CERTAIN PERSONAL MATTERS

 BY

 H. G. WELLS

 LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE, E. C. 1901

CONTENTS

 PAGE

THOUGHTS ON CHEAPNESS AND MY AUNT CHARLOTTE 7

THE TROUBLE OF LIFE 12

ON THE CHOICE OF A WIFE 18

THE HOUSE OF DI SORNO 22

OF CONVERSATION 27

IN A LITERARY HOUSEHOLD 32

ON SCHOOLING AND THE PHASES OF MR. SANDSOME 36

THE POET AND THE EMPORIUM 40

THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS 45

THE LITERARY REGIMEN 49

HOUSE-HUNTING AS AN OUTDOOR AMUSEMENT 54

OF BLADES AND BLADERY 59

OF CLEVERNESS 63

THE POSE NOVEL 67

THE VETERAN CRICKETER 71

CONCERNING A CERTAIN LADY 76

THE SHOPMAN 80

THE BOOK OF CURSES 85

DUNSTONE'S DEAR LADY 90

EUPHEMIA'S NEW ENTERTAINMENT (_this is illustrated_) 94

FOR FREEDOM OF SPELLING 98

INCIDENTAL THOUGHTS ON A BALD HEAD 104

OF A BOOK UNWRITTEN 108

THE EXTINCTION OF MAN 115

THE WRITING OF ESSAYS 120

THE PARKES MUSEUM 124

BLEAK MARCH IN EPPING FOREST 128

THE THEORY OF QUOTATION 132

ON THE ART OF STAYING AT THE SEASIDE 135

CONCERNING CHESS 140

THE COAL-SCUTTLE 145

BAGARROW 150

THE BOOK OF ESSAYS DEDICATORY 155

THROUGH A MICROSCOPE 159

THE PLEASURE OF QUARRELLING 164

THE AMATEUR NATURE-LOVER 169

FROM AN OBSERVATORY 174

THE MODE IN MONUMENTS 177

HOW I DIED 182

CERTAIN PERSONAL MATTERS

THOUGHTS ON CHEAPNESS AND MY AUNT CHARLOTTE

The world mends. In my younger days people believed in mahogany; some ofmy readers will remember it--a heavy, shining substance, having asingularly close resemblance to raw liver, exceedingly heavy to move, and esteemed on one or other count the noblest of all woods. Such of usas were very poor and had no mahogany pretended to have mahogany; andthe proper hepatite tint was got by veneering. That makes one incline tothink it was the colour that pleased people. In those days there was aword "trashy, " now almost lost to the world. My dear Aunt Charlotte usedthat epithet when, in her feminine way, she swore at people she did notlike. "Trashy" and "paltry" and "Brummagem" was the very worst she couldsay of them. And she had, I remember, an intense aversion to platedgoods and bronze halfpence. The halfpence of her youth had been vast andcorpulent red-brown discs, which it was folly to speak of as smallchange. They were fine handsome coins, and almost as inconvenient ascrown-pieces. I remember she corrected me once when I was very young. "Don't call a penny a copper, dear, " she said; "copper is a metal. Thepennies they have nowadays are bronze. " It is odd how our childishimpressions cling to us. I still regard bronze as a kind of upstartintruder, a mere trashy pretender among metals. 

All my Aunt Charlotte's furniture was thoroughly good, and most of itextremely uncomfortable; there was not a thing for a little boy to breakand escape damnation in the household. Her china was the only thing witha touch of beauty in it--at least I remember nothing else--and each ofher blessed plates was worth the happiness of a mortal for daystogether. And they dressed me in a Nessus suit of valuable garments. Ilearned the value of thoroughly good things only too early. I knew theequivalent of a teacup to the very last scowl, and I have hated good, handsome property ever since. For my part I love cheap things, trashythings, things made of the commonest rubbish that money can possiblybuy; things as vulgar as primroses, and as transitory as a morning'sfrost. 

Think of all the advantages of a cheap possession--cheap and nasty, ifyou will--compared with some valuable substitute. Suppose you need thisor that. "Get a good one, " advises Aunt Charlotte; "one that will last. "You do--and it does last. It lasts like a family curse. These greatplain valuable things, as plain as good women, as complacently assuredof their intrinsic worth--who does not know them? My Aunt Charlottescarcely had a new thing in her life. Her mahogany was avuncular; herchina remotely ancestral; her feather beds and her bedsteads!--they werehaunted; the births, marriages, and deaths associated with the best onewas the history of our race for three generations. There was more in herhouse than the tombstone rectitude of the chair-backs to remind me ofthe graveyard. I can still remember the sombre aisles of that house, thevault-like shadows, the magnificent window curtains that blotted out thewindows. Life was too trivial for such things. She never knew she tiredof them, but she did. That was the secret of her temper, I think; theyengendered her sombre Calvinism, her perception of the trashy quality ofhuman life. The pretence that they were the accessories to human lifewas too transparent. _We_ were the accessories; we minded them for alittle while, and then we passed away. They wore us out and cast usaside. We were the changing scenery; they were the actors who played onthrough the piece. It was even so with clothing. We buried my othermaternal aunt--Aunt Adelaide--and wept, and partly forgot her; but herwonderful silk dresses--they would stand alone--still went rustlingcheerfully about an ephemeral world. 

All that offended my sense of proportion, my feeling of what is due tohuman life, even when I was a little boy. I want things of my own, things I can break without breaking my heart; and, since one can livebut once, I want some change in my life--to have this kind of thing andthen that. I never valued Aunt Charlotte's good old things until I soldthem. They sold remarkably well: those chairs like nether millstones forthe grinding away of men; the fragile china--an incessant anxiety untilaccident broke it, and the spell of it at the same time; those silverspoons, by virtue of which Aunt Charlotte went in fear of burglary forsix-and-fifty years; the bed from which I alone of all my kindred hadescaped; the wonderful old, erect, high-shouldered, silver-faced clock. 

But, as I say, our ideas are changing--mahogany has gone, and reppcurtains. Articles are made for man, nowadays, and not man, by carefulearly training, for articles. I feel myself to be in many respects alink with the past. Commodities come like the spring flowers, and vanishagain. "Who steals my watch steals trash, " as some poet has remarked;the thing is made of I know not what metal, and if I leave it on themantel for a day or so it goes a deep blackish purple that delights meexceedingly. My grandfather's hat--I understood when I was a little boythat I was to have that some day. But now I get a hat for ten shillings, or less, two or three times a year. In the old days buying clothes waswell-nigh as irrevocable as marriage. Our flat is furnished withglittering things--wanton arm-chairs just strong enough not to collapseunder you, books in gay covers, carpets you are free to drop lightedfusees upon; you may scratch what you like, upset your coffee, cast yourcigar ash to the four quarters of heaven. Our guests, at anyrate, arenot snubbed by our furniture. It knows its place. 

But it is in the case of art and adornment that cheapness is mostdelightful. The only thing that betrayed a care for beauty on the partof my aunt was her dear old flower garden, and even there she was notabove suspicion. Her favourite flowers were tulips, rigid tulips withopulent crimson streaks. She despised wildings. Her ornaments weresimply displays of the precious metal. Had she known the price ofplatinum she would have worn that by preference. Her chains and broochesand rings were bought by weight. She would have turned her back onBenvenuto Cellini if he was not 22 carats fine. She despisedwater-colour art; her conception of a picture was a vast domain of oilybrown by an Old Master. The Babbages at the Hall had a display of goldplate swaggering in the corner of the dining-room; and the visitor(restrained by a plush rope from examining the workmanship) was told thevalue, and so passed on. I like my art unadorned: thought and skill, andthe other strange quality that is added thereto, to make thingsbeautiful--and nothing more. A farthing's worth of paint and paper, and, behold! a thing of beauty!--as they do in Japan. And if it should fallinto the fire--well, it has gone like yesterday's sunset, and to-morrowthere will be another. 

These Japanese are indeed the apostles of cheapness. The Greeks lived toteach the world beauty, the Hebrews to teach it morality, and now theJapanese are hammering in the lesson that men may be honourable, dailylife delightful, and a nation great without either freestone houses, marble mantelpieces, or mahogany sideboards. I have sometimes wishedthat my Aunt Charlotte could have travelled among the Japanese nation. She would, I know, have called it a "parcel of trash. " Their use ofpaper--paper suits, paper pocket-handkerchiefs--would have made herrigid with contempt. I have tried, but I cannot imagine my AuntCharlotte in paper underclothing. Her aversion to paper wasextraordinary. Her Book of Beauty was printed on satin, and all herbooks were bound in leather, the boards regulated rather than decoratedwith a severe oblong. Her proper sphere was among the ancientBabylonians, among which massive populace even the newspapers werebuilt of brick. She would have compared with the King's daughter whoseraiment was of wrought gold. When I was a little boy I used to think shehad a mahogany skeleton. However, she is gone, poor old lady, and atleast she left me her furniture. Her ghost was torn in pieces after thesale--must have been. Even the old china went this way and that. I tookwhat was perhaps a mean revenge of her for the innumerableblack-holeings, bread-and-water dinners, summary chastisements, andimpossible tasks she inflicted upon me for offences against her toosolid possessions. You will see it at Woking. It is a light and gracefulcross. It is a mere speck of white between the monstrous granitepaperweights that oppress the dead on either side of her. Sometimes I amhalf sorry for that. When the end comes I shall not care to look her inthe face--she will be so humiliated. 

THE TROUBLE OF LIFE

I do not know whether this will awaken a sympathetic lassitude in, say, fifty per cent. Of its readers, or whether my experience is unique andmy testimony simply curious. At anyrate, it is as true as I can make it. Whether this is a mere mood, and a certain flagrant exhilaration my trueattitude towards things, or this is my true attitude and the exuberantphase a lapse from it, I cannot say. Probably it does not matter. Thething is that I find life an extremely troublesome affair. I do not wantto make any railing accusations against life; it is--to mytaste--neither very sad nor very horrible. At times it is distinctlyamusing. Indeed, I know nothing in the same line that can quite comparewith it. But there is a difference between general appreciation anduncritical acceptance. At times I find life a Bother. 

The kind of thing that I object to is, as a good example, all thetroublesome things one has to do every morning in getting up. There iswashing. This is an age of unsolicited personal confidences, and I willfrankly confess that if it were not for Euphemia I do not think I shouldwash at all. There is a vast amount of humbug about washing. Vulgarpeople not only profess a passion for the practice, but a physicalhorror of being unwashed. It is a sort of cant. I can understand asponge bath being a novelty the first time and exhilarating the secondand third. But day after day, week after week, month after month, andnothing to show at the end of it all! Then there is shaving. I have toget shaved because Euphemia hates me with a blue jowl, and I will admitI hate myself. Yet, if I were left alone, I do not think my personaltaste would affect my decision; I will say that for myself. Either Ihack about with a blunt razor--my razors are always blunt--until I am akind of Whitechapel Horror, and with hair in tufts upon my chin like thetop of a Bosjesman's head, or else I have to spend all the morning beingdabbed about the face by a barber with damp hands. In either case it isa repulsive thing to have, eating into one's time when one might beliving; and I have calculated that all the hair I have lost in this way, put end to end, would reach to Berlin. All that vital energy thrownaway! However, "Thorns and bristles shall it bring forth to thee. " Isuppose it is part of the primal curse, and I try and stand it like aman. But the thing is a bother all the same. 

Then after shaving comes the hunt for the collar-stud. Of all idioticinventions the modern collar is the worst. A man who has to write thingsfor such readers as mine cannot think over-night of where he puts hiscollar-stud; he has to keep his mind at an altogether higher level. Consequently he walks about the bedroom, thinking hard, and droppingthings about: here a vest and there a collar, and sowing a bitterharvest against the morning. Or he sits on the edge of the bed jerkinghis garments this way and that. "I shot a slipper in the air, " as thepoet sings, and in the morning it turns up in the most impossiblequarters, and where you least expect it. And, talking of going to bed, before Euphemia took the responsibility over, I was always forgetting towind my watch. But now that is one of the things she neglects. 

Then, after getting up, there is breakfast. Autolycus of the _Pall MallGazette_ may find heaven there, but I am differently constituted. Thereis, to begin with the essence of the offence--the stuff that has to beeaten somehow. Then there is the paper. Unless it is the face of afashionable beauty, I know of nothing more absolutely uninteresting thana morning paper. You always expect to find something in it, and neverdo. It wastes half my morning sometimes, going over and over the thing, and trying to find out why they publish it. If I edited a daily I thinkI should do like my father does when he writes to me. "Things much thesame, " he writes; "the usual fussing about the curate's red socks"--along letter for him. The rest margin. And, by the bye, there are lettersevery morning at breakfast, too!

Now I do not grumble at letters. You can read them instead of getting onwith your breakfast. They are entertaining in a way, and you can tearthem up at the end, and in that respect at least they are better thanpeople who come to see you. Usually, too, you need not make a reply. Butsometimes Euphemia gets hold of some still untorn, and says in herdictatorial way that they _have_ to be answered--insists--says I _must_. Yet she knows that nothing fills me with a livelier horror than havingto answer letters. It paralyses me. I waste whole days sometimesmourning over the time that I shall have to throw away presently, answering some needless impertinence--requests for me to return bookslent to me; reminders from the London Library that my subscription isoverdue; proposals for me to renew my ticket at the stores--Euphemia'sbusiness really; invitations for me to go and be abashed beforeimpertinent distinguished people: all kinds of bothering things. 

And speaking of letters and invitations brings me round to friends. Idislike most people; in London they get in one's way in the street andfill up railway carriages, and in the country they stare at you--but I_hate_ my friends. Yet Euphemia says I _must_ "keep up" my friends. Theywould be all very well if they were really true friends and respected myfeelings and left me alone, just to sit quiet. But they come wearingshiny clothes, and mop and mow at me and expect me to answer theirgibberings. Polite conversation always appears to me to be a wickedperversion of the blessed gift of speech, which, I take it, was given usto season our lives rather than to make them insipid. New friends arethe worst in this respect. With old friends one is more at home; yougive them something to eat or drink, or look at, or something--whateverthey seem to want--and just turn round and go on smoking quietly. Butevery now and then Euphemia or Destiny inflicts a new human being uponme. I do not mean a baby, though the sentence has got that turnsomehow, but an introduction; and the wretched thing, all angles andoffence, keeps bobbing about me and discovering new ways of worrying me, trying, I believe, to find out what topics interest me, though the factis no topics interest me. Once or twice, of course, I have met humanbeings I think I could have got on with very well, after a time; but inthis mood, at least, I doubt if any human being is quite worth thebother of a new acquaintance. 

These are just sample bothers--shaving, washing, answering letters, talking to people. I could specify hundreds more. Indeed, in my saddermoments, it seems to me life is all compact of bothers. There are thedetails of business--knowing the date approximately (an incessantanxiety) and the time of day. Then, having to buy things. Euphemia doesmost of this, it is true, but she draws the line at my boots and glovesand hosiery and tailoring. Then, doing up parcels and finding pieces ofstring or envelopes or stamps--which Euphemia might very well manage forme. Then, finding your way back after a quiet, thoughtful walk. Then, having to get matches for your pipe. I sometimes dream of a betterworld, where pipe, pouch, and matches all keep together instead of beingmutually negatory. But Euphemia is always putting everything into somehiding-hole or other, which she calls its "place. " Trivial things intheir way, you may say, yet each levying so much toll on my brain andnervous system, and demanding incessant vigilance and activity. Icalculated once that I wasted a masterpiece upon these mountainouslittle things about every three months of my life. Can I help thinkingof them, then, and asking why I suffer thus? And can I avoid seeing atlast how it is they hang together?

For there is still one other bother, a kind of _bother botherum_, totell of, though I hesitate at the telling. It brings this rabble herd ofworries into line and makes them formidable; it is, so to speak, theBother Commander-in-Chief. Well! Euphemia. I simply worship the groundshe treads upon, mind, but at the same time the truth is the truth. Euphemia is a bother. She is a brave little woman, and helps me inevery conceivable way. But I wish she would not. It is so obviously allher doing. She makes me get up of a morning--I would not stand as muchfrom anybody else--and keeps a sharp eye on my chin and collar. If itwere not for her I could sit about always with no collar or tie on inthat old jacket she gave to the tramp, and just smoke and grow a beardand let all the bothers slide. I would never wash, never shave, neveranswer any letters, never go to see any friends, never do anywork--except, perhaps, an insulting postcard to a publisher now andagain. I would just sit about. 

Sometimes I think this may be peculiar in me. At other times I fancy Iam giving voice to the secret feeling of every member of my sex. Isuspect, then, that we would all do as the noble savage does, take ourthings off and lie about comfortable, if only someone had the courage tobegin. It is these women--all love and reverence to Euphemianotwithstanding--who make us work and bother us with Things. They keepus decent, and remind us we have a position to support. And really, after all, this is not my original discovery! There is the third chapterof Genesis, for instance. And then who has not read Carlyle's gloatingover a certain historical suit of leather? It gives me a queer thrill ofenvy, that Quaker Fox and his suit of leather. Conceive it, if you can!One would never have to quail under the scrutiny of a tailor any more. Thoreau, too, come to think of it, was, by way of being a prophet, apioneer in this Emancipation of Man from Bothery. 

Then the silent gentry who brew our Chartreuse; what are they inretirement for? Looking back into history, with the glow of discovery inmy eyes, I find records of wise men--everyone acknowledged they werewise men--who lived apart. In every age the same associate of solitude, silence, and wisdom. The holy hermits!... I grant it, they professed toflee wickedness and seek after righteousness, but now my impression isthat they fled bothers. We all know they had an intense aversion to anysavour of domesticity, and they never shaved, washed, dined, visited, had new clothes. Holiness, indeed! They were _viveurs_.... We havewitnessed Religion without Theology, and why not an Unsectarian Thebaid?I sometimes fancy it needs only one brave man to begin.... If it werenot for the fuss Euphemia would make I certainly should. But I know shewould come and worry me worse than St. Anthony was worried until I putthem all on again, and that keeps me from the attempt. 

I am curious whether mine is the common experience. I fancy, after all, I am only seeing in a clearer way, putting into modern phrase, so tospeak, an observation old as the Pentateuch. And looking up I read upona little almanac with which Euphemia has cheered my desk:--

 "The world was sad" (sweet sadness!) "The garden was a wild" (a picturesque wild) "And man the hermit" (he made no complaint) "Till the woman smiled. "--CAMPBELL. 

[And very shortly after he had, as you know, all that bother about themillinery. ]

ON THE CHOICE OF A WIFE

Wife-choosing is an unending business. This sounds immoral, but what Imean will be clearer in the context. People have lived--innumerablepeople--exhausted experience, and yet other people keep on coming tohand, none the wiser, none the better. It is like a waterfall more thananything else in the world. Every year one has to turn to and warnanother batch about these stale old things. Yet it is one's duty--thelast thing that remains to a man. And as a piece of worldly wisdom, thathas nothing to do with wives, always leave a few duties neglected forthe comfort of your age. There are such a lot of other things one can dowhen one is young. 

Now, the kind of wife a young fellow of eight- or nine-and-twentyinsists on selecting is something of one-and-twenty or less, inexperienced, extremely pretty, graceful, and well dressed, not tooclever, accomplished; but I need not go on, for the youthful reader canfill in the picture himself from his own ideal. Every young man has hisown ideal, as a matter of course, and they are all exactly alike. Now, Ido not intend to repeat all the stale old saws of out-of-date wiseacres. Most of them are even more foolish than the follies they reprove. Take, for instance, the statement that "beauty fades. " Absurd; everyone knowsperfectly well that, as the years creep on, beauty simply gets morehighly coloured. And then, "beauty is only skin-deep. " Fantasticallywrong! Some of it is not that; and, for the rest, is a woman like a toyballoon?--just a surface? To hear that proverb from a man is to know himat once for a phonographic kind of fool. The fundamental and enduringgrace of womanhood goes down to the skeleton; you cannot have a prettyface without a pretty skull, just as you cannot have one without a goodtemper. 

Yet all the same there is an excellent reason why one should shun beautyin a prospective wife, at anyrate obvious beauty--the kind of beautypeople talk about, and which gets into the photographers' windows. Thecommon beautiful woman has a style of her own, a favourite aspect. Afterall, she cannot be perfect. She comes upon you, dazzles you, marriesyou; there is a time of ecstasy. People envy you, continue to envy you. After a time you envy yourself--yourself of the day before yesterday. For the imperfection, the inevitable imperfection--in one case Iremember it was a smile--becomes visible to you, becomes your especialprivilege. That is the real reason. No beauty is a beauty to herhusband. But with the plain woman--the thoroughly plain woman--it isdifferent. At first--I will not mince matters--her ugliness is animpenetrable repulse. Face it. After a time little things begin toappear through the violent discords: little scraps of melody--a shytenderness in her smile that peeps out at you and vanishes, a somethingthat is winning, looking out of her eyes. You find a waviness of herhair that you never saw at the beginning, a certain surprising, pleasing, enduring want of clumsiness in part of her ear. And it isyours. You can see she strikes the beholder with something of a shock;and while the beauty of the beauty is common for all the world torejoice in, you will find in your dear, plain wife beauty enough and tospare; exquisite--for it is all your own, your treasure-trove, yoursafely-hidden treasure.... 

Then, in the matter of age; though young fellows do not imagine it, itis very easy to marry a wife too young. Marriage has been defined as afoolish bargain in which one man provides for another man's daughter, but there is no reason why this should go so far as completing hereducation. If your conception of happiness is having something prettyand innocent and troublesome about you, something that you can cherishand make happy, a pet rabbit is in every way preferable. At the worstthat will nibble your boots. I have known several cases of thegirl-wife, and it always began like an idyll, charmingly; the tenderestcare on one hand, winsome worship on the other--until some little thing, a cut chin or a missing paper, startled the pure and natural man out ofhis veneer, dancing and blaspheming, with the most amazing consequences. Only a proven saint should marry a girl-wife, and his motives might bemisunderstood. The idyllic wife is a beautiful thing to read about, butin practice idylls should be kept episodes; in practice the idyllic lifeis a little too like a dinner that is all dessert. A common man, after atime, tires of winsome worship; he craves after companionship, and asympathy based on experience. The ordinary young man, with the stillyounger wife, I have noticed, continues to love her with all hisheart--and spends his leisure telling somebody else's wife all about it. If in these days of blatant youth an experienced man's counsel is worthanything, it would be to marry a woman considerably older than oneself, if one must marry at all. And while upon this topic--and I have livedlong--the ideal wife, I am persuaded, from the close observation of manyyears, is invariably, by some mishap, a widow.... 

Avoid social charm. It was the capacity for entertaining visitors thatruined Paradise. It grows upon a woman. An indiscriminating personalmagnetism is perhaps the most dreadful vice a wife can have. You thinkyou have married the one woman in the world, and you find you havemarried a host--that is to say, a hostess. Instead of making a home foryou she makes you something between an ethnographical museum and acasual ward. You find your rooms littered with people and teacups andthings, strange creatures that no one could possibly care for, that seemscarcely to care for themselves. You go about the house treading uponchance geniuses, and get tipped by inexperienced guests. And even whenshe does not entertain, she is continually going out. I do not deny thatcharming people are charming, that their company should be sought, butseeking it in marriage is an altogether different matter. 

Then, I really must insist that young men do not understand the realtruth about accomplishments. There comes a day when the most variegatedwife comes to the end of her tunes, and another when she ends them forthe second time; _Vita longa, ars brevis_--at least, as regards the artof the schoolgirl. It is only like marrying a slightly more complicatedbarrel-organ. And, for another point, watch the young person you wouldhonour with your hand for the slightest inkling of economy or tidiness. Young men are so full of poetry and emotion that it does not occur tothem how widely the sordid vices are distributed in the other sex. Ifyou are a hotel proprietor, or a school proprietor, or a day labourer, such weaknesses become a strength, of course, but not otherwise. For aliterary person--if perchance you are a literary person--it isaltogether too dreadful. You are always getting swept and garnished, straightened up and sent out to be shaved. And home--even yourstudy--becomes a glittering, spick-and-span mechanism. But you know theparable of the seven devils?

To conclude, a summary. The woman you choose should be plain, as plainas you can find, as old or older than yourself, devoid of social giftsor accomplishments, poor--for your self-respect--and with a certainamiable untidiness. Of course no young man will heed this, but at leastI have given my counsel, and very excellent reasons for that counsel. And possibly I shall be able to remind him that I told him as much, inthe course of a few years' time. And, by the bye, I had almostforgotten! Never by any chance marry a girl whose dresses do up at theback, unless you can afford her a maid or so of her own. 

THE HOUSE OF DI SORNO

A MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN A BOX

And the box, Euphemia's. Brutally raided it was by an insensate husband, eager for a tie and too unreasonably impatient to wait an hour or sountil she could get home and find it for him. There was, of course, notie at all in that box, for all his stirring--as anyone might haveknown; but, if there was no tie, there were certain papers that at leastsuggested a possibility of whiling away the time until the Chooser andDistributer of Ties should return. And, after all, there is no readinglike your accidental reading come upon unawares. 

It was a discovery, indeed, that Euphemia _had_ papers. At the firstglance these close-written sheets suggested a treasonable Keynote, andthe husband gripped it with a certain apprehension mingling with hisrelief at the opiate of reading. It was, so to speak, the privilege ofpolice he exercised, so he justified himself. He began to read. But whatis this? "She stood on the balcony outside the window, while thenoblest-born in the palace waited on her every capricious glance, andwatched for an unbending look to relieve her hauteur, but in vain. " Noneof your snippy-snappy Keynote there!

Then he turned over a page or so of the copy, doubting if the privilegeof police still held good. Standing out by virtue of a different ink, and coming immediately after "bear her to her proud father, " were thewords, "How many yards of carpet 3/4 yds. Wide will cover room, width 16ft. , length 27-1/2 ft. ?" Then he knew he was in the presence of thegreat romance that Euphemia wrote when she was sixteen. He had heardsomething of it before. He held it doubtfully in his hands, for thequestion of conscience still troubled him. "Bah!" he said abruptly, "notto find it irresistible was to slight the authoress and her skill. " Andwith that he sat plump down among the things in the box very comfortablyand began reading, and, indeed, read until Euphemia arrived. But she, atthe sight of his head and legs, made several fragmentary and presumablyoffensive remarks about crushing some hat or other, and proceeded withneedless violence to get him out of the box again. However, that is myown private trouble. We are concerned now with the merits of Euphemia'sromance. 

The hero of the story is a Venetian, named (for some unknown reason)Ivan di Sorno. So far as I ascertained, he is the entire house of DiSorno referred to in the title. No other Di Sornos transpired. Likeothers in the story, he is possessed of untold wealth, tempered by aprofound sorrow, for some cause which remains unmentioned, but which ispossibly internal. He is first displayed "pacing a sombre avenue of ilexand arbutus that reflected with singular truth the gloom of hiscountenance, " and "toying sadly with the jewelled hilt of his dagger. "He meditates upon his loveless life and the burthen of riches. Presentlyhe "paces the long and magnificent gallery, " where a "hundredgenerations of Di Sornos, each with the same flashing eye and the samemarble brow, look down with the same sad melancholy upon thebeholder"--a truly monotonous exhibition. It would be too much foranyone, day after day. He decides that he will travel. Incognito. 

The next chapter is headed "In Old Madrid, " and Di Sorno, cloaked toconceal his grandeur, "moves sad and observant among the giddy throng. "But "Gwendolen"--the majestic Gwendolen of the balcony--"marked hispallid yet beautiful countenance. " And the next day at the bull-fightshe "flung her bouquet into the arena, and turning to Di Sorno"--aperfect stranger, mind you--"smiled commandingly. " "In a moment he hadflung himself headlong down among the flashing blades of the toreadorsand the trampling confusion of bulls, and in another he stood beforeher, bowing low with the recovered flowers in his hand. 'Fair sir, ' shesaid, 'methinks my poor flowers were scarce worth your trouble. '" A veryproper remark. And then suddenly I put the manuscript down. 

My heart was full of pity for Euphemia. Thus had she gone a-dreaming. Aman of imposing physique and flashing eye, who would fling you oxen hereand there, and vault in and out of an arena without catching a breath, for his lady's sake--and here I sat, the sad reality, a lean andslippered literary pretender, and constitutionally afraid of cattle. 

Poor little Euphemia! For after all is said and done, and the New Womangibed out of existence, I am afraid we do undeceive these poor wives ofours a little after the marrying is over. It may be they have deceivedthemselves, in the first place, but that scarcely affects theirdisappointment. These dream-lovers of theirs, these monsters ofunselfishness and devotion, these tall fair Donovans and darkworshipping Wanderers! And then comes the rabble rout of us poor humanmen, damning at our breakfasts, wiping pens upon our coat sleeves, smelling of pipes, fearing our editors, and turning Euphemia's privateboxes into public copy. And they take it so steadfastly--most of them. They never let us see the romance we have robbed them of, but turn toand make the best of it--and us--with such sweet grace. Only now andthen--as in the instance of a flattened hat--may a cry escape them. Andeven then----

But a truce to reality! Let us return to Di Sorno. 

This individual does not become enamoured of Gwendolen, as the crudenovel reader might anticipate. He answers her "coldly, " and his eyerests the while on her "tirewoman, the sweet Margot. " Then come scenesof jealousy and love, outside a castle with heavily mullioned windows. The sweet Margot, though she turns out to be the daughter of a bankruptprince, has one characteristic of your servant all the world over--shespends all her time looking out of the window. Di Sorno tells her of hislove on the evening of the bull-fight, and she cheerfully promises to"learn to love him, " and therafter he spends all his days and nights"spurring his fiery steed down the road" that leads by the castlecontaining the young scholar. It becomes a habit with him--in all, hedoes it seventeen times in three chapters. Then, "ere it is too late, "he implores Margot to fly. 

Gwendolen, after a fiery scene with Margot, in which she calls her a"petty minion, "--pretty language for a young gentlewoman, --"sweeps withunutterable scorn from the room, " never, to the reader's hugeastonishment, to appear in the story again, and Margot flies with DiSorno to Grenada, where the Inquisition, consisting apparently of asingle monk with a "blazing eye, " becomes extremely machinatory. Acertain Countess di Morno, who intends to marry Di Sorno, and who hasbeen calling into the story in a casual kind of way since the romancebegan, now comes prominently forward. She has denounced Margot forheresy, and at a masked ball the Inquisition, disguised in a yellowdomino, succeeds in separating the young couple, and in carrying off"the sweet Margot" to a convent. 

"Di Sorno, half distraught, flung himself into a cab and drove to allthe hotels in Grenada" (he overlooked the police station), and, failingto find Margot, becomes mad. He goes about ejaculating "Mad, mad!" thanwhich nothing could be more eloquent of his complete mental inversion. In his paroxysms the Countess di Morno persuades him to "lead her to thealtar, " but on the way (with a certain indelicacy they go to church inthe same conveyance) she lets slip a little secret. So Di Sorno jumpsout of the carriage, "hurling the crowd apart, " and, "flourishing hisdrawn sword, " "clamoured at the gate of the Inquisition" for Margot. TheInquisition, represented by the fiery-eyed monk, "looked over the gateat him. " No doubt it felt extremely uncomfortable. 

Now it was just at this thrilling part that Euphemia came home, and thetrouble about the flattened hat began. I never flattened her hat. It wasin the box, and so was I; but as for deliberate flattening----It wasjust a thing that happened. She should not write such interestingstories if she expects me to go on tiptoe through the world lookingabout for her hats. To have that story taken away just at thatparticular moment was horrible. There was fully as much as I had readstill to come, so that a lot happened after this duel of Sword _v. _Fiery Eye. I know from a sheet that came out of place that Margotstabbed herself with a dagger ("richly jewelled"), but of all that camebetween I have not the faintest suspicion. That is the peculiar interestof it. At this particular moment the one book I want to read in all theworld is the rest of this novel of Euphemia's. And simply, on the scoreof a new hat needed, she keeps it back and haggles!

OF CONVERSATION

AN APOLOGY

I must admit that in conversation I am not a brilliant success. Partly, indeed, that may be owing to the assiduity with which my aunt suppressedmy early essays in the art: "Children, " she said, "should be seen butnot heard, " and incontinently rapped my knuckles. To a larger degree, however, I regard it as intrinsic. This tendency to silence, to go outof the rattle and dazzle of the conversation into a quiet apart, islargely, I hold, the consequence of a certain elevation and breadth andtenderness of mind; I am no blowfly to buzz my way through the universe, no rattle that I should be expected to delight my fellow-creatures bythe noises I produce. I go about to this social function and that, deporting myself gravely and decently in silence, taking, if possible, aback seat; and, in consequence of that, people who do not understand mehave been heard to describe me as a "stick, " as "shy, " and by anabundance of the like unflattering terms. So that I am bound almost inself-justification to set down my reasons for this temperance of mine inconversation. 

Speech, no doubt, is a valuable gift, but at the same time it is a giftthat may be abused. What is regarded as polite conversation is, I hold, such an abuse. Alcohol, opium, tea, are all very excellent things intheir way; but imagine continuous alcohol, an incessant opium, or toreceive, ocean-like, a perennially flowing river of tea! That is myobjection to this conversation: its continuousness. You have to keep on. You find three or four people gathered together, and instead of beingrestful and recreative, sitting in comfortable attitudes and at peacewith themselves and each other, and now and again, perhaps three or fourtimes in an hour, making a worthy and memorable remark, they are allhaggard and intent upon keeping this fetish flow agoing. A fortuitousscore of cows in a field are a thousand times happier than a score ofpeople deliberately assembled for the purposes of happiness. Theseconversationalists say the most shallow and needless of things, impartaimless information, simulate interest they do not feel, and generallyimpugn their claim to be considered reasonable creatures. Why, whenpeople assemble without hostile intentions, it should be so imperativeto keep the trickling rill of talk running, I find it impossible toimagine. It is a vestige of the old barbaric times, when men murdered atsight for a mere whim; when it was good form to take off your sword inthe antechamber, and give your friend your dagger-hand, to show him itwas no business visit. Similarly, you keep up this babblement to showyour mind has no sinister concentration, not necessarily because youhave anything to say, but as a guarantee of good faith. You have to makea noise all the time, like the little boy who was left in the room withthe plums. It is the only possible explanation. 

To a logical mind there is something very distressing in this social lawof gabble. Out of regard for Mrs. A, let us say, I attend some festivalshe has inaugurated. There I meet for the first time a young person ofpleasant exterior, and I am placed in her company to deliver her at adinner-table, or dance her about, or keep her out of harm's way, in acosy nook. She has also never seen me before, and probably does not wantparticularly to see me now. However, I find her nice to look at, and shehas taken great pains to make herself nice to look at, and why we cannotpass the evening, I looking at her and she being looked at, I cannotimagine. But no; we must talk. Now, possibly there are topics she knowsabout and I do not--it is unlikely, but suppose so; on these topics sherequires no information. Again, I know about other topics things unknownto her, and it seems a mean and priggish thing to broach these, sincethey put her at a disadvantage. Thirdly, comes a last group of subjectsupon which we are equally informed, and upon which, therefore, neitherof us is justified in telling things to the other. This classificationof topics seems to me exhaustive. 

These considerations, I think, apply to all conversations. In everyconversation, every departure must either be a presumption when you talkinto your antagonist's special things, a pedantry when you fall backupon your own, or a platitude when you tell each other things you bothknow. I don't see any other line a conversation can take. The reason whyone has to keep up the stream of talk is possibly, as I have alreadysuggested, to manifest goodwill. And in so many cases this could beexpressed so much better by a glance, a deferential carriage, possiblyin some cases a gentle pressure of the hand, or a quiet persistentsmile. And suppose there is some loophole in my reasoning--though Icannot see it--and that possible topics exist, how superficial andunexact is the best conversation to a second-rate book!

Even with two people you see the objection, but when three or four aregathered together the case is infinitely worse to a man of delicateperceptions. Let us suppose--I do not grant it--that there is a possiblesequence of things to say to the person A that really harmonise with Aand yourself. Grant also that there is a similar sequence betweenyourself and B. Now, imagine yourself and A and B at the corners of anequilateral triangle set down to talk to each other. The kind of talkthat A appreciates is a discord with B, and similarly B's sequence isimpossible in the hearing of A. As a matter of fact, a real conversationof three people is the most impossible thing in the world. In real lifeone of the three always drops out and becomes a mere audience, or a merepartisan. In real life you and A talk, and B pretends to be taking ashare by interjecting interruptions, or one of the three talks amonologue. And the more subtle your sympathy and the greater yourrestraint from self-assertion, the more incredible triple and quadrupleconversation becomes. 

I have observed that there is even nowadays a certain advance towards myviews in this matter. Men may not pick out antagonists, and argue to thegeneral audience as once they did: there is a tacit taboo ofcontroversy, neither may you talk your "shop, " nor invite yourantagonist to talk his. There is also a growing feeling againstextensive quotations or paraphrases from the newspapers. Again, personalities, scandal, are, at least in theory, excluded. This narrowsthe scope down to the "last new book, " "the last new play, " "impressionsde voyage, " and even here it is felt that any very ironical or satiricalremarks, anything unusual, in fact, may disconcert your adversary. Youask: Have you read the _Wheels of Chance_? The answer is "Yes. " "Do youlike it?" "A little vulgar, I thought. " And so forth. Most of this isstereo. It is akin to responses in church, a prescription, a formula. And, following out this line of thought, I have had a vision of thetwentieth century dinner. At a distance it is very like the nineteenthcentury type; the same bright light, the same pleasant deglutition, thesame hum of conversation; but, approaching, you discover each diner hasa little drum-shaped body under his chin--his phonograph. So he dinesand babbles at his ease. In the smoking-room he substitutes his anecdoterecord. I imagine, too, the suburban hostess meeting the new maiden: "Ihope, dear, you have brought a lot of conversation, " just as now sheasks for the music. For my own part, I must confess I find this dinnerconversation particularly a bother. If I could eat with my eye it wouldbe different. 

I lose a lot of friends through this conversational difficulty. Theythink it is my dulness or my temper, when really it is only my refinedmind, my subtlety of consideration. It seems to me that when I go to seea man, I go to see him--to enjoy his presence. If he is my friend, thesight of him healthy and happy is enough for me. I don't want him tokeep his vocal cords, and I don't want to keep my own vocal cords, inincessant vibration all the time I am in his company. If I go to see aman, it distracts me to have to talk and it distracts me to hear himtalking. I can't imagine why one should not go and sit about in people'srooms, without bothering them and without their bothering you to say allthese stereotyped things. Quietly go in, sit down, look at your manuntil you have seen him enough, and then go. Why not?

Let me once more insist that this keeping up a conversation is a sign ofinsecurity, of want of confidence. All those who have had real friendsknow that when the friendship is assured the gabble ceases. You are notat the heart of your friend, if either of you cannot go off comfortablyto sleep in the other's presence. Speech was given us to make known ourneeds, and for imprecation, expostulation, and entreaty. This pitifulnecessity we are under, upon social occasions, to say something--howeverinconsequent--is, I am assured, the very degradation of speech. 

IN A LITERARY HOUSEHOLD

In the literary household of fiction and the drama, things are usuallyin a distressing enough condition. The husband, as you know, has ahacking cough, and the wife a dying baby, and they write in theintervals of these cares among the litter of the breakfast things. Occasionally a comic, but sympathetic, servant brings in anarmful--"heaped up and brimming over"--of rejected MSS. , for, in thedramatic life, it never rains but it pours. Instead of talking abouteditors in a bright and vigorous fashion, as the recipients ofrejections are wont, the husband groans and covers his face with hishands, and the wife, leaving the touching little story she iswriting--she posts this about 9 p. M. , and it brings in a publisher and£100 or so before 10. 30--comforts him by flopping suddenly over hisshoulder. "Courage, " she says, stroking his hyacinthine locks (whereasall real literary men are more or less grey or bald). Sometimes, as in_Our Flat_, comic tradesmen interrupt the course of true literature withtheir ignoble desire for cash payment, and sometimes, as in _Our Boys_, uncles come and weep at the infinite pathos of a bad breakfast egg. Butit's always a very sordid, dusty, lump-in-your-throaty affair, and nodoubt it conduces to mortality by deterring the young and impressionablefrom literary vices. As for its truth, that is another matteraltogether. 

Yet it must not be really imagined that a literary household is justlike any other. There is the brass paper-fastener, for instance. I havesometimes thought that Euphemia married me with an eye to theseconveniences. She has two in her grey gloves, and one (with the headinked) in her boot in the place of a button. Others I suspect her of. Then she fastened the lamp shade together with them, and tried one dayto introduce them instead of pearl buttons as efficient anchorage forcuffs and collars. And she made a new handle for the little drawer underthe inkstand with one. Indeed, the literary household is held together, so to speak, by paper-fasteners, and how other people get along withoutthem we are at a loss to imagine. 

And another point, almost equally important, is that the husband isgenerally messing about at home. That is, indeed, to a superficialobserver, one of the most remarkable characteristics of the literaryhousehold. Other husbands are cast out in the morning to raven forincome and return to a home that is swept and garnished towards the endof the day; but the literary husband is ever in possession. His workmust not be disturbed even when he is merely thinking. The study isconsequently a kind of domestic cordite factory, and you are nevercertain when it may explode. The concussion of a dust-pan and brush mayset it going, the sweeping of a carpet in the room upstairs. Then beholda haggard, brain-weary man, fierce and dishevelled, and full ofshattered masterpiece--expostulating. Other houses have their day ofcleaning out this room, and their day for cleaning out that; but in theliterary household there is one uniform date for all such functions, andthat is "to-morrow. " So that Mrs. Mergles makes her purifying raids withher heart in her mouth, and has acquired a way of leaving the pail andbrush, or whatever artillery she has with her, in a manner thatunavoidably engages the infuriated brute's attention and so covers herretreat. 

It is a problem that has never been probably solved, this discord oforder and orderly literary work. Possibly it might be done by making theliterary person live elsewhere or preventing literary persons fromhaving households. However it might be done, it is not done. This is athing innocent girls exposed to the surreptitious proposals of literarymen do not understand. They think it will be very fine to havephotographs of themselves and their "cosy nooks" published in magazines, to illustrate the man's interviews, and the full horror of having thisferal creature always about the house, and scarcely ever being able todo any little thing without his knowing it, is not brought properly hometo them until escape is impossible. 

And then there is the taint of "copy" everywhere. That is really thefundamental distinction. It is the misfortune of literary people, thatthey have to write about something. There is no reason, of course, whythey should, but the thing is so. Consequently, they are always lookingabout them for something to write about. They cannot take a pure-mindedinterest in anything in earth or heaven. Their servant is no servant, but a character; their cat is a possible reservoir of humorousobservation; they look out of window and see men as columns walking. Even the sanctity of their own hearts, their self-respect, their mostprivate emotions are disregarded. The wife is infected with the taint. Her private opinion of her husband she makes into a short story--forgetsits origin and shows it him with pride--while the husband decants hisheart-beats into occasional verse and minor poetry. It is amazing what alot of latter-day literature consists of such breaches of confidence. And not simply latter-day literature. 

The visitor is fortunate who leaves no marketable impression behind. Theliterary entertainers eye you over, as if they were dealers in a slavemart, and speculate on your uses. They try to think how you would do asa scoundrel, and mark your little turns of phrase and kinks of thoughtto that end. The innocent visitor bites his cake and talks abouttheatres, while the meditative person in the arm-chair may be inimagination stabbing him, or starving him on a desert island, oreven--horrible to tell!--flinging him headlong into the arms of theyoung lady to the right and "covering her face with a thousandpassionate kisses. " A manuscript in the rough of Euphemia's, that Irecently suppressed, was an absolutely scandalous example of this methodof utilising one's acquaintances. Mrs. Harborough, who was indeedEuphemia's most confidential friend for six weeks and more, she hadmade to elope with Scrimgeour--as steady and honourable a man as weknow, though unpleasant to Euphemia on account of his manner of holdinghis teacup. I believe there really was something--quite harmless, ofcourse--between Mrs. Harborough and Scrimgeour, and that, imparted inconfidence, had been touched up with vivid colour here and there andutilised freely. Scrimgeour is represented as always holding teacups inhis peculiar way, so that anyone would recognise him at once. Euphemiacalls that character. Then Harborough, who is really on excellent termswith his wife, and, in spite of his quiet manner, a very generous andcourageous fellow, is turned aside from his headlong pursuit of thefugitives across Wimbledon Common--they elope, by the bye, onScrimgeour's tandem bicycle--by the fear of being hit by a golf ball. Ipointed out to Euphemia that these things were calculated to lose usfriends, and she promises to destroy the likeness; but I have noconfidence in her promise. She will probably clap a violent auburn wigon Mrs. Harborough and make Scrimgeour squint and give Harborough a bigbeard. The point that she won't grasp is, that with that fatal facilityfor detail, which is one of the most indisputable proofs of woman'sintellectual inferiority, she has reproduced endless remarks andmannerisms of these excellent people with more than photographicfidelity. But this is really a private trouble, though it illustratesvery well the shameless way in which those who have the literary taintwill bring to market their most intimate affairs. 

ON SCHOOLING AND THE PHASES OF MR. SANDSOME

I do not know if you remember your "dates. " Indeed, I do not know ifanyone does. My own memory is of a bridge; like that bridge ofGoldsmith's, standing firm and clear on its hither piers and thenpassing into a cloud. In the beginning of days was "William theConqueror, 1066, " and the path lay safe and open to Henry the Second;then came Titanic forms of kings, advancing and receding, elongating anddwindling, exchanging dates, losing dates, stealing dates from battlesand murders and great enactments--even inventing dates, vacant yearsthat were really no dates at all. The things I have suffered--prisons, scourgings, beating with rods, wild masters, in bounds often, a hundredlines often, standing on forms and holding out books often--on accountof these dates! I knew, and knew well before I was fifteen, what these"heredity" babblers are only beginning to discover--that the past is thecurse of the present. But I never knew my dates--never. And I marvel nowthat all little boys do not grow up to be Republicans, seeing how muchthey suffer for the mere memory of Kings. 

Then there were pedigrees, and principal parts and conjugations, andcounty towns. Every county had a county town, and it was always on ariver. Mr. Sandsome never allowed us a town without that colophon. Iremember in my early manhood going to Guildford on the Wey, and tryingto find that unobtrusive rivulet. I went over the downs for miles. It isnot only the Wey I have had a difficulty in finding. There are certainverses--Heaven help me, but I have forgotten them!--about "_i_ vel _e_dat" (_was_ it dat?) "utrum malis"--if I remember rightly--and all thatabout _amo, amas, amat_. There was a multitude of such things Iacquired, and they lie now, in the remote box-rooms and lumber recessesof my mind, a rusting armoury far gone in decay. I have never been ableto find a use for them. I wonder even now why Mr. Sandsome equipped mewith them. Yet he seemed to be in deadly earnest about this learning, and I still go in doubt. In those early days he impressed me, chiefly inhorizontal strips, with the profoundest respect for his mental andphysical superiority. I credited him then, and still incline to believehe deserved to be credited, with a sincere persuasion that unless Ilearnt these things I should assuredly go--if I may be frank--to thedevil. It may be so. I may be living in a fool's paradise, prospering--like that wicked man the Psalmist disliked. Some unsuspectedgulf may open, some undreamt-of danger thrust itself through thephantasmagoria of the universe, and I may learn too late the folly offorgetting my declensions. 

I remember Mr. Sandsome chiefly as sitting at his desk, in a little roomfull of boys, a humming hive whose air was thick with dust, as theslanting sunbeams showed. When we were not doing sums or writing copies, we were always learning or saying lessons. In the early morning Mr. Sandsome sat erect and bright, his face animated, his ruddy eyes keenand observant, the cane hanging but uncertainly upon its hook. There wasa standing up of classes, a babble of repetition, now and then a crisis. How long the days were then! I have heard that scientificpeople--Professor C. Darwin is their leader, unless I err--whichprobably I do, for names and dates I have hated from my youth up--saythe days grow longer. Anyhow, whoever says it, it is quite wrong. But asthe lank hours of that vast schooltime drawled on, Mr. Sandsome lostenergy, drooped like a flower, --especially if the day was at allhot, --his sandy hair became dishevelled, justice became nerveless, hectic, and hasty. Finally came copybooks; and yawns and weird rumblingsfrom Mr. Sandsome. And so the world aged to the dinner-hour. 

When I had been home--it was a day school, for my aunt, who had anappetite for such things, knew that boarding-schools were sinks ofiniquity--and returned, I had Mr. Sandsome at another phase. He haddined--for we were simple country folk. The figurative suggestions ofthat "phase" are irresistible--the lunar quality. May I say that Mr. Sandsome was at his full? We now stood up, thirty odd of us altogether, to read, reading out of books in a soothing monotone, and he sat withhis reading-book before him, ruddy as the setting sun, and slowly, slowly settling down. But now and then he would jerk back suddenly intostaring wakefulness as though he were fishing--with himself as bait--forschoolboy crimes in the waters of oblivion--and fancied a nibble. Thatwas a dangerous time, full of anxiety. At last he went right under andslept, and the reading grew cheerful, full of quaint glosses andunexpected gaps, leaping playfully from boy to boy, instead oftravelling round with a proper decorum. But it never ceased, and littleHurkley's silly little squeak of a voice never broke in upon its mellowflow. (It took a year for Hurkley's voice to break. ) Any suchinterruption and Mr. Sandsome woke up and into his next phaseforthwith--a disagreeable phase always, and one we made it our businessto postpone as long as possible. 

During that final period, the last quarter, Mr. Sandsome was distinctlymalignant. It was hard to do right; harder still to do wrong. A feverishenergy usually inspired our government. "Let us try to get some workdone, " Mr. Sandsome would say--and I have even known him teach thingsthen. More frequently, with a needless bitterness, he set us uponimpossible tasks, demanding a colossal tale of sums perhaps, scatteringpens and paper and sowing the horrors of bookkeeping, or chastising uswith the scorpions of parsing and translation. And even in wintryweather the little room grew hot and stuffy, and we terminated ourschoolday, much exhausted, with minds lax, lounging attitudes, and redears. What became of Mr. Sandsome after the giving-out of home-work, theconcluding prayer, and the aftermath of impositions, I do not know. Istuffed my books, such as came to hand--very dirty they were inside, andvery neat out with my Aunt Charlotte's chintz covers--into my greenbaize bag, and went forth from the mysteries of schooling into the greatworld, up the broad white road that went slanting over the Down. 

I say "the mysteries of schooling" deliberately. I wondered then, Iwonder still, what it was all for. Reading, almost my only art, I learntfrom Aunt Charlotte; a certain facility in drawing I acquired at homeand took to school, to my own undoing. "Undoing, " again, isdeliberate--it was no mere swish on the hand, gentle reader. But thethings I learnt, more or less partially, at school, lie in my mind, likethe "Sarsen" stones of Wiltshire--great, disconnected, time-worn chunksamidst the natural herbage of it. "The Rivers of the East Coast; theTweed, the Tyne, the Wear, the Tees, the Humber"--why is that, forinstance, sticking up among my ferns and wild flowers? It is not onlyuseless but misleading, for the Humber is not another Tweed. I sometimesfancy the world may be mad--yet that seems egotistical. The fact remainsthat for the greater part of my young life Mr. Sandsome got an appetiteupon us from nine till twelve, and digested his dinner, at firstplacidly and then with petulance, from two until five--and we thirty oddboys were sent by our twenty odd parents to act as a sort of chorus tohis physiology. And he was fed (as I judge) more than sufficiently, clothed, sheltered, and esteemed on account of this relation. I think, after all, there must have been something in that schooling. I can'tbelieve the world mad. And I have forgotten it--or as good as forgottenit--all! At times I feel a wild impulse to hunt up all thosechintz-covered books, and brush up my dates and paradigms, before it istoo late. 

THE POET AND THE EMPORIUM

"I am beginning life, " he said, with a sigh. "Great Heavens! I havespent a day--_a day!_--in a shop. Three bedroom suites and a sideboardare among the unanticipated pledges of our affection. Have you lithia?For a man of twelve limited editions this has been a terrible day. "

I saw to his creature comforts. His tie was hanging outside hiswaistcoat, and his complexion was like white pasteboard that has gotwet. "Courage, " said I. "It will not occur again----"

"It will, " said he. "We have to get there again tomorrow. We have--whatis it?--carpets, curtains----"

He produced his tablets. I was amazed. Those receptacles of choicethoughts!

"The amber sunlight splashing through the leaky--leafy interlacinggreen, " he read. "No!--that's not it. Ah, here! Curtains!Drawing-room--not to cost more than thirty shillings! And there's allthe Kitchen Hardware! (Thanks. ) Dining-room chairs--query--rush bottoms?What's this? G. L. I. S. --ah! "Glistering thro' deeps ofglaucophane"--that's nothing. Mem. To see can we afford Indianneedlework chairs--57s. 6d. ? It's dreadful, Bellows!"

He helped himself to a cigarette. 

"Find the salesman pleasant?" said I. 

"Delightful. Assumed I was a spendthrift millionaire at first. Producedin an off-hand way an eighty-guinea bedroom suite--we're trying to dothe entire business, you know, on about two hundred pounds. Well--that'sten editions, you know. Came down, with evidently dwindling respect, tothings that were still ruinously expensive. I told him we wanted anidyll--love in a cottage, and all that kind of thing. He brushed that onone side, said idols were upstairs in the Japanese Department, and thatperhaps we might _do_ with a servant's set of bedroom furniture. Do witha set! He was a gloomy man with (I should judge) some internal pain. Itried to tell him that there was quite a lot of middle-class people likemyself in the country, people of limited or precarious means, whoseexistence he seemed to ignore; assured him some of them led quitebeautiful lives. But he had no ideas beyond wardrobes. I quite forgotthe business of shopping in an attempt to kindle a little humanenthusiasm in his heart. We were in a great vast place full ofwardrobes, with a remote glittering vista of brass bedsteads--skeletonbeds, you know--and I tried to inspire him with some of the poetry ofhis emporium; tried to make him imagine these beds and things going eastand west, north and south, to take sorrow, servitude, joy, worry, failing strength, restless ambition in their impartial embraces. He onlyturned round to Annie, and asked her if she thought she could _do_ with'enamelled. ' But I was quite taken with my idea----Where is it? I leftAnnie to settle with this misanthrope, amidst his raw frameworks of theHomes of the Future. "

He fumbled with his tablets. "Mats for hall--not to exceed 3s. 9d.... Kerbs ... Inquire tiled hearth ... Ah! Here we are: 'Ballade of theBedroom Suite':--

 "'Noble the oak you are now displaying, Subtly the hazel's grainings go, Walnut's charm there is no gainsaying, Red as red wine is your rosewood's glow; Brave and brilliant the ash you show, Rich your mahogany's hepatite shine, Cool and sweet your enamel: But oh! _Where are the wardrobes of Painted Pine?_'

"They have 'em in the catalogue at five guineas, with a picture--quiteas good they are as the more expensive ones. To judge by the picture. "

"But that's scarcely the idea you started with, " I began. 

"Not; it went wrong--ballades often do. The preoccupation of the'Painted Pine' was too much for me. What's this? 'N. B. --Sludge sellsmusic stools at--' No. Here we are (first half unwritten):--

 "'White enamelled, like driven snow, Picked with just one delicate line. Price you were saying is? Fourteen!--No! _Where are the wardrobes of Painted Pine?_'

"Comes round again, you see! Then _L'Envoy_:--

 "'Salesman, sad is the truth I trow: Winsome walnut can never be mine. Poets are cheap. And their poetry. So _Where are the wardrobes of Painted Pine?_'

"Prosaic! As all true poetry is, nowadays. But, how I tired as theafternoon moved on! At first I was interested in the shopman's amazinglack of imagination, and the glory of that fond dream of mine--love in acottage, you know--still hung about me. I had ideas come--like thatBallade--and every now and then Annie told me to write notes. I think mylast gleam of pleasure was in choosing the drawing-room chairs. There isscope for fantasy in chairs. Then----"

He took some more whisky. 

"A kind of grey horror came upon me. I don't know if I can describe it. We went through vast vistas of chairs, of hall-tables, of machine-madepictures, of curtains, huge wildernesses of carpets, and ever this cold, unsympathetic shopman led us on, and ever and again made us buy this orthat. He had a perfectly grey eye--the colour of an overcast sky inJanuary--and he seemed neither to hate us nor to detest us, but simplyto despise us, to feel such an overwhelming contempt for our petty meansand our petty lives, as an archangel might feel for an apple-maggot. Itmade me think.... "

He lit a fresh cigarette. 

"I had a kind of vision. I do not know if you will understand. TheWarehouse of Life, with our Individual Fate hurrying each of us through. Showing us with a covert sneer all the good things that we cannotafford. A magnificent Rosewood love affair, for instance, deep andrich, fitted complete, some hours of perfect life, some acts of perfectself-sacrifice, perfect self-devotion.... You ask the price. "

He shrugged his shoulders. 

"Where are the wardrobes of Painted Pine?" I quoted. 

"That's it. All the things one might do, if the purse of one's couragewere not so shallow. If it wasn't for the lack of that coinage, Bellows, every man might be magnificent. There's heroism, there's such nobilityas no one has ever attained to, ready to hand. Anyone, if it were notfor this lack of means, might be a human god in twenty-four hours.... You see the article. You cannot buy it. No one buys it. It stands in theemporium, I suppose, for show--on the chance of a millionaire. And theshopman waves his hand to it on your way to the Painted Pine. 

"Then you meet other couples and solitary people going about, each witha gloomy salesman leading. The run of them look uncomfortable; some arehot about the ears and in the spiteful phase of ill-temper; all looksick of the business except the raw new-comers. It's the only time theywill ever select any furniture, their first chance and their last. Mostof their selections are hurried a little. The salesman must not be keptall day.... Yet it goes hard with you if you buy your Object in Life andfind it just a 'special line' made to sell.... We're all amateurs atliving, just as we are all amateurs at furnishing--or dying. Some of thepoor devils one meets carry tattered little scraps of paper, and fumbleconscientiously with stumpy pencils. It's a comfort to see how you go, even if you do have to buy rubbish. 'If we have _this_ so good, dear, Idon't know _how_ we shall manage in the kitchen, ' says the carefulhousewife.... So it is we do our shopping in the Great Emporium. "

"You will have to rewrite your Ballade, " said I, "and put all that in. "

"I wish I could, " said the poet. 

"And while you were having these very fine moods?"

"Annie and the shopman settled most of the furniture between them. Perhaps it's just as well. I was never very good at the practicaldetails of life.... Cigarette's out! Have you any more matches?"

"Horribly depressed you are!" I said. 

"There's to-morrow. Well, well.... "

And then he went off at a tangent to tell me what he expected to make byhis next volume of poems, and so came to the congenial business ofrunning down his contemporaries, and became again the cheerful littlePoet that I know. 

THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS

During the early Victorian revival of chivalry the Language of Flowershad some considerable vogue. The Romeo of the mutton-chop whiskers wasexpected to keep this delicate symbolism in view, and even to displayhis wit by some dainty conceits in it. An ignorance of the code wasfraught with innumerable dangers. A sprig of lilac was a suggestion, amoss-rosebud pushed the matter, was indeed evidence to go to court upon;and unless Charlotte parried with white poplar--a by no means accessibleflower--or apricot blossom, or failing these dabbed a cooling dock-leafat the fellow, he was at her with tulip, heliotrope, and honeysuckle, peach-blossom, white jonquil, and pink, and a really overpowering andsuffocating host of attentions. I suppose he got at last tothree-cornered notes in the vernacular; and meanwhile what could a poorgirl do? There was no downright "No!" in the language of flowers, nothing equivalent to "Go away, please, " no flower for "Idiot!" The onlypossible defence was something in this way: "Your cruelty causes mesorrow, " "Your absence is a pleasure. " For this, according to the codeof Mr. Thomas Miller (third edition, 1841, with elegantly colouredplates) you would have to get a sweet-pea blossom for Pleasure, wormwoodfor Absence, and indicate Sorrow by the yew, and Cruelty by thestinging-nettle. There is always a little risk of mixing your predicatesin this kind of communication, and he might, for instance, read that hisAbsence caused you Sorrow, but he could scarcely miss the point of thestinging-nettle. That and the gorse carefully concealed were about theonly gleams of humour possible in the language. But then it was theappointed tongue of lovers, and while their sickness is upon them theyhave neither humour nor wit. 

This Mr. Thomas Miller wrote abundant flowers of language in his book, and the plates were coloured by hand. By the bye, what a blessed thingcolour-printing is! These hand-tinted plates, to an imaginative person, are about as distressing as any plates can very well be. Whenever I lookat these triumphs of art over the beauties of nature, with all theirweary dabs of crimson, green, blue, and yellow, I think of wretched, anæmic girls fading their youth away in some dismal attic over apublisher's, toiling through the whole edition tint by tint, and beingmocked the while by Mr. Miller's alliterative erotics. And they _are_erotics! In one place he writes, "Beautiful art thou, O Broom! on thebreezy bosom of the bee-haunted heath"; and throughout he buds andblossoms into similar delights. He wallows in doves and coy toyings andmodest blushes, and bowers and meads. He always adds, "Wonderful boy!"to Chatterton's name as if it were a university degree (W. B. ), and heinvariably refers to Moore as the Bard of Erin, and to Milton as theBard of Paradise--though Bard of the Bottomless Pit would be moreappropriate. However, we are not concerned with Mr. Miller's language somuch as with a very fruitful suggestion he throws out, that "it issurely worth while to trace a resemblance between the flower and theemblem it represents" (a turn like that is nothing to Mr. Miller) "whichshall at least have some show of reason in it. "

Come to think of it, there is something singularly unreasonable aboutalmost all floral symbolism. There is your forget-me-not, pink in thebud, and sapphire in the flower, with a fruit that breaks up into four, the very picture of inconstancy and discursiveness. Yet your lover, witha singular blindness, presents this to his lady when they part. Then thewhite water-lily is supposed to represent purity of heart, and, markyou, it is white without and its centre is all set about withinnumerable golden stamens, while in the middle lies, to quote the wordsof that distinguished botanist, Mr. Oliver, "a fleshy disc. " Couldthere be a better type of sordid and mercenary deliberation maintaininga fair appearance? The tender apple-blossom, rather than Pretence, issurely a reminder of Eden and the fall of love's devotion into inflatedworldliness. The poppy which flaunts its violent colours athwart thebearded corn, and which frets and withers like the Second Mrs. Tanquerayso soon as you bring it to the shelter of a decent home, is made thesymbol of Repose. One might almost think Aimé Martin and the other greatauthorities on this subject wrote in a mood of irony. 

The daisy, too, presents you Innocence, "companion of the milk-whitelamb, " Mr. Miller calls it. I am sorry for the milk-white lamb. It wasone of the earliest discoveries of systematic botany that the daisy is afraud, a complicated impostor. _The daisy is not a flower at all. _ It isa favourite trap in botanical examinations, a snare for artless youngmen entering the medical profession. Each of the little yellow things inthe centre of the daisy is a flower in itself, --if you look at one witha lens you will find it not unlike a cowslip flower, --and the white raysoutside are a great deal more than the petals they ought to be if theInnocence theory is to hold good. There is no such thing as an innocentflower; they are all so many deliberate advertisements to catch the eyeof the undecided bee, but any flower almost is simpler than this one. Wewould make it the emblem of artistic deception, and the confidence trickexpert should wear it as his crest. 

The violet, again, is a greatly overrated exemplar. It stimulates acertain bashfulness, hangs its head, and passed as modest among oursimple grandparents. Its special merit is its perfume, and it pretendsto wish to hide that from every eye. But, withal, the fragrance is asfar-reaching as any I know. It droops ingenuously. "How _could_ you cometo me, " it seems to say, "when all these really brilliant flowers inviteyou?" Mere fishing for compliments. All the while it is being sweet, tothe very best of its undeniable ability. Then it comes, too, in earlyspring, without a chaperon, and catches our hearts fresh before theyare jaded with the crowded beauties of May. A really modest flower wouldwait for the other flowers to come first. A subtle affectation is surelya different thing from modesty. The violet is simply artful, the youngwidow among flowers, and to hold up such a flower as an example is notdoing one's duty by the young. For true modesty commend me to the agave, which flowers once only in half a hundred years, as one may see foroneself at the Royal Botanical Gardens. 

Enough has been said to show what scope there is for revision of thissentimental Volapuk. Mr. Martin himself scarcely goes so far as I havedone, though I have merely worked out his suggestion. His onlyrevolutionary proposal is to displace the wind star by the "ratheprimrose" for Forsaken, on the strength of a quotation familiar to everyreader of Mason's little text-book on the English language. For the resthe followed his authorities, and has followed them now to the remoterecesses of the literary lumber-room and into the twopenny book-box. From that receptacle one copy of him was disinterred only a day or soago; a hundred and seventy pages of prose, chiefly alliterative, severalcoloured plates, enthusiastic pencil-marking of a vanished somebody, and, besides, an early Victorian flavour of dust and a dim vision of asilent conversation in a sunlit flower garden--altogether I think verycheap at twopence. The fashion has changed altogether now. In these dayswe season our love-making with talk about heredity, philanthropy, andsanitation, and present one another with Fabian publications instead ofwild flowers. But in the end, I fancy, the business comes to very muchthe same thing. 

THE LITERARY REGIMEN

At the risk of offending the young beginner's illusions, he must bereminded of one or two homely but important facts bearing upon literaryproduction. Homely as they are, they explain much that is at firstpuzzling. This perplexing question of distinction; the quality of beingsomehow _fresh_--individual. Really it is a perfectly simple matter. Itis common knowledge that, after a prolonged fast, the brain works in afeeble manner, the current of one's thoughts is pallid and shallow, itis difficult to fix the attention and impossible to mobilise the fullforces of the mind. On the other hand, immediately after a sound meal, the brain feels massive, but static. Tea is conducive to a gentle flowof pleasing thoughts, and anyone who has taken Easton's syrup of thehypophosphites will recall at once the state of cerebral erethrism, ofgeneral mental alacrity, that followed on a dose. Again, champagne(followed perhaps by a soupçon of whisky) leads to a mood essentiallyhumorous and playful, while about three dozen oysters, taken fasting, will in most cases produce a profound and even ominous melancholy. Onemight enlarge further upon this topic, on the brutalising influence ofbeer, the sedative quality of lettuce, the stimulating consequences ofcurried chicken; but enough has been said to point our argument. It is, that such facts as this can surely indicate only one conclusion, andthat is the entire dependence of literary qualities upon the diet of thewriter. 

I may remind the reader, in confirmation of this suggestion, of what isperhaps the most widely known fact about Carlyle, that on one memorableoccasion he threw his breakfast out of the window. Why did he throw hisbreakfast out of the window? Surely his friends have cherished the storyout of no petty love of depreciatory detail? There are, however, thosewho would have us believe it was mere childish petulance at a chillyrasher or a hard-boiled egg. Such a supposition is absurd. On the otherhand, what is more natural than an outburst of righteous indignation atthe ruin of some carefully studied climax of feeding? The thoughtfulliterary beginner who is not altogether submerged in foolish theories ofinspiration and natural genius will, we fancy, see pretty clearly that Iam developing what is perhaps after all the fundamental secret ofliterary art. 

To come now to more explicit instructions. It is imperative, if you wishto write with any power and freshness at all, that you should utterlyruin your digestion. Any literary person will confirm this statement. Atany cost the thing must be done, even if you have to live on Germansausage, onions, and cheese to do it. So long as you turn all yourdietary to flesh and blood you will get no literature out of it. "Welearn in suffering what we teach in song. " This is why men who live athome with their mothers, or have their elder sisters to see after them, never, by any chance, however great their literary ambition may be, write anything but minor poetry. They get their meals at regular hours, and done to a turn, and that plays the very devil--if you will pardonthe phrase--with one's imagination. 

A careful study of the records of literary men in the past, and aconsiderable knowledge of living authors, suggests two chief ways oflosing one's digestion and engendering literary capacity. You go andlive in humble lodgings, --we could name dozens of prominent men who havefed a great ambition in this way, --or you marry a nice girl who does notunderstand housekeeping. The former is the more efficacious method, because, as a rule, the nice girl wants to come and sit on your knee allday, and that is a great impediment to literary composition. Belongingto a club--even a literary club--where you can dine is absolute ruin tothe literary beginner. Many a bright young fellow, who has pushed hisway, or has been pushed by indiscreet friends, into the society ofsuccessful literary men, has been spoilt by this fatal error, and he hassaved his stomach to lose his reputation. 

Having got rid of your digestion, then, the common condition of all goodliterature, the next thing is to arrange your dietary for the particularliterary effect you desire. And here we may point out the secrecyobserved in such matters by literary men. Stevenson fled to Samoa tohide his extremely elaborate methods, and to keep his kitchen servantsout of the reach of bribery. Even Sir Walter Besant, though he is fairlycommunicative to the young aspirant, has dropped no hints of the plain, pure, and wholesome menu he follows. Sala professed to eat everything, but that was probably his badinage. Possibly he had one staple, and tookthe rest as condiment. Then what did Shakespeare live on? Bacon? And Mr. Barrie, though he has written a delightful book about his pipe andtobacco, full of suggestion to the young humorist, lets out nothing ornext to nothing of his meat and drink. His hints about pipes are veryextensively followed, and nowadays every ambitious young pressman smokesin public at least one well-burnt briar with an eccentric stem--even atsome personal inconvenience. But this jealous reticence on the part ofsuccessful men--you notice they never let even the interviewer see theirkitchens or the débris of a meal--necessarily throws one back uponrumour and hypothesis in this matter. Mr. Andrew Lang, for instance, ispopularly associated with salmon, but that is probably a wilfuldelusion. Excessive salmon, far from engendering geniality, will befound in practice a vague and melancholy diet, tending more towards themagnificent despondency of Mr. Hall Caine. 

Nor does Mr. Haggard feed entirely on raw meat. Indeed, for lurid andsomewhat pessimistic narrative, there is nothing like the ordinarycurrant bun, eaten new and in quantity. A light humorous style is bestattained by soda-water and dry biscuits, following café-noir. Thesoda-water may be either Scotch or Irish as the taste inclines. For aflorid, tawdry style the beginner must take nothing but boiled water, stewed vegetables, and an interest in the movements against vivisection, opium, alcohol, tobacco, sarcophagy, and the male sex. 

For contributions to the leading reviews, boiled pork and cabbage may beeaten, with bottled beer, followed by apple dumpling. This effectuallysuppresses any tendency to facetiousness, or what respectable Englishpeople call _double entendre_, and brings you _en rapport_ with theserious people who read these publications. So soon as you begin to feelwakeful and restless discontinue writing. For what is vulgarly known asthe _fin-de-siècle_ type of publication, on the other hand, one shouldlimit oneself to an aërated bread shop for a week or so, with theexception of an occasional tea in a literary household. All people fedmainly on scones become clever. And this regimen, with an occasionaldebauch upon macaroons, chocolate, and cheap champagne, and brisk dailywalks from Oxford Circus, through Regent Street, Piccadilly, and theGreen Park, to Westminster and back, should result in an animatedsociety satire. 

It is not known what Mr. Kipling takes to make him so peculiar. Many ofus would like to know. Possibly it is something he picked up in thejungle--berries or something. A friend who made a few tentativeexperiments to this end turned out nothing beyond a will, and that hedictated and left incomplete. (It was scarcely on the lines of anordinary will, being blasphemous, and mentioning no property except hisinside. ) For short stories of the detective type, strong cold tea andhard biscuits are fruitful eating, while for a social science novel oneshould take an abundance of boiled rice and toast and water. 

However, these remarks are mainly by way of suggestion. Every writer inthe end, so soon as his digestion is destroyed, must ascertain forhimself the peculiar diet that suits him best--that is, which disagreeswith him the most. If everything else fails he might try some chemicalfood. "Jabber's Food for Authors, " by the bye, well advertised, and withportraits of literary men, in their drawing-rooms, "Fed entirely onJabber's Food, " with medical certificates of its unwholesomeness, andfavourable and expurgated reviews of works written on it, ought to be abrilliant success among literary aspirants. A small but sufficientquantity of arsenic might with advantage be mixed in. 

HOUSE-HUNTING AS AN OUTDOOR AMUSEMENT

Since Adam and Eve went hand in hand out of the gates of Paradise, theworld has travailed under an infinite succession of house-hunts. To-dayin every eligible suburb you may see New Adams and New Eves by thescore, with rusty keys and pink order-forms in hand, wandering still, insearch of the ideal home. To them it is anything but an amusement. Mostof these poor pilgrims look simply tired, some are argumentative inaddition, but all are disappointed, anxious, and unhappy, their handsdirty with prying among cisterns, and their garments soiled from cellarwalls. All, in the exaltation of the wooing days, saw at least theindistinct reflection of the perfect house, but now the Quest isirrevocably in hand they seek and do not find. And such a momentousquestion it is to them. Are they not choosing the background, the airand the colour, as it were, of the next three or four years, thecardinal years, too! of their lives?

Perhaps the exquisite exasperation of the business for the man who huntsamong empty houses for a home is, that it is so entirely a choice ofsecond-hand, or at least ready-made goods. To me, at least, there is adecided suggestion of the dead body in your empty house that has oncebeen occupied. Here, like pale ghosts upon the wall paper, are outlinedthe pictures of the departed tenant; here are the nails of the invisiblecurtains, this dent in the wall is all that is sensible of a vanishedpiano. I could fancy all these things creeping back to visibility as thelight grew dim. Someone was irritable in the house, perhaps, and ahaunting fragrance of departed quarrels is to be found in the loosedoor-handles, and the broken bell-pull. Then the blind in the bedroomhas a broken string. He was a beer-drinker, for the drip of the tap hasleft its mark in the cellar; a careless man, for this wall is a recordof burst water-pipes; and rough in his methods, as his emendation of thegarden gate--a remedy rather worse than the disease--shows. The mark ofthis prepotent previous man is left on the house from cellar to attic. It is his house really, not mine. And against these hauntingindividualities set the horrible wholesale flavour, the obviousdexterous builder's economies of a new house. Yet, whatever yourrepulsion may be, the end is always the same. After you have asked foryour ideal house a hundred times or so you begin to see you do not getit. You go the way of your kind. All houses are taken in despair. 

But such disgusts as this are for the man who really aims at taking ahouse. The artist house-hunter knows better than that. He hunts for thehunt's sake, and does not mar his work with a purpose. Thenhouse-hunting becomes a really delightful employment, and one strangelyneglected in this country. I have heard, indeed, of old ladies whoenlivened the intervals of their devotions in this manner, but to thegeneral run of people the thing is unknown. Yet a more entertaining wayof spending a half-holiday--having regard to current taste--it should bedifficult to imagine. An empty house is realistic literature in theconcrete, full of hints and allusions if a little wanting in tangiblehumanity, and it outdoes the modern story in its own line, by beginningas well as ending in a note of interrogation. That it is not moreextensively followed I can only explain by supposing that its merits aregenerally unsuspected. In which case this book should set a fashion. 

One singular thing the house-hunter very speedily discovers is, that thegreater portion of the houses in this country are owned by old gentlemenor old ladies who live next door. After a certain age, and especiallyupon retired tradespeople, house property, either alone or in commonwith gardening, exercises an irresistible fascination. You always knowyou are going to meet a landlord or landlady of this type when you readon your order to view, "Key next door but one. " Calling next door butone, you are joined after the lapse of a few minutes by a bald, stoutgentleman, or a lady of immemorial years, who offers to go over "theproperty" with you. Apparently the intervals between visits to view arespent in slumber, and these old people come out refreshed and keen toscrutinise their possible new neighbours. They will tell you all aboutthe last tenant, and about the present tenants on either side, and aboutthemselves, and how all the other houses in the neighbourhood are damp, and how they remember when the site of the house was a cornfield, andwhat they do for their rheumatism. As one hears them giving a mostdelightful vent to their loquacity, the artistic house-hunter feels allthe righteous self-applause of a kindly deed. Sometimes they getextremely friendly. One old gentleman--to whom anyone under forty musthave seemed puerile--presented the gentle writer with three fine largegreen apples as a kind of earnest of his treatment: apples, no doubt, ofsome little value, since they excited the audible envy of several littleboys before they were disposed of. 

Sometimes the landlord has even superintended the building of the househimself, and then it often has peculiar distinctions--no coal cellar, ora tower with turrets, or pillars of ornamental marble investing theportico with disproportionate dignity. One old gentleman, young as oldgentlemen go, short of stature, of an agreeable red colour, and withshort iron-grey hair, had a niche over the front door containing a pieceof statuary. It gave one the impression of the Venus of Milo inchocolate pyjamas. "It was nood at first, " said the landlord, "but theneighbourhood is hardly educated up to art, and objected. So I gave itthat brown paint. "

On one expedition the artistic house-hunter was accompanied by Euphemia. Then it was he found Hill Crest, a vast edifice at the incredible rentof £40 a year, with which a Megatherial key was identified. It took thetwo of them, not to mention an umbrella, to turn this key. The rent wasa mystery, and while they were in the house--a thunderstorm kept themthere some time--they tried to imagine the murder. From the top windowsthey could see the roofs of the opposite houses in plan. 

"I wonder how long it would take to get to the top of the house from thebottom?" said Euphemia. 

"Certainly longer than we could manage every day, " said the artistichouse-hunter. "Fancy looking for my pipe in all these rooms. Startingfrom the top bedroom at the usual time, I suppose one would arrivedownstairs to breakfast about eleven, and then we should have to begetting upstairs again by eight o'clock if we wanted any night's restworth having. Or we might double or treble existence, live a Gargantuanlife to match the house, make our day of forty-eight hours instead oftwenty-four. By doubling everything we should not notice the hole itmade in our time getting about the place. Perhaps by making dinner lasttwice as long, eating twice as much, and doing everything on the scaleof two to one, we might adapt ourselves to our environment in time, growtwice as big. "

"_Then_ we might be very comfortable here, " said Euphemia. 

They went downstairs again. By that time it was thundering and rainingheavily. The rooms were dark and gloomy. The big side door, which wouldnot shut unless locked from the outside, swayed and banged as the gustsof wind swept round the house. But they had a good time in the frontkitchen, playing cricket with an umbrella and the agent's order crumpledinto a ball. Presently the artistic house-hunter lifted Euphemia on tothe tall dresser, and they sat there swinging their feet patiently untilthe storm should leave off and release them. 

"I should feel in this kitchen, " said Euphemia, "like one of my littledolls must have felt in the dolls'-house kitchen I had once. The top ofher head just reached the level of the table. There were only fourplates on the dresser, but each was about half her height across----"

"Your reminiscences are always entertaining, " said the artistichouse-hunter; "still they fail to explain the absorbing mystery of thishouse being to let at £40 a year. " The problem raised his curiosity, butthough he made inquiries he found no reason for the remarkably low rentor the continued emptiness of the house. It was a specimen puzzle forthe house-hunter. A large house with a garden of about half an acre, andwith accommodation for about six families, going begging for £40 a year. Would it let at eighty? Some such problem, however, turns up in everyhouse-hunt, and it is these surprises that give the sport its particularinterest and delight. Always provided the mind is not unsettled by anyulterior notion of settling down. 

OF BLADES AND BLADERY

The Blade is not so much a culture as a temperament, and Bladery--if thething may have the name--a code of sentiments rather than a ritual. Itis the rococo school of behaviour, the flamboyant gentleman, thegargoyle life. The Blade is the tribute innocence pays to vice. He maylook like a devil and belong to a church. And the clothing of the Blade, being symbolical, is a very important part of him. It must show not onlya certain tastiness, but also decision in the accent, courage in thepattern, and a Dudley Hardihood of outline. A Blade must needs take thecolour of his social standing, but all Blades have the same essentialqualities. And all Blades have this quality, that they despise andcontemn other Blades from the top downward. (But where the bottommostBlade comes no man can tell. )

A well-bred Blade--though he be a duke--tends to wear his hat tilted alittle over the right eyebrow, and a piece of hair is pulledcoquettishly down just below the brim. His collar is high, and a verylarge bow is worn slightly askew. This may be either cream-coloured ordeep blue, with spots of white, or it may be red, or buff, but notgreen, because of badinage. The Blade of the middle class displays afine gold watch-chain, and his jacket and vest may be of a rough blackcloth or blue serge. The trousering may be of a suit with the jacket, ortasteful, and the shoes must be long. The betting man, adorned, is aperfect Blade. There is often a large and ornamental stick, which isinvariably carried head downwards. And note, that the born Bladeinstinctively avoids any narrowness of pose. In walking he thrusts outhis shoulders, elbows, and knees, and it is rather the thing todominate a sphere of influence beyond this by swinging his stick. Atfirst the beginner will find this weapon a little apt to slip from thehand and cause inconvenience to the general public; but he must not mindthat. After a few such misadventures he will acquire dexterity. 

All Blades smoke--publicly at least. To smoke a white meerschaum in thestreets, however, is very inferior form. The proper smoking is a briar, and, remember, it is not smart to have a new pipe. So soon as he buysit, the Blade takes his pipe home, puts it on a glowing fire to burn therim, scrapes this away, burns it again, and so on until it looks asullen desperado of a pipe--a pipe with a wild past. Sometimes he cannotsmoke a pipe. In this case he may--for his stomach's sake--smoke acigarette. And, besides, there is something cynical about a cigarette. For the very young Blade there are certain makes of cigarette that burnwell--they are mixed with nitre--and these may be smoked by holding themin the left hand and idly swinging them to and fro in the air. If itwere not for the public want of charity, I would recommend a well-knownbrand. A Blade may always escape a cigar by feigning a fastidious taste. "None of your Cabanas" is rather good style. 

The Blade, it must be understood--especially by the Blade'sfriends--spends his time in a whirl of dissipation. That is thesymbolism of the emphatic obliquity of the costume. First, he drinks. The Blade at Harrow, according to a reliable authority, drinks cherrybrandy and even champagne; other Blades consume whisky-and-soda; theless costly kind of Blade does it on beer. And here the beginner isoften at a loss. Let us say he has looked up the street and down, ascertained that there are no aunts in the air, and then plunged intohis first public-house. How shall he ask for his liquor? "I will take aglass of ale, if you please, Miss, " seems tame for a Blade. It may beuseful to know a more suitable formula. Just at present, we may assurethe Blade neophyte, it is all the rage to ask for "Two of swipes, ducky. " Go in boldly, bang down your money as loudly as possible, andshout that out at the top of your voice. If it is a barman, though, youhad better not say "ducky. " The slang will, we can assure him, proveextremely effective. 

Then the Blade gambles; but over the gambling of the Blade it is well todraw a veil--a partially translucent and coquettish veil, through whichwe can see the thing dimly, and enhanced in its enormity. You mustpatronise the Turf, of course, and have money on horses, or you are noBlade at all, but a mere stick. The Harrow Blade has his book on all thebig races in the calendar; and the great and noble game of Nap--are notBlades its worshippers wherever the sun shines and a pack of cards isobtainable? Baccarat, too. Many a glorious Blade has lost his wholeterm's pocket-money at a single sitting at that noble game. And theconversation of the Blade must always be brilliant in the extreme, likethe flashing of steel in the sunlight. It is usually cynical andworldly, sometimes horrible enough to make a governess shudder, butalways epigrammatic. Epigrams and neat comparisons are much easier tomake than is vulgarly supposed. "Schoolmasters hang about the crops ofknowledge like dead crows about a field, examples and warnings to greedysouls. " "Marriage is the beginning of philosophy, and the end is, 'Donot marry. '" "All women are constant, but some discover mistakes. " "Oneis generally repentant when one is found out, and remorseful when onecan't do it again. " A little practice, and this kind of thing may beground out almost without thinking. Occasionally, in your conversationwith ladies, you may let an oath slip. (Better not let your aunt hearyou. ) Apologise humbly at once, of course. But it will give them aglimpse of the lurid splendour of your private life. 

And that brings us to the central thing of the Blade's life, the eternalFeminine! Pity them, be a little sorry for them--the poor souls cannotbe Blades. They must e'en sit and palpitate while the Blade flashes. Theaccomplished Blade goes through life looking unspeakable wickedness ateverything feminine he meets, old and young, rich and poor, one withanother. He reeks with intrigue. Every Blade has his secrets andmysteries in this matter--remorse even for crimes. You do not know allthat his handsome face may hide. Even he does not know. He may have saton piers and talked to shop-girls, kissed housemaids, taken barmaids tomusic halls, conversed with painted wickedness in public places--nothingis too much for him. And oh! the reckless protestations of love he hasmade, the broken promises, the broken hearts! Yet men must be Blades, though women may weep; and every Blade must take his barmaid to a musichall at least once, even if she be taller than himself. Until then hismanhood is not assured. 

Just one hint in conclusion. A Blade who collects stamps, or keeps tamerabbits, or eats sweets, oranges, or apples in the streets, or callsnames publicly after his friends, is no Blade at all, but a boy still. So, with our blessing, he swaggers on his way and is gone. A Don Juan asfresh as spring, a rosebud desperado. May he never come upon just causefor repentance!

OF CLEVERNESS

ÀPROPOS OF ONE CRICHTON

Crichton is an extremely clever person--abnormally, indeed almostunnaturally, so. He is not merely clever at this or that, but clever allround; he gives you no consolations. He goes about being needlesslybrilliant. He caps your jests and corrects your mistakes, and does yourspecial things over again in newer and smarter ways. Any reallywell-bred man who presumed so far would at least be plain or physicallyfeeble, or unhappily married by way of apology, but the idea of so muchcivility seems never to have entered Crichton's head. He will come intoa room where we are jesting perhaps, and immediately begin to flourishabout less funny perhaps but decidedly more brilliant jests, until atlast we retire one by one from the conversation and watch him withsavage, weary eyes over our pipes. He invariably beats me at chess, invariably. People talk about him and ask my opinion of him, and if Iventure to criticise him they begin to look as though they thought I wasjealous. Grossly favourable notices of his books and his pictures cropup in the most unlikely places; indeed I have almost given up newspaperson account of him. Yet, after all----

This cleverness is not everything. It never pleases me, and I doubtsometimes if it pleases anyone. Suppose you let off some clever littlething, a subtlety of expression, a paradox, an allusive suggestivepicture; how does it affect ordinary people? Those who are less cleverthan yourself, the unspecialised, unsophisticated average people, aresimply annoyed by the puzzle you set them; those who are cleverer findyour cleverness mere obvious stupidity; and your equals, yourcompetitors in cleverness, are naturally your deadly rivals. The fact isthis cleverness, after all, is merely egotism in its worst and unwisestphase. It is an incontinence of brilliance, graceless and aggressive, aglaring swagger. The drunken helot of cleverness is the creature whogoes about making puns. A mere step above comes the epigram, theisolated epigram framed and glazed. Then such impressionist art asCrichton's pictures, mere puns in paint. What they mean is nothing, theyarrest a quiet decent-minded man like myself with the same spasmodicdisgust as a pun in literature--the subject is a transparent excuse;they are mere indecent and unedifying exhibitions of himself. He thinksit is something superlative to do everything in a startling way. Hecannot even sign his name without being offensive. He lacks altogetherthe fundamental quality of a gentleman, the magnanimity to becommonplace. I----

On the score of personal dignity, why should a young man of respectableantecedents and some natural capacity stoop to this kind of thing? To beclever is the last desperate resort of the feeble, it is the merit ofthe ambitious slave. You cannot conquer _vi et armis_, you cannotstomach a decent inferiority, so you resort to lively, eccentric, andbrain-wearying brilliance to ingratiate yourself. The cleverest animalby far is the monkey, and compare that creature's undignified activitywith the mountainous majesty of the elephant!

And I cannot help thinking, too, that cleverness must be the greatestobstacle a man can possibly have in his way upward in the world. Onenever sees really clever people in positions of trust, never widelyinfluential or deeply rooted. Look, for instance, at the Royal Academy, at the Judges, at----But there! The very idea of cleverness is anall-round readiness and looseness that is the very negation ofstability. 

Whenever Crichton has been particularly exasperating, getting himselfappreciated in a new quarter, or rising above his former successes, Ifind some consolation in thinking of my Uncle Augustus. He was theglory of our family. Even Aunt Charlotte's voice drooped a little in themention of his name. He was conspicuous for an imposing and evencolossal stupidity: he rose to eminence through it, and, what is more, to wealth and influence. He was as reliable, as unlikely to alter hisprecise position, or do anything unexpected, as the Pyramids of Egypt. Ido not know any topic upon which he was not absolutely uninformed, andhis contributions to conversation, delivered in that ringing baritone ofhis, were appallingly dull. Often I have seen him utterly flatten somecheerful clever person of the Crichton type with one of his simplegarden-roller remarks--plain, solid, and heavy, which there was nopossibility either of meeting or avoiding. He was very successful inargument, and yet he never fenced. He simply came down. It was, so tospeak, a case of small sword _versus_ the avalanche. His moral inertiawas tremendous. He was never excited, never anxious, never jaded; he wassimply massive. Cleverness broke upon him like shipping on an ironboundcoast. His monument is like him--a plain large obelisk of coarsegranite, unpretending in its simple ugliness and prominent a mile off. Among the innumerable little white sorrows of the cemetery it looksexactly as he used to look among clever people. 

Depend upon it cleverness is the antithesis of greatness. The BritishEmpire, like the Roman, was built up by dull men. It may be we shall beruined by clever ones. Imagine a regiment of lively and eccentricprivates! There never was a statesman yet who had not some ballast ofstupidity, and it seems to me that part at least of the essentials of agenius is a certain divine dulness. The people we used to call themasters--Shakespeare, Raphael, Milton, and so forth--had a certainsimplicity Crichton lacks. They do not scintillate nearly so much as hedoes, and they do not give that same uncomfortable feeling of internalstrain. Even Homer nods. There are restful places in their work, broadmeadows of breezy flatness, calms. But Crichton has no Pacific Ocean tomitigate his everlasting weary passage of Cape Horn: it is all pointand prominence, point and prominence. 

No doubt this Crichton is having a certain vogue now, but it cannotlast. I wish him no evil, of course, but I cannot help thinking he willpresently have had his day. This epoch of cleverness must be very nearits last flare. The last and the abiding thought of humanity is peace. Adull man will presently be sought like the shadow of a great rock in athirsty land. Dulness will be the New Genius. "Give us dull books, "people will cry, "great dull restful pictures. We are weary, veryweary. " This hectic, restless, incessant phase in which wetravail--_fin-de-siècle_, "decadent, " and all the rest of it--will passaway. A chubby, sleepy literature, large in aim, colossal in execution, rotund and tranquil will lift its head. And this Crichton will become aclassic, Messrs. Mudie will sell surplus copies of his works at areduction, and I shall cease to be worried by his disgusting success. 

THE POSE NOVEL

I watched the little spurts of flame jet out from between the writhingpages of my manuscript, watched the sheets coil up in their fieryanguish and start one from another. I helped the fire to the very vitalsof the mass by poking the brittle heap, and at last the sacrifice wasover, the flames turned from pink to blue and died out, the red glowgave place to black, little luminous red streaks coiled across thecharred sheets and vanished at the margins, and only the ashes of myinspiration remained. The ink was a lustrous black on the dull blacknessof the burnt paper. I could still read this much of my indiscretionremaining, "He smiled at them all and said nothing. "

"Fool!" I said, and stirred the crackling mass into a featureless heapof black scraps. Then with my chin on my fists and elbows on knees Istared at the end of my labours. 

I suppose, after all, there has been some profit out of the thing. Satanfinds some mischief still for idle hands to do, and one may well thankHeaven it was only a novel. Still, it means many days out of my life, and I would be glad to find some positive benefit accruing. Clearly, inthe first place, I have eased my mind of some execrable English. I amcleaner now by some dozen faulty phrases that I committed and sawafterwards in all the nakedness of typewriting. (Thank Heaven fortypewriting! Were it not for that, this thing had gone to the scoffingof some publisher's reader, and another had known my shame. ) And I shallnot write another pose novel. 

I am inclined to think these pose novels the wild oats of authorship. Wesit down in the heyday of our youth to write the masterpiece. Obviously, it must be a novel about a man and a woman, and something assplendid as we can conceive of in that way. We look about us. We do notgo far for perfection. One of the brace holds the pen and the other isinside his or her head; and so Off! to the willing pen. Only a few yearsago we went slashing among the poppies with a walking-stick, and were, we said boldly and openly, Harolds and Hectors slaying our thousands. Now of course we are grown up to self-respect, and must needs be alittle disingenuous about it. But as the story unfolds there is nomistaking the likeness, in spite of the transfiguration. This bold, decided man who performs such deeds of derring-do in the noisome slum, knocks down the burly wife-beater, rescues an unmistakable Miss Claptonfrom the knife of a Lascar, and is all the while cultivating a virtuousconsumption that stretches him on an edifying, pathetic, and altogetherbeautiful deathbed in the last chapter----My dear Authorling, cry myfriends, we hear the squeak of that little voice of yours in every wordhe utters. Is _that_ what you aspire to be, that twopence-colourededition of yourself? Heaven defend you from your desires!

Yet there was a singular fascination in writing the book; to be inanticipation my own sympathetic historian, to joy with my joys yet tocome, and sorrow with my sorrows, to bear disaster like a man, and atlast to close my own dear eyes, and with a swelling heart write my ownepitaph. The pleasure remained with me until I reached the end. Howadmirably I strutted in front of myself! And I and the better self of methat was flourishing about in the book--we pretended not to know eachother for what we were. He was myself with a wig and a sham visitingcard, and I owed it to myself to respect my disguise. I made him withvery red hair--my hair is fairly dark--and shifted his university fromLondon to Cambridge. Clearly it could not be the same person, I argued. But I endowed him with all the treasures of myself; I made him say allthe good things I might have said had I thought of them opportunely, andall the noble thoughts that occurred to me afterwards occurred to himat the time. He was myself--myself at a premium, myself without anydrawbacks, the quintessence and culmination of me. And yet somehow whenhe came back from the typewriter he seemed a bit of an ass. 

Probably every tadpole author writes a pose novel--at least I hope sofor the sake of my self-respect. Most, after my fashion, burn the thing, or benevolent publishers lose it. It is an ill thing if by some accidentthe tadpole tale survives the tadpole stage. The authoress does thefeminine equivalent, but I should judge either that she did it moreabundantly or else that she burned less. Has she never swept past youwith a scornful look, disdained you in all the pride of her beauty, rippled laughter at you, or amazed you with her artless girlishness? Andeven after the early stages some of the trick may survive, unless I readbooks with malice instead of charity. I must confess, though, that Ihave a weakness for finding mine author among his puppets. I conceivehim always taking the best parts, like an actor-manager or a little boyplaying with his sisters. I do not read many novels with sincere belief, and I like to get such entertainment from them as I can. So that theseartless little self-revelations are very sweet and precious to me amongall the lay figures, tragedy and comedy. Since the deception istransparent I make the most of the transparency, and love to see theclumsy fingers on the strings of the marionettes. And this will be nonethe less pleasant now that I have so narrowly escaped giving thisentertainment to others. 

I suppose this stage is a necessary one. We begin with ignorance and theimagination, the material of the pose novel. Later come self-knowledge, disappointments and self-consciousness, and the prodigals of fictionstay themselves upon the husks of epigram and cynicism, and in the placeof artless aspiration are indeed in plain black and white very desperatecharacters. It is after all only another pose--the pose of not posing. We, the common clay of the world of letters, must needs write in thisway, because we cannot forget our foolish little selves in our work. But some few there are who sit as gods above their private universes, and write without passion or vanity. At least, so I have been told. These be the true artists of letters, the white windows upon the truthof things. We by comparison are but stained glass in our own honour, anddo but obstruct the view with our halos and attitudes. Yet evenShakespeare, the critics tell us--and they say they know--posed in thecharacter of Hamlet. 

After all, the pose novel method has at times attained to the level ofliterature. Charlotte Brontë might possibly have found no other topichad she disdained the plain little woman with a shrewish tongue; andwhere had Charles Kingsley been if the vision of a curate rampant hadnot rejoiced his heart? Still, I am not sorry that this novel is burned. Even now it was ridiculous, and the time might have come when this book, full of high, if foolish aims, and the vain vast promise of well-meaningyouth, had been too keen a reproach to be endured. Three volumes of goodintentions! It is too much. There was more than a novel burning justnow. After this I shall be in a position to take a humorist's view oflife. 

THE VETERAN CRICKETER

My old cricketer was seized, he says, some score of years ago now, bysciatica, clutched indeed about the loins thereby, and forciblywithdrawn from the practice of the art; since when a certainpredisposition to a corpulent habit has lacked its natural check ofexercise, and a broadness almost Dutch has won upon him. Were it not forthis, which renders his contours and his receding aspect unseemly, hewould be indeed a venerable-looking person, having a profile worthy of apatriarch, tinged though it may be with an unpatriarchal jollity, and aclose curly beard like that of King David. He lives by himself in asmall cottage outside the village--hating women with an unaccountabledetestation--and apparently earns a precarious livelihood, and certainlythe sincere aversion of the country side, by umpiring in matches, andplaying whist and "Nap" with such as will not be so discreet andeconomical as to bow before his superior merit. 

His neighbours do not like him, because he will not take their cricketor their whist seriously, because he will persist in offering counseland the stimulus of his gift of satire. All whist than his he avers is"Bumble-puppy. " His umpiring is pedagogic in tone; he fails to see thecontest in the game. To him, who has heard his thousands roar as thebails of the best of All England went spinning, these village matchesare mere puerile exercises to be corrected. His corrections, too, areOlympian, done, as it were, in red ink, vivid, and without respect ofpersons. Particularly he gibes. He never uses vulgar bad languagehimself, but has a singular power of engendering it in others. He has aword "gaby, " which he will sometimes enlarge to "stuppid gaby, " thewhich, flung neatly into a man who has just missed a catch, will fillthe same with a whirl of furious curses difficult to restrain. And ifperchance one should escape, my ancient cricketer will be as startled asCadmus at the crop he has sown. And not only startled but pained athuman wickedness and the follies of a new generation. "Why can't youplay without swearing, Muster Gibbs?" he will say, catching thewhispered hope twenty yards away, and proclaiming it to a censoriousworld. And so Gibbs, our grocer and draper, and one made much of by thevicar, is shamed before the whole parish, and damned even as he desired. 

To our vicar, a well-meaning, earnest, and extremely nervous man, hedisplays a methodical antagonism. Our vicar is the worst of all possiblerural vicars--unripe, a glaring modern, no classical scholar, no loverof nature, offensively young and yet not youthful, an indecentpolitician. He was meant to labour amid Urban Myriads, to deal withSocial Evils, Home Rule, the Woman Question, and the Reunion ofChristendom, attend Conferences and go with the _Weltgeist_--damnhim!--wherever the _Weltgeist_ is going. He presents you jerkily--a talllean man of ascetic visage and ample garments, a soul clothed not somuch in a fleshy body as in black flaps that ever trail behind itsenergy. Where they made him Heaven knows. No university owns him. It maybe he is a renegade Dissenting minister, neither good Church norwholesome Nonconformity. Him my cricketer regards with malignantrespect. Respect he shows by a punctilious touching of his hat brim, directed to the sacred office; all the rest is malignity, and aimed atthe man that fills it. They come into contact on the cricket-field, andon the committee of our reading-room. For our vicar, in spite of atendency to myopia, conceives it his duty to encourage cricket by hisparticipation. _Duty_--to encourage cricket! So figure the scene toyourself. The sunlit green, and a match in progress, --the ball has justsnipped a stump askew, --my ancient, leaning on a stout cabbage stick, and with the light overcoat that is sacred to umpires upon his arm. 

"_Out_, Billy Durgan, " says he, and adds, _ex cathedrâ_, "and one youought to ha' hit for four. "

Then appears our vicar in semi-canonicals, worn "to keep up hisposition, " or some such folly, nervous about the adjustment of his hatand his eyeglasses. He approaches the pitch, smiling the while to showhis purely genial import and to anticipate and explain any amateurishtouches. He reaches the wicket and poses himself, as the convenient bookhe has studied directs. "You'll be caught, Muster Shackleforth, if youkeep your shoulder up like that, " says the umpire. "Ya-a-ps! that'sworse!"--forgetting himself in his zeal for attitude. And then a voicecries "Play!"

The vicar swipes wildly, cuts the ball for two, and returns to hiswicket breathless but triumphant. Next comes a bye, and then over. Themisguided cleric, ever pursuing a theory of foolish condescension to hisbetters at the game, and to show there is no offence at the "Yaaps, "takes the opportunity, although panting, of asking my ancient if hischicks--late threatened with staggers--are doing well. What would hethink if my cricketer retaliated by asking, in the pause before thesermon, how the vicarage pony took his last bolus? The two men do notunderstand one another. My cricketer waves the hens aside, and revengeshimself, touching his hat at intervals, by some offensively obviousremarks--as to a mere beginner--about playing with a straight bat. Andthe field sniggers none too furtively. I sympathise with his malice. Cricket is an altogether too sacred thing to him to be tampered with onmerely religious grounds. However, our vicar gets himself caught at thefirst opportunity, and so being removed from my veteran's immediateenvironment, to their common satisfaction, the due ritual of the greatgame is resumed. 

My ancient cricketer abounds in reminiscence of the glorious days thathave gone for ever. He can still recall the last echoes of the"throwing" controversy that agitated Nyren, when over-arm bowling began, and though he never played himself in a beaver hat, he can, he says, recollect seeing matches so played. In those days everyone wore tallhats--the policeman, the milkman, workmen of all sorts. Some people Ifancy must have bathed in them and gone to bed wearing them. He recallsthe Titans of that and the previous age, and particularly delights inthe legend of Noah Mann, who held it a light thing to walk twenty milesfrom Northchapel to Hambledon to practise every Tuesday afternoon, andwander back after dark. He himself as a stripling would run a matter offour miles, after a day's work in the garden where he was employed, toattend an hour's practice over the downs before the twilight made theballs invisible. And afterwards came Teutonic revelry or wanderingsunder the summer starlight, as the mood might take him. For there was avein of silent poetry in the youth of this man. 

He hates your modern billiard-table pitch, and a batting of dexteroussnickery. He likes "character" in a game, gigantic hitting forward, bowler-planned leg catches, a cunning obliquity in a wicket that wouldsend the balls mysteriously askew. But dramatic breaks are now a thingunknown in trade cricket. One legend of his I doubt; he avers that onceat Brighton, in a match between Surrey and Sussex, he saw seven wicketsbowled by some such aid in two successive overs. I have never been ableto verify this. I believe that, as a matter of fact, the thing has neveroccurred, but he tells it often in a fine crescendo of surprise, and therefrain, "Out HE came. " His first beginning is a cheerfulanecdote of a crew of "young gentlemen" from Cambridge staying at thebig house, and a challenge to the rustic talent of "me and Billy Hall, "who "played a bit at that time, " "of me and Billy Hall" winning thepitch and going in first, of a memorable if uncivil stand at the wicketsthrough a long hot afternoon, and a number of young gentlemen fromCambridge painfully discovering local talent by exhaustive fielding inthe park, a duty they honourably discharged. 

I am fond of my old cricketer, in spite of a certain mendacious andmalign element in him. His yarns of gallant stands and unexpected turnsof fortune, of memorable hits and eccentric umpiring, albeit tendingsometimes incredibly to his glory, are full of the flavour of days wellspent, of bright mornings of play, sunlit sprawlings beside the scoretent, warmth, the flavour of bitten grass stems, and the odour ofcrushed turf. One seems to hear the clapping hands of village ancients, and their ululations of delight. One thinks of stone jars with cooldrink swishing therein, of shouting victories and memorable defeats, ofeleven men in a drag, and tuneful and altogether glorious home-comingsby the light of the moon. His were the Olympian days of the sport, whennoble squires were its patrons, and every village a home and nursery ofstalwart cricketers, before the epoch of special trains, gate-money, star elevens, and the tumultuous gathering of idle cads to jabber at agame they cannot play. 

CONCERNING A CERTAIN LADY

This lady wears a blue serge suit and a black hat, without flippancy;she is a powerfully built lady and generally more or less flushed, andshe is aunt, apparently, to a great number of objectionable-lookingpeople. I go in terror of her. Yet the worm will turn at last, and sowill the mild, pacific literary man. Her last outrage was too much evenfor my patience. It was committed at Gloucester Road Station the otherafternoon. I was about to get into a train for Wimbledon, --and there areonly two of them to the hour, --and, so far as I could see, the wholeworld was at peace with me. I felt perfectly secure. The ægis of the_pax Britannica_--if you will pardon the expression--was over me. Forthe moment the thought of the lady in the blue serge was quite out of mymind. I had just bought a newspaper, and had my hand on the carriagedoor. The guard was fluttering his flag. 

Then suddenly she swooped out of space, out of the infinite unknown, andhit me. She always hits me when she comes near me, and I infer she hitseveryone she comes across. She hit me this time in the chest with herelbow and knocked me away from the door-handle. She hit me very hard;indeed, she was as fierce as I have ever known her. With her there weretwo nieces and a nephew, and the nephew hit me too. He was a horridlittle boy in an Eton suit of the kind that they do not wear at Eton, and he hit me with his head and pushed at me with his little pink hands. The nieces might have been about twenty-two and thirteen respectively, and I infer that they were apprenticed to her. All four people seemedmadly excited. "It's just starting!" they screamed, and the train was, indeed, slowly moving. Their object--so far as they had an object andwere not animated by mere fury--appeared to be to assault me and thenescape in the train. The lady in blue got in and then came backwards outagain, sweeping the smaller girl behind her upon the two others, whowere engaged in hustling me. "It's 'smoking!'" she cried. I could havetold her that, if she had asked instead of hitting me. The elder girl, by backing dexterously upon me, knocked my umbrella out of my hand, andwhen I stooped to pick it up the little boy knocked my hat off. I willconfess they demoralised me with their archaic violence. I had somethought of joining in their wild amuck, whooping, kicking out madly, perhaps assaulting a porter, --I think the lady in blue would have beensurprised to find what an effective addition to her staff she had pickedup, --but before I could collect my thoughts sufficiently to do anydefinite thing the whole affair was over. A porter was slamming doors onthem, the train was running fast out of the station, and I was leftalone with an unmannerly newsboy and an unmannerly porter on theplatform. I waited until the porter was out of the way, and then I hitthe newsboy for laughing at me, but even with that altercation it was atedious wait for the next train to Wimbledon. 

This is the latest of my encounters with this lady, but it has decidedme to keep silence no longer. She has been persecuting me now for yearsin all parts of London. It may be I am her only victim, but, on theother hand, she may be in the habit of annoying the entire class ofslender and inoffensive young men. If so, and they will communicate withme through the publishers of this little volume, we might do somethingtowards suppressing her, found an Anti-Energetic-Lady-League, orsomething of that sort. For if there was ever a crying wrong thatclamoured for suppression it is this violent woman. 

She is, even now, flagrantly illegal. She might be given in charge forhitting people at any time, and be warned, or fined, or given a week. But somehow it is only when she is overpast and I am recovering my witsthat I recollect that she might be dealt with in this way. She is thechartered libertine of British matrons, and assaulteth where shelisteth. The blows I have endured from her? She fights people who aregetting into 'buses. It is no mere accidental jostling, but a deliberateshouldering, poking with umbrellas, and clawing. It is her delight to goto the Regent Circus corner of Piccadilly, about half-past seven in theevening, accompanied by a genteel rout of daughters, and fill up wholeomnibuses with them. At that hour there are work-girls and tired clerks, and the like worn-out anæmic humanity trying to get home for an hour orso of rest before bed, and they crowd round the 'buses very eagerly. They are little able to cope with her exuberant vitality, beingill-nourished and tired from the day's work, and she simply mows throughthem and fills up every vacant place they covet before their eyes. Then, I can never count change even when my mind is tranquil, and she knowsthat, and swoops threateningly upon me in booking offices andstationers' shops. When I am dodging cabs at crossings she will appearfrom behind an omnibus or carriage and butt into me furiously. She holdsher umbrella in her folded arms just as the Punch puppet does his staff, and with as deadly effect. Sometimes she discards her customary navyblue and puts on a glittering bonnet with bead trimmings, and goes andhurts people who are waiting to enter the pit at theatres, andespecially to hurt me. She is fond of public shows, because they affordsuch possibilities of hurting me. Once I saw her standing partly on aseat and partly on another lady in the church of St. George's, HanoverSquare, partly, indeed, watching a bride cry, but chiefly, I expect, scheming how she could get round to me and hurt me. Then there was anoccasion at the Academy when she was peculiarly aggressive. I wassitting next my lame friend when she marked me. Of course she came atonce and sat right upon us. "Come along, Jane, " I heard her say, as Istruggled to draw my flattened remains from under her; "this gentlemanwill make room. "

My friend was not so entangled and had escaped on the other side. Shenoticed his walk. "Oh, don't _you_ get up, " she said. "_This_gentleman, " she indicated my convulsive struggles to free myself, "willdo that. _I did not see that you were a cripple. _"

It may be some of my readers will recognise the lady now. It can be--forthe honour of womankind--only one woman. She is an atavism, a survivalof the age of violence, a Palæolithic squaw in petticoats. I do not knowher name and address or I would publish it. I do not care if she killsme the next time she meets me, for the limits of endurance have beenpassed. If she kills me I shall die a martyr in the cause of the Queen'speace. And if it is only one woman, then it was the same lady, more thanhalf intoxicated, that I saw in the Whitechapel Road cruellyill-treating a little costermonger. If it was not she it was certainlyher sister, and I do not care who knows it. 

What to do with her I do not know. A League, after all, seemsineffectual; she would break up any League. I have thought of giving herin charge for assault, but I shrink from the invidious publicity ofthat. Still, I am in grim earnest to do something. I think at times thatthe compulsory adoption of a narrow doorway for churches and places ofpublic entertainment might be some protection for quiet, inoffensivepeople. How she would rage outside to be sure! Yet that seems a greatundertaking. 

But this little paper is not so much a plan of campaign as a preliminarydefiance. Life is a doubtful boon while one is never safe from assault, from hitting and shoving, from poking with umbrellas, being sat upon, and used as a target for projectile nephews and nieces. I warnher--possibly with a certain quaver in my voice--that I am in revolt. Ifshe hits me again----I will not say the precise thing I will do, but Iwarn her, very solemnly and deliberately, that she had better not hit meagain. 

And so for the present the matter remains. 

THE SHOPMAN

If I were really opulent, I would not go into a shop at all--I wouldhave a private secretary. If I were really determined, Euphemia would dothese things. As it is, I find buying things in a shop the mostexasperating of all the many trying duties of life. I am sometimesalmost tempted to declare myself Adamite to escape it. The way theshopman eyes you as you enter his den, the very spread of his fingers, irritate me. "What can I have the pleasure?" he says, bowing forward atme, and with his eye on my chin--and so waits. 

Now I hate incomplete sentences, and confound his pleasure! I don't gointo a shop to give a shopman pleasure. But your ordinary shopman mustneeds pretend you delight and amuse him. I say, trying to display mydislike as plainly as possible, "Gloves. " "Gloves, yessir, " he says. Whyshould he? I suppose he thinks I require to be confirmed in mypersuasion that I want gloves. "Calf--kid--dogskin?" How should _I_ knowthe technicalities of his traffic? "Ordinary gloves, " I say, disdaininghis petty distinctions. "About what price, sir?" he asks. 

Now that always maddens me. Why should I be expected to know the priceof gloves? I'm not a commercial traveller nor a wholesale dealer, and Idon't look like one. Neither am I constitutionally parsimonious norpetty. I am a literary man, unworldly, and I wear long hair and a softhat and a peculiar overcoat to indicate the same to ordinary people. Why, I say, should I know the price of gloves? I know they are someordinary price--elevenpence-halfpenny, or three-and-six, orseven-and-six, or something--one of those prices that everything issold at--but further I don't go. Perhaps I say elevenpence-halfpenny ata venture. 

His face lights up with quiet malice. "Don't keep them, sir, " he says. Ican tell by his expression that I am ridiculously low, and so beingsnubbed. I think of trying with three-and-six, or seven-and-six; theonly other probable prices for things that I know, except a guinea andfive pounds. Then I see the absurdity of the business, and my angercomes surging up. 

"Look here!" I say, as bitterly as possible. "I don't come here to playat Guessing Games. Never mind your prices. I want some gloves. Get mesome!"

This cows him a little, but very little. "May I ask your size, sir?" hesays, a trifle more respectfully. 

One would think I spent all my time remembering the size of my gloves. However, it is no good resenting it. "It's either seven or nine, " I sayin a tired way. 

He just begins another question, and then he catches my eye and stopsand goes away to obtain some gloves, and I get a breathing space. Butwhy do they keep on with this cross-examination? If I knew exactly whatI wanted--description, price, size--I should not go to a shop at all, itwould save me such a lot of trouble just to send a cheque to the Stores. The only reason why I go into a tradesman's shop is because I don't knowwhat I want exactly, am in doubt about the name or the size, or theprice, or the fashion, and want a specialist to help me. The only reasonfor having shopmen instead of automatic machines is that one requireshelp in buying things. When I want gloves, the shopman ought tounderstand his business sufficiently well to know better than I do whatparticular kind of gloves I ought to be wearing, and what is a fairprice for them. I don't see why I should teach him what is in fashionand what is not. A doctor does not ask you what kind of operation youwant and what price you will pay for it. But I really believe theseoutfitter people would let me run about London wearing white cottongloves and a plaid comforter without lifting a finger to prevent me. 

And, by the bye, that reminds me of a scandalous trick these salesmenwill play you. Sometimes they have not the thing you want, and then theymake you buy other things. I happen to have, through no fault of my own, a very small head, and consequently for one long summer I wore a littleboy's straw hat about London with the colours of a Paddington BoardSchool, simply because a rascal outfitter hadn't my size in a properkind of headgear, and induced me to buy the thing by speciousrepresentations. He must have known perfectly well it was not what Iought to wear. It seems never to enter into a shopman's code of honourthat he ought to do his best for his customer. Since that, however, Ihave noticed lots of people about who have struck me in a new light astriumphs of the salesman, masterpieces in the art of incongruity; age inthe garb of youth, corpulence put off with the size called "slendermen's"; unhappy, gentle, quiet men with ties like oriflammes, breastslike a kingfisher's, and cataclysmal trouser patterns. Even so, if theshopkeeper had his will, should we all be. Those poor withered maidenladies, too, who fill us with a kind of horror, with their juvenilecurls, their girlish crudity of colouring, their bonnets, giddy, tottering, hectic. It overcomes me with remorse to think that I myselfhave accused them of vanity and folly. It overcomes me with pain to hearthe thoughtless laugh aloud after them, in the public ways. For they aresimply short-sighted trustful people, the myopic victims of the salesmanand saleswoman. The little children gibe at them, pelt even.... Andsomewhere in the world a draper goes unhung. 

However, the gloves are bought. I select a pair haphazard, and hepretends to perceive they fit perfectly by putting them over the back ofmy hand. I make him assure me of the fit, and then buy the pair andproceed to take my old ones off and put the new on grimly. If they splitor the fingers are too long--glovemakers have the most erraticconceptions of the human finger--I have to buy another pair. 

But the trouble only begins when you have bought your thing. "Nothingmore, sir?" he says. "Nothing, " I say. "Braces?" he says. "No, thankyou, " I say. "Collars, cuffs?" He looks at mine swiftly but keenly, andwith an unendurable suspicion. 

He goes on, item after item. Am I in rags, that I should endure thisthing? And I get sick of my everlasting "No, thank you"--the monotonyshows up so glaringly against his kaleidoscope variety. I feel all theunutterable pettiness, the mean want of enterprise of my poor littlepurchase compared with the catholic fling he suggests. I feel angry withmyself for being thus played upon, furiously angry with him. "_No, no_!"I say. 

"These tie-holders are new. " He proceeds to show me his infernaltie-holders. "They prevent the tie puckering, " he says with his eye onmine. It's no good. "How much?" I say. 

This whets him to further outrage. "Look here, my man!" I say at last, goaded to it, "I came here for gloves. After endless difficulties I atlast induced you to let me have gloves. I have also been intimidated, bythe most shameful hints and insinuations, into buying that _beastly_tie-holder. I'm not a child that I don't know my own needs. Now _will_you let me go? How much do you want?"

That usually checks him. 

The above is a fair specimen of a shopman--a favourable rendering. Thereare other things they do, but I simply cannot write about them becauseit irritates me so to think of them. One infuriating manoeuvre is tocorrect your pronunciation. Another is to make a terrible ado about yourname and address--even when it is quite a well-known name. 

After I have bought things at a shop I am quite unfit for socialintercourse. I have to go home and fume. There was a time when Euphemiawould come and discuss my purchase with a certain levity, but on oneoccasion.... 

Some day these shopmen will goad me too far. It's almost my onlyconsolation, indeed, to think what I am going to do when I do break out. There is a salesman somewhere in the world, he going on his way and Ion mine, who will, I know, prove my last straw. It may be he will readthis--amused--recking little of the mysteries of fate.... Is killing asalesman murder, like killing a human being?

THE BOOK OF CURSES

Professor Gargoyle, you must understand, has travelled to and fro in theearth, culling flowers of speech: a kind of recording angel he is, butwithout any sentimental tears. To be plain, he studies swearing. Hiscollection, however, only approaches completeness in the westerndepartments of European language. Going eastward he found such anappalling and tropical luxuriance of these ornaments as to despair atlast altogether of even a representative selection. "They do not curse, "he says, "at door-handles, and shirt-studs, and such other trifles aswill draw down the meagre discharge of an Occidental, but when they dobegin----

"I hired a promising-looking man at Calcutta, and after a month or sorefused to pay his wages. He was unable to get at me with the big knifehe carried, because the door was locked, so he sat on his hams outsideunder the verandah, from a quarter-past six in the morning until nearlyten, cursing--cursing in one steady unbroken flow--an astonishing spateof blasphemy. First he cursed my family, from me along the female lineback to Eve, and then, having toyed with me personally for a littlewhile, he started off along the line of my possible posterity to myremotest great-grandchildren. Then he cursed me by this and that. Myhand ached taking it down, he was so very rich. It was a perfectanthology of Bengali blasphemy--vivid, scorching, and variegated. Nottwo alike. And then he turned about and dealt with different parts ofme. I was really very fortunate in him. Yet it was depressing to thinkthat all this was from one man, and that there are six hundred millionpeople in Asia. "

"Naturally, " said the Professor in answer to my question, "theseinvestigations involve a certain element of danger. The first conditionof curse-collecting is to be unpopular, especially in the East, wherecomminatory swearing alone is practised, and you have to offend a manvery grievously to get him to disgorge his treasure. In this country, except among ladies in comparatively humble circumstances, anything likethis fluent, explicit, detailed, and sincere cursing, aimed, missile-fashion, at a personal enemy, is not found. It was quite commona few centuries ago; indeed, in the Middle Ages it was part of therecognised procedure. Aggrieved parties would issue a father's curse, an orphan's curse, and so forth, much as we should take out a countycourt summons. And it played a large part in ecclesiastical policy too. At one time the entire Church militant here on earth was swearing inunison, and the Latin tongue, at the Republic of Venice--a very splendidand imposing spectacle. It seems to me a pity to let these old customsdie out so completely. I estimate that more than half these Gothic formshave altogether passed out of memory. There must have been some splendidthings in Erse and Gaelic too; for the Celtic mind, with its more vividsense of colour, its quicker transitions, and deeper emotional quality, has ever over-cursed the stolid Teuton. But it is all getting forgotten. 

"Indeed, your common Englishman now scarcely curses at all. A morecolourless and conventional affair than what in England is calledswearing one can scarcely imagine. It is just common talk, with somehalf-dozen orthodox bad words dropped in here and there in the mostfoolish and illogical manner. Fancy having orthodox unorthodox words! Iremember one day getting into a third-class smoking carriage on theMetropolitan Railway about one o'clock, and finding it full of roughworking men. Everything they said was seasoned with one incrediblystupid adjective, and no doubt they thought they were very desperatecharacters. At last I asked them not to say that word again. Oneforthwith asked me 'What the ----'--I really cannot quote thesepuerilities--'what the idiotic _cliché_ that mattered to me?' So Ilooked at him quietly over my glasses, and I began. It was a revelationto these poor fellows. They sat open-mouthed, gasping. Then those thatwere nearest me began to edge away, and at the very next station theyall bundled out of the carriage before the train stopped, as though Ihad some infectious disease. And the thing was just a rough imperfectrendering of some mere commonplaces, passing the time of day as it were, with which the heathen of Aleppo used to favour the servants of theAmerican missionary. Indeed, " said Professor Gargoyle, "if it were notfor women there would be nothing in England that one could speak of asswearing at all. "

"I say, " said I, "is not that rather rough on the ladies?"

"Not at all; they have agreed to consider certain words, for no verygood reason, bad words. It is a pure convention; it has little ornothing to do with the actual meaning, because for every one of thesebad words there is a paraphrase or synonym considered to be quitesuitable for polite ears. Hence the feeblest creature can always producea sensation by breaking the taboo. But women are learning how to undothis error of theirs now. The word 'damn, ' for instance, is, I hear, being admitted freely into the boudoir and feminine conversation; it iseven considered a rather prudish thing to object to this word. Now, men, especially feeble men, hate doing things that women do. As aconsequence, men who go about saying 'damn' are now regarded by theirfellow-men as only a shade less effeminate than those who go aboutsaying 'nasty' and 'horrid. ' The subtler sex will not be long innoticing what has happened to this objectionable word. When they do theywill, of course, forthwith take up all the others. It will be a littlestartling perhaps at first, but in the end there will be no swearingleft. I have no doubt there will be those who will air their petty witon the pioneer women, but where a martyr is wanted a woman can always befound to offer herself. She will clothe herself in cursing, like theungodly, and perish in that Nessus shirt, a martyr to pure language. Andthen this dull cad swearing--a mere unnecessary affectation ofcoarseness--will disappear. And a very good job too. 

"There is a pretty department of the subject which I might call graceswearing. 'Od's fish, ' cried the king, when he saw the man climbingSalisbury spire; 'he shall have a patent for it--no one else shall doit. ' One might call such little things Wardour Street curses. 'Od'sbodkins' is a ladylike form, and 'Od's possles' a variety I met in theBritish Museum. Every gentleman once upon a time aspired to have his ownparticular grace curse, just as he liked to have his crest, and hisbookplate, and his characteristic signature. It fluttered pleasantlyinto his conversation, as Mr. Whistler's butterfly comes into hispictures--a signature and a delight. 'Od's butterfly!' I have sometimesthought of a little book of grace-words and heraldic curses, printedwith wide margins on the best of paper. Its covers should be of soft redleather, stamped with little gold flowers. It might be made a birthdaybook, or a pocket diary--'Daily Invocations. '

"Coming back to wrathy swearing, I must confess I am sorry to see itdecay. It was such a thoroughly hygienic and moral practice. You see, ifanything annoying happens to a man, or if any powerful emotion seizeshim, his brain under the irritation begins to disengage energy at atremendous rate. He has to use all his available force of control inkeeping the energy in. Some of it will leak away into the nerves of hisface and distort his features, some may set his tear-glands at work, some may travel down his vagus nerve and inhibit his heart's action sothat he faints, or upset the blood-vessels in his head and give him astroke. Or if he pens it up, without its reaching any of these vents, itmay rise at last to flood-level, and you will have violent assaults, thebreaking of furniture, 'murther' even. For all this energy a goodflamboyant, ranting swear is Nature's outlet. All primitive men and mostanimals swear. It is an emotional shunt. Your cat swears at you becauseshe does not want to scratch your face. And the horse, because he cannotswear, drops dead. So you see my reason for regretting the decay ofthis excellent and most wholesome practice.... 

"However, I must be getting on. Just now I am travelling about Londonpaying cabmen their legal fares. Sometimes one picks up a new variant, though much of it is merely stereo. "

And with that, flinging a playful curse at me, he disappeared at onceinto the tobacco smoke from which I had engendered him. An amusing andcheerful person on the whole, though I will admit his theme was a littleundesirable. 

DUNSTONE'S DEAR LADY

The story of Dunstone is so slight, so trivial in its cardinalincidents, such a business of cheap feathers and bits of ribbon on thesurface, that I should hesitate to tell it, were it not for itsInwardness, what one might call the symbolism of the thing. Frankly, Ido not clearly see what that symbolism is, but I feel it hovering insome indefinable way whenever I recall his case. It is one of thosethings that make a man extend his arm and twiddle his fingers, and say, blinking, "Like _that_, you know. " So do not imagine for one moment thatthis is a shallow story, simply because it is painted, so to speak, notin heart's blood but in table claret. 

Dunstone was a strong, quiet kind of man--a man of conspicuousmediocrity, and rising rapidly, therefore, in his profession. He wasimmensely industrious, and a little given to melancholia in privatelife. He smoked rather too many cigars, and took his social occasionsseriously. He dressed faultlessly, with a scrupulous elimination ofstyle. Unlike Mr. Grant Allen's ideal man, he was not constitutionally alover; indeed, he seemed not to like the ordinary girl at all--found hereither too clever or too shallow, lacking a something. I don't think_he_ knew quite what it was. Neither do I--it is a case for extendedhand and twiddling fingers. Moreover, I don't think the ordinary girltook to Dunstone very much. 

He suffered, I fancy, from a kind of mental greyness; he was all subtletones; the laughter of girls jarred upon him; foolish smartness oramiable foolishness got on his nerves; he detested, with equalsincerity, bright dressing, artistic dabbling, piety, and the glow ofhealth. And when, as his confidential friend--confidential, that is, sofar as his limits allowed--I heard that he intended to marry, I wasreally very much surprised. 

I expected something quintessential; I was surprised to find she was avisiting governess. Harringay, the artist, thought there was nothing inher, but Sackbut, the art critic, was inclined to admire her bones. Formy own part, I took rather a liking to her. She was small and thin, and, to be frank, I think it was because she hardly got enough to eat--of thedelicate food she needed. She was shabby, too, dressed in rustymourning--she had recently lost her mother. But she had a sweet, lowvoice, a shrinking manner, rather a graceful carriage, I thought, and, though she spoke rarely, all she said was sweet and sane. She struck meas a refined woman in a blatant age. The general effect of her upon mewas favourable; upon Dunstone it was tremendous. He lost a considerableproportion of his melancholia, and raved at times like a common man. Hecalled her in particular his "Dear Lady" and his "Sweet Lady, " thingsthat I find eloquent of what he found in her. What that was I fancy Iunderstand, and yet I cannot say it quite. One has to resort to theextended arm and fingers vibratile. 

Before he married her--which he did while she was still inhalf-mourning--there was anxiety about her health, and I understood sheneeded air and exercise and strengthening food. But she recoveredrapidly after her marriage, her eyes grew brighter, we saw less ofSackbut's "delicious skeleton. " And then, in the strangest way, shebegan to change. It is none of my imagining; I have heard the changeremarked upon by half a dozen independent observers. Yet you would thinka girl of three-and-twenty (as she certainly was) had attained herdevelopment as a woman. I have heard her compared to a winter bud, casedin its sombre scales, until the sun shone, and the warm, moist windsbegan to blow. I noticed first that the delicate outline of her cheekwas filling, and then came the time when she reverted to colour in herdress. 

Her first essays were charitably received. Her years of struggle, heryear of mourning, had no doubt dwarfed her powers in this direction;presently her natural good taste would reassert itself. But the nexteffort and the next were harder to explain. It was not the note ofnervousness or inexperience we saw; there was an undeniable decision, and not a token of shame. The little black winter bud grew warm-colouredabove, and burst suddenly into extravagant outlines and chromaticconfusion. Harringay, who is a cad, first put what we were all feelinginto words. "I've just seen Dunstone and his donah, " he said. Clearlyshe was one of those rare women who cannot dress. And that was not all. A certain buoyancy, hitherto unsuspected, crept into her manner, as thecorpuscles multiplied in her veins--an archness. She talked more, andthrew up a spray of playfulness. And, with a growing energy, she beganto revise the exquisite æsthetic balance of Dunstone's house. She evenenamelled a chair. 

For a year or so I was in the East. When I returned Mrs. Dunstone amazedme. In some odd way she had grown, she had positively grown. She wastaller, broader, brighter--infinitely brighter. She wore a diamondbrooch in the afternoon. The "delicious skeleton" had vanished inplumpness. She moved with emphasis. Her eye--which glittered--met minebravely, and she talked as one who would be heard. In the old days yousaw nothing but a rare timid glance from under the pretty lids. Shetalked now of this and that, of people of "good family, " and thedifficulty of getting a suitable governess for her little boy. She saidshe objected to meeting people "one would not care to invite to one'shouse. " She swamped me with tea and ruled the conversation, so thatDunstone and I, who were once old friends, talked civil twaddle for thespace of one hour--theatres, concerts, and assemblies chiefly--and thenparted again. The furniture had all been altered--there were two "cosynooks" in the room after the recipe in the _Born Lady_. It was plain tome, it is plain to everyone, I find, that Mrs. Dunstone is, in the sunof prosperity, rapidly developing an extremely florid vulgarity. Andafterwards I discovered that she had forgotten her music, and evidentlyenjoyed her meals. Yet I for one can witness that five years ago therewas _that_ about her--I can only extend my arm with quivering digits. But it was something very sweet and dainty, something that made herwhite and thoughtful, and marked her off from the rest of womankind. Isometimes fancy it may have been anæmia in part, but it was certainlypoverty and mourning in the main. 

You may think that this is a story of disillusionment. When I firstheard the story, I thought so too. But, so far as Dunstone goes, that isnot the case. It is rare that I see him now, but the other day we smokedtwo cigars apiece together. And in a moment of confidence he spoke ofher. He said how anxious he felt for her health, called her his "DaintyLittle Lady, " and spoke of the coarseness of other women. I am afraidthis is not a very eventful story, and yet there is _that_----That veryconvenient gesture, an arm protruded and flickering fingers, conveys mymeaning best. Perhaps you will understand. 

EUPHEMIA'S NEW ENTERTAINMENT

Euphemia has great ideas of putting people at their ease, a thousandlittle devices for thawing the very stiffest among them with a home-likeglow. Far be it from me to sing her praises, but I must admit that attimes she is extremely successful in this--at times almost toosuccessful. That tea-cake business, for instance. No doubt it's a genialexpedient to make your guests toast his own tea-cake: down he must goupon his knees upon your hearthrug, and his poses will melt away likethe dews of the morning before the rising sun. Nevertheless, when itcomes to roasting a gallant veteran like Major Augustus, deliberatelyroasting him, in spite of the facts that he has served his country noblythrough thirty irksome years of peace, and that he admires Euphemia witha delicate fervour--roasting him, I say, alive, as if he were aStrasburg goose, or suddenly affixing a delicate young genius to thehither end of a toasting-fork while he is in the midst of a really verysubtle and tender conversation, the limits of social warmth seem to beapproaching dangerously near. However, this scarcely concerns Euphemia'snew entertainment. 

This new entertainment is modelling in clay. Euphemia tells me it is tobe quite the common thing this winter. It is intended especially for theevening, after a little dinner. As the reader is aware, the eveningafter a little dinner is apt to pall. A certain placid contentmentcreeps over people. I don't know in what organ originality resides; butit's a curious thing, and one I must leave to the consideration ofpsychologists, that people's output of original remarks appears to beobstructed in some way after these gastronomic exercises. Then a littledinner always confirms my theory of the absurdity of polygonalconversation. Music and songs, too, have their drawbacks, especially gaysongs; they invariably evoke a vaporous melancholy. Card-playingEuphemia objects to because her uncle, the dean, is prominent inconnection with some ridiculous association for the suppression ofgambling; and in what are called "games" no rational creature esteeminghimself an immortal soul would participate. In this difficulty it wasthat Euphemia--decided, I fancy, by the possession of certain reallyvery becoming aprons--took up this business of clay-modelling. 

You have a lump of greyish clay and a saucer of water and certain smalltools of wood (for which I cannot discover the slightest use in theworld) given you, and Euphemia puts on a very winning bib. Then, moistening the clay until it acquires sufficient plasticity, andincidentally splashing your cuffs and coat-sleeves with an agreeablylight tinted mud, you set to work. At first people are a littledisgusted at the apparent dirtiness of the employment, and also perhapsrather diffident. The eldest lady says weakly deprecatory things, andthe feeblest male is jocular after his wont. But it is remarkable howsoon the charm of this delightful occupation seizes hold of you. Forreally the sensations of moulding this plastic matter into shape arewonderfully and quite unaccountably pleasing. It is ever so much easierthan drawing things--"anyone can do it, " as the advertisement peoplesay--and the work is so much more substantial in its effects. Technicalquestions arise. In moulding a head, do you take a lump and fine itdown, or do you dab on the features after the main knob of it is shaped?

So soon as your guests realise the plastic possibilities before them, agreat silence, a delicious absorption comes over them. Some rash personstates that he is moulding an Apollo, or a vase, or a bust of Mr. Gladstone, or an elephant, or some such animal. The wiser ones go towork in a speculative spirit, aiming secretly at this perhaps, but quitewilling to go on with that, if Providence so wills it. Buddhas are goodsubjects; there is a certain genial rotundity not difficult to attain, and the pyramidal build of the idol is well suited to the material. Youcan start a Buddha, and hedge to make it a loaf of bread if the featuresare unsatisfactory. For slender objects a skeletal substructure of benthairpins or matches is advisable. The innate egotism of the human animalbecomes very conspicuous. "His tail is too large, " says the lady withthe fish, in self-criticism. "I haven't put his tail on yet--that's histrunk, " answers the young man with the elephant. 

[Illustration]

It's a pretty sight to see the first awakening of the artistic passionin your guests--the flush of discovery, the glow of innocent pride asthe familiar features of Mr. Gladstone emerge from the bust of Clytie. An accidental stroke of the thumbnail develops new marvels ofexpression. (By the bye, it's just as well to forbid deliberate attemptsat portraiture. ) And I know no more becoming expression for everyonethan the look of intent and pleasing effort--a divine touch almost--thatcomes over the common man modelling. For my own part, I feel a beinginfinitely my own superior when I get my fingers upon the clay. And, incidentally, how much pleasanter this is than writing articles--to seethe work grow altogether under your hands; to begin with the largemasses and finish with the details, as every artist should! Just to showhow easy the whole thing is, I append a little sketch of the first workI ever did. I had had positively no previous instruction. Unfortunatelythe left ear of the animal--a cat, by the bye--has fallen off. (Thefigure to the left is the back view of a Buddha. )

However, I have said enough to show the charm of the new amusement. Itwill prove a boon to many a troubled hostess. The material is calledmodelling-clay, and one may buy it of any dealer in artists' materials, several pounds for sixpence. This has to be renewed at intervals, as agood deal is taken away by the more careless among your guests upontheir clothes. 

FOR FREEDOM OF SPELLING

THE DISCOVERY OF AN ART

It is curious that people do not grumble more at having to spellcorrectly. Yet one may ask, Do we not a little over-estimate the valueof orthography? This is a natural reflection enough when the maker ofartless happy phrases has been ransacking the dictionary for someelusive wretch of a word which in the end proves to be not yetnaturalised, or technical, or a mere local vulgarity; yet one does notoften hear the idea canvassed in polite conversation. Dealers in smalltalk, of the less prolific kind, are continually falling back upon thesilk hat or dress suit, or some rule of etiquette or other convention asa theme, but spelling seems to escape them. The suspicion seems quaint, but one may almost fancy that an allusion to spelling savoured a littleof indelicacy. It must be admitted, though where the scruples come fromwould be hard to say, that there is a certain diffidence even here inbroaching my doubts in the matter. For some inexplicable reason spellinghas become mixed up with moral feeling. One cannot pretend to explainthings in a little paper of this kind; the fact is so. Spelling is notappropriate or inappropriate, elegant or inelegant; it is right orwrong. We do not greatly blame a man for turn-down collars when thevogue is erect; nor, in these liberal days, for theologicaleccentricity; but we esteem him "Nithing" and an outcast if he but dropa "p" from opportunity. It is not an anecdote, but a scandal, if we saya man cannot spell his own name. There is only one thing esteemed worsebefore we come to the deadly crimes, and that is the softening oflanguage by dropping the aspirate. 

After all, it is an unorthodox age. We are all horribly afraid of beingbourgeois, and unconventionality is the ideal of every respectableperson. It is strange that we should cling so steadfastly to correctspelling. Yet again, one can partly understand the business, if onethinks of the little ways of your schoolmaster and schoolmistress. Thissanctity of spelling is stamped upon us in our earliest years. Thewriter recalls a period of youth wherein six hours a week were given tothe study of spelling, and four hours to all other religiousinstruction. So important is it, that a writer who cannot spell isalmost driven to abandon his calling, however urgent the thing he mayhave to say, or his need of the incidentals of fame. Yet in the crisisof such a struggle rebellious thoughts may arise. Even this: Why, afterall, should correct spelling be the one absolutely essential literarymerit? For it is less fatal for an ambitious scribe to be as dull asHoxton than to spell in diverse ways. 

Yet correct spelling of English has not been traced to revelation; therewas no grammatical Sinai, with a dictionary instead of tables of stone. Indeed, we do not even know certainly when correct spelling began, whichword in the language was first spelt the right way, and by whom. Correctspelling may have been evolved, or it may be the creation of some mastermind. Its inventor, if it had an inventor, is absolutely forgotten. Thomas Cobbett would have invented it, but that he was born more thantwo centuries too late, poor man. All that we certainly know is that, contemporaneously with the rise of extreme Puritanism, the belief inorthography first spread among Elizabethan printers, and with theHanoverian succession the new doctrine possessed the whole length andbreadth of the land. At that time the world passed through whatextension lecturers call, for no particular reason, the classical epoch. Nature--as, indeed, all the literature manuals testify--was in theremotest background then of human thought. The human mind, in a mood ofthe severest logic, brought everything to the touchstone of an orderlyreason; the conception of "correctness" dominated all mortal affairs. For instance, one's natural hair with its vagaries of rat's tails, duck's tails, errant curls, and baldness, gave place to an orderly wig, or was at least decently powdered. The hoop remedied the deficiencies ofthe feminine form, and the gardener clipped his yews intorespectability. All poetry was written to one measure in those days, anda Royal Academy with a lady member was inaugurated that art might becomeat least decent. Dictionaries began. The crowning glory of Hanoverianliterature was a Great Lexicographer. 

In those days it was believed that the spelling of every English wordhad been settled for all time. Thence to the present day, though theseverities then inaugurated, so far as metre and artistic compositionare concerned, been generously relaxed--though we have had a Whistler, aWalt Whitman, and a Wagner--the rigours of spelling have continuedunabated. There is just one right way of spelling, and all others areheld to be not simply inelegant or undesirable, but wrong; andunorthodox spelling, like original morality, goes hand in hand withshame. 

Yet even at the risk of shocking the religious convictions of some, maynot one ask whether spelling is in truth a matter of right and wrong atall? Might it not rather be an art? It is too much to advocate theindiscriminate sacking of the alphabet, but yet it seems plausible thatthere is a happy medium between a reckless debauch of errant letters andour present dead rigidity. For some words at anyrate may there not besometimes one way of spelling a little happier, sometimes another? We dosomething of this sort even now with our "phantasy" and "fantasie, " andwe might do more. How one would spell this word or that would become, ifthis latitude were conceded, a subtle anxiety of the literary exquisite. People are scarcely prepared to realise what shades of meaning may begot by such a simple device. Let us take a simple instance. You write, let us say, to all your cousins, many of your friends, and even, it maybe, to this indifferent intimate and that familiar enemy, "My dearSo-and-so. " But at times you feel even as you write, sometimes, thatthere is something too much and sometimes something lacking. You mayeven get so far in the right way occasionally as to write, "My dr. So-and-so, " when your heart is chill. And people versed in the arts ofsocial intercourse know the subtle insult of misspelling a person'sname, or flicking it off flippantly with a mere waggling wipe of thepen. But these are mere beginnings. 

Let the reader take a pen in hand and sit down and write, "My very dearwife. " Clean, cold, and correct this is, speaking of orderly affection, settled and stereotyped long ago. In such letters is butcher's meat also"very dear. " Try now, "Migh verrie deare Wyfe. " Is it not immediatelyinfinitely more soft and tender? Is there not something exquisitelypleasant in lingering over those redundant letters, leaving each word, as it were, with a reluctant caress? Such spelling is a soft, domestic, lovingly wasteful use of material. Or, again, if you have no wife, orobject to an old-fashioned conjugal tenderness, try "Mye owne sweetedearrest Marrie. " There is the tremble of a tenderness no merearrangement of trim everyday letters can express in those double_r's_. "Sweete" my ladie must be; sweet! why pump-water and inferiorchampagne, spirits of nitrous ether and pancreatic juice are "sweet. "For my own part I always spell so, with lots of f's and g's and suchlike tailey, twirley, loopey things, when my heart is in the tendervein. And I hold that a man who will not do so, now he has been shownhow to do it, is, in plain English, neither more nor less than a prig. The advantages of a varied spelling of names are very great. Industrious, rather than intelligent, people have given not a littletime, and such minds as they have, to the discussion of the rightspelling of our great poet's name. But he himself never dreamt of tyinghimself down to one presentation of himself, and was--we have his handfor it--Shakespeare, Shakspear, Shakespear, Shakspeare, and so forth, asthe mood might be. It would be almost as reasonable to debate whetherShakespeare smiled or frowned. My dear friend Simmongues is the same. He is "Sims, " a mere slash of the pen, to those he scorns, Simmonds orSimmongs to his familiars, and Simmons, A. T. Simmons, Esq. , to allEurope. 

From such mere introductory departures from precision, such pettyescapades as these, we would we might seduce the reader into an utterdebauch of spelling. But a sudden Mænad dance of the letters on thepage, gleeful and iridescent spelling, a wild rush and procession ofhowling vowels and clattering consonants, might startle the half-wonreader back into orthodoxy. Besides, there is another reader--theprinter's reader--to consider. For if an author let his wit run to thesematters, he must write elaborate marginal exhortations to thisauthority, begging his mercy, to let the little flowers of spellingalone. Else the plough of that Philistine's uniformity will utterly rootthem out. 

Such high art of spelling as is thus hinted at is an art that has stillto gather confidence and brave the light of publicity. A few, indeed, practise it secretly for love--in letters and on spare bits of paper. But, for the most part, people do not know that there is so much as anart of spelling possible; the tyranny of orthography lies so heavily onthe land. Your common editors and their printers are a mere orthodoxspelling police, and at the least they rigorously blot out all thedelightful frolics of your artist in spelling before his writings reachthe public eye. But commonly, as I have proved again and again, theslightest lapse into rococo spelling is sufficient to secure therejection of a manuscript without further ado. 

And to end, --a word about Phonographers. It may be that my title has ledthe reader to anticipate some mention of these before. They are a kindof religious sect, a heresy from the orthodox spelling. They bind oneanother by their mysteries and a five-shilling subscription in a"soseiti to introduis an impruvd method of spelinj. " They come acrossthe artistic vision, they and their Soseiti, with an altogetherindefinable offence. Perhaps the essence of it is the indescribablemeanness of their motive. For this phonography really amounts to astudy of the cheapest way of spelling words. These phonographers aresweaters of the Queen's English, living meanly on the selvage of honestmental commerce by clipping the coin of thought. But enough of them. They are mentioned here only to be disavowed. They would substitute onenarrow orthodoxy for another, and I would unfold the banner of freedom. Spell, my brethren, as you will! Awake, arise, O language living inchains; let Butter's spelling be our Bastille! So with a propheticvision of liberated words pouring out of the dungeons of aspelling-book, this plea for freedom concludes. What trivial argumentsthere are for a uniform spelling I must leave the reader to discover. This is no place to carp against the liberation I foresee, with the glowof the dawn in my eyes. 

INCIDENTAL THOUGHTS ON A BALD HEAD

I was asked to go, quite suddenly, and found myself there before I hadtime to think of what it might be. I understood her to say it was ameeting of some "Sunday society, " some society that tried to turn theSabbath from a day of woe to a day of rejoicing. "St. George's Hall, Langham Place, " a cab, and there we were. I thought they would bepicturesque Pagans. But the entertainment was the oddest it has everbeen my lot to see, a kind of mystery. The place was dark, except for abig circle of light on a screen, and a dismal man with a long stick wastalking about the effects of alcohol on your muscles. He talked andtalked, and people went to sleep all about us. Euphemia's face looked sovery pretty in the dim light that I tried to talk to her and hold herhand, but she only said "Ssh!" And then they began showing pictures onthe screen--the most shocking things!--stomachs, and all that kind ofthing. They went on like that for an hour, and then there was a lot ofthumping with umbrellas, and they turned the lights up and we went home. Curious way of spending Sunday afternoon, is it not?

But you may imagine I had a dismal time all that hour. I understood thepeople about me were Sceptics, the kind of people who don't believethings--a singular class, and, I am told, a growing one. These excellentpeople, it seems, have conscientious objections to going to chapel orchurch, but at the same time the devotional habit of countlessgenerations of pious forerunners is strong in them. Consequently theyhave invented things like these lectures to go to, with a professorinstead of a priest, and a lantern slide of a stomach by way ofaltar-piece; and alcohol they make their Devil, and their god isHygiene--a curious and instructive case of mental inertia. I understand, too, there are several other temples of this Cult in London--South PlaceChapel and Essex Hall, for instance, where they worship the Spirit ofthe Innermost. But the thing that struck me so oddly was the number ofbald heads glimmering faintly in the reflected light from the lanterncircle. And that set me thinking upon a difficulty I have never beenable to surmount. 

You see these people, and lots of other people, too, believe in a thingthey call Natural Selection. They think, as part of that belief, thatmen are descended from hairy simian ancestors; assert that even ahundred thousand years ago the ancestor was hairy--hairy, heavy, andalmost as much a brute as if he lived in Mr. Arthur Morrison'sWhitechapel. For my own part I think it a pretty theory, and wouldcertainly accept it were it not for one objection. The thing I cannotunderstand is how our ancestor lost that hair. I see no reason why heshould not have kept his hair on. According to the theory of naturalselection, materially favourable variations survive, unfavourabledisappear; the only way in which the loss is to be accounted for is byexplaining it as advantageous; but where is the advantage of losing yourhair? The disadvantages appear to me to be innumerable. A thick coveringof hair, like that of a Capuchin monkey, would be an invaluableprotection against sudden changes of temperature, far better than anyclothing can be. Had I that, for instance, I should be rid of theperpetual cold in the head that so disfigures my life; and themultitudes who die annually of chills, bronchitis, and consumption, andmost of those who suffer from rheumatic pains, neuralgia, and so forth, would not so die and suffer. And in the past, when clothing was lessperfect and firing a casual commodity, the disadvantages of losing hairwere all the greater. In very hot countries hair is perhaps even moreimportant in saving the possessor from the excessive glare of the sun. Before the invention of the hat, thick hair on the head at least wasabsolutely essential to save the owner of the skull from sunstroke. That, perhaps, explains why the hair has been retained there, and why itis going now that we have hats, but it certainly does not explain why ithas gone from the rest of the body. 

One--remarkably weak--explanation has been propounded: an appeal to ourbelief in human vanity. He picked it out by the roots, because hethought he was prettier without. But that is no reason at all. Supposehe did, it would not affect his children. Professor Weismann has atleast convinced scientific people of this: that the characters acquiredby a parent are rarely, if ever, transmitted to its offspring. Anindividual given to such wanton denudation would simply be at adisadvantage with his decently covered fellows, would fall behind in therace of life, and perish with his kind. Besides, if man has been at suchpains to uncover his skin, why have quite a large number of the mostrespected among us such a passionate desire to have it covered up again?

Yet that is the only attempted explanation I have ever come upon, andthe thing has often worried me. I think it is just as probably a changein dietary. I have noticed that most of your vegetarians areshock-headed, ample-bearded men, and I have heard the Ancestor wasvegetarian. Or it may be, I sometimes fancy, a kind of inherentdisposition on the part of your human animal to dwindle. That came backin my memory vividly as I looked at the long rows of Sceptics, typicalAdvanced people, and marked their glistening crania. I recalled otherlosses. Here is Humanity, thought I, growing hairless, growing bald, growing toothless, unemotional, irreligious, losing the end joint of thelittle toe, dwindling in its osseous structures, its jawbone and browridges, losing all the full, rich curvatures of its primordial beauty. 

It seems almost like what the scientific people call a Law. And bystrenuous efforts the creature just keeps pace with his losses--devisesclothes, wigs, artificial teeth, paddings, shoes--what civilised beingcould use his bare feet for his ordinary locomotion? Imagine him on afurze-sprinkled golf links. Then stays, an efficient substitute for theeffete feminine backbone. So the thing goes on. Long ago his superficiesbecame artificial, and now the human being shrinks like a burning cigar, and the figure he has abandoned remains distended with artificial ashes, dead dry protections against the exposures he so unaccountably fears. Will he go on shrinking, I wonder?--become at last a mere lurking atomyin his own recesses, a kind of hermit crab, the bulk of him a complexmechanism, a thing of rags and tatters and papier-maché, stolen from theearth and the plant-world and his fellow beasts? And at last may he notdisappear altogether, none missing him, and a democracy of honestmachinery, neatly clad and loaded up with sound principles of action, walk to and fro in a regenerate world? Thus it was my mind went dreamingin St. George's Hall. But presently, as I say, came the last word aboutstomachs, and the bald men woke up, rattled their umbrellas, said it wasvastly interesting, and went toddling off home in an ecstasy of advancedLiberalism. And we two returned to the place whence we came. 

OF A BOOK UNWRITTEN

Accomplished literature is all very well in its way, no doubt, but muchmore fascinating to the contemplative man are the books that have notbeen written. These latter are no trouble to hold; there are no pages toturn over. One can read them in bed on sleepless nights without acandle. Turning to another topic, primitive man in the works of thedescriptive anthropologist is certainly a very entertaining and quaintperson, but the man of the future, if we only had the facts, wouldappeal to us more strongly. Yet where are the books? As Ruskin has saidsomewhere, _à propos_ of Darwin, it is not what man has been, but whathe will be, that should interest us. 

The contemplative man in his easy-chair, pondering this saying, suddenlybeholds in the fire, through the blue haze of his pipe, one of thesegreat unwritten volumes. It is large in size, heavy in lettering, seemingly by one Professor Holzkopf, presumably Professor atWeissnichtwo. "The Necessary Characters of the Man of the Remote Futurededuced from the Existing Stream of Tendency" is the title. The worthyProfessor is severely scientific in his method, and deliberate andcautious in his deductions, the contemplative man discovers as hepursues his theme, and yet the conclusions are, to say the least, remarkable. We must figure the excellent Professor expanding the matterat great length, voluminously technical, but the contemplativeman--since he has access to the only copy--is clearly at liberty to makesuch extracts and abstracts as he chooses for the unscientific reader. Here, for instance, is something of practicable lucidity that heconsiders admits of quotation. "The theory of evolution, " writes theProfessor, "is now universally accepted by zoologists and botanists, andit is applied unreservedly to man. Some question, indeed, whether itfits his soul, but all agree it accounts for his body. Man, we areassured, is descended from ape-like ancestors, moulded by circumstancesinto men, and these apes again were derived from ancestral forms of alower order, and so up from the primordial protoplasmic jelly. Clearlythen, man, unless the order of the universe has come to an end, willundergo further modification in the future, and at last cease to be man, giving rise to some other type of animated being. At once thefascinating question arises, What will this being be? Let us considerfor a little the plastic influences at work upon our species. 

"Just as the bird is the creature of the wing, and is all moulded andmodified to flying, and just as the fish is the creature that swims, andhas had to meet the inflexible conditions of a problem in hydrodynamics, so man is the creature of the brain; he will live by intelligence, andnot by physical strength, if he live at all. So that much that is purely'animal' about him is being, and must be, beyond all question, suppressed in his ultimate development. Evolution is no mechanicaltendency making for perfection, according to the ideas current in theyear of grace 1897; it is simply the continual adaptation of plasticlife, for good or evil, to the circumstances that surround it.... Wenotice this decay of the animal part around us now, in the loss of teethand hair, in the dwindling hands and feet of men, in their smaller jaws, and slighter mouths and ears. Man now does by wit and machinery andverbal agreement what he once did by bodily toil; for once he had tocatch his dinner, capture his wife, run away from his enemies, andcontinually exercise himself, for love of himself, to perform theseduties well. But now all this is changed. Cabs, trains, trams, renderspeed unnecessary, the pursuit of food becomes easier; his wife is nolonger hunted, but rather, in view of the crowded matrimonial market, seeks him out. One needs wits now to live, and physical activity is adrug, a snare even; it seeks artificial outlets, and overflows ingames. Athleticism takes up time and cripples a man in his competitiveexaminations, and in business. So is your fleshly man handicappedagainst his subtler brother. He is unsuccessful in life, does not marry. The better adapted survive. "

The coming man, then, will clearly have a larger brain, and a slighterbody than the present. But the Professor makes one exception to this. "The human hand, since it is the teacher and interpreter of the brain, will become constantly more powerful and subtle as the rest of themusculature dwindles. "

Then in the physiology of these children of men, with their expandingbrains, their great sensitive hands and diminishing bodies, greatchanges were necessarily worked. "We see now, " says the Professor, "inthe more intellectual sections of humanity an increasing sensitivenessto stimulants, a growing inability to grapple with such a matter asalcohol, for instance. No longer can men drink a bottleful of port; somecannot drink tea; it is too exciting for their highly-wrought nervoussystems. The process will go on, and the Sir Wilfrid Lawson of some neargeneration may find it his duty and pleasure to make the silvery sprayof his wisdom tintinnabulate against the tea-tray. These facts leadnaturally to the comprehension of others. Fresh raw meat was once a dishfor a king. Now refined persons scarcely touch meat unless it iscunningly disguised. Again, consider the case of turnips; the raw rootis now a thing almost uneatable, but once upon a time a turnip must havebeen a rare and fortunate find, to be torn up with delirious eagernessand devoured in ecstasy. The time will come when the change will affectall the other fruits of the earth. Even now, only the young of mankindeat apples raw--the young always preserving ancestral characteristicsafter their disappearance in the adult. Some day even boys will regardapples without emotion. The boy of the future, one must believe, willgaze on an apple with the same unspeculative languor with which he nowregards a flint"--in the absence of a cat. 

"Furthermore, fresh chemical discoveries came into action as modifyinginfluences upon men. In the prehistoric period even, man's mouth hadceased to be an instrument for grasping food; it is still growingcontinually less prehensile, his front teeth are smaller, his lipsthinner and less muscular; he has a new organ, a mandible not ofirreparable tissue, but of bone and steel--a knife and fork. There is noreason why things should stop at partial artificial division thusafforded; there is every reason, on the contrary, to believe mystatement that some cunning exterior mechanism will presently masticateand insalivate his dinner, relieve his diminishing salivary glands andteeth, and at last altogether abolish them. "

Then what is not needed disappears. What use is there for external ears, nose, and brow ridges now? The two latter once protected the eye frominjury in conflict and in falls, but in these days we keep on our legs, and at peace. Directing his thoughts in this way, the reader maypresently conjure up a dim, strange vision of the latter-day face: "Eyeslarge, lustrous, beautiful, soulful; above them, no longer separated byrugged brow ridges, is the top of the head, a glistening, hairless dome, terete and beautiful; no craggy nose rises to disturb by its unmeaningshadows the symmetry of that calm face, no vestigial ears project; themouth is a small, perfectly round aperture, toothless and gumless, jawless, unanimal, no futile emotions disturbing its roundness as itlies, like the harvest moon or the evening star, in the wide firmamentof face. " Such is the face the Professor beholds in the future. 

Of course parallel modifications will also affect the body and limbs. "Every day so many hours and so much energy are required for digestion;a gross torpidity, a carnal lethargy, seizes on mortal men after dinner. This may and can be avoided. Man's knowledge of organic chemistry widensdaily. Already he can supplement the gastric glands by artificialdevices. Every doctor who administers physic implies that the bodilyfunctions may be artificially superseded. We have pepsine, pancreatine, artificial gastric acid--I know not what like mixtures. Why, then, should not the stomach be ultimately superannuated altogether? A manwho could not only leave his dinner to be cooked, but also leave it tobe masticated and digested, would have vast social advantages over hisfood-digesting fellow. This is, let me remind you here, the calmest, most passionless, and scientific working out of the future forms ofthings from the data of the present. At this stage the following factsmay perhaps stimulate your imagination. There can be no doubt that manyof the Arthropods, a division of animals more ancient and even now moreprevalent than the Vertebrata, have undergone more phylogeneticmodification"--a beautiful phrase--"than even the most modified ofvertebrated animals. Simple forms like the lobsters display a primitivestructure parallel with that of the fishes. However, in such a form asthe degraded 'Chondracanthus, ' the structure has diverged far morewidely from its original type than in man. Among some of these mosthighly modified crustaceans the whole of the alimentary canal--that is, all the food-digesting and food-absorbing parts--form a useless solidcord: the animal is nourished--it is a parasite--by absorption of thenutritive fluid in which it swims. Is there any absolute impossibilityin supposing man to be destined for a similar change; to imagine him nolonger dining, with unwieldy paraphernalia of servants and plates, uponfood queerly dyed and distorted, but nourishing himself in elegantsimplicity by immersion in a tub of nutritive fluid?

"There grows upon the impatient imagination a building, a dome ofcrystal, across the translucent surface of which flushes of the mostglorious and pure prismatic colours pass and fade and change. In thecentre of this transparent chameleon-tinted dome is a circular whitemarble basin filled with some clear, mobile, amber liquid, and in thisplunge and float strange beings. Are they birds?

"They are the descendants of man--at dinner. Watch them as they hop ontheir hands--a method of progression advocated already byBjornsen--about the pure white marble floor. Great hands they have, enormous brains, soft, liquid, soulful eyes. Their whole muscularsystem, their legs, their abdomens, are shrivelled to nothing, adangling, degraded pendant to their minds. "

The further visions of the Professor are less alluring. 

"The animals and plants die away before men, except such as he preservesfor his food or delight, or such as maintain a precarious footing abouthim as commensals and parasites. These vermin and pests must succumbsooner or later to his untiring inventiveness and incessantly growingdiscipline. When he learns (the chemists are doubtless getting towardsthe secret now) to do the work of chlorophyll without the plant, thenhis necessity for other animals and plants upon the earth willdisappear. Sooner or later, where there is no power of resistance and nonecessity, there comes extinction. In the last days man will be alone onthe earth, and his food will be won by the chemist from the dead rocksand the sunlight. 

"And--one may learn the full reason in that explicit and painfully rightbook, the _Data of Ethics_--the irrational fellowship of man will giveplace to an intellectual co-operation, and emotion fall within thescheme of reason. Undoubtedly it is a long time yet, but a long time isnothing in the face of eternity, and every man who dares think of thesethings must look eternity in the face. "

Then the earth is ever radiating away heat into space, the Professorreminds us. And so at last comes a vision of earthly cherubim, hoppingheads, great unemotional intelligences, and little hearts, fightingtogether perforce and fiercely against the cold that grips them tighterand tighter. For the world is cooling--slowly and inevitably it growscolder as the years roll by. "We must imagine these creatures, " says theProfessor, "in galleries and laboratories deep down in the bowels of theearth. The whole world will be snow-covered and piled with ice; allanimals, all vegetation vanished, except this last branch of the tree oflife. The last men have gone even deeper, following the diminishing heatof the planet, and vast metallic shafts and ventilators make way for theair they need. "

So with a glimpse of these human tadpoles, in their deep close gallery, with their boring machinery ringing away, and artificial lights glaringand casting black shadows, the Professor's horoscope concludes. Humanityin dismal retreat before the cold, changed beyond recognition. Yet theProfessor is reasonable enough, his facts are current science, hismethods orderly. The contemplative man shivers at the prospect, startsup to poke the fire, and the whole of this remarkable book that is notwritten vanishes straightway in the smoke of his pipe. This is the greatadvantage of this unwritten literature: there is no bother in changingthe books. The contemplative man consoles himself for the destiny of thespecies with the lost portion of Kubla Khan. 

THE EXTINCTION OF MAN

It is part of the excessive egotism of the human animal that the bareidea of its extinction seems incredible to it. "A world without _us_!"it says, as a heady young Cephalaspis might have said it in the oldSilurian sea. But since the Cephalaspis and the Coccostëus many a fineanimal has increased and multiplied upon the earth, lorded it over landor sea without a rival, and passed at last into the night. Surely it isnot so unreasonable to ask why man should be an exception to the rule. From the scientific standpoint at least any reason for such exception ishard to find. 

No doubt man is undisputed master at the present time--at least of mostof the land surface; but so it has been before with other animals. Letus consider what light geology has to throw upon this. The great landand sea reptiles of the Mesozoic period, for instance, seem to have beenas secure as humanity is now in their pre-eminence. But they passed awayand left no descendants when the new orders of the mammals emerged fromtheir obscurity. So, too, the huge Titanotheria of the Americancontinent, and all the powerful mammals of Pleistocene South America, the sabre-toothed lion, for instance, and the Machrauchenia suddenlycame to a finish when they were still almost at the zenith of theirrule. _And in no case does the record of the fossils show a reallydominant species succeeded by its own descendants. _ What has usuallyhappened in the past appears to be the emergence of some type of animalhitherto rare and unimportant, and the extinction, not simply of thepreviously ruling species, but of most of the forms that are at allclosely related to it. Sometimes, indeed, as in the case of the extinctgiants of South America, they vanished without any considerable rivals, victims of pestilence, famine, or, it may be, of that cumulativeinefficiency that comes of a too undisputed life. So that the analogy ofgeology, at anyrate, is against this too acceptable view of man'scertain tenure of the earth for the next few million years or so. 

And, after all, even now man is by no means such a master of thekingdoms of life as he is apt to imagine. The sea, that mysteriousnursery of living things, is for all practical purposes beyond hiscontrol. The low-water mark is his limit. Beyond that he may do a littlewith seine and dredge, murder a few million herrings a year as they comein to spawn, butcher his fellow air-breather, the whale, or haul now andthen an unlucky king-crab or strange sea-urchin out of the deep water, in the name of science; but the life of the sea as a whole knows himnot, plays out its slow drama of change and development unheeding him, and may in the end, in mere idle sport, throw up some new terrestrialdenizens, some new competitor for space to live in and food to liveupon, that will sweep him and all his little contrivances out ofexistence, as certainly and inevitably as he has swept away auk, bison, and dodo during the last two hundred years. 

For instance, there are the Crustacea. As a group the crabs and lobstersare confined below the high-water mark. But experiments in air-breathingare no doubt in progress in this group--we already have tropicalland-crabs--and as far as we know there is no reason why in the futurethese creatures should not increase in size and terrestrial capacity. Inthe past we have the evidence of the fossil _Paradoxides_ that creaturesof this kind may at least attain a length of six feet, and, consideringtheir intense pugnacity, a crab of such dimensions would be asformidable a creature as one could well imagine. And their amphibiouscapacity would give them an advantage against us such as at present isonly to be found in the case of the alligator or crocodile. If weimagine a shark that could raid out upon the land, or a tiger that couldtake refuge in the sea, we should have a fair suggestion of what aterrible monster a large predatory crab might prove. And so far aszoological science goes we must, at least, admit that such a creature isan evolutionary possibility. 

Then, again, the order of the Cephalopods, to which belong thecuttle-fish and the octopus (sacred to Victor Hugo), may be, for all wecan say to the contrary, an order with a future. Their kindred, theGastropods, have, in the case of the snail and slug, learnt the trick ofair-breathing. And not improbably there are even now genera of thisorder that have escaped the naturalist, or even well-known genera whosepossibilities in growth and dietary are still unknown. Suppose some daya specimen of a new species is caught off the coast of Kent. It excitesremark at a Royal Society soirée, engenders a Science Note or so, "AHuge Octopus!" and in the next year or so three or four other specimenscome to hand, and the thing becomes familiar. "Probably a new and largervariety of _Octopus_ so-and-so, hitherto supposed to be tropical, " saysProfessor Gargoyle, and thinks he has disposed of it. Then conceive somemysterious boating accidents and deaths while bathing. A large animal ofthis kind coming into a region of frequent wrecks might so easilyacquire a preferential taste for human nutriment, just as the Coloradobeetle acquired a new taste for the common potato and gave up its oldfood-plants some years ago. Then perhaps a school or pack or flock of_Octopus gigas_ would be found busy picking the sailors off a strandedship, and then in the course of a few score years it might begin tostroll up the beaches and batten on excursionists. Soon it would be acommon feature of the watering-places--possibly at last commoner thanexcursionists. Suppose such a creature were to appear--and it is, werepeat, a possibility, if perhaps a remote one--how could it be foughtagainst? Something might be done by torpedoes; but, so far as our pastknowledge goes, man has no means of seriously diminishing the numbers ofany animal of the most rudimentary intelligence that made its fastnessin the sea. 

Even on land it is possible to find creatures that with a littlemodification might become excessively dangerous to the human ascendency. Most people have read of the migratory ants of Central Africa, againstwhich no man can stand. On the march they simply clear out wholevillages, drive men and animals before them in headlong rout, and killand eat every living creature they can capture. One wonders why theyhave not already spread the area of their devastations. But at presentno doubt they have their natural checks, of ant-eating birds, or whatnot. In the near future it may be that the European immigrant, as hesets the balance of life swinging in his vigorous manner, may kill offthese ant-eating animals, or otherwise unwittingly remove the checksthat now keep these terrible little pests within limits. And once theybegin to spread in real earnest, it is hard to see how their advancecould be stopped. A world devoured by ants seems incredible now, simplybecause it is not within our experience; but a naturalist would have adull imagination who could not see in the numerous species of ants, andin their already high intelligence, far more possibility of strangedevelopments than we have in the solitary human animal. And no doubt theidea of the small and feeble organism of man, triumphant andomnipresent, would have seemed equally incredible to an intelligentmammoth or a palæolithic cave bear. 

And, finally, there is always the prospect of a new disease. As yetscience has scarcely touched more than the fringe of the probabilitiesassociated with the minute fungi that constitute our zymotic diseases. But the bacilli have no more settled down into their final quiescencethan have men; like ourselves, they are adapting themselves to newconditions and acquiring new powers. The plagues of the Middle Ages, forinstance, seem to have been begotten of a strange bacillus engenderedunder conditions that sanitary science, in spite of its panacea ofdrainage, still admits are imperfectly understood, and for all we knoweven now we may be quite unwittingly evolving some new and more terribleplague--a plague that will not take ten or twenty or thirty per cent. , as plagues have done in the past, but the entire hundred. 

No; man's complacent assumption of the future is too confident. Wethink, because things have been easy for mankind as a whole for ageneration or so, we are going on to perfect comfort and security in thefuture. We think that we shall always go to work at ten and leave off atfour, and have dinner at seven for ever and ever. But these foursuggestions, out of a host of others, must surely do a little againstthis complacency. Even now, for all we can tell, the coming terror maybe crouching for its spring and the fall of humanity be at hand. In thecase of every other predominant animal the world has ever seen, Irepeat, the hour of its complete ascendency has been the eve of itsentire overthrow. But if some poor story-writing man ventures to figurethis sober probability in a tale, not a reviewer in London but will tellhim his theme is the utterly impossible. And, when the thing happens, one may doubt if even then one will get the recognition one deserves. 

THE WRITING OF ESSAYS

The art of the essayist is so simple, so entirely free from canons ofcriticism, and withal so delightful, that one must needs wonder why allmen are not essayists. Perhaps people do not know how easy it is. Orperhaps beginners are misled. Rightly taught it may be learnt in a brieften minutes or so, what art there is in it. And all the rest is as easyas wandering among woodlands on a bright morning in the spring. 

Then sit you down if you would join us, taking paper, pens, and ink; andmark this, your pen is a matter of vital moment. For every pen writesits own sort of essay, and pencils also after their kind. The inkperhaps may have its influence too, and the paper; but paramount is thepen. This, indeed, is the fundamental secret of essay-writing. Wed anyman to his proper pen, and the delights of composition and the birth ofan essay are assured. Only many of us wander through the earth and nevermeet with her--futile and lonely men. 

And, of all pens, your quill for essays that are literature. There is asubtle informality, a delightful easiness, perhaps even a faintimmorality essentially literary, about the quill. The quill is rich insuggestion and quotation. There are quills that would quote youMontaigne and Horace in the hands of a trades-union delegate. And thosequirky, idle noises this pen makes are delightful, and would break youreasy fluency with wit. All the classical essayists wrote with a quill, and Addison used the most expensive kind the Government purchased. Andthe beginning of the inferior essay was the dawn of the cheap steelpen. 

The quill nibs they sell to fit into ordinary pen-holders are no truequills at all, lacking dignity, and may even lead you into the NewHumour if you trust overmuch to their use. After a proper quill commendme to a stumpy BB pencil; you get less polish and broader effects, butyou are still doing good literature. Sometimes the work is close--Mr. George Meredith, for instance, is suspected of a soft pencil--and alwaysit is blunter than quill work and more terse. With a hard pencil no mancan write anything but a graceless style--a kind of east wind air itgives--and smile you cannot. So that it is often used for seriousarticles in the half-crown reviews. 

There follows the host of steel pens. That bald, clear, scientificstyle, all set about with words like "evolution" and "environment, "which aims at expressing its meaning with precision and an exemplaryeconomy of words, is done with fine steel nibs--twelve a penny at anystationer's. The J pen to the lady novelist, and the stylograph to thedevil--your essayist must not touch the things. So much for the pen. Ifyou cannot write essays easily, that is where the hitch comes in. Get abox of a different kind of pen and begin again, and so on again andagain until despair or joy arrests you. 

As for a typewriter, you could no more get an essay out of a typewriterthan you could play a sonata upon its keys. No essay was ever writtenwith a typewriter yet, nor ever will be. Besides its impossibility, thesuggestion implies a brutal disregard of the division of labour by whichwe live and move and have our being. If the essayist typewrite, theunemployed typewriter, who is commonly a person of superior educationand capacity, might take to essays, and where is your living then? Onemight as reasonably start at once with the Linotype and print one's witand humour straight away. And taking the invasion of other trades onestep further one might, after an attempt to sell one's own newspaper, even get to the pitch of having to read it oneself. No; even essayistsmust be reasonable. If its mechanical clitter-clatter did not rendercomposition impossible, the typewriter would still be beneath the honourof a literary man. 

Then for the paper. The luxurious, expensive, small-sized cream-laidnote is best, since it makes your essay choice and compact; and, failingthat, ripped envelopes and the backs of bills. Some men love ruledpaper, because they can write athwart the lines, and some take thefly-leaves of their friends' books. But whosoever writes on cheap sermonpaper full of hairs should write far away from the woman he loves, lesthe offend her ears. It is good, however, for a terse, forcible style. 

The ink should be glossy black as it leaves your pen, for polishedEnglish. Violet inks lead to sham sentiment, and blue-black tovulgarity. Red ink essays are often good, but usually unfit forpublication. 

This is as much almost as anyone need know to begin essay writing. Givenyour proper pen and ink, or pencil and paper, you simply sit down andwrite the thing. The value of an essay is not its matter, but its mood. You must be comfortable, of course; an easy-chair with arm-rests, slippers, and a book to write upon are usually employed, and you must befed recently, and your body clothed with ease rather than grandeur. Forthe rest, do not trouble to stick to your subject, or any subject; andtake no thought for the editor or the reader, for your essay should beas spontaneous as the lilies of the field. 

So long as you do not begin with a definition you may begin anyhow. Anabrupt beginning is much admired, after the fashion of the clown's entrythrough the chemist's window. Then whack at your reader at once, hit himover the head with the sausages, brisk him up with the poker, bundle himinto the wheelbarrow, and so carry him away with you before he knowswhere you are. You can do what you like with a reader then, if you onlykeep him nicely on the move. So long as you are happy your reader willbe so too. But one law must be observed: an essay, like a dog thatwishes to please, must have a lively tail, short but as waggish aspossible. Like a rocket, an essay goes only with fizzle and sparks atthe end of it. And, know, that to stop writing is the secret of writingan essay; the essay that the public loves dies young. 

THE PARKES MUSEUM

THE PLACE TO SPEND A HAPPY DAY

By way of jest, my morning daily paper constantly includes in its menuof "To-day" the Parkes Museum, Margaret Street, adding, seductively, "free"; and no doubt many a festive Jonas Chuzzlewit has preened himselffor a sight-seeing, and all unaware of the multitudes of MargaretStreets--surely only Charlottes of that ilk are more abundant--hasstarted forth, he and his feminine, to find this Parkes Museum. One mayeven conceive a rare Bank Holiday thoughtfully put aside for the quest, and spent all vainly in the asking of policemen, and in traversing thisvast and tiresome metropolis, from Margaret Street to Margaret Street, the freshness of the morning passing into the dry heat of the day, fatigue spreading from the feet upwards, discussion, difference, denial, "words, " and a day of recreation dying at last into a sunset of luridsulks. Such possibility was too painful to think of, and a philanthropicinquirer has at last by persistent investigation won the secret of theMissing Museum and opened the way to it for all future investigators. 

The Margaret Street in question is an apparently derelict thoroughfare, opening into Great Portland Street. Immemorial dust is upon itspavements, and a profound silence broods over its vacant roadway. Theblinds of its houses are mostly down, and, where the blackness of somewindow suggests a dark interior, no face appears to reassure us in ourdoubt of humanity within. It may be that somewhen in the past the entirepopulation of this street set out on a boating party up the river, andwas overset by steam launches, and so never returned, or perchance ithas all been locked up for a long term of imprisonment--though thehouses seem almost too respectable for that; or the glamour of theSleeping Beauty is upon it all. Certainly we saw the figure of a porterin an attitude of repose in the little glass lodge in the museumdoorway. He _may_ have been asleep. But we feared to touch him--andindeed slipped very stealthily by him--lest he should suddenly crumbleinto dust. 

And so to the Museum and its wonders. This Parkes Museum is a kind ofarmoury of hygiene, a place full of apparatus for being healthy--inbrief, a museum of sanitary science. To that large and growing class ofpeople who take no thought of anything but what they eat and what theydrink, and wherewithal they should be clothed, it should prove intenselyinteresting. Apart from the difficulty of approach we cannot understandhow it is so neglected by an intelligent public. You can see germicidesand a model convict prison, Pentonville cells in miniature, statisticaldiagrams and drain pipes--if only there was a little more aboutheredity, it would be exactly the kind of thing that is popular inliterature now, as literature goes. And yet excepting ourselves and thesleeping porter--if he was sleeping--and the indistinct and motionlessoutline, visible through a glass door, of a human body sitting over abook, there was not a suggestion or memory of living humanity about theplace. 

The exhibits of food are especially remarkable. We cleaned the glasscase with our sleeves and peered at the most appetising revelations. There are dozens of little bottles hermetically sealed, containing suchcurios as a sample of "Bacon Common (Gammon) Uncooked, " and then thesame cooked--it looked no nicer cooked--Irish sausage, pork sausage, black pudding, Welsh mutton, and all kinds of rare and exquisitefeeding. There are ever so many cases of this kind of thing. We saw, forinstance, further along, several good specimens of the common oystershell (_Ostrea edulis_), cockle shells, and whelks, both "almonds" and"whites, " and then came breadstuffs. The breadstuffs are particularlyimpressive, of a grey, scientific aspect, a hard, hoary antiquity. Wealways knew that stale bread was good for one, but yet the Parkes Museumstartled us with the antique pattern it recommended. There was a muffin, too, identified and labelled, but without any Latin name, a capturedcrumpet, a collection of buns, a dinner-roll, and a something novel tous, called Pumpernickel, that we had rather be without, or rather--forthe expression is ambiguous--that we had rather not be without, butaltogether remote from. And all these things have been tested by ananalyst, with the most painful results. Nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, andthe like nasty chemical things seem indeed to have occurred ineverything he touched. Those sturdy mendicants who go about complainingthat they cannot get food should visit this Parkes Museum and see whatfood is really like, and learn contentment with their lot. 

There were no real vegetables, but only the ideals of a firm ofseedsmen, made of wax and splendidly coloured, with something of theboldness and vigour of Michael Angelo about the modelling of them. Andamong other food stuffs were sweetmeats and yellow capers, liver flukes, British wines, and snuff. At last we felt replete with food stuffs, andwent on to see the models to illustrate ventilation, and the exhibits ofhygienic glazed tiles arranged around a desert lecture-theatre. Hygienictiles stimulate the eye vigorously rather than relax it by any æstheticweakness; and the crematory appliances are so attractive as they are, and must have such an added charm of neatness and brightness whenalight, that one longs to lose a relative or so forthwith, for the merepleasure of seeing them in operation. 

A winding staircase designed upon hygienic principles, to bump your headat intervals, takes one to a little iron gallery full of the mostcharming and varied display of cooking-stoves and oil-lamps. Here, also, there are flaunted the resources of civilisation for the Prevention ofAccidents, which resources are four, namely, a patent fire-escape, apatent carriage pole, a coal plate, and a dog muzzle. But the labels, though verbose, are scarcely full enough. They do not tell you, forinstance, if you wish to prevent cramp while bathing, whether the dogmuzzle or the coal plate should be employed, nor do they show how thefire-escape will prevent the explosion of a paraffin lamp. However, thisis a detail. We feel assured that no intelligent person will regret avisit to this most interesting and instructive exhibition. It offers youvaluable hints how to live, and suggests the best and tidiest way inwhich you can, when dead, dispose of your body. We feel assured that thepublic only needs this intimation of its whereabouts to startle thedeath-like slumbers of Margaret Street with an unaccustomed tumult. Andthe first to arrive will, no doubt, find legibly and elegantly writtenin the dust that covers the collection the record of its discovery byEuphemia and me. 

BLEAK MARCH IN EPPING FOREST

All along the selvage of Epping Forest there was excitement. Before theswallows, before the violets, long before the cuckoo, with only untimelyhoneysuckle bushes showing a trace of green, two trippers had been seentraversing the district, making their way towards High Beech, andsettling awhile near the Forest Hotel. Whether they were belatedsurvivals from last season or exceptionally early hatchings of thecoming year, was a question of considerable moment to the natives, andhas since engaged the attention of the local Natural History Society. But we know that, as a matter of fact, they were of little omen, beingindeed but insignificant people from Hampstead and not true trippers atall, who were curious to see this forest in raw winter. 

For some have argued that there is no Epping Forest at all in thewinter-time; that it is, in fact, taken up and put away, and thatagriculture is pursued there. Others assert that the Forest is shroudedwith wrappers, even as a literary man's study is shrouded by dusty womenwhen they clean him out. Others, again, have supposed that it is adelightful place in winter, far more delightful than in summer, but thatthis is not published, because no writing man hath ever been there inthe cold season. And much more of unreal speculation, but nothing whichbore upon it the stamp of truth. So these two--and I am one of thetwo--went down to Epping Forest to see that it was still there, and howit fared in the dismal weather. 

The sky was a greasy grey that guttered down to the horizon, and thewind smote damp and chill. There was a white fringe of ice in thecart-wheel ruts, but withal the frost was not so crisp as to prevent athin and slippery glaze of softened clay upon the road. The decayingtriumphal arch outside the station sadly lacked a coat of paint, and wasindistinctly regretful of remote royal visits and processions gone forever. Then we passed shuddering by many vacant booths that had onceresounded with the revelry of ninepenny teas and the gingerbeer cork'sstaccato, and their forms were piled together and their trestlesoverturned. And the wind ravened, and no human beings were to be seen. So up the hill to the left, and along the road leading by deviouswindings between the black hedges and through clay wallows to the hillypart round High Beech. 

But upon the shoulder of a hill we turned to a gate to scrape off themud that made our boots unwieldy. At that moment came a threadbare placein the cloudy curtain that was sweeping across the sun, and our shadowsshowed themselves for an instant to comfort us. The amber patch ofsunlight presently slipped from us and travelled down the meadowstowards the distant blue of the hills by Waltham Abbey, touching withmiraculous healing a landscape erst dead and shrouded in grey. Thistransitory gleam of light gladdened us mightily at the time, but it madethe after-sky seem all the darker. 

So through the steep and tortuous village to High Beech, and thenleaving the road we wandered in among big trees and down slopes ankledeep with rustling leaves towards Chingford again. Here was pleasanterwalking than the thawing clay, but now and then one felt the threat ofan infinite oozy softness beneath the stiff frozen leaves. Once againwhile we were here the drifting haze of the sky became thinner, and thesmooth green-grey beech stems and rugged oak trunks were brightlyilluminated. But only for a moment, and thereafter the sky became notsimply unsympathetic but ominous. And the misery of the wind grew apace. 

Presently we wandered into that sinister corner of the Forest where thebeech trees have grown so closely together that they have had perforceto lift their branches vertically. Divested of leaves, the bare greylimbs of these seem strangely restless. These trees, reaching soeagerly upward, have an odd resemblance to the weird figures of horrorin which William Blake delighted--arms, hands, hair, all stretchintensely to the zenith. They seem to be straining away from the spot towhich they are rooted. It is a Laocoon grouping, a wordless concentratedstruggle for the sunlight, and disagreeably impressive. The tripperslonged to talk and were tongue-tied; they looked now and then over theirshoulders. They were glad when the eerie influence was passed, thoughthey traversed a morass to get away from it. 

Then across an open place, dismal with the dun hulls of lost cows andthe clatter of their bells, over a brook full of dead leaves and edgedwith rusty clay, through a briery thicket that would fain have detainedus, and so to a pathway of succulent green, that oozed black under ourfeet. Here some poor lost wayfarer has blazed his way with rustic seats, now rheumatic and fungus-eaten. And here, too, the wind, which hadsought us howling, found us at last, and stung us sharply with a showerof congealing raindrops. This grew to a steady downfall as the opentowards Chingford station was approached at last, after devious windingin the Forest. Then, coming upon the edge of the wood and seeing thelone station against the grey sky, we broke into a shout and beganrunning. But it is dismal running on imperfectly frozen clay, in rainand a gusty wind. We slipped and floundered, and one of us wept sorethat she should never see her home again. And worse, the only trainsleeping in the station was awakened by our cries, and, with an eldritchshriek at the unseasonable presence of trippers, fled incontinentlyLondonward. 

Smeared with clay and dead leaves almost beyond human likeness, westaggered into the derelict station, and found from an outcast porterthat perhaps another train might after the lapse of two hours accumulatesufficiently to take us back to Gospel Oak and a warm world again. So wespeered if there were amusements to be got in this place, and he told us"some very nice walks. " To refrain from homicide we left the station, and sought a vast red hotel that loomed through the drift on a steephill, and in the side of this a door that had not been locked. Happilyone had been forgotten, and, entering at last, we roused a hibernatingwaiter, and he exhumed us some of his winter victual. In this way wewere presently to some degree comforted, and could play chess until atrain had been sent for our relief. And this did at last happen, andtowards the hour of dinner we rejoined our anxious friends, and all theevening time we boasted of a pleasant day and urged them to go even aswe had gone. 

THE THEORY OF QUOTATION

The nobler method of quotation is not to quote at all. For why shouldone repeat good things that are already written? Are not the words intheir fittest context in the original? Clearly, then, your new settingcannot be quite so congruous, which is, forthwith, an admission ofincongruity. Your quotation is evidently a plug in a leak, an apologyfor a gap in your own words. But your vulgar author will even go out ofhis way to make the clothing of his thoughts thus heterogeneous. Hecounts every stolen scrap he can work in an improvement--a literarycaddis worm. Yet would he consider it improvement to put a piece of eventhe richest of old tapestry or gold embroidery into his new pair ofbreeks?

The passion for quotation is peculiar to literature. We do not glory toquote our costume, dress in cast-off court robes, or furnish our housesfrom the marine store. Neither are we proud of alien initials on thedomestic silver. We like things new and primarily our own. We have awholesome instinct against infection, except, it seems, in the matter ofideas. An authorling will deliberately inoculate his copy with theinverted comma bacillus, till the page swims unsteadily, counting thefever a glow of pure literary healthiness. Yet this reproduction, rightly considered, is merely a proof that his appetite for books hasrun beyond his digestion. Or his industry may be to seek. You expect anomelette, and presently up come the unbroken eggs. A tissue of quotationwisely looked at is indeed but a motley garment, eloquent either of afool, or an idle knave in a fool's disguise. 

Nevertheless at times--the truth must be told--we must quote. As foradmitting that we have quoted, that is another matter altogether. Butthe other man's phrase will lie at times so close in one's mind to thetrend of one's thoughts, that, all virtue notwithstanding, they mustneeds run into the groove of it. There are phrases that lie about in theliterary mind like orange peel on a pavement. You are down on thembefore you know where you are. But does this necessitate acknowledgmentto the man, now in Hades, who sucked that orange and strewed the peel inyour way? Rather, is it not more becoming to be angry at his carelessanticipation?

One may reasonably look at it in this way. What business has a man tothink of things right in front of you, poke his head, as it were, intoyour light? What right has he to set up dams and tunnel outswallow-holes to deflect the current of your thoughts? Surely you mayremove these obstructions, if it suits you, and put them where you will. Else all literature will presently be choked up, and the making of bookscome to an end. One might as well walk ten miles out of one's waybecause some deaf oaf or other chose to sit upon a necessary stile. Surely Shakespeare or Lamb, or what other source you contemplate, hashad the thing long enough? Out of the road with them. Turn and turnabout. 

And inverted commas are so inhospitable. If you _must_ take in anotherman's offspring, you should surely try to make the poor foundlings feelat home. Away with such uncharitable distinctions between the childrenof the house and the stranger within your gates. I never see invertedcommas but I think of the necessary persecuted mediæval Jew in yellowgabardine. 

At least, never put the name of the author you quote. Think of thefeelings of the dead. Don't let the poor spirit take it to heart thatits monumental sayings would pass unrecognised without youradvertisement. You mean well, perhaps, but it is in the poorest taste. Yet I have seen Patience on a Monument honourably awarded to WilliamShakespeare, and fenced in by commas from all intercourse with thegeneral text. 

There is something so extremely dishonest, too, in acknowledgingquotations. Possibly the good people who so contrive that suchsignatures as "Shakespeare, " "Homer, " or "St. Paul, " appear to bewritten here and there to parts of their inferior work, manage tojustify the proceeding in their conscience; but it is uncommonly likehallmarking pewter on the strength of an infinitesimal tinge of silvertherein. The point becomes at once clear if we imagine some obscurepainter quoting the style of Raphael and fragments of his designs, andacknowledging his indebtedness by appending the master's signature. Blank forgery! And a flood of light was thrown on the matter by a chanceremark of one of Euphemia's aunts--she is a great reader of purefiction--anent a popular novel: "I am sure it must be a nice book, " saidshe, "or she could not get all these people to write the mottoes for thechapters. "

No, it is all very well to play with one's conscience. I have known menso sophisticated as to assert that unacknowledged quotation was wrong. But very few really reasonable people will, I think, refuse to agreewith me that the only artistic, the only kindly, and the only honestmethod of quotation is plagiary. If you cannot plagiarise, surely itwere better not to quote. 

ON THE ART OF STAYING AT THE SEASIDE

A MEDITATION AT EASTBOURNE

To stay at the seaside properly, one should not think. But even instaying at the seaside there are intervals, waking moments when mealscome, even if there are no appointed meal-times. Moreover, now and then, one must go to buy tobacco, a matter one can trust to no hireling, lesthe get it dry. It cannot be always seaside, even as it cannot be alwaysMay, and through the gaps thought creeps in. Going over the cliff andalong the parade, and down by the circulating library to the cigardivan, where they sell Parique tobacco, the swinging of one's legs seemsto act like a pendulum to the clockwork of one's brain. One meditatesall the way, and chiefly on how few people there are who can really--toa critical adept--be said to stay at the seaside. 

People seem to think that one can take a ticket to Eastbourne, orBognor, or Ventnor, and come and stay at the seaside straight away, justas I have known new-hatched undergraduates tell people they were goingto play billiards. Thousands and thousands of people think they havestayed at the seaside, and have not, just as thousands of peopleerroneously imagine they have played whist. For the latter have playednot whist, but Bumble-puppy, and the former have only frequented awatering-place for a time. Your true staying at the seaside is an art, demanding not only railway fares but special aptitude, and, moreover, needing culture, like all worthy arts. 

The most insurmountable difficulty of the beginner is the classicalsimplicity of the whole thing. To stay at the seaside properly you justspread yourself out on the extreme edge of the land and let the sunlightsoak in. Your eyes are fixed upon the horizon. Some have it that yourhead should be towards the sea, but the best authorities think that thisdetermines blood to that region, and so stimulates thought. This is allthe positive instruction; the rest is prohibition. You must not think, and you must not move, neither may you go to sleep. In a few minutes theadept becomes as a god, even as a god that sits upon the lotus leaf. Newlight and colour come into the sky and sea, and the surges chant hispraises. But those who are not of the elect get pins and needles allover them. 

It must be freely admitted that staying at the seaside such as this, staying at the seaside in its perfection, is a thing for a select few. You want a broad stretch of beach and all the visible sea to yourself. You cannot be disturbed by even the most idyllic children trying to buryyou with sand and suchlike playfulness, nor by boatloads of thedemocracy rowing athwart your sea and sky. And the absence of friend orwife goes without saying. I notice down here a very considerablequantity of evidently married pairs, and the huge majority of the restof the visitors run in couples, and are to all appearances engaged. Ifthey are not, I would submit that they ought to be. Probably there is acertain satisfaction in sitting by the sea with the girl you are in lovewith, or your wife for the matter of that, just as many peopleundoubtedly find tea with milk and sugar very nice. But the former is nomore the way to get the full and perfect pleasure of staying at theseaside than the latter is the way to get the full and perfect flavourof the tea. True staying at the seaside is neither the repetition of oldconversations in new surroundings nor the exposure of one's affectionsto ozone. It is something infinitely higher. It is pure quiescence. Itis the experience of a waking inanition savouring of Buddha and thedivine. 

Now, staying at the seaside is so rarely done well, because of thelittleness of man. To do it properly needs many of the elements ofgreatness. Your common man, while he has life in him, can let neitherhimself nor the universe alone. He must be asserting himself in someway, even if it is only by flinging pebbles at a stick. Thatself-forgetfulness which should be a delight is a terror to him. Hebrings dogs down to the beach to stand between him and the calm ofnature, and yelp. He does worse than that. 

The meditative man going daily over by the cliff and along the parade, to get his ounce of tobacco, has a sad spectacle of what human beingsmay be driven to in this way. One sees altogether some hundreds ofpeople there who have heard perhaps that staying at the seaside is good, and who have, anyhow, got thus far towards it, and stopped. They havenot the faintest idea how to make themselves happy. The generalexpression is veiled curiosity. They sit--mostly with their backs to thesea--talking poorly of indifferent topics and watching one another. Mostobviously they want hints of what to do with themselves. Behind them isa bank of flowers like those in Battersea Park, and another parallelparade, and beyond are bathing-machines. The pier completely cuts thehorizon out of the background. There is a stout lady, in dark blue, bathing. The only glances directed seaward are furtive ones at her. Manyseem to be doubting whether this is not what they came down for. Otherslean dubiously to the invitations of the boatmen. Others again listen tovocalists and dramatic outcasts who, for ha'pence, render obvious thereason of their professional degradation. It seems eccentric to travelseventy or eighty miles to hear a man without a voice demonstrate thathe is unfit to have one, but they do. Anyone curious in these mattersneed only go to a watering-place to see and, what is worse, to hear forhimself. After an excursion train to Eastbourne, upwards of a thousandpeople have been seen thus heaped together over an oblong space of amile long by twenty yards wide. Only three miles away there was atowering white cliff overhanging a practically desert beach; and oneseagull circled above one solitary, motionless, supine man, reallystaying at the seaside. 

You cannot walk six miles anywhere along the south coast without comingupon one of these heaps of people, called a watering-place. There willbe a town of houses behind wherein the people lodge, until, as theythink, they have stayed a sufficient time at the sea, and they return, hot, cross, and mystified, to London. The sea front will be bricked orpaved for a mile or so, and there will be rows of boats andbathing-machines, and other contrivances to screen off the view of thesea. And, as we have indicated, watering-places and staying by theseaside are incompatible things. The true stayer by the seaside goesinto the watering-place because he must; because there is little food, and that uncooked, and no tobacco, between the cliffs and the sea. Having purchased what he needs he flees forth again. What time the wholeselvage of England becomes watering-place, there will be no more stayingby the seaside at all in the land. But this is a gloomy train of thoughtthat we will not pursue. 

There have been those who assert that one end of staying at the seasideis bathing; but it is easy to show that this is not so. Your properbathing-place is up the river, where the trees bend to the green andbrown shadows of the water. There the bath is sweet, fresh out of thesky, or but just filtered through the blue hills of the distantwater-shed; and it is set about with flowers. But the sea--the sea hasstood there since the beginning of things, and with small prospect ofchange, says Mr. Kipling, to all eternity. The water in the sea, geologists tell us, has _not been changed for fifty million years_! Thesame chemist who sets me against all my food with his chemical namesspeaks of the sea as a weak solution of drowned men. Be that as it may, it leaves the skin harsh with salt, and the hair sticky. Moreover, it issuch a promiscuous bathing-place. However, we need scarcely depreciatethe sea as a bath, for what need is there of that when the river isclearly better? No one can deny that the river is better. People whobathe in the sea bathe by mistake, because they have come to the side ofthe sea, and know not how else to use it. 

So, too, with the boating. It is hard to imagine how human beings whohave drifted down streams, and watched the brown fish in the shallows, and peered through the tall sedges at the forget-me-nots, and foughtwith the ropes of the water-lilies, and heard the ripple under the bows, can ever think of going to and fro, pitching spasmodically, in front ofa watering-place. And as for fishing--they catch fish at sea, indeed, but it is not fishing at all; neither rods nor flies have they, andthere is an end to that matter. 

An Eastbourne meditative man returning to where he stays, with his dailyounce of tobacco already afire, sees in the streets what are called bythe natives "cherry-bangs, " crowded with people, and, further, cabriolets and such vehicles holding parties and families. The goodfolks are driving away from the sea for the better part of the day, going to Battle and other places inland. The puzzle of what to do withtheir sea is too much for them, and they are going away for a little torest their minds. Regarded as a centre of drives one might think aninland place would be preferable to a seaside town, which at bestcommands but a half-circle. However that may be, the fact remains thatone of the chief occupations of your common visitor to the seaside isgoing away from it. Than this fact there can be nothing more conclusivein support of my argument that ordinary people are absolutely ignorantand incapable of staying by the seaside. 

CONCERNING CHESS

The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in theworld. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is themost absorbing of occupations, the least satisfying of desires, anaimless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let ussay, a promising politician, a rising artist, that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic, clumsy, and unreliable--but teach him, inoculate him with chess! It is well, perhaps, that the right way ofteaching chess is so little known, that consequently in most cases theplot fails in the performance, the dagger turns aside. Else we shouldall be chess-players--there would be none left to do the business of theworld. Our statesmen would sit with pocket boards while the country wentto the devil, our army would bury itself in chequered contemplation, ourbread-winners would forget their wives in seeking after impossiblemates. The whole world would be disorganised. I can fancy thisabominable hypnotism so wrought into the constitution of men that thecabmen would go trying to drive their horses in Knights' moves up anddown Charing Cross Road. And now and again a suicide would come to handwith the pathetic inscription pinned to his chest: "I checked with myQueen too soon. I cannot bear the thought of it. " There is no remorselike the remorse of chess. 

Only, happily, as we say, chess is taught the wrong way round. Peopleput out the board before the learner with all the men in battle array, sixteen a side, with six different kinds of moves, and the poor wretchis simply crushed and appalled. A lot of things happen, mostlydisagreeable, and then a mate comes looming up through the haze ofpieces. So he goes away awestricken but unharmed, secretly believingthat all chess-players are humbugs, and that intelligent chess, which isneither chancy nor rote-learned, is beyond the wit of man. But clearlythis is an unreasonable method of instruction. Before the beginner canunderstand the beginning of the game he must surely understand the end;how can he commence playing until he knows what he is playing for? It islike starting athletes on a race, and leaving them to find out where thewinning-post is hidden. 

Your true teacher of chess, your subtle chess-poisoner, your cunningComus who changes men to chess-players, begins quite the other wayround. He will, let us say, give you King, Queen, and Pawn placed out incareless possible positions. So you master the militant possibilities ofQueen and Pawn without perplexing complications. Then King, Queen, andBishop perhaps; King, Queen, and Knight; and so on. It ensures that youalways play a winning game in these happy days of your chess childhood, and taste the one sweet of chess-playing, the delight of having theupper hand of a better player. Then to more complicated positions, andat last back to the formal beginning. You begin to see now to what endthe array is made, and understand why one Gambit differeth from anotherin glory and virtue. And the chess mania of your teacher cleaveth to youthenceforth and for evermore. 

It is a curse upon a man. There is no happiness in chess--Mr. St. GeorgeMivart, who can find happiness in the strangest places, would be at aloss to demonstrate it upon the chess-board. The mild delight of apretty mate is the least unhappy phase of it. But, generally, you findafterwards that you ought to have mated two moves before, or at the timethat an unforeseen reply takes your Queen. No chess-player sleeps well. After the painful strategy of the day one fights one's battles overagain. You see with more than daylight clearness that it was the Rookyou should have moved, and not the Knight. No! it is impossible! nocommon sinner innocent of chess knows these lower deeps of remorse. Vastdesert boards lie for the chess-player beyond the gates of horn. Stalwart Rooks ram headlong at one, Knights hop sidelong, one's Pawnsare all tied, and a mate hangs threatening and never descends. And oncechess has been begun in the proper way, it is flesh of your flesh, boneof your bone; you are sold, and the bargain is sealed, and the evilspirit hath entered in. 

The proper outlet for the craving is the playing of games, and there isa class of men--shadowy, unhappy, unreal-looking men--who gather incoffee-houses, and play with a desire that dieth not, and a fire that isnot quenched. These gather in clubs and play Tournaments, suchtournaments as he of the Table Round could never have imagined. Butthere are others who have the vice who live in country places, in remotesituations--curates, schoolmasters, rate collectors--who go consumedfrom day to day and meet no fit companion, and who must needs find someartificial vent for their mental energy. No one has ever calculated howmany sound Problems are possible, and no doubt the Psychical Researchpeople would be glad if Professor Karl Pearson would give his mind tothe matter. All the possible dispositions of the pieces come to such avast number, however, that, according to the theory of probability, andallowing a few thousand arrangements each day, the same problem oughtnever to turn up more than twice in a century or so. As a matter offact--it is probably due to some flaw in the theory of probability--thesame problem has a way of turning up in different publications severaltimes in a month or so. It may be, of course, that, after all, quite"sound" problems are limited in number, and that we keep on inventingand reinventing them; that, if a record were kept, the whole system, upto four or five moves, might be classified, and placed on record in thecourse of a few score years. Indeed, if we were to eliminate those withconspicuously bad moves, it may be we should find the number ofreasonable games was limited enough, and that even our brilliant Laskeris but repeating the inspirations of some long-buried Persian, some muteinglorious Hindoo, dead and forgotten ages since. It may be over everygame there watches the forgotten forerunners of the players, and thatchess is indeed a dead game, a haunted game, played out centuries ago, even, as beyond all cavil, is the game of draughts. 

The artistic temperament, the gay irresponsible cast of mind, does whatit can to lighten the gravity of this too intellectual game. To a mortalthere is something indescribably horrible in these champions with theirfour moves an hour--the bare thought of the mental operations of thefifteen minutes gives one a touch of headache. Compulsory quick movingis the thing for gaiety, and that is why, though we revere Steinitz andLasker, it is Bird we love. His victories glitter, his errors aremagnificent. The true sweetness of chess, if it ever can be sweet, is tosee a victory snatched, by some happy impertinence, out of the shadow ofapparently irrevocable disaster. And talking of cheerfulness reminds meof Lowson's historical game of chess. Lowson said he had been cheerfulsometimes--but, drunk! Perish the thought! Challenged, he would haveproved it by some petty tests of pronunciation, some Good Templar'sshibboleths. He offered to walk along the kerb, to work any problem inmathematics we could devise, finally to play MacBryde at chess. Theother gentleman was appointed judge, and after putting the antimacassarover his head ("jush wigsh") immediately went to sleep in a disorderlyheap on the sofa. The game was begun very solemnly, so I am told. MacBryde, in describing it to me afterwards, swayed his hands about withthe fingers twiddling in a weird kind of way, and said the board wentlike that. The game was fierce but brief. It was presently discoveredthat both kings had been taken. Lowson was hard to convince, but thiscame home to him. "Man, " he is reported to have said to MacBryde, "I'mjust drunk. There's no doubt in the matter. I'm feeling very ashamed ofmyself. " It was accordingly decided to declare the game drawn. Theposition, as I found it next morning, is an interesting one. Lowson'sQueen was at K Kt 6, his Bishop at Q B 3, he had several Pawns, and hisKnight occupied a commanding position at the intersection of foursquares. MacBryde had four Pawns, two Rooks, a Queen, a draught, and asmall mantel ornament arranged in a rough semicircle athwart the board. I have no doubt chess exquisites will sneer at this position, but in myopinion it is one of the cheerfulest I have ever seen. I remember Iadmired it very much at the time, in spite of a slight headache, and itis still the only game of chess that I recall with undiluted pleasure. And yet I have played many games. 

THE COAL-SCUTTLE

A STUDY IN DOMESTIC ÆSTHETICS

Euphemia, who loves to have home dainty and delightful, would have nocoals if she could dispense with them, much less a coal-scuttle. Indeed, it would seem she would have no fireplace at all, if she had her will. All the summer she is happy, and the fireplace is anything but the placefor a fire; the fender has vanished, the fireirons are gone, it isdraped and decorated and disguised. So would dear Euphemia drape anddisguise the whole iron framework of the world, with that decorative anddecent mind of hers, had she but the scope. There are exotic fernsthere, spreading their fanlike fronds, and majolica glows and gleams;and fabrics, of which Morris is the actual or spiritual begetter, delight the eye. In summer-time our fireplace is indeed a thing ofbeauty, but, alas for the solar system! it is not a joy for ever. Thesun at last recedes beyond the equinoxes, and the black bogey who hasslept awakens again. Euphemia restores the fender kerb and the brazendogs and the fireirons that will clatter; and then all the winter, whenever she sits before the fire, her trouble is with her. Even whenthe red glow of the fire lights up her features most becomingly, andflattery is in her ear, every now and then a sidelong glance at her uglyfoe shows that the thought of it is in her mind, and that the crumpledroseleaf, if such a phrase may be used for a coal-scuttle, insists onbeing felt. And she has even been discovered alone, sitting elbows onknees, and chin on her small clenched fist, frowning at it, puzzling howto circumvent the one enemy of her peace. 

"_It_" is what Euphemia always calls this utensil, when she can bringherself to give the indescribable an imperfect vent in speech. Butcommonly the feeling is too deep for words. Her war with this foeman inher household, this coarse rebel in her realm of soft prettiness, is oneof those silent ones, those grim struggles without outcry or threat orappeal for quarter that can never end in any compromise, never find arest in any truce, except the utter defeat of her antagonist. And howshe has tried--the happy thoughts, the faint hopes, the new departuresand outflanking movements! And even to-day there the thing defies her--acoal-box, with a broad smile that shows its black teeth, thick andsquat, filling a snug corner and swaggering in unmanly triumph over theoutrage upon her delicacy that it commits. 

One of Euphemia's brightest ideas was to burn wood. Logs make even apicturesque pile in a corner--look "uncommon. " But there are objectionsto wood. Wood finely divided burns with gay quirks and jets of flame, and making cheerful crackling noises the while; but its warmth andbrightness are as evanescent as love's young dream. And your solid loghas a certain irritating inertness. It is an absentee fuel, spending itsfire up the chimney, and after its youthful clouds of glory turns but acheerless side of black and white char towards the room. And, above all, the marital mind is strangely exasperated by the log. Smite it with thepoker, and you get but a sullen resonance, a flight of red sparks, asense of an unconquerable toughness. It is worse than coke. The crispfracture of coal, the spitting flames suddenly leaping into existencefrom the shiny new fissures, are altogether wanting. Old-seasoned timberburns indeed most delightfully, but then it is as ugly as coal, andwithal very dear. So Euphemia went back to coal again with a sigh. Possibly if Euphemia had been surrounded by the wealth she deserves thistrouble would not have arisen. A silent servant, bearing the due dose offresh fuel, would have come gliding from a mysterious Beneath, restoredthe waning animation of the grate, and vanished noiselessly again. Butthis was beyond the range of Euphemia's possibilities. And so we areface to face with this problem of the scuttle again. 

At first she would feign there was no such thing as coal. It was toohorrible. Only a Zola would admit it. It was the epoch of concealment. The thing purchased was like a little cupboard on four legs; it mighthave held any convenient trifle; and there was a shelf upon the top anda book of poetry and a piece of crackled Satsuma. You took a littlebrass handle and pulled it down, and the front of the little cupboardcame forward, and there you found your coal. But a dainty littlecupboard can no more entertain black coal and inelegant firewood andkeep its daintiness than a mind can entertain black thoughts and yet besweet. This cabinet became demoralised with amazing quickness; it becameincontinent with its corruptions, a hinge got twisted, and after a timeit acquired the habit of suddenly, and with an unpleasant oscillatorylaughing noise, opening of its own accord and proclaiming its horridsecret to Euphemia's best visitors. An air of wickedness, at onceprecocious and senile, came upon it; it gaped and leered at Euphemia asthe partner of her secret with such a familiar air of "I and you" thatshe could stand it no longer, and this depraved piece of furniture wasbanished at last from her presence, and relegated to its proper sphereof sham gentility below stairs, where it easily passed itself upon thecook as an exquisite. Euphemia tried to be sensible then, anddetermined, since she must have coal in her room, to let no falsemodesty intervene, but to openly proclaim its presence to all the world. 

The next thing, therefore, was a cylinder of brass, broadly open above, saying to the world, as it were, "Look! I contain coal. " And there werebrass tongs like sugar tongs wherewith Euphemia would regale the fireand brighten it up, handing it a lump at a time in the prettiest way. But brass dints. The brazen thing was quiet and respectable enoughupstairs, but ever and again it went away to be filled. What happened onthese holiday jaunts Euphemia has never ascertained. But a chance blowor worse cause ran a crease athwart the forehead of the thing, andbelow an almost imperceptible bulging hinted at a future corpulency. Andthere was complaint of the quantity of polishing it needed, and anincreasing difficulty in keeping it bright. And except when it was fullto the brim, the lining was unsightly; and this became more so. One dayIthuriel must have visited Euphemia's apartment, and the tarnishedbrilliancy of the thing stood confessed. For some days there was aninterregnum, and a coal-scuttle from downstairs--a black unstable thingon flat foot and with a vast foolish nether lip--did its duty withinelegant faithfulness. 

Then Euphemia had a really pretty fancy. She procured one of those bigopen garden baskets and painted it a pleasant brown, and instead of agarden fork she had a little half horticultural scoop. In this basketshe kept her coals, and she tied a pink ribbon on the handle. One mightfancy she had been in some dewy garden and had dug a few coals as onemight dig up bulbs, and brought them in and put them down. It attractedattention from all her visitors, and set a kind of fashion in theneighbourhood. For a time Euphemia was almost contented. But one day amalignant woman called, and looked at this device through her gilteye-glasses, while she secretly groped in the dark of her mind for anunpleasant thing to say. Then suddenly she remarked, "Why not put yourcoal in a bassinette? Or keep it _all_ on the floor?" Euphemia's facefell. The thing was undeniably very like a cradle, in the light of thissuggestion; the coal certainly did seem a little out of place there; andbesides, if there were more than three or four lumps they had a way oftumbling over the edge upon the carpet when the fire was replenished. The tender shoot of Euphemia's satisfaction suddenly withered and died. 

So the struggle has gone on. Sometimes it has been a wrought iron tripodwith a subtle tendency to upset in certain directions; sometimes acoal-box; once even the noisy old coal-box of japanned tin, making morenoise than a Salvation Army service, and strangely decorated with "art"enamels, had a turn. At present Euphemia is enduring a walnut "casket, "that since its first week of office has displayed an increasingindisposition to shut. But things cannot stay like this. The worry andanxiety and vexation, Euphemia declares, are making her old before hertime. A delicate woman should not be left alone to struggle againstbrazen monsters. A closed gas stove is happily impossible, but thehusband of the household is threatened with one of those beastly shamfires, wherein gas jets flare among firebrick--a mechanical fire withoutvitality or variety, that never dances nor crackles nor blazes, amonotonous horror, a fire you cannot poke. That is what it willcertainly come to if the problem remains unsolved. 

BAGARROW

Frankly, I detest this Bagarrow. Yet it is quite generally conceded thatBagarrow is a very well-meaning fellow. But the trouble is to understandhim. To do that I have been at some pains, and yet I am still a meretheorist. An anthropometric estimate of the man fails to reveal anyreason for the distinction of my aversion. He is of passable height, breadth, and density, and, save for a certain complacency of expression, I find no salient objection in his face. He has bluish eyes and awhitish skin, and average-coloured hair--none of them distinctlyindictable possessions. It is something in his interior and unseenmechanism, I think, that must be wrong; some internal lesion that findsexpression in his acts. 

His mental operations, indeed, were at first as inconceivable to me as acrab's or a cockchafer's. That is where all the trouble came in. Forthat reason alone they fascinated me and aggrieved me. From theconditions of our acquaintance--we were colleagues--I had to study himwith some thoroughness, observing him under these circumstances andthose. I have, by the bye, sometimes wondered idly how he would react toalcohol--a fluid he avoids. It would, I am sure, be an entirely noveland remarkable kind of Drunk, and I am also certain it would be anoffensive one. But I can't imagine it; I have no data. I could as soonevolve from my inner consciousness an intoxicated giraffe. But, as Isay, this interesting experience has hitherto been denied me. 

Now my theory of Bagarrow is this, that he has a kind of disease in hisideals, some interruption of nutrition that has left them small andemasculate. He aims, it appears, at a state called "Really Nice" or the"True Gentleman, " the outward and visible signs of which are aconspicuous quietness of costume, gloves in all weathers, and atightly-rolled umbrella. But coupled in some way with this is a queersmack of the propagandist, a kind of dwarfed prophetic passion. That isthe particular oddness of him. He displays a timid yet persistent desireto foist this True Gentleman of his upon an unwilling world, to make youReally Nice after his own pattern. I always suspect him of trying toconvert me by stealth when I am not looking. 

So far as I can see, Bagarrow's conception of this True Gentleman of hisis at best a compromise, mainly holiness, but a tinted kind ofholiness--goodness in clean cuffs and with something neat in ties. Herenounces the flesh and the devil willingly enough, but he wants to keepup a decent appearance. Now a stark saint I can find sympathy for. Irespect your prophet unkempt and in a hair shirt denouncing Sin--andmundane affairs in general--with hoarse passion and a fiery hate. Iwould not go for my holidays with nor make a domestic pet of such a man, but I respect him. But Bagarrow's pose is different. Bagarrow would callthat carrying things to extremes. His is an unobtrusive virtue, acompromising dissent, inaggressive aggressions on sin. So I take it. Andat times he puts it to you in a drawling argument, a stream ofBagarrowisms, until you have to hurt his feelings--happily he is alwaysgetting his feelings hurt--just to stop the flow of him. 

"Life, " said Bagarrow, in a moment of expansiveness, "is scarcely worthliving unless you are doing good to someone. " That I take to be thekeystone of him. "I want to be a Good Influence upon all the people Imeet. " I do not think it has ever dawned upon him that he himself is anyway short of perfection; and, so far as I can see, the triumph and endof his good influence is cleanliness of cuff, compactness of umbrella, and general assimilation to the Bagarrow ideal. 

Hear him upon one's social duties--this living soul in this world ofwonders! "In moderation, " said Bagarrow, opening out to questions onthat matter, "social relaxation is desirable, and I will even go so faras to admit that I think it well to have at hand some pleasant expedientfor entertaining people and passing the time. A humorous song or arecitation--provided it is in really good taste--is harmless enough, andsometimes it may even be turned to good account. And everyone should tryto master some instrument or other. The flute, perhaps, is as convenientas any; for the fiddle and piano, you know, are difficult and expensiveto learn, and require constant practice. A little legerdemain is also agreat acquisition for a man. Some may differ from me in that, " continuedBagarrow, "but I see no harm in it. There are hundreds of perfectlyproper and innocent tricks with coins and bits of paper, and pieces ofstring, that will make an evening pass most delightfully. One may getquite a little reputation as an entertainer with these things. "

"And it is, " pursued Bagarrow, quite glowing with liberality, "just alittle pharisaical to object to card tricks. There are quantities ofreally quite clever and mathematical things that one may do with achosen card, dealing the pack into heaps and counting slowly. Of courseit is not for mere pleasuring that I learn these things. It gives anyonewith a little tact an opportunity for stopping card-playing. When thepack is brought in, and all the party are intent upon gaming, you mayseize your opportunity and take the cards, saying, 'Let me show you alittle trick, ' or, 'Have you seen Maskelyne's new trick with the cards?'Before anyone can object you are displaying your skill to theirastonished eyes, and in their wonder at your cleverness theobjectionable game may be indefinitely postponed. "

"Yet so set at times is your gambler upon his abominable pursuit, " saysBagarrow, "that in practice even this ingenious expedient has been knownto fail. " He tried it once, it seems, in a race train to Kempton Park, and afterwards he had to buy a new hat. That incident, indeed, gives youthe very essence of Bagarrow in his insidious attacks on evil. Iremember that on another occasion he went out of his way to promise apartially intoxicated man a drink; and taking him into a public-houseordered two lemon squashes! Drinks! He liked lemon squash himself and hedid not like beer, and he thought he had only to introduce the poorfallen creature to the delights of temperance to ensure his conversionthere and then. I think he expected the man to fall upon him, crying "Mybenefactor!" But he did not say "My benefactor, " at anyrate, though hefell upon him, cheerfully enough. 

To avoid the appearance of priggishness, which he dreads with somereason, he even went so far as to procure a herb tobacco, which hesmokes with the help of frequent sulphur matches. This he recommends tous strongly. "Won't you try it?" he says, with a winning smile. "Justonce. " And he is the only man I ever met who drinks that facetiousfluid, non-alcoholic beer. Once he proposed to wean me upon that from mydistinctive vice, which led indeed to our first rupture. "_I_ find itdelicious, " he said in pathetic surprise. 

It is one of his most inveterate habits to tell you quietly what hedoes, or would do under the circumstances. Seeing you at Kipling, hewill propound the proposition that "all true literature has a distinctaim. " His test of literary merit is "What good does it do you?" He is agreat lender of books, especially of Carlyle and Ruskin, which authorsfor some absolutely inscrutable reason he considers provocative ofBagarrowism, and he goes to the County Council lectures on dairy-work, because it encourages others to improve themselves. But I have saidenough to display him, and of Bagarrow at least--as I can welltestify--it is easy to have more than enough. Indeed, after whole dayswith him I have gone home to dream of the realisation of his ideals, asort of Bagarrow millennium, a world of Bagarrows. All kinds ofmen--Falstaffs, Don Quixotes, Alan Stewarts, John the Baptists, JohnKnoxes, Quilps, and Benvenuto Cellinis--all, so to speak, Bagarrowed, all with clean cuffs, tight umbrellas, and temperate ways, passing toand fro in a regenerate earth. 

And so he goes on his way through this wonderful universe with his eyesfixed upon two or three secondary things, without the lust or pride oflife, without curiosity or adventure, a mere timid missionary of areligion of "Nicer Ways, " a quiet setter of a good example. I can assureyou this is no exaggeration, but a portrait. It seems to me that thething must be pathological, that he and this goodness of his haveexactly the same claim upon Lombroso, let us say, as the born criminal. He is born good, a congenital good example, a sufferer from atrophy ofhis original sin. The only hope I can see for Bagarrow, short of murder, is forcible trepanning. He ought to have the seat of his ideals lanced, and all this wash about doing good to people by stealth taken away. Itmay be he might prove a very decent fellow then--if there was anythingleft of him, that is. 

THE BOOK OF ESSAYS DEDICATORY

I have been bothered about this book this three months. I have writtenscarcely anything since Llewellyn asked me for it, for when he asked meI had really nothing on hand. I had just published every line I had everwritten, at my own expense, with Prigsbys. Yet three months shouldsuffice for one of Llewellyn's books, which consist chiefly of decorousfly-leaves and a dedication or so, and margins. Of course you knowLlewellyn's books--the most delightful things in the market: thesweetest covers, with little gilt apples and things carelesslydistributed over luminous grey, and bright red initials, and all thesedelightful fopperies. But it was the very slightness of these bibelotsthat disorganised me. And perhaps, also, the fact that no one has everasked me for a book before. 

I had no trouble with the title though--"Lichens. " I have wondered thething was never used before. Lichens, variegated, beautiful, though onthe most arid foundations, half fungoid, half vernal--the very name fora booklet of modern verse. And that, of course, decided the key of thecover and disposed of three or four pages. A fly-leaf, a leaf with"Lichens" printed fair and beautiful a little to the left of the centre, then a title-page--"Lichens. By H. G. Wells. London: MDCCCXCV. StephenLlewellyn. " Then a restful blank page, and then--the Dedication. It wasthe dedication stopped me. The title-page, it is true, had some pointsof difficulty. Should the Christian name be printed in full or not, forinstance; but it had none of the fatal fascination of the dedicatorypage. I had, so to speak, to look abroad among the ranks of men, andmake one of those fretful forgotten millions--immortal. It seemed acongenial task. 

I went to work forthwith. 

It was only this morning that I realised the magnitude of myaccumulations. Ever since then--it was three months ago--I have beenelaborating this Dedication. I turned the pile over, idly at first. Presently I became interested in tracing my varying moods, as they hadfound a record in the heap. 

This struck me--

[Illustration: A Handwritten dedication, "To my Dearest Friend"followed by three successive names, two crossed out, then the wholededication struck out]

Then again, a little essay in gratitude came to hand--

 TO PROFESSOR AUGUSTUS FLOOD, Whose Admirable Lectures on Palæontology First turned my Attention to Literature. 

There was a tinge of pleasantry in the latter that pleased me verygreatly when I wrote it, and I find immediately overlying it anotheressay in the same line--

 To the Latter-day Reviewer, These Pearls. 

For some days I was smitten with the idea of dedicating my littlebooklet to one of my numerous personal antagonists, and conveying somesubtly devised insult with an air of magnanimity. I thought, forinstance, of Blizzard--

 SIR JOSEPH BLIZZARD, The most distinguished, if not the greatest, of contemporary anatomists. 

I think it was "X. L. 's" book, _Aut Diabolus aut Nihil_, that set me uponanother line. There is, after all, your reader to consider in thesematters, your average middle-class person to impress in some way. Theysay the creature is a snob, and absolutely devoid of any tinge ofhumour, and I must confess that I more than half believe it. At anyrate, it was that persuasion inspired--

 To the Countess of X. , In Memory of Many Happy Days. 

I know no Countess of X. , as a matter of fact, but if the public is suchan ass as to think better of my work for the suspicion, I do not carehow soon I incur it. And this again is a pretty utilisation of the wastedesert of politics--

 MY DEAR SALISBURY, --Pray accept this unworthy tribute of my affectionate esteem. 

There were heaps of others. And looking at those heaps it suddenly camesharp and vivid before my mind that there--there was the book I needed, already written! A blank page, a dedication, a blank page, a dedication, and so on. I saw no reason to change the title. It only remained toselect the things, and the book was done. I set to work at once, and ina very little while my bibelot was selected. There were dedicationsfulsome and fluid, dedications acrid and uncharitable, dedications inverse and dedications in the dead languages: all sorts and conditions ofdedications, even the simple "To J. H. Gabbles"--so suggestive of themodest white stones of the village churchyard. Altogether I picked outone hundred and three dedications. At last only one thing remained tocomplete the book. And that was--the Dedication. You will scarcelycredit it, but that worries me still.... 

I am almost inclined to think that Dedications are going out offashion. 

THROUGH A MICROSCOPE

SOME MORAL REFLECTIONS

This dabbler person has recently disposed of his camera and obtained amicroscope--a short, complacent-looking implement it is, of brass--andhe goes about everywhere now with little glass bottles in his pocket, ready to jump upon any stray polly-woggle he may find, and hale it homeand pry into its affairs. Within his study window are perhaps half adozen jars and basins full of green scum and choice specimens of blackmud in which his victims live. He persists in making me look throughthis instrument, though I would rather I did not. It seems to me a kindof impropriety even when I do it. He gets innumerable things in a dropof green water, and puts it on a glass slip under the object glass, and, of course, they know nothing of the change in their condition, and go onliving just as they did before they were observed. It makes me feel attimes like a public moralist, or Peeping Tom of Coventry, or some suchcreature. 

Certainly there are odd things enough in the water. Among others, certain queer green things that are neither plants nor animals. Most ofthe time they are plants, quiet green threads matted together, but everynow and then the inside comes out of one, so to speak, and starts offwith a fine red eye and a long flickering tail, to see the world. Thedabbler says it's quite a usual thing among the lower plants--_Algæ_ hecalls them, for some reason--to disgorge themselves in this way and goswimming about; but it has quite upset my notions of things. If thelower plants, why not the higher? It may be my abominable imagination, but since he told me about these--swarm spores I think he calledthem--I don't feel nearly so safe with my geraniums as I did. 

A particularly objectionable thing in these water drops, the dabblerinsists upon my spying at is the furious activity of everything you seein them. You look down his wretched tube, and there, bright and yellowwith the lamplight in the round field of the microscope, is a perfectriot of living things. Perhaps it's the water he got from Hampstead, anda dozen flat things the shape of shortbreads will be fussing about. They are all quite transparent and colourless, and move about likegalleys by means of a lot of minute oars that stick out all over them. Never a moment's rest. And, presently, one sees that even the greenplant threads are wriggling across the field. The dabbler tries tomoralise on this in the vein of Charles Kingsley, and infer we have muchto learn from these ridiculous creatures; but, so far as I can see, it'sa direct incentive to sloth to think how low in the scale of creationthese things are, in spite of all their fussing. If they had sat aboutmore and thought, they might be fishing the dabbler out of ponds andexamining him instead of his examining them. Your energetic people mightdo worse things than have a meditative half-hour at the microscope. Thenthere are green things with a red spot and a tail, that creep about likeslugs, and are equally transparent. _Euglena viridis_ the dabbler callsthem, which seems unnecessary information. In fact all the things heshows me are transparent. Even the little one-eyed Crustacea, the sizeof a needle-point, that discredit the name of Cyclops. You can see theirdigestion and muscle and nerve, and, in fact, everything. It's at leasta blessing we are not the same. Fancy the audible comments of thetemperance advocate when you get in the bus! No use pulling yourselftogether then. "Pretty full!" And "Look, " people would say, "his wifegives him cold mutton. "

Speaking of the name of Cyclops reminds me that these scientific peoplehave been playing a scurvy trick upon the classics behind our backs. Itreminds one of Epistemon's visit to Hades, when he saw Alexander apatcher of clouts and Xerxes a crier of mustard. Aphrodite, the dabblertells me, is a kind of dirty mud-worm, and much dissected by spectacledpretenders to the London B. Sc. ; every candidate, says the syllabus, mustbe able to dissect, to the examiner's satisfaction, and demonstrate uponAphrodite, Nereis, Palæmon. Were the gods ever so insulted? Then thesnaky Medusa and Pandora, our mother, are jelly-fish; Astræa is still tobe found on coral reefs, a poor thing, and much browsed upon by parrotfish; and Doris and Tethys and Cydippe are sea slugs. It's worse thanHeine's vision of the gods grown old. They can't be content with thedeparted gods merely. Evadne is a water flea--they'll make something outof Mrs. Sarah Grand next; and Autolycus, my Autolycus! is a polymorphicworm, whatever subtlety of insult "polymorphic worm" may convey. 

However, I wander from the microscope. These shortbread things arefussing about hither and thither across the field, and now and then anamoeba comes crawling into view. These are invertebrate jelly-likethings of no particular shape, and they keep on thrusting out a parthere, and withdrawing a part there, and changing and advancing just asthough they were popular democratic premiers. Then diatoms keep glidingathwart the circle. These diatoms are, to me at least, the mostperplexing things in the universe. Imagine a highly ornamental thing inwhite and brown, the shape of a spectacle case, without any limbs orother visible means of progression, and without any wriggling of thebody, or indeed any apparent effort at all, gliding along at a smartpace. That's your diatom. The dabbler really knows nothing of how theydo it. He mumbles something about Bütschli and Grenfell. Imagine thething on a larger scale, Cleopatra's Needle, for instance, travelling onits side up the Thames Embankment, and all unchaperoned, at the rate offour or five miles an hour. 

There's another odd thing about these microscope things which redeems, to some extent at least, their singular frankness. To use the decorousphrase of the text-book, "They multiply by fission. " Your amoeba orvorticella, as the case may be, splits in two. Then there are two amoebæor vorticellæ. In this way the necessity of the family, thatmiddle-class institution so abhorrent to the artistic mind, is avoided. In my friend's drop of ditch-water, as in heaven, there is neithermarrying nor giving in marriage. There are no waste parents, whichshould appeal to the scholastic mind, and the simple protozoon has noneof that fitful fever of falling in love, that distressingly tender statethat so bothers your mortal man. They go about their business with anenviable singleness of purpose, and when they have eaten and drunk, andattained to the fulness of life, they divide and begin again withrenewed zest the pastime of living. 

In a sense they are immortal. For we may look at this matter in anotherlight, and say our exuberant protozoon has shed a daughter, and remains. In that case the amoeba I look at may have crawled among the slime ofthe Silurian seas when the common ancestor of myself and the royalfamily was an unassuming mud-fish like those in the reptile house in theZoo. His memoirs would be interesting. The thought gives a solemn tintto one's meditations. If the dabbler wash him off this slide into histube of water again, this trivial creature may go on feeding and growingand dividing, and presently be thrown away to wider waters, and soescape to live ... After I am dead, after my masterpieces are forgotten, after our Empire has passed away, after the human animal has passedthrough I know not what vicissitudes. It may be he will still, with theutmost nonchalance, be pushing out his pseudopodia, and ingestingdiatoms when the fretful transitory life of humanity has passedaltogether from the earth. One may catch him in specimen tubes by thedozen; but still, when one thinks of this, it is impossible to deny hima certain envious, if qualified, respect. 

And all the time these creatures are living their vigorous, fussy littlelives; in this drop of water they are being watched by a creature ofwhose presence they do not dream, who can wipe them all out of existencewith a stroke of his thumb, and who is withal as finite, and sometimesas fussy and unreasonably energetic, as themselves. He sees them, andthey do not see him, because he has senses they do not possess, becausehe is too incredibly vast and strange to come, save as an overwhelmingcatastrophe, into their lives. Even so, it may be, the dabbler himselfis being curiously observed.... The dabbler is good enough to say thatthe suggestion is inconceivable. I can imagine a decent amoeba sayingthe same thing. 

THE PLEASURE OF QUARRELLING

Your cultivated man is apt to pity the respectable poor, on the score oftheir lack of small excitements, and even in the excess of his generoussympathy to go a Toynbee-Halling in their cause. And Sir Walter Besantonce wrote a book about Hoxton, saying, among other things, howmonotonous life was there. That is your modern fallacy respecting thelower middle class. One might multiply instances. The tenor of the pityis always the same. 

"No music, " says the cultivated man, "no pictures, no books to read norleisure to read in. How can they pass their lives?"

The answer is simple enough, as Emily Brontë knew. They quarrel. And anexcellent way of passing the time it is; so excellent, indeed, that thepity were better inverted. But we all lack the knowledge of our chiefestneeds. In the first place, and mainly, it is hygienic to quarrel, itdisengages floods of nervous energy, the pulse quickens, the breathingis accelerated, the digestion improved. Then it sets one's stagnantbrains astir and quickens the imagination; it clears the mind ofvapours, as thunder clears the air. And, finally, it is a naturalfunction of the body. In his natural state man is always quarrelling--byinstinct. Not to quarrel is indeed one of the vices of our civilisation, one of the reasons why we are neurotic and anæmic, and all these things. And, at last, our enfeebled palates have even lost the capacity forenjoying a "jolly good row. "

There can be no more melancholy sight in the world than that of youryoung man or young woman suffering from suppressed pugnacity. Up to theend of the school years it was well with them; they had ample scope forthis wholesome commerce, the neat give and take of offence. In thefamily circle, too, there are still plentiful chances of acquiring thetaste. Then, suddenly, they must be gentle and considerate, and all therest of it. A wholesome shindy, so soon as toga and long skirts arrive, is looked upon as positively wrong; even the dear old institution of the"cut" is falling into disrepute. The quarrelling is all forced back intothe system, as it were; it poisons the blood. This is why our literaturegrows sinister and bitter, and our daughters yearn after this and that, write odd books, and ride about on bicycles in remarkable clothes. Theyhave shut down the safety valve, they suffer from the present lamentableincrease of gentleness. They must find some outlet, or perish. If theycould only put their arms akimbo and tell each other a piece of theirminds for a little, in the ancient way, there can be not the slightestdoubt that much of this _fin-de-siècle_ unwholesomeness would disappear. 

Possibly this fashion of gentleness will pass. Yet it has had increasingsway now for some years. An unhealthy generation has arisen--among themore educated class at least--that quarrels little, regards the functionas a vice or a nuisance, as the East-ender does a taste for fine art orliterature. We seem indeed to be getting altogether out of the way ofit. Rare quarrels, no doubt, occur to everyone, but rare quarrelling isno quarrelling at all. Like beer, smoking, sea-bathing, cycling, and thelike delights, you cannot judge of quarrelling by the early essay. Butto show how good it is--did you ever know a quarrelsome person give upthe use? Alcohol you may wean a man from, and Barrie says he gave up theArcadia Mixture, and De Quincey conquered opium. But once you are set asa quarreller you quarrel and quarrel till you die. 

How to quarrel well and often has ever been something of an art, and itbecomes more of an art with the general decline of spirit. For it takestwo to make a quarrel. Time was when you turned to the handiest humanbeing, and with small care or labour had the comfortable warmth youneeded in a minute or so. There was theology, even in the fifties it wasample cause with two out of three you met. Now people will express alamentable indifference. Then politics again, but a little while ago fatfor the fire of any male gathering, is now a topic of mere tepidity. Soyou are forced to be more subtle, more patient in your quarrelling. Youplay like a little boy playing cricket with his sisters, with those whodo not understand. A fellow-votary is a rare treat. As a rule you haveto lure and humour your antagonist like a child. The wooing is asintricate and delicate as any wooing can well be. To quarrel now, indeed, requires an infinity of patience. The good old days ofthumb-biting--"Do you bite your thumbs at us, sir?" and so to clash andstab--are gone for ever. 

There are certain principles in quarrelling, however, that the truequarreller ever bears in mind, and which, duly observed, do much tofacilitate encounters. In the first place, cultivate Distrust. Havealways before you that this is a wicked world, full of insidious people, and you never know what villainous encroachments upon you may be hiddenunder fair-seeming appearances. That is the flavour of it. At the firstsuspicion, "stick up for your rights, " as the vulgar say. And see thatyou do it suddenly. Smite promptly, and the surprise and sting of yourinjustice should provoke an excellent reply. And where there is leastground for suspicion, there, remember, is the most. The right hand offellowship extended towards you is one of the best openings you have. "Not such a fool, " is the kind of attitude to assume, and "You don't putupon _me_ so easy. " Your adversary resents this a little, and, rankling, tries to explain. You find a personal inference in the expostulation. 

Next to a wariness respecting your interests is a keen regard for yourhonour. Have concealed in the privacy of your mind a code of what is dueto you. Expand or modify it as occasion offers. Be as it were acollector of what are called "slights, " and never let one pass you. Watch your friend in doorways, passages; when he eats by you, when hedrinks with you, when he addresses you, when he writes you letters. Itwill be hard if you cannot catch him smuggling some deadly insult intoyour presence. Tax him with it. He did not think, forsooth! Tell him nogentleman would do such a thing, thinkingly or not; that you certainlywill not stand it again. Say you will show him. He will presently argueor contradict. So to your climax. 

Then, again, there is the personal reference. "Meaning me, sir?" Yourvictim with a blithe heart babbles of this or that. You let him meanderhere and there, watching him as if you were in ambush. Presently hecomes into your spring. "Of course, " you say, "I saw what you weredriving at just this minute, when you mentioned mustard in saladdressing, but if I am peppery I am not mean. And if I have a thing tosay I say it straight out. " A good gambit this, and well into him fromthe start. The particular beauty of this is that you get him apologeticat first, and can score heavily before he rises to the defensive. 

Then, finally, there is your abstract cause, once very fruitful indeed, but now sadly gone in decay, except perhaps in specialist society. As anexample, let there be one who is gibing genially at some topic or other, at Japanese king-crabs, or the inductive process, or any other topicwhich cannot possibly affect you one atom. Then is the time to drop allthese merely selfish interests, and to champion the cause of truth. Fallupon him in a fine glow of indignation, and bring your contradictionacross his face--whack!--so that all the table may hear. Tell him, withhis pardon, that the king-crab is no more a crab than you are ajelly-fish, or that Mill has been superseded these ten years. Ask: "Howcan you say such things?" From thence to his general knowledge is ashort flight, and so to his veracity, his reasoning powers, his merecommon sense. "Let me tell you, sir, " is the special incantation for thestorm. 

These are the four chief ways of quarrelling, the four gates to thisdelightful city. For it is delightful, once your 'prentice days arepast. In a way it is like a cold bath on a winter's morning, and youglow all day. In a way it is like football, as the nimble aggravationdances to and fro. In a way it is like chess. Indeed, all games of skillare watered quarrels, quarrel and soda, come to see them in a properlight. And without quarrelling you have not fully appreciated yourfellow-man. For in the ultimate it is the train and complement of Love, the shadow that rounds off the delight we take in poor humanity. It isthe vinegar and pepper of existence, and long after our taste for sweetshas vanished it will be the solace of our declining years. 

THE AMATEUR NATURE-LOVER

It is possible that an education entirely urban is not the bestconceivable preparation for descriptive articles upon the country. Onthe other hand, your professional nature-lover is sometimes a littleover-familiar with his subject. He knows the names of all the things, and he does not spare you. Besides, he is subtle. The prominent featuresare too familiar to him, and he goes into details. What respectabletownsman, for instance, knows what "scabiosa" is? It sounds veryunpleasant. Then the professional nature-lover assumes that you knowtrees. No Englishman can tell any tree from any other tree, except avery palpable oak or poplar. So that we may at least, as an experiment, allow a good Londoner to take his unsophisticated eyes out into thesweet country for once, and try his skill at nature-loving, though hisbotany has been learned over the counter of flower-shops, and hiszoology on Saturday afternoons when they have the band in the Gardens. He makes his way, then, over by Epsom Downs towards Sutton, trying toassimilate his mood to the proper flavour of appreciation as he goes, and with a little notebook in the palm of his hand to assist anill-trained memory. And the burthen of his song is of course the autumntints. 

The masses of trees towards Epsom and Ewell, with the red houses andElizabethan façades peeping through their interstices, contain, it wouldseem, every conceivable colour, except perhaps sky-blue; there arebrilliant yellow trees, and a kind of tree of the most amazing gambogegreen, almost the green of spring come back, and tan-coloured trees, deep brown, red, and deep crimson trees. Here and there the wind hasleft its mark, and the grey-brown branches and their purple tracery oftwigs, with a suggestion of infinite depth behind, show through therents in the leafy covering. There are deep green trees--the amateurnature-lover fancies they may be yews--with their dense warm foliagearranged in horizontal masses, like the clouds low down in a sunset; andcertain other evergreens, one particularly, with a bluish-green coveringof upstanding needles, are intensely conspicuous among the flame tintsaround. On a distant church tower, and nearer, disputing the possessionof a gabled red house with a glowing creeper, is some ivy; and never isthe perennial green of ivy so delightful as it is now, when all else isalight with the sombre fire of the sunset of the year.... 

The amateur nature-lover proceeds over the down, appreciating all thisas hard as he can appreciate, and anon gazing up at the grey and whitecloud shapes melting slowly from this form to that, and showing lakes, and wide expanses, and serene distances of blue between their gaps. Andthen he looks round him for a zoological item. Underfoot the grass ofthe down is recovering from the summer drought and growing soft andgreen again, and plentiful little flattened snail shells lie about, andhere and there a late harebell still nods in the breeze. Yonder bolts arabbit, and then something whizzes by the amateur nature-lover's ear. 

They shoot here somewhere, he remembers suddenly; and then lookinground, in a palpitating state, is reassured by the spectacle of a lonegolfer looming over the brow of the down, and gesticulating black andweird against the sky. The Londoner, with an abrupt affectation ofnonchalance, flings himself flat upon his back, and so remainscomparatively safe until the golfer has passed. These golfers arestrange creatures, rabbit-coloured, except that many are bright redabout the middle, and they repel and yet are ever attracted by a devilin the shape of a little white ball, which leads them on through toothedbriars, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns; cursing the thing, weeping even, and anon laughing at their own foolish rambling;muttering, heeding no one to the right or left of theircareer, --demented creatures, as though these balls were their souls, that they ever sought to lose, and ever repented losing. And silent, ever at the heel of each, is a familiar spirit, an eerie human hedgehog, all set about with walking-sticks, a thing like a cylindricalumbrella-stand with a hat and boots and a certain suggestion of leg. Andso they pass and are gone. 

Rising, the amateur nature-lover finds he has been reclining on apuff-ball. These puff-balls are certainly the most remarkable example ofadaptation to circumstances known to English botanists. They growabundantly on golf grounds, and are exactly like golf-balls in externalappearance. They are, however, Pharisees and whited sepulchres, andwithin they are full of a soft mess of a most unpleasant appearance--theamateur nature-lover has some on him now--which stuff contains thespores. It is a case of what naturalists call "mimicry"--one of nature'scountless adaptations. The golf-player smites these things with force, covering himself with ridicule--and spores, and so disseminating thisfar-sighted and ingenious fungus far and wide about the links. 

The amateur nature-lover passes off the down, and towards Bansteadvillage. He is on the watch for characteristic objects of thecountryside, and rustling through the leaves beneath a chestnut avenuehe comes upon an old boot. It is a very, very old boot, all its blackingwashed off by the rain, and two spreading chestnut leaves, yellow theyare with blotches of green, with their broad fingers extended, rest uponit, as if they would protect and altogether cover the poor old boot inits last resting-place. It is as if Mother Nature, who lost sight of herproduct at the tanner's yard, meant to claim her own trampled childagain at last, after all its wanderings. So we go on, noting a sardinetin gleaming brightly in the amber sunlight, through a hazel hedge, andpresently another old boot. Some hawthorn berries, some hoary clematiswe notice--and then another old boot. Altogether, it may be remarked, inthis walk the amateur nature-lover saw eleven old boots, most of themdropped in the very sweetest bits of hedge tangle and grassy cornerabout Banstead. 

It is natural to ask, "Whence come all these old boots?" They are, aseveryone knows, among the commonest objects in a country walk, socommon, indeed, that the professional nature-lover says very littleabout them. They cannot grow there, they cannot be dropped fromabove--they are distinctly earth-worn boots. I have inquired of my owndomestic people, and caused inquiry to be made in a large number ofhouseholds, and there does not appear to be any regular custom of takingboots away to remote and picturesque spots to abandon them. Somediscarded boots of my own were produced, but they were quite differentfrom the old boot of the outer air. These home-kept old boots werelovely in their way, hoary with mould running into the most exquisitetints of glaucophane and blue-grey, but it was a different wayaltogether from that of the wild boot. 

A friend says, that these boots are cast away by tramps. People, hestates, give your tramp old boots and hats in great profusion, and themodesty of the recipient drives him to these picturesque and secludedspots to effect the necessary change. But no nature-lover has everobserved the tramp or tramp family in the act of changing their clothes, and since there are even reasons to suppose that their garments are notdetachable, it seems preferable to leave the wayside boot as a pleasantflavouring of mystery to our ramble. Another point, which also goes toexplode this tramp theory, is that these countryside boots _never occurin pairs_, as any observer of natural history can testify.... 

So our Cockney Jefferies proceeds, presently coming upon a cinder path. They use cinders a lot about Sutton, to make country paths with; itgives you an unexpected surprise the first time it occurs. You dropsuddenly out of a sweetly tangled lane into a veritable bit of the BlackCountry, and go on with loathing in your soul for your fellow-creatures. There is also an abundance of that last product of civilisation, barbedwire. Oh that I were Gideon! with thorns and briers of the wildernesswould I teach these elders of Sutton! But a truce to dark thoughts!

We take our last look at the country from the open down above Sutton. Blue hills beyond blue hills recede into the remote distance; fromBanstead Down one can see into Oxfordshire. Windsor Castle is in minuteblue silhouette to the left, and to the right and nearer is the CrystalPalace. And closer, clusters red-roofed Sutton and its tower, thenCheam, with its white spire, and further is Ewell, set in a variegatedtexture of autumn foliage. Water gleams--a silver thread--at Ewell, andthe sinking sun behind us catches a window here and there, and turns itinto an eye of flame. And so to Sutton station and home to Cockneydomonce more. 

FROM AN OBSERVATORY

It will be some time yet before the rising of the moon. Looking downfrom the observatory one can see the pathways across the park dotted outin yellow lamps, each with a fringe of dim green; and further off, hotand bright, is the tracery of the illuminated streets, through which thepeople go to and fro. Save for an occasional stirring, or a passingvoice speaking out of the dimness beneath me, the night is very still. Not a cloud is to be seen in the dark midwinter sky to hide one speck ofits broad smears of star dust and its shining constellations. 

As the moon rises, heaven will be flooded with blue light, and one afteranother the stars will be submerged and lost, until only a solitaryshining pinnacle of brightness will here and there remain out of thewhole host of them. It is curious to think that, were the moon but alittle brighter and truly the ruler of the night, rising to its empirewith the setting of the sun, we should never dream of the great stellaruniverse in which our little solar system swims--or know it only as atraveller's tale, a strange thing to be seen at times in the ArcticCircle. Nay, if the earth's atmosphere were some few score miles higher, a night-long twilight would be drawn like an impenetrable veil acrossthe stars. By a mere accident of our existence we see their multitudeever and again, when the curtains of the daylight and moonlight, and ofour own narrow pressing necessities, are for a little while drawn back. Then, for an interval, we look, as if out of a window, into the greatdeep of heaven. So far as physical science goes, there is nothing in theessential conditions of our existence to necessitate that we should havethese transitory glimpses of infinite space. We can imagine men justlike ourselves without such an outlook. But it happens that we have it. 

If we had not this vision, if we had always so much light in the skythat we could not perceive the stars, our lives, so far as we can infer, would be very much as they are now; there would still be the same needsand desires, the same appliances for our safety and satisfaction; thislittle gaslit world below would scarcely miss the stars now, if theywere blotted out for ever. But our science would be different in somerespects had we never seen them. We should still have good reason, inFoucault's pendulum experiment, for supposing that the world rotatedupon its axis, and that the sun was so far relatively fixed; but weshould have no suspicion of the orbital revolution of the world. Insteadwe should ascribe the seasonal differences to a meridional movement ofthe sun. Our spectroscopic astronomy--so far as it refers to thecomposition of the sun and moon--would stand precisely where it does, but the bulk of our mathematical astronomy would not exist. Our calendarwould still be in all essential respects as it is now; our year with thesolstices and equinoxes as its cardinal points. The texture of ourpoetry might conceivably be the poorer without its star spangles; ourphilosophy, for the want of a nebular hypothesis. These would be themain differences. Yet, to those who indulge in speculative dreaming, howmuch smaller life would be with a sun and a moon and a blue beyond forthe only visible, the only thinkable universe. And it is, we repeat, from the scientific standpoint a mere accident that the present--thedaylight--world periodically opens, as it were, and gives us thisinspiring glimpse of the remoteness of space. 

One may imagine countless meteors and comets streaming through the solarsystem, unobserved by those who dwelt under such conditions as have justbeen suggested, or some huge dark body from the outer depths sweepingstraight at that little visible universe, and all unsuspected by theinhabitants. One may imagine the scientific people of such a world, calmin their assurance of the permanence of things, incapable almost ofconceiving any disturbing cause. One may imagine how an imaginativewriter who doubted that permanence would be pooh-poohed. "Cannot we seeto the uttermost limits of space?" they might argue, "and is it notaltogether blue and void?" Then, as the unseen visitor draws near, beginthe most extraordinary perturbations. The two known heavenly bodiessuddenly fail from their accustomed routine. The moon, hithertoinvariably full, changes towards its last quarter--and then, behold! forthe first time the rays of the greater stars visibly pierce the bluecanopy of the sky. How suddenly--painfully almost--the minds of thinkingmen would be enlarged when this rash of the stars appeared. 

And what then if _our_ heavens were to open? Very thin indeed is thecurtain between us and the unknown. There is a fear of the night that isbegotten of ignorance and superstition, a nightmare fear, the fear ofthe impossible; and there is another fear of the night--of the starlitnight--that comes with knowledge, when we see in its true proportionthis little life of ours with all its phantasmal environment of citiesand stores and arsenals, and the habits, prejudices, and promises ofmen. Down there in the gaslit street such things are real and solidenough, the only real things, perhaps; but not up here, not under themidnight sky. Here for a space, standing silently upon the dim, greytower of the old observatory, we may clear our minds of instincts andillusions, and look out upon the real. 

And now to the eastward the stars are no longer innumerable, and the skygrows wan. Then a faint silvery mist appears above the housetops, and atlast in the midst of this there comes a brilliantly shining line--theupper edge of the rising moon. 

THE MODE IN MONUMENTS

STRAY THOUGHTS IN HIGHGATE CEMETERY

On a sharp, sunlight morning, when the white clouds are drifting swiftlyacross the luminous blue sky, there is no finer walk about London thanthe Highgate ridge. One may stay awhile on the Archway looking down uponthe innumerable roofs of London stretching southward into the haze, andshining here and there with the reflection of the rising sun, and thenwander on along the picturesque road by the college of Saint Aloysius tothe new Catholic church, and so through the Waterlow Park to thecemetery. The Waterlow Park is a pleasant place, full of children andaged persons in perambulators during the middle hours of the day, and inthe summer evening time a haunt of young lovers; but your early wandererfinds it solitary save for Vertumnus, who, with L. C. C. On the front ofhim, is putting in crocuses. So we wander down to the little red lodge, whence a sinuous road runs to Hampstead, and presently into the closegroves of monuments that whiten the opposite slope. 

How tightly these white sepulchres are packed here! How different thiscongestion of sorrow from the mossy latitude of God's Acre in thecountry! The dead are crammed together as closely as the living seemedin that bird's-eye view from the Archway. There is no ample shadow oftrees, no tangled corners where mother earth may weave flower garlandsover her returning children. The monuments positively jostle and elboweach other for frontage upon the footways. And they are so rawly cleanand assertive. Most of them are conspicuously new whitened, withfreshly-blackened or newly-gilt inscriptions, bare of lichen, moss, ormystery, and altogether so restless that it seems to the meditative manthat the struggle for existence, for mere standing room and a show inthe world, still rages among the dead. The unstable slope of the hill, with its bristling array of obelisks, crosses and urns, craning oneabove another, is as directly opposed to the restfulness of the villagechurchyard with its serene outspreading yews as midday Fleet Street to aSabbath evening amidst the Sussex hills. This cemetery is, indeed, averitable tumult of tombs. 

Another thing that presently comes painfully home to one is the lack ofindividuality among all these dead. Not a necessary lack ofindividuality so much as a deliberate avoidance of it. As one wandersalong the steep, narrow pathways one is more and more profoundlyimpressed by the wholesale flavour of the mourning, the stereotyping ofthe monuments. The place is too modern for _memento mori_ and thehour-glass and the skull. Instead, Slap & Dash, that excellent firm ofmonumental masons, everywhere crave to be remembered. Truly, the firm ofSlap & Dash have much to answer for among these graves, and they do notseem to be ashamed of it. 

From one elevated point in this cemetery one can count more than ahundred urns, getting at last weary and confused with the recedingmultitude. The urn is not dissimilar to the domestic mantel ornament, and always a stony piece of textile fabric is feigned to be thrown overits shoulder. At times it is wreathed in stony flowers. The only varietyis in the form. Sometimes your urn is broad and squat, a Silenus amongurns; sometimes fragile and high-shouldered, like a slender old maid;here an "out-size" in urns stalwart and strong, and there a dwarfpeeping quaintly from its wrapping. The obelisks, too, run through along scale of size and refinement. But the curious man finds no hiddenconnection between the carriage of the monument and the character of thedead. Messrs. Slap & Dash apparently take the urn or obelisk that comesreadiest to hand. One wonders dimly why mourners have this overwhelmingproclivity for Messrs. Slap & Dash and their obelisk and urn. 

The reason why the firm produces these articles may be guessed at. Theyare probably easy to make, and require scarcely any skill. Thecontemplative man has a dim vision of a grimy shed in a back street, where a human being passes dismally through life the while he chips outan unending succession of these cheap urns and obelisks for hisemployers' retailing. But the question why numberless people willprofane the memory of their departed by these public advertisements ofSlap & Dash, and their evil trade, is a more difficult problem. Forsurely nothing could be more unmeaning or more ungainly than themonumental urn, unless it be the monumental obelisk. The plain cross, bycontrast, has the tenderest meaning, and is a simple and fittingmonument that no repetition can stale. 

The artistic cowardice of the English is perhaps the clue to themystery. Your Englishman is always afraid to commit himself to criticismwithout the refuge of a _tu quoque_. He is covered dead, just as he iscovered living, with the "correct thing. " A respectable stock-in-tradeis proffered him by the insinuating shopman, to whom it is our custom togo. He is told this is selling well, or that is much admired. Heavendefend that he should admire on his own account! He orders the stock urnor the stock slab because it is large and sufficiently expensive for hismeans and sorrow, and because he knows of nothing better. So we mourn asthe stonemason decrees, or after the example and pattern of the Smithsnext door. But some day it will dawn upon us that a little thought and asearch after beauty are far more becoming than an order and a cheque tothe nearest advertising tradesman. Or it may be we shall conclude thatthe anonymous peace of a grassy mould is better than his commercialbrutalities, and so there will be an end of him. 

One may go from end to end of this cemetery and find scarcely anythingbeautiful, appropriate, or tender. A lion, ill done, and yet to somedegree impressive, lies complacently above a menagerie keeper, and nearthis is a tomb of some imagination, with reliefs of the life of Christ. In one place a grotesque horse, with a head disproportionately vast, isto be seen. Perhaps among all these monuments the one to Mrs. Blake isthe most pleasing. It is a simply and quaintly executed kneeling figure, with a certain quiet and pathetic reverence of pose that is strangelyrestful against the serried vulgarity around it. 

But the tradesman ghoul will not leave us; he follows us up and down, indecently clamouring his name and address, and at last turns ourmeditation to despair. Certain stock devices become as painful aspopular autotypes. There is the lily broken on its stalk; we meet ithere on a cross and there on an obelisk, presently on the pedestal of anurn. There is the hand pointing upward, here balanced on the top of anobelisk and there upon a cross. The white-robed angel, free from theremotest shadow of expression, meets us again and again. "All this ismine, " says the tradesman ghoul. "Behold the names of me--Slap & Dashhere, the Ugliness Company there, and this the work of the Cheap andElegant Funeral Association. This is where we slew the art of sculpture. These are our trophies that sculpture is no more. All this marble mighthave been beautiful, all this sorrow might have been expressive, had itnot been for us. See, this is our border, No. A 5, and our pedestal No. E, and our second quality urn, along of a nice appropriate text--apretty combination and a cheap one. Or we can do it you better in borderA 3, and pedestal C, and a larger urn or a hangel----"

The meditative man is seized with a dismal horror, and retreats to thegates. Even there a wooden advertisement grins broadly at him in hisdiscomfiture, and shouts a name athwart his route. And so down thewinding road to the valley, and then up Parliament Hill towardsHampstead and its breeze-whipped ponds. And the mind of him is full of adim vision of days that have been, when sculptor and stonemason wereone, when the artist put his work in the porch for all the world to see, when people had leisure to think how things should be done and heart todo them well, when there was beauty in the business of life and dignityin death. And he wonders rather hopelessly if people will ever rise upagainst these damnable tradesmen who ruin our arts, make our livescostly and dismal, and advertise, advertise even on our graves. 

HOW I DIED

It is now ten years ago since I received my death warrant. All these tenyears I have been, and I am, and shall be, I hope, for years yet, aDoomed Man. It only occurred to me yesterday that I had beendodging--missing rather than dodging--the common enemy for such a spaceof time. _Then_, I know, I respected him. It seemed he marched upon me, inexorable, irresistible; even at last I felt his grip upon me. I bowedin the shadow. And he passed. Ten years ago, and once since, he and Ihave been very near. But now he seems to me but a blind man, and we, with all our solemn folly of medicine and hygiene, but players in a gameof Blind Man's Buff. The gaunt, familiar hand comes out suddenly, swiftly, this time surely? And it passes close to my shoulder; I hearsomeone near me cry, and it is over.... Another ream of paper; there istime at least for the Great Book still. 

Very close to the tragedy of life is the comedy, brightest upon the veryedge of the dark, and I remember now with a queer touch of sympatheticamusement my dear departed self of the middle eighties. How the thingstaggered me! I was full of the vast ambition of youth; I was still atthe age when death is quite out of sight, when life is still aninterminable vista of years; and then suddenly, with a gout of bloodupon my knuckle, with a queer familiar taste in my mouth, that coughwhich had been a bother became a tragedy, and this world that had beenso solid grew faint and thin. I saw through it; saw his face near to myown; suddenly found him beside me, when I had been dreaming he was farbeyond there, far away over the hills. 

My first phase was an immense sorrow for myself. It was a purely selfishemotion. You see I had been saving myself up, denying myself half thepride of life and most of its indulgence, drilling myself like adrill-sergeant, with my eyes on those now unattainable hills. Had Iknown it was to end so soon, I should have planned everything sodifferently. I lay in bed mourning my truncated existence. Thenpresently the sorrow broadened. They were so sorry, so genuinely sorryfor me. And they considered me so much now. I had this and that theywould never have given me before--the stateliest bedding, the costliestfood. I could feel from my bed the suddenly disorganised house, thedistressed friends, the new-born solicitude. Insensibly a realisation ofenhanced importance came to temper my regrets for my neglected sins. Thelost world, that had seemed so brilliant and attractive, dwindledsteadily as the days of my illness wore on. I thought more of theworld's loss, and less of my own. 

Then came the long journey; the princely style of it! the suddenawakening on the part of external humanity, which had hitherto been wontto jostle me, to help itself before me, to turn its back upon me, to myimportance. "He has a diseased lung--cannot live long".... 

I was going into the dark and I was not afraid--with ostentation. Istill regard that, though now with scarcely so much gravity asheretofore, as a very magnificent period in my life. For nearly fourmonths I was dying with immense dignity. Plutarch might have recordedit. I wrote--in touchingly unsteady pencil--to all my intimate friends, and indeed to many other people. I saw the littleness of hate andambition. I forgave my enemies, and they were subdued and owned to it. How they must regret these admissions! I made many memorable remarks. This lasted, I say, nearly four months. 

The medical profession, which had pronounced my death sentence, reiterated it steadily--has, indeed, done so now this ten years. Towardsthe end of those four months, however, dying lost its freshness for me. I began to detect a certain habitual quality in my service. I hadexhausted all my memorable remarks upon the subject, and the strainbegan to tell upon all of us. 

One day in the spring-time I crawled out alone, carefully wrapped, andwith a stick, to look once more--perhaps for the last time--on sky andearth, and the first scattered skirmishers of the coming army offlowers. It was a day of soft wind, when the shadows of the clouds gosweeping over the hills. Quite casually I happened upon a girlclambering over a hedge, and her dress had caught in a bramble, and thechat was quite impromptu and most idyllic. I remember she had three orfour wood anemones in her hand--"wind stars" she called them, and Ithought it a pretty name. And we talked of this and that, with a lightin our eyes, as young folks will. 

I quite forgot I was a Doomed Man. I surprised myself walking home witha confident stride that jarred with the sudden recollection of myfunereal circumstances. For a moment I tried in vain to think what itwas had slipped my memory. Then it came, colourless and remote. "Oh!Death.... He's a Bore, " I said; "I've done with him, " and laughed tothink of having done with him. 

"And why not so?" said I. 

THE END

 _This book appeared some years ago at another price and in another form. The Publisher believes that its present guise will bring it within the reach of all and sundry, who, while delighting in the marriage of_ wit _with_ wisdom, _cannot complete the trilogy with the third desideratum of_ wealth. 

PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH

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