OVER THE FIRESIDE

WITH SILENT FRIENDS

BY RICHARD KING

WITH A "FOREWORD" BY

SIR ARTHUR PEARSON, BART. , G. B. E. 

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

 WITH SILENT FRIENDS THE SECOND BOOK OF SILENT FRIENDS PASSION AND POT-POURRI

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY

MCMXXI

 _Many of the following Essays appear by kind permission of the Editor of "The Tatler. "_

 _Fifty per cent. Of the author's profit on the sale of this book will be handed over to the National Library of the Blind, Tufton Street, Westminster, S. W. _

 I DEDICATE, THIS LITTLE BOOK TO THOSE V. A. D. 'S WHO, THOUGH THE WAR IS OVER, STILL "CARRY ON" AND TO THOSE OTHER MEN AND WOMEN WHO, LIVING IN FREEDOM, HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN THE MEN WHO FOUGHT OR DIED FOR IT

FOREWORD

BY SIR ARTHUR PEARSON, BART. , G. B. E. 

Those who buy "Over the Fireside" will purchase for themselves the realjoy of mentally absorbing the delightful thoughts which Mr. RichardKing so charmingly clothes in words. And they will purchase, too, alarge share of an even greater pleasure--the pleasure of givingpleasure to others--for the author tells me that he has arranged togive half of the profits arising from the sale of this book to theNational Library for the Blind, thus enabling that beneficentInstitution to widen and extend its sphere of usefulness. 

You will never, perhaps, have heard of the National Library for theBlind, and even if it so happens that you are vaguely aware of itsexistence, you will in no true degree realise all that it means tothose who are compelled to lead lives, which however full andinteresting, must inevitably be far more limited in scope than yourown. Let me try to make you understand what reading means to theintelligent blind man or woman. 

Our lives are necessarily narrow. Blind people, however keen theirunderstanding, and however clearly and sympathetically those aroundthem may by description make up for their lack of perception, must, perforce, lead lives which lack the vivid actuality of the lives ofothers. To those of them who have always been blind the world, outsidethe reach of their hands, is a mystery which can only be solved bydescription. And where shall they turn for more potent descriptionthan to the pages in which those gifted with the mastery of languagehave set down their impressions of the world around them?

And for people whose sight has left them after the world and much thatis in it has become familiar to them, reading must mean more than itdoes to any but the most studious of those who can see. Some are sofortunate as to be able to enlist or command the services of anintelligent reader, but this is not given to any but a small minority, and even to these the ability to read at will, without the necessity ofcalling in the aid of another, is a matter of real moment, helping asit does to do away with that feeling of dependence which is thegreatest disadvantage of blindness. 

All this Mr. Richard King knows nearly as well as I do, for he has beena splendidly helpful friend to the men who were blinded in the War, andnone know better than he how greatly they have gained by learning toread anew, making the fingers as they travel over the dotted charactersreplace the eyes of which they have been despoilt. 

Disaster sometimes leads to good fortune, and the disaster which befellthe blinded soldier has given to the service of the blind worldgenerally the affection and sympathy which Mr. Richard King soabundantly possesses. Your reading of this book--and if you have onlyborrowed it I hope that these words may induce you to buy a copy--willhelp to enable more blind folk to read than would otherwise have beenthe case, and thus you will have added to the happiness of the world, just as the perusal of "Over the Fireside" will have added to your ownhappiness. 

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

Draw your chair up nearer to the fireside. 

It is the hour of twilight. Soon, so very soon, another of Life'slittle days will have silently crept behind us into the long dim limboof half-forgotten years. 

We are alone--you and I. Yet between us--unseen, but very real--areMemories linking us to one another and to the generation who, likeourselves, is growing old. How still the world outside seems to havegrown! The shadows are lengthening, minute by minute, and presently, the garden, so brightly beautiful such a little time ago in all thecolour of its September beauty, will be lost to us in the magic mysteryof Night. Who knows? if in the darkest shadows Angels are notstanding, and God, returning in this twilight hour, will stay with usuntil the coming of the Dawn!

Inside the room the fire burns brightly, for the September evenings arevery chilly. Its dancing flames illumine us as if pixies were shakingtheir tiny lanterns in our faces. 

DON'T you love the Twilight Hour, when heart seems to speak to heart, and Time seems as if it had ceased for a moment to pursue its Deathlesscourse, lingering in the shadows for a while!

It is the hour when old friends meet to talk of "cabbages and kings, "and Life and Love and all those unimportant things which happened longago in the Dead Yesterdays. Or perhaps, we both sit silent for aspace. We do not speak, yet each seems to divine the other's thought. That is the wonder of real Friendship, even the silence speaks, tellingto those who understand the thoughts we have never dared to utter. 

So we sit quietly, dreaming over the dying embers. We make no effort, we do not strive to "entertain. " We simply speak of Men and Mattersand how they influenced us and were woven unconsciously into thepattern of our inner lives. 

So the long hour of twilight passes--passes. . . . . . 

And each hour is no less precious because there will be so many hours"over the fireside" for both of us, now that we are growing old. 

But we would not become young again, merely to grow old again. 

No! NO!

Age, after all, has MEMORIES, and each Memory is as a story that istold. 

Do you know those lovely lines by John Masefield--

 _"I take the bank and gather to the fire, Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute The clock ticks to my heart. A withered wire, Moves a thin ghost of music in the spinet. I cannot sail your seas, I cannot wander Your cornfield, nor your hill-land, nor your valleys Ever again, nor share the battle yonder Where the young knight the broken squadron rallies. Only stay quiet while my mind remembers The beauty of fire from the beauty of embers. "_

And so I hope that a few of the embers in this little book will help towarm some unknown human heart. 

And that is all I ask!

 CONTENTS

 Books and the Blind The Blind Man's Problem Dreams How to Help On Getting Away from Yourself Travel Work Farewells! The "Butters" Age that Dyes Women in Love Pompous Pride in Literary "Lions" Seaside Piers Visitors The Unimpassioned English Relations Polite Conversation Awful Warnings It's oh, to be out of England--now that Spring is here Bad-tempered People Polite Masks The Might-have-been Autumn Sowing What You Really Reap Autumn Determination Two Lives Backward and Forward When? The Futile Thought The London Season Christmas The New Year February Tub-thumpers I Wonder If . . . Types of Tub-thumpers If Age only Practised what it Preached! Beginnings Unlucky in Little Things Wallpapers Our Irritating Habits Away--Far Away! "Family Skeletons" The Dreariness of One Line of Conduct The Happy Discontent Book-borrowing Nearly Always Means Book-stealing Other People's Books The Road to Calvary Mountain Paths The Unholy Fear The Need to Remember Humanity Responsibility The Government of the Future The Question The Two Passions Our "Secret Escapes" My Escape and Some Others Over the Fireside Faith Reached through Bitterness and Loss Aristocracy and Democracy Duty Sweeping Assertions from Particular Instances How I came to make "History" The Glut of the Ornamental On Going "to the Dogs" A School for Wives The Neglected Art of Eating Gracefully Modern Clothes A Sense of Universal Pity The Few The Great and the Really Great Love "Mush" Wives Children One of the Minor Tragedies The "Glorious Dead" Always the Personal Note Clergymen Their Failure Work In the East-end Mysticism and the Practical Man Abraham Lincoln Reconstruction Education The Inane and Unimaginative Great Adventure Travel The Enthralling Out-of-Reach The Things which are not Dreamed of in Our Philosophy Faith Spiritualism On Reality in People Life Dreams and Reality Love of God The Will to Faith

OVER THE FIRESIDE

_Books and the Blind_

Strange as the confession may appear coming from one who, week in, weekout, writes about books, I am not a great book-lover! I infinitelyprefer to watch and think, think and watch, and listen. All the same, I would not be without books for anything in this world. They are ameans of getting away, of forgetting, of losing oneself, the past, thepresent, and the future, in the story, in the lives, and in thethoughts of other men and women, in the thrill and excitement ofextraneous people and things. One of the delights of winter--and inthis country winter is of such interminable length and dreariness thatwe hug any delight which belongs to it alone as fervently as we huglove to our bosoms when we have reached the winter of our lives!--is tosnuggle down into a comfy easy-chair before a big fire and, book inhand, travel hither and thither as the author wills--hate, love, despair, or mock as the author inveigles or moves us. I don't thinkthat most of us pay half enough respectful attention to books seeinghow greatly we depend upon them for some of the quietest pleasures ofour lives. But that is the way of human nature, isn't it? We rarelyvalue anything until we lose it; we sigh most ardently for the thingwhich is beyond our reach, we count our happiest days those across therecord of which we now must scrawl, "Too late!" That is why I alwaysfeel so infinitely sorry for the blind. The blind can so rarely getaway from themselves, and, when they do, only with that effort which inyou and me would demand some bigger result than merely to loseremembrance of our minor worries. When we are in trouble, when we arein pain, when our heart weeps silently and alone, its sorrowunsuspected by even our nearest and dearest, we, I say, can ofttimesdeaden the sad ache of the everyday by going out into the world, seeking change of scene, change of environment, something to divert, for the nonce, the unhappy tenor of our lives. But the blind, alas!can do none of these things. Wherever they go, to whatever change ofscene they flee for variety, the same haunting darkness follows themunendingly. 

_The Blind Man's Problem_

It is so difficult for them to get away from themselves, to seek thatchange and novelty which, in our hours of dread and suspense, are ourmost urgent need. All the time, day in, day out, their perpetualdarkness thrusts them back upon themselves. They cannot get away fromit. Nothing--or perhaps, so very, very few things--can take them outof themselves, allow them to lose their own unhappiness in living theirlives for something, someone outside themselves. Their own needs, their own loss, their own loneliness, are perpetually with them. Sotheir emotions go round and round in a vicious circle, from which thereis no possible escape. Never, never can they _give_. They have solittle to offer but love and gratitude. But, although gratitude is sobeautiful and so rare, it is not an emotion that we yearn to feelalways and always. We want to give, to be thanked ourselves, to cheer, to succour, to do some little good ourselves while yet we may. Thereis a joy in _giving_ generously, just as there is in _receiving_generously. Yet, there are many moments in each man's life when nogift can numb the dull ache of the inevitable, when nothing, exceptgetting away--somewhere, somehow, and immediately--can stifle theunspoken pain which comes to all of us and which in not every instancecan we so easily cast off. Some men travel; some men go out into theworld to lose their own trouble in administering to the trouble ofother people; some find forgetfulness in work--hard, strenuous labour;most of us--especially when our trouble be not overwhelming--findsolace in art, or music, and especially in books. For books take onesuddenly into another world, among other men and women; and sometimesin the problem of their lives we may find a solution of our own trials, and be helped, encouraged, restarted on our way by them. I thought ofthese things the other day when I was asked to visit the NationalLibrary for the Blind in Tufton Street, Westminster. It is hidden awayin a side street, but the good work it does is spread all over theworld. And, as I wandered round this large building and examined thethousands of books--classic as well as quite recent works--I thought tomyself, "How the blind must appreciate this blessing!" And from that Ibegan to realise once more how those who cannot see depend so greatlyon books--that means of "forgetting" which you and I pass by socasually. For _we_ can seek diversion in a score of ways, but _they_, the blind, have so few, so very few means of escape. Wherever they go, they never find a change of scene--merely the sounds alter, that isall. But in books they can suddenly find a new world--a world which_they can see_. 

_Dreams_

I can remember talking once to a blinded soldier about dreams. I haveoften wondered what kind of dreams blind people--those who have beenblind from birth, I mean--dream, what kind of scenes their visionpictures, how their friends, and those they love, look who people thisworld of sleeping fancy. I have never had the courage to ask thoseblind people whom I know, but this soldier to whom I talked, told methat every night when he goes to bed he prays that he maydream--because in his dreams he is not blind, in his dreams he can see, and he is once more happy. I could have sobbed aloud when he told me, but to sob over the inevitable is useless--better make happier theworld which is a fact. But I realised that this dream-sight gave himinestimable comfort. It gave him something to think about in thedarkness of the day. It was a change from always thinking about thepast--the past when he could laugh and shout, run wild and enjoyhimself as other boys enjoy their lives. And this blinded soldier usedto be reading--always reading. I used to chaff him about it, callinghim a book-worm, urging him to go to theatres, tea-parties, long walks. He laughed, but shook his head. Then he told me that, although henever used to care much for reading, books were now one of the comfortsof his life. "When I feel blind, " he said--"and we don't always feelblind, you know, when we are in the right company among people who knowhow to treat us as if we were not children, and as if we were notdeaf--I pick up a book, and, if I stick to it and concentrate, I beginto lose remembrance and to live in the story I am reading and among thepeople of the tale. And--_it is more like seeing the world thananything else I do!_"

_How to Help_

I must confess, his remark gave me an additional respect for those hugevolumes of books written in Braille which he always carried about withhim than I had ever felt before. When you and I are "fed up" with lifeand everybody surrounding us--and we all have these moods--we canescape open grousing by taking a long walk, or by seeing fresh peopleand fresh places, watching, thinking, and amusing ourselves in a newfashion. But the blind have only books--they alone are the only handymeans by which they can get away from the present and lose themselvesamid surroundings new and strange. All the more need, then, for us tohelp along the good work done by the National Library for the Blind. It needs more helpers, and it needs more money. Working with theabsolute minimum of staff and outside expenses, it is achieving themaximum amount of good. As a library, I have only to tell you that itcontains 6, 600 separate works in 56, 000 volumes, supplemented by 4, 000pieces of music in 8, 000 volumes--a total of 64, 000 items, which numberis being added to every week as books are asked for by the variousblind readers. And in helping this great and good work, I realise nowthat, to a certain extent, you are helping blind people _to see_. Forbooks do take you out of yourself, don't they? They do help you tolose cognizance of your present surroundings, even if you be surroundedperpetually by darkness, they do transplant you for a while intoanother world--a world which you can _see_, and among men and womenwhom, should the author be great enough, you seem to know as well. Books are a blessing to all of us--but they are something more than ablessing to the blind, they are a deliverance from their darkness. Andwe can all give them this blessing, if we will--thank Heaven, and thewomen who give their lives to the work of the National Library for theBlind!--this blessing, which is not often heard of, is a work whichwill grow so soon as it is known, a work the greatness and goodness ofwhich are worthy of all help. 

_On Getting Away from Yourself_

I always feel so sorry for the blind, because it seems to me they cannever get away from themselves by wandering in pastures new. It istrite to say that the glory of the golden sunsets, the glory of themountains and the valleys, the coming of spring, the radiance ofsummer--all these things are denied them. They are. But their greatdeprivation is that none of these things can help them to get away fromthemselves, from the torments of their own souls, the hauntingdreadfulness of their own secret worries. We, the more fortunate, notonly can fill our souls with beauty by the contemplation of beautifulthings, but, when the tale of our inner-life possesses the torments ofHell, we can turn to them in our despair because we know that theirglory will ease our pain, will help us to forget awhile, will give usrenewed courage to go on fighting until the end. But where all isblackness, those inner-torments must assume gigantic proportions. Nothing can take them away--except time and the weariness of a soul tooutterly weary to care any longer. But time works so slowly, and theutter weariness of the soul is often so prolonged before, as it were, the spirit snaps and the blessed numbness of indifference settles downupon our hearts. People who can see have the whole of the wonder ofNature working for them in their woe. It is hard to feel utterlycrushed and broken before a wide expanse of mountain, moorland, or sea. Something in their strength and vastness seems to bring renewed vigourto our heart and soul. It is as if God spoke words of encouragement toyou through the wonder which is His world. But blind--one can havenone of these consolations. All is darkness--darkness which seems tothrust you back once more towards the terror of your own heart-break. Sometimes I wonder that the blind do not go mad. To them there is onlymusic and love to bring renewed courage to a heart weary of its ownconflict. To get away from yourself--and not to be able to do it--oh, that must be Hell indeed! Verily sometimes the human need of pity ispositively terrifying. 

_Travel_

We know what it would be were we never for a single instant able to getaway from the too-familiar scenes and people who, unconsciously, because of their very familiarity, drive us back upon ourselves. Ineach life there are a series of soul crises, when the spirit has tobattle against some great pain, some great trouble, some overwhelmingdisillusion--to win, or be for ever beaten. But few, very few soulsare strong enough to win that battle unaided. A friend may doit--though friends to whom you would tell the secret sorrows of yourlife are rare! But a complete change of scene and environment workswonders. Nature, travel, work--all these things can help you in yourstruggle towards indifference and the superficially normal. But whereNature and travel are useless, and work--well, work has to be somethingall-absorbing to help us in our conflict--is the only thing left, Iwonder how men and women survive, unless, with sightlessness, somegreater strength is added to the soul, some greater numbness to theimagination and the heart. But this I so greatly doubt. Truthfully, as I said before, the need for pity seems sometimes overwhelming, surpassing all imagining. I am sure that I myself would assuredly havegone mad had I not been able to lose myself a little in travel andchange of scene. When the heart is tormented by some great pain, thespirit seems too utterly spiritless to do anything but despair. Butlife teaches us, among other things, some of the panaceas of pain. Itteaches us that the mind finds it difficult to realise two greatemotions at once, and that, where an emotion helps to take us out ofourselves, by exactly the strength of that emotion, as it were, is theother one robbed of its bitterness and its pain. Some people seek thissoul-ease one way and some people by other means, but seek it we allmust one day or another, and it seems to me that one of the wonders ofthe natural world, the sunlight and the stars, is that they are alwaysthere, magnificent and waiting, for the weary and the sorrowing to findsome small solace in their woe. 

_Work_

Work and Travel, Travel and Work--and by Work I mean some labour soabsorbing as to drug all thought; and by Travel I mean Nature, andbooks, and art, and music, since these are, after all, butdream-voyages in other men's minds--they alone are for me the panaceaof pain. Not the cackle of the human tongue--that for ever leaves mecold; not the sympathy which talks and reproves, or turns on the tap ofhelp and courage by the usual trite source--that never helps me toforget. But Work, and Travel, and (for me) Loneliness--these are thethree things by which I flee from haunting terrors towards numbness andindifference. Each one, of course, has his own weapons--these aremine. Years ago, when I was young and timid, I dreaded to leave thelittle rut down which I wandered. Now experience has given me theknowledge that Life is very little after all, and that it is for themost part worthless where there is no happiness, no forgetfulness ofpain, no inner peace. The opinion of other people, beyond the few wholove me, leaves me cold. The praise or approbation of the world--whatis it worth at best, while it is boring nearly always? Each year as itpasses seems to me, not so much a mere passing of time and distance, but a further peak attained towards some world, some inner vision, which I but half comprehend. Each peak is lonelier, but, as I reach itand prepare to ascend the next, there comes into my soul a wider visionof what life, and love, and renunciation really mean, until at last Iseem to _see_--what? I cannot really say, but I see, as it were, theearly radiance of some Great Dawn where everything will be made clearand, at last and at length, the soul will find comfort, and happiness, and peace. And the things which drag you away from thisinner-vision--they are the things which hurt, which age you before yourtime, which rob you of joy and contentment. As a syren they seem tobeckon you into the valleys where all is sunshine and liveliness, andif you go . . . If you go, alas! it is not long before once more youmust set your face, a lonelier and a sadder man, towards the mountainpeaks. That seems to me to be the story of--oh, so many lives! Thatseems to me to be the one big theme in a tale which superficially isall jollity and laughter. 

_Farewells!_

When Youth bids "Good-bye" to anything, it is usually to some very_tremendous thing_--or at least, it seems to be tremendous in the eyesof Youth. But Age--although few people ever suspect--is always sayingFarewell, not to some tremendous thing, because Age knows alas! thatvery few things are tremendous, but to little everyday pleasures whichYouth, in the full pride of its few years, smiles at complaisantly, orignores--for will they not repeat themselves again and again, tomorrowperhaps, certainly next year? But the "I Will" of Youth has become the"I may" of Old Age. That is why Old Age is continually saying"Farewell" secretly in its heart. Nobody hears it bid "Adieu" to thethings which pass; it says "Addio" under its breath so quietly that noone ever knows: and Old Age is very, very proud. And Youth, seeing thesmile by which Old Age so often hides its tears, imagines that Age canhave no sadness beyond the fact of growing old. Youth is so strong, sofree, so contemptuous of all restraint, so secretly uncomprehendingface to face with the tears which are hastily wiped away. "For, whathas Age to weep over?" it cries. "After all, it has lived its life; ithas had its due share of existence. How stupid--to quarrel with theshadows when they fall!" But Old Age hearing that cry, says nothing. Youth would not understand it were it to speak a modicum of itsthoughts. Besides, Old Age is fearful of ridicule; and Youth so oftenmistakes that fear for envy--whereas, Old Age envies Youth so little, so very, very little! Would Old Age be young again? Yes, yes, athousand times _Yes_! But would Age be young again merely _to grow oldagain_? No! A hundred thousand times No! Old Age is too difficult alesson to learn ever to repeat the process. Resignation is such ahard-won victory that there remains no strength of will, no desire tofight the battle all over again. And resignation _is_ a victory--avictory which nothing on earth can rob us. And because it is avictory, and because the winning of it cost us so many unseen tears, somany pangs, so much unsuspected courage, it is for Age one of the mostprecious memories of its inner-life. No; Age envies Youth for itsinnocence, its vigour and its strength; for its well-nigh unshakablebelief in itself, in the reality of happiness and of love: but Ageenvies it so little--the mere fact of being young. It knows what liesahead of Youth, and, in that knowledge, there can be no room for envy. The Dawn has its beauty; so too has the Twilight. And night comes atlength to wrap in darkness and in mystery the brightest day. 

_The "Butters"_

Of all the human species--preserve, oh! preserve me from the monstrousfamily of the Goats. I don't mean the people who go off mountainclimbing, nor those old gentlemen who allow the hair round their lowerjaw to grow so long that it resembles a dirty halo which has somehowslipped down over their noses; nor do I mean the sheepish individuals, nor those whom, in our more vulgar moments, we crossly designate as"Goats. " No; the people I really mean are the people who can neverutter a favourable opinion without butting a "but" into the middle ofit; people who, as it were, give you a bunch of flowers with one handand throw a bucket of cabbage-water over you with the other. People, in fact, who talk like this: "Yes, she's a very nice woman, _but_ whata pity she's so fat!" or, "Yes, she's pretty, _but_, of course, she'snot so young as she was!" Nothing is ever perfect in the minds ofthese people, nor any person either. For one nice thing they have tosay concerning men, women, and affairs, they have a hundred nastythings to utter. They are never completely satisfied by anything noranybody, and they cannot bear that the world should remain in ignoranceof the causes of their dissatisfaction. 

It isn't that they know there is often a fly in the amber so much asthat they perceive the fly too clearly, and that amber, even at itsbest, always looks to them like a piece of toffee after all. Howanybody ever manages to live with these kind of people perpetuallyabout the house I do not know. And the worst of it is there seems nocure for the "Goats, " and, unlike real Goats, nothing will ever drivethem into the wilderness for ever. Even if you do occasionally drivethem forth, they will return to you anon to inform you that thewilderness, to which you have never been, is a hundred times nicer thanthe cultivated garden which it is your fate to inhabit. The mostbeautiful places on this earth are, according to them, just thoseplaces which you have never visited, nor is there any likelihood of youever being fortunate enough to do so. If you tell them that the mostlovely spot you have ever seen is Beaulieu in May, when the visitorshave gone, they will immediately tell you that it isn't half so lovelyas Timbuctoo--even when the visitors are there. Should you talk tothem of charming people, they will describe to you the people theyknow, people whom you really would fall violently in love with--onlythere is no chance of you ever meeting them, because they have justgone to Jamaica. They "butt" their "but" into all your littlepleasures, and even when you really are enjoying yourself, and the"but" would have to be a bomb to upset your equanimity, they will throwcold water upon your ardour by gently hinting that you had better enjoyyourself while you can, because you won't be young much longer. Ough!Even when one is dead, I suppose, these "Goats" will stand round youand say: "It's very sad . . . _But_ we all have to die some time. "And if they do, I hope I shall come back suddenly to life to butt inwith my own "but" . . . "_But_ I hope I shan't meet YOU in Heaven. "

But I suppose these "butters" enjoy themselves, even though otherpeople don't enjoy them. They love to take you by the hand, as itwere, and lead you from the sunshine into the shady side of everygarden. Not their delight is it to work the limelight. Rather theyprefer to cast a shadow--when they can't turn out the lightsaltogether. And, strangely enough, these people are the very peoplewhose life is passed in the pleasantest places. It may be that, metaphorically speaking, they have been so long used to the Powers ofexistence that they delight in treasuring the weeds. Well, I, for one, wish that they could live among these weeds for just so long a time asto become quite sick of them--when, doubtless, they would return to usonly too anxious to see nothing but the simple flowers, and each simpleflower an exquisite joy in itself--although it fades!

_Age that Dyes_

So many women seem to imagine that when they dip their heads in hennatwenty years suddenly slips from off them into the mess. As a matterof fact, they invariably pick up an additional ten years with the dyeevery time. After all, the hair, even at its dullest and greyest, shows fewer of the painful signs of Anno Domini than almost any part ofthe body. The eyes and the hands, and, above all, the mind--these tellthe tale of the passing years far more vividly for those who pause toread. But then, so very many women make the mistake of imagining thatif their hair is fully-coloured and their skin fairly smooth the worldwill be deceived into taking them for twenty-nine. As a matter offact, the world is far too lynx-eyed ever to be taken in by any suchapparent camouflage. On the contrary, it adds yet another ten years tothe real age, and classes the dyed one among the "poor old things" forevermore. No, the truth of the matter is that, to keep and preservethe illusion of youthfulness long after youth has slipped away into thedead years behind us, is a far more difficult and complicated matterthan merely painting the face, turning brown hair red, and beingdivorced. Perhaps one of the most rejuvenating effects is to show theworld, while trying to believe it yourself, that you don't honestlyreally care tuppence about growing old. To show that you do care, andcare horribly, is to look every second of your proper age, with theadditional effect of a dreary antiquity into the bargain. It isn'tsufficient to be strictly economical with your smiles for fear lestdeep lines should appear on your face (deep lines will come in spite ofyour imitation of a mask), or to dye your hair a kind of lifelessgolden, or to draw your waist in, dress as youthfully as your owndaughter, and generally try to skip about as giddily as your owngrandchildren. No, if you want to seem youthful--and where is thewoman who doesn't?--you must _think_ youthfully all the time. Thisdoesn't mean that you must _act_ youthfully as well. Oh, dear me, no!Old mutton skipping about like a super-animated young lamb--that, indeed, gives an impression of old age which approaches to theantiquity of a curio. No, you must keep your intelligence alert, yoursympathies awake; you must never rust or get into a "rut"; above all, you must keep in touch with the _aims_ of youth, without necessarilymerely imitating its _antics_--then a woman will always possess thatinterest and that charm which never stales, and which will carry herthrough the years with the same triumph as her youth once did, or herbeauty--if she ever possessed any. And if _she_ must use theartificial deceptions of chemists, which deceive nobody, let her do itso artfully that, metaphorically speaking, she preserves the lovelymellow atmosphere of an "old picture, " not the blatant colouring of alodging-house daub. 

But, of course, one of the hardest problems of a woman's life is torealise just when she must acknowlege that her youthful prime is past. Some women never seem able to solve it. They either hang on to theburlesque semblance of twenty-five, or else go all to pieces, and takeunto themselves "views" as violent as they are sour. When they cannotcommand the uncritical admiration of the gaping crowd, they descendfrom their thrones to shy brickbats at everyone who doesn't look atthem twice. A wise woman realises that although at forty she cannot bethe centre of attraction for her youthfulness alone, she can yetcommand a circle of true friends, which, though smaller in number, ismore deeply devoted in intention. But she will never be able to keepeven these unless her sympathies are wide, her heart full ofunderstanding, unless she keeps herself mentally alert and her sense ofhumour perpetually bright. Should she do so, hers will be the triumphof real charm; and, providing that she grows older not only gracefullybut also cheerfully, not by plastering herself over with chemicalimitations of her own daughter's youth, but by shading becomingly, asit were, the inevitable ravages of time, which nothing on earth willever hide; by dressing not more than five years younger than she reallyis--then her attractiveness will continue until she is an old, oldwoman. And I would back her in the race for real devotion against allthe flappers who ever flapped their crêpe de chine wings to dazzle theeyes of that cheapest of feminine prey--the elderly married man. 

_Women in Love_

Have you noticed how a woman displays much more "sang froid" in lovethan a man? Her heart may be aflame, but there always seems to be atiny lump of ice which keeps her head cool. Only when a woman is notquite sure of her captor does she begin to lose her feminine"un-dismay. " So long as she is being chased she can always remain calmand collected, perhaps because she knows that, however hot her lovermay be in pursuit, the race began by giving her a long start, and, being well ahead, she can listen in camouflaged amusement to the man'sprotestations of her "divinity" as he "galollups" madly after her. When you come across lovers in that state of oblivion to staringeyes--as you do come across them so often during these beautiful warmevenings--it is always the man who looks supremely sheepish; the womandoesn't "turn a hair. " She simply stares at the intruder as if shewanted him to see for himself how very attractive she is. The man, onthe other hand, never meets the stranger's eyes. His expressioninvariably shows that he is wishing for the earth to open--which, inparenthesis, it never does when you most want it to. But the girl isquite unembarrassed. Even when it is she who is making love, a staringand smiling crowd will not force her to desist. She just goes onstroking her lover's face and kissing him. But the man looks a perfectfool, and, I am sure, feels it. It seems indeed, as if he would cry tothe onlookers, "Don't blame me. It's human nature. I shall get overit quite soon!" But the girl seems to say: "By all means--watch us!This, for me, is 'Der Tag'!" No, you can't disconcert a woman inlove--it makes her quite vain-glorious. 

I wonder why love always seems such a splendid "joke" to those who areout of it, when it was a paralysing reality while they were in it. Andyet, as one looks back upon one's love affairs one invariably refers tothe incident as the time when "I made a fool of myself. " And yet loveis no laughing matter. Considering that ninety-nine per cent. Of ournovels and plays are about nothing else; considering that our songs andour poetry, and the scandal we like to hear, all centre around this onetheme, we really ought to take it more seriously. But if we see twolovers making love to each other we laugh outright. It is verystrange! I suppose it is that everybody else's love affairs areridiculous; only our own possess the splendour of a Greek tragedy. Perhaps we share with Nature her sense of humour, which makes love oneof the biggest practical jokes in life. So we jeer at love in order tohide our own "soreness, " just as we laugh at the man who sits downsuddenly in Piccadilly because his foot stepped on a banana skin--welaugh at him because it wasn't we who sat down. Altogether love is aconundrum, and we laugh at the answer Fate gives us because we dare notshow the world we want to cry. Laughter is the one armour which onlythe gods can pierce. Lovers never laugh--at least, they never laugh atlove--that is why we can turn them into such glorious figures of fun. 

But I always wonder why a woman of a "thousand loves" assumes a kind of"halo, " when a man of equal passion only gets called a "libertine, " ifnot worse things. I suppose we think it must have been so clever ofher. We speak of her as _inspiring_ love, though a man who inspiresthe same wholesale affection isn't considered nice for young women toknow. It is, apparently because we realise that a woman very rarelyloses her head in love. She may have had a thousand lovers, but onlymade herself look a "silly idiot" over one. But a man looks a "sillyidiot" every time. We know he must have uttered the usual eternalprotestations on each occasion. But a woman only has to _listen_, andcan always hear "the tale" without losing her dignity. She merelybegins to talk when a man comes "down to earth. " While his "soul" hadsoared verbally she enjoyed him as she enjoys a "ballad concert, " thoselove songs which say so much and mean so very little. 

_Pompous Pride in Literary "Lions"_

I always think that the author who places his own photograph as anillustrated frontispiece to his own book must be either an exceedinglybrave man or an exceedingly misguided one. At any rate, he runs aterrible risk, amounting almost to certain calamity, in regard to hisliterary admirers. I have never yet known an author--and this appliesto authoresses as well--whose face, if you liked his work, was not anacute disappointment the moment you clapped eyes upon it. For example, I am a devoted admirer of "Amiel's Journal", but it is years since Ihave torn Amiel's photograph from the covers of his book. I could notbear to think that such lovely, such poetical thoughts, should issuefrom a man who, in his portrait, anyway, looks like nothing so much asa melancholy Methodist minister, the most cheerful characteristic ofwhom is "Bright's disease. "

In the days of my extreme youth I admired a well-known authoress--_inpublic_, be it understood, as is the way of youth. The world was givento understand that in her seductive heroines she really drew her ownportrait. This same world lived long in blissful ignorance that whatwas stated to be a fact was only the very small portion of ahalf-truth. For years this famous lady _refused_ to have her photopublished. She even went so far as to tell the world so in every"interview" which journalists obtained from her--either regarding herviews on "How best to obtain an extra sugar-allowance in war-time, " orconcerning "Queen Mary's noble example to English women to wear alwaysthe same-sort-of-looking hat. " This extreme modesty piqued thecuriosity of her ten million readers enormously. The ten million, ofwhich I was a member, imagined that she must be too beautiful and tooelegant to possess brains, unless she were a positive miracle. Wepictured her as tall and graceful, with a lovely willowy figure and anexpression all sad tenderness when it wasn't all sweet smiles. 

Then one fatal day the famous authoress decided--too late, I'm afraid, by more than twenty years--to show her face to the ten millionworshippers who demanded so greatly to see it. The irrevocable stepbeing taken, disillusion jumped to our eyes, as the French say, andnearly blinded us. Instead of the goddess we had anticipated, all wesaw was, gazing at us out of the pages of an illustrated newspaper, anover-plump, middle-aged "party" with no figure and a fuzzy fringe, whostood smiling in an open French window, and herself completely fillingit! The shock to our worship was so intense that it made most of usthink several times before spending 7_s_. On her new love story, wereit ever so romantic. And so that was the net result of _that_!

Wiser far is the other well-known authoress, who apparently had herlast photograph taken somewhere back in the early nineties, and stillsends it forth to the press as her "latest portrait study, " which, perhaps, if she be as wise as she is witty, it will for ever be. 

No, I think that authors who insist upon their own photographsappearing in their own books are either very foolish or puffed out withpompous pride. Nobody really wants to look at them a second time; or, even if they do, nine times out of ten those who stay to look remain towish they hadn't. I have never yet known an author's face whichcompared in charm and interest with the books he writes. Takingliterature as a professional example, it cannot truthfully be said thatbeauty often follows brains. In the case of authors, as in so manyother cases, to leave everything to the imagination is by far thebetter policy in the long run. But there is this consolation, anyway--we are what we are, after all, and our faces are very oftenlibels on our "souls. "

Granting this, the theory of the resurrection of the body always leavesme inordinately cold. As far as I, myself, am concerned, the worms canhave my body--and welcome. May I prove extremely indigestible, that'sall! Preferably, I want to "cease upon the midnight without pain, " inthe middle of a dynamite explosion. I want, as it were, to return tothe dust from which I came in one big bang! And if I must have aChristian burial, then I hope that all of me which remains for my moreor less sorrowing relatives to bury, decently and in order, will, atmost, be one--old boot! Of course, if I do die in the middle of anexplosion, I grant that, if the resurrection of the body really be afact, then I shall find it extremely tiresome to hunt everywhere for myspare parts. It will be such a colossal bore having to worry all theother people, also busy collecting themselves, who went up with me inthe "bang, " by keeping on demanding of them the information, "Excuseme, but have you by any chance seen anything of a big-toe nail knockingabout?" I always feel so sorry for those Egyptian princesses whoseteeth and hair, whose jewels and old bones, proved such an irresistibleattraction to the New Zealand and Australian soldiers when they were incamp near Cairo, that they stole out at night to rob their tombs, andsent the plunder thus obtained "way back home to the old shack" assouvenirs of the Great War. It will be so perfectly aggravating forthese royal ladies to resurrect in a tomb which, in parenthesis, theyhad purposely constructed to last them until the Day of Judgment--toresurrect therein, only to discover that some of their necessary partsare either in Auckland, or in Sydney, or in Melbourne, or, perhaps, inall three cities. It will be but poor consolation to learn that therest of them may, perhaps, be discovered among the sands of thedesert--that is to say, if they scratch about long enough looking forthem. Personally, if I get the chance, I shall immediately go aboutpurloining other people's physical perfections, so that, when at last Iam ready for the next move onward, I shall consist of one part Herculesand three-parts Owen Nares! I shall indeed look lovely, shan't I? Inthe meanwhile, I realise that, physically speaking, I am far betterimagined than understood. Not that I am very much worse than theaverage? on the other hand, I am certainly not much better--so whowould be the happier for gazing at my photograph? No, indeed, itcannot be for their beauty that authors insert their ownphotographs--sometimes, even, on the outside covers of their own books!For what beauty they do possess has usually been lost somewhere on theoriginal negative. If they still yearn to let themselves be _seen_, aswell as _read_, I would suggest that the frontispiece be the one pagein the book to be uncut, so that their readers, should they wish topeep at the author's physiognomy for curiosity's sake, may--if thatcuriosity prove its own punishment--leave those first pages uncut untilthe book falls to pieces on the bookshelf. For myself, I hate to readsome beautifully written thought, only to have the author's distinctlyunbeautiful face always protruding between me and my delight--like someutterance of the commonplace in the middle of a discussion on "souls. "

I suppose it is that authors--like everybody else--cannot understandthat how they look to themselves and to those who love them, and so areused to them, they will not necessarily look to other people, whomerely want to gaze upon their photograph because they cannot look upontheir waxwork. We all get so used to our own blemishes by seeing themevery morning when we brush our hair that we have long since ceased toregard them seriously. But ten to one a stranger will notice nothingelse. That is always the way of a stranger's regard. But, after all, to fail to impress someone who knows you and loves you is nothing atall; to fail, however, to impress someone who yearns to becomeacquainted with you, is very often to lose a possible friend. Better athousand times that an adoring reader should keep yearning to know whather favourite author looks like than, having at last satisfied hercuriosity, she should exclaim disappointedly, "_Gosh! To think that hecould look like that!!_"

If an author feels that indeed he must show the world what he lookslike, let him issue to the public merely a "vague impression" ofhimself--a Cubist one for preference. A Cubist portrait can look likeanything . . . But to look like anything is infinitely preferable tolooking like _nothing on this earth_, isn't it?

_Seaside Piers_

The only real excitement I can ever perceive about a Seaside Pier iswhen the sea washes half of it away. To me, Seaside Piers are the mostdeadly things. You pay tuppence to go on them, and you generally stayon them until you can stay no longer because--well, because you _have_paid tuppence. Having walked along the dreary length of the tail-endwhich joins the shore, there seems really nothing to do at the end ofyour journey except to spit over the side. Of course, there are alwaysthose derelict kind of amusements such as putting a penny in a slot andbeing sprayed with some vile scent; or putting a ha'penny in anotherslot and seeing a lead ball being shot into any hole except the one inwhich, had it disappeared therein, you would have got your money back. For the rest, I am sure that half the people remain on them for thesimple reason that tuppence is tuppence in these days or any otherdays. Of course, there is generally a band which plays twice, sometimes three times, a day; but it is not a band which ever does muchmore than blast its way through a selection from "Carmen, " or afantasia on "Faust. " Of course, if you like crowds--well, a pier isfor you another name for Paradise. Nobody uses the tail-part except towalk to the end, or _from_ it, on the side which is protected from thewind. But the end of a pier--where it swells and the band plays--is akind of receptacle which receives the human debouch. There you havethe spectacle of what human beings would look like if they were putinto a bowl, like goldfish, and had nothing to do but swim round andround. 

I suppose there _is_ an amusement in such a picture--because, look atthe women who come there every morning and bring their knitting! Andthe "flappers" and the "knuts"--they seem never to tire of seeing eachother pass and re-pass for a solid hour on end! Why do they go there?It cannot be to see clothes, because the most you see, as a rule, is awhite skirt and blouse and a brown neck all peeling with the heat!They must go there, then, because to go on the pier is all part andparcel of the seaside habit--and an English seaside, anyway, is one bigbunch of habits, from the three-mile promenade of unsympatheticasphalt, with its backing of houses in the Graeco-Surbiton style, tothe railway station at the back of the town, where antiquated "flies"won't take anybody anywhere under half-a-crown. It belongs, I suppose, to that strain of fidelity which runs through the British "soul"--afidelity which finds expression in facing death sooner than foregoroast beef on Sunday, and will applaud an old operatic favourite untilher front teeth drop out. It is all very laudable, but it has its"trying" side. One becomes rather tired of the average seaside resort, which is built and designed rather as if the "authorities" believedthat God made Blackpool on the Seventh Day, and it was their religiousduty to erect replicas of His handiwork up and down the coast. Andunder this delusion piers, I suppose, were born. 

Well, certainly they are convenient to throw yourself off the end ofthem. Happily--or unhappily, whichever way you look at it--the towncouncil never seem to know quite what to do with them. Beside thepenny fair and the brass band, they only seem to be the haven of restfor fifth-rate theatrical touring companies, who manage to pay fortheir summer outing in the theatre erected at the end. Otherwise theirimportance consists chiefly in being a convenient place for the"flapper" to "meet mother, " and to carry on a violent flirtation, without the slightest danger, with any Gay Lothario in lavender sockswho kind o' tickles them with his eyes and makes them giggle. But formyself, who have no mamma to meet, nor any desire to flop about with"flappers, " piers are deadly things. Their great excitement is whenthe sea washes half of them away at a moment when, apparently, fivethousand people living in boarding-houses had only just vacated them. And sometimes even that miraculous escape seems a pity! What do youthink?

_Visitors_

I always think that visitors are charming "interruptions. " They aredelightful when they arrive; they are equally delightful--perhaps moreso--when they go. Only on the third day of their visit are theytiresome, and their qualities distinctly below the par we expected. Almost anybody can put up with almost anybody for three days. There isthe delight of showing him over the house, bringing out all ourtreasures and listening the while our visitor shows us his envy (or hishypocrisy) by his compliments; there is the pleasure of taking himround the garden and pointing out our own pet plants and bulbs. Eventhe servants can keep smiling through three days of extra work. Butthe second night begins to see us becoming exhausted. We have saideverything we wanted to say. We have taken him up to the attic and tothe farthest ends of the pig sty, we have laid down the law concerningour own pet enthusiasms and tolerated him while he told us about hisown. But a sense of boredom begins to creep into our hearts at the endof the second evening, which, if there were not the pleasure of biddinghim "Good-bye" on the morrow to keep our spirits up, would end inexasperation to be fought down and a yawn to be suppressed. The manwho invented "long visits" ought to be made to spend them for the restof his life as a punishment. There is only one thing longer--though itsounds rather like a paradox to say so--and that is a "long day. " To"spend a long day" with anyone sees both you and your hostess "sold up"long before the evening. Happily, that infliction is a country form ofentertainment, and is reserved principally for relations and familyfriends who might otherwise expect us to ask them for a month. 

You see, most of us are creatures possessing habits as well as a liver. Visitors are a fearful strain on both--after forty-eight hours. Thestrain of appearing at our most hospitable and best--from the breakfastegg in the morning to the "nightcap" at night--is one which only thosewho are given a bed-sitting-room and a door with a key in it can comethrough triumphantly. Visitors usually have nothing to do, while wehave our own work--and the two can rarely mate for long. Of course, there are visitors who seem born with a gift for visiting; they give usof their brightest and best for forty-eight hours and have "letters towrite" up in their bedroom during most of the subsequent days of theirsojourn. Also there are hostesses who seem born with the "smile ofcordiality" fixed on to their mouths. They also give of their best andbrightest for forty-eight hours and then, metaphorically, give theirguests a latch-key and a time-table of meals, and wash their hands ofthem until they meet again on the door-step of "farewell. " But themajority of visitors seem incapable of leading their own lives in anyhouse except their own. They follow you about and wait for you at oddcorners, until you are either driven to committing murder or going outto the post-office to send a telegram to yourself killing off a greataunt and giving an early date for her funeral. Also there are somehostesses who cannot let their guests alone; who must always be askingthem "What are they going to do to-day, " or telling them not to forgetthat Lady Sploshykins is coming to tea especially to meet them!Frantic for our entertainment, they invite all the dull people of theneighbourhood to meals, and drag us along with them to the dullpeople's houses on the exchange visit. They are always terrified thatwe are "feeling it dull, " whereas the dulness really comes of our notbeing allowed to stupefy in peace. 

"Never outstay your welcome" is one of the social adages I wouldimpress upon all young people; and "Be extremely modest concerning thelength to which that welcome would be likely to extend" is an addendato it. Failing any other calculation, forty-eight hours of being a"fixture" and twelve hours of packing up are generally the safe limit. Following that advice, you will generally enjoy the dullest visit andwill want to come again; following that advice, also, your hostess willenjoy seeing you and hope you will. Not to follow it is to risk losinga friend. Everybody hates the visitor who comes whenever he is askedand stays far too long when he arrives. 

_The Unimpassioned English_

I have just been to see the latest musical comedy. Of course, I feelin love with the heroine. Could I help myself? Even women have fallenin love with her--so what chance has a mere male, and one at thedangerous age at that? But what struck me almost as much as theyouthful charm and cleverness of the new American "star" and theinvigoratingly "catchy" music, was the way in which _all the young menon the stage put both their hands into their trouser pockets the momentthey put on evening clothes_! They didn't do it in their glad day-rags. . . Or, at least, only one hand at a time, anyway. But immediatelythey appeared _en grande tenue_, both their hands disappeared as if bymagic! _C'ètait bien drôle, j'vous assure!_ Perhaps . . . Who knows?. . . They were but counting their "moneys. " . . . For the chorusladies are certainly rather attractive, and even a svelte figure _hasbeen known_ to hold a big dinner! But the fact still remains . . . Ifone night some wicked dresser takes it into his evil head to stitch uptheir trouser pockets, every one of the young men will have to come onand do physical "jerks, " or go outside and cut his own arms off!

But then, most Englishmen seem at a loss to know what to do with theirlimbs when they are not using them for anything very special at themoment. Have you ever sat and watched the "niggly" things whichpeople--especially Englishmen--do with their hands when they don't knowwhat to do with them otherwise? It is very instructive, I assure you. I suppose our language does not lend itself to anything except beingspoken out of our mouths. Unlike Frenchmen, we have not learnt to talkalso with our hands. We consider it "bad form" . . . _like scratchingin public where you itch_! Well, perhaps our decision in this respecthas added to the general fun of existence. In life's everyday, onedoesn't notice these things, maybe. One has become so habituated to"Father" drumming "Colonel Bogey" on the chair-arm; or "Little Willee"playing "shakes" with two ha'pennies and a pen-knife--that one hasceased to pay any attention to these minor irritations. And, when weare among strangers, we are so busy watching that people don't put_their_ hands into _our_ pockets, that we generally put our own handsinto them for safety. . . . Which, perhaps, accounts for theEnglishman's habit . . . Who knows?

But on the stage, this custom is an almost mesmeric one to watch. Wecertainly do see other people at a disadvantage when they are struttingthe Boards of Illusion . . . Men especially. But to a foreigner, whois not used to seeing a man's hands disappear the moment he is asked tostand up, the sight must come with something of a shock. For my ownpart, I think his amazement is justified. Surely God gave a man twohands for other needs than to pick things up with or hide them?

Personally, I always think that it is a thousand pities that men arenot expected to knit. They grew up to be idle in the drawing-room, Isuppose, in times when every other woman was a "Sister Susie. " But the"Sister Susie" species is nowadays almost extinct. It requires aGerman offensive to drive the modern woman towards her darning needles. 

In a recent literary competition in EVE, the subject was "Bores, andhow to make the best of them. " Well, personally, I could sufferthem--if not more gladly, at least with a greater resignation--if Iwere allowed to recite, "Two plain; one purl" so long as theirinfliction lasted. As it is, I am left with nothing else to do exceptfurtively to watch the clock, and secretly to ring up "OO Heaven" tosend down a bombing party to deliver me. 

Men of the Latin races are far more wise in this respect. If you tiedthe hands of a Frenchman, or an Italian, or even a Spaniard, up behindhis back, the odds are he would be struck dumb! But we Englishmen--weonly seem able to become eloquent when, as it were, we have voluntarilyplaced our own hands into the handcuffs of our own trouser pockets. Even Englishwomen are singularly un-self-revealing with anything excepttheir tongues. You have only to watch an Englishwoman singing torealise how extremely limited are her powers of expression. She placesboth hands over her heart to represent "Love, " and opens them wide toillustrate every other emotion. 

And this self-restriction--especially when you can't hear what she issinging about, which is not seldom--leads more quickly to the wrinklesof perplexity than even does the problem of how to circumvent theculinary soarings of Mrs. Beaton, and yet obtain the same results . . . With eggs at the price they are! If some producing genius had notconceived the idea of ending off nearly every musical-comedy song witha dance, and yet another genius of equally enviable parts had notcreated the beauty chorus, I don't know how many a prima donna of thelighter stage would ever be able to get through her own numbers. For, to dance at the end of her little ditty, and to have the chorus girlsrelieve her of further action at the end of the first verse, brings asgreat a relief to her as well as to the audience, as do his trouserpockets to the young man who makes-believe to love her for ever and forever . . . And then some, on the stage. 

And, because we have taken the well-dressed "poker" as our ideal ofmasculine "good form" in society, English men and women always seem toexude an atmosphere of "slouching" indifference to everything excepttheir God--and football. It has such a very chilling effect uponexuberant foreigners when they run up against it. Emotionally, I amsure we are as developed as any other nation . . . Look at our poetry, for example! But we have so long denied the right to express it, thatwe have forgotten how it should be done. 

"_I shall love you on and on . . . Throughout life; after death; untilthe end of eternity . . . !_" declares the impassioned Englishman, thewhile he carelessly shakes the dead-end off his cigarette on tosomebody else's carpet. 

"_And for you, Egbert, the world will be only too well lost. I willwillingly die with you . . . At any time most convenient to yourself, _"answers his equally-impassioned mistress, gently replacing an errantkiss-curl behind her left ear. 

Well, I suppose it does take another Englishman to realise that thesetwo are preparing for a _crime passionel_. But a simple foreigner, more used to the violence of the "movies" in everyday life than we are, might be excused if he merely believed them to be protesting apreference for prawns in aspic over prawns without. 

Not, however, that it really matters . . . So long as the lovers, likeMaisie, "get right there" at the finish. For, after all, does notpassion mostly end in the same kind of old "tripe" . . . Either here inEngland or . . . Well, let us say . . . The tropics?

_Relations_

Our Relations are a race apart. They are not often our friends; rarerstill are they our enemies. They are just "relations"--men and womenwho treat our endeavours towards righteousness with all the outspokenhostility of those who dislike us, whom yet we do not want to quarrelwith because then there may be nobody left except the village doctor tobury us. 

Relations always seem to know us too little, and too well. The good inus is continually warped by the bad in us--which, in parenthesis, isthe only one of our secrets relatives ever seem able to keep. To tellthe world of our faults would be like throwing mud at the family tree. Moreover, relations always seem born with long memories. There is noone in this world who remembers quite so far back, nor quite sovividly, as a mother-in-law. And one's relations-in-law are but one'sown relations in a concentrated and more virulent form. And yeteverybody is somebody's relation. You consider that remark trite, perhaps? Well, "trite" it undoubtedly is, and yet it is extremelydifficult to realise. The middle-aged woman whom you find so charming, so sympathetic, so very "understanding, " may send her nephews andnieces fleeing in all directions the moment she appears among them. The man you look upon as being an insufferable bore may still be MissSomebody-or-other's best beloved Uncle John. It is so hard to explain. It is almost as hard to explain as the charm of the man your closestwoman-friend marries. What she can see in him you cannot for the lifeof you perceive, while he, on his part, secretly wonders why the womanhe loves ever sought friendship with such a pompous, dull ass as youare. Love is blind, so they say. Well, so is friendship--so arerelations--blind to everything except your faults. 

Another odd thing about relations is that only very rarely can you evermake friends with them. At best, your intimacy amounts to nothing morethan a truce. You are extremely lucky if it isn't open warfare. Theyknow at once too little about you and too much. They never by anychance acknowledge that you have changed, that you are a better manthan once you were. What you have once been, in their opinion, youwill always be--so help-them-heaven-to-hide-the-wine-cellar-key! Youmay change your friends as you "grow out" of them, or they "grow out"of you; but your relations are for ever immutable. The friends of youryouth you have sometimes nothing in common with later on, except"memories"; and except for these "memories" there is little or no tiebetween you. But the "memories" of friends centre around pleasantthings, whereas the "memories" of relations seem to specialise at alltimes in the disagreeable. Moreover, relations will never acknowledgethat you have ever really _grown up_. This is one of their mosttiresome characteristics. To them you will always be the little boywho forgot to write profusive thanks for the half-a-crown they gave youwhen you first went to school. You can always tell the man or womanwho live among their relatives. They possess no individuality, no"vision"; they are narrow, self-centred, pompous, clannish--with thatclannishness which means only complete self-satisfaction with the clan. They take their mental and moral "cue" from the oldest generation amongthem. The younger members are, metaphorically speaking, patted on thehead and told to believe in grandpapa as they believe in God. 

No, the great benefit of having relations is to come back to them. Tovisit them is like stirring up once more the memories of your lostyouth, which time and distance have rendered faint. And to return oncemore to one's youth is good for every man. It makes him realisehimself, and the "thread" which has been running through his lifelinking all the incidents together. And, as I said before, relationsare agreeable adjuncts at your own funeral, since you may always dependupon them saying nice things about you when it's too late for you tohear them. Friends will never do that. They don't need to. Theycarry your epitaph with them written on their own hearts. The "nice"things have been said--they have been said to YOU. 

_Polite Conversation_

A man may live to be a hundred; he may have learnt to speak twelvedifferent languages--all badly; he may know, in fact, everything a manought to know, and have done everything a man ought to have done; butone thing he probably won't have learnt--or, if he has done so, then heought to be counted among the Twelve Apostles and other "wonders"--andthat is the fact that, what interests him enormously to talk aboutwon't necessarily be anything but a bore for other people to listen to. Most people talk a great deal and tell you absolutely nothing you wantparticularly to know. The man or woman who can talk _impersonally_ isas rare as a psychic phenomenon when you want to see it but won't _payfor_ a manifestation! Most people can talk of nothing but themselvesbecause nothing else really interests them. I don't mean to say thatthey boast, but, what they talk about is purely their own personalaffair--ranging from golf to grandchildren. That is what makes dogsthe most sympathetic listeners in the world. Could they speak, I fearme they would only tell us about their puppies, or of their new bone, or of the rat they worried to death the last time they scamperedthrough the wood. Cats are far more egotistical, and consequently farmore human. They can't talk, it is true; neither can they listen. Bytheir manner we know exactly what interests them at the moment, and ifthey appear to sympathise with us, it is only because what we want atthe moment fits in admirably with their own desires. And so manypeople are just like cats in this. They invite us to their houses, presumably because they desire our company, but, in reality, in orderthat they may relate to us at length the incidents, big or small, whichhave marked the calendar of their recent very everyday existence. 

But we, on our side, are not without our means of revenge. We invitethem back again, under protestations of friendship, and, when we havegot them, and, as it were, chained them down with the fetters ofpoliteness, we relate to them in our turn everything which has happenedto us and ours. We never ask ourselves if our children, or our cook, or our new hat, or our next summer holiday can interest anybody outsidethe radius of their influence. We demand another human being to smilewhen we smile, show anger when we show anger, echo our own admirationfor our new hat, and generally retrace with us our life in retrospectand journey with us into the problematical future. For, as I saidbefore, the wisdom which realises that the incidents of our own lifeneed not--very probably do not, although they may be too polite to showit--interest other people, is the rarest wisdom of all. Most peoplewill never, never learn it. And the more people love their ownaffairs, the more they seek the world for listeners whom, as it were, they may devour. They usually have hundreds of intimates, and boast atChristmas of having sent off a thousand cards! As a matter of fact, they very probably have not one real friend. But that does not troublethem. They don't require friendship. They only need, as it were, aperpetual pair of ears into which to pour the trivialities of theirdaily life. Personally, I get so tired of listening to stories ofchildren I have never seen; golfing "yarns" which I have heard before;servants--all as bad as each other; Lloyd George; new clothes;ailments; what Aunt Emily intends to do with last year's frock, and oflittle Flora's cough. I wish it were the fashion for people to asktheir friends to _do_ something, instead of securing their society, with nothing to do with it when they've got it, except to offer hoursfor conversation with literally nothing to say on either side. Ishould like to read a book in company, it is nice to work in company; avisit to a theatre with a congenial companion is delightful--and this, of course, applies to concerts, lectures, picture galleries, evenshopping. But the usual form of friendly entertainment is a deadlything. Only a cook, who at the same time is an artist, can make thempossible. For you can endure hours of little other than the personalnote in conversation with the compensation of a culinary _chef'd'oeuvre_ in front of you. That is why you so often hear of a"perfectly charming woman with a simply wonderful cook. " It's thecook, I fancy, who is the real charmer. 

_Awful Warnings_

Old Age is bad enough, but a dyspeptic Old Age--that surely is fatehitting us below the belt! For with advancing years the love ofadventure leaves us; the "Love of a Lifetime" becomes to us of morereal consequence than our pet armchair--but the _love of a gooddinner_, that, at least, can make the everyday of an octogenarian wellworth living. Young people little realise the awful prophecy impliedin that irritating remark--"Don't gobble!" There is another one, almost equally irritating to youth--"Go and change your socks!" But, if the truth must be told, you regret the "No" you said to Edwin whenhe asked you to "fly with him"; the louis you failed to place _enplein_ on thirty-six, which you _felt_ was coming up, infinitely lessthan that you still persisted to "gobble" when you were warned not to, and you failed to change your socks while there was yet time. Now itis too late, alas! How true it is, the saying--"If Youth knew how, andAge only could. " The trouble is that, when elderly people would warnyouth, they rarely ever give concrete examples. They always imply some_moral_ loss which will happen to young people if they do not followtheir elders' advice. But youth would be far more impressed if agedrew a vivid picture of their own physical and digestive decrepitude. But, of course, age won't do that. Why should it? No one likes tothink that their "every movement tells a story. "

Personally, I can foresee a new profession open to those elderly peoplewho are the victims of their own early indiscretions. Why should theynot tour the country as a collection of _awful warnings_! Fancy thejoy there would be in the hearts of all those who, as it were, standbawling at the cross-roads that the "narrow path" is the broader one inthe long run, if they woke up and saw on the hoardings some suchannouncement as this:--

 Coming! Coming!! Coming!!!

 FOR ONE WEEK ONLY!

 The Awful End of the Man who Gobbled his Food!

 Mary of the Hooked Figure; or, the Girl who Wouldn't Change her Wet Socks!

 A Picture of Living Vermin; or, the Man who Never Washed!

 The End of the Girl who Would Take the Wrong Turning!

 Parents, Free. Children, One Penny. Schools and Large Parties by Arrangement. 

It would ease the burden of parenthood enormously. It might even "Savethe Children. " Maybe they would thank their mother from the bottom oftheir hearts because she took them to see these living examples ofyouthful folly instead of lugging them to a dull lecture on hygiene. For half the silly things we do, we do because we don't realise theconsequences. The man who _knows everything_ would gladly give up allhis knowledge if he could turn back the hands of the clock, and, instead of studying the origin of Arabic, learn to recognise a pair ofdamp sheets when he got in between them; while a Woman of a ThousandLove Affairs would forego the memory of nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine ofthese if she could return to the early days and drink a glass of hotwater between every meal! For, as I said before, Love leaves us andenthusiasms die; but Old Age which can sit down to a good dinner andthoroughly enjoy it without having to have a medical bulletin stuck upoutside its bedroom door for days afterwards, is an Old Age which noone can call really unhappy. To eat is, at last, about the only joywhich is left to us. The "romantic" will shudder at my philosophy, Iknow; but the "romantic" have generally such a lot to live for besidetheir meals. Old Age hasn't. That is why elderly people who can beginto look forward to their dinner--say at five o'clock in theafternoon--can be said to have reached the "ripe old age" of theScriptures. If they _can't_?--well, over-ripe to _rottenness_ is theonly description. 

_It's oh, to be out of England--now that spring is here!_

I don't know if you, fair reader, find that in the spring your fancyturns to thoughts of love--I know mine doesn't! On the contrary, itturns to thoughts of sulphur tablets and camomile tea and other sicklyor disagreeable circumventions of the "creakiness" of the human body. For among the things I could teach Nature is that, when she made man, she did not permit him to "flower" in the spring and start each yearwith something at least resembling his pristine vigour--if he ever hadany. But, whereas the spring gives a new glory to birds, and trees, and plants, she only gives to us--built in the image of God--spots, adisordered liver, and a muddy complexion. It seems a piece of grossmismanagement, doesn't it? It would be so delightful if, once a year, we were filled with extra energy; if our hair sprouted once more in thecolour with which we were born; if the old skin shed itself and a newone came on so beautiful as to ruin the business of all the "Mrs. Pomeroys" of this world. But Nature seems, once having made us, toleave us severely alone; to let us wither on our stalks, as it were, until we drop off them and are swept away into the dustbin of the wormsand weeds. The mind is a far kinder ally. Oh, no; say what you willin the praise of spring, to all those who, as it were, have commencedthe "bulge" of anno domini, it is a very trying season. Besides--herein England anyway--it is as uncertain as a flirt. Sometimes itsuddenly comes upon us in the early days of March or lets mid-winterpay us a visit in the lengthening days of May. One never quite knowswhat spring is going to do. One never knows what kind of clothes towear to please it. So often one sallies forth arrayed in winterunderwear, because the morning awoke so coldly, only to spend the restof the day eating ices to keep the body calm and cool. Or, again, thespring morning greets us with the warmth of an August day; we jump upgaily, deck ourselves out in muslin, sally forth, take a sudden"chill, " and spend the rest of the week in bed!

One is always either too hot or too cold. It is the season of theunaccountable draught. True, it often turns the fancy towards sweetthoughts of love--but the fancy usually ends with an influenza coldthrough indulging in sentimental dalliance upon the grass. On thewhole, I always think that spring in England is nicer to sing aboutthan experience. It is delightful as a season of "promise"--but, likehumanity, it often treats its promises like pie-crusts. Still, it _is_spring, and--although the body rarely recognises the fact except toruin by biliousness the romance which is surging in its heart--summeris, as it were, knocking at the door. And from June to mid-July--thatsurely is the glory of the year! After July, summer becomes a littledusty at the hem. Still, dusty, or even dirty, it makes life worthliving. Nevertheless, I only wish that it were greedier and stolethree months away from winter. For winter is too long, and spring istoo uncertain, and autumn too full of "Farewell. "

But summer never palls. And we have five summers to make up for, haven't we? For no one could really enjoy anything during the warexcept the war news--when it was favourable. But now we can--well, ifnot enjoy ourselves, at least lie back, just whispering to ourselvesthat, when the sun shines the world is a lovely place, and, so far asEngland is concerned, there is at any rate a kind of camouflaged peace. And so we have to be very very old if we cannot feel in our hearts abreath of youth and spring. After all, when the sun shines, we are, orfeel we are, of any age--or of no age whatever. And if we cannot burstinto flower like the roses, we can at least enjoy the beauty of therose when it blooms--which other roses cannot do. Thus, with a fewsmall mercies, life is very good when the sun shines, isn't it?

_Bad-tempered People_

I would sooner live with an immoral man or woman than a bad-temperedone. An immoral person can often be a very charming companion, quiteeasy to live with--if you take the various excuses for sudden absencesat their face value, and don't probe too deeply into the business; infact, if you are not in love with the absentee. A bad-tempered personin the house may have the morality of the angels--but life with him isa daily "hell, " like always living with strangers, or a mad dog, or ina room full of those ornaments which belong, almost exclusively, tolodging-houses everywhere. Briefly, he is always _there_--ready toburst into flames at any moment, ready to misunderstand everythinganybody does or says, a perpetual bugbear; and not even the emotionalrepentances, which are often the only partially saving grace ofbad-tempered people, can atone for the atmosphere of disturbance whichthey always inflict. And the man or woman who loses his temperwhenever anything goes in the slightest bit wrong--well, from them maythe Lord deliver me for ever, Amen! They carry their ill-nature aboutwith them all day and under all circumstances. Sometimes they seem toimagine that their spirit of disagreeableness is a sign of thesuper-man, or of that dominating personality of which Caesar andNapoleon are historical examples. They frequent restaurants and harrythe already over-harried waiters. It is such a very easy victory--thevictory over a paid servant. But the conquerors stamp themselves forever and for ever among Nature's "cads" nevertheless. Anybody who isrude enough can give a quelling performance of "God Almighty" beforemenials. Some people delight to do so, apparently. They possesseverything except an instinctive respect for a man and woman, howeverlowly, who are earning their own living. And the lack of it placesthem among the inglorious army of the "bounders" for all time. Whenthere is no "inferior" upon whom to vent the outbursts of their ownsupreme egoism, they find their wives extremely useful. In the dayswhen the divorce laws are "sensible, " freedom will be granted forperpetual bad temper sooner than for occasional unfaithfulness. 

Of course, we all have our days when we are like nothing so much asgunpowder looking for a match. We can't be perfect and serene all thetime. And if ever, as I have just hinted, we do wake up in the morningfeeling as if we could get up and quarrel with a bee because it buzzes, a Beecham pill will probably soon put us in a regular "click" of ahumour. ("Mr. Carter" never offered me anything; nor did Sir ThomasBeecham. But being fond of grand opera, I mention the pills "worth aguinea a box" for preference. Besides, they tell us a "Beecham atnight makes you sing with delight!" So there!) That is one of thereasons why I always advocate a "silence room" in every household whichotherwise is large enough to put the biggest room aside to playbilliards in. I would have it quite small, and decorated in restful, neutral tints, with the finest view from the window thereof that thehouse could supply. I would also have a little window cut out of thedoor, through which food could be pushed in to the sufferer without himhaving to tell the domestic that it is a fine day and that he hopes herbunion's better. This little room would be devoted to those inmates ofthe house who got up on the wrong side of the bed because both sideswere "wrong sides" that morning. There he, or she, would stay untilthe world seemed to be bright again. And they would come forth intheir new and serener state of mind, blessing the idea with all theirhearts. For if, as they have to do now, they had come downstairs inthe mood in which they woke up, the whole house would have known of itto curse it, and most of its members would not be on polite speakingterms for days afterwards. Of course, the idea could be recommendedalso for those people whose temper is always in a state of uproar. Theonly difficulty, however, would be, then--they might live in thesilence room all their lives and die there--beloved, because _unseen_. But that is the only thing to do with an habitually disagreeableperson--_lock him up_, and, if you be wise, _take away the key of thedungeon with you_!

_Polite Masks_

You never really know anybody--until you have either lived with them, travelled with them, or drunk a glass of port with them quietly overthe fireside. In almost every other instance, what you becomeacquainted with is one of a variety of _masks_! And everyone has afine assortment of these, haven't they? For the most part you don themunconsciously--or rather, you have got so used to assuming themsuddenly that you have lost all consciousness of effort. But they are_masks_, nevertheless--and a mask always hides the truth, doesn't it?Not that I am one of those, however, who dislike camouflage because it_is_ camouflage. In fact, most of the time I thank Heaven for it--myown and other people's! The "assumed" is so often so much moreagreeable than the natural, and nine times out of ten all you requireof men and women is that they should at least _look_ pleasant. You'vegot to get through this life day after day somehow, and time passesever so much quicker for everyone if the hypocrite be a smilinghypocrite at all times. At every moment of the everyday--preserve mefrom the _sour_-visaged saint. 

After all, only love and friendship and the law demand the truth andnothing but the truth. Among acquaintances, among all the manythousands you meet through life only to discuss the weather and yourown influenza symptoms--all you ask of them is that they should bringout their smiling mask as readily as you struggle to assume your own. Only, as I said before, in love and friendship and the courts of law isthe mask an insult, a tragic disillusion and a sham. In every othercircumstance it is usually a blessing. Without it society, as a socialentertainment, would become impossible. For society is but acollection of men and women wearing masks, each one vying with theothers to make his mask the most attractive, and, at the same time, themost concealing. But the worst of wearing masks is, that we becometired at last of holding them in front of our features. This makes theentertainment of watching the truth peering through the camouflage oneof the most amusing among the many unpremeditated amusements of thesocial world. After all, as I said before, so long as your lover andyour friend, and the witnesses you have subpoenaed on behalf of yourown case, show you _truth_--all you ask of the others is the mostagreeable mask they can put on for the occasion. But even lovers andfriends may deceive you, while some witnesses' idea of the truth in thelaw courts hasn't that semblance of reality possessed by the Medium'sdescription of life in the world beyond. That is what makes matrimonyoften such a gamble with loaded dice, and holidays so often moretedious than work. To be in the company of one's lover for oneecstatic hour tells one nothing of what he will be when, day after day, one has to live with him in deadly intimacy until death doth part usboth. 

Neither do you really know how much, or how little, your friend meansto you, until you have been with her on a cold railway station forhours, when fate has done its best to make you both lose your tempersand your luggage. Only a very _real_ love can survive smiling throughthat period when, from almost maudlin appreciation, a husband graduallysinks into the commonplace mood of taking his soul's mate "forgranted. " Only _real_ friendship can live through the disillusionmentof irritable temper, lack of imagination, and boredom so often revealedwhile travelling in the company of friends. More than half the mutuallife of lovers and friends is spent behind masks--for masks aresometimes necessary to keep love and friendship great and true. Butone must, nevertheless, know _something_ of the real man and woman_behind the mask_--even though that which lies behind it may provedisappointing--before you can prove that your love is _real_ love, thatyour friendship is _real_ friendship, that you love your lover or yourfriend, not only for what they are, but also in spite of what they are_not_. 

_The Might-Have-Been_

It is rare to come across anybody with very definite ideas; it is rarerstill to meet a man and woman brave enough to put their ideas intopractice. The hardest battle in life--and one of the longest--is thebattle to live your own life. No one realises what fighting reallymeans until they stand in battle-array face to face with relations. But most of us have to fight this battle sooner or later, and if wefight and yet make a "hash" of the victory we gain, is it not betterso? Relations always think they know what is best for you. Well, perhaps they do, if the "best" be a circumspect kind of goodness. Butthey rarely know what you _want_, and, until you have got what youreally want, even though you find it is "Dead Sea fruit" after all, thethought always haunts the disappointed Present by visions of theglorious Might-Have-Been. 

Relatives always seem to imagine that, when you say you want to leadyour own life, it is always a "bad" life you want to lead. They seemto think that a girl leading her own life is a girl entertaining menfriends, until goodness knows what hour of the night, alone in herbachelor flat, they picture a man leading his own life as a man whosememoirs would send shudders down a really nice woman's spine. Theynever realise that there is happiness in personal freedom andliberty--happiness which is happy merely in the independent feeling ofself-respect which this freedom and liberty gives. They would likeboys and girls to continue to maturity the same life which they ledwhen they were children, subject to the same restrictions, bowing tothe same parental point of view. No one knows of what he is capableuntil he has begun the battle of life in the world of men, independentand on his own. Better make a "hash" of everything; better suffer andendure and grow old in disappointment, than live in a gilded cage withclipped wings, while kind-hearted people feed you to repletion throughthe bars. 

A girl or boy, who has no occupation, other than the occupation of mereamusement, who has no Ideal; who has no interest other than theinterest of passing the time, is not only useless, but detestable as amember of human society, while his old age is of unhappiness the mostunhappy. For what is Old Age worth if it has no "memories"; and whatare "memories" worth if they are not memories of having lived one'slife to the full? To me, to live one's own life is to live--or, perhaps I ought to say, to strive to live--all those ideals whichReflection has shown you to be good, and Nature has given you the powerto accomplish. That to me is the fight to live your own life--thefight to realise yourself, to live the "best" that is in you. For aman and woman must be able to hold up their heads high, not only faceto face with the world, but face to face with their own selves, beforethey can say that Life is happy, that Life has been worth while. Thetragic cases are those who cannot live their own lives because thelives of other people demanded their sacrifice, a sacrifice whichcannot be withheld without loss of self-respect, of that goodfellowship with your own "soul" which some people call Conscience. 

This sacrifice is generally a woman's sacrifice. You may see thevictims of it in any church, in any town, at almost any hour of theday. They are grey-haired, and sad, and grim, and they hold the moretenaciously to the promise of happiness in After Life because they havesacrificed, or permitted to pass by, the happiness of this. To a greatextent it is a "Victorian" sacrifice. They are victims of that passingBelief which was convinced that a girl of gentle birth ought toadminister to her parents, pay calls, uphold the Church, and do alittle needlework all her life, unless some man came along to marry herand give her emancipation. The happiness which goes with a career, even if that career fails, is saving daughters from this parentallyimposed "atrophy. " They are learning that to live one's own life isnot necessarily to live a "bad" life, but a "fuller" life. Thus theyoung are teaching the Old People wisdom--the knowledge that youth hasits Declaration of Rights no less than Middle Age. 

_Autumn Sowing_

I sometimes think the man who first said that "the road to hell is pavedwith good intentions" must have said it in November. The autumn is fullof good intentions--just as spring is full of holiday and hope, andsummer of heat and _dolce far niente_. But, just as the first warm dayin June fills you with a physical vitality which you feel convinced thatyou must live for ever, so autumn makes you realise that life is fleetingand the mind has not yet reached its full development, nor intellectualambition its complete fruition. Perhaps it is the touch of winter in theair which braces your mind and soul and gives you the impression that, given the long autumn evenings over the fire undisturbed, your brain willsoon be capable of tackling the removal of mountains. If you areunutterably silly (as so many of us are--alas! for the world's sanity;but thank heaven for the world's humour!) you will plan a wholecurriculum of intellectual labour for the quiet evenings over thefireside. Oh, the books--good books, I mean--you will read! Oh, thesubjects you will study! Perhaps you will learn Russian, or maybesomething strange and out-of-the-ordinary, like Arabic! You dream of themoment when, speaking quite casually, you will inform your friends thatyou are reading the whole of the novels of Balzac; that you are studyingfor the law and hope to pass your "Final" "just for the fun of thething"; that you are learning Persian, and intend to retranslate theRubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and discover other Eastern philosophers. Infact, there is no end to the things you intend to do in the autumnevenings over the fireside when your labours of the day are over. Briefly, you are going to "cultivate your mind"; and when people talkabout "cultivating their minds, " they usually regard the mind as a kindof intellectual allotment which anyone can till--given determination, aneasy-chair near a big fire, and the long, long autumn evenings. 

_What You Really Reap_

But alas! all you do . . . All you _really_ do, is . . . Well, as I saidbefore, the man who first said that "the way to hell is paved with goodintentions, " must have said it in the autumn, or perhaps, in the spring, when he realised how few of the good intentions he had lived up to. Well, maybe the most enjoyable part of going to hell is paving the waywith, as it were, your back turned to your eventual goal. And sometimesI rather fancy, in spite of all the moralist may say, the paving-stonesof good intent that you have laid on your way to perdition will becounted in your favour, and the Recording Angel will place them to yourcredit--which she can't do if, metaphorically speaking, you have notpaved a way anywhere, but just been content to live snugly on the littleplot upon which Fate planted you at the beginning, and you were too dullyinert either to cultivate hot-house orchids thereon or even let it becomeovergrown with wild oats and roses. And I think sometimes that on goodintentions we eventually mount to heaven. I certainly know that the goodintentions of the early autumn make me very nearly forgive the cycle ofthe seasons which robs me of summer and its joys. And after all, thereis always this to be said for a good intention, nobody knows, yourselfleast of all, if you may not one day fulfil it. That is what makesdreaming so exciting. In your dreams you _have_ learnt Russian; you_have_ read all the novels of Balzac; you _will_ be able to understandSir Oliver Lodge when he leaves the realms of spiritualism and talksabout the stars. And maybe--who knows?--by the time that your dreamshave materialised into reality and spring has just arrived, you _will_ beable to tell Lenin, if you happen to meet him, that you have "seen thedaughters of the lawyer and lost the pen of your aunt"; and you _will_have read the books of Paul de Kock because you couldn't struggle throughBalzac; and you _will_ know the composition of the moon and theimpossibility of there being a man in it--which, after all, is a fargreater achievement than having played countless games of bridge, learntsixty-two steps of the tango, evolved a racing system, and arrived atloving the Germans, isn't it?

_Autumn Determination_

But unless your determination be something Napoleonic, you won't haveachieved very much more than this. It has all been so invigorating anddelightful to contemplate; and the way of your decline has been so cosyand so comfortable, and it has so often ended in a glass of hot "toddy"and so to bed. You had stage-managed your self-education so beautifully. You had brought the most comfortable easy-chair right up to the fire; youhad put on your "smoking"--not that garment almost as uncomfortable asevening-dress, but that coat which is made of velvet, or flannel, softlylined with silk and deliciously padded: you had brought out all yourbooks--the "First Steps to Russian, " "How to appreciate Balzac, ""Introduction to Astronomy"--put your feet on the fender, cut the end ofyour best cigar. Everything simply invited peace and comfort and anintellectual feast. Then, just _one more_ glimpse at the eveningpaper--and you would begin . . . Oh yes! you _would begin_! And so youread about the threatened strike; the murder in East Ham; the leadingarticle, the marriage of Lady Fitzclarence-Forsooth to--well, whoever shemarried, the funny remark the drunken woman made to the judge when hefined her two-and-six for kissing a policeman; Mr. Justice Darling'slatest _mot_; the racing, the forthcoming fashions; the advertisement ofBack-Ache Pills; Mr. C. B. Cochran's praise of his own productions, Mr. Selfridge's praise of his own shop; the "Wants, " the "Situations Vacant, "the . . . Then somebody woke you up to ask if you were asleep . . . Which, of course, you _weren't_ . . . Well . . . Well . . . It is pastmidnight! So what can one do now? What _can_ one do? Why, go to bed, of course. Another autumn evening is over. But then, there are plentymore . . . Oh, plenty more. "Good-night. "

_Two Lives_

I often wish that we could all of us lead two lives. I don't mean I wishthat we could live twice as long--though, in reality, it would come tothe same thing. But I would like to live the two lives which I want tolead, and only do lead in a sort of patchwork-quilt kind of way. I wouldlike to live a life in which I could wander gipsy-like over the face ofthe globe--seeing everything, doing everything, meeting everybody. Ishould also like to live a purely vegetable existence in some remotecountry village--sleeping away my life in happy domesticity, away fromthe crowd, free from care, tranquil, and at peace. I suppose that, evenas dreams, they are only too futile--but they are very pleasant dreamsnevertheless. I know that they _are_ dreams--since I am quite sure thatthe reality would be far less satisfactory than it seems in anticipation. There is "always a fly in the amber" as the saying goes, and myexperience is, that the truth more nearly resembles a great big fly witha tiny speck of amber sticking somewhere to its back. For in our dreamvoyages we overlook the fleas, the mosquitoes, the hunt for lodgings, thestruggle with languages, the hundred-and-one disturbances of the spiritwhich are inseparable from real voyages of any kind and bombard our innertranquillity at every turn. In the same way, when we gaze at thepeaceful landscape of some hidden-away English countryside, we yearn tolive among such peacefulness, forgetting that, though life in the countrymay _look_ peaceful to the stranger's eye, experience teaches us thatgossip and scandal and the continual agitation round and round thetrivial--an agitation so great that the trivial becomes colossal--at lastrob life of anything resembling _dolce far niente_ mid country lanes andin the shadow of some country church. In fact, it seems to me that theemotion which we seek--the emotion of strange wonderplaces, the emotionof utter restfulness which falls upon the soul like a benediction--docome to us from time to time, but at the most unexpected moments and inthe most unlikely places. They come--and we hug them in our memory likeprecious thoughts. And sometimes we try to reproduce them artificially, only to discover that "never anything twice" is one of the lessons oflife--and quite the last one we ever learn, even if we ever do learnit--which is doubtful. 

_Backward and Forward_

Thus for the most part, things look most beautiful when we anticipatethem, or as we look back upon them in memory over the fireside. Fordistance lends enchantment, not only to most views, but also to memoriesand love. As, metaphorically, we stand on the Mount of Olives gazingdown at the city of Jerusalem, thinking of all that tiny corner of theearth has meant to men and women, we forget--as we look back--the beastlylittle mosquito which bit us on the nose, the interruption or ourcompanion who wondered what the stones might tell us if they could onlyspeak. So (also metaphorically), as we set our faces towards the HolyCity, filled with the anticipation of those sublime thoughts and emotionswhich would surge through our souls when we eventually arrived there, wewere happy in our ignorance of the fact that, when we did arrive, we feltunutterably dirty and our head ached, and the corn on our little toe feltmore like a cancer than a corn! Meanwhile, the emotion of the soul, which we expected to find upon the Mount of Olives, has sometimes come tous quite unexpectedly while standing in the middle of Clapham Common inthe moonlight; and that glorious spirit of adventure, which to us means"travel, " we have felt riding on a motor-bike through the New Forest atnightfall when the forest seemed full of pixies and the fading sunset wasred and grey and golden like the transformation scene of a pantomime. But alas! the next day we found the forest unromantic, and Clapham Commonlooked indescribably common in the morning sunlight. Our mood hadvanished, and although we tried to reproduce the same uplifting emotionthe following evening, we couldn't--we had a headache and the gnats wereabout. So, although I often yearn to live _two_ lives--one full oftravel and adventure, and the other peacefully over the fireside mid thepeace and beauty of the country--I am quite sure that, were my wishgranted, I should find both lives just the same mixture of unexpectedhappiness and unanticipated disappointment which I find this one to be, yet still go smiling on. Very rarely the Time and the Place and theMood. But when they do happen to come together--well, life is sowonderful and so beautiful that to throw in the "Loved one" too wouldseem like gilding the rose--a heaven worth sacrificing every stolenhappiness in life for. 

_When?_

One of the greatest--perhaps _the_ greatest--problems which parents haveto face is--when to tell their children the truth about sexual life; howto tell it; how little to tell--how much. And most parents, alas! arecontent to drift--to trust to luck! They themselves have got throughfairly well; the probabilities are, then, that their children will getthrough fairly well too. So they, metaphorically speaking, fold theirhands and listen, and, when any part of the truth breaks through thereticence of intimate conversation, they shake their heads solemnly, strive to look shocked--and often are; or else they make a joke ofit--believing that their children regard the question in the samereasonable light as they do themselves. But ignorance is neverreasonable, and half ignorance is even more excited. There is a"mystery" somewhere, and ignorant youth is hot after its solution. Andthe "mystery" is solved for them in a dozen ways--all more or less dirtyand untrue. Better far be too frank, so long as your frankness isn't thefrankness of coarse levity, than not to be frank enough. The reticenceof parents towards their children in this matter has turned many a younglife of brilliant promise into a life-long hell. We don't _see_ thishell for the most part, and, because we don't see it, we fondly believethat it does not exist--or, if it does exist, that it exists so rarely asscarcely to demand more than a passing condemnation and a sigh. We heara great deal about the Hidden Plague. We hear of the 80, 000 cases ofsyphilis which are registered every year in the United Kingdom. But wedon't know any individual sufferer--or we _think_ we don't; and so, although we take the figure as an acknowledged fact, we neverthelessdon't realise it--and in any case, it isn't a nice subject of debate, and, should the word be even mentioned in the presence of our dear, dearchildren, we would ask the speaker to leave the house immediately andnever again return! I, too, was one of these poor fools--although I haveno children to suffer from my foolishness. I knew it was a fact, butlike others I didn't realise that fact--like we didn't realise the horrorand filth and tragedy of war, we who never were "out there"; we who never"went over the top. " But lately I have had to visit a friend in one ofthe largest lock hospitals in London. And one day I was obliged to walkthrough the waiting-room where the men are forced to sit until they aresummoned to see the doctor. And truly I was appalled! There were_hundreds of them_ of all ages--from 16 to 60. They were not the seriouscases, of course, and we should pass them in the street without realisingthat they were any but physically sound men, often of a very splendidtype. But each one represented a blighted life--a future robbed ofsplendid promise, a present of misery and unhappiness stalking throughthe world like shame beneath a happy mask. I tell you, it brought thetruth home to me in a way mere figures and statistics could never do. AsI said before, I was appalled: I was also very angry. For I knew thatignorance was at the bottom of many of these sad tragedies--the criminalreticence of the people _who know_, too mock-modest to discuss openly afact of life which, beyond all other facts of life, should be spoken ofbluntly, honestly, therefore decently and cleanly. 

_The Futile Thought_

Too many fond parents like to imagine that their children know nothing atall of sexual matters--that they are clean and innocent and ignorant, andthat, as long as they can be kept so, they will not run into danger anddisgrace. But no parent really knows how much or how little theirchildren know of this matter. Children have ears and imagination, andonce they know anything at all--which is at any time from eight years ofage, sometimes, alas! earlier--they should be told everything, not in anasty, furtive fashion, glossing over the ugly part and elevating thedecent side until it is out of all proportion to the truth, but quietly, with dignity, laying stress on the fact that sexual morality is not athing of religion and of God, but of self-respect, of care for the cominggeneration, and, especially, of that great love which one day will comeinto their lives. It should not be called a "sin"; at the same time itshould not be laughed at and made the subject of a whispered jest. Sexual laxity should be treated in the same way as dishonesty anduntruthfulness--a sin against oneself, against the beauty of one's ownsoul, and against those who believe in us and love us and are our world. Children should be taught to respect the dignity of their own bodies, oftheir own minds and soul; not by leaving them in half-ignorance, but bytelling them everything, and telling them it in the right way--which isthe clean and truthful way. 

_The London Season_

If only the people who repeat the words of wisdom uttered by philosopherslived as if they believed them, how much happier the world would be! Itis, however, so much easier to give, or to repeat, advice, than to followit, isn't it? Conventionality is far stronger than common sense, and afixed habit more powerful than a revolution. Besides, most peoplerealise that to give advice is a much more impressive ceremony thanmerely to receive it. And I think that the majority of people would farsooner look _impressive_ than be _wise_. The _appearance_ of a thingsometimes pleases them far more than the thing itself. Besides, to giveadvice is a rather pleasant proceeding, and those who habitually indulgein it seem incapable of discouragement. They will inform the "rollingstone" that if he continues his unresisting methods he will gather nomoss, but the rolling stone usually continues to roll merrily onward. They will protest to the ignorant that "to be good is to be happy, " butvery few of them will go out of their way to do good, if, by being "bad, "they can snatch a personal advantage without anybody being any the wiser. "Life would be endurable if it were not for its pleasures, " they declarein the face of a pile of social invitations. Yet they still endure thattreadmill of entertainments which makes up a London season, only showingtheir real feelings by moaning to themselves in the process. They freelyacknowledge that very few of these entertainments really entertain, butto miss being seen at them would be to risk a disaster which they wouldnot dare to take. So they go wearily smiling to amusements which don'tamuse, to dances which are too crowded to dance at, to dinner parties atwhich they pay in boredom for the food they eat; to "at homes" which arethe most "homeless" things imaginable--travelling here and there, fromone entertainment to another which proves as unutterably dull as thefirst one. Not content with these things, they must perforce be seen atthe Opera--although they _hate_ music; visit all the exhibitions ofart--when Maude Goodeman is their favourite painter; talk cleverly ofbooks which they would never read did not people talk about them, andgenerally follow for three long months a time-table of "enjoyment" whichvery few of them really enjoy. In the meanwhile, the only affairs whichgive them pleasure are the little impromptu ones arranged on the spur ofthe moment between friends. 

Of course I am not speaking of the débutante. She, "sweet young thing, "always enjoys any entertainment at which there are plenty of young menand ices. Nor, judging from observation, do I include among those whowillingly go through the three months' hard labour of a London seasonthose henna haired ladies--thickening from anno domini--who seemperfectly happy in the delusion that their juvenile antics are stilldeliciously girlish, and whose décolleté dresses would seem to declare tothe world that, though their faces may begin to show the wear and tear oflife, their plump backs don't look a day over twenty-five. The one is soyoung that she will enjoy anything which requires the endurance of youth. The other is of that age which is happy hugging to its bosom the adagethat a woman can't possibly look a day older than champagne makes herfeel. 

No, the person whose life of amusement I pity is the person who acceptsinvitations because she daren't refuse them. If the world doesn't seeher in all places where she _should be_ seen, the world always presumesher to be dead--and people would rather die in reality than live to beforgotten. But what a price they have to pay to keep their memoriesgreen. 

No, as I said before, the only entertainments which people really enjoyare those at which they can be perfectly natural--natural, because theyare perfectly happy. Rarely are they fixed affairs, advertised weeksbeforehand. Mostly are they unpremeditated---delightful little impromptuamusements made up of people who really desire to meet each other. Largeentertainments are almost invariably dull. Upon them hangs the heavyatmosphere or a hostess "paying off old debts in _one_. " The only reallyamusing part of them is to watch the amazement on the faces of one halfof the guests that the other half is there at all! That is invariablyfunny. In the big affairs the chef and the champagne are the real hostsof the evening. If England went "dry, " I think the London season wouldjoin the dodo--people couldn't possibly endure it on ginger "pop" andcider. But champagne and a good chef could, I believe, make even aChurch Congress seem jolly. They only bring an illusion ofhappiness--but what's the odds? A London season is but an illusion ofjoy after all. 

_Christmas_

Christmas comes but once a year--and the cynic cries, "Thank God!" Andso, perhaps, do the very lonely. But then Christmas is not a festivalfor either the cynic or the desolate. The cynic is as welcome at theannual feast of turkey and plum pudding as Mr. "Pussyfoot" would be at a"beano"; while the lonely--well, one likes to imagine that there are nolonely ones at Christmas-time; or, if there are--that somebody has askedthem out, or they have toothache and so wouldn't appreciate even thesociety of jolly seraphims. Christmas, except to the young, isessentially a festival of "let's pretend"--let's pretend that we loveeverybody, that everybody loves us, that Aunt Maria isn't a prosy oldbore, that Uncle John isn't a profiteer; that everybody has his or hergood points and that all their bad ones are not sticking out, as theyusually appear to us to be, as painfully apparent as those on the back ofa porcupine should you happen to sit down upon one in a bathing costume!And it is quite wonderful how this spirit of good will towards all mencan be self-distilled, as it were! You try to feel it, and, strangelyenough, you do feel it--at least, up to tea time. The public exhibitionof ecstacy you give at receiving a present you don't want seems to cometo you quite easily and naturally on Christmas morning. Even Aunt Mariacan pretend enthusiasm quite convincingly at the gimcrack you have givenher which her artistic soul loathes, the while she furtively examines itsbase to discover if peradventure you have forgotten to erase the price. You yourself declare, while regarding the sixpenny pen-wiper, that it isnot the gift so much as the _thought_ which pleases you, and you candeclare this lie to the satisfaction, not only of yourself, but, moredifficult by far, to the satisfaction of the wealthy donor who gave it toyou because she couldn't think what to give you--and because, as shepiously declares, "Thank God, you have everything you want!" Yes, indeed, there is something about Yuletide which makes all men benign, andthe joyful hypocrisy of Christmas Eve sounds quite the genuine emotionwhen uttered on Christmas Day. I am bound, however, to confess that the"good will" becomes a trifle strident towards nightfall. Many thingsconduce to this. The children are suffering from overfeeding; Mother issick of Aunt Maria, her husband's sister; and Father is more than fed upwith the pomposity of Uncle John. There is a general and half-utteredyearning among everybody to go upstairs and lie down. The jollificationsof the coming evening, when the grown-ups come into their own and thechildren are being sick upstairs, presume the necessity for such aretirement--a kind of regeneration of that charitable energy required forthe festival "jump off. " After which the digestive organs begin torealise what sweated labour means, and Father makes a speech about hispleasure at seeing so many members of the family present, and Motherweeps silently for some trouble which always revives over Christmasdinner and nobody has yet been able to sympathise with, because nobodyhas yet known what it is. And, because Christmas night would otherwiseprove somewhat trying even to a family determined to be loving or to diein the attempt, somebody or other has invented champagne. It is quitewonderful how the dullest people seem to take unto themselves wings afterthe third bottle of Veuve Clicquot has been opened. 

So Christmas Day is thus brought to a triumphant conclusion of good will. And the next morning, of course, is Boxing Day--a most appropriatelynamed event. Even if fighting isn't strictly legal, backbitingunfortunately is. Still, the wise relation seeks the frequent seclusionof his own bedroom during that mostly inglorious day of Christmasaftermath. You see, there is no knowing what sparks may fly when thedigestions of a devoted family have gone on strike!

Only the children seem to be able to raise the jolly ashes of their deadselves, phoenix-like from the carcase of the devoured turkey (whose bonesin the morning light of Boxing Day resemble somewhat the Cloth Hall atYpres by the end of the war). Even they (bless 'em!) seem able torecover from the fact that the lovely toys which Uncle John gave them liebroken at their feet because Uncle John would insist upon playing withthem all by himself. Children can always become philosophers in half aday. It is their special genius. 

Only grown up people have forgotten how to forget. And Christmas, although the most lovable of all the festivals of the year, is also thesaddest--and the most lonely, alas! There are so many "gaps"--so manyempty places in the heart which the passing of the years will never, never be able to fill. That is why Mother weeps--it is her privilege. And, truth to tell, so many people would like to weep too, only they darenot--they dare not. So they throw themselves into the feverish jollitywhich Christmas seems to demand for the sake of the children, and for thesake of the young people who, because they were so young, will neverrealise the aftermath of loneliness which to-day elder people know _meantwar_! So they say to themselves, "Let us eat and drink and appear merrybecause to-morrow . . . To-morrow--who knows?--peradventure we may allmeet again!" Thus the true spirit of Christmas is always as abenediction. 

_The New Year_

There is something "tonic" about the New Year which there isn't aboutChristmas, and Birthdays certainly do not possess. After thirty, youwake up on Christmas morning, look back into the Long Ago, and sigh;after forty, you wake up on the morning of your birthday, look forward, and ofttimes despair. But New Year's Day has "buck" in it, and, whenyou wake up, you lay down the immediate future with those GoodIntentions which somebody or other once declared paved the way to Hell, but are nevertheless a most invigorating exercise. Christmas, besides, has been seized upon by tradesmen and others in whose debt you happento be to remind you of the fact. I suppose they hope that the GoodWill of the Season will make you think kindly of their account--which, in parenthesis, perhaps it might, did not that same Good Will run youinto debt in other directions. As for Birthdays--well, the person whoremembers Birthdays is the person at whose head I should like to hurlthe biggest and heaviest paving-stone with which, as I lie in bed onNew Year's morning, I lay out my way to Hell. No, as I said before, Christmas Days and Birthdays are failures so far as festivity goes. The former brings along with it bills and accounts rendered, and youare fed with rood which immediately overwhelms any feeling ofkindliness you may happen to have in your heart, while the latter islike a settlement day with Time, and Time certainly lets you havenothing off your account. But New Year's Day, except in Scotland, where, I believe, you are expected to go out and get drunk--always aneasy obligation!--brings with it nothing but another year, andpossesses all the "tonic" quality of novelty, besides the promise of amuch happier and luckier one than the Old Year which has just beenscratched off the calendar. It is like an annual Beginning Again, andbeginning again much better. Besides, New Year's Day seems to be ananniversary which belongs to you alone, as it were. On Christmas Dayyou are expected to do things for other people, and you do (usuallyjust the things they don't want); while on Birthdays people do thingsfor you (and you wish to Heaven they'd neglect their duty). But NewYear's Day doesn't belong to anybody but yourself, and you prospect thefuture with no reference to anybody whomsoever, and, better still, withno one likely to refer to you. Oh, the New Leaves you are going toturn! The blots you are going to erase! The copy-books you are goingto keep spotless! The Big Things you are going to do with what remainsof your life, and the big way you are going to do them! Besides, saywhat you will, there comes to you on New Year's Day the very firstbreath of Spring. The Old Year is dead, and you kick its corpse downthe limbo of the Past and Done-with the while you plan out the New. So, looking forward in anticipation, you feel "bucked. " You aren'texpected to show "good will to all men" after a previous night'sdebauch on turkey, plum-pudding, and sweet champagne. Nobody comesdown to breakfast on New Year's morning and weeps because "Dear UncleJohn" was alive (and an unsociable old bore) "this time last year. "Nobody adds to the day's joy by wondering if they will be "alive nextNew Year's Day, " nor become quite "huffy" if you cheerfully remark thatthey very probably _will_. It doesn't invite the melancholy to becomereminiscent, nor the prophet to assume the mantle of Solomon Eagle. New Year's Day belongs to nobody but yourself, and what you are goingto make of the 365 days which follow it. You regard the date as a kindof spiritual Spring Cleaning, and to good housewives there is all thevigorous promise of a Big Achievement even in buying a pot of paint andshaking out a duster. And, though Fate usually helps to enlivenChristmas-time by arranging a big railway accident or burning a Londonstore down, and the newspapers, in search of something to frighten usnow that the war is over, by referring to Germany's "hidden army" andan unprecedentedly colossal strike in the New Year, the human spiritsoars above these things on the First of January, and Hope, figuratively speaking, buys a "buzzer" and makes high holiday. Whoknows if the New Year may not be your year, your _lucky_ year? And inthis feeling you jump out of bed, clothe yourself in your "GladdestRags, " collect your "Goodest" intentions, and sally forth. Nobodywishes you anything, it's true, but you wish yourself the moon, and inwishing for it you somehow feel that the New Year will give it to you. 

_February_

February is the month when, cold-red are the noses--and so (oh help!)are the "toes-es. " No one ever sings about February: scarcely anyonespeaks about It. It is indeed unspeakable. Its only benefit is that, once every four years, it keeps people younger a day longer. If you'rethirty-nine, you're thirty-nine for an extra twenty-four hours, and atthat period of life you're glad of any small mercy. It is the monthwhen the new-rich depart to sun themselves in their new-found sun, andthe new-poor, and others who are quite used to poverty, swear at themin secret. Oh, yes, indeed! If the Clerk of the Weather has a leftear it must surely at this moment be as 'ot as 'ell! Nobody likesFebruary--it is the step-child of the months. 

One simply lives through it as one lives through a necessary duty. It's a month--and that's all. Thank Heaven! somebody once made it theshortest! By the end of January most people have had more than enoughof the English Winter even if the English Winter thinks we can everhave enough of it, and comes back saying "Hello!" to us right intoSummer, and starts ringing us up, as it were, to tell us it's comingback again as early as October. Just as if we didn't know--just as ifwe ever wanted to know! The English Summer is far more modest. Usually it's gone before we have, so to speak, washed our hands, tidiedour hair, and dressed ourselves up to meet it. But Winter in Englandnot only comes before it is wanted, but outstays its welcome by weeks. And of all the months it brings with it, February, though the shortest, seems to linger longest. March may be colder, but the first day ofSpring is marked on its calendar; and we wait for it like we wait for alover--a lover in whose embrace we may not yet be, but who is, as itwere, downstairs washing his hands, he has arrived, he is here--and sowe can endure the suspense of waiting for him with a grin. April mayfill the dykes fuller than February, whose skies are supposed to weepall day long, but generally only succeed in dribbling, but Aprilbelongs to Spring--even though our face and hands and feet are still inMid-Winter. 

February always reminds me of the suburbs--appalling but you've got togo through them to get to London. Were I a rich man, I would followSpring round the World. In that way I should be able to smile throughlife like those people who, in snapshots from the Riviera, seemcomposed principally of wide grins and thin legs, and whose joie devivre is usually published in English illustrated journals in seasonswhen the English weather makes you feel that Life is just a Big Damn ina mackintosh. To follow Spring round the world would be like followinga mistress whose charms never palled, whose welcome was never too warmto be sultry, whose friendship was never too cold to freeze furtherpromise of intimacy. What a delightful chase! and what asweet-tempered man I should be! For, say what you will, the weatherhas a lot to do with that spotless robe of white which is supposed toenvelop saints. If you can't be pure and good and generous andaltogether delightful in the Spring, you might as well write yourselfoff for evermore among the ignoble army of the eternally disgruntled. And if you _can_ be all these things in weather that is typicallyEnglish and typically February, then a hat would surely hide your halo. 

And this is about all the good that February does, so far as I can see. True, once in four years it also allows old maids to propose. But thethree years when they had to wait to be asked have usually taken alltheir courage out of them. Besides, the married people and others whoare otherwise hooked and secure have turned even that benefit into ajoke--and no woman likes to place all her heart-yearnings at the mercyof a laugh. So that, what Leap-Year once allowed, people have turnedinto a jeer. But then, that is all part and parcel of February. Somebody once tried their best to make it as attractive as possible, even if it could only be so once every four years. But everybody elsehas since done their best to rob it of its one little bit of anaemicjoy. Perhaps we ought not to blame them! Nobody ought to be blamed inFebruary. It is a month which brings out the very worst in everybody. 

_Tub-thumpers_

I often wonder what born tub-thumpers are like in their own homes. Perhaps they are as meek and mild as watered buttermilk. Thinking itover, I think they must be. No self-respecting woman could betub-thumped at daily without eyeing furtively the nearest meat-carver. For the genius of a tub-thumper is that he is usually born deaf. Idon't mean to say that he cannot hear, but he only hears what isconvenient for his own arguments to hear, and the more an explanationis convincing the more he tries to shout it down, deafening himself aswell as the poor fool who is struggling to make his meaning clear. Each one of us, I suppose, has to "let off steam" some time somewhere, and round about the Marble Arch, where fiery orators "let themselvesgo, " must be the safety-valve of many an obscure home. Occasionally Igo there--just to listen to men and women giving an example of thatproverb about "a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. " Moreover, there is a certain psychological interest in this rowdy corner of apeaceful park. It is typical of England, for one thing. I don't meanto say that tub-thumping is typical of England, but England iscertainly the harbour of refuge of the crank. You can see there thecrankiest of cranks being as cranky as they know how to be; and you cansee also the utterly good-humoured indifference with which the crowdswho listen to them regard their crankiness--which also has its meaning. The other evening a middle aged woman of untidy locks was crying thatEngland alone was responsible for the war. Another--in this instance ayoung man--was deploring the recent blockade of Germany, viewing at thesame time in quite a tender light the Zeppelin raids on towns andvillages and the bombardment of undefended ports. In any othercountry, I think, these people would have been lynched. But D. O. R. A. , as a strenuous female, is now as dead as 1914 fashions, and the peoplewho heard these friends or Germany crying out their friendlinesslistened to them in laughing tolerance, which must have annoyed thespeakers considerably, seeing that laughter renders unconvincing thevery fiercest argument. But they laughed, and, passing on their way, heard God being described as an "old scoundrel, " and this seemed toamuse them even more. 

_I Wonder If . . . _

But I sometimes wonder if this indifference towards the facts which are"big" to so many people and ought, perhaps, to be "big" to everybody, bea sign of national weakness or of national strength. Personally, Ilonged, metaphorically speaking, to tear that female limb from limb andsend that young man to a village under bombardment, there to make himstay a week in the very hottest portion of Hell's Corner. But had I doneso, I realised that I should not have accomplished the very slightestgood. The moment that you take a crank seriously, from that very momenthe imagines that his "crankiness" is divinely inspired. Far better laughat him and let him alone. Laughter is the one unanswerablecontradiction, and ridicule is a far more deadly thing to fight againstthan fury, no matter if fury wields a hatchet. Perhaps this utterindifference to the firebrand is our national strength--even though itcomes from a too-sluggish imagination, a too great imperviousness to newdangers. English people possess too great a sense of humour ever tobecome Bolshevik. They may not be witty and vivacious and effervescinglybright, but they possess an innate sense of the ridiculous which is theirnational safeguard against any very bloody form of revolution. So wesuffer infuriated cranks--if not gladly, at least, in the same manner aswe suffer baboons in the Zoo--interesting, and even amusing in theirproper place, but to be shot at sight should they venture to play the"baboon" amid those hideous red-brick villas which have been termed anEnglishman's castle and his home. After all, every new system has itsridiculous side, and strangely enough, it is this ridiculous side whichis most apparent at the outset. Only after you have delved below the"comic froth" do you begin to realise that there is a very vital truthhidden beneath. Well, a sense of humour blows away that froth in time, and then--as for example after the Suffragette antics--the real argumentbehind the capers and the words becomes known. Thus in England allrevolutions are gradual, and in their very slowness lies theirincalculable strength of purpose. 

_Types of Tub-thumpers_

But the various types of cranks always provide a psychological interestto the student of intellectual freakishness. There are the "cranks" youlaugh at; others who make you wish to murder them outright. Then thereare a few pathetic cases--elderly men, who bring their own little woodenbox as well as the vast majority of their own audience, including a wife, a sister, and a convert in spectacles--men who, in a mild tone of voice, earnestly strive to paint as a real story the fable of Jonah and theWhale to a few casual passers-by--those same passers-by who, becausethere is no real "fun" to be got out of such lecturers, pass by with suchunsympathetic rapidity. Yet I always love to listen to these speakers. They are such an illustration of "a voice crying in the wilderness, " andthey are so dead-in earnest, and they mean so well--two directinvitations, as it were, to the world's ridicule. You can't helpadmiring them, although mingled with your admiration there is a strongstreak of pity. The simplicity of their faith is colossal. They believe_everything_. They believe in the miraculous conversion of drunkards ina single night through one verse of the Gospel; they believe that weshall all rise again and sing on and on eternally; they believe that allmen and women are born to evil, and they would feel positively indignantwere not the whitest soul among us really steeped in double-dyed sin. And how they believe in God!--Oh, yes, how they do believe in God! Icannot say whether they bring God into their daily lives, but theycertainly drag Him to the Marble Arch. And all the while a very sedate, middle-aged woman and a grim bespectacled maiden of forty-five try theirutmost--or seem so to do--to look as if they had led lives of the mostscarlet sinfulness until they had heard their elderly friend preach TheWord. Nothing ever disturbs these meetings. They just go on to theirappointed close, when the "stand" is promptly taken by someone whobelieves in nothing at all, God least of all, and will tell you thereasons of his disbelief for hours and hours, and still leave youunconvinced. 

_If Age only Practised what it Preached!_

The Boy Scouts have, I believe, a moral injunction to do at least onegood action every day. Older people applaud that injunction wildly. Itis so admirable--_for Boy Scouts_. They consider it to be so admirable, indeed, that they declare it should form part of the moral curriculum ofevery young boy and girl. In fact, they declare it to be applicable toeveryone--everyone except themselves. Personally, I think it would beeven more admirable when followed by grown-up people. But most grown-uppeople seem to consider that they have done their one world-beneficialaction when they get out of bed in the morning. The rest of the day theywill be unselfish--if it suits their purpose. If only grown-up peoplepractised what they preached to children we should have the millenniumnext Monday. If the world is still "wicked, " it isn't because there arenot enough moral precepts being flung about all over it. The trouble isthat the people to whom they most apply pass them on. They consider theydon't apply to them at all. 

If only children could chastise their parents for telling lies, and beinggreedy and selfish, and doing the hundred and one things which they oughtnot to have done, ninety-nine per cent. Of the mothers and fathers, spiritual pastors and masters, and "all those who are set in authorityover them"--would not be able to sit down without an "Oo-er!" for weeks. Happily children are born actors, and can simulate an air of belief, evenin the face of their elders' most bare-faced inconsistency. But--if youcan cast back your memory into long ago--you will remember that one ofthe most "shattering" moments or your youth was the time when it firstburst upon your inner vision that all men, and especially grown-up men, are liars. Certainly, if we really do come "trailing clouds of glory, "the clouds soon evaporate and we lose the glory, not through listening towhat men tell us, but in watching what men _do_. 

Selfishness is surely of the deadly sins the most deadly. Yetselfishness is what elder people tell youth to avoid most carefully. Ifeveryone only lived up to half the moral "fineness" which they find soadmirable in the tenets of the Boy Scouts, the world would be worthliving in to-morrow. Think of the hundreds of millions of unselfish actswhich would then take place every day! In a short time there wouldsurely be hardly any more good to do! As it is, a few kind-hearted, generous, sympathetic people are kept so busy trying to leaven theselfishness, the hardness, the all-uncharitableness of those who are outto live entirely for themselves, that, poor things, they are usually wornto a shadow long before their time!

The virtues are very badly distributed. Some people have so many, and insuch "chunks, " and others possess so few and even seem determined to getrid of those they have as soon as they can. If only youth had a sense orhumour it would surely die from laughing. But it hasn't. It has onlyfaith. Besides, as I said before, it is a born actor--and in face of thebig stick it is far safer to pretend faith than show ridicule. If we canhave children in the next world--and I have just received a communicationfrom an ardent spiritualist informing me that an earthly wife can becomea mother through keeping in touch with her dead husband--I think that, metaphorically speaking, the paternal cane will be "sloshed" both ways. That is to say, Little Johnny, who has been laid across mother's knee andbeaten by her with a slipper for stealing jam, will, in his turn, strikemother across the knuckles with a ruler when she, too, is caught"pinching" half-a-crown out of father's trouser pocket. If heaven benothing else, it will surely be a place of justice. The trouble withthis old earth is that justice is only meted out by those who have notyet been found out. In heaven I hope that people who preach will bepunished if they do not put their preaching into practice. It will, Ifear, empty any number of pulpits--alike in the churches, the publicparks, and the home. 

But heaven will be none the worse for a little silence. As it is, weearth-wallahs hear such a lot of high-falutin and observe so much lowcunning that no wonder youth, as it grows more "knowing, " becomes morecynical. It is only when a young man has arrived at years of discretionthat he realises that the most discreet thing to do is to be indiscreetwhile holding a moral mask up. When he realises this, he will find itmore politic to keep one eye closed. Brotherly love has to be blind inone eye. Justice finds it safer to be blind in both. And the fool is hewho keeps both eyes open, yet sees nothing. And so most grown-up peopleare fools! That is why they stick together in war-time and always_quarrel_ at a Peace Conference. 

_Beginnings_

Beginnings are always difficult--when they are not merely dull. Peopleworth knowing are always hard to get to know. On the other hand, peoplewith whom you become friendly at once usually end by boring you untodeath by the end of the first fortnight. People whom it is easy to getto know, as a rule know so many people that to be counted among theiracquaintances is like belonging to a friendly host, each one of whomought to wear around his neck a regimental number to differentiate himfrom his neighbour. But the friend who is born a friend--and some peopleare born friends, just as other people are born married--dislikes to beone of a herd. Friendship, like love, is among autocrats, the mostautocratic. There is no such thing as communism among the passions. But, as I said before, the people worth getting to know are so difficultto get to know. One has to hack away, as it were, and keep on hackingaway, until one breaks through the crusts of reserve and prejudice andshyness which always surround the "soul" of pure gold--or, in fact, the"soul" of any type or quality. But "to hack" is a very dull occupation:that is why I say all beginnings are difficult when they are not merelydrab. I always secretly envy the people who let themselves be knownquite easily, although I realise that, when you get to know them, thereis usually very little worth knowing. But there are so many lonely menand women wandering through this sad old world of ours who are lonely, not because there is not plenty of sympathy and understanding ready, asit were, to be tapped by the rod of friendship and love, but because theyare too shy to make friends, too reserved to show the genius offriendship which burns within them. So they go through the world withopen arms which merely clasp thin air. They are too difficult to get toknow, and they do not possess the key which unlocks the secret ofdignified "self-revelation. " Between them and the world there is thrusta mask of reserve and shyness--a mask the expression of which theypositively hate, but are unable to tear it down from their faces. Thusthey live lonely in a world of other lonely souls; no one can help them, and they are too timid of rebuff to help themselves. 

But Friendship cannot be cultivated and tended by a third party--that isan axiom. It either springs to life inevitably or, metaphoricallyspeaking, it doesn't turn a hair. The well-meaning person who introducesone friend to another with the supreme assurance that they will both geton splendidly together, usually begins by making two people enemies. Thefriends of friends are very rarely friends with one another. Andjealousy is not entirely the cause of this immediate estrangement. Onefriend appeals to one side of your nature and another friend appeals to adifferent side, but very, very rarely do you find two people who make thesame appeal--since Heaven only knows how great is the physical attractionin Friendship as well as in Love! On the whole, then, the wise man andwoman keep their friends apart. And this for the very good reason, that, either the two friends will become friends with each other, leaving youout of their soul-communion altogether, or else they will wonder in aloud voice what on earth you can find in your other friend to make himseem so attractive to you! In any case, a tiny thread or malignity iswoven into that fabric of an inner life in which there should be nothingwhatever malign. 

Friendship resembles Love in the fact that there are usually threestages. The first stage seems thrilling--but how thankful you are, whenyou look back upon it, that it is over! The second stage is full ofdisappointment--how different the friendship realised is from thefriendship anticipated! The third stage is philosophical, peaceful, andso happy!--since the worst is known and the best is known, but howimmeasurably the best outweighs the worst! and how deliciously restful itis to realise that you, too, are loved, as it were, in spite of yourselfand for those qualities in you which are the _real_ you, although youneed must hide them under so much dross. Thus you both find happinessand peace. And surely friendship--true friendship--is the happiest andmost peaceful state in life? It is the happiest and most peaceful partof Love: it is the one thing which, if you really find it, makes theEveryday of life seem worth the while; seem worth the laughter and thetears, the failures and the victories, the dull beginnings, and the evenmore tedious beginnings-over-again, which are, alas! inevitable, exceptin the Human Turnip, who, in parenthesis, is too pompously inert ever tomake a start. 

A very well-known actress once confessed to me that, no matter how warmhad been her welcome, she invariably felt a feeling of hostility betweenthe audience and herself when she first walked on the stage. But Irather think that everyone, except the Human Turnip, who feels nothingexcept thirst and hunger and cold, has that feeling at the beginning. Nomatter if your advent has been heralded by a fanfare of trumpets, youinvariably feel within yourself that your _début_ has been accompanied bythe unuttered exclamation: "Oh, my dear! Is that all?" It wears off intime, of course; but it only bears out my theory that beginnings arealways difficult--when they are not merely dull. I can quite imaginethat the first day in Heaven will be extremely uncomfortable. I knowthere is no day so long as the first day of a holiday--or any day whichseems so short as the last one. For one thing, at the beginning ofanything you are never your true, natural self. The "pose, " which youcarry about with you amid strange surroundings, hangs like a pall uponyour spirits, to bore you as much as it bores those on whom you wish tomake the most endearing impression. Later on, it wears off--and what youare--_you are_! and for what you are--you are either disliked intenselyor adored. But you are never completely happy until you are completelynatural, and you are never natural at the beginning. That is why youshould forgive beginnings, as you, yourself, hope to be forgiven whenyou, yourself, begin. 

_Unlucky in Little Things_

They say it is better to be born lucky than beautiful. Which contains, by the way, only small consolation for those of us who have been bornboth lucky and ugly. For, after all, to have been born beautiful is anice "chunk" of good luck to build upon, and anyway, if you are a woman, constitutes a fine capital for the increase of future business. But tohave been born lucky is much more exciting than to have been bornbeautiful; moreover the capital reserve does not diminish with time. Allthe same, I don't want to write about either lucky people or beautifulones. There are already too many people writing about them as it is. Iwant to write about the _unlucky_ ones--because I consider myself one ofthem. I do so in the hope that my tears will find their tears, and, itwe must drown, metaphorically speaking, it is a crumb of comfort to drownin company. 

Most unlucky people when they speak about their ill-luck always refer tosuch incidents as when they backed the Derby "favourite" and it fell downwithin a yard of the winning post. True, that is ill-luck amountingalmost to tragedy. But there is another kind of unlucky person--andabout him I can write from experience, because it is my special brand ofmisfortune. He is the unlucky person who is unlucky in _little things_. After all, not many of us back horses, and presently fewer of us thanever will be able to do more in the gambling line than playBeg-o'-my-Neighbour with somebody's old aunt for a thr'penny-bit stake. Let me give a few instances of this ill-luck, in the hope that my plaintwill strike a responsive chord in the hearts of those who read this page. 

(_a_) If I am sitting on the top of a 'bus and a fat man gets on that'bus, that fat man will sit down beside me as sure as houses! (_b_) If Iam sitting in a railway carriage hugging to my heart the hope that I mayhave the compartment to myself throughout the long non-stop run, for asurety, at the very last moment, the Woman-with-the-squalling-brat willrush on the platform and head straight for me! Or, I have only to seethe Remarkably Plain Person hesitating between two tables in a restaurantto know that she will invariably choose _mine_! (_c_) If there is a badoyster--_I get it_! If a wasp flies into the garden seeking repose--Ialways look to it like a Chesterfield couch! If one day I have notshaved--my latest "pash" _is sure to call_! Should I invest myhard-earned savings in Government Stock it is a sign for an immediatespread of Bolshevism, and consequent depreciation in all Governmentsecurities. If one day I plan to make a voyage to Cythere--I will surelycatch a cold in my head the night before and, instead of quotingSwinburne, shall only sneeze and say, "Dearest, I do hope I didn't splashyou!" I fully expect to wake up and find myself rich and famous--the dayI "wake up" to find myself _dead_! And of course, like everybody with agrievance, I could go on talking about it for ever. Still, I have givena sufficient number of instances of my ill-luck for ninety per cent. Ofpeople to respond in sympathy. The "big things" so seldom happen thatone can live quite comfortably without them. 

But the "Little Things" are like the poor--they are always with us; orlike relations--perpetually on the doorstep on washing day. Perhaps oneought to live as if one were not aware of them. To have your eyes fixedsteadfastly on some "star" makes you oblivious, as it were, to thecreepy-crawly things which are creepy-crawling up your leg. Theunfortunate thing, however, is, that there seem so few stars on which tofix your gaze. If you are born beautiful, or born lucky--you have no usefor "stars. " To a certain extent you are a "star" in yourself. But for_nous autres_ there only remains the exasperation of Little Things whichperpetually "go wrong. " The only hope, then, for us is to cultivate thatstate of despair which can view a whole accumulation of minor disasterswith indifference. When you are indifferent to "luck" it is quiteastonishing what good fortune comes your way. Luck is rather like awoman--it is, as it were, only utterly abject before a "shruggedshoulder. "

_Wallpapers_

Life is full of minor mysteries--conundrums of the everyday which usuallycentre round the problem: "Why on earth people do certain things and whaton earth makes them do them?" And one of these mysteries is that oftheir choice in wallpapers. Of course some wallpapers are so pretty thatit is not at all difficult to realise why people chose them. On theother hand, some are so extraordinarily hideous that one would reallylike to see, for curiosity's sake, the artist who designed them and thepurchaser whose artistic needs they satisfied. Those bunches ofimpossible flowers linked together by ribbons, the whole painted inhorrible combinations of colour--how we all know them, and how we marvelat their creation! One imagines the mental difficulty of the purchaseras to which among the many designs most appealed to her artistic "eye. "Then one pictures how her choice wavered among several. One figures tooneself how she sat in consultation with that friend whom most peopletake with them when they go out to choose wallpapers, asking her opinionconcerning the design which showed nightmare birds swarming about amongterrible trees, and the one which illustrated brown roses with blue budsgrowing in regulated bunches on trellis-work of a most bilious green. One can almost hear the arguments for and against, and at last, thedefinite conclusion that the one with the brown roses and blue buds wasthe more uncommon--therefore the better of the two. And one day fateleads your steps towards the bedroom wherein that wallpaper hangs. Asyou throw yourself into the one easy chair you take out your cigarettecase to enjoy that "just one more" which is the more enjoyable because itsymbolises that feeling of being "enfin seul" which always followsconversations with landladies or several hours making yourselvesagreeable to hostesses. 

Then you see it!

At first you are amusedly contemptuous. "How perfectly hideous, " you sayto yourself. And then, in your idleness of mind, your eye follows theroses and ribbons in horrible contortions from the skirting board to theceiling. Realising what you are doing, and knowing that in thatdirection madness lies, you immediately turn your gaze towards thewindow. You imagine that you have gained the day. But, alas! _you arewrong_! Comes a moment in the early morning when you wake up two hoursbefore you wanted to, with nothing else to do except to lie awakethinking. And all the while the brown roses with their blue buds haveunconsciously stretched their tendrils to seize your wandering regard. Before you realise what they are doing, your eyes are riveted on thathorrible bunch half-way up the wall which being cut in half by the suddentermination of the width of one paper roll, does not exactly fit thecorresponding half of the other. How it suddenly begins to irritateyou--this break in the symmetry of the design! You force your eyes fromcontemplating its offence, only to discover that the bunches of roseswhich are exposed between the sides of the picture representing "TheSoul's Awakening" and the illuminated text painted by your hostess whenshe was young, make _an exact square_. Above the pictures you perceivethat these same bunches form a "diamond, " resting on one of its rightangles! That there are only five of these terrible bunches between theside of "The Soul's Awakening" and the corner of the wall, and _six_between that of "Trust in the Lord" and the door. And all the time youare becoming more and more irritable. You cannot close your eyes becauseyou know that when you open them again the same illustrations from Euclidwill await you. The only thing that comforts you is the determination towrite immediately to your Member of Parliament insisting that he drafts aBill creating a censor of wallpapers, with dire penalties for any"circumventors" of the law. That at least would put every seasidelandlady in prison. 

_Our Irritating Habits_

Far more than the Big Things are the Teeny Weeny Little Ones which morequickly divide lovers. A woman may conveniently overlook the fact thather husband poisoned his first wife in order to marry her, when shecannot ignore the perpetual example which he gives her of the truth thatSatan finds some evil still for idle hands to do--by always picking histeeth. All of us possess some little irritating personal habit, whichmakes for us more enemies than those faults for which, on our knees, webeg forgiveness of Heaven. A woman can drink in the poetry of herlover's passionate eloquence for ever and ever, amen. But if, in themiddle of the night, she wakes up to find her eloquent lover lettingforth the most stentorian snores she, metaphorically, immediately sits upin bed and begins seriously _to wonder_. And the moment love begins toask itself questions, it is, as it were, turning over the leaves of thetime-table to discover the next boat for the Antipodes. As I saidbefore, more homes are broken up, not by the flying fire-irons, but bythe irritating little personal idiosyncrasies which men and women exhibitwhen they are, so they declare, "quite natural and at their ease. " Onlya mother's love can survive the accompaniment of suction noises withsoup. Vice always makes the innocent suffer, but suffering is oftenbearable, and sometimes it ennobles us; but chewing raw tobacco--evenperpetually chewing chewing gum--is unbearable, and has a most ignobleeffect on the temper, especially the temper of life's Monday mornings. 

Even for our virtues do we sometimes run the risk of being murdered bythose who, because they think they know us best, consequently admire usleast. Virtue which is waved overhead like a banner is always aperpetual challenge, and the moment we seem to issue a challenge--eventhough we merely challenge the surrounding ether--someone in the concretebends down somewhere to pick up a brickbat and, gazing at us, mutters, "How far? Oh Lord, how far?" Even the expressions of love, in the wrongplace, have been known to hear hatred as their echo. I once knew a manwho left his wife because she could never speak to him without callinghim "darling. " She had so absorbed Barrie's theory that the bravest manis but a "child, " that "home" for her husband became a kind of glorifiednursery. At last his spirit became bilious with the cloying sweetness ofit all. The climax came one evening when, after accidentally treading onher best corn and begging her pardon, she got up, put her loving armsaround his neck and, kissing him, whispered, "_Granted_, darling, _granted_ before you did it!" Soon after that he left her for a womanwho, herself, trod on every corn he possessed, and had not the leastinclination to say she was sorry. Of course, he lived to regret hisfirst wife. Most men do. 

"Tact, " I suppose, is at the bottom of all the difficulty--tact not onlyto know instinctively what to do and when to do it, but when to realisethat a wife is still an "audience" and when to realise that, so far asbeing completely natural in her company is concerned, she has absolutelyceased to exist. But, alas! no one has the heart to teach us thisnecessary lesson in "tact. " We can tell a man of his sin when we darenot tell him it were the better plan to go right away by himself when hewishes to take his false teeth out. A wife will promote an angry scenewith her husband over the "other woman"--of whom she is not in the leastbit jealous--when she will never dream of telling him that he doesn'tsufficiently wash--which was the real cause of their early estrangement. Everybody knows his own vices, whereas most people are blissfullyignorant of their own irritating idiosyncrasies. I would far sooner betold of my nasty habits than of my own special brand of original sin. Sin has to be in very disgusting form to evoke lasting dislike, whereas a"nasty habit" breeds DISGUST, which is a far more terrible emotion thanhatred. 

_Away--Far Away!_

"The bird was there, and rose and fell as formerly, pouring out hismelody; but it was not the same. Something was missing from those lastsweet languishing notes. Perhaps in the interval there had been somedisturbing accident in his little wild life, though I could hardlybelieve it since his mate was still sitting about thirty yards from thetree on the five little mottled eggs in her nest. Or perhaps hismidsummer's music had reached its highest point and was now in itsdeclension. And perhaps the fault was in me. The virtue that draws andholds us does not hold us always nor very long; it departs from allthings, and we wonder why. The loss is in ourselves, although we do notknow it. Nature, the chosen mistress of our heart, does not changetowards us, yet she is now, even to-day--

 Less full of purple colour and hid spice, and smiles and sparkles in vain to allure us, and when she touches uswith her warm caressing touch, there is, compared with yesterday, only afaint response. " I cull this paragraph from Mr. W. H. Hudson'senchanting book, "Birds in Town and Village, " because, or so it seems tome, it expresses in beautiful language a fact which has puzzled me allthrough my life, making me fear to dare in many things, lest theenthusiasm I then felt were not repeated when the time for actionarrived. We are all more or less creatures of mood, some more thanothers, and I, alas! among the moodiest majority. All through the long, dark, chilly, miserable winter I live in town, longing sadly, thoughrapturously, for the summer to come again, and with its advent my ownmigration into rural solitudes, far away from the crowd, surrounded byNature and lost in her embrace. Yet the end of each summer finds me withmy pilgrimage not yet undertaken. Something has held me back--afriendship, business, links which were only imaginary fetters, a host oftrivial unimportances masquerading in my mood of the moment as seriousaffairs. So the summer has come and gone, and only for an all-too-briefperiod have I "got away. " Nor have I particularly enjoyed my respitefrom the roar of omnibuses, the tramp, tramp, tramp of the crowdedpavements. Somehow or other the war has robbed me of my love of solitudeSomehow or other the peace and beauty and solitude of Nature still "hurt"me, as they used to hurt me during the years of the great world tragedywhen, across the meadows brilliant with buttercups and daisies, thereused to come the booming of the guns not so very far away "out there. "So, in order to force my mood, and perhaps deaden remembrance of itspain, I have taken along with me some human companion, only once more torealise that, when with Nature, each of us should be alone. One yearnsto watch and listen, listen and watch, to lie outstretched on thehill-side, gazing lazily, yet with mind alert, at every moving thingwhich happens to catch one's eye. You can rarely do this in company. Sovery, very few people can simply exist silently without sooner or laterbreaking into speech or falling fast asleep. Alone with Nature books arethe only possible company--books and one's own unspoken thoughts. 

"_Family Skeletons_"

The worst of keeping a "Family Skeleton" shut up in a cupboard is thatthe horrid thing _will insist_ on rattling its old bones at the mostinopportune moments--just, for example, when you are entertaining to teathe nearest local thing you've got to God--whether she be an "Honourable"(in her own right, mark you!) or merely the vicar's wife! Whateverfamily skeletons do or do not possess, they most assuredly lack _tact_. They are worse than relations for giving your "show away" at the wrongmoment. If relations do nothing else, they at any rate sit tightlytogether around family skeletons, if only to hide them from full view bythe crowd. But, of course, the crowd always sees them. The crowd alwayssees _everything_ you don't want it to see, and is quite blind to thetriumphal banners you are waving at it out of your top-room window. Sometimes I think that the better plan in regard to family skeletons isto expose them to public view without any dissembling whatsoever, cryingto the world at large, and to the "woman who lives opposite" inparticular, "There! that's _our_ family disgrace! Everybody's got one. What's _yours_?" I believe that this method would shut most people upquite satisfactorily. People only try to learn what they believe you donot want them to know. If you push the truth before them, they turn awaytheir heads. To pretend is usually useless. Not very many of us getthrough life without experiencing a desire to hide something whicheverybody has already seen. Wiser far be honest, even if it costs you adisagreeable quarter of an hour. Better one disagreeable quarter of anhour than months and years sitting on a bombshell which any passer-by canexplode. Honesty is always one of the very few invulnerable things. Nopin-pricks can pierce it--and pin-pricks are usually the bane of life. It's like laughter, in that nobody has yet been found to parry its blowssuccessfully. Shame is a sure sign of possible defeat--and the worldalways ranges itself every time on the side of the probable victor. Ifyou once show people that you _can't_ be hurt in the way they are tryingto hurt you, they soon leave off trying, and begin to think of yourChristian virtues in general and their own more numerous ones inparticular. It's only when your courage is sheer camouflage that theworld tries to penetrate the disguise. Not until a woman dips her hairin henna and, metaphorically speaking, cries, "See how young I look now!"that other women begin to remark, "You know, dear, she is _not soyouthful as she was_!" It's only when the rumour goes round that a manhas had a financial misfortune that everybody to whom he owes anythingfling in their bills. And thus it is with family skeletons. If, as itwere, you ask them to live with you downstairs, everybody ignores themand finds them "frightfully dull. " But the moment you relegate them intothe topmost attic--lo and behold, every single one of your acquaintancesexpresses a desire to rush upstairs, ostensibly to look at the view. 

Everybody has something which they do not want to expose--like dirtylinen. But everybody's linen gets dirty--that is always something toremember. There are some poor old fools, however, who really do seem toimagine that they and theirs are alone immaculate. How they manage to doso I can never for the life of me imagine. They must be very stupid. But stupid people are a very great factor in life's everyday, and we mustalways try to do something with them, like the left-over remnants ofSunday's dinner. And, unless we do something with them, they--likeSunday's dinner--meet our gaze every time we go into the kitchen. Atlast we hate the sight of them. But, just as the remnants clinging to anold mutton-bone lose their terror when Monday arrives without thebutcher, so these interfering old fools sometimes fade away into harmlessacquaintances when you show them that you and your family skeleton arepart and parcel of the same thing, and if they wish to know the onethey'll have to accept the other. In any case, it's usually useless totry and pretend that Uncle George died of heart failure when he reallydied of drink, or that the young girl whom Aunt Maria "adopted" was awaif-and-stray, when everybody knows she is her own daughter; or thatyour first wife isn't still alive--probably kicking--or that your onlychild suddenly went to Australia because he was seized by thewander-lust, when everybody knows he had to go there or go to prison. You may, of course, pretend these things, and if you don't mind theperpetual worry of always pretending, well and good. But if you imaginefor one instant that your pretending deceives the gallery, you'll beextremely silly. Why, every time they speak of you behind your backthey'll preface their remarks with information of this kind: "Yes, yes . . . A _charming_ family. What a thousand pities it is that theyall _drink_!"

But the "skeletons" of our own character--_they_ are the ones which nocupboard can hold, nor any key lock in. Some time, sooner or later, outthey will come to do a jazz in front of the whole world. The life welead in the secret chambers of our own hearts we shall one day enact onthe house-roof. Strive as we may to conform to the conventional ideal ofpublic opinion, we cannot conform _all_ the time, and our lapses are ourundoing--or maybe, our happy emancipation, who knows? We cannot hide thepettiness of our nature, even though we profess the broadest principles. Only one thing can save the ungenerous spirit, and that is to be upagainst life single-handed and alone. To know suffering, spiritual aswell as physical; to know poverty, to know loneliness, sometimes to knowdisgrace, broadens the heart and mind more than years spent in the studyof Greek philosophy. Life is the only real education, and the philosophywhich we evolve through living the only philosophy of any real importancein the evolution of "souls. "

_The Dreariness of One Line of Conduct_

We have lots of ways of expressing that a man is in a "rut" without evergiving the real reason of our adverse criticisms. An author who has"written himself out, " an artist whose pictures we can recognise withoutever looking at the catalogue, the "conventional, " the "dull, " the loverswho have fallen out of love--these are all so many victims of the "rut"in life. It is not their fault either. "Ruts" seem so safe, sodelightful--_at the beginning_. We rush into them as we would rush intoHeaven--and Heaven surely will be a terrible "rut" unless people havedescribed it wrongly! But, although "ruts" may often mean a comfortableexistence, they are the end of all progress. We dig ourselves in, andmake for ourselves a dug-out. But people in dug-outs are only _safe_;they've got to come out of them some time and go "over the top" if theywant to win a war. Unfortunately, in everyday life, the people whodeliberately leave their dug-outs generally get fired at, not only bytheir enemies but also by their friends. But they have to risk that. Sofew people can realise the terrible effect which "staleness" has uponcertain minds. Staleness is the breeding ground for all sorts of socialdiseases which most people attribute to quite other causes. There is astaleness in work as well as in amusement, in love as well as in hate. Variety is the only real happiness--variety, and a longing for theimprobable. What we have we never appreciate after we have had it forany length of time. Doctors will tell you that an illness every nineyears is a great benefit to a man. It makes him appreciate his healthwhen it returns to him; it gives his body that complete rest which it canonly obtain, as a rule, during a long convalescence, while "spiritually"it brings him face to face with death--which is quite the finest thingfor clearing away the cobwebs which are so apt to smother the joy andbeauty of life. In the same way a complete change in the mode of livingkeeps a man's sympathies alive, his mental outlook clear, his enthusiasmsbright; it gives him understanding, and a keener appreciation of theessentials which go to make up the real secret of happiness, the real joyof living. The people we call "narrow" are always the people whose lifeis deliberately passed in a "rut. " They may have health, and wealth, andnearly all those other things which go to make a truce in this battle wecall Life, but because they have been used to all these blessings solong, they have ceased to regard them. And a man who is not keenly aliveto his own blessings is a man who is neither happy nor of much good tothe world in which he lives. You have to be able to appreciate your owngood fortune in order to realise the tragedy of the less fortunate. 

_The Happy Discontent_

What is the happiest time of a man's life? Not the attainment of hisambitions, but when the attainment is _just in sight_. Every man andwoman must have something to live for, otherwise they become discontentedor dull. People wonder at the present unrest among the working classes. But to me this unrest is inevitable to the conditions in which they live. They have no ideal to light up their drudgery with glory. They cannotexpress themselves in the dull labour which is their daily task. Theyjust have to go on and on doing the same monotonous jobs, not in order toenjoy life, but just in order to live at all. Their "rut" is well-nighunendurable. Of what good, for example, is education, an appreciation ofart and beauty, any of those things, in fact, which are the only thingswhich make life splendid and worth living, if all one is asked to do, dayin, day out, is to clean some lift in the morning and pull it up and downall the rest of the day! To me the wonder of the working classes is, notthat they are restless, but that they are not all _mad_! Were they doingtheir tasks for themselves, I can imagine even the dullest work mightbecome interesting, because it would lead, if well done, to developmentand self-expression. But to do these mechanical labours solely andentirely for other people, and to know that you must keep on doing themor starve, well, it seems to me a man needs for his own sanity everything_outside_ his work to make life worth living. The man who is working forhimself, no matter how dreary his occupation may be, is rarely restless. He has ambition; there is competition to keep his enthusiasms alive, hefeels that, however lowly his labour may be, it belongs to him, and itssuccess is his success, too. But can anyone imagine what a life must be, we will say, cleaning other people's windows for a wage which justenables him to live? I can imagine it, and, in putting myself in thatposition, I cast envious eyes on the freedom of tramps! It seems to methat, until the world wakes up to the necessity of enabling work-peopleto fill their leisure hours with those amusements and pleasures, of theintellect as well as of the body, which are the reward of wealth, therewill always be a growing spirit or revolution in the world. I couldendure almost any drudgery for eight hours provided during the rest ofthe day I could enjoy those things for which my spirit craved. But to dothat same drudgery, day in, day out, with nothing but a Mean Street tocome home to, nothing but a "pub" to give me social joy, while people whoappear to live entirely for enjoying themselves bespatter me with mudfrom their magnificent motor-cars as they drive past me with, metaphorically speaking, their noses in the air, I think I, too, shouldturn Bolshevik, not because I would approve of Bolshevism, or evenunderstand what it meant, but because it would seem to give me somethingto live for. Except for the appalling suffering, the death, the disease, the sad "Good-byes" of those who loved one another, I am beginning torealise that the world was a finer place in war time. It mingled theclasses as they have never been mingled before, for the untold benefit ofevery class, it brought out that spirit of kindness and self-sacrificewhich was the most really Christian thing that the world has seen on sucha large scale since the beginning of Christianity; it seemed to give ameaning to life, and to make even the meanest drudgery done for the GreatCause a drudgery which lost all its soul-numbing attributes--thathorrible sense of the drudgery of drudgery which is sometimes moreterrible to contemplate than death. Religion ought to give to life some, if not all this noble meaning. But, alas! it doesn't. I sometimes thinkthat only those who are persecuted for their beliefs know what realreligion is. The Established Church doesn't, anyway. The world ofworkers is _demanding_ a faith, but the Church only gives it admonition, or a charming address by a bishop on the absolute necessity of going tochurch. The clergy never seem to ask themselves what the people aregoing to receive in the way of rendering their daily toil more worthwhile when they do go to church. But the people have answered it withtragic definiteness. They _stay away_! Or perhaps they go to see afootball match. Well, who shall blame them, after the kind of work whichthey have been forced to do during the week? I always think that if onlythe Church followed the crowd, instead of, metaphorically speaking, banging the big drum outside their churches and begging them to comeinside, they would "get hold" of their flock far more effectively. Afterall, why should religion be so divorced from the joy of life? Death isimportant, but life is far more so. If the clergy entered into the _reallife_ of the people they would benefit themselves through a greaterunderstanding, and the people would benefit by this living example ofChristianity in their midst. But so many of the clergy seem to forgetthe fact that the leisured classes possess, by their wealth alone, theopportunity to create their own happiness. The poor have not thisadvantage. Their work is, for the most part, deadening. Thesurroundings in which they live offer them so little joy. They have onlythe amusements which they can snatch from their hours of freedom to makelife worth living at all. And these amusements are the all-importantthings, it seems to me. If you can enter into the hours of happiness ofmen and women, they will be willing to follow you along those pathwayswhich lead to a greater appreciation of the Christ ideal. I always thinkthat if the Church devoted itself to the happiness of its "flock" itwould do far more real good than merely devoting itself to theirreformation. Reformation can only come when a certain amount or innerhappiness has been attained. 

_Book-borrowing Nearly Always Means Book-stealing_

Whenever I lend a book--and, in parenthesis, I never lend a book of whichI am particularly fond--I always say "good-bye" to it under my breath. Ihave found that, whereas the majority of people are perfectly honest whendealing with thousands, their sense of uprightness suddenly leaves themwhen it is only a question of a thr'penny-bit. As for books andumbrellas, people seem to possess literally no conscience in regard tothem. Umbrellas you _may_, perhaps, get back--if you were born under the"lucky star" with a "golden spoon" in your mouth, and had an octogenarianmillionaire, with no children, standing--or peradventure _propped up_--asgod-parent at your christening. Few people have qualms about asking forthe return of an umbrella, whereas a book always gets either"Not-quite-finished-been-so-busy" for an answer, or else the borrower hasbeen so entranced by it that he has "taken the liberty" to lend it to afriend because he knew you wouldn't _mind_! (Of course you don't--youonly feel like murder!) Nor do you really mind, providing that you areindifferent as to the ultimate fate of the volume. If you are notindifferent . . . Well, you won't have lent it, that's all; it willrecline on the bookshelf of the literary "safe"--which is in your ownbedroom, because your own bedroom is the only place where a book ever isreally safe. (Have you noticed how reluctant people always are to askfor the loan of a book which lies beside your bed? It is as if thistraditional lodgment of the family Bible restrained them. Usually theynever even examine bedside books. They are always so embarrassed whenthey happen to pick up a volume of the type of "Holy Thoughts for EveryDay of the Year. " They never know what to say to that!) But a book whichlies about downstairs is the legitimate prey of every book "pincher" whostrays across your threshold. Moreover, no one has yet invented a decentexcuse for refusing to lend a book. I wish they had; I would use ituntil it was threadbare. You can't very well say what you really think, since no one likes to be refused the loan of anything because the ownerfeels convinced that he will never get it back. So, unless you have aparticular gift for the Lie-Immediate, which embraces either theassertion that the book in question does not belong to you or else thatyou have promised it to somebody else, you meekly utter the prayer thatyou will be delighted if the borrower thereof will only be kind enough tolet you have it back soon, which, all the time, you know he won't, and heknows he won't, and you know that he knows he won't, and he knows thatyou know that he won't--all of which passes through your respective mindsas he pockets the book, and you in your heart of hearts bid it a fondfarewell!

_Other People's Books_

I have come to the conclusion that the only books which people are reallyfond of are those which rightly belong to other people. To them they arealways faithful. They are faithful to them not _in spite of themselves_, which is the way with those "classics" which everybody is supposed tohave read while they were young, and which most people only know by name, because they belong to that dim and distant future in which are includedall those things which can be done when they are old--they are faithfulto them for the reason that nobody wants to borrow them; they belong tothe literature which people seek in _free_ libraries, if they seek it atall. The books they really adore are those which somebody else haspurchased. Nor are they ever old books. On the contrary, they are "thevery latest. " You see it gives a room a certain _cachet_ if it includesthe very recent literary "sensation, " the "novel of the season, " whicheverybody is reading because everybody is talking about it. So theystick to the books which you yourself have purchased, under the fonddelusion that what you buy is necessarily yours to do what you like with. Alas! you have forgotten the borrowing fiend. The borrowing fiend is outfor borrowed glory--and few things on earth will ever stop the progressof those who are out for self-glorification. True, I once knew abook-lover who was not afraid of telling the would-be borrower that he_never lent books_. Needless to say, he had very few literary friends. But his bookshelves were filled with almost everything worth reading thathad been published. 

_The Road to Calvary_

She was sitting half dreaming, half listening to the old preacher, whensuddenly one sentence in a sermon, otherwise prosy and conventional, arrested her attention. For the moment she could not remember it, andthen it came to her. "All roads lead to Calvary. " Perhaps he wasgoing to be worth listening to at last. "To all of us sooner orlater, " he was saying, "comes the choosing of the ways: either the roadleading to success, the gratification of desires, the honour andapproval of our fellow men--or the path to Calvary. " And yet it seemsto me that the utterance is only a half-truth after all. It is thehalf-truth which clergymen like to utter. They always picture worldlysuccess as happiness, the gratification of desires happiness also, butgained at the price of one's own "soul. " But there they are wrong. Itseems to me that all roads do lead to Calvary--yes, even the road ofthe worldly success, the limelit path of gratification. Whichever pathyou take, it leads to Calvary--though there is the Calvary which, as itwere, has peace behind its pain, and the Calvary which has merelyloneliness and regret. But life, it seems to me, leads to Calvarywhichever way you follow--the best one can do is merely to bring alittle ray of happiness, ease a little the pain, share the sorrow andthe solitude of those who walk with us along the rough-hewn pathway. If you live only for yourself you are lonely; if you live only forothers you are also left lonely at last. For it seems to me that the"soul" of every man and woman is a lonely "soul, " no matter if theirlife be one long round of pleasure-seeking and success, or merelyrenunciation. Only occasionally, very, very occasionally--maybe onlyonce in a lifetime!--do we ever really feel that our own "soul" and the"soul" of another has met for an all-too-brief moment, shared for aflash its "secret, " mutually sympathised and understood. For therest--well, we live for the most part holding out, as it were, shadowyarms towards shadows which only _seem_ to be substance. The road toCalvary is a lonely road, and each man and woman is forced to followit. There remains then only God--God who knows us for what we are;God--and the faith that in a life beyond we shall by our loved ones bealso recognised and known. For the rest, we but look at each otheryearningly through iron bars--and from a long, long distance. Theleast lonely road which leads to Calvary is the road which leads toGod; the least lonely pilgrims are those who walk with Him. But noteverybody can believe in God, no matter how they yearn. They seek"soul" realisation in success, in self-gratification, in the applauseand passion of the crowd. The "religious" men condemn and despisethem. But they are wrong. They are more to be pitied. For they donot find consolation in the things by which they have sought to drugthe loneliness of their inner life. Their Calvary is often the mostterrible of all. So it seems to me that Calvary is at the end ofwhichever road we take. We are wise when we realise that it is in ourown power to make that road brighter and happier for others, and thatthere are always halts of interest and delight, entertainment and joy, dotted along it for ourselves as well--if we look for them. But we donot escape Calvary even though we struggle for success, gratify our owndesires, seek the honour and approval of our fellow-men. It is justthe Road of Life, and, provided that we harm no other man in so doing, let us realise ourselves in worldly ambition and in love and inenjoyment as often as we may. That is my philosophy, but it is no lesslonely in reality than other people's. Old age is each man's Calvary. 

_Mountain Paths_

And the worst of that road to Calvary which we all of us must follow, whether it be a long or short way, is that it is always, as it were, alonely journey into the Unknown. It is a mystery--a terrificmystery--and sometimes it frightens us so terribly that men and womenhave been known to kill themselves rather than take it. But there isalways this to be said of sorrow--like happiness, it looms so very muchlarger when seen from a long way off. As we approach it it becomessmaller. When we reach it, sometimes it does not seem so very terribleafter all; either it is small or else Nature or God gives to all of ussome added courage which helps us to bear even the greatest affliction. For several years past I have been intimately associated with a tragedywhich most people regard as well-nigh unsurmountable even by thebravest heart. I have thought so myself--and there are moments when Ithink so still, in spite of my long familiarity with it, and themiracles of bravery I have seen displayed in hearts so young and sotender that one would have thought they must of necessity fall helplessbeneath the burden laid upon them by Fate. I speak, of course, of theBlinded Soldier--than whom no better example of courage on the road toCalvary could possibly be given. Personally, I feel that I wouldsooner be dead than blind; but I realise now that I only feel this waybecause I still, thank Heaven, have remarkably good sight. Were I tolose my eyes, I hope--perhaps I _know_--that I should still strive tofight cheerfully onward. And this, not because I am naturally brave--Iam not--but because I have lived long enough to see that when, metaphorically speaking, the axe falls, some added strength is given tothe spirit which, granted bodily health, can fight and go on fightingan apparently overwhelming foe. This is one of the most wonderfulmiracles of Human Life, and I have myself seen so many instances of itthat I know it to be no mere fiction of an optimistic desire, but anacknowledged fact. And this miracle applies to nations as well as toindividuals. In Maurice Maeterlinck's new volume of essays there isone on "The Power of the Dead. " "Our memories are to-day, " he writes, "peopled by a multitude of heroes struck down in the flower of theiryouth and very different from the pale and languid cohort of the past, composed almost wholly of the sick and the old, who had already ceasedto exist before leaving the earth. We must tell ourselves that now, inevery one of our homes, both in our cities and in the country-side, both in the palace and in the meanest hovel, there lives and reigns adead young man in the glory of his strength. He fills the poorest, darkest dwelling with a splendour of which it had never ventured todream. His constant presence, imperious and inevitable, diffuses andmaintains a religion and ideas which it had never known before, hallowseverything around it, makes the eyes look higher, prevents the spiritfrom descending, purifies the air that is breathed and the speech thatis held and the thoughts that are mustered there, and, little bylittle, ennobles and uplifts the whole people on a scale of unexampledvastness. " Surely, in beautiful words such as these, Maeterlinck butechoes the consolation of many a very lonely heart since the tragedy ofAugust, 1914. Without "my boy"--many a desolate heart imagined that itcould never face the road of Calvary which is life now that he is gone. And yet, when the blow came, something they thought would have vanishedfor ever still remained with them. They could not tell if it were a"presence, " felt but unseen, but this they _knew_--though they couldnot argue their convictions--that everything which made life happy, which lent it meaning, was not lost, had not faded away before thelife-long loneliness which faced them; it still lived on--lived on asan Inspiration and as a Hope that one day the road to Calvary wouldcome to an end, that they would reach their journey's end--and findtheir loved one _waiting_. 

_The Unholy Fear_

She didn't object to the celebrations for the anniversary of thesigning of Armistice--in fact, she quite enjoyed them--but she didobject to the few minutes' silent remembrance of the Glorious Dead. Itdepressed her. She brought out the old "tag" so beloved of people whodread sadness, even reverential sadness, that "the world is full enoughof sorrow without adding to it unnecessarily!" Not much sorrow hadcome her way, except the sorrow of not always getting her own way; andthe anniversary of the Armistice meant for her the Victory Ball at theAlbert Hall, a new dress of silver and paste diamonds, a fat supper, and that jolly feeling of believing that a real "beano" is justifiedbecause, after all, _we_ won the war, didn't we? Therefore, shedisliked this bringing back to the world of the tragic fact--the factof what war really means beyond the patriotic talk of politicians, theVictory celebrations, the rush to pick up the threads which had to bedropped in 1914, and the excitement of getting, or missing, ordeclining the O. B. E. The war is over, she keeps saying to herself, thus inferring to everybody that they ought to forget all about it now. So she ignores the maimed and the wrecked, the war poor, the sailorsand the soldiers, war books, war songs, all reference to the war, infact, and most especially the dead. "Why should we be depressed?" shekeeps crying, "the world is sad enough. . . . " Well, you know the old"tag" of those who are not so much frightened of sorrow as frightenedby the fact that they can neither sympathise with it nor understand it. She is an exceptional case, you declare. But alas! she isn't. Thereare thousands of men and women who, behind a plea of war-weariness, really mean a desire to forget all those memories, all thoseobligations, all that work and faith in a New and Better World whichalone make justified--this war, or any other war. She has notforgotten, so much as never realised what men suffered and endured inorder that she, and all the rest of her "clan" who remained at home, might live on and rebuild the happiness and fortunes of their lives. So she dislikes to be reminded of her obligations to the Present andthe Future; she dislikes to remember in reverence and sorrow the menand boys who, without this war, would now be continuing happily, safeand sound, the even tenor of their lives. "The world is sad enough, "she again reiterates, and . . . Oh, well, just BOSH!

_The Need to Remember_

For myself, I consider that it would do the world good if it had onewhole _day_ of silent remembrance each year. And if it bedepressing--well, that will be all to the good. The world will come tono harm if it be depressed once a year--depressed for such a noblecause. After all, we give up one day per year to the solemnremembrance of the One who died for us--it would not, therefore, doanything but good if we were to give up one day a year to the memory ofthose millions who died for us no less. Sunday, too, is kept as aquiet day, in order that the world may be encouraged to contemplatethose ideals for which it has erected churches in which it bows theknee. Well, one whole day in the year given up to the memory of thosewho died that the civilised world might live--who also died for anideal--will help us to remember that they died at all. Without somesuch enforced remembrance, the world will, alas! only too quicklyforget. And in forgetting _how_ they died, will also forget _what theydied for_. Some people--the vast majority perhaps--will never rememberunless remembrance is forced upon them. And if the world ever forgetsthe Glorious Dead, and the "heritage" which these Glorious Dead left tothose who still live on--well, don't talk to me of Christianity andcivilisation and the clap-trap of those high ideals which everyoneprates of, few understand, and still fewer strive to live up to. Ifthe war has not yet taught the political and social and Christian worldwisdom, nothing ever will; and, moreover, it does not deserve to learn. Yet, only the other day, I heard some elderly gentlemen discussing thenext war--as if the last one were but a slight skirmish far away amidthe hills of Afghanistan. Well, better an era of the mostrevolutionary socialism than that the world should once again beplunged into such another tragedy as it has passed through during thelast five years. 

_Humanity_

"Humanity is one, and an injury to one member is an injury to thewhole. " I cull this line from Mr. Gilbert Cannan's book, "The Anatomyof Society. " And I quote it because I believe that it sums up in a fewwords, not only the world-politics of the future, but the religion--thereal, practical religion, and therefore the only religion which countsin so far as this life is concerned--of the future as well. Thesnowball--if I may thus describe it symbolically--has just begun toroll, but it will gather weight and impetus with every succeeding year, until, at last, there will be no nations--as we understand nationsto-day--but only _one_ nation, and that nation the whole of the humanrace. The times are dead, or rather they are dying, which sawcivilisation most clearly in such things as the luxury of the RitzHotels, the parks and palaces of Europe, the number of tube trains andomnibuses running per hour along the rail and roadways of London, andthe imitation silk stockings in which cooks and kitchenmaids disportthemselves on Sundays. A New Knowledge is abroad--and that NewKnowledge is a fuller realisation that the new world is for all men andall women who work and do their duty, for all humanity, and not merelyfor the few who get rich upon the exploitation of poverty andhelplessness of the masses. And this realisation carries with it therealisation that the governments of the future will be more reallygovernments of the people for the people--and by people I do not meanmerely those of Britain or France, or whichever nation men happen tobelong to, but humanity all over the world. The things which nowadaysonly money can buy must be brought within the grasp of the poorest, andcivilisation must be recognised as coming _from the bottom upwards_, and not only from the _top_--a kind of golden froth which strives tohide the dirt and misery and suffering beneath. So long as slumsexist, so long as poverty is exploited, so long as the great masses ofmen and women are forced to lead sordid, unbeautiful, cramped, hopeless, and helpless lives, as they are forced to live now--call nonation civilised. So long as these things exist--call no nationreligious. The one is a mockery of human life; the other is a mockeryof God. 

It always strikes me that the greatest lack in all education--and thisapplies to the education of princes as well as paupers--is the spiritof splendid vision. Most things are taught, except the "vision" ofself-respect and responsibility. The poor are not taught to respectthemselves at all, and certainly their lives do not give them whattheir education has forgotten. They are never encouraged to learn thateach individual man and woman is not only responsible to him andherself, but to all men and all women. Certainly the rich never teachit them. For the last thing which rich people ever realise is thattheir wealth carries with it human obligations, human responsibilities, as well as the gratifications of their own appetites and pleasures. The only objects of education seem to be to teach men to make money, nothing is ever done to teach them how best to make life full ofinterest, full of human worth, full of those "visions" which will helpto make the future or the human race proud in its achievements. Thefailure of education as an intellectual, social, and moral force isbest shown the moment men and women are given the opportunity to doexactly as they please. Metaphorically speaking, the poor with moneyin their pockets immediately go on the "booze, " and the rich "jazz. "And men of the poor work merely for the sake of being able to booze, and the rich merely for the sake of being able to jazz. And the richcondemn the poor for boozing, and the poor condemn the rich forjazzing--but this, of course, is one of life's little ironies. 

_Responsibility_

Personally, I blame the poor for boozing less than I blame the rich for"jazzing. " If I had to live the lives which millions of working menand women lead, and amid the same surroundings, and with the samehopeless future--I would booze with the booziest. You can't expect thepoor to respect themselves when the rich do not respect them. Withoutany feeling of human responsibility in the wealthier classes, youcannot expect to find any human responsibility in the lower orders. And by human responsibility I do not mean some vague thing like"Government for the People, " or subscriptions to hospitals, or bazaarsfor the indigent blind, or anything of that sort--though these thingsare excellent in themselves. I mean something more practical thanthat. Hospitals should be state-owned, and the indigent blind shouldbe pensioned by the state. These things should not be left to privateenterprises, since they are human responsibilities and should be borneby humanity. I mean that all owners of wealth should be made torealise their moral responsibilities to their own workmen--the men andwomen who help to create their wealth--and that with poverty thereshould not go dirt and drudgery and that total lack of beauty andencouragement to a cleaner, finer life without which existence on earthis Hell--Hell being preached at from above. 

_The Government of the Future_

The worst of government by the people is that the moment the people putthem into power they are gracefully forgotten. The only _real_government by the people comes through the people themselves in theform of disturbances and strikes and revolutions. Then, alas, the tinycraft of Progress is borne towards the ocean on a river of badblood--which means waste and unnecessary suffering, and leaves a wholedesert of anger and revenge behind it. The most crying need of thetimes is the very last to be heard by governments. They are soengrossed in the financial prosperity of the country that they forgetthe social and moral prosperity altogether--and financial prosperitywithout social and moral progress is but the beginning of bankruptcyafter all. A government, to be a real government and so to representauthority in the eyes of the people, has not only to nurse and toharbour, but also to _rebuild_. It does something more than govern. It has been placed there _by the people_ in order that it may helprebuild the lives _of the people_--so that, besides helping capital toincrease and develop, it at the same time safeguards the people againstexploitation by capital, and sees to it that, through this capital, thepeople are enabled to live cleaner, better, happier lives, are given anequal chance in the world, and encouraged and given the opportunity tolive self-respecting lives--lives full not only of responsibility tothemselves, but to humanity at large. That to my mind is the truesocialism--and it is a socialism which could come within the next tenyears, and without any sign of revolution, were the Government torealise that it is something more than the foster-mother ofcapital--that it is also a practical rebuilder of the human race--yes, even though it has to cut through all the red-tape in the world andthrow the vested interests, owners and employers, on the scrap-heap ofthings inimical to human happiness in the bulk. Sometimes I think thatthe franchise of women will do a great deal towards this juster worldwhen it comes. Women have no "political sense, " it is said. Well, thank God they haven't, say I! They have the _human sense_--and thatwill be the only political sense of any importance in the world ofto-morrow. 

And this war has been the great revelation. Masses of men and womenwho never thought before--or, rather, who thought but vaguely, nottroubling to put their thoughts into words--have by war becomearticulate. They are now looking for a leader, and upon their facesthere is the expression of disappointment. They do not yet realisethat they have discovered within their own minds and hearts thatSplendid Vision which once came through one, or, at most, a small groupof individuals. This vision is the vision of humanity as apart fromthe vision of one special nation. It sees a new world in whichscience, the practical knowledge and the material advancement of theWest, combine with the greater peace and happiness of the East, to makeof this world an abiding place, an ideal nearer the ideal of Heaven. Man, after all, possesses mind. His failure has been that, so far, hehas not learned wisdom--the wisdom to employ that mind for therealisation of his own soul--that realisation without which lifebecomes a mockery and civilisation a sham. 

_The Question_

Can a man love two women at the same time? If he be married to one ofthem--Yes. If he isn't--well, I cannot imagine it possible. Nor can Iimagine that every man is capable of this double passion. Some people(in parenthesis, the lucky ones!) have characters so simple, so direct, so steadfast, so very peaceful. Their soul is not torn asunder, firstthis way, then that, perfectly sincere in all its varying moods, thoughthe mood changes like the passing seasons. Once having liked a thing, they like it always, and the opposite has no attraction for them. These people are, as it were, born husbands and born wives. They arefaithful, though their fidelity may not be exciting. This type couldhardly love two people, though they are quite capable of loving twice. As individuals they are to be envied, because for them the inner lifeis one of simplicity and peace. But there are other people who, as itwere, seem to be born _two people_. They are capable of infinitegoodness; also they are capable of the most profound baseness. Andnever, never, never are they happy. For the good that is in themsuffers for the bad, and the bad also suffers, since it knows that itis unworthy. So their inner life is one long struggle to attain thatideal of perfection which they prize more than anything else in theworld, but are incapable of reaching--or, rather, they are incapable of_sustaining_--because, within their natures, there is a "kink" whichalways thwarts their good endeavour. Thus for ever do they suffer, since within their souls there is a perpetual warfare between the goodwhich is within them and the bad. These people, I say, can love twopeople at the same time, since two different people seem to inhabit thesame body, and both yearn to be satisfied; both _must_ be satisfied atsome time or another. The Good within them will always triumpheventually, even though the Bad must have its day. But do not blamethese people. They suffer far more than anyone can suspect. Theysuffer, and only with old age or death does peace come to them. Ifthere are people born to be unhappy in this world, they are surely inthe forefront of that tragic army!

_The Two Passions_

Yet these people, as I said before, _must be married_ to one of the twoAdored, if their sentiment for each can be called Love. Love, in whichpassion plays the larger part, is so all-absorbing while it lasts, thatonly the deep affection and respect which may come through the intimacyof matrimony can exist within the self-same heart great enough to becalled Love. A man may adore and worship the woman who has provedherself a perfect mate, who is the mother of his children, and yet beunfaithful to her--not with any woman who crosses his path and beckons, but with the _One_ who appeals to the wild, romantic adventurer which isalso part of his nature, though neither the best part, nor the strongest. But I cannot imagine a man adoring and respecting a woman who is not hiswife the while he loves with a burning passion another woman who promisesrapture, passion, and delight. Passion is so intense while it lasts thatthere is in the heart of man no equal place for another woman who holdshim by no legal and moral tie. But a man, having a double nature, canworship his wife, yet love with passion another woman--even though hehates and despises himself for so doing. But it is rare, if notimpossible, for one woman to completely satisfy the man whose nature ismade up of good and bad, of high ideals and low cravings, of steadfastfidelity, yet with a yearning for the wild, untrammelled existence of themountain tops. With such a man--and how many there are, if we butknew!--the woman he respects will always win in the end, even though thewoman who entices has also her day of victory. The Good Woman willsuffer--God knows she will! But the man will suffer too. A man has tobe wholly bad to thoroughly enjoy evil. The man who is only half asaint--secretly goes through hell. That is his punishment, and it is farmore difficult for him to bear than the finger pointed in contempt. Therefore, I believe that the happiest men and women are the men andwomen who are born good and steadfast, simple and true, or those whocultivate with delight scarcely one unselfish thought. That is why thevast majority of people live so really lonely, so secretly sad at heartand soul. Only the born-good or the born-bad know the blessedness ofinner peace. 

_Our "Secret Escapes"_

I suppose that we all of us have our own little secret"dream-sanctuary"--our way-of-escape which nobody knows anything about, and by which we go when we are weary of the trivialities of the domestichearth and sick unto death of the "cackle-cackle" of the crowds. When weare very young we long to share this secret little dream-sanctuary withsomeone else. When we are older and wiser, we realise that if we don'tkeep it to ourselves we are spiritually lost; for, with the bestintentions in the world, the best-beloved, to whom in rapture we give thekey, either, metaphorically speaking, leaves the front gate open or goestherein and turns on a gramophone. We come into this world alone, and weleave it by ourselves; and the older we grow the more we realise that, inspite of our own heart's longing to share, we are most really at peacewhen we are quite alone in our own company. When we are young we hopeand expect our "dreams" to become one day a glorious reality. When weare older we realise that our "dreams" will always remain "dreams", and, strange as it may sound, they become more real to us, even as "dreams, "than do any realities--except bores and toothache. For the "dreams" ofyouth become the "let's pretend" of age. And the person who hasforgotten the game of "let's pretend" is in soul-colour of the dulness ofditch-water. And "let's pretend" is a game which we can best play byourselves. Even the proximity of a living being, content to do and saynothing, robs it of its keenest enjoyment. No, we must be by ourselvesfor the world around us to seem really inhabited by people we love themost amid surroundings nearest our ideal. There are no bores in ourdream-world. Nothing disagreeable happens there. And, thank Heaven, wecan enter it almost anywhere--sometimes if we merely close our eyes! Andwe can be our real selves in this dream-world of ours too, there isnobody to say us nay; there are no laws and no false morals; we are fairykings and queens in a fairy kingdom. I always pity the man or woman whois no monarch in this very real kingdom of shadows which lies all aroundus, and which we can enter to reign therein whenever the human "jar" issafely out of the way. There we can be our true selves and live our truelife, in what seems a very real world--a world, moreover, which we hopeone day will be the reality of Heaven. 

_My Escape and Some Others_

Everybody, as I said before, has his or her own receipt for "gettingaway. " Some find it in long "chats" over the fireside with old friends;some in reading and music and art; some in travel, some in "good works"and just a few in "bad" ones. A new hat will often lift a woman severalfloors nearer to the seventh heaven. A good dinner in prospect willsometimes elevate the spirit of man out of the dreary "rut" and give that_soupçon_ of something-to-live-for which can take the ordinary everydayand turn it into a day which belongs to the _extraordinary_. For myself, I like to get out into the country alone; or, if I can't do that, or theweather sees to it that I shan't, I like to get by myself--anywhere todream, or, preferably, to explore some unknown district or street orplace in my own company. Sometimes I find that to open a new book or afavourite old one, soon takes the edge off "edgyness, " and makes me seethat the pin-pricks of life are merely pin-pricks, from which, unlessthere are too many of them, I shan't die, however much I may suffer. Buteven when reading--I like best to read alone--I am never really at easewhen at any moment a companion may suddenly break the silence and bringme back to reality by asking the unseen listening gods "if they've lockedthe cat out?" You condemn me? Well, perhaps I am wrong. And if you canfind happiness perpetually surrounded by people, then I envy you. It isso much easier to go through life requiring nothing but food, friends, and a bank balance, than always to hide misanthropic tendencies behind asocial smile. I envy you, because I realise that the fight to be alone, the fight to be yourself, is the longest fight of all--and it lays youopen to suspicion, unfriendliness, even dislike, everywhere you go. But, if I must be honest, I will confess that I _hate_ social pastimes. Towork and to dream, to travel, to listen to music, to be in England in thespringtime, to read, to give of myself to those who most specially needme--if any there be?--that is what I now call happiness, the rest ismerely boredom in varying degree. My only regret is that one hasgenerally to live so long to discover what the constituents of happinessare, or what is worth while and what worthless; what makes you feel thatthe everyday is a day well spent, and not a day merely got throughsomehow or other. You lose so much of your youth, and the best years ofyour life, trying to find happiness along those paths where other peopleinformed you that it lay. It takes so many years of experience torealise that most of the things which men call "pleasure" are but, as itwere, tough dulness covered with piquant sauce--a tough mess of which, when you tire of the piquant sauce the toughness remains just so long asyou go on trying to eat it. 

_Over the Fireside_

Most especially do I feel sorry for those people who cannot find acertain illusion of happiness in reading. I thank whatever gods there bethat I can generally find the means of "getting-away" between the coversof a book. A book has to be very puerile indeed if I cannot enjoy it toa certain extent--even though that extent be merely a mild ridicule andamusement. I can even enjoy books about books--if they are very welldone, which is rare. I am not particularly interested inauthors--especially the photographs of authors, which usually come upontheir admirers with something approaching shock--because I always thinkthat the most interesting part of an author is what he writes, not whathe looks like. What he writes is generally what he _is_. You can't keepeverything of yourself out of anything you may write--and thank Heavenfor it! Apart from the story--often indeed, before the story itself--themost delightful parts of any book are the little gleams of the writer'spoint of view, of his philosophy, of his own life-experiences, whichglint through the matter in hand, and sometimes raise a commonplacenarrative into a volume of sheer entrancing joy. And perhaps one of themost difficult things to write is to write about books--I don't mean"reviews. " (Almost anybody can give their opinion on books they haveread, and tell you something about them--which is nine hundred and ninetyper cent. Of literary reviews. ) But to write about books in a way whichamuses you, or interests you, and makes you want immediately to read thebook in question--that is a more difficult feat. And sometimes what thewriter about books says about books is more entertaining than the booksthemselves. But then that is because of those little gleams of thepersonal which are always so delightful to find anywhere. 

_Faith Reached Through Bitterness and Loss_

Looking back on one's life, I always think it is so strange that justthose blows of fate which logic would consider as certain to destroy suchthings as Faith and Belief, optimism and steadfastness of soul-vision, somany times provide their very foundations. How often those whose Beliefin a Life Hereafter is the firmest have little reason to encourage thatbelief. We often find through sorrow, a happiness--no, not happiness, but a peace--which is enduring. When the waves of agnosticism andatheism have broken over our souls, the ebb tide is so often Faith andHope. And, as we approach nearer and nearer to the time when, in theordinary course of events, we so soon _shall know_, there creeps into ourhearts a certainty that all is not ended with life, a belief which defiesreason, and logic, and common sense, and which, to outsiders, oftenappears to be merely a clutching at straws. But these straws save us, and, through their means, we eventually reach the shore where doubtscannot flourish and agnosticism gives way to a Faith which we _feel_ morethan we can actually define. 

_Aristocracy and Democracy_

I believe in the _heart_ of democracy, but I am extremely suspicious ofits _head_. Popular education among the masses is the most derelictthing in all our much-vaunted civilisation. To talk to the massesconcerning anything outside the radius of their own homes and stomachsis, for the most part, like talking to children. It is not their fault. They have never had a real chance to be otherwise. When I contemplatethe kind of education which the average child of the slums and countryvillages is given--and the type of man and woman who is popularlysupposed to be competent to give it--I do not wonder that they are thevictims of any firebrand, crank, or plutocrat who comes to them and sailsinto the Mother-of-All-Parliaments upon their votes. For the last sixyears I have been placed in circumstances which have enabled me toobserve the results of what education has done for the average poor man. The result has made me angry and appalled. The figure is low when Ideclare that ninety per cent. Of the poor not only cannot write theKing's English, but can neither read it nor understand it--beyond theeveryday common words which a child of twelve uses in his dailyvocabulary. Of history, of geography, of the art and literature of hiscountry, of politics or law, of domestic economy--he knows absolutelynothing. Nothing of any real value is taught him. Even what he knows heknows so imperfectly that absolute ignorance were perhaps a healthiermental state. Until education is regarded with the same seriousness asthe law, it is hopeless to expect a new and better world. For educationis the very foundation of this finer existence. You can't expect an A1nation among B3 intellects. Ornamental education is not wanted--it isworse than useless until a _useful education_ has been inculcated. Andwhat is a useful education? It is an education which teaches a man andwoman to be of some immediate use in the world; to know something of theworld in which they live, and how best to fulfil their duty as usefulmembers of a community and in the world at large. At present the averageboy and girl are, as it were, educationally dragged up anyhow andlaunched upon the world at the first possible moment to earn the fewshillings which two hands and an undeveloped intelligence are worth inthe labour market. No wonder there is Bolshevism and class war andanarchy and revolution. Where the ruled are ignorant and the rulingselfish--you can never expect to found a new and happier world. 

_Duty_

As for a sense of duty, to talk to the average man and woman, no matterwhat may be their class in life, of a sense of duty, is rather likereading Shakespeare to a man who is stone deaf. And yet, an educationwhich does not at the same time seek to teach duty--duty to oneself, tothe state, to humanity at large--is no real education at all. But in theworld in which we live at present, a sense of duty is regarded asnonsense. Labour does not realise its duties, neither does wealth;neither does the Church, except to churchmen; nor Parliament, except tothe party which provides its funds. And yet, as I said before, a senseof duty is the very foundation of all real education. 

Even if the children of the poor were taught the rudiments of some tradewhile they were at school, the years they spend there would not be soutterly and entirely wasted. Even though they did not follow up thattrade as their occupation in life, it would at any rate give them someuseful interest in their hours of recreation. As it is they knownothing, so they are interested in nothing. And this, of course, appliesto the so-called educated people as well. It always amuses me to listento the well-to-do discussing the working classes. To hear them one wouldthink that the working classes were the only people who wasted theirtime, their money, and their store of health. It never seems to strikethem that the working classes for the most part live in surroundingswhich contain no interest whatsoever--apart from their work. They aregiven education--and _such_ education! They are given homes--and _such_homes! They are plentifully supplied with public houses--and ye gods, such public houses! The Government hardly realises yet that it is there, not to listen to its own voice and keep its own little tin-pot throneintact, but as a means by which the masses may arrive at a healthier, better, more worthy state of existence. The working-classes are notBolshevik, nor do I think they ever will be; but deep down in theirhearts there is a determination that they and their children shallreceive the same educational advantages, the same right to air and lightand decent amusement, as the children of the wealthy. Because I am poor, they say to themselves, why should I therefore have to inhabit a homeunfit for decent habitation, receive education utterly useless from everypractical point of view--be forced to live in surroundings whichabsolutely invite degradation of both mind and body? There will alwaysbe poverty, but there ought never to be indecent poverty. Bettereducation; better housing; better chances for healthy recreation--theseare the things for which the masses are clamouring. Why is it wrong fora workman who has made money during the war to buy a piano--and to hearpeople talk that seems to be one of their most dastardly crimes--when itis quite all right for his employer, who has made more money out of thewar, to pay five pounds for one good dinner, or a night's "jazzing"?

_Sweeping Assertions from Particular Instances_

And this mention of the piano-crime among the munition-makers brings meto another fact--how utterly impossible it is for the majority of peopleto judge any big scheme without having regard to the particular instanceswhich threaten its success. Because some working people are so utterlybestial that they are unfit to live in decent homes--so the majority ofpoor people are unworthy of better surroundings. You might just as welljudge the ruling classes by the few units who advertise their ownextravagant tom-fooleries! In all questions of reform you have to work, as it were, up to the vision of an ideal. The real, howeverdisappointing at the outset, will eventually reach the higher plane--ofthat I am certain. And in no question am I more certain of this than inthe question of the working classes. The heart of democracy, as I saidbefore, is absolutely in the right place; only its "head" is as yetundeveloped. Its mental "view" is restricted--and no wonder! Everythingthat has so far been done has helped to restrict that view. This war haslet more "light" into the "soul" of democracy than all the nationalso-called education which has ever been devised and made compulsory. Confiscation of property and all those other tom-fool cries are but thescreams of a handful of silly Bolsheviks. There is no echo in the heartof the real labouring men and women. If they applaud it, it is only thatthese cranks, at least, seem to be fighting for that human right to anequal share of the common good things of this life which ought to be thepossession of all labour, however lowly. Take the education of themasses out of the hands of the for the most part ignorant men and womenwho nowadays make it their profession to teach it; raise the standard ofpayment so that this all-important branch of citizenship will encourageeducated and refined men and women to take up that duty--and give theworking classes decent homes, plenty of air, and the chance of healthfulrecreation close at hand, and you have solved the most vital labourproblems of this old world of ours and laid the foundation stones of thenew. 

_How I came to make "History"!_

Only those who have worked in the offices of an important newspaper, knowthat the Power Behind the Throne--which is the Editorial Chair--is rarelythe Church, scarcely ever the State, infrequently the Capitalist, and_never_ Labour, --but simply the Advertisement Department. 

I was sitting the other afternoon--dreaming, as is my wont; and smokingcigarettes, which is one of my bad habits, --when the head-representativeof this unseen Power rushed into my sanctum. 

"Will you do something for me?" he demanded, with that beneficent smileon his face which, through experience, I have discovered to be theprelude of most disagreeable demands. 

"Certainly, " I answered, inwardly collecting my scattered brainspreparatory to a brilliant defence. "What is it?"

Without more ado he, as it were, threw his bomb. 

"Will you write me an Essay on Corsets?"

"On _what_?" I asked incredulously--knowing that he had been adistinguished soldier, and suspecting that he had suddenly developed whatthe soldiers describe as "a touch of the doolally. "

"On _Corsets_!"

"But I don't know anything about them, " I protested, "except that Ishould not like to wear them!"

"That doesn't matter, " he answered reassuringly. "All we want is a pageof 'matter. '"

Then he proceeded to explain that he had secured several highly-paidadvertisements from the leading corsetières, and that his "bright idea"was to connect them together by an essay illustrated by their wares, inorder that those who read might be attracted to buy. 

Then he left me. 

"Just write a history of corsets, " he cried out laughing. Then, by wayof decorating the "bitter pill" with jam, he added: "I'm _sure_ you'll doit _splendidly_!"

"Splendidly" I know I could not do it, but to do it--rather amused me. 

After all, there is one benefit in writing of something you know nothingabout (and you are certain that ninety-nine per cent. Of your readerswill not be able to enlighten you) the necessity for accuracy does notarise. And so, I settled myself down to invent "history, " and, if myhistorical narrative is all invention, I can defend myself by saying thatif it isn't _true_--it _might be_. And many historical romances cannotboast even that defence. 

Most people who write about the early history of the world have to guessa good deal; so I don't see why I shouldn't state emphatically that, after years and years and years of profound research, the first corset"happened" when Eve suddenly discovered that she was showing signs ofmiddle-age in the middle. So she plaited some reeds together, tied themtightly round her waist-line, and, sure enough, Adam had to put offmaking that joke about "Once round Eve's waist, twice round the Garden ofEden" for many moons. But Eve, I suppose, discovered later on, as many awoman has also discovered since her day, that, though a tight belt makeththe waistline small, the body bulgeth above and below eventually. So Evebegan making a still wider plait--chasing, as it were, the "bulge" allover her body. In this manner she at last became encased in a belt wideenough to imprison her torso quite _un_comfortably, but "she kept herfigure"--or thought she did--and thus easily passed for one hundred andfifty years old when, in reality, she was over six hundred. 

And every woman who is an "Eve" at heart has followed in her time theexample of the mother of all of 'em. As they begin to fatten, so theybegin to tighten, and the inevitable and consequential "bulge" isimprisoned as it "bulgeth" until no _corsetière_ can do more for themthan hint that men like their divinities a trifle plump in places. Butto arrive at this--the last and only consolation--a woman has to becomerigidly encased from her thighs almost to her neck. She can scarcelywalk and she can hardly breathe, and the fat which must go somewhere hasusually gone to her neck, but--thank Heaven!--"she has kept her figure"(or she likes to think she has), and many a woman would sooner lose hercharacter than lose her "line. "

You may think that this only applies to frivolous and silly women, butyou are wrong. It applied even to goddesses! Historians inform us thatthe haughty Juno, discovering that her husband, Jupiter, was going theway of all flesh and nearly every husband, borrowed her girdle fromVenus, with the result that when Jupiter returned home that evening frombusiness, he stayed with his wife--the club calling him in vain. Thuswas Juno justified of her "tightness. "

But then, many a wife has cause to look upon a well-cut corset as herbest friend. And many a husband, too, has every reason to be grateful tothat article of his wife's apparel which the vulgar _will_ call "stays. "In earlier days a husband used to lock his wife in a pair of iron-boundcorsets when he went away from home, keeping the key in his pocket, andthus not caring a tinker's cuss if his home were simply overflowing withhandsome gentleman lodgers! The poor wife couldn't retaliate by lockingher husband in such a virtuous prison, because men never wore suchthings--which, perhaps, was one or the reasons why they didn't, who knows?

Also, the corset--or rather, the "bulge" of middle-age, which was thereal cause of their ever being worn--has always strongly influenced thefashions. I don't know it as a positive fact, though I suspect it to betrue nevertheless, that the woman of fashion who first discovered that noamount of iron bars could keep her from bulging in the right place, butto the wrong extent, suddenly, thought of the pannier and the crinolineand--well, that's where _she_ found that she was laughing. For almostany woman can make her waist-line small: her trouble only really comeswhen she has to tackle other parts of her anatomy which begin to show thethickening of Anno Domini. Panniers and the crinoline save her anenormous amount of mental agony. On the principle of "What the eyedoesn't see, to the imagination looks beautiful"--the early Victorianlady was wise in her generation, and her modern sister, who shows theworld most things without considering whether what she exhibits is worthlooking at, is an extremely foolish person. One thing, however, whichwomen have never been able to fix definitely, is _exactly where_ herwaist should be. Men know where it is, and they put their arms round itinstinctively whenever they get the chance. But women change their mindabout it every few years. Sometimes it is down-down-down, and sometimesit is under their armpits. A few years ago a woman who had what is knownas a "short waist" was referred to by other women as a "Poor Thing. "Then the short-waisted woman came into fashion--or rather, fashionsfashioned themselves for her benefit--and her long-waisted sister had tostruggle to make her waist look to be where really her ribs were. Only afew weeks back a woman's waist and bust and hips had all to be definitelydefined. Nowadays they bundle them all, as it were, into clothes cut ina sack-line, and are the very last letter of the very latest word infashion. I can well imagine that a few years hence women will be asseverely corseted as they were a short time ago. 

I can well remember the time when a woman who held "views" and discardedher stays sent a shudder through the man who was forced to dance withher--though whether they were pleasurable shudders or merely shudderyshudders I do not know. Nowadays, the woman who wears an out-and-outcorset, tightly laced, is either a publican's wife or is just burstingwith middle age. The corset of to-day is little more than the originalplaited grass originated by Mother Eve--in width, that is; in texture itis of a luxury unimaginable in the Garden of Eden. 

Women are not so concerned nowadays that their waist should be theeighteen inches of 1890 beauty as that their figure elsewhere should notpresume their condition to be at once national and domestic. The moderncorset starts soon and finishes quite early. Thus the cycle from MotherEve is now complete. "As we were" has once more repeated itself. 

The only novelty which belongs to to-day is that _men_ are wearingcorsets more than ever. A well-known _corsetière_ has opened a specialbranch for her male customers alone. Their corsets, too, are of a mostbeautiful and elaborate description--ranging from the plain belt of thefamous athlete to the brocade, rosebud-embroidered "confection" of awell-known general. Perhaps--say fifty years hence--my grandson will bewriting of male lingerie, and men will rather lose their reputations thanlose their figure. Well, well! if we live in a topsy-turvy world--asthey say we do--let's all be topsy-turvy!

_The Glut of the Ornamental_

How strange it is that human endeavour is, for the most part, alwaysexpended upon accomplishing something for which no one has any particularuse, while the things which, as it were, are simply begging to be done, are usually among the great "undone" for which we ask forgiveness everySunday morning in church--that is, presuming we go to church. Whilethere is a world shortage of cooks, the earth is stuffed with ladytypists far beyond repletion. Whereas you can always buy a diamondnecklace (if you have the money), you can hardly find a tiny house, evenif you throw "love" in with the payment. Where you may find a hundredpeople to do what you don't want, you will be extremely lucky if you comeacross even one ready and willing to do what you really require done. Nobody seems to like to be merely useful; they would far sooner beornamental--and starve. Where a man can have the choice of a thousandgirls who can't even stitch a button on a pillow-case, the feminineexpert in domestic economy will go on economising all by herself, untilthe only man who takes any real interest in her is the undertaker! It isall very strange, and very unaccountable. But I suppose it will forevercontinue thuswise until the world ceases to lay its laurels at the footof Mary and to give Martha the "go by. "

I never can quite understand why the bank clerk who marries a chemist's"lady" assistant is not considered to marry very much beneath him, whereas if he elopes with a cook we speak of it as a completemésalliance. But the cook would, after all, prove extremely useful tohim, whereas the chemist's "lady" assistant could only make use otherknowledge to poison him one evening without pain. In the same way, if abankrupt "Milord" takes in "holy matrimony" a barmaid with a goodbusiness head, the world wonders what heaven was doing to make such anappalling match. Should, however, he marry "a lady of title" who isentitled to nothing under the will of her late father, the Duke ofPoundfoolish-pennywise, and can't earn anything herself, the marriage isspoken of as a romance, and the Church blesses it--and so does the mostexclusive society in Balham. Utility seems never to be wanted. Theworld only asks for ornaments. 

It is the same in the drama, where Miss Peggy Prettylegs of the FrivolityFollies will draw the salary of a Prime Minister for showing her surname, while Miss Georgiana de Montmorency, the actress who knows Shakspere sointimately that she mutters "Dear old Will" in her sleep, is resting solong in her top flat in Bloomsbury that if she lived on the ground floorshe would inevitably take root. 

It is the same in literature, where "Burnt Out Passion" runs throughsixty editions and dies gloriously in a cheap edition with ahighly-coloured cover on the railway book-stalls, while Professor I. Knowall's wonderful treatise on "What is the Real Origin of Life?" has tobe bought by subscription, with the Professor's rich wife as principalpurchaser. 

It is the same in love, where the worst husbands have the most lovingwives, and a good wife lives for years with a positive "horror, " and isnever known really to smile until she lies dead in her bed!

It is the same in art . . . And yet it is not quite the same here, because the picture which "sells, " and is reproduced on post cards, generally inculcates a respectable moral, even though the sight of itsends the artistic almost insane. And yet, where you can find a hundredhouses the interiors of which are covered in wallpapers which make youwant to scream, you will find only a comparative few who prove by theirbeauty of design just exactly why they were chosen--and these rooms, inparenthesis, are never let as lodgings. 

Not that there seems any cure for this world-wide rage for the useless. We have just to accept it as a fact--and _wonder_! Meanwhile we have tomake the best of the men and women who, metaphorically speaking, wouldfar sooner sit dressed in the very latest fashion, underclothed in cheapflannelette, than buy dainty, real linen "undies, " and make last year's"do-up" do for this year's "best. "

_On Going "to the dogs"_

I always secretly wonder what people mean when they say they are "goingto the dogs. " Do they mean that they are going to enjoy themselvesthoroughly, with Hell at the end of it?--or do they mean that they aregoing to raise Hell in their neighbourhood and prevent everybody elsefrom enjoying themselves? Personally, I always think that it is a veryempty threat--one usually employed by disillusioned lovers or children. From the casual study I have made of the authorised "dogs, " I find themunutterably boring "bow-wows. " Of course, I am not exactly a canineexpert. Like most men, I have ventured near the kennels once or twice, and made good my escape almost at the first sound of a real bark. Peoplewho are habitually immoral, who make a habit of breaking all theCommandments, are rarely any other than very wearisome company. Whatreal lasting joy is there in a "wild night up West" if you have a "head"on you next morning that you would pay handsomely to get rid of, and a"mouth"? . . . "Oh, my dear, _such a_ 'mouth'! Appalling!" Besides, the men and women who are in the race with you are usually such drearycompany. Either they are so naturally bad that they do not possess theattraction of contrast or variety, or else they are so bitterly repentantthat one has to sit and endure from them long stories proving that theyare more sinned against than sinning, or that they all belong to old"county families, " or are the left-handed offspring of real earls. Inany case, one must needs open yet another bottle to endure the fiction tothe end. 

No, I have long since come to the conclusion that most people don'treally enjoy themselves a bit when they are _determined_ to do so. Theyonly have a thoroughly "good time" unexpectedly, or when they oughtn't tohave it. Of course, there is always the question whether people are mosthappy when they don't _look so_, and whether they are usually mostmiserable when apparently smiling their delight. At any rate, if therebe one day, or days, in the whole year when all England looks utterlymiserable, it is on a fine Bank Holiday or at a picnic. Of course, thenewspapers will tell you, for example, that Hampstead Heath waspositively pink with happy, smiling faces. But if you did find yourselfin the midst of the Bank Holiday crush, you would be struck by the hot, irritated, bored, and weary look of this "happy crowd. " Even at theDerby, the only people you see there who, if they are not happy, at leastlook so, are those who have just come out of the saloon bar. Occasionally, someone here or there will let the exuberance of his"spirits" overflow, but he won't get much encouragement from the rest ofhis listeners squashed together in the same char-a-banc. At the mostthey will look at each other and smile in a half-discouraging manner, asif to say, "Yes, dear, he _is_ very funny. But what a common man!" Itis all rather depressing. Only a street accident or standing in a queuewill make the majority of English people really animated. No wonder thatforeigners believe that we take our pleasures sadly. They only observeus when we are out to enjoy ourselves. But if they could see us at afuneral, or when we're suffering from cold feet, then they'd see ussmiling and singing! No wonder the French have never really recoveredfrom the gaiety of the British soldier as he went into battle. But ifthey really want to see the average Britisher looking every bit asphlegmatic as his Continental reputation, they should look at him whenhe's out for a day's gaiety. No wonder that men, when they "go to thedogs, " go to Paris. "The dogs" at home are too much like a moral purgeto make a long stay in the "kennel" anything but a most determined effortof the will. We possess, as a nation, so strangely the joie de mourirwithout much knowledge of the joie de vivre. 

_A School for Wives_

All marriage is a lottery--that is why the modern tendency is to examineboth sides of the hedge before you ask someone to jump over it with you. A single man may be said to have his own career in his own hands; butonce married, he runs the risk of having to begin all over again, andrecommence with a load on his back. A good wife can make a man, but abad wife can undo a saint. And how's he to know if she be a good wife ora bad 'un _until she's his wife_, which is just too late, as the corpsesaid to the tax collector. You see, a man has nothing to go on, exceptto look at what might be his mother-in-law. A girl is far morefortunate. If a man can afford to keep a wife, he's already passed theexamination as a "highly recommended. " He, at any rate, has to takemarriage seriously. No man wants to put his hard-earned savings into apurse with a hole at the bottom, nor live with a woman who begins to"nag" the moment she ceases to snore. If only women were brought up withthe idea that marriage is a very serious business, and not merely thechance to cock-a-snook at Mamma, marriage would be far less often afailure. But most girls are brought up to regard the serious business ofmatrimony from the problematical point of view of whether her husbandwill earn enough money to give her a "good time. " If it be a "seriousbusiness, " as Mamma and Papa and the parish priest assert it to be, thenlet her begin as she would begin a business, by starting to learn it. Idon't see why there shouldn't be a School for Wives, and no girl beallowed to marry until she has at least passed the fourth standard. After all, it is only fair on the man that he should know that with thesweetest-dearest-loveliest-little-darlikins-in-the-whole-world he is alsogetting a woman who knows how to boil an egg, and make an old mutton boneand a few potatoes go metaphorical _miles_. The knowledge would be agreat comfort to him when his little "darlikins'" feet-of-clay began toshow through her silk stockings. As it is, marriage to him is little buta supreme example of buying a pig in a poke, followed by an immediateslump in his own special purchase. 

I never can understand why women immediately become "ruffled" when a mereman suggests that, if marriage be a serious business, the least a girlcan do is to learn the business side of that business before she entersinto partnership. But "ruffle" they do. Also they think that you haveinsulted the sex, rather as if you had accosted a goddess with a"tickler, " or stood before the Sphynx and, regarding her mysterioussmile, said, "Give it up, old Bean!" For, after all, if the man has topay the piper, it's up to the woman to know how to make a tune! As itis, so many husbands seem to make money for their wives to waste it. Nowonder there are so many bachelors about, and no wonder there is anoutcry to "tax them. " Even then many men will pay the tax gladly, plusan entertainment tax if necessary--who knows? For elder people are sofond of drilling into the ears of youth the truism that passion dies andthat marriage, to be successful, must be founded upon something moreenduring than a feeling of delirium under the stars. That is why aSchool for Wives would be so useful. After passion is dead, it would bea poor creature of a husband who couldn't find comfort living in the samehouse with a woman who had obtained her certificate for economicalhousekeeping and sock-mending. You see, the home is the wife's part ofthe business. The husband only comes in on sufferance, to pay the bills, listen to complaints, and be a "man about the place, " should a man berequired. A happy home, a comfortable home, that is a wife's creation. But she can't create the proper atmosphere merely by being an expert onFuturism in music, nor by possessing a back which it would be a crime offashion not to lay bare. She has got to know the business side ofhousekeeping and home economics before an indifferent husband can beturned into a good one. You ask, why not a School for Husbands? Well, husbands have passed their "final" when they have earned enough money tokeep a wife. The husband provides the house and the wife makes the home. But most wrecked homes are wrecked through ignorance, so why not letwisdom be taught? A well-run home is three parts of a happy one. And ifthe other part be missing--well, let's have a divorce. Easy divorcecertainly encourages domestic mess-ups, but they are not half such a"mess" as the mess of a matrimonial "hash. " The home is the other sideof a man's business, the side which his wife runs. Well, as he has hadto study to work up his side, why let hers be such a "jump in the dark, "for him? Let the home become a study, even a science, and let not somany wives reach a forgivable level of domestic excellence on the "deadbodies" of so many unforgivable "bloomers. " Remember that in matrimony, as in everything else it is the premier "bloomer" which blows up leschâteaux en Espagne. Afterwards you have to use concrete--and build asyou may. 

_The Neglected Art of Eating Gracefully_

Were it not for the fact that we are usually eating at the same time, andso in no mood to criticise the mastication of others, I am sure that nothalf so many people would fall into love, nor be able to keep up thepassionate illusion when fate had pushed them into it. For to watchpeople eat is, as a rule, to see them at the same disadvantage as thehousemaid sees them when she calls them in the morning. Very few peoplecan eat prettily. The majority "munch" in a most unbecoming fashion. For, say what you will, to eat may possibly be delightful, but it iscertainly not a romantic episode of the everyday. True, restaurants havedone their best to add glamour to our daily chewing. And the better thecuisine, the less time we have for regarding others. That is whyhostesses are usually so harassed over their menus. Very few guestsarrive really hungry. So she has to entice, as it were, the alreadyreplete stomach by delicacies which it really doesn't want, but is nottoo distended to enjoy. Thus they are kept busy all the time, and haveno leisure to observe. But I always wish that part of our educationincluded a course of lessons in the art of eating enough, and of eatingit elegantly. Not one person in a hundred is anything but a monstrousspectacle in front of a plateful of stewed tripe. But, as I said before, we are, happily, so busy with our own plateful at the time that we haveusually no leisure to regard their stuffing. Personally, I always thinkthat the only way to enjoy a really good dinner is to eat it alone. People are delightful over coffee, but I want only my dreams with salmonmayonnaise. 

Of course you _can_ eat _and_ talk, but only the exceptionally cleverpeople can talk and enjoy what they eat. I always envy them. Many anexcellent dinner have I lost to all intents and purposes because mycompanion insisted on being "lively, " and expected a "certain liveliness"on my front at the same moment. If you _must_ eat in company--then twois an ideal number. But don't place your companion opposite you. Many a"sweet nothing" has been lost in bitterness because the person to whom itwas addressed saw inevitably a morsel of caviare preparing to becomenourishment. No, the best place for a solitary companion at meals is, either on the right or on the left, never immediately in front. I havesat opposite some of the most handsome people, and wished all the timethat I could have changed them into a "view of sheep"--even one of abrick wall would have been better than nothing. When you are talking tosomeone at your side, you can turn your face in their direction for thefirst few words, and then look at something else for the rest of thesentence. But if you turn your head away while talking to someoneimmediately in front of you--if not necessarily rude, it gives at leastthe impression that you are merely talking because to talk is expected ofyou, otherwise you are slightly bored. I know that the popular pictureof an Ideal Dinner for Two is one of an exquisitely gowned woman sittingso close to the man-she-loves that only a spiral table decorationprevents their noses from rubbing; with a quart bottle of champagnereclining in a drunken attitude in a bucket of ice, and a basket ofchoice fruit untouched on the table. But if you examine that picture ofthe ideal, you will always discover that the artist has missed the uglyfoundations of his fancy, as it were, by jumping over the soup and fish, the joint, the entrée, and the sweet, and has got his lovers to thecoffee, the cigar-and-liqueur stage, when, if the truth be known, all thehurdles over which the "horse of disillusion" may come a nasty cropperhave been passed. So, if you be wise, sit on the side of yourbest-beloved until the nourishing part of your gastronomic "enfin seul"is over; and then, if you must gaze into his eyes and he into yours, moveyour seat round--and your evening will probably end by both of you beingin the same infatuated state in which you began it. It is only by thestrictest attention to the most minor among the minor details of life, that a clever woman is able to keep up the reputation of charm and beautyamong her closest intimates. She realises that Nature has given to veryfew people a "sneeze" which is not something of an offence, and that noteven one possessing the loveliness of Ninon de l'Enclos can look anythingbut a monstrous spectacle when a crumb "goes down the wrong way. " Butthere are other "pitfalls" which it is in the power of all of us toavoid, and the "pitfall" of eating ungracefully is not the least amongthem. 

_Modern Clothes_

I often think that, if those "Old walls only could speak"--as the"tripper" yearns for them to do, because he can't think of anything elseto remark at the moment--all they would say to him would be the words, "For God's sake, you guys, CLEAR OUT!" As a matter of fact, it is justas well that old walls can't talk, or they might tell us what theythought of us; and you can't knock out a stone wall--at least, not withany prospect of success--in a couple of rounds. For we must look veryabsurd in the eyes of those who have watched mankind get more absurd andmore absurd-looking throughout the ages. Take, for example, our clothes. No one could possibly call them comfortable, and, were we not so used toseeing them ourselves, we should probably call them ugly as well. In theautumn of 1914 we suddenly woke up to the fact that we belonged to a verygood-looking nation. It was, of course, the cut of the uniform whicheffected this transformation. It not only showed off a man's figure, butit often showed it up--and that is the first and biggest step towards aman improving it. Sometimes it gave a man a figure who before possessedmerely elongation with practically no width. But the days of khaki areover--thank God for the cause, but aesthetically it's a pity. We havereturned to the drab and shoddy days of dress before the war, and menlook more shoddy and more drab than ever. 

Surely clothes are designed, apart from their warmth, to make the bestshow of the body which is in them. Having discovered that style in whichthe average man or woman looks his very best, it seemed so needlesslyridiculous to keep changing it. Beauty and comfort--that surely is the_raison d'être_ of apparel--apart from modesty, which, however, a few figleaves can satisfy. Fashion opens the gate, as it were, and we passthrough it, one by one, like foolish sheep--without a sheep's generalutility. Mr. Smith, who is short, fat, and podgy, dresses exactly likeMr. Brown, who is tall, muscular, and well proportioned. Mr. Smith wouldnot look so dreadful if he wore a coat well "skirted" below the waist, with tight-fitting knickerbockers and stockings. Mr. Brown's muscles andfine proportions are very nearly lost in a coat and trousers, which onlymake his muscular development look like fat and his fine proportionsmerely breadth without much shape. Mrs. Smith, who is modelled on thelines of Venus, bares her back at the dictates of some obscure couturierein Paris, and the result gives a certain aesthetic pleasure. Mrs. Brown, determined also to be in the fashion, valiantly strips herself, and lookslike a bladder of not particularly fresh lard! Were she to wear amodified fashion of the mode 1760 she would probably look almost charming. 

And so we might go on citing examples and improvements until we hadtabulated and docketed every human being. For an absolute proof that thepresent mode of dressing for both men and women is generally wrong, is, that the men and women who look best in it are those who possess boneswithout flesh, length with just that one suggestion of a curve common toall humanity. And think how much more interesting the world would bewere each of us to dress in that style which showed our good points toadvantage. For, after all, what is the object of clothes, apart frommodesty and warmth--which a blanket and a few safety pins couldsatisfy--if it be not to create an effect pleasant to the eye. And why, when once we have discovered a style which certainly makes the majorityof people look their best, should we wilfully discard it and return tothe unimaginative and drab? We complain that the world of to-day, whatever may be said in its favour, cannot possibly be calledpicturesque. Well let us _make_ it picturesque! And having made it morebeautiful--for Heaven's sake let us _KEEP_ it beautiful. Let it be asign of cowardice--not one of the greatest signs of courage of theage--to fail to put on overalls, if we look our best in them! After all, every reform is in our own hands. But most people seem so entirelyhelpless to do anything but, metaphorically speaking, flick a fly offtheir own noses, that they leave reformation to God, and look upon theirown unbeautiful effect and the unbeautiful effect of other men as an actof blind destiny. So we, as it were, sigh "Kismet"--in front of garmentswhich a monkey, with any logic or reason in his composition, would notdeign to wear. Yes, certainly, if "these old walls could only speak, "they would tell us a few home truths. Our ears would surely burn attheir eloquence. 

_A Sense of Universal Pity_

Nearly everybody can "feel sorry"--some, extremely so! Lots of peoplecan exclaim, "How ghastly!" in front of a mangled corpse--and then passshudderingly on their way with a prayer in their hearts that the deadbody isn't their own, nor one belonging to their friends andacquaintances. But very few people, it seems to me, possess what I willcall a sense of universal pity, which is the intuition to know andsympathise with people "who have never had a chance"; with men and womenwho have never had "their little day"; with the poor, and hungry, andneedy; with those whom the world condemns, and the righteous considermore worthy of censure than of pity. That is to say, while nearlyeverybody can sympathise with a tragedy so palpable that a dog couldperceive it, there are very few people who can sympathise with the miserywhich lies behind a smiling face, that sorrow of the "soul" which wouldsooner die than be found out. They can realise the tragedy of a brokenback, but they cannot realise the tragedy of a broken heart, still lessof a broken spirit. And if that heart and that spirit struggle to hidetheir unshed tears behind a mask of cheerfulness, or bravado, orassumed--and sometimes very real--courage, they neither can perceive itnor realise it, and the well-spring of their sympathy, should it bepointed out to them, is a very faint and uncertain trickle indeed. Mostof us like to take the sorrows of other people merely at their facevalue, and if the face be cheerful our imagination does not pierce behindthat mask to take, as it were, the secret sorrow in its all-loving arms. But personally, to my mind, the easiest sorrows of all to bear are thesorrows which need not be hidden, which, maybe, cannot be hidden, andwhich bring all our friends and neighbours around us in one big echoingwail. The sorrows which are the real tragedies are the sorrows which wecarry in our hearts every hour of our lives, which stalk beside us in ourdays of happy carelessness, and add to the misery of our days of woe. Wedo not speak of them--they are too personal for that. We could not welldescribe them--their history would be to tell the whole story of ourlives. But we know that they are there nevertheless. And the men orwomen who are our intimates, if they do not perceive something of thisshadow behind our smiles, can never call themselves our friends, althoughwe may live in the same house with them and exist side by side on themost friendly terms. That is why, if we probe deep down into the heartsof most men and women, we discover that, in spite of all their gaiety andall their outward courage, inside they are very desolate, and in theirhearts they are indescribably lonely. 

_The Few_

But just a few people seem to be enabled to see beneath the surface ofthings. Around them they seem to shed an extraordinary kind ofunderstanding sympathy. They are not entirely the "people in trouble"who appeal to them; rather they seem able to perceive the misery of a"state of life"--something which obtains no sympathy because peopleeither condemn it or fail to realise the steps which led up to it--in thelong, long ago. To them, everybody unfortunate--whether it be by theirown fault or by the economic, moral, or social laws of thecountry--arouses their sympathy. It would seem as if Nature had giventhem the gift of intuition into another's sorrow--especially when thatsorrow is not apparent to the outside world. You will find these peopleworking, for the most part, among the poor and needy, in the slums of bigcities, in the midst of men and women whose life is one long, hardstruggle to keep both ends meeting until death releases them from thetreadmill which is their life. They do not advertise themselves northeir philanthropy. One often never hears of them at all--until they aredead. They do not seek to hide their light under a bushel, because tothem all self-advertisement is indecent. They do not realise that whatthey do is "light" at all. But the world does not realise all that itowes to these unknown men and women, whose sympathies are so wide, soall-absorbing, that they can give up their lives to minister to thesorrows and hardships of others--and, in succouring them, find their onlyreward. I have known one or two of these people in my life, and theyhave given me a clearer insight into the nobility inherent in humannature than all the saints whose virtues were ever chronicled, than allthe wealthy philanthropists whose gifts and generosity were everoverpraised. 

_The Great and the Really Great_

I always think that one of the most amusing things (to watch), in alllife, is what I term the "Kaiser-spirit" in individuals. Nearly everyonemistakes the trimmings of greatness for the real article, and most peoplewould sooner expire than not be able to flaunt these wrappings, or therags or them, before somebody's eyes. And this spirit exists inindividuals in almost every grade of society; until you get to the rockbottom of existence, when the immediate problems of life are so menacingthat men and women dare not play about with the gilded imitations. This"Kaiser-spirit"--or the spirit which, if it can't inspire homage, willbuy the "props" of it and sit among the hired gorgeousness in the fullbelief that their own individual greatness has deserved it--iseverywhere. Very few men and women are content to be simply men andwomen. They all seek strenuously to be mistaken for Great Panjandrums. The woman who takes a little air in the park in the afternoon with twofull-grown men sitting up, straight-backed and impassive, on the box ofthe carriage, is one example of this. The chatelaine of a jerry-builtvilla, who is pleased to consort with anybody except servants and theclass below servants, is another. The majority of people need money, notin order to live and be happy, but in order to impress the crowd thatthey are of more value than those who are thereby impressed. The dramawhich goes on around and around the problem of whom to "call upon" andwhom to "cut, " fills the lives of more men and women than the problem ofhow to make the best of life and pave one's way to the hereafter. IfChrist came back to earth, He would have to choose one set oranother--Belgravia, Bayswater, or Brixton. 

_Love "Mush"_

I was standing outside a music shop the other day, gazing through thewindows at the songs "everybody is singing. " Their titles amused me. Not a single one promised very much real sense. They were all what Iwill call love "mush"--"If you were a flowering rose, " and "Come to mygarden of love, " were two typical examples. The remainder of theverses--with which the suburban sopranos will doubtless break theserenity of the suburban nights this summer--were of a "sloppy"sentimentality combined with a kind of hypersexual idiocy unparalleledexcept in an English ballad of the popular order. On such belief, I saidto myself, are young lovers brought up. Well, I suppose it would bedifficult for a youthful soprano to put "her soul" into a song whichasked, "What shall I give my dear one every morning for his breakfast?"or, "Who'll soothe your brow when the Income Tax is due, dear?" And yet, sooner or later, she will be faced with some such problems, and then herbeloved won't ask her if she be a flowering rose or invite her into hisgarden of love unless she can find an answer which will carry them bothover to the next difficulty fairly successfully. But to live in aneternal state of love-mush is what young people are brought up to regardas matrimony. The plain facts of matrimony are carefully hidden fromthem, as either being too "prosaic" or too indelicate. The mostresponsible position in all life for a man and a woman is entered upon bythem with an ignorance and an irresponsibility which are neitherdignified nor likely to be satisfactory. A woman goes in for severalyears' training before she can become a cook; a worker in every grade oflife has to go through a long period of initiation before she can be saidto be really fit for her "job. " But any girl thinks she is fit to becomea wife, with no other qualification except that she is a woman, and canreturn endearment for endearment when required. She is not expected toknow or do anything else. But her husband expects many and moreimportant things from her if he is not to live to regret his bargain. Hemay not know it when he is asking her to live with him in his garden oflove, but he will realise it a few years later, especially if she hasturned that garden of love into a wilderness of expensive weeds. 

_Wives_

The wife of a poor man really can be a helpmate, but the wife of a richman is so often only asked to be a mistress who can bear her husbandlegitimate children. Everything which a woman can do, a rich woman paysother women to do for her, while she graces the results of their labourwith a studied charm which receives its triumph in the envy of herhusband's male friends. No wonder there are so many wild anddiscontented wives among the middle and upper classes. Where a man or awoman has no "ideal, " where they have nothing to do which is really worthdoing, they always approach the primitive in morals. We may pretend tospurn the _cocotte_--but to look as nearly as she looks, to live asnearly as she lives, to resemble her and yet to place that resemblance ona legal and, consequently, secure foundation, is becoming more and morethe life-work of that feminine "scum" which the war stirred up and peacehas caused to overflow. Beneath it all I know there is a strata of theMagnificent, but the surface-ground is weedier than ever. I am not aprude (I think!), but the eternally amusement-seeking and irresponsiblelives led by many of the rich, and the really appalling looseness ofmorals now being led by girls without a qualm, bode very seriously illfor the future of that New World which we were promised the war wouldmake safe for--well, I believe we were told it was to be Democracy, butthe Government official and the profiteer still seem the most firmly dugin of us all. I go to the fashionable West-end haunts, and I see thecrowds of wealthy women getting as near the nude as they and theirdressmakers can manage; I go to the poor parts of London, and I am reallyshocked by the immense number of girls, some only children, who arepractically and _voluntarily_ on the streets. These may only be theminority of women and girls, I admit, but they are a minority which ishaving, and is going to have, a very sinister influence on thefuture--and the peace and beauty of that future. For the out-and-outprostitute one can feel understanding, and with understanding there is acertain respect; but these amateur "syrens" are a menace and a disgraceto the "homes" which breed them so carelessly, and look after them so ill. 

_Children_

I suppose the most absurd fetish of modern so-called democratic politicsis that fetish of the liberty of the subject. In theory it is ideal--letthere be complete liberty of ideas by all means; but when that liberty, as is nearly always the case, means that the liberty of one man is gainedby the sacrifice of another--then it is the enemy of humanity as well asof nature. I always consider that, in the really Socialistic state, children will not entirely belong to their parents, but will also beguarded and looked after as an asset to the world. This will, of course, give complete liberty to _good_ parents, but it will prevent _bad_parents from wrecking the lives of their children, as is the case to-day, unless the parents' wickedness is so disgracefully bad that they comeunder the eye of the N. S. P. C. C. But the law always shields thewrong-doer. We are far more concerned that mothers and fathers shouldhave complete control of their children even when they have provedthemselves unfit to bring up children, than that the children themselvesshould be protected. We are far more concerned that the drunkard shouldbe given complete freedom to go out and get drunk than that the miserywhich his drunkenness causes to innocent people should be punished, orprevented. The helpless must always suffer for the selfishness of otherpeople--that is one of the "divine" laws of civilisation. The liberty ofthe subject is not only a farce, but a crime, when the libertyjeopardises the lives of the minority. The liberty to harm others willbe a "liberty" punishable by law in the state which is anything more thandemocratic, except as a political catchword. 

_One of the Minor Tragedies_

One of the minor tragedies of life (or is it one of the _major_?) is theway we grow out of things--often against our will, sometimes against ourbetter judgment. I don't mean only that we grow out of clothes--that, after all, is nothing very serious, unless you have no younger brother towhom to hand them on; but we also grow out of desires, out of books, outof pictures, out of places, friendships, even love itself--oh, yes, mostoften out of love itself. You never seem to be able to say to yourselfand the world: "There! this is what I yearn for; this is what I desire;this is what I adore; this is what I shall never tire of--shall alwaysappreciate, to which I shall always show my devotion. " Or rather, you_do_ say this in all sincerity _at the moment_. Only the passing of timeshows you that you were wrong. You seem to grow out of everything whichis within your reach, and are only faithful to those things which havejust eluded your grasp. It is human nature, I suppose; but it is adreadful bore, all the same! It would seem as if the brain could notstand the same mental impression for very long; it becomes wearied, eventually seeking to throw off the impression altogether. They tell usthat everything we do, or hear, or say--every thought, in fact--isphotographed, as it were, on the brain as a definite picture. And ifthis be true, the same impression must affect the same part of thebrain--that part of the brain which becomes tired of this same impress, until it eventually seeks to throw it off as the body throws off disease. Take a very simple instance--that of a popular song. Experience hastaught you to realise that, although the melody haunts you deliciously atfirst, you will eventually grow to hate it, and the tune which once sentyou swaying to its rhythm will at last bore you to the point ofanaesthesia. I often wonder why that is so? The answer must bephysical, since the melody is just the same always--and, if it be reallyphysical, then that surely is the answer to the weariness which alwayscomes with repetition of even the greatest blessings of life in bothpeople as well as things. If only we understood the psychology ofboredom we might attain the eternal delight of never being bored, andwhat we loved once we should always love, until the end of our life'sshort chapter. And that would simplify problems exceedingly, wouldn't it?

The "Glorious Dead"

For a long time past people have been--and, I suppose, for a long timehence people will be--dusting their imaginations in order to discover themost fitting tribute their and other people's money can erect to thememory of the sailors and soldiers who died so that they and theirchildren might live. And yet it seems to me that in most of thesetributes the wishes of the "Glorious Dead, " or what might easily beregarded as their wishes, have rarely been consulted. The wishes of theliving have prevailed almost every time. Thus the "Glorious Dead" have, as it were, paid off church debts, erected stained-glass windows inplaces of worship which are beautified considerably thereby, paid forstatues of fallen warriors which have been placed in the middle of openmarket-places to attract the passing attention of pedestrians and thevery active attention of small birds. A thousand awkward debts have beenwiped out by the money collected for the memory of deeds which for everwill be glorious, and yet, it seems to me, in most of the cases thewishes of the wealthy living--and of a very narrow circle of theliving--were at all times the primary, albeit the unconscious, objectwhich lay behind the tribute. And the worst of it is that so many ofthese memorials to "Our Glorious Dead" are as "dead" as the heroes whomthey wish to commemorate. In ten years' time they will, for allpractical purposes be ignored. Maybe some little corner of the world ismore lovely for their being, but the world, the new and better world, forwhich the "Glorious Dead" died, is just as barren as ever it was. Rarely, only rarely, have these memorials been at all worthy of thememory which they desire to keep alive. And these rare instances havenot been popular among the wealthy and the Churchmen, whose one cry wasthat "something must be done"--something beautiful, but useless, forpreference. Mostly, they constitute some wing added to a hospital;hostels for disabled soldiers; alms-houses, and other purely practicalbenefits which afford nothing to gape at and not very much to talk about. People infinitely prefer some huge ungainly statue or some indifferentlystained glass window, any seven-days' wonder in the way of marble, granite, or glass. They would like the Cenotaph to fill St. James'sPark, and fondly believe that the "Glorious Dead" would find pride andpleasure in such a monstrosity. But it seems to me that any memorial tothe dead heroes falls short of its ideal which does not, at the sametime, help the living in some real practical and unsectarian way. Heroesdidn't die so that the parish church should have a new window or themarket place a pump; they died so that the less fortunate of this worldshould have a better chance, find a greater health, a greater happiness, a wider space in the new world which the sacrifice of their fathers, brothers, and chums helped to found. 

_Always the Personal Note_

The longer I live the more clearly I perceive the extreme difficultyreformers have to interest people in philanthropic schemes which do notplace their religion, their brand of politics, or they themselves inprominent positions on the propaganda. It seems to be very much thefashion among those who desire to help others that they do so in thebelief that they will thereby be themselves saved. So few, so very few, help the less fortunate on their way without cramming their own religion, or their own politics, or their own munificence down their throats at thesame time. They cannot be kind for the sake of being kind; they cannothelp others up without seeking to brand them at the same time with theirown pet views and beliefs. And then they wonder why the poor will not behelped; why they are suspicious, or ungrateful, or allow themselves to behelped only that they may help themselves at the same time--and tosomething more than their individual share. Humility and tolerance--andtolerance is, after all, but one aspect of humility--are the rarest ofall the human virtues. So much philanthropy merely means the giving of a"bun" on the condition that he who takes the bun will also stop to pray, to become Conservative, and to give thanks. Good is so often done forthe sake of doing good, not to right a social wrong--which should be theend of all goodness. Even then, so many people are content to do goodfrom a distance; or if, perhaps, they do come among the objects of theirunselfishness, they do so with, as it were, the dividing-line wellmarked--with them, but not _of them_, and with the air of regardingthemselves as being extremely kind-hearted to be there at all. It istheir "bit"--not to help on the peace, of course, but to help themselvesinto Heaven. The poor are but the means to this end. 

_Clergymen_

I always feel so sorry for clergymen--the clergymen who are inspired totheir calling, not, of course the "professional" variety who areclergymen because they preferred the Church to the Stock Exchange. Theycarry with them wherever they go the mark of the professional servant ofGod, and it creates a prejudice, between them and those who really needtheir succour, which is almost unsurmountable. Many clergymen, I know, adore the trimmings of their profession--the pomps and vestments, theadmiration of spinster ladies, and opportunity to shake the friendlyfinger at Mrs. Gubbins and regret that she hasn't been seen in churchlately--this same Mrs. Gubbins who works sixteen hours a day to bring upa large family in the greatest goodness and comfort her mother's heartcan supply, and, so it seems to me, _lives_ her prayers--which is a farfiner thing than merely uttering them in public and respectability. Butthe clergyman whose heart is in his work, who lives for the poor andneedy, and finds no greater joy than in bringing joy into the lives ofothers, has to make those he wishes to _forget_ first of all that he is aclergyman and not merely a man ready, as it were, to barter a bun for anattendance at church. Until he does this he cannot surmount thatprejudice, that suspicion, and that atmosphere of unnaturalness withoutwhich no lasting comfort and good is ever done. For how can he liveamong the poor as one of the poor when at the same time he has to keep inthe "good books" of the wealthy, who pay the pew rents, and theevil-minded "do-nothings, " who are ever ready to declare that he isdemeaning himself and their Church when he breaks down the barrier ofcaste and position in his efforts to live and suffer and work as do themen and women he wishes to make happier and better? He can do it, if hepossesses the right personality, but it is a fight which, for the mostpart, seems so hopeless as not to be worth while. You have only to watchthe restrained jollity of his flock the moment a clergyman enters theroom to realise the crust which he will have to break through in order tobring to light the jewel of human nature which really shines so brightlyin the hearts of the very poor. 

_Their Failure_

It is so difficult for men and women, as it were, to really help theEast-end while living in West-end comfort. It is so difficult forreligious people to realise that the finest prayer of all is to "play thegame. " But the poor understand the wonder of that prayer full well; itis, indeed, I rather fancy, the only prayer that they really dounderstand, the only one which really and truly touches them and helpsthem on their way. And, when I see among the very poor the simplymagnificent human material which is allowed to run to waste, misunderstood, unheeded, I sometimes feel that the only hope of reallasting good will be found by those who work _outside_ the Church, notamong those who work within it. For those who have worked within it havelet so many generations of fine youth run to seed, that the time has comefor practical lay-workers to take on the job. The poor need morepractical schemes for their guidance and their good, and fewerprayer-meetings and sing-songs from the hymnals. For, to my mind, thevery basis of all real religion is a practical basis. It is useless tolive with, as it were, your head in Heaven if you stand knee-deep infilth. Of what good is your own personal salvation if you have not doneyour best to make the world better and happier for others? To worryabout their salvation is less than useless--if that be possible. Providing they have something to live for, something to make life worthliving, surroundings which bring out all that is best and bravest andfinest in their natures, their heavenly salvation will take care ofitself. The pity is that there is so much magnificent youthful promisewhich prejudice and tradition and social wrongs never allow to befulfilled. There is only one real religion, and that is the religion ofmaking life happier and more profitable to others. You may not make thempray in the process, you may not make them sing hymns--prayers andhymn-singing are merely beautiful accompaniments--in a practicaluplifting of the human state, the human "soul. " "Love"--that is the onlything which really matters, Love--with Charity, and Self-sacrifice, andUnselfishness, and Justice--which are, after all, the attributes of thisLove. 

Work in the East-end

It seems to me that the poor need a friend more urgently than they need apastor, or, if they must have a pastor--then the pastor must becompletely disguised as a friend. I always wonder why it is the popularfallacy that the poor need religion more than the wealthy. My ownexperience is that you will find more real Christianity in Shoreditchthan you will ever find in Mayfair--even though the "revealers" of it maydrink and swear and otherwise lead outwardly debased lives. Well, thesurroundings, the "atmosphere" in which they have been forced to live, encourage them in their blasphemy. I never marvel that they are oftenprofane; I wonder more greatly that they are not infinitely more so. Butit seems to me that you will "uplift" them far more by pulling down theirfilthy habitations than by preaching the "Word of God" at them at everyavailable opportunity. They are the landlords, the profiteers, themembers of Society who do so little to cleanse and purify the human lifeamong the tenements, who require the "Word" more urgently than theenforced dwellers therein. Only the other evening I paid a visit to oneof the general committee of the Oxford and Bermondsey Mission in thelittle flat which he occupies at the top of a huge building called"flats. " These flats consist of only two rooms, a bedroom and a kitchen. There are no "conveniences"--except some of an indescribably filthynature which are mutually shared by the inhabitants of several flats, totheir own necessary loss of self-respect and decency. And in thesetwo-roomed flats families ranging from three to twelve members are forcedto live, and for this benefit they must pay six shillings a week. Howcan youth reach its full perfection amid such surroundings--surroundingswhich can be multiplied hundreds of times in every part of London and ourbig cities? And when I _know_ the magnificent "promise" of which thissame youth is capable--the war showed it in one side of itsgreatness--and see the surroundings in which it must grow and expand, physically as well as spiritually, I marvel at its moral achievements andI hate the society which permits this splendid human material only by astroke of luck ever to have its chance. For what has this youth of theslums got to live for? He can have no home-life amid the pigsties whichare called his "home", his strength is mostly thrust into blind alleyoccupations which he is forced to take, since his education has fittedhim for nothing better, and he must accept them in order to live at all;and for his recreation, he is given the life of the streets and thepublic-house--nothing else. It is only such groups of unselfish men asare represented by the Oxford and Bermondsey Mission and by the men whorun the London Working Boys' Clubs in the poorest parts of London, together with those other men and women, clergymen and laymen, who arestruggling to bring a little happiness and light into the lives of themen and boys of the East-end by providing them with comfort and warmth inthe club houses and with healthy recreation for their hours of freedom, who are helping to kill Bolshevism at its roots. For it seems to me thatyouth is the supreme charge of those who have grown old. The salvationof the world will come through the young; the glory of the old is thatage and experience have taught them to perceive this fact. Give themajority of men something noble to live for, and the vast majority willlive up to their "star. "

_Mysticism and the Practical Man_

I wish the Mystics and the Practical Men could meet, fraternise, andstill not yearn to murder one another. It would be of immense benefit toyou and me and the rest of us who make up the "hum-drum" world. For thePractical Man who is not something of a mystic is at best a commonplacenuisance, and at his worst a clog on the wheels of progress. And themystic who is only mystical is even less good to anyone, since his Idealsand his Theories, and often his personal example, fade away in the smokeof factory chimneys belching out the sweat of men and women's labour intothe pure air of heaven. No, the Mystic who is to do any good to hisbrother men must be at the same time a practical man, just as thepractical man must possess some Big Idea behind his commerce and hissuccess in order to escape the ignominy of being a mere money-maker, theinglorious driver of sweated labourers. If only these two couldmeet--_and agree_--there might possibly be some hope for the Dawn of thatNew World which the War surely came to found and the washy kind of Peacewhich followed seems to have thrust back again into darkness. True, there are some business men who perceive behind their business a goal, anideal, in which there is something more than their own personal wealthand glory, the be-diamonding of a fat wife, and the expensive upbringingof a spoilt family. They make their wealth, but they seek to make itjustly, to make it cleanly, and, having amassed their fortune, strive tobenefit the lot of those by whose labour they amassed it, and whosefuture, and the future of whose children, are at once their charge andtheir most profound interest. But these men are so few--they are so fewthat almost everybody knows their names. The great masses of practicalbusiness men possess the "soul" of a lump of lead, the ideals of littlemoney-grubbing attorneys, the "vision" of a chimpanzee in a jungle. Theyare "cute, " and, for the end towards which they strive, they are clever. But they are nothing more. And, because of them, there is this "eternalunrest" for which the ignorant blame "labour" and the still more ignorantblame "modern education. " (Ye gods--what is it?)

_Abraham Lincoln_

Success and fame which are purely personal are always abortive in thelong run. Unless a Big Achievement has some splendid Vision behind it, it is soon almost as completely forgotten as if it had never been. Or itmay remain in the memory of posterity as a name only, without influencingthat mind in the very slightest degree. A mystic must be a practical manas well, if his "vision" is not to be lost in the smoke of mere words andtheories; just as a practical man must at the same time be something of amystic if his labour is to live and bear fruit a hundredfold. AbrahamLincoln was a mystic as well as a practical man. That is why the idealof statesmanship for which he lived has influenced the world since histime far more than men equally famous in their day. It was this"invisible power" behind his ideal which triumphed over all opposition atlast, and which continues to triumph in spite of the pigmy-souled crowdof party politicians who still wrangle in the political arena. Nothinglasting is ever accomplished without "vision, " and the spiritual, thoughlong in coming, will yet triumph over ignorance and prejudice andselfishness, even though it comes through war and the overthrow ofcapitalists and autocrats. The life and the ideals of Abraham Lincolnare yet one more piece of evidence of this. 

_Reconstruction_

And just so far as modern Socialism possesses this "mystical power" justso far will it go--inevitably. But, personally, I always think thatSocialism (so-called) is far too busy attacking the elderly and decaying, both in men and traditions. It should attack youth; or, rather, itshould fight for youth, and for youth principally and almost alone. Youcannot found the New World in a day, but if the youthful citizen is takenin hand, educated, inspired, and given all possible advantages both forintellectual improvement and bodily health, this New World will comewithout resistance, inevitably, and of its own accord and free will. Toa certain extent the ideals of the British Empire succeed only for thesocialistic "vision" which inspires it. But the chief fault of this"vision" is that it is so busy making black men clean and "Christian"that it has no vigour left to clean up and "Christianise" the dirt andheathenism at home. It would rather, metaphorically speaking (I hadvowed never to use that expression again in the New Year, but--well, there it is!), bring the ideals of Western civilisation into the junglesof Darkest Africa than tackle the problems of the slums of Manchester. And this, not so much because a "civilised" Darkest Africa will havemoney in it, as because in tackling the problem of the slums it will haveto fight drastically the rich and poor heathens at home--with all thetradition and prejudice, ignorance, and selfishness with which they arebolstered up and deluded with the cry of "Freedom" and "Liberty, " andthat still greater illusion--Legal "Justice. "

_Education_

Education of the mind, education of the body--to stop at the verybeginning that tragic waste of human material, both physical, mental, andspiritual, which forces youth into blind-alley occupations or intooccupations unworthy of physically fit men and women--that is the firststone in the foundation of the New World--a step far more important thanthe confiscation of capital, which seems to be the loudest cry of thosewho, in their ignorance, claim to be Socialists. Socialism is_constructive_ not _destructive_--but the construction must have thevision of the future always before its eyes, and that future must beprepared for--drastically, if need be. 

_The Inane and Unimaginative_

In every mixed crowd there always seems such a large percentage of theunimaginative and the inane that I am never surprised that the silliestsuperstitions still flourish, "the Thing" is rampant, and that, inevery progress towards real civilisation, the very longest way round istaken with the very feeblest results. It is not that this percentageis wicked, nor is it strikingly good, neither is it necessarilyfeeble-minded, but it shows itself so entirely unimaginative and inanethat it is no wonder that the charlatan in religion, politics, andeducation rampages over the world through a perfect maelstrom ofbouquets. Nothing impersonal ever seems to stir the sluggishness oftheir "souls. " They feel nothing that does not hit them straightbetween the eyes. They never perceive the tragedy behind the smile, the wrong behind the justice of the law, the piteousness andhelplessness of men and women. The price of currants stirs them torevolt far more rapidly than that disgrace to civilisation which arethe slums. Air raids were the greatest injustice of the war--airraids, when they never knew from one moonlight night to another if theymight not join unwillingly the army of the heroic dead in heaven. Thatis why so many of them secretly believe that they endured far more athome than the ordinary common soldier did in the front-line trenches. They cannot realise _his_ tragedy; they can, however, fully realisetheir own. That is why they talk of it with so much greater eloquence;that is why, when they listen to his recitals of dirt and hunger andindescribable pain, they do so with a suppressed yawn and a secretconviction that they have heard quite enough about the war. As fortragedy--their apotheosis of the tragic is reached in a street accidentat which they can stand gaping, nursing the details for the moment whenthey can retail them with gusto at home; but I verily believe that, ifthe dying man cut rather a ridiculous figure, _some of them would haveto laugh_. But then, this inane and unimaginative percentage among thecrowd is always ready _to laugh_. Their special genius is that theywill always guffaw in the wrong place. Or, if they do not laugh, theywill let fall some utterly stupid remark--so stupid that one wondersoccasionally if nature by mistake has given them a bird's brain withoutgiving them at the same time a bird's beautiful plumage. And the worstof it is one is up against this inane percentage in every walk oflife--this unimaginative army of men and women who can perceive_nothing_ which does not absolutely concern themselves and their ownsoul's comfort. 

Life's Great Adventure

I hope when I am old that Fate will give me a garden and a view of thesea. I should hate to decay in a suburban row and be carried away atthe end of all my mostly fruitless longings in a hearse; the sevenminutes' wonder of the small children of the street, who will cry, "Oo-er" when my coffin is borne out by poor men whose names I can'tever know! Not that it really matters, I suppose; and yet, we all ofus hope to satisfy our artistic sense, especially when we're helplessto help ourselves. Yes, I should like to pass the twilight of my lifein a garden from which there would be a view of the sea. A garden isnearly always beautiful, and the sea always, always promises adventure, even when we have reached that time of life when to "pass over" is theonly chance of adventure left to us. It seems to beckon us to leavethe monotonous in habits, people and things in general, and seekrenewed youthfulness, the thrill of novelty, the promise of romanceamid lands and people far, far away. And we all of us hope that we maynot die before we have had one _real_ adventure. Adventure, I suppose, always comes to the really adventurous, but so many people are onlyhalf-adventurous; they have all the yearning and the longing, butNature has bereft them of the power to act. So they wait for adventureto come to them, the while they grow older and staler all the time. And sometimes it never does come to them; or, perhaps, it only comes tothem too late. There are some, of course, who never feel this wildlonging to escape. They are the human turnips; and, so long as theyhave a plot of ground on which to expand and grow, they look fornothing else other than to be "mashed" from time to time by someone ofthe opposite sex. These people are quite content to live and die in arow, and to have an impressive funeral is to them a sufficient argumentfor having lived at all. But their propinquity is one of the reasonswhy I should not like to grow old in a crowd. I know there areturnips--human turnips, I mean--living amid the Alps. But these don'tdepress you, for the simple reason that, besides them, you have theAlps anyway. And the Alps have something of that spirit of eternitywhich the sea possesses. 

_Travel_

Do you know those men and women who, to paraphrase Omar Khayyám, "comelike treacle and like gall they go"? Well, it seems to me that life israther like such as they. You may live for something, you may live forsomeone, but some time, sooner or later, you will be thrown back uponyour own garden, the "inner plot" of land which you have cultivated inyour own heart, to find what flowers thereon you may. Live for others, yes! but don't live entirely for them. No. For if you live altogetherfor someone, it stands to reason that they cannot well live foryou--or, if they can, then they don't trouble, since you are such acertain asset in their lives. So they will begin to live for someoneelse. For this living for people is part of the nature of all heartswhich are not the hearts of "turnips. " And then, what becomes of you?No, the wise man and woman keep a little for themselves, and that"little" is barred to permanent visitors. You may allow certain peopleto live therein for a while, but, as you value your own joy andhappiness, your own independence and peace, do not deliver up to themthe key. Keep that for yourself, so that, when the loneliness of lifecomes to you, as come it will--that is part of the tragedy of humanlife--you may not be utterly desolate, but possess some little ray ofhope and delight and joy to illumine the shadows of loneliness whenthey fall across your path. And, for what they are worth to me forconsolation, I thank Heaven now for the long years which I spentpractically alone in the world, so far as congenial companionship went. Solitude drove me back upon myself, and since all of us must have somejoy, natural or merely manufactured, in order to go on living, itforced me to cultivate other interests, which, perhaps, had I beenhappy, I should have neglected for brighter but more ephemeral joys. So I am not frightened of my own society, and that, though a ratherdreary achievement, is by no means to be despised. It enables me towander about alone and yet be happy; it permits me to travel with noone but my own company and the chance acquaintances I pick up _enroute_, and yet not be entirely depressed. It helped me to achievethat philosophy which says: "If I may not have the ideal companion, then let me walk with no one but myself"--and that is the philosophy ofa man who can never really feel lonely for a long time, even though hemay be quite alone. 

_The Enthralling Out-of-reach_

Everybody _knows_ that they could improve human nature. I don't mean, of course, that they could necessarily improve their own, nor that ofthe lady who lives next door, nor that of Mr. Lloyd George, nor of MissMarie Lloyd, nor even of Lenin and Trotsky; but human nature as it isfound in all of us and as it prevents heaven on this earth lasting muchlonger than five and twenty minutes! I know--or rather I think--that Icould improve it. And I should begin at that unhappy "kink" in all ofus which only realises those blessings which belong to other people, orthose which we ourselves have lost. Nobody really and truly knows whatYouth means until they have reached the age which only asks of men andwomen to subside--gracefully, if possible, and silently as an act ofdecency. We never love the people who love us, to quite the sameextent anyway, until, either they love us no more, or love somebodyelse, or go out and die. We never realise the splendour of splendidhealth until the doctor prescribes six months in a nursing home as theonly alternative to demise. We never appreciated butter untilprofiteers and the war sent the price up to four-and-sixpence for apound. The extra five hundred a year which seems to stand in the wayof our complete happiness--when we receive it, we realise that ourhappiness really required a thousand. Fame is a wonderful andbeautiful state, until we become famous and find out how dull it is andwhat a real blessing it is to be a person of only the least importance. Life, I can understand, is never so sweet as it is to those who, as itwere, have just been sentenced to be hanged. Our ideals are alwaysthrilling until one day we wake up to find them accomplished facts; andthe only real passion of our life is the woman who went off and marriedsomebody else. I exaggerate, perhaps, but scarcely too much, Ibelieve. For, as I said before, there is a certain "kink" in humannature which casts a halo of delight over those things which we havelost, or, by the biggest stretch of dreaming-fancy can we ever hope topossess. I suppose it means that we could not possibly live up to thehappiness which we believe would be ours were we to possess theblessings we yearn for with all our hearts. All the same, I wish thathuman nature were as fond of the blessings it throws away unheeded, asit would be could it only regain possession of them once it fullyrealises they are lost. Half our troubles spring from our ownfault--though they were not really our own fault, because we did notknow what we were doing when we did those things which might have savedus all our tears. That is where the tragedy of it all came in. Wenever _realised_ . . . We never _knew_! But Fate pays not theslightest heed to our ignorance. We just have to live out our mistakesas best we may. And nobody really pities us; we only pity ourselves. 

_The Things which are not Dreamed of in Our Philosophy_

The other day I received a most extraordinary spirit pictureanonymously through the post. I cannot describe this picture--it iswell-nigh indescribable. The effect is wonderful, though the means areof the simplest. Apparently the artist had upset a bottle of ink overa large piece of white cardboard, and then, with the aid of a sharppenknife, cut his way across it in long narrow slashes until the effectis that of rays of light which, seen from a distance, have the effectof luminosity in a most extraordinary degree. In the corner there isthe figure of Christ on the Cross, to which this method has given themost marvellous effect of light and shadow. Indeed, the whole pictureis almost uncanny in its effectiveness and in the simplicity of themeans to this end. You ask me if I believe it to be really and truly aspirit picture? Well, honestly, I do not know. I realise the beautyof the picture--everyone must realise this who sees it; but, whetherthe artist who designed it and transmitted his idea through a humanhand be a spirit I should not like to declare, for the simple reasonthat I understand so little of spiritualism--except that side ofspiritualism which _I do not believe_--that I should be foolish to bedogmatic when all the time I realise that I am yet in ignorance. Butof the genuineness of the "medium" through whose hand the spiritpicture was transmitted I am certain. He thoroughly believed in thephenomenon that a spirit from another world was using him to conveymessages to the inhabitants of this. You ask me why I believe in hisconviction--well, my answer would be so mundane that you might perhapslaugh at my logic. But one at least I can give, and it is this; that, in my experience of mediums and professional spiritualists, one always, as it were, hears the rattle of the collection-box behind the"messages" from another sphere--either that, or the person is soeccentric that "mediumship" in his case has become merely another formof mental affliction. Well, the artist who sent me this picture is, except for this fixed idea that he is a medium between this world andthe next, as normal as you or I, and his belief not only is making himpoorer each day--the "spirit" firmly forbidding him either to sell orexhibit his pictures--but is gently, yet inevitably, leading himstraight towards the workhouse. 

_Faith_

A few days after the receipt of the picture I discovered the artist andwent to "beard him in his den. " While I was talking with him, hedeclared that he had just received a "message" from this spirit to drawme a picture which, it was inferred, would convey some "recollection"to me. Sitting at the other side of an ordinary desk, the artistpicked up one piece of chalk after another, making a series of circularmarks over the paper. This went on for nearly an hour-and-a-half. Occasionally something like a definite design seemed to come out of allthis chaos in chalk, if I may so express it, only to be rubbed outagain immediately, the circular movements still continuing. Then atlast, a few vigorous strokes, and suddenly a definite picture came out, a picture which was continued until it was finally complete. Thispicture represented a tall arch, through which the artist had paintedthe most beautiful effect of evening sky--the evening sky when sunsetis fading into blue-green and the first stars are twinkling. Andaround this arch was chalked a kind of heavy festoon of droopingostrich feathers. The picture when finished was certainly verybeautiful, and I have it in my possession at the present moment. _Butit conveyed absolutely nothing to me_, and certainly brought back norecollection to my memory of a previous life whatsoever. But the"medium" so thoroughly believed in his "power to convey" that I feltquite unhappy about having to confess my unfamiliarity. In fact, Ileft the studio--if studio it could be called--convinced by the beautyof the pictures, but still unconvinced that they were really picturespainted by a spirit artist. The only belief I did come away with wasthe belief that the "medium" thoroughly believed in himself and thereality behind his belief. And, in a way, I envied him; yes, I enviedhim, even though his faith may prove but illusory after all. For Ihave reached the age when I realise that I am not at all sure that menand women do really want _truth_, and that a faith which gives comfortand happiness is, for the practical purpose of going through lifehappily and dying in hope, a far more comforting philosophy. I, alas!_cannot believe_ what I am not convinced is a scientifically provedfact; but I am to be pitied far more than envied for my--temperamentallimitation--shall I call it? The man or woman who possesses a blindfaith in something above and beyond this world is the man and woman tobe envied, even though everybody cannot emulate their implicit trust. 

_Spiritualism_

All the same, I do not think I shall ever dare to become aspiritualist. If you can understand my meaning, so much, so very muchdepends upon the truth and veracity of its tenets that I cannot goblindly forward, as so many people seem to be able to do, because Irealise that disillusion would mean something so terrible that a kindof instinctive faith in another life, without reason, withoutscientific demonstration, seems far safer for the peace of mind. Tobelieve in spiritualism, and then to be deceived, would be sounsettling, so devastating to the "soul, " that, in my own self-defence, I prefer to be sceptical unreasonably than to be equally unreasonablybelieving. So many people, who have loved and lost, rush towardsspiritualism demanding no real evidence whatsoever, bringing to it akind of passionate yearning to find therein some kind of illusion thattheir loved ones, who are dead, still live on waiting for reunion inanother world. Such a yearning is very human, very understandable, very forgivable; but these people are the enemies of true spiritualismas a new branch of scientific speculation. I would not rob them of theglamour of their faith, since, as I have just written, I have reachedthat time of life when I realise that humanity does not necessarilywant truth for the foundation of its happiness, but a whole-heartedfaith, a belief sufficiently sublime to make the common Everydaysignificant in the march forward toward the Great Unknown. But I, alas! am not one of those who can merely believe because without beliefmy heart would be broken and my life would be drearier than theloneliest autumn twilight. I find a greater comfort in uncertain hopeand a more uncertain faith. If I ever really and truly believed inspiritualism and then found, as so many people have done, alas! thatthe prophet of it was himself a fraud, I should be cut, as it were, from all my spiritual bearings, to flounder hopeless and broken-heartedmid the desolate wastes of agnosticism. I cannot give myself unless Iam convinced that the sacrifice is for something which _I must believe_in spite of all doubt; not entirely what I _want to believe_ becausebelief is full of happiness and comfort. I am of those who demand"all, or not at all. " I cannot go on struggling to find security byjust holding on to one false straw after another. I prefer to hope andto trust, and, although it is a dreary philosophy, I could not, if Iwould, exchange it for something which is false, however wonderful andbeautiful. 

_On Reality in People_

My one great grievance against people in the mass is that they are sovery seldom real. I don't mean to say, of course, that you can walkthrough them like ghosts, or that, if they "gave you one straight fromthe shoulder, " you wouldn't get a black eye. But what I mean is, thatthey are so very rarely their true selves; they so very rarely say whatthey think--or indeed think anything at all! They are so very rarelycontent to be merely human beings, and not some kind of walking-waxworkfigure with a gramophone record inside them speaking the opinions whichdo not belong to them, but to some mysterious "authority" whom it isthe correct thing to quote. Have you ever watched the eyes of friendstalking together? I don't mean friends who are _real_ friends, friendswith whom every thought is a thought shared--but the kind of familiaracquaintance who passes for a friend in polite society, and passes outof one's life as little missed in reality as an arm-chair which hasgone to be repaired. In their eyes there is rarely any "answeringlight"--just a cold, glassy kind of surface, which says nothing and isas unsympathetic and as unfamiliar as a holland blind. You can tell bytheir expression that, in spite of all their apparent air of friendlyfamiliarity, they are merely talking for talking's sake, merely beingfriendly for the sake of friendship; that, if they were never to seeeach other again, they would do so without one heartbreak. Perhaps Iam unsociable, perhaps I am a bit of a misanthrope; but those kind offriends, those kind of people, bore me unutterably. I am only reallyhappy in the society of bosom friends, or in the society of interestingstrangers. The half-and-halves, the people who claim friendshipbecause circumstances happened to have thrown you together fairlyfrequently--and one of us has a beautiful house and the other anexcellent cook--these people press upon my spirit like astrait-waistcoat. I gabble the conventional small-talk of politesociability, and I thank God when they are gone! They are called"friends, " but we have absolutely nothing in common--not even a disease!

So much polite conversation is merely "polite, " and can by no stretchof imagination be rightly called "conversation. " It consists for themost part in exaggerated complimentary remarks--which, it is hoped, will please you--or in one person waiting impatiently while the otherperson relates all he and his family have been doing until he, in histurn, can seize a momentary pause for breath to begin the whole recenthistory of his own affairs in detail. But neither of them is really atall interested in the story of the other's doings--you can see that intheir eyes, in the kind of fixed smile of simulated interest with whichthey listen, the while they furtively take note of the grey hair youare trying to hide, the shirt button which will leave its moorings ifsomething isn't done for it before long, the stain on your waistcoatdenoting egg-for-breakfast and an early hurry--all the things, in fact, which really interest them to an extent and are far more thrillinganyway than the things you are telling them in so much thraldom on yourown part and with so much gusto. 

Some people are artificial through and through; it may be said of themthat they are only really real when they are having a tooth pulled. But the majority of people only hide themselves behind a kind of crustof artificiality; beneath that crust they were real live men and women. And the war--thank God! (that is to say, if one ever can thank God forthe war)--cracked that crust until it fell away, and was trampled underthe feet of real men and women living real lives, honestly withthemselves and _vis-à-vis_ the world. That is one of the reasons whythe war has made social life a so much more vital and interestingstate. Of course, there are some people who still strive to revive thesocial life of "masks, " but they are the people whose crust ofartificiality was only cracked--or rather chipped--by the horror andreality of war. War never really reached them, except through theirstomachs and their motor cars, or perhaps in the excuse it gave themfor flirting half-heartedly with some really useful human labour. Theynever went "over the top" in spirit, and their point of view stillreeks of the point of view of the farthest back of the base. Thesepeople will be more real when they are _dead_ than while they arealive--if you can understand my meaning? But thank Heaven! their ranksare thinned. They belong to the "back of beyond, " to the "frumps, " the"washouts, " and the "back numbers. "

_Life_

Life is rather like a rocket; it shoots into the sky, flares, fades, and falls to the ground in dust so unnoticeable that you can hardlyfind its remnants, search how you may. Of course, I know that ourlives don't really shoot upwards towards the stars to illumine theheavens by their own resplendent beams, but we usually think they'regoing to, sometimes we think they do, and then, when our dreams settledown to reality, we discover that our fate has been scarcely differentfrom the crowd, and that our life stands out about as unique as onehouse is in a row of houses all built on the same pattern. But Isometimes think that our dreams are our real life, and that what we dois a matter of indifference to what we think and suffer and feel. Somedays, when you sit in a railway carriage on the underground railwaysand gaze at the rows of stodgy, expressionless, flat kind of faceswhich the majority of the travellers possess, you say to yourself, "These people can have had no history; these people cannot have reallylived; they cannot have suffered and struggled and hoped and dreamedand renounced, renounced so often with the heart frozen beyond tears. "And yet you know they must have done--perhaps they are living a wholelifetime of mental agony even as you watch them, who can tell?--becauseyou have been "through the mill" too, you too have walked to Amaous, sat desolate in the Garden of Gethsemane, seen all your fondest dreamscrucified on the Cross of Reality, and risen again, lonelier, sadder, wiser maybe, but with a wisdom which is more desolate than thewilderness. You have been through Hell, and no one has guessed, no onehas seen, no one has ever, ever known. And these people, so stodgy, soexpressionless, so dreary and conventional, must have been through ittoo. For it seems to me that we must all go through it some time orother, and the bigger, the braver your heart the greater the Hell; themore sensitive, the more susceptible you are to the love which linksone human being with another, the greater your pain, the more desolateyour renunciation. And, as I said before, nobody guesses, nobodybelieves, nobody ever, ever knows. 

So very, very few people can see beyond the outward and visible signsof pain. They see the smile, the fretfulness--and yet they think thesmile means happiness and the fretfulness an ugly, tiresome thing. They do not perceive that often the smile is as a cry to Heaven, andthat fretfulness is but the sign of a soul breaking itself against thejagged rocks of hopelessness and doubt. I often listen to the peoplespeaking of blindness and the blind. They only see that the eyes aregone, that the glory which is spring is for ever dead; they perceivethe hesitating walk, the outstretched groping hand which, to my mind, is more pitiful than the story of the Cross, and inwardly they murmur, "How awful!" and sometimes they turn away. But they have never seenthe real tragedy which lies behind the visible handicap. Only theirimagination is stirred by the outward and visible side of the tragedy;never--or rather, very rarely--is it haunted by the realisation of thedespair which is struggling to find peace, some solution of the meaningof it all, struggling to bring back some reasoned hope and gladness, some tiny ray of light in the mental and physical darkness, withoutwhich we none of us can believe, we none of us can live. Perhaps theyare wise to see so little of the real sorrow which dogs so many lives, but they, nevertheless, are blind in their turn. They are wise, because there is a whole wise philosophy of a sort in being deaf to thesong within the song, blind to the tears which no one sees, to thetrembling lip which is the aftermath of--oh, so many smiles. Thephilosopher perceives just enough of the heart-beat of the world tokeep the human touch, but not enough to kill the outbursts ofunreasoned joy which make the picture of life so exhilarating andjolly. And yet . . . And yet . . . Oh yes, happiness _does_ lie inremembering little, perceiving less, and in pinning your love and faithin God--in human love, in human gratitude, in human unselfishnessscarcely at all. Happiness, I say, lies thus--but alas! not everybodycan or ever will be happy. They feel too greatly--and if in intensefeeling there is divine beauty, there is also incalculable pain. Whenthe "ingrate" is turned out of Heaven they do not send him to Hell, they send him to Earth and give him imagination and a heart. 

_Dreams and Reality_

So many people imagine that their love is returned, that theirinnermost thoughts are appreciated and understood, when lips meet lipsin that kiss which brings oblivion--that kiss which even the lowliestman and woman receive once in their lives as a benediction from Heaven. So many people imagine that they have found the Ideal Friend when theymeet someone with an equal admiration for the poems of Robert Browning;or the Russian Ballet, or one who places the music of Debussy above themusic of Wagner. But, I fear, they are often disappointed. For thelonger I live, the more convinced I become that Love and Friendship arebut "day dreams" of the "soul, "--that all we can ever possess in Lifeis the second-best of both. Nobody in Love, or in the first throes ofa new friendship, will believe me, of course. Why should they? Thereare moments in both love and friendship when the "dream" does seem tobecome a blissful reality. But they pass--they pass . . . Leaving usonce more lonely in the wilderness of the Everyday, wondering if, afterall, those splendid moments which are over were ever anything more thanmerely the figments of our own imagination and had nothing whatever todo with the love we believed was ours, the friendship which seemed tocome towards us with open arms--that the Dream and the Hope, and thefulfilment of both, merely lived and died in our own hearts alone--inour own hearts and nowhere . . . Alas! nowhere else. I often think itmust be so. Our love is always the same; only the loved-one changes. God alone is a permanent Ideal because He lives within us--we nevermeet Him as a separate entity. Thus we can never become disillusioned. 

_Love of God_

Yet, it seems to me sometimes that even our ideal of God changes withthe fleeting years. When we were young, and because He was thuspresented to us by our spiritual pastors and masters, we figured Him assome tragically revengeful elderly gentleman, who appeared to show Hislove for us by always being exceedingly vindictive. Then when Fate, asit were, thrust us from the confines of our homes into the storm oflife alone, we came to think of the God-Ideal in blind anger. We criedthat He was dead, or deaf; that He was not a God of Love at all, butcruel . . . More cruel than Mankind. Sometimes we denied that He hadever existed at all; that all the Church told us about Him was so much"fudge, " and that Heaven and Hell, the punishment of Sin, the reward ofVirtue, were all part of the Great Human Hoax by which Man is cheatedand ensnared. "We will be hoaxed no more!" we cried, little realisingthat this is invariably the Second Stage along the road by whichthinking men approaches God. 

The Third Stage, when it came, found us older, wiser, far less inclinedto cry "Damn" in the face of the Angels. We began to realise thatthrough pain we had become purified; through hardship we had becomekind; through suffering, and in the silence of our own thoughts we hadbecome wise; through our inner-loneliness--that inner-loneliness whichis part of the "cross" which each man carries with him through Life, wehad found the _blind necessity_ of God. 

And in this fashion he returns to us. He is not the same God as of old(we listen to the pictures of this Old God as He is so often describedfrom the pulpit, in contemptuous amazement, tinged by disdain), but afar greater God than He--greater, for the reason that we have becomegreater too. We no longer seek to find Him in our hours ofhappiness--the only hours when, long ago, we sought to feel Hispresence. We _know_ that we shall only find Him in our hours ofloneliness, in our hours of desolation, in our hours of black despair. Now at last we realise that God is not some Deity apart, but somespirit within _us_, within every man and woman whose "vision" is turnedtowards the stars. He is the "Dream" which is clearer to us thanreality, none the less clear because it is the "Dream" which never inlife comes true. He belongs to us and to the whole world. He iseverywhere, yet nowhere. He is the "soul" in Man, the silent messagein beauty, the miracle in all Nature. He is not a Divinity, living insome far off bourne we call the sky. He is just that "spirit" in allmen's hearts which is the spirit of their self-sacrifice, of theircharity, of their loving kindness, of their honesty, their uprightnessand their truth. It is the "spirit" which, if men be Immortal, willsurely live on and on for ever. Nothing else is worthy immortality. 

_The Will to Faith_

I wish that the great Shakespeare had not written that "immortal" line:

 "_The wish is father to the Thought. _"

It haunts you throughout your life. Like a flaming sign ofinterrogation it burns upon the Altar of Faith Unquestioning, beforewhich, in your perplexity, Fate forces you--at least once in yourlife--to bow the head. It makes us wonder if we should believe all theevidences of Immortality we do--were Immortality really a state ofPunishment and not of Happiness unspeakable. It is so hard, so veryhard, to disentangle our own desires from our own beliefs; so easy toconfuse what we _ought to believe_ with what, beyond all else, _we wantto believe_. It sometimes makes one chary of believing anything--inquestions Human as well as Eternal. The "Personal Bias"--ever in ourheart of hearts can we at all times decide where it ends andimpartiality begins? Even our so-called impartiality is tinged byit--or what we fondly believe to be our impartial Faith. Doubt strikesat the root of Justice and of Love--not the doubt that is thehalf-brother to Disbelief, but the doubt which wonders always andalways if we believe most easily what we _want to believe_, and if ourfirmest conviction against such Belief is not, more than anything else, yet one more manifestation of what we desire so earnestly _to doubt_. 

Sometimes I am in despair regarding the whole question of my ownindividual Faith. 

I am firmly convinced that there _ought to be a God_ and a LifeHereafter. But my faith in such facts is paralysed by the hauntingdoubt that they may both be such stuff as dreams are made of, after all. 

On the whole, I believe the best way is not to think about them atall--or as little as we may. The one question which really and trulyconcerns us--and most certainly only concerns God, if there be aGod--in His relation to ourselves, is _this life_ and what we make ofit for ourselves and for other people. Don't ask yourself always andfor ever _if_ there be a God? _Act as if He existed_! So far aspossible, _play His part on earth_. Then all will surely be well withyour Immortal Soul in the Long Here After!

And, if the reward of it all--if "reward" is what you seek--be but aSleep Eternal, do not weep. If you have done your best, you will haveleft the world happier and better, and so more beautiful. To thosearound you, to those who walked with you a little way along the Road ofLife, you will have brought Hope where before you came there was onlyresignation and despair; you will have brought laughter to eyes longdimmed by tears; you will have brought Love into lives so lonely and sodesolate until you came. God surely can ask of no man more than this. 

That, at least--is my Faith. That is also my "religion. " Theology isunimportant: FACTS, concerning the reality of God and a LifeHereafter--matter little or nothing at all. 

What is all-important is that _here on Earth_--in the world of men andwomen around us--there are many less happy than we; many infinitelylonelier, poorer, more desolate and depressed. To these--even thelowliest among us can give comfort, bring into their darkness somelittle ray of "light"--however small. 

Let the "Christian" Churches quarrel as they may. The uproar of theirdifferences in Faith, each seeking to be justified, is stilled beforethe Great Reality of those really and truly in Human NEED. Let us doall the good we may--nor ask the reason why, nor seek a heavenlyreward. At every step we take along the Road of Life--there is someonewe can help, someone we can succour, someone we can forgive. A truceto violent controversy around and around the Trivial. True religion isan _Act_--even more than a Belief, infinitely more than mere articlesof Faith. By the greatness of our sacrifice, by the unselfishness ofour Love; by the way we have tried to live up to "the best" within us;by our earnest wish at all times, and with all men--to "play thegame"--surely by these things alone shall we be judged?

FINIS.