
+two seasons towards the reformation of the human race; until, indeed,
+our treasurer, an earnest young man, and a tireless foe of all that was
+conventional, departed for the East, leaving behind him a balance sheet,
+showing that the club owed forty-two pounds fifteen and fourpence, and
+that the subscriptions for the current year, amounting to a little over
+thirty-eight pounds, had been "carried forward," but as to where, the
+report afforded no indication. Whereupon our landlord, a man utterly
+without ideals, seized our furniture, offering to sell it back to us
+for fifteen pounds. We pointed out to him that this was an extravagant
+price, and tendered him five.
+
+The negotiations terminated with ungentlemanly language on his part, and
+"The Stormy Petrels" scattered, never to be foregathered together again
+above the troubled waters of humanity. Now-a-days, listening to the
+feeble plans of modern reformers, I cannot help but smile, remembering
+what was done in Chequers Street, St. Luke's, in an age when Mrs. Grundy
+still gave the law to literature, while yet the British matron was the
+guide to British art. I am informed that there is abroad the question of
+abolishing the House of Lords! Why, "The Stormy Petrels" abolished the
+aristocracy and the Crown in one evening, and then only adjourned
+for the purpose of appointing a committee to draw up and have ready a
+Republican Constitution by the following Friday evening. They talk
+of Empire lounges! We closed the doors of every music-hall in London
+eighteen years ago by twenty-nine votes to seventeen. They had a patient
+hearing, and were ably defended; but we found that the tendency of such
+amusements was anti-progressive, and against the best interests of an
+intellectually advancing democracy. I met the mover of the condemnatory
+resolution at the old "Pav" the following evening, and we continued
+the discussion over a bottle of Bass. He strengthened his argument by
+persuading me to sit out the whole of the three songs sung by the "Lion
+Comique"; but I subsequently retorted successfully, by bringing under
+his notice the dancing of a lady in blue tights and flaxen hair. I
+forget her name but never shall I cease to remember her exquisite charm
+and beauty. Ah, me! how charming and how beautiful "artistes" were in
+those golden days! Whence have they vanished? Ladies in blue tights and
+flaxen hair dance before my eyes to-day, but move me not, unless it be
+towards boredom. Where be the tripping witches of twenty years ago, whom
+to see once was to dream of for a week, to touch whose white hand would
+have been joy, to kiss whose red lips would have been to foretaste
+Heaven. I heard only the other day that the son of an old friend of
+mine had secretly married a lady from the front row of the ballet, and
+involuntarily I exclaimed, "Poor devil!" There was a time when my first
+thought would have been, "Lucky beggar! is he worthy of her?" For then
+the ladies of the ballet were angels. How could one gaze at them--from
+the shilling pit--and doubt it? They danced to keep a widowed mother in
+comfort, or to send a younger brother to school. Then they were glorious
+creatures a young man did well to worship; but now-a-days--
+
+It is an old jest. The eyes of youth see through rose-tinted glasses.
+The eyes of age are dim behind smoke-clouded spectacles. My flaxen
+friend, you are not the angel I dreamed you, nor the exceptional sinner
+some would paint you; but under your feathers, just a woman--a bundle of
+follies and failings, tied up with some sweetness and strength. You keep
+a brougham I am sure you cannot afford on your thirty shillings a week.
+There are ladies I know, in Mayfair, who have paid an extravagant price
+for theirs. You paint and you dye, I am told: it is even hinted you pad.
+Don't we all of us deck ourselves out in virtues that are not our own?
+When the paint and the powder, my sister, is stripped both from you and
+from me, we shall know which of us is entitled to look down on the other
+in scorn.
+
+Forgive me, gentle Reader, for digressing. The lady led me astray. I was
+speaking of "The Stormy Petrels," and of the reforms they accomplished,
+which were many. We abolished, I remember, capital punishment and war;
+we were excellent young men at heart. Christmas we reformed altogether,
+along with Bank Holidays, by a majority of twelve. I never recollect any
+proposal to abolish anything ever being lost when put to the vote. There
+were few things that we "Stormy Petrels" did not abolish. We attacked
+Christmas on grounds of expediency, and killed it by ridicule. We
+exposed the hollow mockery of Christmas sentiment; we abused the
+indigestible Christmas dinner, the tiresome Christmas party, the silly
+Christmas pantomime. Our funny member was side-splitting on the
+subject of Christmas Waits; our social reformer bitter upon Christmas
+drunkenness; our economist indignant upon Christmas charities. Only one
+argument of any weight with us was advanced in favour of the festival,
+and that was our leading cynic's suggestion that it was worth enduring
+the miseries of Christmas, to enjoy the soul-satisfying comfort of the
+after reflection that it was all over, and could not occur again for
+another year.
+
+But since those days when I was prepared to put this old world of ours
+to rights upon all matters, I have seen many sights and heard many
+sounds, and I am not quite so sure as I once was that my particular
+views are the only possibly correct ones. Christmas seems to me somewhat
+meaningless; but I have looked through windows in poverty-stricken
+streets, and have seen dingy parlours gay with many chains of coloured
+paper. They stretched from corner to corner of the smoke-grimed ceiling,
+they fell in clumsy festoons from the cheap gasalier, they framed the
+fly-blown mirror and the tawdry pictures; and I know tired hands and
+eyes worked many hours to fashion and fix those foolish chains, saying,
+"It will please him--she will like to see the room look pretty;" and
+as I have looked at them they have grown, in some mysterious manner,
+beautiful to me. The gaudy-coloured child and dog irritates me, I
+confess; but I have watched a grimy, inartistic personage, smoothing it
+affectionately with toil-stained hand, while eager faces crowded round
+to admire and wonder at its blatant crudity. It hangs to this day in its
+cheap frame above the chimney-piece, the one bright spot relieving those
+damp-stained walls; dull eyes stare and stare again at it, catching a
+vista, through its flashy tints, of the far-off land of art. Christmas
+Waits annoy me, and I yearn to throw open the window and fling coal at
+them--as once from the window of a high flat in Chelsea I did. I doubted
+their being genuine Waits. I was inclined to the opinion they were young
+men seeking excuse for making a noise. One of them appeared to know
+a hymn with a chorus, another played the concertina, while a third
+accompanied with a step dance. Instinctively I felt no respect for them;
+they disturbed me in my work, and the desire grew upon me to injure
+them. It occurred to me it would be good sport if I turned out the
+light, softly opened the window, and threw coal at them. It would be
+impossible for them to tell from which window in the block the coal
+came, and thus subsequent unpleasantness would be avoided. They were a
+compact little group, and with average luck I was bound to hit one of
+them.
+
+I adopted the plan. I could not see them very clearly. I aimed rather
+at the noise; and I had thrown about twenty choice lumps without effect,
+and was feeling somewhat discouraged, when a yell, followed by language
+singularly unappropriate to the season, told me that Providence had
+aided my arm. The music ceased suddenly, and the party dispersed,
+apparently in high glee--which struck me as curious.
+
+One man I noticed remained behind. He stood under the lamp-post, and
+shook his fist at the block generally.
+
+"Who threw that lump of coal?" he demanded in stentorian tones.
+
+To my horror, it was the voice of the man at Eighty-eight, an Irish
+gentleman, a journalist like myself. I saw it all, as the
+unfortunate hero always exclaims, too late, in the play. He--number
+Eighty-eight--also disturbed by the noise, had evidently gone out to
+expostulate with the rioters. Of course my lump of coal had hit him--him
+the innocent, the peaceful (up till then), the virtuous. That is the
+justice Fate deals out to us mortals here below. There were ten to
+fourteen young men in that crowd, each one of whom fully deserved that
+lump of coal; he, the one guiltless, got it--seemingly, so far as the
+dim light from the gas lamp enabled me to judge, full in the eye.
+
+As the block remained silent in answer to his demand, he crossed the
+road and mounted the stairs. On each landing he stopped and shouted--
+
+"Who threw that lump of coal? I want the man who threw that lump of
+coal. Out you come."
+
+Now a good man in my place would have waited till number Eighty-eight
+arrived on his landing, and then, throwing open the door would have said
+with manly candour--
+
+"_I_ threw that lump of coal. I was-," He would not have got further,
+because at that point, I feel confident, number Eighty--eight would
+have punched his head. There would have been an unseemly fracas on the
+staircase, to the annoyance of all the other tenants and later, there
+would have issued a summons and a cross-summons. Angry passions would
+have been roused, bitter feeling engendered which might have lasted for
+years.
+
+I do not pretend to be a good man. I doubt if the pretence would be of
+any use were I to try: I am not a sufficiently good actor. I said to
+myself, as I took off my boots in the study, preparatory to retiring to
+my bedroom--"Number Eighty-eight is evidently not in a frame of mind
+to listen to my story. It will be better to let him shout himself cool;
+after which he will return to his own flat, bathe his eye, and obtain
+some refreshing sleep. In the morning, when we shall probably meet as
+usual on our way to Fleet Street, I will refer to the incident casually,
+and sympathize with him. I will suggest to him the truth--that in all
+probability some fellow-tenant, irritated also by the noise, had
+aimed coal at the Waits, hitting him instead by a regrettable but pure
+accident. With tact I may even be able to make him see the humour of the
+incident. Later on, in March or April, choosing my moment with judgment,
+I will, perhaps, confess that I was that fellow-tenant, and over a
+friendly brandy-and-soda we will laugh the whole trouble away."
+
+As a matter of fact, that is what happened. Said number Eighty-eight--he
+was a big man, as good a fellow at heart as ever lived, but
+impulsive--"Damned lucky for you, old man, you did not tell me at the
+time."
+
+"I felt," I replied, "instinctively that it was a case for delay."
+
+There are times when one should control one's passion for candour; and
+as I was saying, Christmas waits excite no emotion in my breast save
+that of irritation. But I have known "Hark, the herald angels sing,"
+wheezily chanted by fog-filled throats, and accompanied, hopelessly out
+of tune, by a cornet and a flute, bring a great look of gladness to a
+work-worn face. To her it was a message of hope and love, making
+the hard life taste sweet. The mere thought of family gatherings, so
+customary at Christmas time, bores us superior people; but I think of an
+incident told me by a certain man, a friend of mine. One Christmas, my
+friend, visiting in the country, came face to face with a woman whom in
+town he had often met amid very different surroundings. The door of
+the little farmhouse was open; she and an older woman were ironing at
+a table, and as her soft white hands passed to and fro, folding and
+smoothing the rumpled heap, she laughed and talked, concerning simple
+homely things. My friend's shadow fell across her work, and she looking
+up, their eyes met; but her face said plainly, "I do not know you here,
+and here you do not know me. Here I am a woman loved and respected." My
+friend passed in and spoke to the older woman, the wife of one of his
+host's tenants, and she turned towards, and introduced the younger--"My
+daughter, sir. We do not see her very often. She is in a place in
+London, and cannot get away. But she always spends a few days with us at
+Christmas."
+
+"It is the season for family re-unions," answered my friend with just
+the suggestion of a sneer, for which he hated himself.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the woman, not noticing; "she has never missed her
+Christmas with us, have you, Bess?"
+
+"No, mother," replied the girl simply, and bent her head again over her
+work.
+
+So for these few days every year this woman left her furs and jewels,
+her fine clothes and dainty foods, behind her, and lived for a little
+space with what was clean and wholesome. It was the one anchor holding
+her to womanhood; and one likes to think that it was, perhaps, in
+the end strong enough to save her from the drifting waters. All which
+arguments in favour of Christmas and of Christmas customs are, I admit,
+purely sentimental ones, but I have lived long enough to doubt whether
+sentiment has not its legitimate place in the economy of life.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE TIME WASTED IN LOOKING BEFORE ONE LEAPS
+
+Have you ever noticed the going out of a woman?
+
+When a man goes out, he says--"I'm going out, shan't be long."
+
+"Oh, George," cries his wife from the other end of the house, "don't go
+for a moment. I want you to--" She hears a falling of hats, followed by
+the slamming of the front door.
+
+"Oh, George, you're not gone!" she wails. It is but the voice of
+despair. As a matter of fact, she knows he is gone. She reaches the
+hall, breathless.
+
+"He might have waited a minute," she mutters to herself, as she picks up
+the hats, "there were so many things I wanted him to do."
+
+She does not open the door and attempt to stop him, she knows he is
+already half-way down the street. It is a mean, paltry way of going out,
+she thinks; so like a man.
+
+When a woman, on the other hand, goes out, people know about it. She
+does not sneak out. She says she is going out. She says it, generally,
+on the afternoon of the day before; and she repeats it, at intervals,
+until tea-time. At tea, she suddenly decides that she won't, that she
+will leave it till the day after to-morrow instead. An hour later she
+thinks she will go to-morrow, after all, and makes arrangements to wash
+her hair overnight. For the next hour or so she alternates between fits
+of exaltation, during which she looks forward to going out, and moments
+of despondency, when a sense of foreboding falls upon her. At dinner
+she persuades some other woman to go with her; the other woman, once
+persuaded, is enthusiastic about going, until she recollects that she
+cannot. The first woman, however, convinces her that she can.
+
+"Yes," replies the second woman, "but then, how about you, dear? You are
+forgetting the Joneses."
+
+"So I was," answers the first woman, completely non-plussed. "How very
+awkward, and I can't go on Wednesday. I shall have to leave it till
+Thursday, now."
+
+"But _I_ can't go Thursday," says the second woman.
+
+"Well, you go without me, dear," says the first woman, in the tone of
+one who is sacrificing a life's ambition.
+
+"Oh no, dear, I should not think of it," nobly exclaims the second
+woman. "We will wait and go together, Friday!"
+
+"I'll tell you what we'll do," says the first woman. "We will start
+early" (this is an inspiration), "and be back before the Joneses
+arrive."
+
+They agree to sleep together; there is a lurking suspicion in both their
+minds that this may be their last sleep on earth. They retire early with
+a can of hot water. At intervals, during the night, one overhears them
+splashing water, and talking.
+
+They come down very late for breakfast, and both very cross. Each seems
+to have argued herself into the belief that she has been lured into this
+piece of nonsense, against her better judgment, by the persistent folly
+of the other one. During the meal each one asks the other, every five
+minutes, if she is quite ready. Each one, it appears, has only her hat
+to put on. They talk about the weather, and wonder what it is going to
+do. They wish it would make up its mind, one way or the other. They are
+very bitter on weather that cannot make up its mind. After breakfast it
+still looks cloudy, and they decide to abandon the scheme altogether.
+The first woman then remembers that it is absolutely necessary for her,
+at all events, to go.
+
+"But there is no need for you to come, dear," she says.
+
+Up to that point the second woman was evidently not sure whether she
+wished to go or whether she didn't. Now she knows.
+
+"Oh yes, I'll come," she says, "then it will be over!"
+
+"I am sure you don't want to go," urges the first woman, "and I shall be
+quicker by myself. I am ready to start now."
+
+The second woman bridles.
+
+"_I_ shan't be a couple of minutes," she retorts. "You know, dear, it's
+generally I who have to wait for you."
+
+"But you've not got your boots on," the first woman reminds her.
+
+"Well, they won't take ANY time," is the answer. "But of course, dear,
+if you'd really rather I did not come, say so." By this time she is on
+the verge of tears.
+
+"Of course, I would like you to come, dear," explains the first in a
+resigned tone. "I thought perhaps you were only coming to please me."
+
+"Oh no, I'd LIKE to come," says the second woman.
+
+"Well, we must hurry up," says the first; "I shan't be more than a
+minute myself, I've merely got to change my skirt."
+
+Half-an-hour later you hear them calling to each other, from different
+parts of the house, to know if the other one is ready. It appears they
+have both been ready for quite a long while, waiting only for the other
+one.
+
+"I'm afraid," calls out the one whose turn it is to be down-stairs,
+"it's going to rain."
+
+"Oh, don't say that," calls back the other one.
+
+"Well, it looks very like it."
+
+"What a nuisance," answers the up-stairs woman; "shall we put it off?"
+
+"Well, what do YOU think, dear?" replies the down-stairs.
+
+They decide they will go, only now they will have to change their boots,
+and put on different hats.
+
+For the next ten minutes they are still shouting and running about. Then
+it seems as if they really were ready, nothing remaining but for them to
+say "Good-bye," and go.
+
+They begin by kissing the children. A woman never leaves her house
+without secret misgivings that she will never return to it alive. One
+child cannot be found. When it is found it wishes it hadn't been. It has
+to be washed, preparatory to being kissed. After that, the dog has to be
+found and kissed, and final instructions given to the cook.
+
+Then they open the front door.
+
+"Oh, George," calls out the first woman, turning round again. "Are you
+there?"
+
+"Hullo," answers a voice from the distance. "Do you want me?"
+
+"No, dear, only to say good-bye. I'm going."
+
+"Oh, good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, dear. Do you think it's going to rain?"
+
+"Oh no, I should not say so."
+
+"George."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you got any money?"
+
+Five minutes later they come running back; the one has forgotten her
+parasol, the other her purse.
+
+And speaking of purses, reminds one of another essential difference
+between the male and female human animal. A man carries his money in his
+pocket. When he wants to use it, he takes it out and lays it down. This
+is a crude way of doing things, a woman displays more subtlety. Say she
+is standing in the street, and wants fourpence to pay for a bunch of
+violets she has purchased from a flower-girl. She has two parcels in one
+hand, and a parasol in the other. With the remaining two fingers of the
+left hand she secures the violets. The question then arises, how to
+pay the girl? She flutters for a few minutes, evidently not quite
+understanding why it is she cannot do it. The reason then occurs to her:
+she has only two hands and both these are occupied. First she thinks
+she will put the parcels and the flowers into her right hand, then she
+thinks she will put the parasol into her left. Then she looks round
+for a table or even a chair, but there is not such a thing in the whole
+street. Her difficulty is solved by her dropping the parcels and the
+flowers. The girl picks them up for her and holds them. This enables
+her to feel for her pocket with her right hand, while waving her open
+parasol about with her left. She knocks an old gentleman's hat off into
+the gutter, and nearly blinds the flower-girl before it occurs to her to
+close it. This done, she leans it up against the flower-girl's basket,
+and sets to work in earnest with both hands. She seizes herself firmly
+by the back, and turns the upper part of her body round till her hair is
+in front and her eyes behind. Still holding herself firmly with her
+left hand--did she let herself go, goodness knows where she would spin
+to;--with her right she prospects herself. The purse is there, she can
+feel it, the problem is how to get at it. The quickest way would, of
+course, be to take off the skirt, sit down on the kerb, turn it inside
+out, and work from the bottom of the pocket upwards. But this simple
+idea never seems to occur to her. There are some thirty folds at the
+back of the dress, between two of these folds commences the secret
+passage. At last, purely by chance, she suddenly discovers it, nearly
+upsetting herself in the process, and the purse is brought up to the
+surface. The difficulty of opening it still remains. She knows it opens
+with a spring, but the secret of that spring she has never mastered, and
+she never will. Her plan is to worry it generally until it does open.
+Five minutes will always do it, provided she is not flustered.
+
+At last it does open. It would be incorrect to say that she opens it. It
+opens because it is sick of being mauled about; and, as likely as not,
+it opens at the moment when she is holding it upside down. If you happen
+to be near enough to look over her shoulder, you will notice that the
+gold and silver lies loose within it. In an inner sanctuary, carefully
+secured with a second secret spring, she keeps her coppers, together
+with a postage-stamp and a draper's receipt, nine months old, for
+elevenpence three-farthings.
+
+I remember the indignation of an old Bus-conductor, once. Inside we were
+nine women and two men. I sat next the door, and his remarks therefore
+he addressed to me. It was certainly taking him some time to collect
+the fares, but I think he would have got on better had he been less
+bustling; he worried them, and made them nervous.
+
+"Look at that," he said, drawing my attention to a poor lady opposite,
+who was diving in the customary manner for her purse, "they sit on their
+money, women do. Blest if you wouldn't think they was trying to 'atch
+it."
+
+At length the lady drew from underneath herself an exceedingly fat
+purse.
+
+"Fancy riding in a bumpby bus, perched up on that thing," he continued.
+"Think what a stamina they must have." He grew confidential. "I've seen
+one woman," he said, "pull out from underneath 'er a street doorkey, a
+tin box of lozengers, a pencil-case, a whopping big purse, a packet
+of hair-pins, and a smelling-bottle. Why, you or me would be wretched,
+sitting on a plain door-knob, and them women goes about like that all
+day. I suppose they gets used to it. Drop 'em on an eider-down pillow,
+and they'd scream. The time it takes me to get tuppence out of them,
+why, it's 'eart-breaking. First they tries one side, then they tries the
+other. Then they gets up and shakes theirselves till the bus jerks them
+back again, and there they are, a more 'opeless 'eap than ever. If I 'ad
+my way I'd make every bus carry a female searcher as could over'aul
+'em one at a time, and take the money from 'em. Talk about the poor
+pickpocket. What I say is, that a man as finds his way into a woman's
+pocket--well, he deserves what he gets."
+
+But it was the thought of more serious matters that lured me into
+reflections concerning the over-carefulness of women. It is a theory of
+mine--wrong possibly; indeed I have so been informed--that we pick our
+way through life with too much care. We are for ever looking down upon
+the ground. Maybe, we do avoid a stumble or two over a stone or a brier,
+but also we miss the blue of the sky, the glory of the hills. These
+books that good men write, telling us that what they call "success" in
+life depends on our flinging aside our youth and wasting our manhood
+in order that we may have the means when we are eighty of spending a
+rollicking old age, annoy me. We save all our lives to invest in a
+South Sea Bubble; and in skimping and scheming, we have grown mean,
+and narrow, and hard. We will put off the gathering of the roses
+till tomorrow, to-day it shall be all work, all bargain-driving, all
+plotting. Lo, when to-morrow comes, the roses are blown; nor do we care
+for roses, idle things of small marketable value; cabbages are more to
+our fancy by the time to-morrow comes.
+
+Life is a thing to be lived, not spent, to be faced, not ordered. Life
+is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of
+cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of. Is it the wisest who
+is always the most successful? I think not. The luckiest whist-player I
+ever came across was a man who was never QUITE certain what were trumps,
+and whose most frequent observation during the game was "I really
+beg your pardon," addressed to his partner; a remark which generally
+elicited the reply, "Oh, don't apologize. All's well that ends well."
+The man I knew who made the most rapid fortune was a builder in the
+outskirts of Birmingham, who could not write his name, and who, for
+thirty years of his life, never went to bed sober. I do not say that
+forgetfulness of trumps should be cultivated by whist-players. I think
+my builder friend might have been even more successful had he learned
+to write his name, and had he occasionally--not overdoing it--enjoyed a
+sober evening. All I wish to impress is, that virtue is not the road to
+success--of the kind we are dealing with. We must find other reasons for
+being virtuous; maybe, there are some. The truth is, life is a gamble
+pure and simple, and the rules we lay down for success are akin to the
+infallible systems with which a certain class of idiot goes armed each
+season to Monte Carlo. We can play the game with coolness and judgment,
+decide when to plunge and when to stake small; but to think that wisdom
+will decide it, is to imagine that we have discovered the law of chance.
+Let us play the game of life as sportsmen, pocketing our winnings with
+a smile, leaving our losings with a shrug. Perhaps that is why we have
+been summoned to the board and the cards dealt round: that we may learn
+some of the virtues of the good gambler; his self-control, his courage
+under misfortune, his modesty under the strain of success, his firmness,
+his alertness, his general indifference to fate. Good lessons these,
+all of them. If by the game we learn some of them our time on the green
+earth has not been wasted. If we rise from the table having learned only
+fretfulness and self-pity I fear it has been.
+
+The grim Hall Porter taps at the door: "Number Five hundred billion and
+twenty-eight, your boatman is waiting, sir."
+
+So! is it time already? We pick up our counters. Of what use are they?
+In the country the other side of the river they are no tender. The
+blood-red for gold, and the pale-green for love, to whom shall we fling
+them? Here is some poor beggar longing to play, let us give them to him
+as we pass out. Poor devil! the game will amuse him--for a while.
+
+Keep your powder dry, and trust in Providence, is the motto of the wise.
+Wet powder could never be of any possible use to you. Dry, it may
+be, WITH the help of Providence. We will call it Providence, it is a
+prettier name than Chance--perhaps also a truer.
+
+Another mistake we make when we reason out our lives is this: we
+reason as though we were planning for reasonable creatures. It is a big
+mistake. Well-meaning ladies and gentlemen make it when they picture
+their ideal worlds. When marriage is reformed, and the social problem
+solved, when poverty and war have been abolished by acclamation, and sin
+and sorrow rescinded by an overwhelming parliamentary majority! Ah, then
+the world will be worthy of our living in it. You need not wait, ladies
+and gentlemen, so long as you think for that time. No social revolution
+is needed, no slow education of the people is necessary. It would all
+come about to-morrow, IF ONLY WE WERE REASONABLE CREATURES.
+
+Imagine a world of reasonable beings! The Ten Commandments would be
+unnecessary: no reasoning being sins, no reasoning creature makes
+mistakes. There would be no rich men, for what reasonable man cares for
+luxury and ostentation? There would be no poor: that I should eat
+enough for two while my brother in the next street, as good a man as I,
+starves, is not reasonable. There would be no difference of opinion on
+any two points: there is only one reason. You, dear Reader, would find,
+that on all subjects you were of the same opinion as I. No novels would
+be written, no plays performed; the lives of reasonable creatures do
+not afford drama. No mad loves, no mad laughter, no scalding tears, no
+fierce unreasoning, brief-lived joys, no sorrows, no wild dreams--only
+reason, reason everywhere.
+
+But for the present we remain unreasonable. If I eat this mayonnaise,
+drink this champagne, I shall suffer in my liver. Then, why do I eat it?
+Julia is a charming girl, amiable, wise, and witty; also she has a share
+in a brewery. Then, why does John marry Ann? who is short-tempered,
+to say the least of it, who, he feels, will not make him so good a
+house-wife, who has extravagant notions, who has no little fortune.
+There is something about Ann's chin that fascinates him--he could not
+explain to you what. On the whole, Julia is the better-looking of the
+two. But the more he thinks of Julia, the more he is drawn towards Ann.
+So Tom marries Julia and the brewery fails, and Julia, on a holiday,
+contracts rheumatic fever, and is a helpless invalid for life; while Ann
+comes in for ten thousand pounds left to her by an Australian uncle no
+one had ever heard of.
+
+I have been told of a young man, who chose his wife with excellent
+care. Said he to himself, very wisely, "In the selection of a wife a
+man cannot be too circumspect." He convinced himself that the girl was
+everything a helpmate should be. She had every virtue that could be
+expected in a woman, no faults, but such as are inseparable from a
+woman. Speaking practically, she was perfection. He married her, and
+found she was all he had thought her. Only one thing could he urge
+against her--that he did not like her. And that, of course, was not her
+fault.
+
+How easy life would be did we know ourselves. Could we always be sure
+that tomorrow we should think as we do today. We fall in love during a
+summer holiday; she is fresh, delightful, altogether charming; the blood
+rushes to our head every time we think of her. Our ideal career is one
+of perpetual service at her feet. It seems impossible that Fate could
+bestow upon us any greater happiness than the privilege of cleaning her
+boots, and kissing the hem of her garment--if the hem be a little muddy
+that will please us the more. We tell her our ambition, and at that
+moment every word we utter is sincere. But the summer holiday passes,
+and with it the holiday mood, and winter finds us wondering how we are
+going to get out of the difficulty into which we have landed ourselves.
+Or worse still, perhaps, the mood lasts longer than is usual. We become
+formally engaged. We marry--I wonder how many marriages are the result
+of a passion that is burnt out before the altar-rails are reached?--and
+three months afterwards the little lass is broken-hearted to find that
+we consider the lacing of her boots a bore. Her feet seem to have grown
+bigger. There is no excuse for us, save that we are silly children,
+never sure of what we are crying for, hurting one another in our play,
+crying very loudly when hurt ourselves.
+
+I knew an American lady once who used to bore me with long accounts of
+the brutalities exercised upon her by her husband. She had instituted
+divorce proceedings against him. The trial came on, and she was highly
+successful. We all congratulated her, and then for some months she
+dropped out of my life. But there came a day when we again found
+ourselves together. One of the problems of social life is to know what
+to say to one another when we meet; every man and woman's desire is to
+appear sympathetic and clever, and this makes conversation difficult,
+because, taking us all round, we are neither sympathetic nor clever--but
+this by the way.
+
+Of course, I began to talk to her about her former husband. I asked
+her how he was getting on. She replied that she thought he was very
+comfortable.
+
+"Married again?" I suggested.
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+"Serve him right," I exclaimed, "and his wife too." She was a pretty,
+bright-eyed little woman, my American friend, and I wished to ingratiate
+myself. "A woman who would marry such a man, knowing what she must have
+known of him, is sure to make him wretched, and we may trust him to be a
+curse to her."
+
+My friend seemed inclined to defend him.
+
+"I think he is greatly improved," she argued.
+
+"Nonsense!" I returned, "a man never improves. Once a villain, always a
+villain."
+
+"Oh, hush!" she pleaded, "you mustn't call him that."
+
+"Why not?" I answered. "I have heard you call him a villain yourself."
+
+"It was wrong of me," she said, flushing. "I'm afraid he was not the
+only one to be blamed; we were both foolish in those days, but I think
+we have both learned a lesson."
+
+I remained silent, waiting for the necessary explanation.
+
+"You had better come and see him for yourself," she added, with a little
+laugh; "to tell the truth, I am the woman who has married him. Tuesday
+is my day, Number 2, K---- Mansions," and she ran off, leaving me
+staring after her.
+
+I believe an enterprising clergyman who would set up a little church
+in the Strand, just outside the Law Courts, might do quite a trade,
+re-marrying couples who had just been divorced. A friend of mine,
+a respondent, told me he had never loved his wife more than on two
+occasions--the first when she refused him, the second when she came into
+the witness-box to give evidence against him.
+
+"You are curious creatures, you men," remarked a lady once to another
+man in my presence. "You never seem to know your own mind."
+
+She was feeling annoyed with men generally. I do not blame her, I feel
+annoyed with them myself sometimes. There is one man in particular I am
+always feeling intensely irritated against. He says one thing, and acts
+another. He will talk like a saint and behave like a fool, knows what is
+right and does what is wrong. But we will not speak further of him. He
+will be all he should be one day, and then we will pack him into a nice,
+comfortably-lined box, and screw the lid down tight upon him, and put
+him away in a quiet little spot near a church I know of, lest he should
+get up and misbehave himself again.
+
+The other man, who is a wise man as men go, looked at his fair critic
+with a smile.
+
+"My dear madam," he replied, "you are blaming the wrong person. I
+confess I do not know my mind, and what little I do know of it I do not
+like. I did not make it, I did not select it. I am more dissatisfied
+with it than you can possibly be. It is a greater mystery to me than it
+is to you, and I have to live with it. You should pity not blame me."
+
+There are moods in which I fall to envying those old hermits who
+frankly, and with courageous cowardice, shirked the problem of life.
+There are days when I dream of an existence unfettered by the thousand
+petty strings with which our souls lie bound to Lilliputia land. I
+picture myself living in some Norwegian sater, high above the black
+waters of a rockbound fiord. No other human creature disputes with me my
+kingdom. I am alone with the whispering fir forests and the stars. How
+I live I am not quite sure. Once a month I could journey down into the
+villages and return laden. I should not need much. For the rest, my gun
+and fishing-rod would supply me. I would have with me a couple of big
+dogs, who would talk to me with their eyes, so full of dumb thought, and
+together we would wander over the uplands, seeking our dinner, after the
+old primitive fashion of the men who dreamt not of ten-course dinners
+and Savoy suppers. I would cook the food myself, and sit down to the
+meal with a bottle of good wine, such as starts a man's thoughts (for I
+am inconsistent, as I acknowledge, and that gift of civilization I
+would bear with me into my hermitage). Then in the evening, with pipe
+in mouth, beside my log-wood fire, I would sit and think, until new
+knowledge came to me. Strengthened by those silent voices that are
+drowned in the roar of Streetland, I might, perhaps, grow into something
+nearer to what it was intended that a man should be--might catch a
+glimpse, perhaps, of the meaning of life.
+
+No, no, my dear lady, into this life of renunciation I would not take a
+companion, certainly not of the sex you are thinking of, even would
+she care to come, which I doubt. There are times when a man is better
+without the woman, when a woman is better without the man. Love drags
+us from the depths, makes men and women of us, but if we would climb a
+little nearer to the stars we must say good-bye to it. We men and women
+do not show ourselves to each other at our best; too often, I fear, at
+our worst. The woman's highest ideal of man is the lover; to a man the
+woman is always the possible beloved. We see each other's hearts,
+but not each other's souls. In each other's presence we never shake
+ourselves free from the earth. Match-making mother Nature is always at
+hand to prompt us. A woman lifts us up into manhood, but there she
+would have us stay. "Climb up to me," she cries to the lad, walking with
+soiled feet in muddy ways; "be a true man that you may be worthy to walk
+by my side; be brave to protect me, kind and tender, and true; but climb
+no higher, stay here by my side." The martyr, the prophet, the leader of
+the world's forlorn hopes, she would wake from his dream. Her arms she
+would fling about his neck holding him down.
+
+To the woman the man says, "You are my wife. Here is your America,
+within these walls, here is your work, your duty." True, in nine hundred
+and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand, but men and women are
+not made in moulds, and the world's work is various. Sometimes to her
+sorrow, a woman's work lies beyond the home. The duty of Mary was not to
+Joseph.
+
+The hero in the popular novel is the young man who says, "I love you
+better than my soul." Our favourite heroine in fiction is the woman who
+cries to her lover, "I would go down into Hell to be with you." There
+are men and women who cannot answer thus--the men who dream dreams, the
+women who see visions--impracticable people from the Bayswater point
+of view. But Bayswater would not be the abode of peace it is had it not
+been for such.
+
+Have we not placed sexual love on a pedestal higher than it deserves? It
+is a noble passion, but it is not the noblest. There is a wider love by
+the side of which it is but as the lamp illumining the cottage, to the
+moonlight bathing the hills and valleys. There were two women once.
+This is a play I saw acted in the daylight. They had been friends from
+girlhood, till there came between them the usual trouble--a man. A weak,
+pretty creature not worth a thought from either of them; but women love
+the unworthy; there would be no over-population problem did they not;
+and this poor specimen, ill-luck had ordained they should contend for.
+
+Their rivalry brought out all that was worst in both of them. It is
+a mistake to suppose love only elevates; it can debase. It was a
+mean struggle for what to an onlooker must have appeared a remarkably
+unsatisfying prize. The loser might well have left the conqueror to her
+poor triumph, even granting it had been gained unfairly. But the
+old, ugly, primeval passions had been stirred in these women, and the
+wedding-bells closed only the first act.
+
+The second is not difficult to guess. It would have ended in the Divorce
+Court had not the deserted wife felt that a finer revenge would be
+secured to her by silence.
+
+In the third, after an interval of only eighteen months, the man
+died--the first piece of good fortune that seems to have occurred to
+him personally throughout the play. His position must have been
+an exceedingly anxious one from the beginning. Notwithstanding his
+flabbiness, one cannot but regard him with a certain amount of pity--not
+unmixed with amusement. Most of life's dramas can be viewed as either
+farce or tragedy according to the whim of the spectator. The actors
+invariably play them as tragedy; but then that is the essence of good
+farce acting.
+
+Thus was secured the triumph of legal virtue and the punishment of
+irregularity, and the play might be dismissed as uninterestingly
+orthodox were it not for the fourth act, showing how the wronged wife
+came to the woman she had once wronged to ask and grant forgiveness.
+Strangely as it may sound, they found their love for one another
+unchanged. They had been long parted: it was sweet to hold each other's
+hands again. Two lonely women, they agreed to live together. Those
+who knew them well in this later time say that their life was very
+beautiful, filled with graciousness and nobility.
+
+I do not say that such a story could ever be common, but it is more
+probable than the world might credit. Sometimes the man is better
+without the woman, the woman without the man.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE NOBILITY OF OURSELVES
+
+AN old Anglicized Frenchman, I used to meet often in my earlier
+journalistic days, held a theory, concerning man's future state, that
+has since come to afford me more food for reflection than, at the time,
+I should have deemed possible. He was a bright-eyed, eager little man.
+One felt no Lotus land could be Paradise to him. We build our heaven of
+the stones of our desires: to the old, red-bearded Norseman, a foe to
+fight and a cup to drain; to the artistic Greek, a grove of animated
+statuary; to the Red Indian, his happy hunting ground; to the Turk,
+his harem; to the Jew, his New Jerusalem, paved with gold; to others,
+according to their taste, limited by the range of their imagination.
+
+Few things had more terrors for me, when a child, than Heaven--as
+pictured for me by certain of the good folks round about me. I was told
+that if I were a good lad, kept my hair tidy, and did not tease the cat,
+I would probably, when I died, go to a place where all day long I would
+sit still and sing hymns. (Think of it! as reward to a healthy boy for
+being good.) There would be no breakfast and no dinner, no tea and no
+supper. One old lady cheered me a little with a hint that the monotony
+might be broken by a little manna; but the idea of everlasting manna
+palled upon me, and my suggestions, concerning the possibilities of
+sherbet or jumbles, were scouted as irreverent. There would be no
+school, but also there would be no cricket and no rounders. I should
+feel no desire, so I was assured, to do another angel's "dags" by
+sliding down the heavenly banisters. My only joy would be to sing.
+
+"Shall we start singing the moment we get up in the morning?" I asked.
+
+"There won't be any morning," was the answer. "There will be no day and
+no night. It will all be one long day without end."
+
+"And shall we always be singing?" I persisted.
+
+"Yes, you will be so happy, you will always want to sing."
+
+"Shan't I ever get tired?"
+
+"No, you will never get tired, and you will never get sleepy or hungry
+or thirsty."
+
+"And does it go on like that for ever?"
+
+"Yes, for ever and ever."
+
+"Will it go on for a million years?"
+
+"Yes, a million years, and then another million years, and then another
+million years after that. There will never be any end to it."
+
+I can remember to this day the agony of those nights, when I would lie
+awake, thinking of this endless heaven, from which there seemed to be
+no possible escape. For the other place was equally eternal, or I might
+have been tempted to seek refuge there.
+
+We grown-up folk, our brains dulled by the slowly acquired habit of
+not thinking, do wrong to torture children with these awful themes.
+Eternity, Heaven, Hell are meaningless words to us. We repeat them, as
+we gabble our prayers, telling our smug, self-satisfied selves that we
+are miserable sinners. But to the child, the "intelligent stranger" in
+the land, seeking to know, they are fearful realities. If you doubt me,
+Reader, stand by yourself, beneath the stars, one night, and SOLVE this
+thought, Eternity. Your next address shall be the County Lunatic Asylum.
+
+My actively inclined French friend held cheerier views than are common
+of man's life beyond the grave. His belief was that we were destined to
+constant change, to everlasting work. We were to pass through the older
+planets, to labour in the greater suns.
+
+But for such advanced career a more capable being was needed. No one of
+us was sufficient, he argued, to be granted a future existence all to
+himself. His idea was that two or three or four of us, according to
+our intrinsic value, would be combined to make a new and more important
+individuality, fitted for a higher existence. Man, he pointed out, was
+already a collection of the beasts. "You and I," he would say, tapping
+first my chest and then his own, "we have them all here--the ape, the
+tiger, the pig, the motherly hen, the gamecock, the good ant; we are
+all, rolled into one. So the man of the future, he will be made up of
+many men--the courage of one, the wisdom of another, the kindliness of a
+third."
+
+"Take a City man," he would continue, "say the Lord Mayor; add to him a
+poet, say Swinburne; mix them with a religious enthusiast, say General
+Booth. There you will have the man fit for the higher life."
+
+Garibaldi and Bismarck, he held, should make a very fine mixture,
+correcting one another; if needful, extract of Ibsen might be added, as
+seasoning. He thought that Irish politicians would mix admirably with
+Scotch divines; that Oxford Dons would go well with lady novelists. He
+was convinced that Count Tolstoi, a few Gaiety Johnnies (we called them
+"mashers" in those days), together with a humourist--he was kind enough
+to suggest myself--would produce something very choice. Queen Elizabeth,
+he fancied, was probably being reserved to go--let us hope in the long
+distant future--with Ouida. It sounds a whimsical theory, set down here
+in my words, not his; but the old fellow was so much in earnest that few
+of us ever thought to laugh as he talked. Indeed, there were moments
+on starry nights, as walking home from the office, we would pause on
+Waterloo Bridge to enjoy the witchery of the long line of the Embankment
+lights, when I could almost believe, as I listened to him, in the not
+impossibility of his dreams.
+
+Even as regards this world, it would often be a gain, one thinks, and no
+loss, if some half-dozen of us were rolled together, or boiled down, or
+whatever the process necessary might be, and something made out of us in
+that way.
+
+Have not you, my fair Reader, sometimes thought to yourself what a
+delightful husband Tom this, plus Harry that, plus Dick the other, would
+make? Tom is always so cheerful and good-tempered, yet you feel that in
+the serious moments of life he would be lacking. A delightful hubby
+when you felt merry, yes; but you would not go to him for comfort and
+strength in your troubles, now would you? No, in your hour of sorrow,
+how good it would be to have near you grave, earnest Harry. He is
+a "good sort," Harry. Perhaps, after all, he is the best of the
+three--solid, staunch, and true. What a pity he is just a trifle
+commonplace and unambitious. Your friends, not knowing his sterling
+hidden qualities, would hardly envy you; and a husband that no other
+girl envies you--well, that would hardly be satisfactory, would it?
+Dick, on the other hand, is clever and brilliant. He will make his way;
+there will come a day, you are convinced, when a woman will be proud to
+bear his name. If only he were not so self-centred, if only he were more
+sympathetic.
+
+But a combination of the three, or rather of the best qualities of the
+three--Tom's good temper, Harry's tender strength, Dick's brilliant
+masterfulness: that is the man who would be worthy of you.
+
+The woman David Copperfield wanted was Agnes and Dora rolled into one.
+He had to take them one after the other, which was not so nice. And did
+he really love Agnes, Mr. Dickens; or merely feel he ought to? Forgive
+me, but I am doubtful concerning that second marriage of Copperfield's.
+Come, strictly between ourselves, Mr. Dickens, was not David, good human
+soul! now and again a wee bit bored by the immaculate Agnes? She made
+him an excellent wife, I am sure. SHE never ordered oysters by the
+barrel, unopened. It would, on any day, have been safe to ask Traddles
+home to dinner; in fact, Sophie and the whole rose-garden might have
+accompanied him, Agnes would have been equal to the occasion. The dinner
+would have been perfectly cooked and served, and Agnes' sweet smile
+would have pervaded the meal. But AFTER the dinner, when David and
+Traddles sat smoking alone, while from the drawing-room drifted down the
+notes of high-class, elevating music, played by the saintly Agnes, did
+they never, glancing covertly towards the empty chair between them, see
+the laughing, curl-framed face of a very foolish little woman--one of
+those foolish little women that a wise man thanks God for making--and
+wish, in spite of all, that it were flesh and blood, not shadow?
+
+Oh, you foolish wise folk, who would remodel human nature! Cannot you
+see how great is the work given unto childish hands? Think you that in
+well-ordered housekeeping and high-class conversation lies the whole
+making of a man? Foolish Dora, fashioned by clever old magician Nature,
+who knows that weakness and helplessness are as a talisman calling forth
+strength and tenderness in man, trouble yourself not unduly about those
+oysters nor the underdone mutton, little woman. Good plain cooks at
+twenty pounds a year will see to these things for us; and, now and
+then, when a windfall comes our way, we will dine together at a
+moderate-priced restaurant where these things are managed even better.
+Your work, Dear, is to teach us gentleness and kindliness. Lay your
+curls here, child. It is from such as you that we learn wisdom. Foolish
+wise folk sneer at you; foolish wise folk would pull up the useless
+lilies, the needless roses, from the garden, would plant in their places
+only serviceable wholesome cabbage. But the Gardener knowing better,
+plants the silly short-lived flowers; foolish wise folk, asking for what
+purpose.
+
+As for Agnes, Mr. Dickens, do you know what she always makes me think
+of? You will not mind my saying?--the woman one reads about. Frankly,
+I don't believe in her. I do not refer to Agnes in particular, but the
+woman of whom she is a type, the faultless woman we read of. Women have
+many faults, but, thank God, they have one redeeming virtue--they are
+none of them faultless.
+
+But the heroine of fiction! oh, a terrible dragon of virtue is she. May
+heaven preserve us poor men, undeserving though we be, from a life with
+the heroine of fiction. She is all soul, and heart, and intellect, with
+never a bit of human nature to catch hold of her by. Her beauty, it
+appals one, it is so painfully indescribable. Whence comes she, whither
+goes she, why do we never meet her like? Of women I know a goodish few,
+and I look among them for her prototype; but I find it not. They are
+charming, they are beautiful, all these women that I know. It would
+not be right for me to tell you, Ladies, the esteem and veneration with
+which I regard you all. You yourselves, blushing, would be the first to
+cheek my ardour. But yet, dear Ladies, seen even through my eyes, you
+come not near the ladies that I read about. You are not--if I may be
+permitted an expressive vulgarism--in the same street with them. Your
+beauty I can look upon, and retain my reason--for whatever value that
+may be to me. Your conversation, I admit, is clever and brilliant in the
+extreme; your knowledge vast and various; your culture quite Bostonian;
+yet you do not--I hardly know how to express it--you do not shine with
+the sixteen full-moon-power of the heroine of fiction. You do not--and
+I thank you for it--impress me with the idea that you are the only women
+on earth. You, even you, possess tempers of your own. I am inclined to
+think you take an interest in your clothes. I would not be sure, even,
+that you do not mingle a little of "your own hair" (you know what I
+mean) with the hair of your head. There is in your temperament a vein of
+vanity, a suggestion of selfishness, a spice of laziness. I have known
+you a trifle unreasonable, a little inconsiderate, slightly exacting.
+Unlike the heroine of fiction, you have a certain number of human
+appetites and instincts; a few human follies, perhaps, a human fault, or
+shall we say two? In short, dear Ladies, you also, even as we men, are
+the children of Adam and Eve. Tell me, if you know, where I may meet
+with this supernatural sister of yours, this woman that one reads about.
+She never keeps any one waiting while she does her back hair, she is
+never indignant with everybody else in the house because she cannot find
+her own boots, she never scolds the servants, she is never cross with
+the children, she never slams the door, she is never jealous of her
+younger sister, she never lingers at the gate with any cousin but the
+right one.
+
+Dear me, where DO they keep them, these women that one reads about? I
+suppose where they keep the pretty girl of Art. You have seen her,
+have you not, Reader, the pretty girl in the picture? She leaps the
+six-barred gate with a yard and a half to spare, turning round in her
+saddle the while to make some smiling remark to the comic man behind,
+who, of course, is standing on his head in the ditch. She floats
+gracefully off Dieppe on stormy mornings. Her baigneuse--generally of
+chiffon and old point lace--has not lost a curve. The older ladies,
+bathing round her, look wet. Their dress clings damply to their limbs.
+But the pretty girl of Art dives, and never a curl of her hair is
+disarranged. The pretty girl of Art stands lightly on tip-toe and
+volleys a tennis-ball six feet above her head. The pretty girl of Art
+keeps the head of the punt straight against a stiff current and a strong
+wind. SHE never gets the water up her sleeve, and down her back, and
+all over the cushions. HER pole never sticks in the mud, with the steam
+launch ten yards off and the man looking the other way. The pretty girl
+of Art skates in high-heeled French shoes at an angle of forty-five
+to the surface of the ice, both hands in her muff. SHE never sits down
+plump, with her feet a yard apart, and says "Ough." The pretty girl of
+Art drives tandem down Piccadilly, during the height of the season, at
+eighteen miles an hour. It never occurs to HER leader that the time has
+now arrived for him to turn round and get into the cart. The pretty
+girl of Art rides her bicycle through the town on market day, carrying
+a basket of eggs, and smiling right and left. SHE never throws away
+both her handles and runs into a cow. The pretty girl of Art goes trout
+fishing in open-work stockings, under a blazing sun, with a bunch of
+dew-bespangled primroses in her hair; and every time she gracefully
+flicks her rod she hauls out a salmon. SHE never ties herself up to a
+tree, or hooks the dog. SHE never comes home, soaked and disagreeable,
+to tell you that she caught six, but put them all back again, because
+they were merely two or three-pounders, and not worth the trouble of
+carrying. The pretty girl of Art plays croquet with one hand, and looks
+as if she enjoyed the game. SHE never tries to accidentally kick her
+ball into position when nobody is noticing, or stands it out that she is
+through a hoop that she knows she isn't.
+
+She is a good, all-round sportswoman, is the pretty girl in the
+picture. The only thing I have to say against her is that she makes one
+dissatisfied with the girl out of the picture--the girl who mistakes a
+punt for a teetotum, so that you land feeling as if you had had a day
+in the Bay of Biscay; and who, every now and again, stuns you with the
+thick end of the pole: the girl who does not skate with her hands in her
+muff; but who, throwing them up to heaven, says, "I'm going," and who
+goes, taking care that you go with her: the girl who, as you brush her
+down, and try to comfort her, explains to you indignantly that the horse
+took the corner too sharply and never noticed the mile-stone; the girl
+whose hair sea water does NOT improve.
+
+There can be no doubt about it: that is where they keep the good woman
+of Fiction, where they keep the pretty girl of Art.
+
+Does it not occur to you, Messieurs les Auteurs, that you are sadly
+disturbing us? These women that are a combination of Venus, St. Cecilia,
+and Elizabeth Fry! you paint them for us in your glowing pages: it is
+not kind of you, knowing, as you must, the women we have to put up with.
+
+Would we not be happier, we men and women, were we to idealize one
+another less? My dear young lady, you have nothing whatever to complain
+to Fate about, I assure you. Unclasp those pretty hands of yours, and
+come away from the darkening window. Jack is as good a fellow as you
+deserve; don't yearn so much. Sir Galahad, my dear--Sir Galahad rides
+and fights in the land that lies beyond the sunset, far enough away
+from this noisy little earth where you and I spend much of our time
+tittle-tattling, flirting, wearing fine clothes, and going to shows. And
+besides, you must remember, Sir Galahad was a bachelor: as an idealist
+he was wise. Your Jack is by no means a bad sort of knight, as knights
+go nowadays in this un-idyllic world. There is much solid honesty about
+him, and he does not pose. He is not exceptional, I grant you; but, my
+dear, have you ever tried the exceptional man? Yes, he is very nice in
+a drawing-room, and it is interesting to read about him in the Society
+papers: you will find most of his good qualities there: take my advice,
+don't look into him too closely. You be content with Jack, and thank
+heaven he is no worse. We are not saints, we men--none of us, and our
+beautiful thoughts, I fear, we write in poetry not action. The White
+Knight, my dear young lady, with his pure soul, his heroic heart, his
+life's devotion to a noble endeavour, does not live down here to any
+great extent. They have tried it, one or two of them, and the world--you
+and I: the world is made up of you and I--has generally starved, and
+hooted them. There are not many of them left now: do you think you would
+care to be the wife of one, supposing one were to be found for you?
+Would you care to live with him in two furnished rooms in Clerkenwell,
+die with him on a chair bedstead? A century hence they will put up a
+statue to him, and you may be honoured as the wife who shared with him
+his sufferings. Do you think you are woman enough for that? If not,
+thank your stars you have secured, for your own exclusive use, one of us
+UNexceptional men, who knows no better than to admire you. YOU are not
+exceptional.
+
+And in us ordinary men there is some good. It wants finding, that is
+all. We are not so commonplace as you think us. Even your Jack, fond of
+his dinner, his conversation four-cornered by the Sporting Press--yes, I
+agree he is not interesting, as he sits snoring in the easy-chair; but,
+believe it or not, there are the makings of a great hero in Jack, if
+Fate would but be kinder to him, and shake him out of his ease.
+
+Dr. Jekyll contained beneath his ample waist-coat not two egos, but
+three--not only Hyde but another, a greater than Jekyll--a man as near
+to the angels as Hyde was to the demons. These well-fed City men, these
+Gaiety Johnnies, these plough-boys, apothecaries, thieves! within each
+one lies hidden the hero, did Fate, the sculptor, choose to use his
+chisel. That little drab we have noticed now and then, our way taking
+us often past the end of the court, there was nothing by which to
+distinguish her. She was not over-clean, could use coarse language on
+occasion--just the spawn of the streets: take care lest the cloak of our
+child should brush her.
+
+One morning the district Coroner, not, generally speaking, a poet
+himself, but an adept at discovering poetry buried under unlikely
+rubbish-heaps, tells us more about her. She earned six shillings a week,
+and upon it supported a bed-ridden mother and three younger children.
+She was housewife, nurse, mother, breadwinner, rolled into one. Yes,
+there are heroines OUT of fiction.
+
+So loutish Tom has won the Victoria Cross--dashed out under a storm
+of bullets and rescued the riddled flag. Who would have thought it of
+loutish Tom? The village alehouse one always deemed the goal of his
+endeavours. Chance comes to Tom and we find him out. To Harry the Fates
+were less kind. A ne'er-do-well was Harry--drank, knocked his wife
+about, they say. Bury him, we are well rid of him, he was good for
+nothing. Are we sure?
+
+Let us acknowledge we are sinners. We know, those of us who dare to
+examine ourselves, that we are capable of every meanness, of every
+wrong under the sun. It is by the accident of circumstance, aided by the
+helpful watchfulness of the policeman, that our possibilities of crime
+are known only to ourselves. But having acknowledged our evil, let us
+also acknowledge that we are capable of greatness. The martyrs who faced
+death and torture unflinchingly for conscience' sake, were men and women
+like ourselves. They had their wrong side. Before the small trials of
+daily life they no doubt fell as we fall. By no means were they the pick
+of humanity. Thieves many of them had been, and murderers, evil-livers,
+and evil-doers. But the nobility was there also, lying dormant, and
+their day came. Among them must have been men who had cheated their
+neighbours over the counter; men who had been cruel to their wives and
+children; selfish, scandal-mongering women. In easier times their virtue
+might never have been known to any but their Maker.
+
+In every age and in every period, when and where Fate has called upon
+men and women to play the man, human nature has not been found wanting.
+They were a poor lot, those French aristocrats that the Terror seized:
+cowardly, selfish, greedy had been their lives. Yet there must have been
+good, even in them. When the little things that in their little lives
+they had thought so great were swept away from them, when they found
+themselves face to face with the realities; then even they played the
+man. Poor shuffling Charles the First, crusted over with weakness and
+folly, deep down in him at last we find the great gentleman.
+
+I like to hear stories of the littleness of great men. I like to think
+that Shakespeare was fond of his glass. I even cling to the tale of that
+disgraceful final orgie with friend Ben Jonson. Possibly the story may
+not be true, but I hope it was. I like to think of him as poacher, as
+village ne'er-do-well, denounced by the local grammar-school master,
+preached at by the local J. P. of the period. I like to reflect that
+Cromwell had a wart on his nose; the thought makes me more contented
+with my own features. I like to think that he put sweets upon the
+chairs, to see finely-dressed ladies spoil their frocks; to tell myself
+that he roared with laughter at the silly jest, like any East End 'Arry
+with his Bank Holiday squirt of dirty water. I like to read that Carlyle
+threw bacon at his wife and occasionally made himself highly ridiculous
+over small annoyances, that would have been smiled at by a man of
+well-balanced mind. I think of the fifty foolish things a week _I_ do,
+and say to myself, "I, too, am a literary man."
+
+I like to think that even Judas had his moments of nobility, his good
+hours when he would willingly have laid down his life for his Master.
+Perhaps even to him there came, before the journey's end, the memory of
+a voice saying--"Thy sins be forgiven thee." There must have been good,
+even in Judas.
+
+Virtue lies like the gold in quartz, there is not very much of it, and
+much pains has to be spent on the extracting of it. But Nature seems
+to think it worth her while to fashion these huge useless stones, if
+in them she may hide away her precious metals. Perhaps, also, in
+human nature, she cares little for the mass of dross, provided that by
+crushing and cleansing she can extract from it a little gold, sufficient
+to repay her for the labour of the world. We wonder why she troubles to
+make the stone. Why cannot the gold lie in nuggets on the surface?
+But her methods are secrets to us. Perchance there is a reason for the
+quartz. Perchance there is a reason for the evil and folly, through
+which run, unseen to the careless eye, the tiny veins of virtue.
+
+Aye, the stone predominates, but the gold is there. We claim to have it
+valued. The evil that there is in man no tongue can tell. We are vile
+among the vile, a little evil people. But we are great. Pile up the
+bricks of our sins till the tower knocks at Heaven's gate, calling for
+vengeance, yet we are great--with a greatness and a virtue that the
+untempted angels may not reach to. The written history of the human
+race, it is one long record of cruelty, of falsehood, of oppression.
+Think you the world would be spinning round the sun unto this day, if
+that written record were all? Sodom, God would have spared had there
+been found ten righteous men within its walls. The world is saved by its
+just men. History sees them not; she is but the newspaper, a report of
+accidents. Judge you life by that? Then you shall believe that the true
+Temple of Hymen is the Divorce Court; that men are of two classes
+only, the thief and the policeman; that all noble thought is but a
+politician's catchword. History sees only the destroying conflagrations,
+she takes no thought of the sweet fire-sides. History notes the wrong;
+but the patient suffering, the heroic endeavour, that, slowly and
+silently, as the soft processes of Nature re-clothing with verdure the
+passion-wasted land, obliterate that wrong, she has no eyes for. In
+the days of cruelty and oppression--not altogether yet of the past, one
+fears--must have lived gentle-hearted men and women, healing with their
+help and sympathy the wounds that else the world had died of. After the
+thief, riding with jingle of sword and spur, comes, mounted on his ass,
+the good Samaritan. The pyramid of the world's evil--God help us! it
+rises high, shutting out almost the sun. But the record of man's good
+deeds, it lies written in the laughter of the children, in the light of
+lovers' eyes, in the dreams of the young men; it shall not be forgotten.
+The fires of persecution served as torches to show Heaven the heroism
+that was in man. From the soil of tyranny sprang self-sacrifice, and
+daring for the Right. Cruelty! what is it but the vile manure, making
+the ground ready for the flowers of tenderness and pity? Hate and
+Anger shriek to one another across the ages, but the voices of Love and
+Comfort are none the less existent that they speak in whispers, lips to
+ear.
+
+We have done wrong, oh, ye witnessing Heavens, but we have done good. We
+claim justice. We have laid down our lives for our friends: greater love
+hath no man than this. We have fought for the Right. We have died for
+the Truth--as the Truth seemed to us. We have done noble deeds; we have
+lived noble lives; we have comforted the sorrowful; we have succoured
+the weak. Failing, falling, making in our blindness many a false step,
+yet we have striven. For the sake of the army of just men and true, for
+the sake of the myriads of patient, loving women, for the sake of the
+pitiful and helpful, for the sake of the good that lies hidden within
+us,--spare us, O Lord.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE MOTHERLINESS OF MAN
+
+It was only a piece of broken glass. From its shape and colour, I should
+say it had, in its happier days, formed portion of a cheap scent-bottle.
+Lying isolated on the grass, shone upon by the early morning sun, it
+certainly appeared at its best. It attracted him.
+
+He cocked his head, and looked at it with his right eye. Then he hopped
+round to the other side, and looked at it with his left eye. With either
+optic it seemed equally desirable.
+
+That he was an inexperienced young rook goes without saying. An older
+bird would not have given a second glance to the thing. Indeed, one
+would have thought his own instinct might have told him that broken
+glass would be a mistake in a bird's nest. But its glitter drew him too
+strongly for resistance. I am inclined to suspect that at some time,
+during the growth of his family tree, there must have occurred a
+mesalliance, perhaps worse. Possibly a strain of magpie blood?--one
+knows the character of magpies, or rather their lack of character--and
+such things have happened. But I will not pursue further so painful a
+train: I throw out the suggestion as a possible explanation, that is
+all.
+
+He hopped nearer. Was it a sweet illusion, this flashing fragment of
+rainbow; a beautiful vision to fade upon approach, typical of so much
+that is un-understandable in rook life? He made a dart forward and
+tapped it with his beak. No, it was real--as fine a lump of jagged green
+glass as any newly-married rook could desire, and to be had for the
+taking. SHE would be pleased with it. He was a well-meaning bird; the
+mere upward inclination of his tail suggested earnest though possibly
+ill-directed endeavour.
+
+He turned it over. It was an awkward thing to carry; it had so very many
+corners. But he succeeded at last in getting it firmly between his beak,
+and in haste, lest some other bird should seek to dispute with him its
+possession, at once flew off with it.
+
+A second rook who had been watching the proceedings from the lime tree,
+called to a third who was passing. Even with my limited knowledge of the
+language I found it easy to follow the conversation: it was so obvious.
+
+"Issachar!"
+
+"Hallo!"
+
+"What do you think? Zebulan's found a piece of broken bottle. He's going
+to line his nest with it."
+
+"No!"
+
+"God's truth. Look at him. There he goes, he's got it in his beak."
+
+"Well, I'm ----!"
+
+And they both burst into a laugh.
+
+But Zebulan heeded them not. If he overheard, he probably put down the
+whole dialogue to jealousy. He made straight for his tree. By standing
+with my left cheek pressed close against the window-pane, I was able to
+follow him. He is building in what we call the Paddock elms--a suburb
+commenced only last season, but rapidly growing. I wanted to see what
+his wife would say.
+
+At first she said nothing. He laid it carefully down on the branch near
+the half-finished nest, and she stretched up her head and looked at it.
+
+Then she looked at him. For about a minute neither spoke. I could see
+that the situation was becoming strained. When she did open her beak,
+it was with a subdued tone, that had a vein of weariness running through
+it.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+He was evidently chilled by her manner. As I have explained, he is an
+inexperienced young rook. This is clearly his first wife, and he stands
+somewhat in awe of her.
+
+"Well, I don't exactly know what it's CALLED," he answered.
+
+"Oh."
+
+"No. But it's pretty, isn't it?" he added. He moved it, trying to get it
+where the sun might reach it. It was evident he was admitting to himself
+that, seen in the shade, it lost much of its charm.
+
+"Oh, yes; very pretty," was the rejoinder; "perhaps you'll tell me what
+you're going to do with it."
+
+The question further discomforted him. It was growing upon him that this
+thing was not going to be the success he had anticipated. It would be
+necessary to proceed warily.
+
+"Of course, it's not a twig," he began.
+
+"I see it isn't."
+
+"No. You see, the nest is nearly all twigs as it is, and I thought--"
+
+"Oh, you did think."
+
+"Yes, my dear. I thought--unless you are of opinion that it's too
+showy--I thought we might work it in somewhere."
+
+Then she flared out.
+
+"Oh, did you? You thought that a good idea. An A1 prize idiot I seem to
+have married, I do. You've been gone twenty minutes, and you bring me
+back an eight-cornered piece of broken glass, which you think we might
+'work into' the nest. You'd like to see me sitting on it for a month,
+you would. You think it would make a nice bed for the children to lie
+on. You don't think you could manage to find a packet of mixed pins
+if you went down again, I suppose. They'd look pretty 'worked in'
+somewhere, don't you think?--Here, get out of my way. I'll finish this
+nest by myself." She always had been short with him.
+
+She caught up the offending object--it was a fairly heavy lump of
+glass--and flung it out of the tree with all her force. I heard it crash
+through the cucumber frame. That makes the seventh pane of glass broken
+in that cucumber frame this week. The couple in the branch above are the
+worst. Their plan of building is the most extravagant, the most absurd
+I ever heard of. They hoist up ten times as much material as they can
+possibly use; you might think they were going to build a block, and let
+it out in flats to the other rooks. Then what they don't want they
+fling down again. Suppose we built on such a principle? Suppose a
+human husband and wife were to start erecting their house in Piccadilly
+Circus, let us say; and suppose the man spent all the day steadily
+carrying bricks up the ladder while his wife laid them, never asking
+her how many she wanted, whether she didn't think he had brought
+up sufficient, but just accumulating bricks in a senseless fashion,
+bringing up every brick he could find. And then suppose, when evening
+came, and looking round, they found they had some twenty cart-loads of
+bricks lying unused upon the scaffold, they were to commence flinging
+them down into Waterloo Place. They would get themselves into trouble;
+somebody would be sure to speak to them about it. Yet that is precisely
+what those birds do, and nobody says a word to them. They are supposed
+to have a President. He lives by himself in the yew tree outside the
+morning-room window. What I want to know is what he is supposed to be
+good for. This is the sort of thing I want him to look into. I would
+like him to be worming underneath one evening when those two birds are
+tidying up: perhaps he would do something then. I have done all I can. I
+have thrown stones at them, that, in the course of nature, have returned
+to earth again, breaking more glass. I have blazed at them with a
+revolver; but they have come to regard this proceeding as a mere
+expression of light-heartedness on my part, possibly confusing me with
+the Arab of the Desert, who, I am given to understand, expresses himself
+thus in moments of deep emotion. They merely retire to a safe distance
+to watch me; no doubt regarding me as a poor performer, inasmuch as I do
+not also dance and shout between each shot. I have no objection to their
+building there, if they only would build sensibly. I want somebody to
+speak to them to whom they will pay attention.
+
+You can hear them in the evening, discussing the matter of this surplus
+stock.
+
+"Don't you work any more," he says, as he comes up with the last load,
+"you'll tire yourself."
+
+"Well, I am feeling a bit done up," she answers, as she hops out of the
+nest and straightens her back.
+
+"You're a bit peckish, too, I expect," he adds sympathetically. "I know
+I am. We will have a scratch down, and be off."
+
+"What about all this stuff?" she asks, while titivating herself; "we'd
+better not leave it about, it looks so untidy."
+
+"Oh, we'll soon get rid of that," he answers. "I'll have that down in a
+jiffy."
+
+To help him, she seizes a stick and is about to drop it. He darts
+forward and snatches it from her.
+
+"Don't you waste that one," he cries, "that's a rare one, that is. You
+see me hit the old man with it."
+
+And he does. What the gardener says, I will leave you to imagine.
+
+Judged from its structure, the rook family is supposed to come next in
+intelligence to man himself. Judging from the intelligence displayed by
+members of certain human families with whom I have come in contact, I
+can quite believe it. That rooks talk I am positive. No one can spend
+half-an-hour watching a rookery without being convinced of this. Whether
+the talk be always wise and witty, I am not prepared to maintain; but
+that there is a good deal of it is certain. A young French gentleman of
+my acquaintance, who visited England to study the language, told me that
+the impression made upon him by his first social evening in London was
+that of a parrot-house. Later on, when he came to comprehend, he,
+of course, recognized the brilliancy and depth of the average London
+drawing-room talk; but that is how, not comprehending, it impressed
+him at first. Listening to the riot of a rookery is much the same
+experience. The conversation to us sounds meaningless; the rooks
+themselves would probably describe it as sparkling.
+
+There is a Misanthrope I know who hardly ever goes into Society. I
+argued the question with him one day. "Why should I?" he replied; "I
+know, say, a dozen men and women with whom intercourse is a pleasure;
+they have ideas of their own which they are not afraid to voice. To
+rub brains with such is a rare and goodly thing, and I thank Heaven for
+their friendship; but they are sufficient for my leisure. What more do
+I require? What is this 'Society' of which you all make so much ado?
+I have sampled it, and I find it unsatisfying. Analyze it into its
+elements, what is it? Some person I know very slightly, who knows me
+very slightly, asks me to what you call an 'At Home.' The evening comes,
+I have done my day's work and I have dined. I have been to a theatre or
+concert, or I have spent a pleasant hour or so with a friend. I am more
+inclined for bed than anything else, but I pull myself together, dress,
+and drive to the house. While I am taking off my hat and coat in the
+hall, a man enters I met a few hours ago at the Club. He is a man I have
+very little opinion of, and he, probably, takes a similar view of me.
+Our minds have no thought in common, but as it is necessary to talk, I
+tell him it is a warm evening. Perhaps it is a warm evening, perhaps
+it isn't; in either case he agrees with me. I ask him if he is going
+to Ascot. I do not care a straw whether he is going to Ascot or not. He
+says he is not quite sure, but asks me what chance Passion Flower has
+for the Thousand Guineas. I know he doesn't value my opinion on the
+subject at a brass farthing--he would be a fool if he did, but I cudgel
+my brains to reply to him, as though he were going to stake his shirt on
+my advice. We reach the first floor, and are mutually glad to get rid of
+one another. I catch my hostess' eye. She looks tired and worried; she
+would be happier in bed, only she doesn't know it. She smiles sweetly,
+but it is clear she has not the slightest idea who I am, and is waiting
+to catch my name from the butler. I whisper it to him. Perhaps he will
+get it right, perhaps he won't; it is quite immaterial. They have asked
+two hundred and forty guests, some seventy-five of whom they know by
+sight, for the rest, any chance passer-by, able, as the theatrical
+advertisements say, 'to dress and behave as a gentleman,' would do every
+bit as well. Indeed, I sometimes wonder why people go to the trouble
+and expense of invitation cards at all. A sandwich-man outside the door
+would answer the purpose. 'Lady Tompkins, At Home, this afternoon
+from three to seven; Tea and Music. Ladies and Gentlemen admitted on
+presentation of visiting card. Afternoon dress indispensable.' The
+crowd is the thing wanted; as for the items, well, tell me, what is the
+difference, from the Society point of view, between one man in a black
+frock-coat and another?
+
+"I remember being once invited to a party at a house in Lancaster Gate.
+I had met the woman at a picnic. In the same green frock and parasol I
+might have recognized her the next time I saw her. In any other clothes
+I did not expect to. My cabman took me to the house opposite, where
+they were also giving a party. It made no difference to any of us. The
+hostess--I never learnt her name--said it was very good of me to come,
+and then shunted me off on to a Colonial Premier (I did not catch his
+name, and he did not catch mine, which was not extraordinary, seeing
+that my hostess did not know it) who, she whispered to me, had
+come over, from wherever it was (she did not seem to be very sure)
+principally to make my acquaintance. Half through the evening, and
+by accident, I discovered my mistake, but judged it too late to say
+anything then. I met a couple of people I knew, had a little supper with
+them, and came away. The next afternoon I met my right hostess--the lady
+who should have been my hostess. She thanked me effusively for having
+sacrificed the previous evening to her and her friends; she said she
+knew how seldom I went out: that made her feel my kindness all the more.
+She told me that the Brazilian Minister's wife had told her that I was
+the cleverest man she had ever met. I often think I should like to meet
+that man, whoever he may be, and thank him.
+
+"But perhaps the butler does pronounce my name rightly, and perhaps
+my hostess actually does recognize me. She smiles, and says she was so
+afraid I was not coming. She implies that all the other guests are
+but as a feather in her scales of joy compared with myself. I smile in
+return, wondering to myself how I look when I do smile. I have never
+had the courage to face my own smile in the looking-glass. I notice the
+Society smile of other men, and it is not reassuring. I murmur something
+about my not having been likely to forget this evening; in my turn,
+seeking to imply that I have been looking forward to it for weeks. A few
+men shine at this sort of thing, but they are a small percentage, and
+without conceit I regard myself as no bigger a fool than the average
+male. Not knowing what else to say, I tell her also that it is a warm
+evening. She smiles archly as though there were some hidden witticism in
+the remark, and I drift away, feeling ashamed of myself. To talk as an
+idiot when you ARE an idiot brings no discomfort; to behave as an idiot
+when you have sufficient sense to know it, is painful. I hide myself in
+the crowd, and perhaps I'll meet a woman I was introduced to three weeks
+ago at a picture gallery. We don't know each other's names, but, both
+of us feeling lonesome, we converse, as it is called. If she be the
+ordinary type of woman, she asks me if I am going on to the Johnsons'.
+I tell her no. We stand silent for a moment, both thinking what next to
+say. She asks me if I was at the Thompsons' the day before yesterday. I
+again tell her no. I begin to feel dissatisfied with myself that I was
+not at the Thompsons'. Trying to get even with her, I ask her if she is
+going to the Browns' next Monday. (There are no Browns, she will have to
+say, No.) She is not, and her tone suggests that a social stigma rests
+upon the Browns. I ask her if she has been to Barnum's Circus; she
+hasn't, but is going. I give her my impressions of Barnum's Circus,
+which are precisely the impressions of everybody else who has seen the
+show.
+
+"Or if luck be against me, she is possibly a smart woman, that is to
+say, her conversation is a running fire of spiteful remarks at the
+expense of every one she knows, and of sneers at the expense of every
+one she doesn't. I always feel I could make a better woman myself, out
+of a bottle of vinegar and a penn'orth of mixed pins. Yet it usually
+takes one about ten minutes to get away from her.
+
+"Even when, by chance, one meets a flesh-and-blood man or woman at such
+gatherings, it is not the time or place for real conversation; and as
+for the shadows, what person in their senses would exhaust a single
+brain cell upon such? I remember a discussion once concerning Tennyson,
+considered as a social item. The dullest and most densely-stupid bore I
+ever came across was telling how he had sat next to Tennyson at dinner.
+'I found him a most uninteresting man,' so he confided to us; 'he
+had nothing to say for himself--absolutely nothing.' I should like to
+resuscitate Dr. Samuel Johnson for an evening, and throw him into one of
+these 'At Homes' of yours."
+
+My friend is an admitted misanthrope, as I have explained; but one
+cannot dismiss him as altogether unjust. That there is a certain mystery
+about Society's craving for Society must be admitted. I stood one
+evening trying to force my way into the supper room of a house in
+Berkeley Square. A lady, hot and weary, a few yards in front of me was
+struggling to the same goal.
+
+"Why," remarked she to her companion, "why do we come to these places,
+and fight like a Bank Holiday crowd for eighteenpenny-worth of food?"
+
+"We come here," replied the man, whom I judged to be a philosopher, "to
+say we've been here."
+
+I met A----- the other evening, and asked him to dine with me on Monday.
+I don't know why I ask A----- to dine with me, but about once a month I
+do. He is an uninteresting man.
+
+"I can't," he said, "I've got to go to the B-----s'; confounded
+nuisance, it will be infernally dull."
+
+"Why go?" I asked.
+
+"I really don't know," he replied.
+
+A little later B----- met me, and asked me to dine with him on Monday.
+
+"I can't," I answered, "some friends are coming to us that evening. It's
+a duty dinner, you know the sort of thing."
+
+"I wish you could have managed it," he said, "I shall have no one to
+talk to. The A-----s are coming, and they bore me to death."
+
+"Why do you ask him?" I suggested.
+
+"Upon my word, I really don't know," he replied.
+
+But to return to our rooks. We were speaking of their social instincts.
+Some dozen of them--the "scallywags" and bachelors of the community,
+I judge them to be--have started a Club. For a month past I have been
+trying to understand what the affair was. Now I know: it is a Club.
+
+And for their Club House they have chosen, of course, the tree nearest
+my bedroom window. I can guess how that came about; it was my own fault,
+I never thought of it. About two months ago, a single rook--suffering
+from indigestion or an unhappy marriage, I know not--chose this tree one
+night for purposes of reflection. He woke me up: I felt angry. I opened
+the window, and threw an empty soda-water bottle at him. Of course it
+did not hit him, and finding nothing else to throw, I shouted at him,
+thinking to frighten him away. He took no notice, but went on talking
+to himself. I shouted louder, and woke up my own dog. The dog barked
+furiously, and woke up most things within a quarter of a mile. I had to
+go down with a boot-jack--the only thing I could find handy--to soothe
+the dog. Two hours later I fell asleep from exhaustion. I left the rook
+still cawing.
+
+The next night he came again. I should say he was a bird with a sense of
+humour. Thinking this might happen, I had, however, taken the precaution
+to have a few stones ready. I opened the window wide, and fired them one
+after another into the tree. After I had closed the window, he hopped
+down nearer, and cawed louder than ever. I think he wanted me to throw
+more stones at him: he appeared to regard the whole proceeding as a
+game. On the third night, as I heard nothing of him, I flattered myself
+that, in spite of his bravado, I had discouraged him. I might have known
+rooks better.
+
+What happened when the Club was being formed, I take it, was this:
+
+"Where shall we fix upon for our Club House?" said the secretary, all
+other points having been disposed of. One suggested this tree, another
+suggested that. Then up spoke this particular rook:
+
+"I'll tell you where," said he, "in the yew tree opposite the porch. And
+I'll tell you for why. Just about an hour before dawn a man comes to the
+window over the porch, dressed in the most comical costume you ever set
+eyes upon. I'll tell you what he reminds me of--those little statues
+that men use for decorating fields. He opens the window, and throws
+a lot of things out upon the lawn, and then he dances and sings. It's
+awfully interesting, and you can see it all from the yew tree."
+
+That, I am convinced, is how the Club came to fix upon the tree next my
+window. I have had the satisfaction of denying them the exhibition they
+anticipated, and I cheer myself with the hope that they have visited
+their disappointment upon their misleader.
+
+There is a difference between Rook Clubs and ours. In our clubs the
+respectable members arrive early, and leave at a reasonable hour; in
+Rook Clubs, it would appear, this principle is reversed. The Mad Hatter
+would have liked this Club--it would have been a club after his own
+heart. It opens at half-past two in the morning, and the first to
+arrive are the most disreputable members. In Rook-land the rowdy-dowdy,
+randy-dandy, rollicky-ranky boys get up very early in the morning and go
+to bed in the afternoon. Towards dawn, the older, more orderly members
+drop in for reasonable talk, and the Club becomes more respectable. The
+tree closes about six. For the first two hours, however, the goings-on
+are disgraceful. The proceedings, as often as not, open with a fight. If
+no two gentlemen can be found to oblige with a fight, the next noisiest
+thing to fall back upon is held to be a song. It is no satisfaction to
+me to be told that rooks cannot sing. _I_ know that, without the trouble
+of referring to the natural history book. It is the rook who does not
+know it; HE thinks he can; and as a matter of fact, he does. You can
+criticize his singing, you can call it what you like, but you can't stop
+it--at least, that is my experience. The song selected is sure to be
+one with a chorus. Towards the end it becomes mainly chorus, unless the
+soloist be an extra powerful bird, determined to insist upon his rights.
+
+The President knows nothing of this Club. He gets up himself about
+seven--three hours after all the others have finished breakfast--and
+then fusses round under the impression that he is waking up the colony,
+the fat-headed old fool. He is the poorest thing in Presidents I have
+ever heard of. A South American Republic would supply a better article.
+The rooks themselves, the married majority, fathers of families,
+respectable nestholders, are as indignant as I am. I hear complaints
+from all quarters.
+
+Reflection comes to one as, towards the close of these chill afternoons
+in early spring, one leans upon the paddock gate watching the noisy
+bustling in the bare elms.
+
+So the earth is growing green again, and love is come again unto the
+hearts of us old sober-coated fellows. Oh, Madam, your feathers gleam
+wondrous black, and your bonnie bright eye stabs deep. Come, sit by our
+side, and we'll tell you a tale such as rook never told before. It's
+the tale of a nest in a topmost bough, that sways in the good west wind.
+It's strong without, but it's soft within, where the little green eggs
+lie safe. And there sits in that nest a lady sweet, and she caws with
+joy, for, afar, she sees the rook she loves the best. Oh, he has been
+east, and he has been west, and his crop it is full of worms and slugs,
+and they are all for her.
+
+We are old, old rooks, so many of us. The white is mingling with the
+purple black upon our breasts. We have seen these tall elms grow from
+saplings; we have seen the old trees fall and die. Yet each season come
+to us again the young thoughts. So we mate and build and gather that
+again our old, old hearts may quiver to the thin cry of our newborn.
+
+Mother Nature has but one care, the children. We talk of Love as the
+Lord of Life: it is but the Minister. Our novels end where Nature's tale
+begins. The drama that our curtain falls upon, is but the prologue to
+her play. How the ancient Dame must laugh as she listens to the prattle
+of her children. "Is Marriage a Failure?" "Is Life worth Living?"
+"The New Woman versus the Old." So, perhaps, the waves of the Atlantic
+discuss vehemently whether they shall flow east or west.
+
+Motherhood is the law of the Universe. The whole duty of man is to be a
+mother. We labour: to what end? the children--the woman in the home, the
+man in the community. The nation takes thought for its future: why? In a
+few years its statesmen, its soldiers, its merchants, its toilers,
+will be gathered unto their fathers. Why trouble we ourselves about the
+future? The country pours its blood and treasure into the earth that the
+children may reap. Foolish Jacques Bonhomie, his addled brain full
+of dreams, rushes with bloody hands to give his blood for Liberty,
+Equality, Fraternity. He will not live to see, except in vision, the new
+world he gives his bones to build--even his spinning word-whipped head
+knows that. But the children! they shall live sweeter lives. The peasant
+leaves his fireside to die upon the battle-field. What is it to him,
+a grain in the human sand, that Russia should conquer the East, that
+Germany should be united, that the English flag should wave above new
+lands? the heritage his fathers left him shall be greater for his sons.
+Patriotism! what is it but the mother instinct of a people?
+
+Take it that the decree has gone forth from Heaven: There shall be
+no more generations, with this life the world shall die. Think you we
+should move another hand? The ships would rot in the harbours, the grain
+would rot in the ground. Should we paint pictures, write books, make
+music? hemmed in by that onward creeping sea of silence. Think you with
+what eyes husband and wife would look on one another. Think you of the
+wooing--the spring of Love dried up; love only a pool of stagnant water.
+
+How little we seem to realize this foundation of our life. Herein, if
+nowhere else, lies our eternity. This Ego shall never die--unless the
+human race from beginning to end be but a passing jest of the Gods, to
+be swept aside when wearied of, leaving room for new experiments. These
+features of mine--we will not discuss their aesthetic value--shall
+never disappear; modified, varied, but in essential the same, they shall
+continue in ever increasing circles to the end of Time. This temperament
+of mine--this good and evil that is in me, it shall grow with every age,
+spreading ever wider, combining, amalgamating. I go into my children and
+my children's children, I am eternal. I am they, they are I. The tree
+withers and you clear the ground, thankful if out of its dead limbs you
+can make good firewood; but its spirit, its life, is in fifty saplings.
+The tree dies not, it changes.
+
+These men and women that pass me in the street, this one hurrying to his
+office, this one to his club, another to his love, they are the mothers
+of the world to come.
+
+This greedy trickster in stocks and shares, he cheats, he lies, he
+wrongs all men--for what? Follow him to his luxurious home in the
+suburbs: what do you find? A man with children on his knee, telling them
+stories, promising them toys. His anxious, sordid life, for what object
+is it lived? That these children may possess the things that he thinks
+good for them. Our very vices, side by side with our virtues, spring
+from this one root, Motherhood. It is the one seed of the Universe. The
+planets are but children of the sun, the moon but an offspring of the
+earth, stone of her stone, iron of her iron. What is the Great Centre
+of us all, life animate and inanimate--if any life be inanimate? Is the
+eternal universe one dim figure, Motherhood, filling all space?
+
+This scheming Mother of Mayfair, angling for a rich son-in-law! Not a
+pleasing portrait to look upon, from one point of view. Let us look at
+it, for a moment, from another. How weary she must be! This is her third
+"function" to-night; the paint is running off her poor face. She has
+been snubbed a dozen times by her social superiors, openly insulted by
+a Duchess; yet she bears it with a patient smile. It is a pitiful
+ambition, hers: it is that her child shall marry money, shall have
+carriages and many servants, live in Park Lane, wear diamonds, see her
+name in the Society Papers. At whatever cost to herself, her daughter
+shall, if possible, enjoy these things. She could so much more
+comfortably go to bed, and leave the child to marry some well-to-do
+commercial traveller. Justice, Reader, even for such. Her sordid
+scheming is but the deformed child of Motherhood.
+
+Motherhood! it is the gamut of God's orchestra, savageness and cruelty
+at the one end, tenderness and self-sacrifice at the other.
+
+The sparrow-hawk fights the hen: he seeking food for his brood, she
+defending hers with her life. The spider sucks the fly to feed its
+myriad young; the cat tortures the mouse to give its still throbbing
+carcase to her kittens, and man wrongs man for children's sake. Perhaps
+when the riot of the world reaches us whole, not broken, we shall learn
+it is a harmony, each jangling discord fallen into its place around the
+central theme, Motherhood.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE INADVISABILITY OF FOLLOWING ADVICE
+
+I was pacing the Euston platform late one winter's night, waiting for
+the last train to Watford, when I noticed a man cursing an automatic
+machine. Twice he shook his fist at it. I expected every moment to see
+him strike it. Naturally curious, I drew near softly. I wanted to catch
+what he was saying. However, he heard my approaching footsteps, and
+turned on me. "Are you the man," said he, "who was here just now?"
+
+"Just where?" I replied. I had been pacing up and down the platform for
+about five minutes.
+
+"Why here, where we are standing," he snapped out. "Where do you think
+'here' is--over there?" He seemed irritable.
+
+"I may have passed this spot in the course of my peregrinations, if that
+is what you mean," I replied. I spoke with studied politeness; my idea
+was to rebuke his rudeness.
+
+"I mean," he answered, "are you the man that spoke to me, just a minute
+ago?"
+
+"I am not that man," I said; "good-night."
+
+"Are you sure?" he persisted.
+
+"One is not likely to forget talking to you," I retorted.
+
+His tone had been most offensive. "I beg your pardon," he replied
+grudgingly. "I thought you looked like the man who spoke to me a minute
+or so ago."
+
+I felt mollified; he was the only other man on the platform, and I had
+a quarter of an hour to wait. "No, it certainly wasn't me," I returned
+genially, but ungrammatically. "Why, did you want him?"
+
+"Yes, I did," he answered. "I put a penny in the slot here," he
+continued, feeling apparently the need of unburdening himself: "wanted
+a box of matches. I couldn't get anything put, and I was shaking the
+machine, and swearing at it, as one does, when there came along a man,
+about your size, and--you're SURE it wasn't you?"
+
+"Positive," I again ungrammatically replied; "I would tell you if it had
+been. What did he do?"
+
+"Well, he saw what had happened, or guessed it. He said, 'They are
+troublesome things, those machines; they want understanding.' I said,
+'They want taking up and flinging into the sea, that's what they want!'
+I was feeling mad because I hadn't a match about me, and I use a lot. He
+said, 'They stick sometimes; the thing to do is to put another penny in;
+the weight of the first penny is not always sufficient. The second penny
+loosens the drawer and tumbles out itself; so that you get your purchase
+together with your first penny back again. I have often succeeded that
+way.' Well, it seemed a silly explanation, but he talked as if he had
+been weaned by an automatic machine, and I was sawney enough to listen
+to him. I dropped in what I thought was another penny. I have just
+discovered it was a two-shilling piece. The fool was right to a certain
+extent; I have got something out. I have got this."
+
+He held it towards me; I looked at it. It was a packet of Everton
+toffee.
+
+"Two and a penny," he remarked, bitterly. "I'll sell it for a third of
+what it cost me."
+
+"You have put your money into the wrong machine," I suggested.
+
+"Well, I know that!" he answered, a little crossly, as it seemed to
+me--he was not a nice man: had there been any one else to talk to I
+should have left him. "It isn't losing the money I mind so much; it's
+getting this damn thing, that annoys me. If I could find that idiot Id
+ram it down his throat."
+
+We walked to the end of the platform, side by side, in silence.
+
+"There are people like that," he broke out, as we turned, "people who
+will go about, giving advice. I'll be getting six months over one of
+them, I'm always afraid. I remember a pony I had once." (I judged the
+man to be a small farmer; he talked in a wurzelly tone. I don't know if
+you understand what I mean, but an atmosphere of wurzels was the thing
+that somehow he suggested.) "It was a thoroughbred Welsh pony, as sound
+a little beast as ever stepped. I'd had him out to grass all the winter,
+and one day in the early spring I thought I'd take him for a run. I had
+to go to Amersham on business. I put him into the cart, and drove him
+across; it is just ten miles from my place. He was a bit uppish, and had
+lathered himself pretty freely by the time we reached the town.
+
+"A man was at the door of the hotel. He says, 'That's a good pony of
+yours.'
+
+"'Pretty middling,' I says.
+
+"'It doesn't do to over-drive 'em, when they're young,' he says.
+
+"I says, 'He's done ten miles, and I've done most of the pulling. I
+reckon I'm a jolly sight more exhausted than he is.
+
+"I went inside and did my business, and when I came out the man was
+still there. 'Going back up the hill?' he says to me.
+
+"Somehow, I didn't cotton to him from the beginning. 'Well, I've got to
+get the other side of it,' I says, 'and unless you know any patent way
+of getting over a hill without going up it, I reckon I am.'
+
+"He says, 'You take my advice: give him a pint of old ale before you
+start.'
+
+"'Old ale,' I says; 'why he's a teetotaler.'
+
+"'Never you mind that,' he answers; 'you give him a pint of old ale. I
+know these ponies; he's a good 'un, but he ain't set. A pint of old
+ale, and he'll take you up that hill like a cable tramway, and not hurt
+himself.'
+
+"I don't know what it is about this class of man. One asks oneself
+afterwards why one didn't knock his hat over his eyes and run his head
+into the nearest horse-trough. But at the time one listens to them.
+I got a pint of old ale in a hand-bowl, and brought it out. About
+half-a-dozen chaps were standing round, and of course there was a good
+deal of chaff.
+
+"'You're starting him on the downward course, Jim,' says one of them.
+'He'll take to gambling, rob a bank, and murder his mother. That's
+always the result of a glass of ale, 'cording to the tracts.'
+
+"'He won't drink it like that,' says another; 'it's as flat as ditch
+water. Put a head on it for him.'
+
+"'Ain't you got a cigar for him?' says a third.
+
+"'A cup of coffee and a round of buttered toast would do him a sight
+more good, a cold day like this,' says a fourth.
+
+"I'd half a mind then to throw the stuff away, or drink it myself; it
+seemed a piece of bally nonsense, giving good ale to a four-year-old
+pony; but the moment the beggar smelt the bowl he reached out his head,
+and lapped it up as though he'd been a Christian; and I jumped into the
+cart and started off, amid cheers. We got up the hill pretty steady.
+Then the liquor began to work into his head. I've taken home a drunken
+man more than once and there's pleasanter jobs than that. I've seen a
+drunken woman, and they're worse. But a drunken Welsh pony I never want
+to have anything more to do with so long as I live. Having four legs he
+managed to hold himself up; but as to guiding himself, he couldn't;
+and as for letting me do it, he wouldn't. First we were one side of the
+road, and then we were the other. When we were not either side, we were
+crossways in the middle. I heard a bicycle bell behind me, but I dared
+not turn my head. All I could do was to shout to the fellow to keep
+where he was.
+
+"'I want to pass you,' he sang out, so soon as he was near enough.
+
+"'Well, you can't do it,' I called back.
+
+"'Why can't I?' he answered. 'How much of the road do YOU want?'
+
+"'All of it and a bit over,' I answered him, 'for this job, and nothing
+in the way.'
+
+"He followed me for half-a-mile, abusing me; and every time he thought
+he saw a chance he tried to pass me. But the pony was always a bit too
+smart for him. You might have thought the brute was doing it on purpose.
+
+"'You're not fit to be driving,' he shouted. He was quite right; I
+wasn't. I was feeling just about dead beat.
+
+"'What do you think you are?' he continued, 'the charge of the Light
+Brigade?' (He was a common sort of fellow.) 'Who sent YOU home with the
+washing?'
+
+"Well, he was making me wild by this time. 'What's the good of talking
+to me?' I shouted back. 'Come and blackguard the pony if you want to
+blackguard anybody. I've got all I can do without the help of that alarm
+clock of yours. Go away, you're only making him worse.'
+
+"'What's the matter with the pony?' he called out.
+
+"'Can't you see?' I answered. 'He's drunk.'
+
+"Well, of course it sounded foolish; the truth often does.
+
+"'One of you's drunk,' he retorted; 'for two pins I'd come and haul you
+out of the cart.'
+
+"I wish to goodness he had; I'd have given something to be out of that
+cart. But he didn't have the chance. At that moment the pony gave a
+sudden swerve; and I take it he must have been a bit too close. I heard
+a yell and a curse, and at the same instant I was splashed from head to
+foot with ditch water. Then the brute bolted. A man was coming along,
+asleep on the top of a cart-load of windsor chairs. It's disgraceful the
+way those wagoners go to sleep; I wonder there are not more accidents. I
+don't think he ever knew what had happened to him. I couldn't look round
+to see what became of him; I only saw him start. Half-way down the hill
+a policeman holla'd to me to stop. I heard him shouting out something
+about furious driving. Half-a-mile this side of Chesham we came upon a
+girls' school walking two and two--a 'crocodile' they call it, I think.
+I bet you those girls are still talking about it. It must have taken the
+old woman a good hour to collect them together again.
+
+"It was market-day in Chesham; and I guess there has not been a busier
+market-day in Chesham before or since. We went through the town at about
+thirty miles an hour. I've never seen Chesham so lively--it's a sleepy
+hole as a rule. A mile outside the town I sighted the High Wycombe
+coach. I didn't feel I minded much; I had got to that pass when it
+didn't seem to matter to me what happened; I only felt curious. A dozen
+yards off the coach the pony stopped dead; that jerked me off the seat
+to the bottom of the cart. I couldn't get up, because the seat was on
+top of me. I could see nothing but the sky, and occasionally the head
+of the pony, when he stood upon his hind legs. But I could hear what the
+driver of the coach said, and I judged he was having trouble also.
+
+"'Take that damn circus out of the road,' he shouted. If he'd had
+any sense he'd have seen how helpless I was. I could hear his cattle
+plunging about; they are like that, horses--if they see one fool, then
+they all want to be fools.
+
+"'Take it home, and tie it up to its organ,' shouted the guard.
+
+"Then an old woman went into hysterics, and began laughing like an
+hyena. That started the pony off again, and, as far as I could calculate
+by watching the clouds, we did about another four miles at the gallop.
+Then he thought he'd try to jump a gate, and finding, I suppose, that
+the cart hampered him, he started kicking it to pieces. I'd never have
+thought a cart could have been separated into so many pieces, if I
+hadn't seen it done. When he had got rid of everything but half a wheel
+and the splashboard he bolted again. I remained behind with the other
+ruins, and glad I was to get a little rest. He came back later in
+the afternoon, and I was pleased to sell him the next week for a
+five-pound-note: it cost me about another ten to repair myself.
+
+"To this day I am chaffed about that pony, and the local temperance
+society made a lecture out of me. That's what comes of following
+advice."
+
+I sympathized with him. I have suffered from advice myself. I have a
+friend, a City man, whom I meet occasionally. One of his most
+ardent passions in life is to make my fortune. He button-holes me in
+Threadneedle Street. "The very man I wanted to see," he says; "I'm going
+to let you in for a good thing. We are getting up a little syndicate."
+He is for ever "getting up" a little syndicate, and for every hundred
+pounds you put into it you take a thousand out. Had I gone into all
+his little syndicates, I could have been worth at the present moment,
+I reckon, two million five hundred thousand pounds. But I have not gone
+into all his little syndicates. I went into one, years ago, when I was
+younger. I am still in it; my friend is confident that my holding, later
+on, will yield me thousands. Being, however, hard-up for ready money,
+I am willing to part with my share to any deserving person at a genuine
+reduction, upon a cash basis. Another friend of mine knows another man
+who is "in the know" as regards racing matters. I suppose most people
+possess a friend of this type. He is generally very popular just
+before a race, and extremely unpopular immediately afterwards. A third
+benefactor of mine is an enthusiast upon the subject of diet. One day he
+brought me something in a packet, and pressed it into my hand with the
+air of a man who is relieving you of all your troubles.
+
+"What is it?" I asked.
+
+"Open it and see," he answered, in the tone of a pantomime fairy.
+
+I opened it and looked, but I was no wiser.
+
+"It's tea," he explained.
+
+"Oh!" I replied; "I was wondering if it could be snuff."
+
+"Well, it's not exactly tea," he continued, "it's a sort of tea. You
+take one cup of that--one cup, and you will never care for any other
+kind of tea again."
+
+He was quite right, I took one cup. After drinking it I felt I didn't
+care for any other tea. I felt I didn't care for anything, except to die
+quietly and inoffensively. He called on me a week later.
+
+"You remember that tea I gave you?" he said.
+
+"Distinctly," I answered; "I've got the taste of it in my mouth now."
+
+"Did it upset you?" he asked.
+
+"It annoyed me at the time," I answered; "but that's all over now."
+
+He seemed thoughtful. "You were quite correct," he answered; "it WAS
+snuff, a very special snuff, sent me all the way from India."
+
+"I can't say I liked it," I replied.
+
+"A stupid mistake of mine," he went on--"I must have mixed up the
+packets!"
+
+"Oh, accidents will happen," I said, "and you won't make another
+mistake, I feel sure; so far as I am concerned."
+
+We can all give advice. I had the honour once of serving an old
+gentleman whose profession it was to give legal advice, and excellent
+legal advice he always gave. In common with most men who know the
+law, he had little respect for it. I have heard him say to a would-be
+litigant--
+
+"My dear sir, if a villain stopped me in the street and demanded of me
+my watch and chain, I should refuse to give it to him. If he thereupon
+said, 'Then I shall take it from you by brute force,' I should, old as
+I am, I feel convinced, reply to him, 'Come on.' But if, on the other
+hand, he were to say to me, 'Very well, then I shall take proceedings
+against you in the Court of Queen's Bench to compel you to give it up
+to me,' I should at once take it from my pocket, press it into his hand,
+and beg of him to say no more about the matter. And I should consider I
+was getting off cheaply."
+
+Yet that same old gentleman went to law himself with his next-door
+neighbour over a dead poll parrot that wasn't worth sixpence to anybody,
+and spent from first to last a hundred pounds, if he spent a penny.
+
+"I know I'm a fool," he confessed. "I have no positive proof that it WAS
+his cat; but I'll make him pay for calling me an Old Bailey Attorney,
+hanged if I don't!"
+
+We all know how the pudding OUGHT to be made. We do not profess to be
+able to make it: that is not our business. Our business is to criticize
+the cook. It seems our business to criticize so many things that it is
+not our business to do. We are all critics nowadays. I have my opinion
+of you, Reader, and you possibly have your own opinion of me. I do not
+seek to know it; personally, I prefer the man who says what he has to
+say of me behind my back. I remember, when on a lecturing tour, the
+ground-plan of the hall often necessitated my mingling with the audience
+as they streamed out. This never happened but I would overhear somebody
+in front of me whisper to his or her companion--"Take care, he's just
+behind you." I always felt so grateful to that whisperer.
+
+At a Bohemian Club, I was once drinking coffee with a Novelist, who
+happened to be a broad-shouldered, athletic man. A fellow-member,
+joining us, said to the Novelist, "I have just finished that last book
+of yours; I'll tell you my candid opinion of it." Promptly replied the
+Novelist, "I give you fair warning--if you do, I shall punch your head."
+We never heard that candid opinion.
+
+Most of our leisure time we spend sneering at one another. It is a
+wonder, going about as we do with our noses so high in the air, we do
+not walk off this little round world into space, all of us. The Masses
+sneer at the Classes. The morals of the Classes are shocking. If
+only the Classes would consent as a body to be taught behaviour by a
+Committee of the Masses, how very much better it would be for them. If
+only the Classes would neglect their own interests and devote themselves
+to the welfare of the Masses, the Masses would be more pleased with
+them.
+
+The Classes sneer at the Masses. If only the Masses would follow the
+advice given them by the Classes; if only they would be thrifty on their
+ten shillings a week; if only they would all be teetotalers, or drink
+old claret, which is not intoxicating; if only all the girls would be
+domestic servants on five pounds a year, and not waste their money on
+feathers; if only the men would be content to work for fourteen hours a
+day, and to sing in tune, "God bless the Squire and his relations," and
+would consent to be kept in their proper stations, all things would go
+swimmingly--for the Classes.
+
+The New Woman pooh-poohs the Old; the Old Woman is indignant with the
+New. The Chapel denounces the Stage; the Stage ridicules Little Bethel;
+the Minor Poet sneers at the world; the world laughs at the Minor Poet.
+
+Man criticizes Woman. We are not altogether pleased with woman. We
+discuss her shortcomings, we advise her for her good. If only English
+wives would dress as French wives, talk as American wives, cook as
+German wives! if only women would be precisely what we want them
+to be--patient and hard-working, brilliantly witty and exhaustively
+domestic, bewitching, amenable, and less suspicious; how very much
+better it would be for them--also for us. We work so hard to teach
+them, but they will not listen. Instead of paying attention to our wise
+counsel, the tiresome creatures are wasting their time criticizing us.
+It is a popular game, this game of school. All that is needful is a
+doorstep, a cane, and six other children. The difficulty is the six
+other children. Every child wants to be the schoolmaster; they will keep
+jumping up, saying it is their turn.
+
+Woman wants to take the stick now, and put man on the doorstep. There
+are one or two things she has got to say to him. He is not at all the
+man she approves of. He must begin by getting rid of all his natural
+desires and propensities; that done, she will take him in hand and make
+of him--not a man, but something very much superior.
+
+It would be the best of all possible worlds if everybody would only
+follow our advice. I wonder, would Jerusalem have been the cleanly city
+it is reported, if, instead of troubling himself concerning his own
+twopenny-halfpenny doorstep, each citizen had gone out into the road and
+given eloquent lectures to all the other inhabitants on the subject of
+sanitation?
+
+We have taken to criticizing the Creator Himself of late. The world is
+wrong, we are wrong. If only He had taken our advice, during those first
+six days!
+
+Why do I seem to have been scooped out and filled up with lead? Why do
+I hate the smell of bacon, and feel that nobody cares for me? It is
+because champagne and lobsters have been made wrong.
+
+Why do Edwin and Angelina quarrel? It is because Edwin has been given
+a fine, high-spirited nature that will not brook contradiction; while
+Angelina, poor girl, has been cursed with contradictory instincts.
+
+Why is excellent Mr. Jones brought down next door to beggary? Mr. Jones
+had an income of a thousand a year, secured by the Funds. But there
+came along a wicked Company promoter (why are wicked Company promoters
+permitted?) with a prospectus, telling good Mr. Jones how to obtain a
+hundred per cent. for his money by investing it in some scheme for the
+swindling of Mr. Jones's fellow-citizens.
+
+The scheme does not succeed; the people swindled turn out, contrary to
+the promise of the prospectus, to be Mr. Jones and his fellow-investors.
+Why does Heaven allow these wrongs?
+
+Why does Mrs. Brown leave her husband and children, to run off with the
+New Doctor? It is because an ill-advised Creator has given Mrs. Brown
+and the New Doctor unduly strong emotions. Neither Mrs. Brown nor the
+New Doctor are to be blamed. If any human being be answerable it is,
+probably, Mrs. Brown's grandfather, or some early ancestor of the New
+Doctor's.
+
+We shall criticize Heaven when we get there. I doubt if any of us will
+be pleased with the arrangements; we have grown so exceedingly critical.
+
+It was once said of a very superior young man that he seemed to be under
+the impression that God Almighty had made the universe chiefly to hear
+what he would say about it. Consciously or unconsciously, most of us are
+of this way of thinking. It is an age of mutual improvement societies--a
+delightful idea, everybody's business being to improve everybody else;
+of amateur parliaments, of literary councils, of playgoers' clubs.
+
+First Night criticism seems to have died out of late, the Student of the
+Drama having come to the conclusion, possibly, that plays are not worth
+criticizing. But in my young days we were very earnest at this work. We
+went to the play, less with the selfish desire of enjoying our evening,
+than with the noble aim of elevating the Stage. Maybe we did good,
+maybe we were needed--let us think so. Certain it is, many of the old
+absurdities have disappeared from the Theatre, and our rough-and-ready
+criticism may have helped the happy dispatch. A folly is often served by
+an unwise remedy.
+
+The dramatist in those days had to reckon with his audience. Gallery and
+Pit took an interest in his work such as Galleries and Pits no longer
+take. I recollect witnessing the production of a very blood-curdling
+melodrama at, I think, the old Queen's Theatre. The heroine had been
+given by the author a quite unnecessary amount of conversation, so we
+considered. The woman, whenever she appeared on the stage, talked by the
+yard; she could not do a simple little thing like cursing the Villain
+under about twenty lines. When the hero asked her if she loved him she
+stood up and made a speech about it that lasted three minutes by the
+watch. One dreaded to see her open her mouth. In the Third Act, somebody
+got hold of her and shut her up in a dungeon. He was not a nice man,
+speaking generally, but we felt he was the man for the situation, and
+the house cheered him to the echo. We flattered ourselves we had got
+rid of her for the rest of the evening. Then some fool of a turnkey came
+along, and she appealed to him, through the grating, to let her out for
+a few minutes. The turnkey, a good but soft-hearted man, hesitated.
+
+"Don't you do it," shouted one earnest Student of the Drama, from the
+Gallery; "she's all right. Keep her there!"
+
+The old idiot paid no attention to our advice; he argued the matter to
+himself. "'Tis but a trifling request," he remarked; "and it will make
+her happy."
+
+"Yes, but what about us?" replied the same voice from the Gallery. "You
+don't know her. You've only just come on; we've been listening to her
+all the evening. She's quiet now, you let her be."
+
+"Oh, let me out, if only for one moment!" shrieked the poor woman. "I
+have something that I must say to my child."
+
+"Write it on a bit of paper, and pass it out," suggested a voice from
+the Pit. "We'll see that he gets it."
+
+"Shall I keep a mother from her dying child?" mused the turnkey. "No, it
+would be inhuman."
+
+"No, it wouldn't," persisted the voice of the Pit; "not in this
+instance. It's too much talk that has made the poor child ill."
+
+The turnkey would not be guided by us. He opened the cell door amidst
+the execrations of the whole house. She talked to her child for about
+five minutes, at the end of which time it died.
+
+"Ah, he is dead!" shrieked the distressed parent.
+
+"Lucky beggar!" was the unsympathetic rejoinder of the house.
+
+Sometimes the criticism of the audience would take the form of remarks,
+addressed by one gentleman to another. We had been listening one night
+to a play in which action seemed to be unnecessarily subordinated to
+dialogue, and somewhat poor dialogue at that. Suddenly, across the
+wearying talk from the stage, came the stentorian whisper--
+
+"Jim!"
+
+"Hallo!"
+
+"Wake me up when the play begins."
+
+This was followed by an ostentatious sound as of snoring. Then the voice
+of the second speaker was heard--
+
+"Sammy!"
+
+His friend appeared to awake.
+
+"Eh? Yes? What's up? Has anything happened?"
+
+"Wake you up at half-past eleven in any event, I suppose?"
+
+"Thanks, do, sonny." And the critic slept again.
+
+Yes, we took an interest in our plays then. I wonder shall I ever enjoy
+the British Drama again as I enjoyed it in those days? Shall I ever
+enjoy a supper again as I enjoyed the tripe and onions washed down with
+bitter beer at the bar of the old Albion? I have tried many suppers
+after the theatre since then, and some, when friends have been in
+generous mood, have been expensive and elaborate. The cook may have come
+from Paris, his portrait may be in the illustrated papers, his salary
+may be reckoned by hundreds; but there is something wrong with his art,
+for all that, I miss a flavour in his meats. There is a sauce lacking.
+
+Nature has her coinage, and demands payment in her own currency. At
+Nature's shop it is you yourself must pay. Your unearned increment, your
+inherited fortune, your luck, are not legal tenders across her counter.
+
+You want a good appetite. Nature is quite willing to supply you.
+"Certainly, sir," she replies, "I can do you a very excellent article
+indeed. I have here a real genuine hunger and thirst that will make your
+meal a delight to you. You shall eat heartily and with zest, and you
+shall rise from the table refreshed, invigorated, and cheerful."
+
+"Just the very thing I want," exclaims the gourmet delightedly. "Tell me
+the price."
+
+"The price," answers Mrs. Nature, "is one long day's hard work."
+
+The customer's face falls; he handles nervously his heavy purse.
+
+"Cannot I pay for it in money?" he asks. "I don't like work, but I am a
+rich man, I can afford to keep French cooks, to purchase old wines."
+
+Nature shakes her head.
+
+"I cannot take your cheques, tissue and nerve are my charges. For these
+I can give you an appetite that will make a rump-steak and a tankard
+of ale more delicious to you than any dinner that the greatest chef in
+Europe could put before you. I can even promise you that a hunk of bread
+and cheese shall be a banquet to you; but you must pay my price in my
+money; I do not deal in yours."
+
+And next the Dilettante enters, demanding a taste for Art and
+Literature, and this also Nature is quite prepared to supply.
+
+"I can give you true delight in all these things," she answers. "Music
+shall be as wings to you, lifting you above the turmoil of the world.
+Through Art you shall catch a glimpse of Truth. Along the pleasant paths
+of Literature you shall walk as beside still waters."
+
+"And your charge?" cries the delighted customer.
+
+"These things are somewhat expensive," replies Nature. "I want from you
+a life lived simply, free from all desire of worldly success, a life
+from which passion has been lived out; a life to which appetite has been
+subdued."
+
+"But you mistake, my dear lady," replies the Dilettante; "I have many
+friends, possessed of taste, and they are men who do not pay this price
+for it. Their houses are full of beautiful pictures, they rave about
+'nocturnes' and 'symphonies,' their shelves are packed with first
+editions. Yet they are men of luxury and wealth and fashion. They
+trouble much concerning the making of money, and Society is their
+heaven. Cannot I be as one of these?"
+
+"I do not deal in the tricks of apes," answers Nature coldly; "the
+culture of these friends of yours is a mere pose, a fashion of the hour,
+their talk mere parrot chatter. Yes, you can purchase such culture as
+this, and pretty cheaply, but a passion for skittles would be of more
+service to you, and bring you more genuine enjoyment. My goods are of a
+different class. I fear we waste each other's time."
+
+And next comes the boy, asking with a blush for love, and Nature's
+motherly old heart goes out to him, for it is an article she loves to
+sell, and she loves those who come to purchase it of her. So she leans
+across the counter, smiling, and tells him that she has the very thing
+he wants, and he, trembling with excitement, likewise asks the figure.
+
+"It costs a good deal," explains Nature, but in no discouraging tone;
+"it is the most expensive thing in all my shop."
+
+"I am rich," replies the lad. "My father worked hard and saved, and
+he has left me all his wealth. I have stocks and shares, and lands and
+factories; and will pay any price in reason for this thing."
+
+But Nature, looking graver, lays her hand upon his arm.
+
+"Put by your purse, boy," she says, "my price is not a price in reason,
+nor is gold the metal that I deal in. There are many shops in various
+streets where your bank-notes will be accepted. But if you will take an
+old woman's advice, you will not go to them. The thing they will sell
+you will bring sorrow and do evil to you. It is cheap enough, but, like
+all things cheap, it is not worth the buying. No man purchases it, only
+the fool."
+
+"And what is the cost of the thing YOU sell then?" asks the lad.
+
+"Self-forgetfulness, tenderness, strength," answers the old Dame; "the
+love of all things that are of good repute, the hate of all things
+evil--courage, sympathy, self-respect, these things purchase love. Put
+by your purse, lad, it will serve you in other ways, but it will not buy
+for you the goods upon my shelves."
+
+"Then am I no better off than the poor man?" demands the lad.
+
+"I know not wealth or poverty as you understand it," answers Nature.
+"Here I exchange realities only for realities. You ask for my treasures,
+I ask for your brain and heart in exchange--yours, boy, not your
+father's, not another's."
+
+"And this price," he argues, "how shall I obtain it?"
+
+"Go about the world," replies the great Lady. "Labour, suffer, help.
+Come back to me when you have earned your wages, and according to how
+much you bring me so we will do business."
+
+Is real wealth so unevenly distributed as we think? Is not Fate the true
+Socialist? Who is the rich man, who the poor? Do we know? Does even
+the man himself know? Are we not striving for the shadow, missing the
+substance? Take life at its highest; which was the happier man, rich
+Solomon or poor Socrates? Solomon seems to have had most things that
+most men most desire--maybe too much of some for his own comfort.
+Socrates had little beyond what he carried about with him, but that was
+a good deal. According to our scales, Solomon should have been one of
+the happiest men that ever lived, Socrates one of the most wretched. But
+was it so?
+
+Or taking life at its lowest, with pleasure its only goal. Is my
+lord Tom Noddy, in the stalls, so very much jollier than 'Arry in the
+gallery? Were beer ten shillings the bottle, and champagne fourpence a
+quart, which, think you, we should clamour for? If every West End Club
+had its skittle alley, and billiards could only be played in East End
+pubs, which game, my lord, would you select? Is the air of Berkeley
+Square so much more joy-giving than the atmosphere of Seven Dials? I
+find myself a piquancy in the air of Seven Dials, missing from Berkeley
+Square. Is there so vast a difference between horse-hair and straw, when
+you are tired? Is happiness multiplied by the number of rooms in one's
+house? Are Lady Ermintrude's lips so very much sweeter than Sally's of
+the Alley? What IS success in life?
+
+
+
+
+ON THE PLAYING OF MARCHES AT THE FUNERALS OF MARIONETTES
+
+He began the day badly. He took me out and lost me. It would be so much
+better, would he consent to the usual arrangement, and allow me to take
+him out. I am far the abler leader: I say it without conceit. I am older
+than he is, and I am less excitable. I do not stop and talk with every
+person I meet, and then forget where I am. I do less to distract myself:
+I rarely fight, I never feel I want to run after cats, I take but little
+pleasure in frightening children. I have nothing to think about but the
+walk, and the getting home again. If, as I say, he would give up taking
+me out, and let me take him out, there would be less trouble all round.
+But into this I have never been able to persuade him.
+
+He had mislaid me once or twice, but in Sloane Square he lost me
+entirely. When he loses me, he stands and barks for me. If only he would
+remain where he first barked, I might find my way to him; but, before
+I can cross the road, he is barking half-way down the next street. I am
+not so young as I was and I sometimes think he exercises me more than
+is good for me. I could see him from where I was standing in the King's
+Road. Evidently he was most indignant. I was too far off to distinguish
+the barks, but I could guess what he was saying--
+
+"Damn that man, he's off again."
+
+He made inquiries of a passing dog--
+
+"You haven't smelt my man about anywhere, have you?"
+
+(A dog, of course, would never speak of SEEING anybody or anything,
+smell being his leading sense. Reaching the top of a hill, he would say
+to his companion--"Lovely smell from here, I always think; I could
+sit and sniff here all the afternoon." Or, proposing a walk, he would
+say--"I like the road by the canal, don't you? There's something
+interesting to catch your nose at every turn.")
+
+"No, I haven't smelt any man in particular," answered the other dog.
+"What sort of a smelling man is yours?"
+
+"Oh, an egg-and-bacony sort of a man, with a dash of soap about him."
+
+"That's nothing to go by," retorted the other; "most men would answer to
+that description, this time of the morning. Where were you when you last
+noticed him?"
+
+At this moment he caught sight of me, and came up, pleased to find me,
+but vexed with me for having got lost.
+
+"Oh, here you are," he barked; "didn't you see me go round the corner?
+Do keep closer. Bothered if half my time isn't taken up, finding you and
+losing you again."
+
+The incident appeared to have made him bad-tempered; he was just in
+the humour for a row of any sort. At the top of Sloane Street a stout
+military-looking gentleman started running after the Chelsea bus. With
+a "Hooroo" William Smith was after him. Had the old gentleman taken no
+notice, all would have been well. A butcher boy, driving just behind,
+would--I could read it in his eye--have caught Smith a flick as he
+darted into the road, which would have served him right; the old
+gentleman would have captured his bus; and the affair would have been
+ended. Unfortunately, he was that type of retired military man all gout
+and curry and no sense. He stopped to swear at the dog. That, of course,
+was what Smith wanted. It is not often he gets a scrimmage with a
+full-grown man. "They're a poor-spirited lot, most of them," he thinks;
+"they won't even answer you back. I like a man who shows a bit of
+pluck." He was frenzied with delight at his success. He flew round
+his victim, weaving whooping circles and curves that paralyzed the old
+gentleman as though they had been the mystic figures of a Merlin. The
+colonel clubbed his umbrella, and attempted to defend himself. I called
+to the dog, I gave good advice to the colonel (I judged him to be a
+colonel; the louder he spoke, the less one could understand him), but
+both were too excited to listen to me. A sympathetic bus driver leaned
+over, and whispered hoarse counsel.
+
+"Ketch 'im by the tail, sir," he advised the old gentleman; "don't you
+be afraid of him; you ketch 'im firmly by the tail."
+
+A milkman, on the other hand, sought rather to encourage Smith, shouting
+as he passed--
+
+"Good dog, kill him!"
+
+A child, brained within an inch by the old gentleman's umbrella, began
+to cry. The nurse told the old gentleman he was a fool--a remark
+which struck me as singularly apt The old gentleman gasped back that
+perambulators were illegal on the pavement; and, between his exercises,
+inquired after myself. A crowd began to collect; and a policeman
+strolled up.
+
+It was not the right thing: I do not defend myself; but, at this point,
+the temptation came to me to desert William Smith. He likes a street
+row, I don't. These things are matters of temperament. I have also
+noticed that he has the happy instinct of knowing when to disappear from
+a crisis, and the ability to do so; mysteriously turning up, quarter
+of a mile off, clad in a peaceful and pre-occupied air, and to all
+appearances another and a better dog.
+
+Consoling myself with the reflection that I could be of no practical
+assistance to him and remembering with some satisfaction that, by a
+fortunate accident, he was without his collar, which bears my name
+and address, I slipped round the off side of a Vauxhall bus, making no
+attempt at ostentation, and worked my way home through Lowndes Square
+and the Park.
+
+Five minutes after I had sat down to lunch, he flung open the
+dining-room door, and marched in. It is his customary "entrance." In
+a previous state of existence, his soul was probably that of an
+Actor-Manager.
+
+From his exuberant self-satisfaction, I was inclined to think he must
+have succeeded in following the milkman's advice; at all events, I have
+not seen the colonel since. His bad temper had disappeared, but his
+"uppishness" had, if possible, increased. Previous to his return, I had
+given The O'Shannon a biscuit. The O'Shannon had been insulted; he did
+not want a dog biscuit; if he could not have a grilled kidney he did not
+want anything. He had thrown the biscuit on the floor. Smith saw it and
+made for it. Now Smith never eats biscuits. I give him one occasionally,
+and he at once proceeds to hide it. He is a thrifty dog; he thinks of
+the future. "You never know what may happen," he says; "suppose the
+Guv'nor dies, or goes mad, or bankrupt, I may be glad even of this
+biscuit; I'll put it under the door-mat--no, I won't, somebody will find
+it there. I'll scratch a hole in the tennis lawn, and bury it there.
+That's a good idea; perhaps it'll grow!" Once I caught him hiding it in
+my study, behind the shelf devoted to my own books. It offended me, his
+doing that; the argument was so palpable. Generally, wherever he hides
+it somebody finds it. We find it under our pillows--inside our boots;
+no place seems safe. This time he had said to himself--"By Jove! a whole
+row of the Guv'nor's books. Nobody will ever want to take these out;
+I'll hide it here." One feels a thing like that from one's own dog.
+
+But The O'Shannon's biscuit was another matter. Honesty is the best
+policy; but dishonesty is the better fun. He made a dash for it, and
+commenced to devour it greedily; you might have thought he had not
+tasted food for a week.
+
+The indignation of The O'Shannon was a sight for the gods. He has the
+good-nature of his race: had Smith asked him for the biscuit he would
+probably have given it to him; it was the insult--the immorality of the
+proceeding, that maddened The O'Shannon.
+
+For a moment he was paralyzed.
+
+"Well, of all the--Did ye see that now?" he said to me with his eyes.
+Then he made a rush and snatched the biscuit out of Smith's very jaws.
+"Ye onprincipled black Saxon thief," growled The O'Shannon; "how dare ye
+take my biscuit?"
+
+"You miserable Irish cur," growled Smith; "how was I to know it was your
+biscuit? Does everything on the floor belong to you? Perhaps you think I
+belong to you, I'm on the floor. I don't believe it is your biscuit, you
+long-eared, snubbed-nosed bog-trotter; give it me back."
+
+"I don't require any of your argument, you flop-eared son of a tramp
+with half a tail," replied The O'Shannon. "You come and take it, if you
+think you are dog enough."
+
+He did think he was dog enough. He is half the size of The O'Shannon,
+but such considerations weigh not with him. His argument is, if a dog is
+too big for you to fight the whole of him, take a bit of him and fight
+that. He generally gets licked, but what is left of him invariably
+swaggers about afterwards under the impression it is the victor. When
+he is dead, he will say to himself, as he settles himself in his
+grave--"Well, I flatter myself I've laid out that old world at last. It
+won't trouble ME any more, I'm thinking."
+
+On this occasion, _I_ took a hand in the fight. It becomes necessary
+at intervals to remind Master Smith that the man, as the useful and
+faithful friend of dog, has his rights. I deemed such interval had
+arrived. He flung himself on to the sofa, muttering. It sounded
+like--"Wish I'd never got up this morning. Nobody understands me."
+
+Nothing, however, sobers him for long. Half-an-hour later, he was
+killing the next-door cat. He will never learn sense; he has been
+killing that cat for the last three months. Why the next morning his
+nose is invariably twice its natural size, while for the next week he
+can see objects on one side of his head only, he never seems to grasp; I
+suppose he attributes it to change in the weather.
+
+He ended up the afternoon with what he no doubt regarded as a complete
+and satisfying success. Dorothea had invited a lady to take tea with her
+that day. I heard the sound of laughter, and, being near the nursery,
+I looked in to see what was the joke. Smith was worrying a doll. I
+have rarely seen a more worried-looking doll. Its head was off, and its
+sawdust strewed the floor. Both the children were crowing with delight;
+Dorothea, in particular, was in an ecstasy of amusement.
+
+"Whose doll is it?" I asked.
+
+"Eva's," answered Dorothea, between her peals of laughter.
+
+"Oh no, it isn't," explained Eva, in a tone of sweet content; "here's
+my doll." She had been sitting on it, and now drew it forth, warm but
+whole. "That's Dorry's doll."
+
+The change from joy to grief on the part of Dorothea was distinctly
+dramatic. Even Smith, accustomed to storm, was nonplussed at the
+suddenness of the attack upon him.
+
+Dorothea's sorrow lasted longer than I had expected. I promised her
+another doll. But it seemed she did not want another; that was the only
+doll she would ever care for so long as life lasted; no other doll could
+ever take its place; no other doll would be to her what that doll had
+been. These little people are so absurd: as if it could matter whether
+you loved one doll or another, when all are so much alike! They have
+curly hair, and pink-and-white complexions, big eyes that open and shut,
+a little red mouth, two little hands. Yet these foolish little people!
+they will love one, while another they will not look upon. I find the
+best plan is not to reason with them, but to sympathize. Later on--but
+not too soon--introduce to them another doll. They will not care for
+it at first, but in time they will come to take an interest in it. Of
+course, it cannot make them forget the first doll; no doll ever born in
+Lowther Arcadia could be as that, but still---- It is many weeks before
+they forget entirely the first love.
+
+We buried Dolly in the country under the yew tree. A friend of mine who
+plays the fiddle came down on purpose to assist. We buried her in the
+hot spring sunshine, while the birds from shady nooks sang joyously of
+life and love. And our chief mourner cried real tears, just for all the
+world as though it were not the fate of dolls, sooner or later, to get
+broken--the little fragile things, made for an hour, to be dressed and
+kissed; then, paintless and stript, to be thrown aside on the nursery
+floor. Poor little dolls! I wonder do they take themselves seriously,
+not knowing the springs that stir their sawdust bosoms are but
+clockwork, not seeing the wires to which they dance? Poor little
+marionettes! do they talk together, I wonder, when the lights of the
+booth are out?
+
+You, little sister doll, were the heroine. You lived in the white-washed
+cottage, all honeysuckle and clematis without--earwiggy and damp within,
+maybe. How pretty you always looked in your simple, neatly-fitting print
+dress. How good you were! How nobly you bore your poverty. How patient
+you were under your many wrongs. You never harboured an evil thought, a
+revengeful wish--never, little doll? Were there never moments when you
+longed to play the wicked woman's part, live in a room with many doors,
+be-clad in furs and jewels, with lovers galore at your feet? In those
+long winter evenings? the household work is done--the greasy dishes
+washed, the floor scrubbed; the excellent child is asleep in the corner;
+the one-and-elevenpenny lamp sheds its dismal light on the darned
+table-cloth; you sit, busy at your coarse sewing, waiting for Hero Dick,
+knowing--guessing, at least, where he is--! Yes, dear, I remember your
+fine speeches, when you told her, in stirring language the gallery
+cheered to the echo, what you thought of her and of such women as she;
+when, lifting your hand to heaven, you declared you were happier in your
+attic, working your fingers to the bone, than she in her gilded salon--I
+think "gilded salon" was the term, was it not?--furnished by sin.
+But speaking of yourself, weak little sister doll, not of your fine
+speeches, the gallery listening, did you not, in your secret heart,
+envy her? Did you never, before blowing out the one candle, stand for
+a minute in front of the cracked glass, and think to yourself that
+you, too, would look well in low-cut dresses from Paris, the diamonds
+flashing on your white smooth skin? Did you never, toiling home through
+the mud, bearing your bundle of needlework, feel bitter with the wages
+of virtue, as she splashed you, passing by in her carriage? Alone, over
+your cup of weak tea, did you never feel tempted to pay the price for
+champagne suppers, and gaiety, and admiration? Ah, yes, it is easy
+for folks who have had their good time, to prepare copybooks for weary
+little inkstained fingers, longing for play. The fine maxims sound such
+cant when we are in that mood, do they not? You, too, were young and
+handsome: did the author of the play think you were never hungry for the
+good things of life? Did he think that reading tracts to crotchety old
+women was joy to a full-blooded girl in her twenties? Why should SHE
+have all the love, and all the laughter? How fortunate that the villain,
+the Wicked Baronet, never opened the cottage door at that moment, eh,
+dear! He always came when you were strong, when you felt that you could
+denounce him, and scorn his temptations. Would that the villain came
+to all of us at such time; then we would all, perhaps, be heroes and
+heroines.
+
+Ah well, it was only a play: it is over now. You and I, little tired
+dolls, lying here side by side, waiting to know our next part, we can
+look back and laugh. Where is she, this wicked dolly, that made such a
+stir on our tiny stage? Ah, here you are, Madam; I thought you could
+not be far; they have thrown us all into this corner together. But how
+changed you are, Dolly: your paint rubbed off, your golden hair worn to
+a wisp. No wonder; it was a trying part you had to play. How tired you
+must have grown of the glare and the glitter! And even hope was denied
+you. The peace you so longed for you knew you had lost the power to
+enjoy. Like the girl bewitched in the fairy tale, you knew you must
+dance ever faster and faster, with limbs growing palsied, with face
+growing ashen, and hair growing grey, till Death should come to release
+you; and your only prayer was he might come ere your dancing grew comic.
+
+Like the smell of the roses to Nancy, hawking them through the hot
+streets, must the stifling atmosphere of love have been to you. The song
+of passion, how monotonous in your ears, sung now by the young and now
+by the old; now shouted, now whined, now shrieked; but ever the one
+strident tune. Do you remember when first you heard it? You dreamt it
+the morning hymn of Heaven. You came to think it the dance music of
+Hell, ground from a cracked hurdy-gurdy, lent out by the Devil on hire.
+
+An evil race we must have seemed to you, Dolly Faustine, as to some Old
+Bailey lawyer. You saw but one side of us. You lived in a world upside
+down, where the leaves and the blossoms were hidden, and only the roots
+saw your day. You imagined the worm-beslimed fibres the plant, and
+all things beautiful you deemed cant. Chivalry, love, honour! how you
+laughed at the lying words. You knew the truth--as you thought: aye,
+half the truth. We were swine while your spell was upon us, Daughter of
+Circe, and you, not knowing your island secret, deemed it our natural
+shape.
+
+No wonder, Dolly, your battered waxen face is stamped with an angry
+sneer. The Hero, who eventually came into his estates amid the plaudits
+of the Pit, while you were left to die in the streets! you remembered,
+but the house had forgotten those earlier scenes in always wicked Paris.
+The good friend of the family, the breezy man of the world, the Deus ex
+Machina of the play, who was so good to everybody, whom everybody loved!
+aye, YOU loved him once--but that was in the Prologue. In the Play
+proper, he was respectable. (How you loathed that word, that meant to
+you all you vainly longed for!) To him the Prologue was a period past
+and dead; a memory, giving flavour to his life. To you, it was the
+First Act of the Play, shaping all the others. His sins the house had
+forgotten: at yours, they held up their hands in horror. No wonder the
+sneer lies on your waxen lips.
+
+Never mind, Dolly; it was a stupid house. Next time, perhaps, you will
+play a better part; and then they will cheer, instead of hissing you.
+You were wasted, I am inclined to think, on modern comedy. You should
+have been cast for the heroine of some old-world tragedy. The strength
+of character, the courage, the power of self-forgetfulness, the
+enthusiasm were yours: it was the part that was lacking. You might have
+worn the mantle of a Judith, a Boadicea, or a Jeanne d'Arc, had such
+plays been popular in your time. Perhaps they, had they played in your
+day, might have had to be content with such a part as yours. They could
+not have played the meek heroine, and what else would there have been
+for them in modern drama? Catherine of Russia! had she been a waiter's
+daughter in the days of the Second Empire, should we have called
+her Great? The Magdalene! had her lodging in those days been in some
+bye-street of Rome instead of in Jerusalem, should we mention her name
+in our churches?
+
+You were necessary, you see, Dolly, to the piece. We cannot all play
+heroes and heroines. There must be wicked people in the play, or it
+would not interest. Think of it, Dolly, a play where all the women were
+virtuous, all the men honest! We might close the booth; the world would
+be as dull as an oyster-bed. Without you wicked folk there would be no
+good. How should we have known and honoured the heroine's worth, but
+by contrast with your worthlessness? Where would have been her fine
+speeches, but for you to listen to them? Where lay the hero's strength,
+but in resisting temptation of you? Had not you and the Wicked Baronet
+between you robbed him of his estates, falsely accused him of crime, he
+would have lived to the end of the play an idle, unheroic, incomplete
+existence. You brought him down to poverty; you made him earn his own
+bread--a most excellent thing for him; gave him the opportunity to play
+the man. But for your conduct in the Prologue, of what value would have
+been that fine scene at the end of the Third Act, that stirred the house
+to tears and laughter? You and your accomplice, the Wicked Baronet,
+made the play possible. How would Pit and Gallery have known they were
+virtuous, but for the indignation that came to them, watching your
+misdeeds? Pity, sympathy, excitement, all that goes to the making of
+a play, you were necessary for. It was ungrateful of the house to hiss
+you.
+
+And you, Mr. Merryman, the painted grin worn from your pale lips, you
+too were dissatisfied, if I remember rightly, with your part. You wanted
+to make the people cry, not laugh. Was it a higher ambition? The poor
+tired people! so much happens in their life to make them weep, is it not
+good sport to make them merry for awhile? Do you remember that old soul
+in the front row of the Pit? How she laughed when you sat down on the
+pie! I thought she would have to be carried out. I heard her talking to
+her companion as they passed the stage-door on their way home. "I have
+not laughed, my dear, till to-night," she was saying, the good, gay
+tears still in her eyes, "since the day poor Sally died." Was not
+that alone worth the old stale tricks you so hated? Aye, they were
+commonplace and conventional, those antics of yours that made us laugh;
+are not the antics that make us weep commonplace and conventional also?
+Are not all the plays, played since the booth was opened, but of one
+pattern, the plot old-fashioned now, the scenes now commonplace? Hero,
+villain, cynic--are their parts so much the fresher? The love duets,
+are they so very new? The death-bed scenes, would you call them
+UNcommonplace? Hate, and Evil, and Wrong--are THEIR voices new to the
+booth? What are you waiting for, people? a play with a plot that is
+novel, with characters that have never strutted before? It will be ready
+for you, perhaps, when you are ready for it, with new tears and new
+laughter.
+
+You, Mr. Merryman, were the true philosopher. You saved us from
+forgetting the reality when the fiction grew somewhat strenuous. How we
+all applauded your gag in answer to the hero, when, bewailing his
+sad fate, he demanded of Heaven how much longer he was to suffer evil
+fortune. "Well, there cannot be much more of it in store for you," you
+answered him; "it's nearly nine o'clock already, and the show closes at
+ten." And true to your prophecy the curtain fell at the time appointed,
+and his troubles were of the past. You showed us the truth behind the
+mask. When pompous Lord Shallow, in ermine and wig, went to take his
+seat amid the fawning crowd, you pulled the chair from under him, and
+down he sat plump on the floor. His robe flew open, his wig flew off.
+No longer he awed us. His aped dignity fell from him; we saw him a
+stupid-eyed, bald little man; he imposed no longer upon us. It is your
+fool who is the only true wise man.
+
+Yours was the best part in the play, Brother Merryman, had you and the
+audience but known it. But you dreamt of a showier part, where you loved
+and fought. I have heard you now and again, when you did not know I was
+near, shouting with sword in hand before your looking-glass. You had
+thrown your motley aside to don a dingy red coat; you were the hero of
+the play, you performed the gallant deeds, you made the noble speeches.
+I wonder what the play would be like, were we all to write our own
+parts. There would be no clowns, no singing chambermaids. We would
+all be playing lead in the centre of the stage, with the lime-light
+exclusively devoted to ourselves. Would it not be so?
+
+What grand acting parts they are, these characters we write for
+ourselves alone in our dressing-rooms. We are always brave and
+noble--wicked sometimes, but if so, in a great, high-minded way; never
+in a mean or little way. What wondrous deeds we do, while the house
+looks on and marvels. Now we are soldiers, leading armies to victory.
+What if we die: it is in the hour of triumph, and a nation is left to
+mourn. Not in some forgotten skirmish do we ever fall; not for some
+"affair of outposts" do we give our blood, our very name unmentioned in
+the dispatches home. Now we are passionate lovers, well losing a
+world for love--a very different thing to being a laughter-provoking
+co-respondent in a sordid divorce case.
+
+And the house is always crowded when we play. Our fine speeches always
+fall on sympathetic ears, our brave deeds are noted and applauded. It
+is so different in the real performance. So often we play our parts to
+empty benches, or if a thin house be present, they misunderstand, and
+laugh at the pathetic passages. And when our finest opportunity comes,
+the royal box, in which HE or SHE should be present to watch us, is
+vacant.
+
+Poor little dolls, how seriously we take ourselves, not knowing the
+springs that stir our bosoms are but clockwork, not seeing the wires
+to which we dance. Poor little marionettes, shall we talk together, I
+wonder, when the lights of the booth are out?
+
+We are little wax dollies with hearts. We are little tin soldiers with
+souls. Oh, King of many toys, are you merely playing with us? IS it only
+clockwork within us, this thing that throbs and aches? Have you wound us
+up but to let us run down? Will you wind us again to-morrow, or leave us
+here to rust? IS it only clockwork to which we respond and quiver? Now
+we laugh, now we cry, now we dance; our little arms go out to clasp
+one another, our little lips kiss, then say good-bye. We strive, and we
+strain, and we struggle. We reach now for gold, now for laurel. We call
+it desire and ambition: are they only wires that you play? Will you
+throw the clockwork aside, or use it again, O Master?
+
+The lights of the booth grow dim. The springs are broken that kept our
+eyes awake. The wire that held us erect is snapped, and helpless we fall
+in a heap on the stage. Oh, brother and sister dollies we played beside,
+where are you? Why is it so dark and silent? Why are we being put into
+this black box? And hark! the little doll orchestra--how far away the
+music sounds! what is it they are playing:--
+
+[Start of Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow, by 
+Jerome K. Jerome
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