Etext » books

I understand, agree to and accept the "Small Print!" statement.

The Project Gutenberg Etext The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow

#14 in our series by Jerome K. Jerome

the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!

Please take a look at the important information in this header.

We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an

electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this.

**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**

*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*

Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and

further information is included below. We need your donations.

The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow

by Jerome K. Jerome

October, 1999 [Etext #1915]

The Project Gutenberg Etext The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow

*******This file should be named scthk10.txt or scthk10.zip******

Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, scthk11.txt

VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, scthk10a.txt

This etext was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset from the

1899 Hurst and Blackett edition.

Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,

all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a

these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.

We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance

of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.

Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till

midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.

The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at

Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A

preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment

and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an

up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes

in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has

a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a

look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a

new copy has at least one byte more or less.

Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The

time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours

to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright

searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This

projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value

per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2

million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text

files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+

If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the

total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year.

The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext

Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]

This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,

which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users.

At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third

of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we

manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly

from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an

assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few

more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we

don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person.

We need your donations more than ever!

All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are

tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie-

Mellon University).

For these and other matters, please mail to:

Project Gutenberg

P. O. Box 2782

Champaign, IL 61825

When all other email fails. . .try our Executive Director:

Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>

hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org

if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if

it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .

We would prefer to send you this information by email.

To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser

to view http://promo.net/pg. This site lists Etexts by

author and by title, and includes information about how

to get involved with Project Gutenberg. You could also

download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here. This

is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com,

for a more complete list of our various sites.

To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any

Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror

sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed

at http://promo.net/pg).

Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better.

Example FTP session:

ftp sunsite.unc.edu

password: your@login

cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg

cd etext90 through etext99

dir [to see files]

get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]

GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]

GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]

***

**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**

(Three Pages)

***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***

Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.

They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with

your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from

someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our

fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement

disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how

you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.

*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT

By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm

etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept

this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive

a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by

sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person

you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical

medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.

ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS

This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-

tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor

Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at

Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project"). Among other

things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright

on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and

distribute it in the United States without permission and

without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth

below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext

under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.

To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable

efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain

works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any

medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other

things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or

corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other

intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged

disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer

codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES

But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,

[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this

etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all

liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including

legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR

UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,

INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE

OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE

POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of

receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)

you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that

time to the person you received it from. If you received it

on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and

such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement

copy. If you received it electronically, such person may

choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to

receive it electronically.

THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER

WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS

TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT

LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A

PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or

the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the

above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you

may have other legal rights.

INDEMNITY

You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,

officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost

and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or

indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:

[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,

or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.

DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"

You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by

disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this

"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,

or:

[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this

requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the

etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however,

if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable

binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,

including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-

cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as

*EITHER*:

[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and

does *not* contain characters other than those

intended by the author of the work, although tilde

(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may

be used to convey punctuation intended by the

author, and additional characters may be used to

indicate hypertext links; OR

[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at

no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent

form by the program that displays the etext (as is

the case, for instance, with most word processors);

[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at

no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the

etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC

or other equivalent proprietary form).

[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this

"Small Print!" statement.

[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the

net profits you derive calculated using the method you

already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you

don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are

payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon

University" within the 60 days following each

date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)

your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.

WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?

The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,

scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty

free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution

you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg

Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".

*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

This etext was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset from the

1899 Hurst and Blackett edition.

The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Contents

On the art of making up one's mind.

On the disadvantage of not getting what one wants.

On the exceptional merit attaching to the things we meant to do.

On the preparation and employment of love philtres.

On the delights and benefits of slavery.

On the care and management of women.

On the minding of other people's business.

On the time wasted in looking before one leaps.

On the nobility of ourselves.

On the motherliness of man.

On the inadvisability of following advice.

On the playing of marches at the funerals of marionettes.

ON THE ART OF MAKING UP ONE'S MIND

"Now, which would you advise, dear? You see, with the red I shan't

be able to wear my magenta hat."

"Well then, why not have the grey?"

"Yes--yes, I think the grey will be MORE useful."

"It's a good material."

"Yes, and it's a PRETTY grey. You know what I mean, dear; not a

COMMON grey. Of course grey is always an UNINTERESTING colour."

"Its quiet."

"And then again, what I feel about the red is that it is so

warm-looking. Red makes you FEEL warm even when you're NOT warm.

You know what I mean, dear!"

"Well then, why not have the red? It suits you--red."

"No; do you really think so?"

"Well, when you've got a colour, I mean, of course!"

"Yes, that is the drawback to red. No, I think, on the whole, the

grey is SAFER."

"Then you will take the grey, madam?"

"Yes, I think I'd better; don't you, dear?"

"I like it myself very much."

"And it is good wearing stuff. I shall have it trimmed with--Oh!

you haven't cut it off, have you?"

"I was just about to, madam."

"Well, don't for a moment. Just let me have another look at the

red. You see, dear, it has just occurred to me--that chinchilla

would look so well on the red!"

"So it would, dear!"

"And, you see, I've got the chinchilla."

"Then have the red. Why not?"

"Well, there is the hat I'm thinking of."

"You haven't anything else you could wear with that?"

"Nothing at all, and it would go so BEAUTIFULLY with the grey.--Yes,

I think I'll have the grey. It's always a safe colour--grey."

"Fourteen yards I think you said, madam?"

"Yes, fourteen yards will be enough; because I shall mix it with--

One minute. You see, dear, if I take the grey I shall have nothing

to wear with my black jacket."

"Won't it go with grey?"

"Not well--not so well as with red."

"I should have the red then. You evidently fancy it yourself."

"No, personally I prefer the grey. But then one must think of

EVERYTHING, and--Good gracious! that's surely not the right time?"

"No, madam, it's ten minutes slow. We always keep our clocks a

little slow!"

"And we were too have been at Madame Jannaway's at a quarter past

twelve. How long shopping does take I--Why, whatever time did we

start?"

"About eleven, wasn't it?"

"Half-past ten. I remember now; because, you know, we said we'd

start at half-past nine. We've been two hours already!"

"And we don't seem to have done much, do we?"

"Done literally nothing, and I meant to have done so much. I must

go to Madame Jannaway's. Have you got my purse, dear? Oh, it's all

right, I've got it."

"Well, now you haven't decided whether you're going to have the grey

or the red."

"I'm sure I don't know what I do want now. I had made up my mind a

minute ago, and now it's all gone again--oh yes, I remember, the

red. Yes, I'll have the red. No, I don't mean the red, I mean the

grey."

"You were talking about the red last time, if you remember, dear."

"Oh, so I was, you're quite right. That's the worst of shopping.

Do you know I get quite

confused sometimes."

"Then you will decide on the red, madam?"

"Yes--yes, I shan't do any better, shall I, dear? What do you

think? You haven't got any other shades of red, have you? This is

such an ugly red."

The shopman reminds her that she has seen all the other reds, and

that this is the particular shade she selected and admired.

"Oh, very well," she replies, with the air of one from whom all

earthly cares are falling, "I must take that then, I suppose. I

can't be worried about it any longer. I've wasted half the morning

already."

Outside she recollects three insuperable objections to the red, and

four unanswerable arguments why she should have selected the grey.

She wonders would they change it, if she went back and asked to see

the shopwalker? Her friend, who wants her lunch, thinks not.

"That is what I hate about shopping," she says. "One never has time

to really THINK."

She says she shan't go to that shop again.

We laugh at her, but are we so very much better? Come, my superior

male friend, have you never stood, amid your wardrobe, undecided

whether, in her eyes, you would appear more imposing, clad in the

rough tweed suit that so admirably displays your broad shoulders; or

in the orthodox black frock, that, after all, is perhaps more

suitable to the figure of a man approaching--let us say, the

nine-and-twenties? Or, better still, why not riding costume? Did

we not hear her say how well Jones looked in his top-boots and

breeches, and, "hang it all," we have a better leg than Jones. What

a pity riding-breeches are made so baggy nowadays. Why is it that

male fashions tend more and more to hide the male leg? As women

have become less and less ashamed of theirs, we have become more and

more reticent of ours. Why are the silken hose, the tight-fitting

pantaloons, the neat kneebreeches of our forefathers impossible

to-day? Are we grown more modest--or has there come about a falling

off, rendering concealment advisable?

I can never understand, myself, why women love us. It must be our

honest worth, our sterling merit, that attracts them--certainly not

our appearance, in a pair of tweed "dittos," black angora coat and

vest, stand-up collar, and chimney-pot hat! No, it must be our

sheer force of character that compels their admiration.

What a good time our ancestors must have had was borne in upon me

when, on one occasion, I appeared in character at a fancy dress

ball. What I represented I am unable to say, and I don't

particularly care. I only know it was something military. I also

remember that the costume was two sizes too small for me in the

chest, and thereabouts; and three sizes too large for me in the hat.

I padded the hat, and dined in the middle of the day off a chop and

half a glass of soda-water. I have gained prizes as a boy for

mathematics, also for scripture history--not often, but I have done

it. A literary critic, now dead, once praised a book of mine. I

know there have been occasions when my conduct has won the

approbation of good men; but never--never in my whole life, have I

felt more proud, more satisfied with myself than on that evening

when, the last hook fastened, I gazed at my full-length Self in the

cheval glass. I was a dream. I say it who should not; but I am not

the only one who said it. I was a glittering dream. The groundwork

was red, trimmed with gold braid wherever there was room for gold

braid; and where there was no more possible room for gold braid

there hung gold cords, and tassels, and straps. Gold buttons and

buckles fastened me, gold embroidered belts and sashes caressed me,

white horse-hair plumes waved o'er me. I am not sure that

everything was in its proper place, but I managed to get everything

on somehow, and I looked well. It suited me. My success was a

revelation to me of female human nature. Girls who had hitherto

been cold and distant gathered round me, timidly solicitous of

notice. Girls on whom I smiled lost their heads and gave themselves

airs. Girls who were not introduced to me sulked and were rude to

girls that had been. For one poor child, with whom I sat out two

dances (at least she sat, while I stood gracefully beside her--I had

been advised, by the costumier, NOT to sit), I was sorry. He was a

worthy young fellow, the son of a cotton broker, and he would have

made her a good husband, I feel sure. But he was foolish to come as

a beer-bottle.

Perhaps, after all, it is as well those old fashions have gone out.

A week in that suit might have impaired my natural modesty.

One wonders that fancy dress balls are not more popular in this grey

age of ours. The childish instinct to "dress up," to "make

believe," is with us all. We grow so tired of being always

ourselves. A tea-table discussion, at which I once assisted, fell

into this:- Would any one of us, when it came to the point, change

with anybody else, the poor man with the millionaire, the governess

with the princess--change not only outward circumstances and

surroundings, but health and temperament, heart, brain, and soul; so

that not one mental or physical particle of one's original self one

would retain, save only memory? The general opinion was that we

would not, but one lady maintained the affirmative.

"Oh no, you wouldn't really, dear," argued a friend; "you THINK you

would."

"Yes, I would," persisted the first lady; "I am tired of myself.

I'd even be you, for a change."

In my youth, the question chiefly important to me was--What sort of

man shall I decide to be? At nineteen one asks oneself this

question; at thirty-nine we say, "I wish Fate hadn't made me this

sort of man."

In those days I was a reader of much well-meant advice to young men,

and I gathered that, whether I should become a Sir Lancelot, a Herr

Teufelsdrockh, or an Iago was a matter for my own individual choice.

Whether I should go through life gaily or gravely was a question the

pros and cons of which I carefully considered. For patterns I

turned to books. Byron was then still popular, and many of us made

up our minds to be gloomy, saturnine young men, weary with the

world, and prone to soliloquy. I determined to join them.

For a month I rarely smiled, or, when I did, it was with a weary,

bitter smile, concealing a broken heart--at least that was the

intention. Shallow-minded observers misunderstood.

"I know exactly how it feels," they would say, looking at me

sympathetically, "I often have it myself. It's the sudden change in

the weather, I think;" and they would press neat brandy upon me, and

suggest ginger.

Again, it is distressing to the young man, busy burying his secret

sorrow under a mound of silence, to be slapped on the back by

commonplace people and asked--"Well, how's 'the hump' this morning?"

and to hear his mood of dignified melancholy referred to, by those

who should know better, as "the sulks."

There are practical difficulties also in the way of him who would

play the Byronic young gentleman. He must be supernaturally

wicked--or rather must have been; only, alas! in the unliterary

grammar of life, where the future tense stands first, and the past

is formed, not from the indefinite, but from the present indicative,

"to have been" is "to be"; and to be wicked on a small income is

impossible. The ruin of even the simplest of maidens costs money.

In the Courts of Love one cannot sue in forma pauperis; nor would it

be the Byronic method.

"To drown remembrance in the cup" sounds well, but then the "cup,"

to be fitting, should be of some expensive brand. To drink deep of

old Tokay or Asti is poetical; but when one's purse necessitates

that the draught, if it is to be deep enough to drown anything,

should be of thin beer at five-and-nine the four and a half gallon

cask, or something similar in price, sin is robbed of its flavour.

Possibly also--let me think it--the conviction may have been within

me that Vice, even at its daintiest, is but an ugly, sordid thing,

repulsive in the sunlight; that though--as rags and dirt to art--it

may afford picturesque material to Literature, it is an

evil-smelling garment to the wearer; one that a good man, by reason

of poverty of will, may come down to, but one to be avoided with all

one's effort, discarded with returning mental prosperity.

Be this as it may, I grew weary of training for a saturnine young

man; and, in the midst of my doubt, I chanced upon a book the hero

of which was a debonnaire young buck, own cousin to Tom and Jerry.

He attended fights, both of cocks and men, flirted with actresses,

wrenched off door-knockers, extinguished street lamps, played many a

merry jest upon many an unappreciative night watch-man. For all the

which he was much beloved by the women of the book. Why should not

I flirt with actresses, put out street lamps, play pranks on

policemen, and be beloved? London life was changed since the days

of my hero, but much remained, and the heart of woman is eternal.

If no longer prizefighting was to be had, at least there were boxing

competitions, so called, in dingy back parlours out Whitechapel way.

Though cockfighting was a lost sport, were there not damp cellars

near the river where for twopence a gentleman might back mongrel

terriers to kill rats against time, and feel himself indeed a

sportsman? True, the atmosphere of reckless gaiety, always

surrounding my hero, I missed myself from these scenes, finding in

its place an atmosphere more suggestive of gin, stale tobacco, and

nervous apprehension of the police; but the essentials must have

been the same, and the next morning I could exclaim in the very

words of my prototype--"Odds crickets, but I feel as though the

devil himself were in my head. Peste take me for a fool."

But in this direction likewise my fatal lack of means opposed me.

(It affords much food to the philosophic mind, this influence of

income upon character.) Even fifth-rate "boxing competitions,"

organized by "friendly leads," and ratting contests in Rotherhithe

slums, become expensive, when you happen to be the only gentleman

present possessed of a collar, and are expected to do the honours of

your class in dog's-nose. True, climbing lamp-posts and putting out

the gas is fairly cheap, providing always you are not caught in the

act, but as a recreation it lacks variety. Nor is the modern London

lamp-post adapted to sport. Anything more difficult to

grip--anything with less "give" in it--I have rarely clasped. The

disgraceful amount of dirt allowed to accumulate upon it is another

drawback from the climber's point of view. By the time you have

swarmed up your third post a positive distaste for "gaiety" steals

over you. Your desire is towards arnica and a bath.

Nor in jokes at the expense of policemen is the fun entirely on your

side. Maybe I did not proceed with judgment. It occurs to me now,

looking back, that the neighbourhoods of Covent Garden and Great

Marlborough Street were ill-chosen for sport of this nature. To

bonnet a fat policeman is excellent fooling. While he is struggling

with his helmet you can ask him comic questions, and by the time he

has got his head free you are out of sight. But the game should be

played in a district where there is not an average of three

constables to every dozen square yards. When two other policemen,

who have had their eye on you for the past ten minutes, are watching

the proceedings from just round the next corner, you have little or

no leisure for due enjoyment of the situation. By the time you have

run the whole length of Great Titchfield Street and twice round

Oxford Market, you are of opinion that a joke should never be

prolonged beyond the point at which there is danger of its becoming

wearisome; and that the time has now arrived for home and friends.

The "Law," on the other hand, now raised by reinforcements to a

strength of six or seven men, is just beginning to enjoy the chase.

You picture to yourself, while doing Hanover Square, the scene in

Court the next morning. You will be accused of being drunk and

disorderly. It will be idle for you to explain to the magistrate

(or to your relations afterwards) that you were only trying to live

up to a man who did this sort of thing in a book and was admired for

it. You will be fined the usual forty shillings; and on the next

occasion of your calling at the Mayfields' the girls will be out,

and Mrs. Mayfield, an excellent lady, who has always taken a

motherly interest in you, will talk seriously to you and urge you to

sign the pledge.

Thanks to your youth and constitution you shake off the pursuit at

Notting Hill; and, to avoid any chance of unpleasant contretemps on

the return journey, walk home to Bloomsbury by way of Camden Town

and Islington.

I abandoned sportive tendencies as the result of a vow made by

myself to Providence, during the early hours of a certain Sunday

morning, while clinging to the waterspout of an unpretentious house

situate in a side street off Soho. I put it to Providence as man to

man. "Let me only get out of this," I think were the muttered words

I used, "and no more 'sport' for me." Providence closed on the

offer, and did let me get out of it. True, it was a complicated

"get out," involving a broken skylight and three gas globes, two

hours in a coal cellar, and a sovereign to a potman for the loan of

an ulster; and when at last, secure in my chamber, I took stock of

myself--what was left of me,--I could not but reflect that

Providence might have done the job neater. Yet I experienced no

desire to escape the terms of the covenant; my inclining for the

future was towards a life of simplicity.

Accordingly, I cast about for a new character, and found one to suit

me. The German professor was becoming popular as a hero about this

period. He wore his hair long and was otherwise untidy, but he had

"a heart of steel," occasionally of gold. The majority of folks in

the book, judging him from his exterior together with his

conversation--in broken English, dealing chiefly with his dead

mother and his little sister Lisa,--dubbed him uninteresting, but

then they did not know about the heart. His chief possession was a

lame dog which he had rescued from a brutal mob; and when he was not

talking broken English he was nursing this dog.

But his speciality was stopping runaway horses, thereby saving the

heroine's life. This, combined with the broken English and the dog,

rendered him irresistible.

He seemed a peaceful, amiable sort of creature, and I decided to try

him. I could not of course be a German professor, but I could, and

did, wear my hair long in spite of much public advice to the

contrary, voiced chiefly by small boys. I endeavoured to obtain

possession of a lame dog, but failed. A one-eyed dealer in Seven

Dials, to whom, as a last resource, I applied, offered to lame one

for me for an extra five shillings, but this suggestion I declined.

I came across an uncanny-looking mongrel late one night. He was not

lame, but he seemed pretty sick; and, feeling I was not robbing

anybody of anything very valuable, I lured him home and nursed him.

I fancy I must have over-nursed him. He got so healthy in the end,

there was no doing anything with him. He was an ill-conditioned

cur, and he was too old to be taught. He became the curse of the

neighbourhood. His idea of sport was killing chickens and sneaking

rabbits from outside poulterers' shops. For recreation he killed

cats and frightened small children by yelping round their legs.

There were times when I could have lamed him myself, if only I could

have got hold of him. I made nothing by running that dog--nothing

whatever. People, instead of admiring me for nursing him back to

life, called me a fool, and said that if I didn't drown the brute

they would. He spoilt my character utterly--I mean my character at

this period. It is difficult to pose as a young man with a heart of

gold, when discovered in the middle of the road throwing stones at

your own dog. And stones were the only things that would reach and

influence him.

I was also hampered by a scarcity in runaway horses. The horse of

our suburb was not that type of horse. Once and only once did an

opportunity offer itself for practice. It was a good opportunity,

inasmuch as he was not running away very greatly. Indeed, I doubt

if he knew himself that he was running away. It transpired

afterwards that it was a habit of his, after waiting for his driver

outside the Rose and Crown for what he considered to be a reasonable

period, to trot home on his own account. He passed me going about

seven miles an hour, with the reins dragging conveniently beside

him. He was the very thing for a beginner, and I prepared myself.

At the critical moment, however, a couple of officious policemen

pushed me aside and did it themselves.

There was nothing for me to regret, as the matter turned out. I

should only have rescued a bald-headed commercial traveller, very

drunk, who swore horribly, and pelted the crowd with empty

collar-boxes.

From the window of a very high flat I once watched three men,

resolved to stop a runaway horse. Each man marched deliberately

into the middle of the road and took up his stand. My window was

too far away for me to see their faces, but their attitude suggested

heroism unto death. The first man, as the horse came charging

towards him, faced it with his arms spread out. He never flinched

until the horse was within about twenty yards of him. Then, as the

animal was evidently determined to continue its wild career, there

was nothing left for him to do but to retire again to the kerb,

where he stood looking after it with evident sorrow, as though

saying to himself--"Oh, well, if you are going to be headstrong I

have done with you."

The second man, on the catastrophe being thus left clear for him,

without a moment's hesitation, walked up a bye street and

disappeared. The third man stood his ground, and, as the horse

passed him, yelled at it. I could not hear what he said. I have

not the slightest doubt it was excellent advice, but the animal was

apparently too excited even to listen. The first and the third man

met afterwards, and discussed the matter sympathetically. I judged

they were regretting the pig-headedness of runaway horses in

general, and hoping that nobody had been hurt.

I forget the other characters I assumed about this period. One, I

know, that got me into a good deal of trouble was that of a

downright, honest, hearty, outspoken young man who always said what

he meant.

I never knew but one man who made a real success of speaking his

mind. I have heard him slap the table with his open hand and

exclaim--

"You want me to flatter you--to stuff you up with a pack of lies.

That's not me, that's not Jim Compton. But if you care for my

honest opinion, all I can say is, that child is the most marvellous

performer on the piano I've ever heard. I don't say she is a

genius, but I have heard Liszt and Metzler and all the crack

players, and I prefer HER. That's my opinion. I speak my mind, and

I can't help it if you're offended."

"How refreshing," the parents would say, "to come across a man who

is not afraid to say what he really thinks. Why are we not all

outspoken?"

The last character I attempted I thought would be easy to assume.

It was that of a much admired and beloved young man, whose great

charm lay in the fact that he was always just--himself. Other

people posed and acted. He never made any effort to be anything but

his own natural, simple self.

I thought I also would be my own natural, simple self. But then the

question arose--What was my own natural, simple self?

That was the preliminary problem I had to solve; I have not solved

it to this day. What am I? I am a great gentleman, walking through

the world with dauntless heart and head erect, scornful of all

meanness, impatient of all littleness. I am a mean-thinking,

little-daring man--the type of man that I of the dauntless heart and

the erect head despise greatly--crawling to a poor end by devious

ways, cringing to the strong, timid of all pain. I--but, dear

reader, I will not sadden your sensitive ears with details I could

give you, showing how contemptible a creature this wretched I

happens to be. Nor would you understand me. You would only be

astonished, discovering that such disreputable specimens of humanity

contrive to exist in this age. It is best, my dear sir, or madam,

you should remain ignorant of these evil persons. Let me not

trouble you with knowledge.

I am a philosopher, greeting alike the thunder and the sunshine with

frolic welcome. Only now and then, when all things do not fall

exactly as I wish them, when foolish, wicked people will persist in

doing foolish, wicked acts, affecting my comfort and happiness, I

rage and fret a goodish deal.

As Heine said of himself, I am knight, too, of the Holy Grail,

valiant for the Truth, reverent of all women, honouring all men,

eager to yield life to the service of my great Captain.

And next moment, I find myself in the enemy's lines, fighting under

the black banner. (It must be confusing to these opposing Generals,

all their soldiers being deserters from both armies.) What are

women but men's playthings! Shall there be no more cakes and ale

for me because thou art virtuous! What are men but hungry dogs,

contending each against each for a limited supply of bones! Do

others lest thou be done. What is the Truth but an unexploded lie!

I am a lover of all living things. You, my poor sister, struggling

with your heavy burden on your lonely way, I would kiss the tears

from your worn cheeks, lighten with my love the darkness around your

feet. You, my patient brother, breathing hard as round and round

you tramp the trodden path, like some poor half-blind gin-horse,

stripes your only encouragement, scanty store of dry chaff in your

manger! I would jog beside you, taking the strain a little from

your aching shoulders; and we would walk nodding, our heads side by

side, and you, remembering, should tell me of the fields where long

ago you played, of the gallant races that you ran and won. And you,

little pinched brats, with wondering eyes, looking from

dirt-encrusted faces, I would take you in my arms and tell you fairy

stories. Into the sweet land of make-believe we would wander,

leaving the sad old world behind us for a time, and you should be

Princes and Princesses, and know Love.

But again, a selfish, greedy man comes often, and sits in my

clothes. A man who frets away his life, planning how to get more

money--more food, more clothes, more pleasures for himself; a man so

busy thinking of the many things he needs he has no time to dwell

upon the needs of others. He deems himself the centre of the

universe. You would imagine, hearing him grumbling, that the world

had been created and got ready against the time when he should come

to take his pleasure in it. He would push and trample, heedless,

reaching towards these many desires of his; and when, grabbing, he

misses, he curses Heaven for its injustice, and men and women for

getting in his path. He is not a nice man, in any way. I wish, as

I say, he would not come so often and sit in my clothes. He

persists that he is I, and that I am only a sentimental fool,

spoiling his chances. Sometimes, for a while, I get rid of him, but

he always comes back; and then he gets rid of me and I become him.

It is very confusing. Sometimes I wonder if I really am myself.

ON THE DISADVANTAGE OF NOT GETTING WHAT ONE WANTS

Long, long ago, when you and I, dear Reader, were young, when the

fairies dwelt in the hearts of the roses, when the moonbeams bent

each night beneath the weight of angels' feet, there lived a good,

wise man. Or rather, I should say, there had lived, for at the time

of which I speak the poor old gentleman lay dying. Waiting each

moment the dread summons, he fell a-musing on the life that

stretched far back behind him. How full it seemed to him at that

moment of follies and mistakes, bringing bitter tears not to himself

alone but to others also. How much brighter a road might it have

been, had he been wiser, had he known!

"Ah, me!" said the good old gentleman, "if only I could live my life

again in the light of experience."

Now as he spoke these words he felt the drawing near to him of a

Presence, and thinking it was the One whom he expected, raising

himself a little from his bed, he feebly cried,

"I am ready."

But a hand forced him gently back, a voice saying, "Not yet; I bring

life, not death. Your wish shall be granted. You shall live your

life again, and the knowledge of the past shall be with you to guide

you. See you use it. I will come again."

Then a sleep fell upon the good man, and when he awoke, he was again

a little child, lying in his mother's arms; but, locked within his

brain was the knowledge of the life that he had lived already.

So once more he lived and loved and laboured. So a second time he

lay an old, worn man with life behind him. And the angel stood

again beside his bed; and the voice said,

"Well, are you content now?"

"I am well content," said the old gentleman. "Let Death come."

"And have you understood?" asked the angel.

"I think so," was the answer; "that experience is but as of the

memory of the pathways he has trod to a traveller journeying ever

onward into an unknown land. I have been wise only to reap the

reward of folly. Knowledge has ofttimes kept me from my good. I

have avoided my old mistakes only to fall into others that I knew

not of. I have reached the old errors by new roads. Where I have

escaped sorrow I have lost joy. Where I have grasped happiness I

have plucked pain also. Now let me go with Death that I may

learn.."

Which was so like the angel of that period, the giving of a gift,

bringing to a man only more trouble. Maybe I am overrating my

coolness of judgment under somewhat startling circumstances, but I

am inclined to think that, had I lived in those days, and had a

fairy or an angel come to me, wanting to give me something--my

soul's desire, or the sum of my ambition, or any trifle of that kind

I should have been short with him.

"You pack up that precious bag of tricks of yours," I should have

said to him (it would have been rude, but that is how I should have

felt), "and get outside with it. I'm not taking anything in your

line to-day. I don't require any supernatural aid to get me into

trouble. All the worry I want I can get down here, so it's no good

your calling. You take that little joke of yours,--I don't know

what it is, but I know enough not to want to know,--and run it off

on some other idiot. I'm not priggish. I have no objection to an

innocent game of 'catch-questions' in the ordinary way, and when I

get a turn myself. But if I've got to pay every time, and the

stakes are to be my earthly happiness plus my future existence--why,

I don't play. There was the case of Midas; a nice, shabby trick you

fellows played off upon him! making pretence you did not understand

him, twisting round the poor old fellow's words, just for all the

world as though you were a pack of Old Bailey lawyers, trying to

trip up a witness; I'm ashamed of the lot of you, and I tell you so-

-coming down here, fooling poor unsuspecting mortals with your

nonsense, as though we had not enough to harry us as it was. Then

there was that other case of the poor old peasant couple to whom you

promised three wishes, the whole thing ending in a black pudding.

And they never got even that. You thought that funny, I suppose.

That was your fairy humour! A pity, I say, you have not, all of

you, something better to do with your time. As I said before, you

take that celestial 'Joe Miller' of yours and work it off on

somebody else. I have read my fairy lore, and I have read my

mythology, and I don't want any of your blessings. And what's more,

I'm not going to have them. When I want blessings I will put up

with the usual sort we are accustomed to down here. You know the

ones I mean, the disguised brand--the blessings that no human being

would think were blessings, if he were not told; the blessings that

don't look like blessings, that don't feel like blessings; that, as

a matter of fact, are not blessings, practically speaking; the

blessings that other people think are blessings for us and that we

don't. They've got their drawbacks, but they are better than yours,

at any rate, and they are sooner over. I don't want your blessings

at any price. If you leave one here I shall simply throw it out

after you."

I feel confident I should have answered in that strain, and I feel

it would have done good. Somebody ought to have spoken plainly,

because with fairies and angels of that sort fooling about, no one

was ever safe for a moment. Children could hardly have been allowed

outside the door. One never could have told what silly trick some

would-be funny fairy might be waiting to play off on them. The poor

child would not know, and would think it was getting something worth

having. The wonder to me is that some of those angels didn't get

tarred and feathered.

I am doubtful whether even Cinderella's luck was quite as satisfying

as we are led to believe. After the carpetless kitchen and the

black beetles, how beautiful the palace must have seemed--for the

first year, perhaps for the first two. And the Prince! how loving,

how gallant, how tender--for the first year, perhaps for the first

two. And after? You see he was a Prince, brought up in a Court,

the atmosphere of which is not conducive to the development of the

domestic virtues; and she--was Cinderella. And then the marriage

altogether was rather a hurried affair. Oh yes, she is a good,

loving little woman; but perhaps our Royal Highness-ship did act too

much on the impulse of the moment. It was her dear, dainty feet

that danced their way into our heart. How they flashed and

twinkled, eased in those fairy slippers. How like a lily among

tulips she moved that night amid the over-gorgeous Court dames. She

was so sweet, so fresh, so different to all the others whom we knew

so well. How happy she looked as she put her trembling little hand

in ours. What possibilities might lie behind those drooping lashes.

And we were in amorous mood that night, the music in our feet, the

flash and glitter in our eyes. And then, to pique us further, she

disappeared as suddenly and strangely as she had come. Who was she?

Whence came she? What was the mystery surrounding her? Was she

only a delicious dream, a haunting phantasy that we should never

look upon again, never clasp again within our longing arms? Was our

heart to be for ever hungry, haunted by the memory of--No, by

heavens, she is real, and a woman. Here is her dear slipper, made

surely to be kissed. Of a size too that a man may well wear within

the breast of his doublet. Had any woman--nay, fairy, angel, such

dear feet! Search the whole kingdom through, but find her, find

her. The gods have heard our prayers, and given us this clue.

"Suppose she be not all she seemed. Suppose she be not of birth fit

to mate with our noble house!" Out upon thee, for an earth-bound,

blind curmudgeon of a Lord High Chancellor. How could a woman, whom

such slipper fitted, be but of the noblest and the best, as far

above us, mere Princelet that we are, as the stars in heaven are

brighter than thy dull old eyes! Go, search the kingdom, we tell

thee, from east to west, from north to south, and see to it that

thou findest her, or it shall go hard with thee. By Venus, be she a

swineherd's daughter, she shall be our Queen--an she deign to accept

of us, and of our kingdom.

Ah well, of course, it was not a wise piece of business, that goes

without saying; but we were young, and Princes are only human. Poor

child, she could not help her education, or rather her lack of it.

Dear little thing, the wonder is that she has contrived to be no

more ignorant than she is, dragged up as she was, neglected and

overworked. Nor does life in a kitchen, amid the companionship of

peasants and menials, tend to foster the intellect. Who can blame

her for being shy and somewhat dull of thought? not we, generous-

minded, kind-hearted Prince that we are. And she is very

affectionate. The family are trying, certainly; father-in-law not a

bad sort, though a little prosy when upon the subject of his

domestic troubles, and a little too fond of his glass; mamma-in-law,

and those two ugly, ill-mannered sisters, decidedly a nuisance about

the palace. Yet what can we do? they are our relations now, and

they do not forget to let us know it. Well, well, we had to expect

that, and things might have been worse. Anyhow she is not jealous--

thank goodness.

So the day comes when poor little Cinderella sits alone of a night

in the beautiful palace. The courtiers have gone home in their

carriages. The Lord High Chancellor has bowed himself out

backwards. The Gold-Stick-in-Waiting and the Grooms of the Chamber

have gone to their beds. The Maids of Honour have said "Good-

night," and drifted out of the door, laughing and whispering among

themselves. The clock strikes twelve--one--two, and still no

footstep creaks upon the stair. Once it followed swiftly upon the

"good-night" of the maids, who did not laugh or whisper then.

At last the door opens, and the Prince enters, none too pleased at

finding Cinderella still awake. "So sorry I'm late, my love--

detained on affairs of state. Foreign policy very complicated,

dear. Have only just this moment left the Council Chamber."

And little Cinderella, while the Prince sleeps, lies sobbing out her

poor sad heart into the beautiful royal pillow, embroidered with the

royal arms and edged with the royal monogram in lace. "Why did he

ever marry me? I should have been happier in the old kitchen. The

black beetles did frighten me a little, but there was always the

dear old cat; and sometimes, when mother and the girls were out,

papa would call softly down the kitchen stairs for me to come up,

and we would have such a merry evening together, and sup off

sausages: dear old dad, I hardly ever see him now. And then, when

my work was done, how pleasant it was to sit in front of the fire,

and dream of the wonderful things that would come to me some day. I

was always going to be a Princess, even in my dreams, and live in a

palace, but it was so different to this. Oh, how I hate it, this

beastly palace where everybody sneers at me--I know they do, though

they bow and scrape, and pretend to be so polite. And I'm not

clever and smart as they are. I hate them. I hate these bold-faced

women who are always here. That is the worst of a palace, everybody

can come in. Oh, I hate everybody and everything. Oh, god-mamma,

god-mamma, come and take me away. Take me back to my old kitchen.

Give me back my old poor frock. Let me dance again with the fire-

tongs for a partner, and be happy, dreaming."

Poor little Cinderella, perhaps it would have been better had god-

mamma been less ambitious for you, dear; had you married some good,

honest yeoman, who would never have known that you were not

brilliant, who would have loved you because you were just amiable

and pretty; had your kingdom been only a farmhouse, where your

knowledge of domestic economy, gained so hardly, would have been

useful; where you would have shone instead of being overshadowed;

where Papa would have dropped in of an evening to smoke his pipe and

escape from his domestic wrangles; where you would have been REAL

Queen.

But then you know, dear, you would not have been content. Ah yes,

with your present experience--now you know that Queens as well as

little drudges have their troubles; but WITHOUT that experience?

You would have looked in the glass when you were alone; you would

have looked at your shapely hands and feet, and the shadows would

have crossed your pretty face. "Yes," you would have said to

yourself--"John is a dear, kind fellow, and I love him very much,

and all that, but--" and the old dreams, dreamt in the old low-

ceilinged kitchen before the dying fire, would have come back to

you, and you would have been discontented then as now, only in a

different way. Oh yes, you would, Cinderella, though you gravely

shake your gold-crowned head. And let me tell you why. It is

because you are a woman, and the fate of all us, men and women

alike, is to be for ever wanting what we have not, and to be

finding, when we have it, that it is not what we wanted. That is

the law of life, dear. Do you think as you lie upon the floor with

your head upon your arms, that you are the only woman whose tears

are soaking into the hearthrug at that moment? My dear Princess, if

you could creep unseen about your City, peeping at will through the

curtain-shielded windows, you would come to think that all the world

was little else than a big nursery full of crying children with none

to comfort them. The doll is broken: no longer it sweetly squeaks

in answer to our pressure, "I love you, kiss me." The drum lies

silent with the drumstick inside; no longer do we make a brave noise

in the nursery. The box of tea-things we have clumsily put our foot

upon; there will be no more merry parties around the three-legged

stool. The tin trumpet will not play the note we want to sound; the

wooden bricks keep falling down; the toy cannon has exploded and

burnt our fingers. Never mind, little man, little woman, we will

try and mend things tomorrow.

And after all, Cinderella dear, you do live in a fine palace, and

you have jewels and grand dresses and--No, no, do not be indignant

with ME. Did not you dream of these things AS WELL AS of love?

Come now, be honest. It was always a prince, was it not, or, at the

least, an exceedingly well-to-do party, that handsome young

gentleman who bowed to you so gallantly from the red embers? He was

never a virtuous young commercial traveller, or cultured clerk,

earning a salary of three pounds a week, was he, Cinderella? Yet

there are many charming commercial travellers, many delightful

clerks with limited incomes, quite sufficient, however, to a

sensible man and woman desiring but each other's love. Why was it

always a prince, Cinderella? Had the palace and the liveried

servants, and the carriages and horses, and the jewels and the

dresses, NOTHING to do with the dream?

No, Cinderella, you were human, that is all. The artist, shivering

in his conventional attic, dreaming of Fame!-do you think he is not

hoping she will come to his loving arms in the form Jove came to

Danae? Do you think he is not reckoning also upon the good dinners

and the big cigars, the fur coat and the diamond studs, that her

visits will enable him to purchase?

There is a certain picture very popular just now. You may see it,

Cinderella, in many of the shop-windows of the town. It is called

"The Dream of Love," and it represents a beautiful young girl,

sleeping in a very beautiful but somewhat disarranged bed. Indeed,

one hopes, for the sleeper's sake, that the night is warm, and that

the room is fairly free from draughts. A ladder of light streams

down from the sky into the room, and upon this ladder crowd and

jostle one another a small army of plump Cupids, each one laden with

some pledge of love. Two of the Imps are emptying a sack of jewels

upon the floor. Four others are bearing, well displayed, a

magnificent dress (a "confection," I believe, is the proper term)

cut somewhat low, but making up in train what is lacking elsewhere.

Others bear bonnet boxes from which peep stylish toques and

bewitching hoods. Some, representing evidently wholesale houses,

stagger under silks and satins in the piece. Cupids are there from

the shoemakers with the daintiest of bottines. Stockings, garters,

and even less mentionable articles, are not forgotten. Caskets,

mirrors, twelve-buttoned gloves, scent-bottles and handkerchiefs,

hair-pins, and the gayest of parasols, has the God of Love piled

into the arms of his messengers. Really a most practical, up-to-

date God of Love, moving with the times! One feels that the modern

Temple of Love must be a sort of Swan and Edgar's; the god himself a

kind of celestial shop-walker; while his mother, Venus, no doubt

superintends the costume department. Quite an Olympian Whiteley,

this latter-day Eros; he has forgotten nothing, for, at the back of

the picture, I notice one Cupid carrying a rather fat heart at the

end of a string.

You, Cinderella, could give good counsel to that sleeping child.

You would say to her--"Awake from such dreams. The contents of a

pawnbroker's store-room will not bring you happiness. Dream of love

if you will; that is a wise dream, even if it remain ever a dream.

But these coloured beads, these Manchester goods! are you then--you,

heiress of all the ages--still at heart only as some poor savage

maiden but little removed above the monkeys that share the primeval

forest with her? Will you sell your gold to the first trader that

brings you THIS barter? These things, child, will only dazzle your

eyes for a few days. Do you think the Burlington Arcade is the gate

of Heaven?"

Ah, yes, I too could talk like that--I, writer of books, to the

young lad, sick of his office stool, dreaming of a literary career

leading to fame and fortune. "And do you think, lad, that by that

road you will reach Happiness sooner than by another? Do you think

interviews with yourself in penny weeklies will bring you any

satisfaction after the first halfdozen? Do you think the gushing

female who has read all your books, and who wonders what it must

feel like to be so clever, will be welcome to you the tenth time you

meet her? Do you think press cuttings will always consist of

wondering admiration of your genius, of paragraphs about your

charming personal appearance under the heading, 'Our Celebrities'?

Have you thought of the Uncomplimentary criticisms, of the spiteful

paragraphs, of the everlasting fear of slipping a few inches down

the greasy pole called 'popular taste,' to which you are condemned

to cling for life, as some lesser criminal to his weary tread-mill,

struggling with no hope but not to fall! Make a home, lad, for the

woman who loves you; gather one or two friends about you; work,

think, and play, that will bring you happiness. Shun this roaring

gingerbread fair that calls itself, forsooth, the 'World of art and

letters.' Let its clowns and its contortionists fight among

themselves for the plaudits and the halfpence of the mob. Let it be

with its shouting and its surging, its blare and its cheap flare.

Come away, the summer's night is just the other side of the hedge,

with its silence and its stars."

You and I, Cinderella, are experienced people, and can therefore

offer good advice, but do you think we should be listened to?

"Ah, no, my Prince is not as yours. Mine will love me always, and I

am peculiarly fitted for the life of a palace. I have the instinct

and the ability for it. I am sure I was made for a princess. Thank

you, Cinderella, for your well-meant counsel, but there is much

difference between you and me."

That is the answer you would receive, Cinderella; and my young

friend would say to me, "Yes, I can understand YOUR finding

disappointment in the literary career; but then, you see, our cases

are not quite similar. _I_ am not likely to find much trouble in

keeping my position. _I_ shall not fear reading what the critics

say of ME. No doubt there are disadvantages, when you are among the

ruck, but there is always plenty of room at the top. So thank you,

and goodbye."

Besides, Cinderella dear, we should not quite mean it--this

excellent advice. We have grown accustomed to these gew-gaws, and

we should miss them in spite of our knowledge of their trashiness:

you, your palace and your little gold crown; I, my mountebank's cap,

and the answering laugh that goes up from the crowd when I shake my

bells. We want everything. All the happiness that earth and heaven

are capable of bestowing. Creature comforts, and heart and soul

comforts also; and, proud-spirited beings that we are, we will not

be put off with a part. Give us only everything, and we will be

content. And, after all, Cinderella, you have had your day. Some

little dogs never get theirs. You must not be greedy. You have

KNOWN happiness. The palace was Paradise for those few months, and

the Prince's arms were about you, Cinderella, the Prince's kisses on

your lips; the gods themselves cannot take THAT from you.

The cake cannot last for ever if we will eat of it so greedily.

There must come the day when we have picked hungrily the last crumb-

-when we sit staring at the empty board, nothing left of the feast,

Cinderella, but the pain that comes of feasting.

It is a naive confession, poor Human Nature has made to itself, in

choosing, as it has, this story of Cinderella for its leading

moral:--Be good, little girl. Be meek under your many trials. Be

gentle and kind, in spite of your hard lot, and one day--you shall

marry a prince and ride in your own carriage. Be brave and true,

little boy. Work hard and wait with patience, and in the end, with

God's blessing, you shall earn riches enough to come back to London

town and marry your master's daughter.

You and I, gentle Reader, could teach these young folks a truer

lesson, an we would. We know, alas! that the road of all the

virtues does not lead to wealth, rather the contrary; else how

explain our limited incomes? But would it be well, think you, to

tell them bluntly the truth--that honesty is the most expensive

luxury a man can indulge in; that virtue, if persisted in, leads,

generally speaking, to a six-roomed house in an outlying suburb?

Maybe the world is wise: the fiction has its uses.

I am acquainted with a fairly intelligent young lady. She can read

and write, knows her tables up to six times, and can argue. I

regard her as representative of average Humanity in its attitude

towards Fate; and this is a dialogue I lately overheard between her

and an older lady who is good enough to occasionally impart to her

the wisdom of the world--

"I've been good this morning, haven't I?"

"Yes--oh yes, fairly good, for you."

"You think Papa WILL take me to the circus to-night? "

"Yes, if you keep good. If you don't get naughty this afternoon."

A pause.

"I was good on Monday, you may remember, nurse."

"Tolerably good."

"VERY good, you said, nurse."

"Well, yes, you weren't bad."

"And I was to have gone to the pantomime, and I didn't."

"Well, that was because your aunt came up suddenly, and your Papa

couldn't get another seat. Poor auntie wouldn't have gone at all if

she hadn't gone then."

"Oh, wouldn't she?"

"No."

Another pause.

"Do you think she'll come up suddenly to-day?"

"Oh no, I don't think so."

"No, I hope she doesn't. I want to go to the circus to-night.

Because, you see, nurse, if I don't it will discourage me."

So, perhaps the world is wise in promising us the circus. We

believe her at first. But after a while, I fear, we grow

discouraged.

ON THE EXCEPTIONAL MERIT ATTACHING TO THE THINGS WE MEANT TO DO

I can remember--but then I can remember a long time ago. You,

gentle Reader, just entering upon the prime of life, that age by

thoughtless youth called middle, I cannot, of course, expect to

follow me--when there was in great demand a certain periodical

ycleped The Amateur. Its aim was noble. It sought to teach the

beautiful lesson of independence, to inculcate the fine doctrine of

self-help. One chapter explained to a man how he might make

flower-pots out of Australian meat cans; another how he might turn

butter-tubs into music-stools; a third how he might utilize old

bonnet boxes for Venetian blinds: that was the principle of the

whole scheme, you made everything from something not intended for

it, and as ill-suited to the purpose as possible.

Two pages, I distinctly recollect, were devoted to the encouragement

of the manufacture of umbrella stands out of old gaspiping.

Anything less adapted to the receipt of hats and umbrellas than

gas-piping I cannot myself conceive: had there been, I feel sure the

author would have thought of it, and would have recommended it.

Picture-frames you fashioned out of gingerbeer corks. You saved

your ginger-beer corks, you found a picture--and the thing was

complete. How much ginger-beer it would be necessary to drink,

preparatory to the making of each frame; and the effect of it upon

the frame-maker's physical, mental and moral well-being, did not

concern The Amateur. I calculate that for a fair-sized picture

sixteen dozen bottles might suffice. Whether, after sixteen dozen

of ginger-beer, a man would take any interest in framing a picture--

whether he would retain any pride in the picture itself, is

doubtful. But this, of course, was not the point.

One young gentleman of my acquaintance--the son of the gardener of

my sister, as friend Ollendorff would have described him--did

succeed in getting through sufficient ginger-beer to frame his

grandfather, but the result was not encouraging. Indeed, the

gardener's wife herself was but ill satisfied.

"What's all them corks round father?" was her first question.

"Can't you see," was the somewhat indignant reply, "that's the

frame."

"Oh! but why corks?"

"Well, the book said corks."

Still the old lady remained unimpressed.

"Somehow it don't look like father now," she sighed.

Her eldest born grew irritable: none of us appreciate criticism!

"What does it look like, then?" he growled.

"Well, I dunno. Seems to me to look like nothing but corks."

The old lady's view was correct. Certain schools of art possibly

lend themselves to this method of framing. I myself have seen a

funeral card improved by it; but, generally speaking, the

consequence was a predominance of frame at the expense of the thing

framed. The more honest and tasteful of the framemakers would admit

as much themselves.

"Yes, it is ugly when you look at it," said one to me, as we stood

surveying it from the centre of the room. "But what one feels about

it is that one has done it oneself."

Which reflection, I have noticed, reconciles us to many other things

beside cork frames.

Another young gentleman friend of mine--for I am bound to admit it

was youth that profited most by the advice and counsel of The

Amateur: I suppose as one grows older one grows less daring, less

industrious--made a rocking-chair, according to the instructions of

this book, out of a couple of beer barrels. From every practical

point of view it was a bad rocking-chair. It rocked too much, and

it rocked in too many directions at one and the same time. I take

it, a man sitting on a rocking-chair does not want to be continually

rocking. There comes a time when he says to himself--"Now I have

rocked sufficiently for the present; now I will sit still for a

while, lest a worse thing befall me." But this was one of those

headstrong rocking-chairs that are a danger to humanity, and a

nuisance to themselves. Its notion was that it was made to rock,

and that when it was not rocking, it was wasting its time. Once

started nothing could stop it--nothing ever did stop it, until it

found itself topsy turvy on its own occupant. That was the only

thing that ever sobered it.

I had called, and had been shown into the empty drawing-room. The

rocking-chair nodded invitingly at me. I never guessed it was an

amateur rocking-chair. I was young in those days, with faith in

human nature, and I imagined that, whatever else a man might attempt

without knowledge or experience, no one would be fool enough to

experiment upon a rocking-chair.

I threw myself into it lightly and carelessly. I immediately

noticed the ceiling. I made an instinctive movement forward. The

window and a momentary glimpse of the wooded hills beyond shot

upwards and disappeared. The carpet flashed across my eyes, and I

caught sight of my own boots vanishing beneath me at the rate of

about two hundred miles an hour. I made a convulsive effort to

recover them. I suppose I over-did it. I saw the whole of the room

at once, the four walls, the ceiling, and the floor at the same

moment. It was a sort of vision. I saw the cottage piano upside

down, and I again saw my own boots flash past me, this time over my

head, soles uppermost. Never before had I been in a position where

my own boots had seemed so all-pervading. The next moment I lost my

boots, and stopped the carpet with my head just as it was rushing

past me. At the same instant something hit me violently in the

small of the back. Reason, when recovered, suggested that my

assailant must be the rocking-chair.

Investigation proved the surmise correct. Fortunately I was still

alone, and in consequence was able, a few minutes later, to meet my

hostess with calm and dignity. I said nothing about the

rocking-chair. As a matter of fact, I was hoping to have the

pleasure, before I went, of seeing some other guest arrive and

sample it: I had purposely replaced it in the most prominent and

convenient position. But though I felt capable of schooling myself

to silence, I found myself unable to agree with my hostess when she

called for my admiration of the thing. My recent experiences had

too deeply embittered me.

"Willie made it himself," explained the fond mother. "Don't you

think it was very clever of him?"

"Oh yes, it was clever," I replied, "I am willing to admit that."

"He made it out of some old beer barrels," she continued; she seemed

proud of it.

My resentment, though I tried to keep it under control, was mounting

higher.

"Oh! did he?" I said; "I should have thought he might have found

something better to do with them."

"What?" she asked.

"Oh! well, many things," I retorted. "He might have filled them

again with beer."

My hostess looked at me astonished. I felt some reason for my tone

was expected.

"You see," I explained, "it is not a well-made chair. These rockers

are too short, and they are too curved, and one of them, if you

notice, is higher than the other and of a smaller radius; the back

is at too obtuse an angle. When it is occupied the centre of

gravity becomes--"

My hostess interrupted me.

"You have been sitting on it," she said.

"Not for long," I assured her.

Her tone changed. She became apologetic.

"I am so sorry," she said. "It looks all right."

"It does," I agreed; "that is where the dear lad's cleverness

displays itself. Its appearance disarms suspicion. With judgment

that chair might be made to serve a really useful purpose. There

are mutual acquaintances of ours--I mention no names, you will know

them--pompous, self-satisfied, superior persons who would be

improved by that chair. If I were Willie I should disguise the

mechanism with some artistic drapery, bait the thing with a couple

of exceptionally inviting cushions, and employ it to inculcate

modesty and diffidence. I defy any human being to get out of that

chair, feeling as important as when he got into it. What the dear

boy has done has been to construct an automatic exponent of the

transitory nature of human greatness. As a moral agency that chair

should prove a blessing in disguise."

My hostess smiled feebly; more, I fear, from politeness than genuine

enjoyment.

"I think you are too severe," she said. "When you remember that the

boy has never tried his hand at anything of the kind before, that he

has no knowledge and no experience, it really is not so bad."

Considering the matter from that point of view I was bound to

concur. I did not like to suggest to her that before entering upon

a difficult task it would be better for young men to ACQUIRE

knowledge and experience: that is so unpopular a theory.

But the thing that The Amateur put in the front and foremost of its

propaganda was the manufacture of household furniture out of

egg-boxes. Why egg-boxes I have never been able to understand, but

egg-boxes, according to the prescription of The Amateur, formed the

foundation of household existence. With a sufficient supply of

egg-boxes, and what The Amateur termed a "natural deftness," no

young couple need hesitate to face the furnishing problem. Three

egg-boxes made a writing-table; on another egg-box you sat to write;

your books were ranged in egg-boxes around you--and there was your

study, complete.

For the dining-room two egg-boxes made an overmantel; four egg-boxes

and a piece of looking-glass a sideboard; while six egg-boxes, with

some wadding and a yard or so of cretonne, constituted a so-called

"cosy corner." About the "corner" there could be no possible doubt.

You sat on a corner, you leant against a corner; whichever way you

moved you struck a fresh corner. The "cosiness," however, I deny.

Egg-boxes I admit can be made useful; I am even prepared to imagine

them ornamental; but "cosy," no. I have sampled egg-boxes in many

shapes. I speak of years ago, when the world and we were younger,

when our fortune was the Future; secure in which, we hesitated not

to set up house upon incomes folks with lesser expectations might

have deemed insufficient. Under such circumstances, the sole

alternative to the egg-box, or similar school of furniture, would

have been the strictly classical, consisting of a doorway joined to

architectural proportions.

I have from Saturday to Monday, as honoured guest, hung my clothes

in egg-boxes.

I have sat on an egg-box at an egg-box to take my dish of tea. I

have made love on egg-boxes.--Aye, and to feel again the blood

running through my veins as then it ran, I would be content to sit

only on egg-boxes till the time should come when I could be buried

in an egg-box, with an egg-box reared above me as tombstone.--I have

spent many an evening on an egg-box; I have gone to bed in

egg-boxes. They have their points--I am intending no pun--but to

claim for them cosiness would be but to deceive.

How quaint they were, those home-made rooms! They rise out of the

shadows and shape themselves again before my eyes. I see the

knobbly sofa; the easy-chairs that might have been designed by the

Grand Inquisitor himself; the dented settle that was a bed by night;

the few blue plates, purchased in the slums off Wardour Street; the

enamelled stool to which one always stuck; the mirror framed in

silk; the two Japanese fans crossed beneath each cheap engraving;

the piano cloth embroidered in peacock's feathers by Annie's sister;

the tea-cloth worked by Cousin Jenny. We dreamt, sitting on those

egg-boxes--for we were young ladies and gentlemen with artistic

taste--of the days when we would eat in Chippendale dining-rooms;

sip our coffee in Louis Quatorze drawing-rooms; and be happy. Well,

we have got on, some of us, since then, as Mr. Bumpus used to say;

and I notice, when on visits, that some of us have contrived so that

we do sit on Chippendale chairs, at Sheraton dining-tables, and are

warmed from Adam's fireplaces; but, ah me, where are the dreams, the

hopes, the enthusiasms that clung like the scent of a March morning

about those gim-crack second floors? In the dustbin, I fear, with

the cretonne-covered egg-boxes and the penny fans. Fate is so

terribly even-handed. As she gives she ever takes away. She flung

us a few shillings and hope, where now she doles us out pounds and

fears. Why did not we know how happy we were, sitting crowned with

sweet conceit upon our egg-box thrones?

Yes, Dick, you have climbed well. You edit a great newspaper. You

spread abroad the message--well, the message that Sir Joseph

Goldbug, your proprietor, instructs you to spread abroad. You teach

mankind the lessons that Sir Joseph Goldbug wishes them to learn.

They say he is to have a peerage next year. I am sure he has earned

it; and perhaps there may be a knighthood for you, Dick.

Tom, you are getting on now. You have abandoned those unsaleable

allegories. What rich art patron cares to be told continually by

his own walls that Midas had ass's ears; that Lazarus sits ever at

the gate? You paint portraits now, and everybody tells me you are

the coming man. That "Impression" of old Lady Jezebel was really

wonderful. The woman looks quite handsome, and yet it is her

ladyship. Your touch is truly marvellous.

But into your success, Tom--Dick, old friend, do not there creep

moments when you would that we could fish up those old egg-boxes

from the past, refurnish with them the dingy rooms in Camden Town,

and find there our youth, our loves, and our beliefs?

An incident brought back to my mind, the other day, the thought of

all these things. I called for the first time upon a man, an actor,

who had asked me to come and see him in the little home where he

lives with his old father. To my astonishment--for the craze, I

believe, has long since died out--I found the house half furnished

out of packing cases, butter tubs, and egg-boxes. My friend earns

his twenty pounds a week, but it was the old father's hobby, so he

explained to me, the making of these monstrosities; and of them he

was as proud as though they were specimen furniture out of the South

Kensington Museum.

He took me into the dining-room to show me the latest outrage--a new

book-case. A greater disfigurement to the room, which was otherwise

prettily furnished, could hardly be imagined. There was no need for

him to assure me, as he did, that it had been made out of nothing

but egg-boxes. One could see at a glance that it was made out of

egg-boxes, and badly constructed egg-boxes at that--egg-boxes that

were a disgrace to the firm that had turned them out; egg-boxes not

worthy the storage of "shop 'uns" at eighteen the shilling.

We went upstairs to my friend's bedroom. He opened the door as a

man might open the door of a museum of gems.

"The old boy," he said, as he stood with his hand upon the

door-knob, "made everything you see here, everything," and we

entered. He drew my attention to the wardrobe. "Now I will hold it

up," he said, "while you pull the door open; I think the floor must

be a bit uneven, it wobbles if you are not careful." It wobbled

notwithstanding, but by coaxing and humouring we succeeded without

mishap. I was surprised to notice a very small supply of clothes

within, although my friend is a dressy man.

"You see," he explained, "I dare not use it more than I can help. I

am a clumsy chap, and as likely as not, if I happened to be in a

hurry, I'd have the whole thing over:" which seemed probable.

I asked him how he contrived. "I dress in the bath-room as a rule,"

he replied; "I keep most of my things there. Of course the old boy

doesn't know."

He showed me a chest of drawers. One drawer stood half open.

"I'm bound to leave that drawer open," he said; "I keep the things I

use in that. They don't shut quite easily, these drawers; or

rather, they shut all right, but then they won't open. It is the

weather, I think. They will open and shut all right in the summer,

I dare say." He is of a hopeful disposition.

But the pride of the room was the washstand.

"What do you think of this?" cried he enthusiastically, "real marble

top--"

He did not expatiate further. In his excitement he had laid his

hand upon the thing, with the natural result that it collapsed.

More by accident than design I caught the jug in my arms. I also

caught the water it contained. The basin rolled on its edge and

little damage was done, except to me and the soap-box.

I could not pump up much admiration for this washstand; I was

feeling too wet.

"What do you do when you want to wash?" I asked, as together we

reset the trap.

There fell upon him the manner of a conspirator revealing secrets.

He glanced guiltily round the room; then, creeping on tip-toe, he

opened a cupboard behind the bed. Within was a tin basin and a

small can.

"Don't tell the old boy," he said. "I keep these things here, and

wash on the floor."

That was the best thing I myself ever got out of egg-boxes--that

picture of a deceitful son stealthily washing himself upon the floor

behind the bed, trembling at every footstep lest it might be the

"old boy" coming to the door.

One wonders whether the Ten Commandments are so all-sufficient as we

good folk deem them--whether the eleventh is not worth the whole

pack of them: "that ye love one another" with just a common-place,

human, practical love. Could not the other ten be comfortably

stowed away into a corner of that! One is inclined, in one's

anarchic moments, to agree with Louis Stevenson, that to be amiable

and cheerful is a good religion for a work-a-day world. We are so

busy NOT killing, NOT stealing, NOT coveting our neighbour's wife,

we have not time to be even just to one another for the little while

we are together here. Need we be so cocksure that our present list

of virtues and vices is the only possibly correct and complete one?

Is the kind, unselfish man necessarily a villain because he does not

always succeed in suppressing his natural instincts? Is the

narrow-hearted, sour-souled man, incapable of a generous thought or

act, necessarily a saint because he has none? Have we not--we unco

guid--arrived at a wrong method of estimating our frailer brothers

and sisters? We judge them, as critics judge books, not by the good

that is in them, but by their faults. Poor King David! What would

the local Vigilance Society have had to say to him?

Noah, according to our plan, would be denounced from every teetotal

platform in the country, and Ham would head the Local Vestry poll as

a reward for having exposed him. And St. Peter! weak, frail St.

Peter, how lucky for him that his fellow-disciples and their Master

were not as strict in their notions of virtue as are we to-day.

Have we not forgotten the meaning of the word "virtue"? Once it

stood for the good that was in a man, irrespective of the evil that

might lie there also, as tares among the wheat. We have abolished

virtue, and for it substituted virtues. Not the hero--he was too

full of faults--but the blameless valet; not the man who does any

good, but the man who has not been found out in any evil, is our

modern ideal. The most virtuous thing in nature, according to this

new theory, should be the oyster. He is always at home, and always

sober. He is not noisy. He gives no trouble to the police. I

cannot think of a single one of the Ten Commandments that he ever

breaks. He never enjoys himself, and he never, so long as he lives,

gives a moment's pleasure to any other living thing.

I can imagine the oyster lecturing a lion on the subject of

morality.

"You never hear me," the oyster might say, "howling round camps and

villages, making night hideous, frightening quiet folk out of their

lives. Why don't you go to bed early, as I do? I never prowl round

the oyster-bed, fighting other gentlemen oysters, making love to

lady oysters already married. I never kill antelopes or

missionaries. Why can't you live as I do on salt water and germs,

or whatever it is that I do live on? Why don't you try to be more

like me?"

An oyster has no evil passions, therefore we say he is a virtuous

fish. We never ask ourselves--"Has he any good passions?" A lion's

behaviour is often such as no just man could condone. Has he not

his good points also?

Will the fat, sleek, "virtuous" man be as Welcome at the gate of

heaven as he supposes?

"Well," St. Peter may say to him, opening the door a little way and

looking him up and down, "what is it now?"

"It's me," the virtuous man will reply, with an oily, self-satisfied

smile; "I should say, I--I've come."

"Yes, I see you have come; but what is your claim to admittance?

What have you done with your three score years and ten?"

"Done!" the virtuous man will answer, "I have done nothing, I assure

you."

"Nothing!"

"Nothing; that is my strong point; that is why I am here. I have

never done any wrong."

"And what good have you done?"

"What good!"

"Aye, what good? Do not you even know the meaning of the word?

What human creature is the better for your having eaten and drunk

and slept these years? You have done no harm--no harm to yourself.

Perhaps, if you had you might have done some good with it; the two

are generally to be found together down below, I remember. What

good have you done that you should enter here? This is no mummy

chamber; this is the place of men and women who have lived, who have

wrought good--and evil also, alas!--for the sinners who fight for

the right, not the righteous who run with their souls from the

fight."

It was not, however, to speak of these things that I remembered The

Amateur and its lessons. My intention was but to lead up to the

story of a certain small boy, who in the doing of tasks not required

of him was exceedingly clever. I wish to tell you his story,

because, as do most true tales, it possesses a moral, and stories

without a moral I deem to be but foolish literature, resembling

roads that lead to nowhere, such as sick folk tramp for exercise.

I have known this little boy to take an expensive eight-day clock to

pieces, and make of it a toy steamboat. True, it was not, when

made, very much of a steamboat; but taking into consideration all

the difficulties--the inadaptability of eight-day clock machinery to

steamboat requirements, the necessity of getting the work

accomplished quickly, before conservatively-minded people with no

enthusiasm for science could interfere--a good enough steamboat.

With merely an ironing-board and a few dozen meat-skewers, he

would--provided the ironing-board was not missed in time--turn out

quite a practicable rabbit-hutch. He could make a gun out of an

umbrella and a gas-bracket, which, if not so accurate as a

Martini-Henry, was, at all events, more deadly. With half the

garden-hose, a copper scalding-pan out of the dairy, and a few

Dresden china ornaments off the drawing-room mantelpiece, he would

build a fountain for the garden. He could make bookshelves out of

kitchen tables, and crossbows out of crinolines. He could dam you a

stream so that all the water would flow over the croquet lawn. He

knew how to make red paint and oxygen gas, together with many other

suchlike commodities handy to have about a house. Among other

things he learned how to make fireworks, and after a few explosions

of an unimportant character, came to make them very well indeed.

The boy who can play a good game of cricket is liked. The boy who

can fight well is respected. The boy who can cheek a master is

loved. But the boy who can make fireworks is revered above all

others as a boy belonging to a superior order of beings. The fifth

of November was at hand, and with the consent of an indulgent

mother, he determined to give to the world a proof of his powers. A

large party of friends, relatives, and school-mates was invited, and

for a fortnight beforehand the scullery was converted into a

manufactory for fireworks. The female servants went about in hourly

terror of their lives, and the villa, did we judge exclusively by

smell, one might have imagined had been taken over by Satan, his

main premises being inconveniently crowded, as an annex. By the

evening of the fourth all was in readiness, and samples were tested

to make sure that no contretemps should occur the following night.

All was found to be perfect.

The rockets rushed heavenward and descended in stars, the Roman

candles tossed their fiery balls into the darkness, the Catherine

wheels sparkled and whirled, the crackers cracked, and the squibs

banged. That night he went to bed a proud and happy boy, and

dreamed of fame. He stood surrounded by blazing fireworks, and the

vast crowd cheered him. His relations, most of whom, he knew,

regarded him as the coming idiot of the family, were there to

witness his triumph; so too was Dickey Bowles, who laughed at him

because he could not throw straight. The girl at the bun-shop, she

also was there, and saw that he was clever.

The night of the festival arrived, and with it the guests. They

sat, wrapped up in shawls and cloaks, outside the hall door--uncles,

cousins, aunts, little boys and big boys, little girls and big

girls, with, as the theatre posters say, villagers and retainers,

some forty of them in all, and waited.

But the fireworks did not go off. Why they did not go off I cannot

explain; nobody ever COULD explain. The laws of nature seemed to be

suspended for that night only. The rockets fell down and died where

they stood. No human agency seemed able to ignite the squibs. The

crackers gave one bang and collapsed. The Roman candles might have

been English rushlights. The Catherine wheels became mere revolving

glow-worms. The fiery serpents could not collect among them the

spirit of a tortoise. The set piece, a ship at sea, showed one mast

and the captain, and then went out. One or two items did their

duty, but this only served to render the foolishness of the whole

more striking. The little girls giggled, the little boys chaffed,

the aunts and cousins said it was beautiful, the uncles inquired if

it was all over, and talked about supper and trains, the "villagers

and retainers" dispersed laughing, the indulgent mother said "never

mind," and explained how well everything had gone off yesterday; the

clever little boy crept upstairs to his room, and blubbered his

heart out in the dark.

Hours later, when the crowd had forgotten him, he stole out again

into the garden. He sat down amid the ruins of his hope, and

wondered what could have caused the fiasco. Still puzzled, he drew

from his pocket a box of matches, and, lighting one, he held it to

the seared end of a rocket he had tried in vain to light four hours

ago. It smouldered for an instant, then shot with a swish into the

air and broke into a hundred points of fire. He tried another and

another with the same result. He made a fresh attempt to fire the

set piece. Point by point the whole picture--minus the captain and

one mast--came out of the night, and stood revealed in all the

majesty of flame. Its sparks fell upon the piled-up heap of

candles, wheels, and rockets that a little while before had

obstinately refused to burn, and that, one after another, had been

thrown aside as useless. Now with the night frost upon them, they

leaped to light in one grand volcanic eruption. And in front of the

gorgeous spectacle he stood with only one consolation--his mother's

hand in his.

The whole thing was a mystery to him at the time, but, as he learned

to know life better, he came to understand that it was only one

example of a solid but inexplicable fact, ruling all human

affairs--YOUR FIREWORKS WON'T GO OFF WHILE THE CROWD IS AROUND.

Our brilliant repartees do not occur to us till the door is closed

upon us and we are alone in the street, or, as the French would say,

are coming down the stairs. Our after-dinner oratory, that sounded

so telling as we delivered it before the looking-glass, falls

strangely flat amidst the clinking of the glasses. The passionate

torrent of words we meant to pour into her ear becomes a halting

rigmarole, at which--small blame to her--she only laughs.

I would, gentle Reader, you could hear the stories that I meant to

tell you. You judge me, of course, by the stories of mine that you

have read--by this sort of thing, perhaps; but that is not just to

me. The stories I have not told you, that I am going to tell you

one day, I would that you judge me by those.

They are so beautiful; you will say so; over them, you will laugh

and cry with me.

They come into my brain unbidden, they clamour to be written, yet

when I take my pen in hand they are gone. It is as though they were

shy of publicity, as though they would say to me--"You alone, you

shall read us, but you must not write us; we are too real, too true.

We are like the thoughts you cannot speak. Perhaps a little later,

when you know more of life, then you shall tell us."

Next to these in merit I would place, were I writing a critical

essay on myself, the stories I have begun to write and that remain

unfinished, why I cannot explain to myself. They are good stories,

most of them; better far than the stories I have accomplished.

Another time, perhaps, if you care to listen, I will tell you the

beginning of one or two and you shall judge. Strangely enough, for

I have always regarded myself as a practical, commonsensed man, so

many of these still-born children of my mind I find, on looking

through the cupboard where their thin bodies lie, are ghost stories.

I suppose the hope of ghosts is with us all. The world grows

somewhat interesting to us heirs of all the ages. Year by year,

Science with broom and duster tears down the moth-worn tapestry,

forces the doors of the locked chambers, lets light into the secret

stairways, cleans out the dungeons, explores the hidden passages--

finding everywhere only dust. This echoing old castle, the world,

so full of mystery in the days when we were children, is losing

somewhat its charm for us as we grow older. The king sleeps no

longer in the hollow of the hills. We have tunnelled through his

mountain chamber. We have shivered his beard with our pick. We

have driven the gods from Olympus. No wanderer through the moonlit

groves now fears or hopes the sweet, death-giving gleam of

Aphrodite's face. Thor's hammer echoes not among the peaks--'tis

but the thunder of the excursion train. We have swept the woods of

the fairies. We have filtered the sea of its nymphs. Even the

ghosts are leaving us, chased by the Psychical Research Society.

Perhaps of all, they are the least, however, to be regretted. They

were dull old fellows, clanking their rusty chains and groaning and

sighing. Let them go.

And yet how interesting they might be, if only they would. The old

gentleman in the coat of mail, who lived in King John's reign, who

was murdered, so they say, on the outskirts of the very wood I can

see from my window as I write--stabbed in the back, poor gentleman,

as he was riding home, his body flung into the moat that to this day

is called Tor's tomb. Dry enough it is now, and the primroses love

its steep banks; but a gloomy enough place in those days, no doubt,

with its twenty feet of stagnant water. Why does he haunt the

forest paths at night, as they tell me he does, frightening the

children out of their wits, blanching the faces and stilling the

laughter of the peasant lads and lasses, slouching home from the

village dance? Instead, why does he not come up here and talk to

me? He should have my easy-chair and welcome, would he only be

cheerful and companionable.

What brave tales could he not tell me. He fought in the first

Crusade, heard the clarion voice of Peter, met the great Godfrey

face to face, stood, hand on sword-hilt, at Runny-mede, perhaps.

Better than a whole library of historical novels would an evening's

chat be with such a ghost. What has he done with his eight hundred

years of death? where has he been? what has he seen? Maybe he has

visited Mars; has spoken to the strange spirits who can live in the

liquid fires of Jupiter. What has he learned of the great secret?

Has he found the truth? or is he, even as I, a wanderer still

seeking the unknown?

You, poor, pale, grey nun--they tell me that of midnights one may

see your white face peering from the ruined belfry window, hear the

clash of sword and shield among the cedar-trees beneath.

It was very sad, I quite understand, my dear lady. Your lovers both

were killed, and you retired to a convent. Believe me, I am

sincerely sorry for you, but why waste every night renewing the

whole painful experience? Would it not be better forgotten? Good

Heavens, madam, suppose we living folk were to spend our lives

wailing and wringing our hands because of the wrongs done to us when

we were children? It is all over now. Had he lived, and had you

married him, you might not have been happy. I do not wish to say

anything unkind, but marriages founded upon the sincerest mutual

love have sometimes turned out unfortunately, as you must surely

know.

Do take my advice. Talk the matter over with the young men

themselves. Persuade them to shake hands and be friends. Come in,

all of you, out of the cold, and let us have some reasonable talk.

Why seek you to trouble us, you poor pale ghosts? Are we not your

children? Be our wise friends. Tell me, how loved the young men in

your young days? how answered the maidens? Has the world changed

much, do you think? Had you not new women even then? girls who

hated the everlasting tapestry frame and spinning-wheel? Your

father's servants, were they so much worse off than the freemen who

live in our East-end slums and sew slippers for fourteen hours a day

at a wage of nine shillings a week? Do you think Society much

improved during the last thousand years? Is it worse? is it better?

or is it, on the whole, about the same, save that we call things by

other names? Tell me, what have YOU learned?

Yet might not familiarity breed contempt, even for ghosts.

One has had a tiring day's shooting. One is looking forward to

one's bed. As one opens the door, however, a ghostly laugh comes

from behind the bed-curtains, and one groans inwardly, knowing what

is in store for one: a two or three hours' talk with rowdy old Sir

Lanval--he of the lance. We know all his tales by heart, and he

will shout them. Suppose our aunt, from whom we have expectations,

and who sleeps in the next room, should wake and overhear! They

were fit and proper enough stories, no doubt, for the Round Table,

but we feel sure our aunt would not appreciate them:--that story

about Sir Agravain and the cooper's wife! and he always will tell

that story.

Or imagine the maid entering after dinner to say--

"Oh, if you please, sir, here is the veiled lady."

"What, again!" says your wife, looking up from her work.

"Yes, ma'am; shall I show her up into the bedroom?"

"You had better ask your master," is the reply. The tone is

suggestive of an unpleasant five minutes so soon as the girl shall

have withdrawn, but what are you to do?

"Yes, yes, show her up," you say, and the girl goes out, closing the

door.

Your wife gathers her work together, and rises.

"Where are you going?" you ask.

"To sleep with the children," is the frigid answer.

"It will look so rude," you urge. "We must be civil to the poor

thing; and you see it really is her room, as one might say. She has

always haunted it. "

"It is very curious," returns the wife of your bosom, still more

icily, "that she never haunts it except when you are down here.

Where she goes when you are in town I'm sure I don't know."

This is unjust. You cannot restrain your indignation.

"What nonsense you talk, Elizabeth," you reply; "I am only barely

polite to her."

"Some men have such curious notions of politeness," returns

Elizabeth. "But pray do not let us quarrel. I am only anxious not

to disturb you. Two are company, you know. I don't choose to be

the third, that's all." With which she goes out.

And the veiled lady is still waiting for you up-stairs. You wonder

how long she will stop, also what will happen after she is gone.

I fear there is no room for you, ghosts, in this our world. You

remember how they came to Hiawatha--the ghosts of the departed loved

ones. He had prayed to them that they would come back to him to

comfort him, so one day they crept into his wigwam, sat in silence

round his fireside, chilled the air for Hiawatha, froze the smiles

of Laughing Water.

There is no room for you, oh you poor pale ghosts, in this our

world. Do not trouble us. Let us forget. You, stout elderly

matron, your thin locks turning grey, your eyes grown weak, your

chin more ample, your voice harsh with much scolding and

complaining, needful, alas! to household management, I pray you

leave me. I loved you while you lived. How sweet, how beautiful

you were. I see you now in your white frock among the

apple-blossom. But you are dead, and your ghost disturbs my dreams.

I would it haunted me not.

You, dull old fellow, looking out at me from the glass at which I

shave, why do you haunt me? You are the ghost of a bright lad I

once knew well. He might have done much, had he lived. I always

had faith in him. Why do you haunt me? I would rather think of him

as I remember him. I never imagined he would make such a poor

ghost.

ON THE PREPARATION AND EMPLOYMENT OF LOVE PHILTRES

Occasionally a friend will ask me some such question as this, Do you

prefer dark women or fair? Another will say, Do you like tall women

or short? A third, Do you think light-hearted women, or serious,

the more agreeable company? I find myself in the position that,

once upon a time, overtook a certain charming young lady of taste

who was asked by an anxious parent, the years mounting, and the

family expenditure not decreasing, which of the numerous and

eligible young men, then paying court to her, she liked the best.

She replied, that was her difficulty. She could not make up her

mind which she liked the best. They were all so nice. She could

not possibly select one to the exclusion of all the others. What

she would have liked would have been to marry the lot, but that, she

presumed, was impracticable.

I feel I resemble that young lady, not so much, perhaps, in charm

and beauty as indecision of mind, when questions such as the above

are put to me. It is as if one were asked one's favourite food.

There are times when one fancies an egg with one's tea. On other

occasions one dreams of a kipper. Today one clamours for lobsters.

To-morrow one feels one never wishes to see a lobster again; one

determines to settle down, for a time, to a diet of bread and milk

and rice-pudding. Asked suddenly to say whether I preferred ices to

soup, or beefsteaks to caviare, I should be nonplussed.

I like tall women and short, dark women and fair, merry women and

grave.

Do not blame me, Ladies, the fault lies with you. Every

right-thinking man is an universal lover; how could it be otherwise?

You are so diverse, yet each so charming of your kind; and a man's

heart is large. You have no idea, fair Reader, how large a man's

heart is: that is his trouble--sometimes yours.

May I not admire the daring tulip, because I love also the modest

lily? May I not press a kiss upon the sweet violet, because the

scent of the queenly rose is precious to me?

"Certainly not," I hear the Rose reply. "If you can see anything in

her, you shall have nothing to do with me."

"If you care for that bold creature," says the Lily, trembling, "you

are not the man I took you for. Good-bye."

"Go to your baby-faced Violet," cries the Tulip, with a toss of her

haughty head. "You are just fitted for each other."

And when I return to the Lily, she tells me that she cannot trust

me. She has watched me with those others. She knows me for a

gad-about. Her gentle face is full of pain.

So I must live unloved merely because I love too much.

My wonder is that young men ever marry. The difficulty of selection

must be appalling. I walked the other evening in Hyde Park. The

band of the Life Guards played heart-lifting music, and the vast

crowd were basking in a sweet enjoyment such as rarely woos the

English toiler. I strolled among them, and my attention was chiefly

drawn towards the women. The great majority of them were, I

suppose, shop-girls, milliners, and others belonging to the lower

middle-class. They had put on their best frocks, their bonniest

hats, their newest gloves. They sat or walked in twos and threes,

chattering and preening, as happy as young sparrows on a clothes

line. And what a handsome crowd they made! I have seen German

crowds, I have seen French crowds, I have seen Italian crowds; but

nowhere do you find such a proportion of pretty women as among the

English middle-class. Three women out of every four were worth

looking at, every other woman was pretty, while every fourth, one

might say without exaggeration, was beautiful. As I passed to and

fro the idea occurred to me: suppose I were an unprejudiced young

bachelor, free from predilection, looking for a wife; and let me

suppose--it is only a fancy--that all these girls were ready and

willing to accept me. I have only to choose! I grew bewildered.

There were fair girls, to look at whom was fatal; dark girls that

set one's heart aflame; girls with red gold hair and grave grey

eyes, whom one would follow to the confines of the universe;

baby-faced girls that one longed to love and cherish; girls with

noble faces, whom a man might worship; laughing girls, with whom one

could dance through life gaily; serious girls, with whom life would

be sweet and good, domestic-looking girls--one felt such would make

delightful wives; they would cook, and sew, and make of home a

pleasant, peaceful place. Then wicked-looking girls came by, at the

stab of whose bold eyes all orthodox thoughts were put to a flight,

whose laughter turned the world into a mad carnival; girls one could

mould; girls from whom one could learn; sad girls one wanted to

comfort; merry girls who would cheer one; little girls, big girls,

queenly girls, fairy-like girls.

Suppose a young man had to select his wife in this fashion from some

twenty or thirty thousand; or that a girl were suddenly confronted

with eighteen thousand eligible young bachelors, and told to take

the one she wanted and be quick about it? Neither boy nor girl

would ever marry. Fate is kinder to us. She understands, and

assists us. In the hall of a Paris hotel I once overheard one lady

asking another to recommend her a milliner's shop.

"Go to the Maison Nouvelle," advised the questioned lady, with

enthusiasm. "They have the largest selection there of any place in

Paris."

"I know they have," replied the first lady, "that is just why I

don't mean to go there. It confuses me. If I see six bonnets I can

tell the one I want in five minutes. If I see six hundred I come

away without any bonnet at all. Don't you know a little shop?"

Fate takes the young man or the young woman aside.

"Come into this village, my dear," says Fate; "into this by-street

of this salubrious suburb, into this social circle, into this

church, into this chapel. Now, my dear boy, out of these seventeen

young ladies, which will you have?--out of these thirteen young men,

which would you like for your very own, my dear?"

"No, miss, I am sorry, but I am not able to show you our up-stairs

department to-day, the lift is not working. But I am sure we shall

be able to find something in this room to suit you. Just look

round, my dear, perhaps you will see something."

"No, sir, I cannot show you the stock in the next room, we never

take that out except for our very special customers. We keep our

most expensive goods in that room. (Draw that curtain, Miss

Circumstance, please. I have told you of that before.) Now, sir,

wouldn't you like this one? This colour is quite the rage this

season; we are getting rid of quite a lot of these."

"NO, sir! Well, of course, it would not do for every one's taste to

be the same. Perhaps something dark would suit you better. Bring

out those two brunettes, Miss Circumstance. Charming girls both of

them, don't you think so, sir? I should say the taller one for you,

sir. Just one moment, sir, allow me. Now, what do you think of

that, sir? might have been made to fit you, I'm sure. You prefer

the shorter one. Certainly, sir, no difference to us at all. Both

are the same price. There's nothing like having one's own fancy, I

always say. NO, sir, I cannot put her aside for you, we never do

that. Indeed, there's rather a run on brunettes just at present. I

had a gentleman in only this morning, looking at this particular

one, and he is going to call again to-night. Indeed, I am not at

all sure--Oh, of course, sir, if you like to settle on this one now,

that ends the matter. (Put those others away, Miss Circumstance,

please, and mark this one sold.) I feel sure you'll like her, sir,

when you get her home. Thank YOU, sir. Good-morning!"

"Now, miss, have YOU seen anything you fancy? YES, miss, this is

all we have at anything near your price. (Shut those other

cupboards, Miss Circumstance; never show more stock than you are

obliged to, it only confuses customers. How often am I to tell you

that?) YES, miss, you are quite right, there IS a slight blemish.

They all have some slight flaw. The makers say they can't help it--

it's in the material. It's not once in a season we get a perfect

specimen; and when we do ladies don't seem to care for it. Most of

our customers prefer a little faultiness. They say it gives

character. Now, look at this, miss. This sort of thing wears very

well, warm and quiet. You'd like one with more colour in it?

Certainly. Miss Circumstance, reach me down the art patterns. NO,

miss, we don't guarantee any of them over the year, so much depends

on how you use them. OH YES, miss, they'll stand a fair amount of

wear. People do tell you the quieter patterns last longer; but my

experience is that one is much the same as another. There's really

no telling any of them until you come to try them. We never

recommend one more than another. There's a lot of chance about

these goods, it's in the nature of them. What I always say to

ladies is--'Please yourself, it's you who have got to wear it; and

it's no good having an article you start by not liking.' YES, miss,

it IS pretty and it looks well against you: it does indeed. Thank

you, miss. Put that one aside, Miss Circumstance, please. See that

it doesn't get mixed up with the unsold stock. "

It is a useful philtre, the juice of that small western flower, that

Oberon drops upon our eyelids as we sleep. It solves all

difficulties in a trice. Why of course Helena is the fairer.

Compare her with Hermia! Compare the raven with the dove! How

could we ever have doubted for a moment? Bottom is an angel, Bottom

is as wise as he is handsome. Oh, Oberon, we thank you for that

drug. Matilda Jane is a goddess; Matilda Jane is a queen; no woman

ever born of Eve was like Matilda Jane. The little pimple on her

nose--her little, sweet, tip-tilted nose--how beautiful it is. Her

bright eyes flash with temper now and then; how piquant is a temper

in a woman. William is a dear old stupid, how lovable stupid men

can be--especially when wise enough to love us. William does not

shine in conversation; how we hate a magpie of a man. William's

chin is what is called receding, just the sort of chin a beard looks

well on. Bless you, Oberon darling, for that drug; rub it on our

eyelids once again. Better let us have a bottle, Oberon, to keep by

us.

Oberon, Oberon, what are you thinking of? You have given the bottle

to Puck. Take it away from him, quick. Lord help us all if that

Imp has the bottle. Lord save us from Puck while we sleep.

Or may we, fairy Oberon, regard your lotion as an eye-opener, rather

than as an eye-closer? You remember the story the storks told the

children, of the little girl who was a toad by day, only her sweet

dark eyes being left to her. But at night, when the Prince clasped

her close to his breast, lo! again she became the king's daughter,

fairest and fondest of women. There be many royal ladies in

Marshland, with bad complexion and thin straight hair, and the silly

princes sneer and ride away to woo some kitchen wench decked out in

queen's apparel. Lucky the prince upon whose eyelids Oberon has

dropped the magic philtre.

In the gallery of a minor Continental town I have forgotten, hangs a

picture that lives with me. The painting I cannot recall, whether

good or bad; artists must forgive me for remembering only the

subject. It shows a man, crucified by the roadside. No martyr he.

If ever a man deserved hanging it was this one. So much the artist

has made clear. The face, even under its mask of agony, is an evil,

treacherous face. A peasant girl clings to the cross; she stands

tip-toe upon a patient donkey, straining her face upward for the

half-dead man to stoop and kiss her lips.

Thief, coward, blackguard, they are stamped upon his face, but UNDER

the face, under the evil outside? Is there no remnant of manhood-

-nothing tender, nothing, true? A woman has crept to the cross to

kiss him: no evidence in his favour, my Lord? Love is blind-aye,

to our faults. Heaven help us all; Love's eyes would be sore indeed

if it were not so. But for the good that is in us her eyes are

keen. You, crucified blackguard, stand forth. A hundred witnesses

have given their evidence against you. Are there none to give

evidence for him? A woman, great Judge, who loved him. Let her

speak.

But I am wandering far from Hyde Park and its show of girls.

They passed and re-passed me, laughing, smiling, talking. Their

eyes were bright with merry thoughts; their voices soft and musical.

They were pleased, and they wanted to please. Some were married,

some had evidently reasonable expectations of being married; the

rest hoped to be. And we, myself, and some ten thousand other young

men. I repeat it--myself and some ten thousand other young men; for

who among us ever thinks of himself but as a young man? It is the

world that ages, not we. The children cease their playing and grow

grave, the lasses' eyes are dimmer. The hills are a little steeper,

the milestones, surely, further apart. The songs the young men sing

are less merry than the songs we used to sing. The days have grown

a little colder, the wind a little keener. The wine has lost its

flavour somewhat; the new humour is not like the old. The other

boys are becoming dull and prosy; but we are not changed. It is the

world that is growing old. Therefore, I brave your thoughtless

laughter, youthful Reader, and repeat that we, myself and some ten

thousand other young men, walked among these sweet girls; and, using

our boyish eyes, were fascinated, charmed, and captivated. How

delightful to spend our lives with them, to do little services for

them that would call up these bright smiles. How pleasant to jest

with them, and hear their flute-like laughter, to console them and

read their grateful eyes. Really life is a pleasant thing, and the

idea of marriage undoubtedly originated in the brain of a kindly

Providence.

We smiled back at them, and we made way for them; we rose from our

chairs with a polite, "Allow me, miss," "Don't mention it, I prefer

standing." "It is a delightful evening, is it not?" And perhaps-

-for what harm was there?--we dropped into conversation with these

chance fellow-passengers upon the stream of life. There were those

among us--bold daring spirits--who even went to the length of mild

flirtation. Some of us knew some of them, and in such happy case

there followed interchange of pretty pleasantries. Your English

middle-class young man and woman are not adepts at the game of

flirtation. I will confess that our methods were, perhaps,

elephantine, that we may have grown a trifle noisy as the evening

wore on. But we meant no evil; we did but our best to enjoy

ourselves, to give enjoyment, to make the too brief time, pass

gaily.

And then my thoughts travelled to small homes in distant suburbs,

and these bright lads and lasses round me came to look older and

more careworn. But what of that? Are not old faces sweet when

looked at by old eyes a little dimmed by love, and are not care and

toil but the parents of peace and joy?

But as I drew nearer, I saw that many of the faces were seared with

sour and angry looks, and the voices that rose round me sounded

surly and captious. The pretty compliment and praise had changed to

sneers and scoldings. The dimpled smile had wrinkled to a frown.

There seemed so little desire to please, so great a determination

not to be pleased.

And the flirtations! Ah me, they had forgotten how to flirt! Oh,

the pity of it! All the jests were bitter, all the little services

were given grudgingly. The air seemed to have grown chilly. A

darkness had come over all things.

And then I awoke to reality, and found I had been sitting in my

chair longer than I had intended. The band-stand was empty, the sun

had set; I rose and made my way home through the scattered crowd.

Nature is so callous. The Dame irritates one at times by her

devotion to her one idea, the propagation of the species.

"Multiply and be fruitful; let my world be ever more and more

peopled."

For this she trains and fashions her young girls, models them with

cunning hand, paints them with her wonderful red and white, crowns

them with her glorious hair, teaches them to smile and laugh, trains

their voices into music, sends them out into the world to captivate,

to enslave us.

"See how beautiful she is, my lad," says the cunning old woman.

"Take her; build your little nest with her in your pretty suburb;

work for her and live for her; enable her to keep the little ones

that I will send."

And to her, old hundred-breasted Artemis whispers, "Is he not a

bonny lad? See how he loves you, how devoted he is to you! He will

work for you and make you happy; he will build your home for you.

You will be the mother of his children."

So we take each other by the hand, full of hope and love, and from

that hour Mother Nature has done with us. Let the wrinkles come;

let our voices grow harsh; let the fire she lighted in our hearts

die out; let the foolish selfishness we both thought we had put

behind us for ever creep back to us, bringing unkindness and

indifference, angry thoughts and cruel words into our lives. What

cares she? She has caught us, and chained us to her work. She is

our universal mother-in-law. She has done the match-making; for the

rest, she leaves it to ourselves. We can love or we can fight; it

is all one to her, confound her.

I wonder sometimes if good temper might not be taught. In business

we use no harsh language, say no unkind things to one another. The

shopkeeper, leaning across the counter, is all smiles and

affability, he might put up his shutters were he otherwise. The

commercial gent, no doubt, thinks the ponderous shopwalker an ass,

but refrains from telling him so. Hasty tempers are banished from

the City. Can we not see that it is just as much to our interest to

banish them from Tooting and Hampstead?

The young man who sat in the chair next to me, how carefully he

wrapped the cloak round the shoulders of the little milliner beside

him. And when she said she was tired of sitting still, how readily

he sprang from his chair to walk with her, though it was evident he

was very comfortable where he was. And she! She had laughed at his

jokes; they were not very clever jokes, they were not very new. She

had probably read them herself months before in her own particular

weekly journal. Yet the harmless humbug made him happy. I wonder

if ten years hence she will laugh at such old humour, if ten years

hence he will take such clumsy pains to put her cape about her.

Experience shakes her head, and is amused at my question.

I would have evening classes for the teaching of temper to married

couples, only I fear the institution would languish for lack of

pupils. The husbands would recommend their wives to attend,

generously offering to pay the fee as a birthday present. The wife

would be indignant at the suggestion of good money being thus

wasted. "No, John, dear," she would unselfishly reply, "you need

the lessons more than I do. It would be a shame for me to take them

away from you," and they would wrangle upon the subject for the rest

of the day.

Oh! the folly of it. We pack our hamper for life's picnic with such

pains. We spend so much, we work so hard. We make choice pies, we

cook prime joints, we prepare so carefully the mayonnaise, we mix

with loving hands the salad, we cram the basket to the lid with

every delicacy we can think of. Everything to make the picnic a

success is there except the salt. Ah! woe is me, we forget the

salt. We slave at our desks, in our workshops, to make a home for

those we love; we give up our pleasures, we give up our rest. We

toil in our kitchen from morning till night, and we render the whole

feast tasteless for want of a ha'porth of salt--for want of a

soupcon of amiability, for want of a handful of kindly words, a

touch of caress, a pinch of courtesy.

Who does not know that estimable housewife, working from eight till

twelve to keep the house in what she calls order? She is so good a

woman, so untiring, so unselfish, so conscientious, so irritating.

Her rooms are so clean, her servants so well managed, her children

so well dressed, her dinners so well cooked; the whole house so

uninviting. Everything about her is in apple-pie order, and

everybody wretched.

My good Madam, you polish your tables, you scour your kettles, but

the most valuable piece of furniture in the whole house you are

letting to rack and ruin for want of a little pains. You will find

it in your own room, my dear Lady, in front of your own mirror. It

is getting shabby and dingy, old-looking before its time; the polish

is rubbed off it, Madam, it is losing its brightness and charm. Do

you remember when he first brought it home, how proud he was of it?

Do you think you have used it well, knowing how he valued it? A

little less care of your pots and your pans, Madam, a little more of

yourself were wiser. Polish yourself up, Madam; you had a pretty

wit once, a pleasant laugh, a conversation that was not confined

exclusively to the short-comings of servants, the wrong-doings of

tradesmen. My dear Madam, we do not live on spotless linen, and

crumbless carpets. Hunt out that bundle of old letters you keep

tied up in faded ribbon at the back of your bureau drawer--a pity

you don't read them oftener. He did not enthuse about your cuffs

and collars, gush over the neatness of your darning. It was your

tangled hair he raved about, your sunny smile (we have not seen it

for some years, Madam--the fault of the Cook and the Butcher, I

presume), your little hands, your rosebud mouth--it has lost its

shape, Madam, of late. Try a little less scolding of Mary Ann, and

practise a laugh once a day: you might get back the dainty curves.

It would be worth trying. It was a pretty mouth once.

Who invented that mischievous falsehood that the way to a man's

heart was through his stomach? How many a silly woman, taking it

for truth, has let love slip out of the parlour, while she was busy

in the kitchen. Of course, if you were foolish enough to marry a

pig, I suppose you must be content to devote your life to the

preparation of hog's-wash. But are you sure that he IS a pig? If

by any chance he be not?--then, Madam, you are making a grievous

mistake. My dear Lady, you are too modest. If I may say so without

making you unduly conceited, even at the dinner-table itself, you

are of much more importance than the mutton. Courage, Madam, be not

afraid to tilt a lance even with your own cook. You can be more

piquant than the sauce a la Tartare, more soothing surely than the

melted butter. There was a time when he would not have known

whether he was eating beef or pork with you the other side of the

table. Whose fault is it? Don't think so poorly of us. We are not

ascetics, neither are we all gourmets: most of us plain men, fond

of our dinner, as a healthy man should be, but fonder still of our

sweethearts and wives, let us hope. Try us. A moderately-cooked

dinner--let us even say a not-too-well-cooked dinner, with you

looking your best, laughing and talking gaily and cleverly--as you

can, you know--makes a pleasanter meal for us, after the day's work

is done, than that same dinner, cooked to perfection, with you

silent, jaded, and anxious, your pretty hair untidy, your pretty

face wrinkled with care concerning the sole, with anxiety regarding

the omelette.

My poor Martha, be not troubled about so many things. YOU are the

one thing needful--if the bricks and mortar are to be a home. See

to it that YOU are well served up, that YOU are done to perfection,

that YOU are tender and satisfying, that YOU are worth sitting down

to. We wanted a wife, a comrade, a friend; not a cook and a nurse

on the cheap.

But of what use is it to talk? the world will ever follow its own

folly. When I think of all the good advice that I have given it,

and of the small result achieved, I confess I grow discouraged. I

was giving good advice to a lady only the other day. I was

instructing her as to the proper treatment of aunts. She was

sucking a lead-pencil, a thing I am always telling her not to do.

She took it out of her mouth to speak.

"I suppose you know how everybody ought to do everything," she said.

There are times when it is necessary to sacrifice one's modesty to

one's duty.

"Of course I do," I replied.

"And does Mama know how everybody ought to do everything?" was the

second question.

My conviction on this point was by no means so strong, but for

domestic reasons I again sacrificed myself to expediency.

"Certainly," I answered; "and take that pencil out of your mouth.

I've told you of that before. You'll swallow it one day, and then

you'll get perichondritis and die."

She appeared to be solving a problem.

"All grown-up people seem to know everything," she summarized.

There are times when I doubt if children are as simple as they look.

If it be sheer stupidity that prompts them to make remarks of this

character, one should pity them, and seek to improve them. But if

it be not stupidity? well then, one should still seek to improve

them, but by a different method.

The other morning I overheard the nurse talking to this particular

specimen. The woman is a most worthy creature, and she was

imparting to the child some really sound advice. She was in the

middle of an unexceptional exhortation concerning the virtue of

silence, when Dorothea interrupted her with--

"Oh, do be quiet, Nurse. I never get a moment's peace from your

chatter."

Such an interruption discourages a woman who is trying to do her

duty.

Last Tuesday evening she was unhappy. Myself, I think that rhubarb

should never be eaten before April, and then never with lemonade.

Her mother read her a homily upon the subject of pain. It was

impressed upon her that we must be patient, that we must put up with

the trouble that God sends us. Dorothea would descend to details,

as children will.

"Must we put up with the cod-liver oil that God sends us?"

"Yes, decidedly."

"And with the nurses that God sends us?"

"Certainly; and be thankful that you've got them, some little girls

haven't any nurse. And don't talk so much."

On Friday I found the mother in tears.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing," was the answer; "only Baby. She's such a strange

child. I can't make her out at all. "

"What has she been up to now?"

"Oh, she will argue, you know."

She has that failing. I don't know where she gets it from, but

she's got it.

"Well?"

"Well, she made me cross; and, to punish her, I told her she

shouldn't take her doll's perambulator out with her."

"Yes?"

"Well, she didn't say anything then, but so soon as I was outside

the door, I heard her talking to herself--you know her way?"

"Yes?"

"She said--"

"Yes, she said?"

"She said, 'I must be patient. I must put up with the mother God

has sent me.'"

She lunches down-stairs on Sundays. We have her with us once a week

to give her the opportunity of studying manners and behaviour.

Milson had dropped in, and we were discussing politics. I was

interested, and, pushing my plate aside, leant forward with my

elbows on the table. Dorothea has a habit of talking to herself in

a high-pitched whisper capable of being heard above an Adelphi love

scene. I heard her say--

"I must sit up straight. I mustn't sprawl with my elbows on the

table. It is only common, vulgar people behave that way."

I looked across at her; she was sitting most correctly, and appeared

to be contemplating something a thousand miles away. We had all of

us been lounging! We sat up stiffly, and conversation flagged.

Of course we made a joke of it after the child was gone. But

somehow it didn't seem to be OUR joke.

I wish I could recollect my childhood. I should so like to know if

children are as simple as they can look.

ON THE DELIGHTS AND BENEFITS OF SLAVERY

My study window looks down upon Hyde Park, and often, to quote the

familiar promise of each new magazine, it amuses and instructs me to

watch from my tower the epitome of human life that passes to and fro

beneath. At the opening of the gates, creeps in the woman of the

streets. Her pitiful work for the time being is over. Shivering in

the chill dawn, she passes to her brief rest. Poor Slave! Lured to

the galley's lowest deck, then chained there. Civilization, tricked

fool, they say has need of such. You serve as the dogs of Eastern

towns. But at least, it seems to me, we need not spit on you. Home

to your kennel! Perchance, if the Gods be kind, they may send you

dreams of a cleanly hearth, where you lie with a silver collar round

your neck.

Next comes the labourer--the hewer of wood, the drawer of water-

-slouching wearily to his toil; sleep clinging still about his

leaden eyes, his pittance of food carried tied up in a dish-clout.

The first stroke of the hour clangs from Big Ben. Haste thee,

fellow-slave, lest the overseer's whip, "Out, we will have no

lie-a-beds here," descend upon thy patient back.

Later, the artisan, with his bag of tools across his shoulder. He,

too, listens fearfully to the chiming of the bells. For him also

there hangs ready the whip.

After him, the shop boy and the shop girl, making love as they walk,

not to waste time. And after these the slaves of the desk and of

the warehouse, employers and employed, clerks and tradesmen, office

boys and merchants. To your places, slaves of all ranks. Get you

unto your burdens.

Now, laughing and shouting as they run, the children, the sons and

daughters of the slaves. Be industrious, little children, and learn

your lessons, that when the time comes you may be ready to take from

our hands the creaking oar, to slip into our seat at the roaring

loom. For we shall not be slaves for ever, little children. It is

the good law of the land. So many years in the galleys, so many

years in the fields; then we can claim our freedom. Then we shall

go, little children, back to the land of our birth. And you we must

leave behind us to take up the tale of our work. So, off to your

schools, little children, and learn to be good little slaves.

Next, pompous and sleek, come the educated slaves--journalists,

doctors, judges, and poets; the attorney, the artist, the player,

the priest. They likewise scurry across the Park, looking anxiously

from time to time at their watches, lest they be late for their

appointments; thinking of the rates and taxes to be earned, of the

bonnets to be paid for, the bills to be met. The best scourged,

perhaps, of all, these slaves. The cat reserved for them has fifty

tails in place of merely two or three. Work, you higher

middle-class slave, or you shall come down to the smoking of

twopenny cigars; harder yet, or you shall drink shilling claret;

harder, or you shall lose your carriage and ride in a penny bus;

your wife's frocks shall be of last year's fashion; your trousers

shall bag at the knees; from Kensington you shall be banished to

Kilburn, if the tale of your bricks run short. Oh, a many-thonged

whip is yours, my genteel brother.

The slaves of fashion are the next to pass beneath me in review.

They are dressed and curled with infinite pains. The liveried,

pampered footman these, kept more for show than use; but their

senseless tasks none the less labour to them. Here must they come

every day, merry or sad. By this gravel path and no other must they

walk; these phrases shall they use when they speak to one another.

For an hour they must go slowly up and down upon a bicycle from Hyde

Park Corner to the Magazine and back. And these clothes must they

wear; their gloves of this colour, their neck-ties of this pattern.

In the afternoon they must return again, this time in a carriage,

dressed in another livery, and for an hour they must pass slowly to

and fro in foolish procession. For dinner they must don yet another

livery, and after dinner they must stand about at dreary social

functions till with weariness and boredom their heads feel dropping

from their shoulders.

With the evening come the slaves back from their work: barristers,

thinking out their eloquent appeals; school-boys, conning their

dog-eared grammars; City men, planning their schemes; the wearers of

motley, cudgelling their poor brains for fresh wit with which to

please their master; shop boys and shop girls, silent now as,

together, they plod homeward; the artisan; the labourer. Two or

three hours you shall have to yourselves, slaves, to think and love

and play, if you be not too tired to think, or love, or play. Then

to your litter, that you may be ready for the morrow's task.

The twilight deepens into dark; there comes back the woman of the

streets. As the shadows, she rounds the City's day. Work strikes

its tent. Evil creeps from its peering place.

So we labour, driven by the whip of necessity, an army of slaves.

If we do not our work, the whip descends upon us; only the pain we

feel in our stomach instead of on our back. And because of that, we

call ourselves free men.

Some few among us bravely struggle to be really free: they are our

tramps and outcasts. We well-behaved slaves shrink from them, for

the wages of freedom in this world are vermin and starvation. We

can live lives worth living only by placing the collar round our

neck.

There are times when one asks oneself: Why this endless labour? Why

this building of houses, this cooking of food, this making of

clothes? Is the ant so much more to be envied than the grasshopper,

because she spends her life in grubbing and storing, and can spare

no time for singing? Why this complex instinct, driving us to a

thousand labours to satisfy a thousand desires? We have turned the

world into a workshop to provide ourselves with toys. To purchase

luxury we have sold our ease.

Oh, Children of Israel! why were ye not content in your wilderness?

It seems to have been a pattern wilderness. For you, a simple

wholesome food, ready cooked, was provided. You took no thought for

rent and taxes; you had no poor among you--no poor-rate collectors.

You suffered not from indigestion, nor the hundred ills that follow

over-feeding; an omer for every man was your portion, neither more

nor less. You knew not you had a liver. Doctors wearied you not

with their theories, their physics, and their bills. You were

neither landowners nor leaseholders, neither shareholders nor

debenture holders. The weather and the market reports troubled you

not. The lawyer was unknown to you; you wanted no advice; you had

nought to quarrel about with your neighbour. No riches were yours

for the moth and rust to damage. Your yearly income and expenditure

you knew would balance to a fraction. Your wife and children were

provided for. Your old age caused you no anxiety; you knew you

would always have enough to live upon in comfort. Your funeral, a

simple and tasteful affair, would be furnished by the tribe. And

yet, poor, foolish child, fresh from the Egyptian brickfield, you

could not rest satisfied. You hungered for the fleshpots, knowing

well what flesh-pots entail: the cleaning of the flesh-pots, the

forging of the flesh-pots, the hewing of wood to make the fires for

the boiling of the flesh-pots, the breeding of beasts to fill the

pots, the growing of fodder to feed the beasts to fill the pots.

All the labour of our life is centred round our flesh-pots. On the

altar of the flesh-pot we sacrifice our leisure, our peace of mind.

For a mess of pottage we sell our birthright.

Oh! Children of Israel, saw you not the long punishment you were

preparing for yourselves, when in your wilderness you set up the

image of the Calf, and fell before it, crying--"This shall be our

God."

You would have veal. Thought you never of the price man pays for

Veal? The servants of the Golden Calf! I see them, stretched

before my eyes, a weary, endless throng. I see them toiling in the

mines, the black sweat on their faces. I see them in sunless

cities, silent, and grimy, and bent. I see them, ague-twisted, in

the rain-soaked fields. I see them, panting by the furnace doors.

I see them, in loin-cloth and necklace, the load upon their head. I

see them in blue coats and red coats, marching to pour their blood

as an offering on the altar of the Calf. I see them in homespun and

broadcloth, I see them in smock and gaiters, I see them in cap and

apron, the servants of the Calf. They swarm on the land and they

dot the sea. They are chained to the anvil and counter; they are

chained to the bench and the desk. They make ready the soil, they

till the fields where the Golden Calf is born. They build the ship,

and they sail the ship that carries the Golden Calf. They fashion

the pots, they mould the pans, they carve the tables, they turn the

chairs, they dream of the sauces, they dig for the salt, they weave

the damask, they mould the dish to serve the Golden Calf.

The work of the world is to this end, that we eat of the Calf. War

and Commerce, Science and Law! what are they but the four pillars

supporting the Golden Calf? He is our God. It is on his back that

we have journeyed from the primeval forest, where our ancestors ate

nuts and fruit. He is our God. His temple is in every street. His

blue-robed priest stands ever at the door, calling to the people to

worship. Hark! his voice rises on the gas-tainted air--"Now's your

time! Now's your time! Buy! Buy! ye people. Bring hither the

sweat of your brow, the sweat of your brain, the ache of your heart,

buy Veal with it. Bring me the best years of your life. Bring me

your thoughts, your hopes, your loves; ye shall have Veal for them.

Now's your time! Now's your time! Buy! Buy!"

Oh! Children of Israel, was Veal, even with all its trimmings, quite

worth the price?

And we! what wisdom have we learned, during the centuries? I talked

with a rich man only the other evening. He calls himself a

Financier, whatever that may mean. He leaves his beautiful house,

some twenty miles out of London, at a quarter to eight, summer and

winter, after a hurried breakfast by himself, while his guests still

sleep, and he gets back just in time to dress for an elaborate

dinner he himself is too weary or too preoccupied to more than

touch. If ever he is persuaded to give himself a holiday it is for

a fortnight in Ostend, when it is most crowded and uncomfortable.

He takes his secretary with him, receives and despatches a hundred

telegrams a day, and has a private telephone, through which he can

speak direct to London, brought up into his bedroom.

I suppose the telephone is really a useful invention. Business men

tell me they wonder how they contrived to conduct their affairs

without it. My own wonder always is, how any human being with the

ordinary passions of his race can conduct his business, or even

himself, creditably, within a hundred yards of the invention. I can

imagine Job, or Griselda, or Socrates liking to have a telephone

about them as exercise. Socrates, in particular, would have made

quite a reputation for himself out of a three months' subscription

to a telephone. Myself, I am, perhaps, too sensitive. I once lived

for a month in an office with a telephone, if one could call it

life. I was told that if I had stuck to the thing for two or three

months longer, I should have got used to it. I know friends of

mine, men once fearless and high-spirited, who now stand in front of

their own telephone for a quarter of an hour at a time, and never so

much as answer it back. They tell me that at first they used to

swear and shout at it as I did; but now their spirit seems crushed.

That is what happens: you either break the telephone, or the

telephone breaks you. You want to see a man two streets off. You

might put on your hat, and be round at his office in five minutes.

You are on the point of starting when the telephone catches your

eye. You think you will ring him up to make sure he is in. You

commence by ringing up some half-dozen times before anybody takes

any notice of you whatever. You are burning with indignation at

this neglect, and have left the instrument to sit down and pen a

stinging letter of complaint to the Company when the ring-back

re-calls you. You seize the ear trumpets, and shout--

"How is it that I can never get an answer when I ring? Here have I

been ringing for the last half-hour. I have rung twenty times."

(This is a falsehood. You have rung only six times, and the

"half-hour" is an absurd exaggeration; but you feel the mere truth

would not be adequate to the occasion.) "I think it disgraceful,"

you continue, "and I shall complain to the Company. What is the use

of my having a telephone if I can't get any answer when I ring?

Here I pay a large sum for having this thing, and I can't get any

notice taken. I've been ringing all the morning. Why is it?"

Then you wait for the answer.

"What--what do you say? I can't hear what you say."

"I say I've been ringing here for over an hour, and I can't get any

reply," you call back. "I shall complain to the Company."

"You want what? Don't stand so near the tube. I can't hear what

you say. What number?"

"Bother the number; I say why is it I don't get an answer when I

ring?"

"Eight hundred and what?"

You can't argue any more, after that. The machine would give way

under the language you want to make use of. Half of what you feel

would probably cause an explosion at some point where the wire was

weak. Indeed, mere language of any kind would fall short of the

requirements of the case. A hatchet and a gun are the only

intermediaries through which you could convey your meaning by this

time. So you give up all attempt to answer back, and meekly mention

that you want to be put in communication with four-five-seven-six.

"Four-nine-seven-six?" says the girl.

"No; four-five-seven-six."

"Did you say seven-six or six-seven?"

"Six-seven--no! I mean seven-six: no--wait a minute. I don't know

what I do mean now."

"Well, I wish you'd find out," says the young lady severely. "You

are keeping me here all the morning."

So you look up the number in the book again, and at last she tells

you that you are in connection; and then, ramming the trumpet tight

against your ear, you stand waiting.

And if there is one thing more than another likely to make a man

feel ridiculous it is standing on tip-toe in a corner, holding a

machine to his head, and listening intently to nothing. Your back

aches and your head aches, your very hair aches. You hear the door

open behind you and somebody enter the room. You can't turn your

head. You swear at them, and hear the door close with a bang. It

immediately occurs to you that in all probability it was Henrietta.

She promised to call for you at half-past twelve: you were to take

her to lunch. It was twelve o'clock when you were fool enough to

mix yourself up with this infernal machine, and it probably is

half-past twelve by now. Your past life rises before you,

accompanied by dim memories of your grandmother. You are wondering

how much longer you can bear the strain of this attitude, and

whether after all you do really want to see the man in the next

street but two, when the girl in the exchange-room calls up to know

if you're done.

"Done!" you retort bitterly; "why, I haven't begun yet."

"Well, be quick," she says, "because you're wasting time."

Thus admonished, you attack the thing again. "ARE you there?" you

cry in tones that ought to move the heart of a Charity Commissioner;

and then, oh joy! oh rapture! you hear a faint human voice replying-

"Yes, what is it?"

"Oh! Are you four-five-seven-six?"

"What?"

"Are you four-five-seven-six, Williamson?"

"What! who are you?"

"Eight-one-nine, Jones."

"Bones?"

"No, JONES. Are you four-five-seven-six?"

"Yes; what is it?"

"Is Mr. Williamson in?"

"Will I what--who are you?"

"Jones! Is Mr. Williamson in?"

"Who?"

"Williamson. Will-i-am-son!"

"You're the son of what? I can't hear what you say."

Then you gather yourself for one final effort, and succeed, by

superhuman patience, in getting the fool to understand that you wish

to know if Mr. Williamson is in, and he says, so it sounds to you,

"Be in all the morning."

So you snatch up your hat and run round.

"Oh, I've come to see Mr. Williamson," you say.

"Very sorry, sir," is the polite reply, "but he's out."

"Out? Why, you just now told me through the telephone that he'd be

in all the morning."

"No, I said, he 'WON'T be in all the morning.'"

You go back to the office, and sit down in front of that telephone

and look at it. There it hangs, calm and imperturbable. Were it an

ordinary instrument, that would be its last hour. You would go

straight down-stairs, get the coal-hammer and the kitchen-poker, and

divide it into sufficient pieces to give a bit to every man in

London. But you feel nervous of these electrical affairs, and there

is a something about that telephone, with its black hole and curly

wires, that cows you. You have a notion that if you don't handle it

properly something may come and shock you, and then there will be an

inquest, and bother of that sort, so you only curse it.

That is what happens when you want to use the telephone from your

end. But that is not the worst that the telephone can do. A

sensible man, after a little experience, can learn to leave the

thing alone. Your worst troubles are not of your own making. You

are working against time; you have given instructions not to be

disturbed. Perhaps it is after lunch, and you are thinking with

your eyes closed, so that your thoughts shall not be distracted by

the objects about the room. In either case you are anxious not to

leave your chair, when off goes that telephone bell and you spring

from your chair, uncertain, for the moment, whether you have been

shot, or blown up with dynamite. It occurs to you in your weakness

that if you persist in taking no notice, they will get tired, and

leave you alone. But that is not their method. The bell rings

violently at ten-second intervals. You have nothing to wrap your

head up in. You think it will be better to get this business over

and done with. You go to your fate and call back savagely--

"What is it? What do you want?"

No answer, only a confused murmur, prominent out of which come the

voices of two men swearing at one another. The language they are

making use of is disgraceful. The telephone seems peculiarly

adapted for the conveyance of blasphemy. Ordinary language sounds

indistinct through it; but every word those two men are saying can

be heard by all the telephone subscribers in London.

It is useless attempting to listen till they have done. When they

are exhausted, you apply to the tube again. No answer is

obtainable. You get mad, and become sarcastic; only being sarcastic

when you are not sure that anybody is at the other end to hear you

is unsatisfying.

At last, after a quarter of an hour or so of saying, "Are you

there?" "Yes, I'm here," "Well?" the young lady at the Exchange

asks what you want.

"I don't want anything," you reply.

"Then why do you keep talking?" she retorts; "you mustn't play with

the thing."

This renders you speechless with indignation for a while, upon

recovering from which you explain that somebody rang you up.

"WHO rang you up?" she asks.

"I don't know."

"I wish you did," she observes.

Generally disgusted, you slam the trumpet up and return to your

chair. The instant you are seated the bell clangs again; and you

fly up and demand to know what the thunder they want, and who the

thunder they are.

"Don't speak so loud, we can't hear you. What do you want?" is the

answer.

"I don't want anything. What do you want? Why do you ring me up,

and then not answer me? Do leave me alone, if you can!"

"We can't get Hong Kongs at seventy-four."

"Well, I don't care if you can't."

"Would you like Zulus?"

"What are you talking about?" you reply; "I don't know what you

mean."

"Would you like Zulus--Zulus at seventy-three and a half?"

"I wouldn't have 'em at six a penny. What are you talking about?"

"Hong Kongs--we can't get them at seventy-four. Oh, half-a-minute"

(the half-a-minute passes). "Are you there?"

"Yes, but you are talking to the wrong man."

"We can get you Hong Kongs at seventy-four and seven-eights."

"Bother Hong Kongs, and you too. I tell you, you are talking to the

wrong man. I've told you once."

"Once what?"

"Why, that I am the wrong man--I mean that you are talking to the

wrong man."

"Who are you?"

"Eight-one-nine, Jones."

"Oh, aren't you one-nine-eight?"

"No."

"Oh, good-bye."

"Good-bye."

How can a man after that sit down and write pleasantly of the

European crisis? And, if it were needed, herein lies another

indictment against the telephone. I was engaged in an argument,

which, if not in itself serious, was at least concerned with a

serious enough subject, the unsatisfactory nature of human riches;

and from that highly moral discussion have I been lured, by the

accidental sight of the word "telephone," into the writing of matter

which can have the effect only of exciting to frenzy all critics of

the New Humour into whose hands, for their sins, this book may come.

Let me forget my transgression and return to my sermon, or rather to

the sermon of my millionaire acquaintance.

It was one day after dinner, we sat together in his magnificently

furnished dining-room. We had lighted our cigars at the silver

lamp. The butler had withdrawn.

"These cigars we are smoking," my friend suddenly remarked, a propos

apparently of nothing, "they cost me five shillings apiece, taking

them by the thousand."

"I can quite believe it," I answered; "they are worth it."

"Yes, to you," he replied, almost savagely. "What do you usually

pay for your cigars?"

We had known each other years ago. When I first met him his offices

consisted of a back room up three flights of stairs in a dingy by-

street off the Strand, which has since disappeared. We occasionally

dined together, in those days, at a restaurant in Great Portland

Street, for one and nine. Our acquaintanceship was of sufficient

standing to allow of such a question.

"Threepence," I answered. "They work out at about twopence

three-farthings by the box."

"Just so," he growled; "and your twopenny-three-farthing weed gives

you precisely the same amount of satisfaction that this five

shilling cigar affords me. That means four and ninepence farthing

wasted every time I smoke. I pay my cook two hundred a year. I

don't enjoy my dinner as much as when it cost me four shillings,

including a quarter flask of Chianti. What is the difference,

personally, to me whether I drive to my office in a carriage and

pair, or in an omnibus? I often do ride in a bus: it saves

trouble. It is absurd wasting time looking for one's coachman, when

the conductor of an omnibus that passes one's door is hailing one a

few yards off. Before I could afford even buses--when I used to

walk every morning to the office from Hammersmith--I was healthier.

It irritates me to think how hard I work for no earthly benefit to

myself. My money pleases a lot of people I don't care two straws

about, and who are only my friends in the hope of making something

out of me. If I could eat a hundred-guinea dinner myself every

night, and enjoy it four hundred times as much as I used to enjoy a

five-shilling dinner, there would be some sense in it. Why do I do

it?"

I had never heard him talk like this before. In his excitement he

rose from the table, and commenced pacing the room.

"Why don't I invest my money in the two and a half per cents?" he

continued. "At the very worst I should be safe for five thousand a

year. What, in the name of common sense, does a man want with more?

I am always saying to myself, I'll do it; why don't I?

"Well, why not?" I echoed.

"That's what I want you to tell me," he returned. "You set up for

understanding human nature, it's a mystery to me. In my place, you

would do as I do; you know that. If somebody left you a hundred

thousand pounds to-morrow, you would start a newspaper, or build a

theatre--some damn-fool trick for getting rid of the money and

giving yourself seventeen hours' anxiety a day; you know you would."

I hung my head in shame. I felt the justice of the accusation. It

has always been my dream to run a newspaper and own a theatre.

"If we worked only for what we could spend," he went on, "the City

might put up its shutters to-morrow morning. What I want to get at

the bottom of is this instinct that drives us to work apparently for

work's own sake. What is this strange thing that gets upon our back

and spurs us?"

A servant entered at that moment with a cablegram from the manager

of one of his Austrian mines, and he had to leave me for his study.

But, walking home, I fell to pondering on his words. WHY this

endless work? Why each morning do we get up and wash and dress

ourselves, to undress ourselves at night and go to bed again? Why

do we work merely to earn money to buy food; and eat food so as to

gain strength that we may work? Why do we live, merely in the end

to say good-bye to one another? Why do we labour to bring children

into the world that they may die and be buried?

Of what use our mad striving, our passionate desire? Will it matter

to the ages whether, once upon a time, the Union Jack or the

Tricolour floated over the battlements of Badajoz? Yet we poured

our blood into its ditches to decide the question. Will it matter,

in the days when the glacial period shall have come again, to clothe

the earth with silence, whose foot first trod the Pole? Yet,

generation after generation, we mile its roadway with our whitening

bones. So very soon the worms come to us; does it matter whether we

love, or hate? Yet the hot blood rushes through our veins, we wear

out heart and brain for shadowy hopes that ever fade as we press

forward.

The flower struggles up from seed-pod, draws the sweet sap from the

ground, folds its petals each night, and sleeps. Then love comes to

it in a strange form, and it longs to mingle its pollen with the

pollen of some other flower. So it puts forth its gay blossoms, and

the wandering insect bears the message from seed-pod to seed-pod.

And the seasons pass, bringing with them the sunshine and the rain,

till the flower withers, never having known the real purpose for

which it lived, thinking the garden was made for it, not it for the

garden. The coral insect dreams in its small soul, which is

possibly its small stomach, of home and food. So it works and

strives deep down in the dark waters, never knowing of the

continents it is fashioning.

But the question still remains: for what purpose is it all?

Science explains it to us. By ages of strife and effort we improve

the race; from ether, through the monkey, man is born. So, through

the labour of the coming ages, he will free himself still further

from the brute. Through sorrow and through struggle, by the sweat

of brain and brow, he will lift himself towards the angels. He will

come into his kingdom.

But why the building? Why the passing of the countless ages? Why

should he not have been born the god he is to be, imbued at birth

with all the capabilities his ancestors have died acquiring? Why

the Pict and Hun that _I_ may be? Why _I_, that a descendant of my

own, to whom I shall seem a savage, shall come after me? Why, if

the universe be ordered by a Creator to whom all things are

possible, the protoplasmic cell? Why not the man that is to be?

Shall all the generations be so much human waste that he may live?

Am I but another layer of the soil preparing for him?

Or, if our future be in other spheres, then why the need of this

planet? Are we labouring at some Work too vast for us to perceive?

Are our passions and desires mere whips and traces by the help of

which we are driven? Any theory seems more hopeful than the thought

that all our eager, fretful lives are but the turning of a useless

prison crank. Looking back the little distance that our dim eyes

can penetrate the past, what do we find? Civilizations, built up

with infinite care, swept aside and lost. Beliefs for which men

lived and died, proved to be mockeries. Greek Art crushed to the

dust by Gothic bludgeons. Dreams of fraternity, drowned in blood by

a Napoleon. What is left to us, but the hope that the work itself,

not the result, is the real monument? Maybe, we are as children,

asking, "Of what use are these lessons? What good will they ever be

to us?" But there comes a day when the lad understands why he

learnt grammar and geography, when even dates have a meaning for

him. But this is not until he has left school, and gone out into

the wider world. So, perhaps, when we are a little more grown up,

we too may begin to understand the reason for our living.

ON THE CARE AND MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN

I talked to a woman once on the subject of honeymoons. I said,

"Would you recommend a long honeymoon, or a Saturday to Monday

somewhere?" A silence fell upon her. I gathered she was looking

back rather than forward to her answer.

"I would advise a long honeymoon," she replied at length, "the

old-fashioned month."

"Why," I persisted, "I thought the tendency of the age was to cut

these things shorter and shorter."

"It is the tendency of the age," she answered, "to seek escape from

many things it would be wiser to face. I think myself that, for

good or evil, the sooner it is over--the sooner both the man and the

woman know--the better."

"The sooner what is over?" I asked.

If she had a fault, this woman, about which I am not sure, it was an

inclination towards enigma.

She crossed to the window and stood there, looking out.

"Was there not a custom," she said, still gazing down into the wet,

glistening street, "among one of the ancient peoples, I forget

which, ordaining that when a man and woman, loving one another, or

thinking that they loved, had been joined together, they should go

down upon their wedding night to the temple? And into the dark

recesses of the temple, through many winding passages, the priest

led them until they came to the great chamber where dwelt the voice

of their god. There the priest left them, clanging-to the massive

door behind him, and there, alone in silence, they made their

sacrifice; and in the night the Voice spoke to them, showing them

their future life--whether they had chosen well; whether their love

would live or die. And in the morning the priest returned and led

them back into the day; and they dwelt among their fellows. But no

one was permitted to question them, nor they to answer should any do

so. Well, do you know, our nineteenth-century honeymoon at

Brighton, Switzerland, or Ramsgate, as the choice or necessity may

be, always seems to me merely another form of that night spent alone

in the temple before the altar of that forgotten god. Our young men

and women marry, and we kiss them and congratulate them; and,

standing on the doorstep, throw rice and old slippers, and shout

good wishes after them; and he waves his gloved hand to us, and she

flutters her little handkerchief from the carriage window; and we

watch their smiling faces and hear their laughter until the corner

hides them from our view. Then we go about our own business, and a

short time passes by; and one day we meet them again, and their

faces have grown older and graver; and I always wonder what the

Voice has told them during that little while that they have been

absent from our sight. But of course it would not do to ask them.

Nor would they answer truly if we did."

My friend laughed, and, leaving the window, took her place beside

the tea-things, and other callers dropping in, we fell to talk of

pictures, plays, and people.

But I felt it would be unwise to act on her sole advice, much as I

have always valued her opinion.

A woman takes life too seriously. It is a serious affair to most of

us, the Lord knows. That is why it is well not to take it more

seriously than need be.

Little Jack and little Jill fall down the hill, hurting their little

knees, and their little noses, spilling the hard-earned water. We

are very philosophical.

"Oh, don't cry!" we tell them, "that is babyish. Little boys and

little girls must learn to bear pain. Up you get, fill the pail

again, and try once more."

Little Jack and little Jill rub their dirty knuckles into their

little eyes, looking ruefully at their bloody little knees, and trot

back with the pail. We laugh at them, but not ill-naturedly.

"Poor little souls," we say; "how they did hullabaloo. One might

have thought they were half-killed. And it was only a broken crown,

after all. What a fuss children make!" We bear with much stoicism

the fall of little Jack and little Jill.

But when WE--grown-up Jack with moustache turning grey; grown-up

Jill with the first faint "crow's feet" showing--when WE tumble down

the hill, and OUR pail is spilt. Ye Heavens! what a tragedy has

happened. Put out the stars, turn off the sun, suspend the laws of

nature. Mr. Jack and Mrs. Jill, coming down the hill--what they

were doing on the hill we will not inquire--have slipped over a

stone, placed there surely by the evil powers of the universe. Mr.

Jack and Mrs. Jill have bumped their silly heads. Mr. Jack and Mrs.

Jill have hurt their little hearts, and stand marvelling that the

world can go about its business in the face of such disaster.

Don't take the matter quite so seriously, Jack and Jill. You have

spilled your happiness, you must toil up the hill again and refill

the pail. Carry it more carefully next time. What were you doing?

Playing some fool's trick, I'll be bound.

A laugh and a sigh, a kiss and good-bye, is our life. Is it worth

so much fretting? It is a merry life on the whole. Courage,

comrade. A campaign cannot be all drum and fife and stirrup-cup.

The marching and the fighting must come into it somewhere. There

are pleasant bivouacs among the vineyards, merry nights around the

camp fires. White hands wave a welcome to us; bright eyes dim at

our going. Would you run from the battle-music? What have you to

complain of? Forward: the medal to some, the surgeon's knife to

others; to all of us, sooner or later, six feet of mother earth.

What are you afraid of? Courage, comrade.

There is a mean between basking through life with the smiling

contentment of the alligator, and shivering through it with the

aggressive sensibility of the Lama determined to die at every cross

word. To bear it as a man we must also feel it as a man. My

philosophic friend, seek not to comfort a brother standing by the

coffin of his child with the cheery suggestion that it will be all

the same a hundred years hence, because, for one thing, the

observation is not true: the man is changed for all eternity--

possibly for the better, but don't add that. A soldier with a

bullet in his neck is never quite the man he was. But he can laugh

and he can talk, drink his wine and ride his horse. Now and again,

towards evening, when the weather is trying, the sickness will come

upon him. You will find him on a couch in a dark corner.

"Hallo! old fellow, anything up?"

"Oh, just a twinge, the old wound, you know. I will be better in a

little while."

Shut the door of the dark room quietly. I should not stay even to

sympathize with him if I were you. The men will be coming to screw

the coffin down soon. I think he would like to be alone with it

till then. Let us leave him. He will come back to the club later

on in the season. For a while we may have to give him another ten

points or so, but he will soon get back his old form. Now and

again, when he meets the other fellows' boys shouting on the

towing-path; when Brown rushes up the drive, paper in hand, to tell

him how that young scapegrace Jim has won his Cross; when he is

congratulating Jones's eldest on having passed with honours, the old

wound may give him a nasty twinge. But the pain will pass away. He

will laugh at our stories and tell us his own; eat his dinner, play

his rubber. It is only a wound.

Tommy can never be ours, Jenny does not love us. We cannot afford

claret, so we will have to drink beer. Well, what would you have us

do? Yes, let us curse Fate by all means--some one to curse is

always useful. Let us cry and wring our hands--for how long? The

dinner-bell will ring soon, and the Smiths are coming. We shall

have to talk about the opera and the picture-galleries. Quick,

where is the eau-de-Cologne? where are the curling-tongs? Or would

you we committed suicide? Is it worth while? Only a few more

years--perhaps to-morrow, by aid of a piece of orange peel or a

broken chimney-pot--and Fate will save us all that trouble.

Or shall we, as sulky children, mope day after day? We are a

broken-hearted little Jack--little Jill. We will never smile again;

we will pine away and die, and be buried in the spring. The world

is sad, and life so cruel, and heaven so cold. Oh dear! oh dear! we

have hurt ourselves.

We whimper and whine at every pain. In old strong days men faced

real dangers, real troubles every hour; they had no time to cry.

Death and disaster stood ever at the door. Men were contemptuous of

them. Now in each snug protected villa we set to work to make

wounds out of scratches. Every head-ache becomes an agony, every

heart-ache a tragedy. It took a murdered father, a drowned

sweetheart, a dishonoured mother, a ghost, and a slaughtered Prime

Minister to produce the emotions in Hamlet that a modern minor poet

obtains from a chorus girl's frown, or a temporary slump on the

Stock Exchange. Like Mrs. Gummidge, we feel it more. The lighter

and easier life gets the more seriously we go out to meet it. The

boatmen of Ulysses faced the thunder and the sunshine alike with

frolic welcome. We modern sailors have grown more sensitive. The

sunshine scorches us, the rain chills us. We meet both with loud

self-pity.

Thinking these thoughts, I sought a second friend--a man whose

breezy common-sense has often helped me, and him likewise I

questioned on this subject of honeymoons.

"My dear boy," he replied; "take my advice, if ever you get married,

arrange it so that the honeymoon shall only last a week, and let it

be a bustling week into the bargain. Take a Cook's circular tour.

Get married on the Saturday morning, cut the breakfast and all that

foolishness, and catch the eleven-ten from Charing Cross to Paris.

Take her up the Eiffel Tower on Sunday. Lunch at Fontainebleau.

Dine at the Maison Doree, and show her the Moulin Rouge in the

evening. Take the night train for Lucerne. Devote Monday and

Tuesday to doing Switzerland, and get into Rome by Thursday morning,

taking the Italian lakes en route. On Friday cross to Marseilles,

and from there push along to Monte Carlo. Let her have a flutter at

the tables. Start early Saturday morning for Spain, cross the

Pyrenees on mules, and rest at Bordeaux on Sunday. Get back to

Paris on Monday (Monday is always a good day for the opera), and on

Tuesday evening you will be at home, and glad to get there. Don't

give her time to criticize you until she has got used to you. No

man will bear unprotected exposure to a young girl's eyes. The

honeymoon is the matrimonial microscope. Wobble it. Confuse it

with many objects. Cloud it with other interests. Don't sit still

to be examined. Besides, remember that a man always appears at his

best when active, and a woman at her worst. Bustle her, my dear

boy, bustle her: I don't care who she may be. Give her plenty of

luggage to look after; make her catch trains. Let her see the

average husband sprawling comfortably over the railway cushions,

while his wife has to sit bolt upright in the corner left to her.

Let her hear how other men swear. Let her smell other men's

tobacco. Hurry up, and get her accustomed quickly to the sight of

mankind. Then she will be less surprised and shocked as she grows

to know you. One of the best fellows I ever knew spoilt his married

life beyond repair by a long quiet honeymoon. They went off for a

month to a lonely cottage in some heaven-forsaken spot, where never

a soul came near them, and never a thing happened but morning,

afternoon, and night. There for thirty days she overhauled him.

When he yawned--and he yawned pretty often, I guess, during that

month--she thought of the size of his mouth, and when he put his

heels upon the fender she sat and brooded upon the shape of his

feet. At meal-time, not feeling hungry herself, having nothing to

do to make her hungry, she would occupy herself with watching him

eat; and at night, not feeling sleepy for the same reason, she would

lie awake and listen to his snoring. After the first day or two he

grew tired of talking nonsense, and she of listening to it (it

sounded nonsense now they could speak it aloud; they had fancied it

poetry when they had had to whisper it); and having no other

subject, as yet, of common interest, they would sit and stare in

front of them in silence. One day some trifle irritated him and he

swore. On a busy railway platform, or in a crowded hotel, she would

have said, 'Oh!' and they would both have laughed. From that

echoing desert the silly words rose up in widening circles towards

the sky, and that night she cried herself to sleep. Bustle them, my

dear boy, bustle them. We all like each other better the less we

think about one another, and the honeymoon is an exceptionally

critical time. Bustle her, my dear boy, bustle her."

My very worst honeymoon experience took place in the South of

England in eighteen hundred and--well, never mind the exact date,

let us say a few years ago. I was a shy young man at that time.

Many complain of my reserve to this day, but then some girls expect

too much from a man. We all have our shortcomings. Even then,

however, I was not so shy as she. We had to travel from Lyndhurst

in the New Forest to Ventnor, an awkward bit of cross-country work

in those days.

"It's so fortunate you are going too," said her aunt to me on the

Tuesday; "Minnie is always nervous travelling alone. You will be

able to look after her, and I shan't be anxious.

I said it would be a pleasure, and at the time I honestly thought

it. On the Wednesday I went down to the coach office, and booked

two places for Lymington, from where we took the steamer. I had not

a suspicion of trouble.

The booking-clerk was an elderly man. He said--

"I've got the box seat, and the end place on the back bench."

I said--

"Oh, can't I have two together?"

He was a kindly-looking old fellow. He winked at me. I wondered

all the way home why he had winked at me. He said--

"I'll manage it somehow."

I said--

"It's very kind of you, I'm sure.

He laid his hand on my shoulder. He struck me as familiar, but

well-intentioned. He said--

"We have all of us been there."

I thought he was alluding to the Isle of Wight. I said--

"And this is the best time of the year for it, so I'm told." It was

early summer time.

He said--"It's all right in summer, and it's good enough in winter-

-WHILE IT LASTS. You make the most of it, young 'un;" and he

slapped me on the back and laughed.

He would have irritated me in another minute. I paid for the seats

and left him.

At half-past eight the next morning Minnie and I started for the

coach-office. I call her Minnie, not with any wish to be

impertinent, but because I have forgotten her surname. It must be

ten years since I last saw her. She was a pretty girl, too, with

those brown eyes that always cloud before they laugh. Her aunt did

not drive down with us as she had intended, in consequence of a

headache. She was good enough to say she felt every confidence in

me.

The old booking-clerk caught sight of us when we were about a

quarter of a mile away, and drew to us the attention of the

coachman, who communicated the fact of our approach to the gathered

passengers. Everybody left off talking, and waited for us. The

boots seized his horn, and blew--one could hardly call it a blast;

it would be difficult to say what he blew. He put his heart into

it, but not sufficient wind. I think his intention was to welcome

us, but it suggested rather a feeble curse. We learnt subsequently

that he was a beginner on the instrument.

In some mysterious way the whole affair appeared to be our party.

The booking-clerk bustled up and helped Minnie from the cart. I

feared, for a moment, he was going to kiss her. The coachman

grinned when I said good-morning to him. The passengers grinned,

the boots grinned. Two chamber-maids and a waiter came out from the

hotel, and they grinned. I drew Minnie aside, and whispered to her.

I said--

"There's something funny about us. All these people are grinning."

She walked round me, and I walked round her, but we could neither of

us discover anything amusing about the other. The booking-clerk

said--

"It's all right. I've got you young people two places just behind

the box-seat. We'll have to put five of you on that seat. You

won't mind sitting a bit close, will you?"

The booking-clerk winked at the coachman, the coachman winked at the

passengers, the passengers winked at one another--those of them who

could wink--and everybody laughed. The two chamber-maids became

hysterical, and had to cling to each other for support. With the

exception of Minnie and myself, it seemed to be the merriest coach

party ever assembled at Lyndhurst.

We had taken our places, and I was still busy trying to fathom the

joke, when a stout lady appeared on the scene, and demanded to know

her place.

The clerk explained to her that it was in the middle behind the

driver.

"We've had to put five of you on that seat," added the clerk.

The stout lady looked at the seat.

"Five of us can't squeeze into that," she said.

Five of her certainly could not. Four ordinary sized people with

her would find it tight.

"Very well then," said the clerk, "you can have the end place on the

back seat."

"Nothing of the sort," said the stout lady. "I booked my seat on

Monday, and you told me any of the front places were vacant.

"I'LL take the back place," I said, "I don't mind it.

"You stop where you are, young 'un," said the clerk, firmly, "and

don't be a fool. I'll fix HER."

I objected to his language, but his tone was kindness itself.

"Oh, let ME have the back seat," said Minnie, rising, "I'd so like

it."

For answer the coachman put both his hands on her shoulders. He was

a heavy man, and she sat down again.

"Now then, mum," said the clerk, addressing the stout lady, "are you

going up there in the middle, or are you coming up here at the

back?"

"But why not let one of them take the back seat?" demanded the stout

lady, pointing her reticule at Minnie and myself; "they say they'd

like it. Let them have it."

The coachman rose, and addressed his remarks generally.

"Put her up at the back, or leave her behind," he directed. "Man

and wife have never been separated on this coach since I started

running it fifteen year ago, and they ain't going to be now."

A general cheer greeted this sentiment. The stout lady, now

regarded as a would-be blighter of love's young dream, was hustled

into the back seat, the whip cracked, and away we rolled.

So here was the explanation. We were in a honeymoon district, in

June--the most popular month in the whole year for marriage. Every

two out of three couples found wandering about the New Forest in

June are honeymoon couples; the third are going to be. When they

travel anywhere it is to the Isle of Wight. We both had on new

clothes. Our bags happened to be new. By some evil chance our very

umbrellas were new. Our united ages were thirty-seven. The wonder

would have been had we NOT been mistaken for a young married couple.

A day of greater misery I have rarely passed. To Minnie, so her

aunt informed me afterwards, the journey was the most terrible

experience of her life, but then her experience, up to that time,

had been limited. She was engaged, and devotedly attached, to a

young clergyman; I was madly in love with a somewhat plump girl

named Cecilia who lived with her mother at Hampstead. I am positive

as to her living at Hampstead. I remember so distinctly my weekly

walk down the hill from Church Row to the Swiss Cottage station.

When walking down a steep hill all the weight of the body is forced

into the toe of the boot, and when the boot is two sizes too small

for you, and you have been living in it since the early afternoon,

you remember a thing like that. But all my recollections of Cecilia

are painful, and it is needless to pursue them.

Our coach-load was a homely party, and some of the jokes were

broad--harmless enough in themselves, had Minnie and I really been

the married couple we were supposed to be, but even in that case

unnecessary. I can only hope that Minnie did not understand them.

Anyhow, she looked as if she didn't.

I forget where we stopped for lunch, but I remember that lamb and

mint sauce was on the table, and that the circumstance afforded the

greatest delight to all the party, with the exception of the stout

lady, who was still indignant, Minnie and myself. About my

behaviour as a bridegroom opinion appeared to be divided. "He's a

bit standoffish with her," I overheard one lady remark to her

husband; "I like to see 'em a bit kittenish myself." A young

waitress, on the other hand, I am happy to say, showed more sense of

natural reserve. "Well, I respect him for it," she was saying to

the barmaid, as we passed through the hall; "I'd just hate to be

fuzzled over with everybody looking on." Nobody took the trouble to

drop their voices for our benefit. We might have been a pair of

prize love birds on exhibition, the way we were openly discussed.

By the majority we were clearly regarded as a sulky young couple who

would not go through their tricks.

I have often wondered since how a real married couple would have

faced the situation. Possibly, had we consented to give a short

display of marital affection, "by desire," we might have been left

in peace for the remainder of the journey.

Our reputation preceded us on to the steamboat. Minnie begged and

prayed me to let it be known we were not married. How I was to let

it be known, except by requesting the captain to summon the whole

ship's company on deck, and then making them a short speech, I could

not think. Minnie said she could not bear it any longer, and

retired to the ladies' cabin. She went off crying. Her trouble was

attributed by crew and passengers to my coldness. One fool planted

himself opposite me with his legs apart, and shook his head at me.

"Go down and comfort her," he began. "Take an old man's advice.

Put your arms around her. " (He was one of those sentimental

idiots.) "Tell her that you love her."

I told him to go and hang himself, with so much vigour that he all

but fell overboard. He was saved by a poultry crate: I had no luck

that day.

At Ryde the guard, by superhuman effort, contrived to keep us a

carriage to ourselves. I gave him a shilling, because I did not

know what else to do. I would have made it half-a-sovereign if he

had put eight other passengers in with us. At every station people

came to the window to look in at us.

I handed Minnie over to her father on Ventnor platform; and I took

the first train the next morning, to London. I felt I did not want

to see her again for a little while; and I felt convinced she could

do without a visit from me. Our next meeting took place the week

before her marriage.

"Where are you going to spend your honeymoon?" I asked her; "in the

New Forest?"

"No," she replied; "nor in the Isle of Wight."

To enjoy the humour of an incident one must be at some distance from

it either in time or relationship. I remember watching an amusing

scene in Whitefield Street, just off Tottenham Court Road, one

winter's Saturday night. A woman--a rather respectable looking

woman, had her hat only been on straight--had just been shot out of

a public-house. She was very dignified, and very drunk. A

policeman requested her to move on. She called him "Fellow," and

demanded to know of him if he considered that was the proper tone in

which to address a lady. She threatened to report him to her

cousin, the Lord Chancellor.

"Yes; this way to the Lord Chancellor," retorted the policeman.

"You come along with me; " and he caught hold of her by the arm.

She gave a lurch, and nearly fell. To save her the man put his arm

round her waist. She clasped him round the neck, and together they

spun round two or three times; while at the very moment a piano-

organ at the opposite corner struck up a waltz.

"Choose your partners, gentlemen, for the next dance," shouted a

wag, and the crowd roared.

I was laughing myself, for the situation was undeniably comical, the

constable's expression of disgust being quite Hogarthian, when the

sight of a child's face beneath the gas-lamp stayed me. Her look

was so full of terror that I tried to comfort her.

"It's only a drunken woman," I said; "he's not going to hurt her."

"Please, sir," was the answer, "it's my mother."

Our joke is generally another's pain. The man who sits down on the

tin-tack rarely joins in the laugh

ON THE MINDING OF OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS

I walked one bright September morning in the Strand. I love London

best in the autumn. Then only can one see the gleam of its white

pavements, the bold, unbroken outline of its streets. I love the

cool vistas one comes across of mornings in the parks, the soft

twilights that linger in the empty bye-streets. In June the

restaurant manager is off-hand with me; I feel I am but in his way.

In August he spreads for me the table by the window, pours out for

me my wine with his own fat hands. I cannot doubt his regard for

me: my foolish jealousies are stilled. Do I care for a drive after

dinner through the caressing night air, I can climb the omnibus

stair without a preliminary fight upon the curb, can sit with easy

conscience and unsquashed body, not feeling I have deprived some

hot, tired woman of a seat. Do I desire the play, no harsh,

forbidding "House full" board repels me from the door. During her

season, London, a harassed hostess, has no time for us, her

intimates. Her rooms are overcrowded, her servants overworked, her

dinners hurriedly cooked, her tone insincere. In the spring, to be

truthful, the great lady condescends to be somewhat vulgar--noisy

and ostentatious. Not till the guests are departed is she herself

again, the London that we, her children, love.

Have you, gentle Reader, ever seen London--not the London of the

waking day, coated with crawling life, as a blossom with blight, but

the London of the morning, freed from her rags, the patient city,

clad in mists? Get you up with the dawn one Sunday in summer time.

Wake none else, but creep down stealthily into the kitchen, and make

your own tea and toast.

Be careful you stumble not over the cat. She will worm herself

insidiously between your legs. It is her way; she means it in

friendship. Neither bark your shins against the coal-box. Why the

kitchen coal-box has its fixed place in the direct line between the

kitchen door and the gas-bracket I cannot say. I merely know it as

an universal law; and I would that you escaped that coal-box, lest

the frame of mind I desire for you on this Sabbath morning be

dissipated.

A spoon to stir your tea, I fear you must dispense with. Knives and

forks you will discover in plenty; blacking brushes you will put

your hand upon in every drawer; of emery paper, did one require it,

there are reams; but it is a point with every housekeeper that the

spoons be hidden in a different place each night. If anybody

excepting herself can find them in the morning, it is a slur upon

her. No matter, a stick of firewood, sharpened at one end, makes an

excellent substitute.

Your breakfast done, turn out the gas, remount the stairs quietly,

open gently the front door and slip out. You will find yourself in

an unknown land. A strange city grown round you in the night.

The sweet long streets lie silent in sunlight. Not a living thing

is to be seen save some lean Tom that slinks from his gutter feast

as you approach. From some tree there will sound perhaps a fretful

chirp: but the London sparrow is no early riser; he is but talking

in his sleep. The slow tramp of unseen policeman draws near or dies

away. The clatter of your own footsteps goes with you, troubling

you. You find yourself trying to walk softly, as one does in

echoing cathedrals. A voice is everywhere about you whispering to

you "Hush." Is this million-breasted City then some tender Artemis,

seeking to keep her babes asleep? "Hush, you careless wayfarer; do

not waken them. Walk lighter; they are so tired, these myriad

children of mine, sleeping in my thousand arms. They are

over-worked and over-worried; so many of them are sick, so many

fretful, many of them, alas, so full of naughtiness. But all of

them so tired. Hush! they worry me with their noise and riot when

they are awake. They are so good now they are asleep. Walk

lightly, let them rest."

Where the ebbing tide flows softly through worn arches to the sea,

you may hear the stone-faced City talking to the restless waters:

"Why will you never stay with me? Why come but to go?"

"I cannot say, I do not understand. From the deep sea I come, but

only as a bird loosed from a child's hand with a cord. When she

calls I must return."

"It is so with these children of mine. They come to me, I know not

whence. I nurse them for a little while, till a hand I do not see

plucks them back. And others take their place."

Through the still air there passes a ripple of sound. The sleeping

City stirs with a faint sigh. A distant milk-cart rattling by

raises a thousand echoes; it is the vanguard of a yoked army. Soon

from every street there rises the soothing cry,

"Mee'hilk--mee'hilk."

London like some Gargantuan babe, is awake, crying for its milk.

These be the white-smocked nurses hastening with its morning

nourishment. The early church bells ring. "You have had your milk,

little London. Now come and say your prayers. Another week has

just begun, baby London. God knows what will happen, say your

prayers."

One by one the little creatures creep from behind the blinds into

the streets. The brooding tenderness is vanished from the City's

face. The fretful noises of the day have come again. Silence, her

lover of the night, kisses her stone lips, and steals away. And

you, gentle Reader, return home, garlanded with the self-sufficiency

of the early riser.

But it was of a certain week-day morning, in the Strand that I was

thinking. I was standing outside Gatti's Restaurant, where I had

just breakfasted, listening leisurely to an argument between an

indignant lady passenger, presumably of Irish extraction, and an

omnibus conductor.

"For what d'ye want thin to paint Putney on ye'r bus, if ye don't GO

to Putney?" said the, lady.

"We DO go to Putney," said the conductor.

"Thin why did ye put me out here?"

"I didn't put you out, yer got out."

"Shure, didn't the gintleman in the corner tell me I was comin'

further away from Putney ivery minit?"

"Wal, and so yer was."

"Thin whoy didn't you tell me?"

"How was I to know yer wanted to go to Putney? Yer sings out

Putney, and I stops and in yer jumps."

"And for what d'ye think I called out Putney thin?"

"'Cause it's my name, or rayther the bus's name. This 'ere IS a

Putney."

"How can it be a Putney whin it isn't goin' to Putney, ye

gomerhawk?"

"Ain't you an Hirishwoman?" retorted the conductor. "Course yer

are. But yer aren't always goin' to Ireland. We're goin' to Putney

in time, only we're a-going to Liverpool Street fust. 'Igher up,

Jim."

The bus moved on, and I was about cross the road, when a man,

muttering savagely to himself, walked into me. He would have swept

past me had I not, recognizing him, arrested him. It was my friend

B-----, a busy editor of magazines and journals. It was some

seconds before he appeared able to struggle out of his abstraction,

and remember himself. "Halloo," he then said, "who would have

thought of seeing YOU here?"

"To judge by the way you were walking," I replied, "one would

imagine the Strand the last place in which you expected to see any

human being. Do you ever walk into a short-tempered, muscular man?"

"Did I walk into you?" he asked surprised.

"Well, not right in," I answered, "I if we are to be literal. You

walked on to me; if I had not stopped you, I suppose you would have

walked over me."

"It is this confounded Christmas business," he explained. "It

drives me off my head."

"I have heard Christmas advanced as an excuse for many things," I

replied, "but not early in September."

"Oh, you know what I mean," he answered, "we are in the middle of

our Christmas number. I am working day and night upon it. By the

bye," he added, "that puts me in mind. I am arranging a symposium,

and I want you to join. 'Should Christmas,'"--I interrupted him.

"My dear fellow," I said, "I commenced my journalistic career when I

was eighteen, and I have continued it at intervals ever since. I

have written about Christmas from the sentimental point of view; I

have analyzed it from the philosophical point of view; and I have

scarified it from the sarcastic standpoint. I have treated

Christmas humorously for the Comics, and sympathetically for the

Provincial Weeklies. I have said all that is worth saying on the

subject of Christmas--maybe a trifle more. I have told the

new-fashioned Christmas story--you know the sort of thing: your

heroine tries to understand herself, and, failing, runs off with the

man who began as the hero; your good woman turns out to be really

bad when one comes to know her; while the villain, the only decent

person in the story, dies with an enigmatic sentence on his lips

that looks as if it meant something, but which you yourself would be

sorry to have to explain. I have also written the old-fashioned

Christmas story--you know that also: you begin with a good

old-fashioned snowstorm; you have a good old-fashioned squire, and

he lives in a good old-fashioned Hall; you work in a good

old-fashioned murder; and end up with a good old-fashioned Christmas

dinner. I have gathered Christmas guests together round the

crackling logs to tell ghost stories to each other on Christmas Eve,

while without the wind howled, as it always does on these occasions,

at its proper cue. I have sent children to Heaven on Christmas

Eve--it must be quite a busy time for St. Peter, Christmas morning,

so many good children die on Christmas Eve. It has always been a

popular night with them.--I have revivified dead lovers and brought

them back well and jolly, just in time to sit down to the Christmas

dinner. I am not ashamed of having done these things. At the time

I thought them good. I once loved currant wine and girls with

towzley hair. One's views change as one grows older. I have

discussed Christmas as a religious festival. I have arraigned it as

a social incubus. If there be any joke connected with Christmas

that I have not already made I should be glad to hear it. I have

trotted out the indigestion jokes till the sight of one of them

gives me indigestion myself. I have ridiculed the family gathering.

I have scoffed at the Christmas present. I have made witty use of

paterfamilias and his bills. I have--"

"Did I ever show you," I broke off to ask as we were crossing the

Haymarket, "that little parody of mine on Poe's poem of 'The Bells'?

It begins--" He interrupted me in his turn--

"Bills, bills, bills," he repeated.

"You are quite right," I admitted. "I forgot I ever showed it to

you."

"You never did," he replied.

"Then how do you know how it begins?" I asked.

"I don't know for certain," he admitted, "but I get, on an average,

sixty-five a year submitted to me, and they all begin that way. I

thought, perhaps, yours did also."

"I don't see how else it could begin," I retorted. He had rather

annoyed me. "Besides, it doesn't matter how a poem begins, it is

how it goes on that is the important thing and anyhow, I'm not going

to write you anything about Christmas. Ask me to make you a new

joke about a plumber; suggest my inventing something original and

not too shocking for a child to say about heaven; propose my running

you off a dog story that can be believed by a man of average

determination and we may come to terms. But on the subject of

Christmas I am taking a rest."

By this time we had reached Piccadilly Circus.

"I don't blame you," he said, "if you are as sick of the subject as

I am. So soon as these Christmas numbers are off my mind, and

Christmas is over till next June at the office, I shall begin it at

home. The housekeeping is gone up a pound a week already. I know

what that means. The dear little woman is saving up to give me an

expensive present that I don't want. I think the presents are the

worst part of Christmas. Emma will give me a water-colour that she

has painted herself. She always does. There would be no harm in

that if she did not expect me to hang it in the drawing room. Have

you ever seen my cousin Emma's water-colours?" he asked.

"I think I have," I replied.

"There's no thinking about it," he retorted angrily. "They're not

the sort of water-colours you forget."

He apostrophized the Circus generally.

"Why do people do these things?" he demanded. "Even an amateur

artist must have SOME sense. Can't they see what is happening?

There's that thing of hers hanging in the passage. I put it in the

passage because there's not much light in the passage. She's

labelled it Reverie. If she had called it Influenza I could have

understood it. I asked her where she got the idea from, and she

said she saw the sky like that one evening in Norfolk. Great

Heavens! then why didn't she shut her eyes or go home and hide

behind the bed-curtains? If I had seen a sky like that in Norfolk I

should have taken the first train back to London. I suppose the

poor girl can't help seeing these things, but why paint them?"

I said, "I suppose painting is a necessity to some natures."

"But why give the things to me?" he pleaded.

I could offer him no adequate reason.

"The idiotic presents that people give you!" he continued. "I said

I'd like Tennyson's poems one year. They had worried me to know

what I did want. I didn't want anything really; that was the only

thing I could think of that I wasn't dead sure I didn't want. Well,

they clubbed together, four of them, and gave me Tennyson in twelve

volumes, illustrated with coloured photographs. They meant kindly,

of course. If you suggest a tobacco-pouch they give you a blue

velvet bag capable of holding about a pound, embroidered with

flowers, life-size. The only way one could use it would be to put a

strap to it and wear it as a satchel. Would you believe it, I have

got a velvet smoking-jacket, ornamented with forget-me-nots and

butterflies in coloured silk; I'm not joking. And they ask me why I

never wear it. I'll bring it down to the Club one of these nights

and wake the place up a bit: it needs it."

We had arrived by this at the steps of the 'Devonshire.'

"And I'm just as bad," he went on, "when I give presents. I never

give them what they want. I never hit upon anything that is of any

use to anybody. If I give Jane a chinchilla tippet, you may be

certain chinchilla is the most out-of-date fur that any woman could

wear. 'Oh! that is nice of you,' she says; 'now that is just the

very thing I wanted. I will keep it by me till chinchilla comes in

again.' I give the girls watch-chains when nobody is wearing

watch-chains. When watch-chains are all the rage I give them

ear-rings, and they thank me, and suggest my taking them to a

fancy-dress ball, that being their only chance to wear the

confounded things. I waste money on white gloves with black backs,

to find that white gloves with black backs stamp a woman as

suburban. I believe all the shop-keepers in London save their old

stock to palm it off on me at Christmas time. And why does it

always take half-a-dozen people to serve you with a pair of gloves,

I'd like to know? Only last week Jane asked me to get her some

gloves for that last Mansion House affair. I was feeling amiable,

and I thought I would do the thing handsomely. I hate going into a

draper's shop; everybody stares at a man as if he were forcing his

way into the ladies' department of a Turkish bath. One of those

marionette sort of men came up to me and said it was a fine morning.

What the devil did I want to talk about the morning to him for? I

said I wanted some gloves. I described them to the best of my

recollection. I said, 'I want them four buttons, but they are not

to be button-gloves; the buttons are in the middle and they reach up

to the elbow, if you know what I mean.' He bowed, and said he

understood exactly what I meant, which was a damned sight more than

I did. I told him I wanted three pair cream and three pair

fawn-coloured, and the fawn-coloured were to be swedes. He

corrected me. He said I meant 'Suede.' I dare say he was right,

but the interruption put me off, and I had to begin over again. He

listened attentively until I had finished. I guess I was about five

minutes standing with him there close to the door. He said, 'Is

that all you require, sir, this morning?' I said it was.

"' Thank you, sir,' he replied. 'This way, please, sir.'

"He took me into another room, and there we met a man named Jansen,

to whom he briefly introduced me as a gentleman who 'desired

gloves.' 'Yes, sir,' said Mr. Jansen; and what sort of gloves do

you desire?'

"I told him I wanted six pairs altogether--three suede,

fawn-coloured, and three cream-coloured--kids.

"He said, 'Do you mean kid gloves, sir, or gloves for children?'

"He made me angry by that. I told him I was not in the habit of

using slang. Nor am I when buying gloves. He said he was sorry. I

explained to him about the buttons, so far as I could understand it

myself, and about the length. I asked him to see to it that the

buttons were sewn on firmly, and that the stitching everywhere was

perfect, adding that the last gloves my wife had had of his firm had

been most unsatisfactory. Jane had impressed upon me to add that.

She said it would make them more careful.

"He listened to me in rapt ecstacy. I might have been music.

"'And what size, sir?' he asked.

"I had forgotten that. 'Oh, sixes,' I answered, 'unless they are

very stretchy indeed, in which case they had better be five and

three-quarter.'

"'Oh, and the stitching on the cream is to be black,' I added. That

was another thing I had forgotten.

"'Thank you very much,' said Mr. Jansen; 'is there anything else

that you require this morning?'

"'No, thank you,' I replied, 'not this morning.' I was beginning to

like the man.

"He took me for quite a walk, and wherever we went everybody left

off what they were doing to stare at me. I was getting tired when

we reached the glove department. He marched me up to a young man

who was sticking pins into himself. He said 'Gloves,' and

disappeared through a curtain. The young man left off sticking pins

into himself, and leant across the counter.

"'Ladies' gloves or gentlemen's gloves?' he said.

"Well, I was pretty mad by this time, as you can guess. It is funny

when you come to think of it afterwards, but the wonder then was

that I didn't punch his head.

"I said, 'Are you ever busy in this shop? Does there ever come a

time when you feel you would like to get your work done, instead of

lingering over it and spinning it out for pure love of the thing?'

"He did not appear to understand me. I said, 'I met a man at your

door a quarter of an hour ago, and we talked about these gloves that

I want, and I told him all my ideas on the subject. He took me to

your Mr. Jansen, and Mr. Jansen and I went over the whole business

again. Now Mr. Jansen leaves it with you--you who do not even know

whether I want ladies' or gentlemen's gloves. Before I go over this

story for the third time, I want to know whether you are the man who

is going to serve me, or whether you are merely a listener, because

personally I am tired of the subject?'

"Well, this was the right man at last, and I got my gloves from him.

But what is the explanation--what is the idea? I was in that shop

from first to last five-and-thirty minutes. And then a fool took me

out the wrong way to show me a special line in sleeping-socks. I

told him I was not requiring any. He said he didn't want me to buy,

he only wanted me to see them. No wonder the drapers have had to

start luncheon and tea-rooms. They'll fix up small furnished flats

soon, where a woman can live for a week."

I said it was very trying, shopping. I also said, as he invited me,

and as he appeared determined to go on talking, that I would have a

brandy-and-soda. We were in the smoke-room by this time.

"There ought to be an association," he continued, "a kind of

clearing-house for the collection and distribution of Christmas

presents. One would give them a list of the people from whom to

collect presents, and of the people to whom to send. Suppose they

collected on my account twenty Christmas presents, value, say, ten

pounds, while on the other hand they sent out for me thirty presents

at a cost of fifteen pounds. They would debit me with the balance

of five pounds, together with a small commission. I should pay it

cheerfully, and there would be no further trouble. Perhaps one

might even make a profit. The idea might include birthdays and

weddings. A firm would do the business thoroughly. They would see

that all your friends paid up--I mean sent presents; and they would

not forget to send to your most important relative. There is only

one member of our family capable of leaving a shilling; and of

course if I forget to send to any one it is to him. When I remember

him I generally make a muddle of the business. Two years ago I gave

him a bath--I don't mean I washed him--an india-rubber thing, that

he could pack in his portmanteau. I thought he would find it useful

for travelling. Would you believe it, he took it as a personal

affront, and wouldn't speak to me for a month, the snuffy old

idiot."

"I suppose the children enjoy it," I said.

"Enjoy what?" he asked.

"Why, Christmas," I explained.

"I don't believe they do," he snapped; "nobody enjoys it. We excite

them for three weeks beforehand, telling them what a good time they

are going to have, over-feed them for two or three days, take them

to something they do not want to see, but which we do, and then

bully them for a fortnight to get them back into their normal

condition. I was always taken to the Crystal Palace and Madame

Tussaud's when I was a child, I remember. How I did hate that

Crystal Palace! Aunt used to superintend. It was always a bitterly

cold day, and we always got into the wrong train, and travelled half

the day before we got there. We never had any dinner. It never

occurs to a woman that anybody can want their meals while away from

home. She seems to think that nature is in suspense from the time

you leave the house till the time you get back to it. A bun and a

glass of milk was her idea of lunch for a school-boy. Half her time

was taken up in losing us, and the other half in slapping us when

she had found us. The only thing we really enjoyed was the row with

the cabman coming home."

I rose to go.

"Then you won't join that symposium?" said B-----. "It would be an

easy enough thing to knock off--'Why Christmas should be

abolished.'"

"It sounds simple," I answered. "But how do you propose to abolish

it?" The lady editor of an "advanced" American magazine once set

the discussion--"Should sex be abolished?" and eleven ladies and

gentlemen seriously argued the question.

"Leave it to die of inanition," said B-----; "the first step is to

arouse public opinion. Convince the public that it should be

abolished."

"But why should it be abolished?" I asked.

"Great Scott! man," he exclaimed; "don't you want it abolished?"

"I'm not sure that I do," I replied.

"Not sure," he retorted; "you call yourself a journalist, and admit

there is a subject under Heaven of which you are not sure!"

"It has come over me of late years," I replied. "It used not to be

my failing, as you know."

He glanced round to make sure we were out of earshot, then sunk his

voice to a whisper.

"Between ourselves," he said, "I'm not so sure of everything myself

as I used to be. Why is it?"

"Perhaps we are getting older," I suggested.

He said--"I started golf last year, and the first time I took the

club in my hand I sent the ball a furlong. 'It seems an easy game,'

I said to the man who was teaching me. 'Yes, most people find it

easy at the beginning,' he replied dryly. He was an old golfer

himself; I thought he was jealous. I stuck well to the game, and

for about three weeks I was immensely pleased with myself. Then,

gradually, I began to find out the difficulties. I feel I shall

never make a good player. Have you ever gone through that

experience?"

"Yes," I replied; "I suppose that is the explanation. The game

seems so easy at the beginning. "

I left him to his lunch, and strolled westward, musing on the time

when I should have answered that question of his about Christmas, or

any other question, off-hand. That good youth time when I knew

everything, when life presented no problems, dangled no doubts

before me!

In those days, wishful to give the world the benefit of my wisdom,

and seeking for a candle-stick wherefrom my brilliancy might be

visible and helpful unto men, I arrived before a dingy portal in

Chequers Street, St. Luke's, behind which a conclave of young men,

together with a few old enough to have known better, met every

Friday evening for the purpose of discussing and arranging the

affairs of the universe. "Speaking members" were charged

ten-and-sixpence per annum, which must have worked out at an

extremely moderate rate per word; and "gentlemen whose subscriptions

were more than three months in arrear," became, by Rule seven,

powerless for good or evil. We called ourselves "The Stormy

Petrels," and, under the sympathetic shadow of those wings, I

laboured two seasons towards the reformation of the human race;

until, indeed, our treasurer, an earnest young man, and a tireless

foe of all that was conventional, departed for the East, leaving

behind him a balance sheet, showing that the club owed forty-two

pounds fifteen and fourpence, and that the subscriptions for the

current year, amounting to a little over thirty-eight pounds, had

been "carried forward," but as to where, the report afforded no

indication. Whereupon our landlord, a man utterly without ideals,

seized our furniture, offering to sell it back to us for fifteen

pounds. We pointed out to him that this was an extravagant price,

and tendered him five.

The negotiations terminated with ungentlemanly language on his part,

and "The Stormy Petrels" scattered, never to be foregathered

together again above the troubled waters of humanity. Now-a-days,

listening to the feeble plans of modern reformers, I cannot help but

smile, remembering what was done in Chequers Street, St. Luke's, in

an age when Mrs. Grundy still gave the law to literature, while yet

the British matron was the guide to British art. I am informed that

there is abroad the question of abolishing the House of Lords! Why,

"The Stormy Petrels" abolished the aristocracy and the Crown in one

evening, and then only adjourned for the purpose of appointing a

committee to draw up and have ready a Republican Constitution by the

following Friday evening. They talk of Empire lounges! We closed

the doors of every music-hall in London eighteen years ago by

twenty-nine votes to seventeen. They had a patient hearing, and

were ably defended; but we found that the tendency of such

amusements was anti-progressive, and against the best interests of

an intellectually advancing democracy. I met the mover of the

condemnatory resolution at the old "Pav" the following evening, and

we continued the discussion over a bottle of Bass. He strengthened

his argument by persuading me to sit out the whole of the three

songs sung by the "Lion Comique"; but I subsequently retorted

successfully, by bringing under his notice the dancing of a lady in

blue tights and flaxen hair. I forget her name but never shall I

cease to remember her exquisite charm and beauty. Ah, me! how

charming and how beautiful "artistes" were in those golden days!

Whence have they vanished? Ladies in blue tights and flaxen hair

dance before my eyes to-day, but move me not, unless it be towards

boredom. Where be the tripping witches of twenty years ago, whom to

see once was to dream of for a week, to touch whose white hand would

have been joy, to kiss whose red lips would have been to foretaste

Heaven. I heard only the other day that the son of an old friend of

mine had secretly married a lady from the front row of the ballet,

and involuntarily I exclaimed, "Poor devil!" There was a time when

my first thought would have been, "Lucky beggar! is he worthy of

her?" For then the ladies of the ballet were angels. How could one

gaze at them--from the shilling pit--and doubt it? They danced to

keep a widowed mother in comfort, or to send a younger brother to

school. Then they were glorious creatures a young man did well to

worship; but now-a-days--

It is an old jest. The eyes of youth see through rose-tinted

glasses. The eyes of age are dim behind smoke-clouded spectacles.

My flaxen friend, you are not the angel I dreamed you, nor the

exceptional sinner some would paint you; but under your feathers,

just a woman--a bundle of follies and failings, tied up with some

sweetness and strength. You keep a brougham I am sure you cannot

afford on your thirty shillings a week. There are ladies I know, in

Mayfair, who have paid an extravagant price for theirs. You paint

and you dye, I am told: it is even hinted you pad. Don't we all of

us deck ourselves out in virtues that are not our own? When the

paint and the powder, my sister, is stripped both from you and from

me, we shall know which of us is entitled to look down on the other

in scorn.

Forgive me, gentle Reader, for digressing. The lady led me astray.

I was speaking of "The Stormy Petrels," and of the reforms they

accomplished, which were many. We abolished, I remember, capital

punishment and war; we were excellent young men at heart. Christmas

we reformed altogether, along with Bank Holidays, by a majority of

twelve. I never recollect any proposal to abolish anything ever

being lost when put to the vote. There were few things that we

"Stormy Petrels" did not abolish. We attacked Christmas on grounds

of expediency, and killed it by ridicule. We exposed the hollow

mockery of Christmas sentiment; we abused the indigestible Christmas

dinner, the tiresome Christmas party, the silly Christmas pantomime.

Our funny member was side-splitting on the subject of Christmas

Waits; our social reformer bitter upon Christmas drunkenness; our

economist indignant upon Christmas charities. Only one argument of

any weight with us was advanced in favour of the festival, and that

was our leading cynic's suggestion that it was worth enduring the

miseries of Christmas, to enjoy the soul-satisfying comfort of the

after reflection that it was all over, and could not occur again for

another year.

But since those days when I was prepared to put this old world of

ours to rights upon all matters, I have seen many sights and heard

many sounds, and I am not quite so sure as I once was that my

particular views are the only possibly correct ones. Christmas

seems to me somewhat meaningless; but I have looked through windows

in poverty-stricken streets, and have seen dingy parlours gay with

many chains of coloured paper. They stretched from corner to corner

of the smoke-grimed ceiling, they fell in clumsy festoons from the

cheap gasalier, they framed the fly-blown mirror and the tawdry

pictures; and I know tired hands and eyes worked many hours to

fashion and fix those foolish chains, saying, "It will please him--

she will like to see the room look pretty;" and as I have looked at

them they have grown, in some mysterious manner, beautiful to me.

The gaudy-coloured child and dog irritates me, I confess; but I have

watched a grimy, inartistic personage, smoothing it affectionately

with toil-stained hand, while eager faces crowded round to admire

and wonder at its blatant crudity. It hangs to this day in its

cheap frame above the chimney-piece, the one bright spot relieving

those damp-stained walls; dull eyes stare and stare again at it,

catching a vista, through its flashy tints, of the far-off land of

art. Christmas Waits annoy me, and I yearn to throw open the window

and fling coal at them--as once from the window of a high flat in

Chelsea I did. I doubted their being genuine Waits. I was inclined

to the opinion they were young men seeking excuse for making a

noise. One of them appeared to know a hymn with a chorus, another

played the concertina, while a third accompanied with a step dance.

Instinctively I felt no respect for them; they disturbed me in my

work, and the desire grew upon me to injure them. It occurred to me

it would be good sport if I turned out the light, softly opened the

window, and threw coal at them. It would be impossible for them to

tell from which window in the block the coal came, and thus

subsequent unpleasantness would be avoided. They were a compact

little group, and with average luck I was bound to hit one of them.

I adopted the plan. I could not see them very clearly. I aimed

rather at the noise; and I had thrown about twenty choice lumps

without effect, and was feeling somewhat discouraged, when a yell,

followed by language singularly unappropriate to the season, told me

that Providence had aided my arm. The music ceased suddenly, and

the party dispersed, apparently in high glee--which struck me as

curious.

One man I noticed remained behind. He stood under the lamp-post,

and shook his fist at the block generally.

"Who threw that lump of coal?" he demanded in stentorian tones.

To my horror, it was the voice of the man at Eighty-eight, an Irish

gentleman, a journalist like myself. I saw it all, as the

unfortunate hero always exclaims, too late, in the play. He--number

Eighty-eight--also disturbed by the noise, had evidently gone out to

expostulate with the rioters. Of course my lump of coal had hit

him--him the innocent, the peaceful (up till then), the virtuous.

That is the justice Fate deals out to us mortals here below. There

were ten to fourteen young men in that crowd, each one of whom fully

deserved that lump of coal; he, the one guiltless, got it--

seemingly, so far as the dim light from the gas lamp enabled me to

judge, full in the eye.

As the block remained silent in answer to his demand, he crossed the

road and mounted the stairs. On each landing he stopped and

shouted--

"Who threw that lump of coal? I want the man who threw that lump of

coal. Out you come."

Now a good man in my place would have waited till number

Eighty-eight arrived on his landing, and then, throwing open the

door would have said with manly candour--

"_I_ threw that lump of coal. I was-," He would not have got

further, because at that point, I feel confident, number Eighty--

eight would have punched his head. There would have been an

unseemly fracas on the staircase, to the annoyance of all the other

tenants and later, there would have issued a summons and a

cross-summons. Angry passions would have been roused, bitter

feeling engendered which might have lasted for years.

I do not pretend to be a good man. I doubt if the pretence would be

of any use were I to try: I am not a sufficiently good actor. I

said to myself, as I took off my boots in the study, preparatory to

retiring to my bedroom--"Number Eighty-eight is evidently not in a

frame of mind to listen to my story. It will be better to let him

shout himself cool; after which he will return to his own flat,

bathe his eye, and obtain some refreshing sleep. In the morning,

when we shall probably meet as usual on our way to Fleet Street, I

will refer to the incident casually, and sympathize with him. I

will suggest to him the truth--that in all probability some

fellow-tenant, irritated also by the noise, had aimed coal at the

Waits, hitting him instead by a regrettable but pure accident. With

tact I may even be able to make him see the humour of the incident.

Later on, in March or April, choosing my moment with judgment, I

will, perhaps, confess that I was that fellow-tenant, and over a

friendly brandy-and-soda we will laugh the whole trouble away."

As a matter of fact, that is what happened. Said number

Eighty-eight--he was a big man, as good a fellow at heart as ever

lived, but impulsive--"Damned lucky for you, old man, you did not

tell me at the time."

"I felt," I replied, "instinctively that it was a case for delay."

There are times when one should control one's passion for candour;

and as I was saying, Christmas waits excite no emotion in my breast

save that of irritation. But I have known "Hark, the herald angels

sing," wheezily chanted by fog-filled throats, and accompanied,

hopelessly out of tune, by a cornet and a flute, bring a great look

of gladness to a work-worn face. To her it was a message of hope

and love, making the hard life taste sweet. The mere thought of

family gatherings, so customary at Christmas time, bores us superior

people; but I think of an incident told me by a certain man, a

friend of mine. One Christmas, my friend, visiting in the country,

came face to face with a woman whom in town he had often met amid

very different surroundings. The door of the little farmhouse was

open; she and an older woman were ironing at a table, and as her

soft white hands passed to and fro, folding and smoothing the

rumpled heap, she laughed and talked, concerning simple homely

things. My friend's shadow fell across her work, and she looking

up, their eyes met; but her face said plainly, "I do not know you

here, and here you do not know me. Here I am a woman loved and

respected." My friend passed in and spoke to the older woman, the

wife of one of his host's tenants, and she turned towards, and

introduced the younger--"My daughter, sir. We do not see her very

often. She is in a place in London, and cannot get away. But she

always spends a few days with us at Christmas."

"It is the season for family re-unions," answered my friend with

just the suggestion of a sneer, for which he hated himself.

"Yes, sir," said the woman, not noticing; "she has never missed her

Christmas with us, have you, Bess?"

"No, mother," replied the girl simply, and bent her head again over

her work.

So for these few days every year this woman left her furs and

jewels, her fine clothes and dainty foods, behind her, and lived for

a little space with what was clean and wholesome. It was the one

anchor holding her to womanhood; and one likes to think that it was,

perhaps, in the end strong enough to save her from the drifting

waters. All which arguments in favour of Christmas and of Christmas

customs are, I admit, purely sentimental ones, but I have lived long

enough to doubt whether sentiment has not its legitimate place in

the economy of life.

ON THE TIME WASTED IN LOOKING BEFORE ONE LEAPS

Have you ever noticed the going out of a woman?

When a man goes out, he says--"I'm going out, shan't be long."

"Oh, George," cries his wife from the other end of the house, "don't

go for a moment. I want you to--" She hears a falling of hats,

followed by the slamming of the front door.

"Oh, George, you're not gone!" she wails. It is but the voice of

despair. As a matter of fact, she knows he is gone. She reaches

the hall, breathless.

"He might have waited a minute," she mutters to herself, as she

picks up the hats, "there were so many things I wanted him to do."

She does not open the door and attempt to stop him, she knows he is

already half-way down the street. It is a mean, paltry way of going

out, she thinks; so like a man.

When a woman, on the other hand, goes out, people know about it.

She does not sneak out. She says she is going out. She says it,

generally, on the afternoon of the day before; and she repeats it,

at intervals, until tea-time. At tea, she suddenly decides that she

won't, that she will leave it till the day after to-morrow instead.

An hour later she thinks she will go to-morrow, after all, and makes

arrangements to wash her hair overnight. For the next hour or so

she alternates between fits of exaltation, during which she looks

forward to going out, and moments of despondency, when a sense of

foreboding falls upon her. At dinner she persuades some other woman

to go with her; the other woman, once persuaded, is enthusiastic

about going, until she recollects that she cannot. The first woman,

however, convinces her that she can.

"Yes," replies the second woman, "but then, how about you, dear?

You are forgetting the Joneses."

"So I was," answers the first woman, completely non-plussed. "How

very awkward, and I can't go on Wednesday. I shall have to leave it

till Thursday, now."

"But _I_ can't go Thursday," says the second woman.

"Well, you go without me, dear," says the first woman, in the tone

of one who is sacrificing a life's ambition.

"Oh no, dear, I should not think of it," nobly exclaims the second

woman. "We will wait and go together, Friday!"

"I'll tell you what we'll do," says the first woman. "We will start

early" (this is an inspiration), "and be back before the Joneses

arrive."

They agree to sleep together; there is a lurking suspicion in both

their minds that this may be their last sleep on earth. They retire

early with a can of hot water. At intervals, during the night, one

overhears them splashing water, and talking.

They come down very late for breakfast, and both very cross. Each

seems to have argued herself into the belief that she has been lured

into this piece of nonsense, against her better judgment, by the

persistent folly of the other one. During the meal each one asks

the other, every five minutes, if she is quite ready. Each one, it

appears, has only her hat to put on. They talk about the weather,

and wonder what it is going to do. They wish it would make up its

mind, one way or the other. They are very bitter on weather that

cannot make up its mind. After breakfast it still looks cloudy, and

they decide to abandon the scheme altogether. The first woman then

remembers that it is absolutely necessary for her, at all events, to

go.

"But there is no need for you to come, dear," she says.

Up to that point the second woman was evidently not sure whether she

wished to go or whether she didn't. Now she knows.

"Oh yes, I'll come," she says, "then it will be over!"

"I am sure you don't want to go," urges the first woman, "and I

shall be quicker by myself. I am ready to start now."

The second woman bridles.

"_I_ shan't be a couple of minutes," she retorts. "You know, dear,

it's generally I who have to wait for you."

"But you've not got your boots on," the first woman reminds her.

"Well, they won't take ANY time," is the answer. "But of course,

dear, if you'd really rather I did not come, say so." By this time

she is on the verge of tears.

"Of course, I would like you to come, dear," explains the first in a

resigned tone. "I thought perhaps you were only coming to please

me."

"Oh no, I'd LIKE to come," says the second woman.

"Well, we must hurry up," says the first; "I shan't be more than a

minute myself, I've merely got to change my skirt."

Half-an-hour later you hear them calling to each other, from

different parts of the house, to know if the other one is ready. It

appears they have both been ready for quite a long while, waiting

only for the other one.

"I'm afraid," calls out the one whose turn it is to be down-stairs,

"it's going to rain."

"Oh, don't say that," calls back the other one.

"Well, it looks very like it."

"What a nuisance," answers the up-stairs woman; "shall we put it

off?"

"Well, what do YOU think, dear?" replies the down-stairs.

They decide they will go, only now they will have to change their

boots, and put on different hats.

For the next ten minutes they are still shouting and running about.

Then it seems as if they really were ready, nothing remaining but

for them to say "Good-bye," and go.

They begin by kissing the children. A woman never leaves her house

without secret misgivings that she will never return to it alive.

One child cannot be found. When it is found it wishes it hadn't

been. It has to be washed, preparatory to being kissed. After

that, the dog has to be found and kissed, and final instructions

given to the cook.

Then they open the front door.

"Oh, George," calls out the first woman, turning round again. "Are

you there?"

"Hullo," answers a voice from the distance. "Do you want me?"

"No, dear, only to say good-bye. I'm going."

"Oh, good-bye."

"Good-bye, dear. Do you think it's going to rain?"

"Oh no, I should not say so."

"George."

"Yes."

"Have you got any money?"

Five minutes later they come running back; the one has forgotten her

parasol, the other her purse.

And speaking of purses, reminds one of another essential difference

between the male and female human animal. A man carries his money

in his pocket. When he wants to use it, he takes it out and lays it

down. This is a crude way of doing things, a woman displays more

subtlety. Say she is standing in the street, and wants fourpence to

pay for a bunch of violets she has purchased from a flower-girl.

She has two parcels in one hand, and a parasol in the other. With

the remaining two fingers of the left hand she secures the violets.

The question then arises, how to pay the girl? She flutters for a

few minutes, evidently not quite understanding why it is she cannot

do it. The reason then occurs to her: she has only two hands and

both these are occupied. First she thinks she will put the parcels

and the flowers into her right hand, then she thinks she will put

the parasol into her left. Then she looks round for a table or even

a chair, but there is not such a thing in the whole street. Her

difficulty is solved by her dropping the parcels and the flowers.

The girl picks them up for her and holds them. This enables her to

feel for her pocket with her right hand, while waving her open

parasol about with her left. She knocks an old gentleman's hat off

into the gutter, and nearly blinds the flower-girl before it occurs

to her to close it. This done, she leans it up against the

flower-girl's basket, and sets to work in earnest with both hands.

She seizes herself firmly by the back, and turns the upper part of

her body round till her hair is in front and her eyes behind. Still

holding herself firmly with her left hand--did she let herself go,

goodness knows where she would spin to;--with her right she

prospects herself. The purse is there, she can feel it, the problem

is how to get at it. The quickest way would, of course, be to take

off the skirt, sit down on the kerb, turn it inside out, and work

from the bottom of the pocket upwards. But this simple idea never

seems to occur to her. There are some thirty folds at the back of

the dress, between two of these folds commences the secret passage.

At last, purely by chance, she suddenly discovers it, nearly

upsetting herself in the process, and the purse is brought up to the

surface. The difficulty of opening it still remains. She knows it

opens with a spring, but the secret of that spring she has never

mastered, and she never will. Her plan is to worry it generally

until it does open. Five minutes will always do it, provided she is

not flustered.

At last it does open. It would be incorrect to say that she opens

it. It opens because it is sick of being mauled about; and, as

likely as not, it opens at the moment when she is holding it upside

down. If you happen to be near enough to look over her shoulder,

you will notice that the gold and silver lies loose within it. In

an inner sanctuary, carefully secured with a second secret spring,

she keeps her coppers, together with a postage-stamp and a draper's

receipt, nine months old, for elevenpence three-farthings.

I remember the indignation of an old Bus-conductor, once. Inside we

were nine women and two men. I sat next the door, and his remarks

therefore he addressed to me. It was certainly taking him some time

to collect the fares, but I think he would have got on better had he

been less bustling; he worried them, and made them nervous.

"Look at that," he said, drawing my attention to a poor lady

opposite, who was diving in the customary manner for her purse,

"they sit on their money, women do. Blest if you wouldn't think

they was trying to 'atch it."

At length the lady drew from underneath herself an exceedingly fat

purse.

"Fancy riding in a bumpby bus, perched up on that thing," he

continued. "Think what a stamina they must have." He grew

confidential. "I've seen one woman," he said, "pull out from

underneath 'er a street doorkey, a tin box of lozengers, a

pencil-case, a whopping big purse, a packet of hair-pins, and a

smelling-bottle. Why, you or me would be wretched, sitting on a

plain door-knob, and them women goes about like that all day. I

suppose they gets used to it. Drop 'em on an eider-down pillow, and

they'd scream. The time it takes me to get tuppence out of them,

why, it's 'eart-breaking. First they tries one side, then they

tries the other. Then they gets up and shakes theirselves till the

bus jerks them back again, and there they are, a more 'opeless 'eap

than ever. If I 'ad my way I'd make every bus carry a female

searcher as could over'aul 'em one at a time, and take the money

from 'em. Talk about the poor pickpocket. What I say is, that a

man as finds his way into a woman's pocket--well, he deserves what

he gets."

But it was the thought of more serious matters that lured me into

reflections concerning the over-carefulness of women. It is a

theory of mine--wrong possibly; indeed I have so been informed--that

we pick our way through life with too much care. We are for ever

looking down upon the ground. Maybe, we do avoid a stumble or two

over a stone or a brier, but also we miss the blue of the sky, the

glory of the hills. These books that good men write, telling us

that what they call "success" in life depends on our flinging aside

our youth and wasting our manhood in order that we may have the

means when we are eighty of spending a rollicking old age, annoy me.

We save all our lives to invest in a South Sea Bubble; and in

skimping and scheming, we have grown mean, and narrow, and hard. We

will put off the gathering of the roses till tomorrow, to-day it

shall be all work, all bargain-driving, all plotting. Lo, when to-

morrow comes, the roses are blown; nor do we care for roses, idle

things of small marketable value; cabbages are more to our fancy by

the time to-morrow comes.

Life is a thing to be lived, not spent, to be faced, not ordered.

Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is

a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of. Is it

the wisest who is always the most successful? I think not. The

luckiest whist-player I ever came across was a man who was never

QUITE certain what were trumps, and whose most frequent observation

during the game was "I really beg your pardon," addressed to his

partner; a remark which generally elicited the reply, "Oh, don't

apologize. All's well that ends well." The man I knew who made the

most rapid fortune was a builder in the outskirts of Birmingham, who

could not write his name, and who, for thirty years of his life,

never went to bed sober. I do not say that forgetfulness of trumps

should be cultivated by whist-players. I think my builder friend

might have been even more successful had he learned to write his

name, and had he occasionally--not overdoing it--enjoyed a sober

evening. All I wish to impress is, that virtue is not the road to

success--of the kind we are dealing with. We must find other

reasons for being virtuous; maybe, there are some. The truth is,

life is a gamble pure and simple, and the rules we lay down for

success are akin to the infallible systems with which a certain

class of idiot goes armed each season to Monte Carlo. We can play

the game with coolness and judgment, decide when to plunge and when

to stake small; but to think that wisdom will decide it, is to

imagine that we have discovered the law of chance. Let us play the

game of life as sportsmen, pocketing our winnings with a smile,

leaving our losings with a shrug. Perhaps that is why we have been

summoned to the board and the cards dealt round: that we may learn

some of the virtues of the good gambler; his self-control, his

courage under misfortune, his modesty under the strain of success,

his firmness, his alertness, his general indifference to fate. Good

lessons these, all of them. If by the game we learn some of them

our time on the green earth has not been wasted. If we rise from

the table having learned only fretfulness and self-pity I fear it

has been.

The grim Hall Porter taps at the door: "Number Five hundred billion

and twenty-eight, your boatman is waiting, sir."

So! is it time already? We pick up our counters. Of what use are

they? In the country the other side of the river they are no

tender. The blood-red for gold, and the pale-green for love, to

whom shall we fling them? Here is some poor beggar longing to play,

let us give them to him as we pass out. Poor devil! the game will

amuse him--for a while.

Keep your powder dry, and trust in Providence, is the motto of the

wise. Wet powder could never be of any possible use to you. Dry,

it may be, WITH the help of Providence. We will call it Providence,

it is a prettier name than Chance--perhaps also a truer.

Another mistake we make when we reason out our lives is this: we

reason as though we were planning for reasonable creatures. It is a

big mistake. Well-meaning ladies and gentlemen make it when they

picture their ideal worlds. When marriage is reformed, and the

social problem solved, when poverty and war have been abolished by

acclamation, and sin and sorrow rescinded by an overwhelming

parliamentary majority! Ah, then the world will be worthy of our

living in it. You need not wait, ladies and gentlemen, so long as

you think for that time. No social revolution is needed, no slow

education of the people is necessary. It would all come about

to-morrow, IF ONLY WE WERE REASONABLE CREATURES.

Imagine a world of reasonable beings! The Ten Commandments would be

unnecessary: no reasoning being sins, no reasoning creature makes

mistakes. There would be no rich men, for what reasonable man cares

for luxury and ostentation? There would be no poor: that I should

eat enough for two while my brother in the next street, as good a

man as I, starves, is not reasonable. There would be no difference

of opinion on any two points: there is only one reason. You, dear

Reader, would find, that on all subjects you were of the same

opinion as I. No novels would be written, no plays performed; the

lives of reasonable creatures do not afford drama. No mad loves, no

mad laughter, no scalding tears, no fierce unreasoning, brief-lived

joys, no sorrows, no wild dreams--only reason, reason everywhere.

But for the present we remain unreasonable. If I eat this

mayonnaise, drink this champagne, I shall suffer in my liver. Then,

why do I eat it? Julia is a charming girl, amiable, wise, and

witty; also she has a share in a brewery. Then, why does John marry

Ann? who is short-tempered, to say the least of it, who, he feels,

will not make him so good a house-wife, who has extravagant notions,

who has no little fortune. There is something about Ann's chin that

fascinates him--he could not explain to you what. On the whole,

Julia is the better-looking of the two. But the more he thinks of

Julia, the more he is drawn towards Ann. So Tom marries Julia and

the brewery fails, and Julia, on a holiday, contracts rheumatic

fever, and is a helpless invalid for life; while Ann comes in for

ten thousand pounds left to her by an Australian uncle no one had

ever heard of,

I have been told of a young man, who chose his wife with excellent

care. Said he to himself, very wisely, "In the selection of a wife

a man cannot be too circumspect." He convinced himself that the

girl was everything a helpmate should be. She had every virtue that

could be expected in a woman, no faults, but such as are inseparable

from a woman. Speaking practically, she was perfection. He married

her, and found she was all he had thought her. Only one thing could

he urge against her--that he did not like her. And that, of course,

was not her fault.

How easy life would be did we know ourselves. Could we always be

sure that tomorrow we should think as we do today. We fall in love

during a summer holiday; she is fresh, delightful, altogether

charming; the blood rushes to our head every time we think of her.

Our ideal career is one of perpetual service at her feet. It seems

impossible that Fate could bestow upon us any greater happiness than

the privilege of cleaning her boots, and kissing the hem of her

garment--if the hem be a little muddy that will please us the more.

We tell her our ambition, and at that moment every word we utter is

sincere. But the summer holiday passes, and with it the holiday

mood, and winter finds us wondering how we are going to get out of

the difficulty into which we have landed ourselves. Or worse still,

perhaps, the mood lasts longer than is usual. We become formally

engaged. We marry--I wonder how many marriages are the result of a

passion that is burnt out before the altar-rails are reached?--and

three months afterwards the little lass is broken-hearted to find

that we consider the lacing of her boots a bore. Her feet seem to

have grown bigger. There is no excuse for us, save that we are

silly children, never sure of what we are crying for, hurting one

another in our play, crying very loudly when hurt ourselves.

I knew an American lady once who used to bore me with long accounts

of the brutalities exercised upon her by her husband. She had

instituted divorce proceedings against him. The trial came on, and

she was highly successful. We all congratulated her, and then for

some months she dropped out of my life. But there came a day when

we again found ourselves together. One of the problems of social

life is to know what to say to one another when we meet; every man

and woman's desire is to appear sympathetic and clever, and this

makes conversation difficult, because, taking us all round, we are

neither sympathetic nor clever--but this by the way.

Of course, I began to talk to her about her former husband. I asked

her how he was getting on. She replied that she thought he was very

comfortable.

"Married again?" I suggested.

"Yes," she answered.

"Serve him right," I exclaimed, "and his wife too." She was a

pretty, bright-eyed little woman, my American friend, and I wished

to ingratiate myself. "A woman who would marry such a man, knowing

what she must have known of him, is sure to make him wretched, and

we may trust him to be a curse to her."

My friend seemed inclined to defend him.

"I think he is greatly improved," she argued.

"Nonsense!" I returned, "a man never improves. Once a villain,

always a villain."

"Oh, hush!" she pleaded, "you mustn't call him that."

"Why not?" I answered. "I have heard you call him a villain

yourself."

"It was wrong of me," she said, flushing. "I'm afraid he was not

the only one to be blamed; we were both foolish in those days, but I

think we have both learned a lesson."

I remained silent, waiting for the necessary explanation.

"You had better come and see him for yourself," she added, with a

little laugh; "to tell the truth, I am the woman who has married

him. Tuesday is my day, Number 2, K---- Mansions," and she ran off,

leaving me staring after her.

I believe an enterprising clergyman who would set up a little church

in the Strand, just outside the Law Courts, might do quite a trade,

re-marrying couples who had just been divorced. A friend of mine, a

respondent, told me he had never loved his wife more than on two

occasions--the first when she refused him, the second when she came

into the witness-box to give evidence against him.

"You are curious creatures, you men," remarked a lady once to

another man in my presence. "You never seem to know your own mind."

She was feeling annoyed with men generally. I do not blame her, I

feel annoyed with them myself sometimes. There is one man in

particular I am always feeling intensely irritated against. He says

one thing, and acts another. He will talk like a saint and behave

like a fool, knows what is right and does what is wrong. But we

will not speak further of him. He will be all he should be one day,

and then we will pack him into a nice, comfortably-lined box, and

screw the lid down tight upon him, and put him away in a quiet

little spot near a church I know of, lest he should get up and

misbehave himself again.

The other man, who is a wise man as men go, looked at his fair

critic with a smile.

"My dear madam," he replied, "you are blaming the wrong person. I

confess I do not know my mind, and what little I do know of it I do

not like. I did not make it, I did not select it. I am more

dissatisfied with it than you can possibly be. It is a greater

mystery to me than it is to you, and I have to live with it. You

should pity not blame me."

There are moods in which I fall to envying those old hermits who

frankly, and with courageous cowardice, shirked the problem of life.

There are days when I dream of an existence unfettered by the

thousand petty strings with which our souls lie bound to Lilliputia

land. I picture myself living in some Norwegian sater, high above

the black waters of a rockbound fiord. No other human creature

disputes with me my kingdom. I am alone with the whispering fir

forests and the stars. How I live I am not quite sure. Once a

month I could journey down into the villages and return laden. I

should not need much. For the rest, my gun and fishing-rod would

supply me. I would have with me a couple of big dogs, who would

talk to me with their eyes, so full of dumb thought, and together we

would wander over the uplands, seeking our dinner, after the old

primitive fashion of the men who dreamt not of ten-course dinners

and Savoy suppers. I would cook the food myself, and sit down to

the meal with a bottle of good wine, such as starts a man's thoughts

(for I am inconsistent, as I acknowledge, and that gift of

civilization I would bear with me into my hermitage). Then in the

evening, with pipe in mouth, beside my log-wood fire, I would sit

and think, until new knowledge came to me. Strengthened by those

silent voices that are drowned in the roar of Streetland, I might,

perhaps, grow into something nearer to what it was intended that a

man should be--might catch a glimpse, perhaps, of the meaning of

life.

No, no, my dear lady, into this life of renunciation I would not

take a companion, certainly not of the sex you are thinking of, even

would she care to come, which I doubt. There are times when a man

is better without the woman, when a woman is better without the man.

Love drags us from the depths, makes men and women of us, but if we

would climb a little nearer to the stars we must say good-bye to it.

We men and women do not show ourselves to each other at our best;

too often, I fear, at our worst. The woman's highest ideal of man

is the lover; to a man the woman is always the possible beloved. We

see each other's hearts, but not each other's souls. In each

other's presence we never shake ourselves free from the earth.

Match-making mother Nature is always at hand to prompt us. A woman

lifts us up into manhood, but there she would have us stay. "Climb

up to me," she cries to the lad, walking with soiled feet in muddy

ways; "be a true man that you may be worthy to walk by my side; be

brave to protect me, kind and tender, and true; but climb no higher,

stay here by my side." The martyr, the prophet, the leader of the

world's forlorn hopes, she would wake from his dream. Her arms she

would fling about his neck holding him down.

To the woman the man says, "You are my wife. Here is your America,

within these walls, here is your work, your duty." True, in nine

hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand, but men and

women are not made in moulds, and the world's work is various.

Sometimes to her sorrow, a woman's work lies beyond the home. The

duty of Mary was not to Joseph.

The hero in the popular novel is the young man who says, "I love you

better than my soul." Our favourite heroine in fiction is the woman

who cries to her lover, "I would go down into Hell to be with you."

There are men and women who cannot answer thus--the men who dream

dreams, the women who see visions--impracticable people from the

Bayswater point of view. But Bayswater would not be the abode of

peace it is had it not been for such.

Have we not placed sexual love on a pedestal higher than it

deserves? It is a noble passion, but it is not the noblest. There

is a wider love by the side of which it is but as the lamp

illumining the cottage, to the moonlight bathing the hills and

valleys. There were two women once. This is a play I saw acted in

the daylight. They had been friends from girlhood, till there came

between them the usual trouble--a man. A weak, pretty creature not

worth a thought from either of them; but women love the unworthy;

there would be no over-population problem did they not; and this

poor specimen, ill-luck had ordained they should contend for.

Their rivalry brought out all that was worst in both of them. It is

a mistake to suppose love only elevates; it can debase. It was a

mean struggle for what to an onlooker must have appeared a

remarkably unsatisfying prize. The loser might well have left the

conqueror to her poor triumph, even granting it had been gained

unfairly. But the old, ugly, primeval passions had been stirred in

these women, and the wedding-bells closed only the first act.

The second is not difficult to guess. It would have ended in the

Divorce Court had not the deserted wife felt that a finer revenge

would be secured to her by silence.

In the third, after an interval of only eighteen months, the man

died--the first piece of good fortune that seems to have occurred to

him personally throughout the play. His position must have been an

exceedingly anxious one from the beginning. Notwithstanding his

flabbiness, one cannot but regard him with a certain amount of pity-

-not unmixed with amusement. Most of life's dramas can be viewed as

either farce or tragedy according to the whim of the spectator. The

actors invariably play them as tragedy; but then that is the essence

of good farce acting.

Thus was secured the triumph of legal virtue and the punishment of

irregularity, and the play might be dismissed as uninterestingly

orthodox were it not for the fourth act, showing how the wronged

wife came to the woman she had once wronged to ask and grant

forgiveness. Strangely as it may sound, they found their love for

one another unchanged. They had been long parted: it was sweet to

hold each other's hands again. Two lonely women, they agreed to

live together. Those who knew them well in this later time say that

their life was very beautiful, filled with graciousness and

nobility.

I do not say that such a story could ever be common, but it is more

probable than the world might credit. Sometimes the man is better

without the woman, the woman without the man.

ON THE NOBILITY OF OURSELVES

AN old Anglicized Frenchman, I used to meet often in my earlier

journalistic days, held a theory, concerning man's future state,

that has since come to afford me more food for reflection than, at

the time, I should have deemed possible. He was a bright-eyed,

eager little man. One felt no Lotus land could be Paradise to him.

We build our heaven of the stones of our desires: to the old,

red-bearded Norseman, a foe to fight and a cup to drain; to the

artistic Greek, a grove of animated statuary; to the Red Indian, his

happy hunting ground; to the Turk, his harem; to the Jew, his New

Jerusalem, paved with gold; to others, according to their taste,

limited by the range of their imagination.

Few things had more terrors for me, when a child, than Heaven--as

pictured for me by certain of the good folks round about me. I was

told that if I were a good lad, kept my hair tidy, and did not tease

the cat, I would probably, when I died, go to a place where all day

long I would sit still and sing hymns. (Think of it! as reward to a

healthy boy for being good.) There would be no breakfast and no

dinner, no tea and no supper. One old lady cheered me a little with

a hint that the monotony might be broken by a little manna; but the

idea of everlasting manna palled upon me, and my suggestions,

concerning the possibilities of sherbet or jumbles, were scouted as

irreverent. There would be no school, but also there would be no

cricket and no rounders. I should feel no desire, so I was assured,

to do another angel's "dags" by sliding down the heavenly banisters.

My only joy would be to sing.

"Shall we start singing the moment we get up in the morning?" I

asked.

"There won't be any morning," was the answer. "There will be no day

and no night. It will all be one long day without end."

"And shall we always be singing?" I persisted.

"Yes, you will be so happy, you will always want to sing."

"Shan't I ever get tired?"

"No, you will never get tired, and you will never get sleepy or

hungry or thirsty."

"And does it go on like that for ever?"

"Yes, for ever and ever."

"Will it go on for a million years?"

"Yes, a million years, and then another million years, and then

another million years after that. There will never be any end to

it."

I can remember to this day the agony of those nights, when I would

lie awake, thinking of this endless heaven, from which there seemed

to be no possible escape. For the other place was equally eternal,

or I might have been tempted to seek refuge there.

We grown-up folk, our brains dulled by the slowly acquired habit of

not thinking, do wrong to torture children with these awful themes.

Eternity, Heaven, Hell are meaningless words to us. We repeat them,

as we gabble our prayers, telling our smug, self-satisfied selves

that we are miserable sinners. But to the child, the "intelligent

stranger" in the land, seeking to know, they are fearful realities.

If you doubt me, Reader, stand by yourself, beneath the stars, one

night, and SOLVE this thought, Eternity. Your next address shall be

the County Lunatic Asylum.

My actively inclined French friend held cheerier views than are

common of man's life beyond the grave. His belief was that we were

destined to constant change, to everlasting work. We were to pass

through the older planets, to labour in the greater suns.

But for such advanced career a more capable being was needed. No

one of us was sufficient, he argued, to be granted a future

existence all to himself. His idea was that two or three or four of

us, according to our intrinsic value, would be combined to make a

new and more important individuality, fitted for a higher existence.

Man, he pointed out, was already a collection of the beasts. "You

and I," he would say, tapping first my chest and then his own, "we

have them all here--the ape, the tiger, the pig, the motherly hen,

the gamecock, the good ant; we are all, rolled into one. So the man

of the future, he will be made up of many men--the courage of one,

the wisdom of another, the kindliness of a third."

"Take a City man," he would continue, "say the Lord Mayor; add to

him a poet, say Swinburne; mix them with a religious enthusiast, say

General Booth. There you will have the man fit for the higher

life."

Garibaldi and Bismarck, he held, should make a very fine mixture,

correcting one another; if needful, extract of Ibsen might be added,

as seasoning. He thought that Irish politicians would mix admirably

with Scotch divines; that Oxford Dons would go well with lady

novelists. He was convinced that Count Tolstoi, a few Gaiety

Johnnies (we called them "mashers" in those days), together with a

humourist--he was kind enough to suggest myself--would produce

something very choice. Queen Elizabeth, he fancied, was probably

being reserved to go--let us hope in the long distant future--with

Ouida. It sounds a whimsical theory, set down here in my words, not

his; but the old fellow was so much in earnest that few of us ever

thought to laugh as he talked. Indeed, there were moments on starry

nights, as walking home from the office, we would pause on Waterloo

Bridge to enjoy the witchery of the long line of the Embankment

lights, when I could almost believe, as I listened to him, in the

not impossibility of his dreams.

Even as regards this world, it would often be a gain, one thinks,

and no loss, if some half-dozen of us were rolled together, or

boiled down, or whatever the process necessary might be, and

something made out of us in that way.

Have not you, my fair Reader, sometimes thought to yourself what a

delightful husband Tom this, plus Harry that, plus Dick the other,

would make? Tom is always so cheerful and good-tempered, yet you

feel that in the serious moments of life he would be lacking. A

delightful hubby when you felt merry, yes; but you would not go to

him for comfort and strength in your troubles, now would you? No, in

your hour of sorrow, how good it would be to have near you grave,

earnest Harry. He is a "good sort," Harry. Perhaps, after all, he

is the best of the three--solid, staunch, and true. What a pity he

is just a trifle commonplace and unambitious. Your friends, not

knowing his sterling hidden qualities, would hardly envy you; and a

husband that no other girl envies you--well, that would hardly be

satisfactory, would it? Dick, on the other hand, is clever and

brilliant. He will make his way; there will come a day, you are

convinced, when a woman will be proud to bear his name. If only he

were not so self-centred, if only he were more sympathetic.

But a combination of the three, or rather of the best qualities of

the three--Tom's good temper, Harry's tender strength, Dick's

brilliant masterfulness: that is the man who would be worthy of

you.

The woman David Copperfield wanted was Agnes and Dora rolled into

one. He had to take them one after the other, which was not so

nice. And did he really love Agnes, Mr. Dickens; or merely feel he

ought to? Forgive me, but I am doubtful concerning that second

marriage of Copperfield's. Come, strictly between ourselves, Mr.

Dickens, was not David, good human soul! now and again a wee bit

bored by the immaculate Agnes? She made him an excellent wife, I am

sure. SHE never ordered oysters by the barrel, unopened. It would,

on any day, have been safe to ask Traddles home to dinner; in fact,

Sophie and the whole rose-garden might have accompanied him, Agnes

would have been equal to the occasion. The dinner would have been

perfectly cooked and served, and Agnes' sweet smile would have

pervaded the meal. But AFTER the dinner, when David and Traddles

sat smoking alone, while from the drawing-room drifted down the

notes of high-class, elevating music, played by the saintly Agnes,

did they never, glancing covertly towards the empty chair between

them, see the laughing, curl-framed face of a very foolish little

woman--one of those foolish little women that a wise man thanks God

for making--and wish, in spite of all, that it were flesh and blood,

not shadow?

Oh, you foolish wise folk, who would remodel human nature! Cannot

you see how great is the work given unto childish hands? Think you

that in well-ordered housekeeping and high-class conversation lies

the whole making of a man? Foolish Dora, fashioned by clever old

magician Nature, who knows that weakness and helplessness are as a

talisman calling forth strength and tenderness in man, trouble

yourself not unduly about those oysters nor the underdone mutton,

little woman. Good plain cooks at twenty pounds a year will see to

these things for us; and, now and then, when a windfall comes our

way, we will dine together at a moderate-priced restaurant where

these things are managed even better. Your work, Dear, is to teach

us gentleness and kindliness. Lay your curls here, child. It is

from such as you that we learn wisdom. Foolish wise folk sneer at

you; foolish wise folk would pull up the useless lilies, the

needless roses, from the garden, would plant in their places only

serviceable wholesome cabbage. But the Gardener knowing better,

plants the silly short-lived flowers; foolish wise folk, asking for

what purpose.

As for Agnes, Mr. Dickens, do you know what she always makes me

think of? You will not mind my saying?--the woman one reads about.

Frankly, I don't believe in her. I do not refer to Agnes in

particular, but the woman of whom she is a type, the faultless woman

we read of. Women have many faults, but, thank God, they have one

redeeming virtue--they are none of them faultless.

But the heroine of fiction! oh, a terrible dragon of virtue is she.

May heaven preserve us poor men, undeserving though we be, from a

life with the heroine of fiction. She is all soul, and heart, and

intellect, with never a bit of human nature to catch hold of her by.

Her beauty, it appals one, it is so painfully indescribable. Whence

comes she, whither goes she, why do we never meet her like? Of

women I know a goodish few, and I look among them for her prototype;

but I find it not. They are charming, they are beautiful, all these

women that I know. It would not be right for me to tell you,

Ladies, the esteem and veneration with which I regard you all. You

yourselves, blushing, would be the first to cheek my ardour. But

yet, dear Ladies, seen even through my eyes, you come not near the

ladies that I read about. You are not--if I may be permitted an

expressive vulgarism--in the same street with them. Your beauty I

can look upon, and retain my reason--for whatever value that may be

to me. Your conversation, I admit, is clever and brilliant in the

extreme; your knowledge vast and various; your culture quite

Bostonian; yet you do not--I hardly know how to express it--you do

not shine with the sixteen full-moon-power of the heroine of

fiction. You do not--and I thank you for it--impress me with the

idea that you are the only women on earth. You, even you, possess

tempers of your own. I am inclined to think you take an interest in

your clothes. I would not be sure, even, that you do not mingle a

little of "your own hair" (you know what I mean) with the hair of

your head. There is in your temperament a vein of vanity, a

suggestion of selfishness, a spice of laziness. I have known you a

trifle unreasonable, a little inconsiderate, slightly exacting.

Unlike the heroine of fiction, you have a certain number of human

appetites and instincts; a few human follies, perhaps, a human

fault, or shall we say two? In short, dear Ladies, you also, even

as we men, are the children of Adam and Eve. Tell me, if you know,

where I may meet with this supernatural sister of yours, this woman

that one reads about. She never keeps any one waiting while she

does her back hair, she is never indignant with everybody else in

the house because she cannot find her own boots, she never scolds

the servants, she is never cross with the children, she never slams

the door, she is never jealous of her younger sister, she never

lingers at the gate with any cousin but the right one.

Dear me, where DO they keep them, these women that one reads about?

I suppose where they keep the pretty girl of Art. You have seen

her, have you not, Reader, the pretty girl in the picture? She

leaps the six-barred gate with a yard and a half to spare, turning

round in her saddle the while to make some smiling remark to the

comic man behind, who, of course, is standing on his head in the

ditch. She floats gracefully off Dieppe on stormy mornings. Her

baigneuse--generally of chiffon and old point lace--has not lost a

curve. The older ladies, bathing round her, look wet. Their dress

clings damply to their limbs. But the pretty girl of Art dives, and

never a curl of her hair is disarranged. The pretty girl of Art

stands lightly on tip-toe and volleys a tennis-ball six feet above

her head. The pretty girl of Art keeps the head of the punt

straight against a stiff current and a strong wind. SHE never gets

the water up her sleeve, and down her back, and all over the

cushions. HER pole never sticks in the mud, with the steam launch

ten yards off and the man looking the other way. The pretty girl of

Art skates in high-heeled French shoes at an angle of forty-five to

the surface of the ice, both hands in her muff. SHE never sits down

plump, with her feet a yard apart, and says "Ough." The pretty girl

of Art drives tandem down Piccadilly, during the height of the

season, at eighteen miles an hour. It never occurs to HER leader

that the time has now arrived for him to turn round and get into the

cart. The pretty girl of Art rides her bicycle through the town on

market day, carrying a basket of eggs, and smiling right and left.

SHE never throws away both her handles and runs into a cow. The

pretty girl of Art goes trout fishing in open-work stockings, under

a blazing sun, with a bunch of dew-bespangled primroses in her hair;

and every time she gracefully flicks her rod she hauls out a salmon.

SHE never ties herself up to a tree, or hooks the dog. SHE never

comes home, soaked and disagreeable, to tell you that she caught

six, but put them all back again, because they were merely two or

three-pounders, and not worth the trouble of carrying. The pretty

girl of Art plays croquet with one hand, and looks as if she enjoyed

the game. SHE never tries to accidentally kick her ball into

position when nobody is noticing, or stands it out that she is

through a hoop that she knows she isn't.

She is a good, all-round sportswoman, is the pretty girl in the

picture. The only thing I have to say against her is that she makes

one dissatisfied with the girl out of the picture--the girl who

mistakes a punt for a teetotum, so that you land feeling as if you

had had a day in the Bay of Biscay; and who, every now and again,

stuns you with the thick end of the pole: the girl who does not

skate with her hands in her muff; but who, throwing them up to

heaven, says, "I'm going," and who goes, taking care that you go

with her: the girl who, as you brush her down, and try to comfort

her, explains to you indignantly that the horse took the corner too

sharply and never noticed the mile-stone; the girl whose hair sea

water does NOT improve.

There can be no doubt about it: that is where they keep the good

woman of Fiction, where they keep the pretty girl of Art.

Does it not occur to you, Messieurs les Auteurs, that you are sadly

disturbing us? These women that are a combination of Venus, St.

Cecilia, and Elizabeth Fry! you paint them for us in your glowing

pages: it is not kind of you, knowing, as you must, the women we

have to put up with.

Would we not be happier, we men and women, were we to idealize one

another less? My dear young lady, you have nothing whatever to

complain to Fate about, I assure you. Unclasp those pretty hands of

yours, and come away from the darkening window. Jack is as good a

fellow as you deserve; don't yearn so much. Sir Galahad, my dear--

Sir Galahad rides and fights in the land that lies beyond the

sunset, far enough away from this noisy little earth where you and I

spend much of our time tittle-tattling, flirting, wearing fine

clothes, and going to shows. And besides, you must remember, Sir

Galahad was a bachelor: as an idealist he was wise. Your Jack is

by no means a bad sort of knight, as knights go nowadays in this un-

idyllic world. There is much solid honesty about him, and he does

not pose. He is not exceptional, I grant you; but, my dear, have

you ever tried the exceptional man? Yes, he is very nice in a

drawing-room, and it is interesting to read about him in the Society

papers: you will find most of his good qualities there: take my

advice, don't look into him too closely. You be content with Jack,

and thank heaven he is no worse. We are not saints, we men--none of

us, and our beautiful thoughts, I fear, we write in poetry not

action. The White Knight, my dear young lady, with his pure soul,

his heroic heart, his life's devotion to a noble endeavour, does not

live down here to any great extent. They have tried it, one or two

of them, and the world--you and I: the world is made up of you and

I--has generally starved, and hooted them. There are not many of

them left now: do you think you would care to be the wife of one,

supposing one were to be found for you? Would you care to live with

him in two furnished rooms in Clerkenwell, die with him on a chair

bedstead? A century hence they will put up a statue to him, and you

may be honoured as the wife who shared with him his sufferings. Do

you think you are woman enough for that? If not, thank your stars

you have secured, for your own exclusive use, one of us

UNexceptional men, who knows no better than to admire you. YOU are

not exceptional.

And in us ordinary men there is some good. It wants finding, that

is all. We are not so commonplace as you think us. Even your Jack,

fond of his dinner, his conversation four-cornered by the Sporting

Press--yes, I agree he is not interesting, as he sits snoring in the

easy-chair; but, believe it or not, there are the makings of a great

hero in Jack, if Fate would but be kinder to him, and shake him out

of his ease.

Dr. Jekyll contained beneath his ample waist-coat not two egos, but

three--not only Hyde but another, a greater than Jekyll--a man as

near to the angels as Hyde was to the demons. These well-fed City

men, these Gaiety Johnnies, these plough-boys, apothecaries,

thieves! within each one lies hidden the hero, did Fate, the

sculptor, choose to use his chisel. That little drab we have

noticed now and then, our way taking us often past the end of the

court, there was nothing by which to distinguish her. She was not

over-clean, could use coarse language on occasion--just the spawn of

the streets: take care lest the cloak of our child should brush

her.

One morning the district Coroner, not, generally speaking, a poet

himself, but an adept at discovering poetry buried under unlikely

rubbish-heaps, tells us more about her. She earned six shillings a

week, and upon it supported a bed-ridden mother and three younger

children. She was housewife, nurse, mother, breadwinner, rolled

into one. Yes, there are heroines OUT of fiction.

So loutish Tom has won the Victoria Cross--dashed out under a storm

of bullets and rescued the riddled flag. Who would have thought it

of loutish Tom? The village alehouse one always deemed the goal of

his endeavours. Chance comes to Tom and we find him out. To Harry

the Fates were less kind. A ne'er-do-well was Harry--drank, knocked

his wife about, they say. Bury him, we are well rid of him, he was

good for nothing. Are we sure?

Let us acknowledge we are sinners. We know, those of us who dare to

examine ourselves, that we are capable of every meanness, of every

wrong under the sun. It is by the accident of circumstance, aided

by the helpful watchfulness of the policeman, that our possibilities

of crime are known only to ourselves. But having acknowledged our

evil, let us also acknowledge that we are capable of greatness. The

martyrs who faced death and torture unflinchingly for conscience'

sake, were men and women like ourselves. They had their wrong side.

Before the small trials of daily life they no doubt fell as we fall.

By no means were they the pick of humanity. Thieves many of them

had been, and murderers, evil-livers, and evil-doers. But the

nobility was there also, lying dormant, and their day came. Among

them must have been men who had cheated their neighbours over the

counter; men who had been cruel to their wives and children;

selfish, scandal-mongering women. In easier times their virtue

might never have been known to any but their Maker.

In every age and in every period, when and where Fate has called

upon men and women to play the man, human nature has not been found

wanting. They were a poor lot, those French aristocrats that the

Terror seized: cowardly, selfish, greedy had been their lives. Yet

there must have been good, even in them. When the little things

that in their little lives they had thought so great were swept away

from them, when they found themselves face to face with the

realities; then even they played the man. Poor shuffling Charles

the First, crusted over with weakness and folly, deep down in him at

last we find the great gentleman.

I like to hear stories of the littleness of great men. I like to

think that Shakespeare was fond of his glass. I even cling to the

tale of that disgraceful final orgie with friend Ben Jonson.

Possibly the story may not be true, but I hope it was. I like to

think of him as poacher, as village ne'er-do-well, denounced by the

local grammar-school master, preached at by the local J. P. of the

period. I like to reflect that Cromwell had a wart on his nose; the

thought makes me more contented with my own features. I like to

think that he put sweets upon the chairs, to see finely-dressed

ladies spoil their frocks; to tell myself that he roared with

laughter at the silly jest, like any East End 'Arry with his Bank

Holiday squirt of dirty water. I like to read that Carlyle threw

bacon at his wife and occasionally made himself highly ridiculous

over small annoyances, that would have been smiled at by a man of

well-balanced mind. I think of the fifty foolish things a week _I_

do, and say to myself, "I, too, am a literary man."

I like to think that even Judas had his moments of nobility, his

good hours when he would willingly have laid down his life for his

Master. Perhaps even to him there came, before the journey's end,

the memory of a voice saying--"Thy sins be forgiven thee." There

must have been good, even in Judas.

Virtue lies like the gold in quartz, there is not very much of it,

and much pains has to be spent on the extracting of it. But Nature

seems to think it worth her while to fashion these huge useless

stones, if in them she may hide away her precious metals. Perhaps,

also, in human nature, she cares little for the mass of dross,

provided that by crushing and cleansing she can extract from it a

little gold, sufficient to repay her for the labour of the world.

We wonder why she troubles to make the stone. Why cannot the gold

lie in nuggets on the surface? But her methods are secrets to us.

Perchance there is a reason for the quartz. Perchance there is a

reason for the evil and folly, through which run, unseen to the

careless eye, the tiny veins of virtue.

Aye, the stone predominates, but the gold is there. We claim to

have it valued. The evil that there is in man no tongue can tell.

We are vile among the vile, a little evil people. But we are great.

Pile up the bricks of our sins till the tower knocks at Heaven's

gate, calling for vengeance, yet we are great--with a greatness and

a virtue that the untempted angels may not reach to. The written

history of the human race, it is one long record of cruelty, of

falsehood, of oppression. Think you the world would be spinning

round the sun unto this day, if that written record were all?

Sodom, God would have spared had there been found ten righteous men

within its walls. The world is saved by its just men. History sees

them not; she is but the newspaper, a report of accidents. Judge

you life by that? Then you shall believe that the true Temple of

Hymen is the Divorce Court; that men are of two classes only, the

thief and the policeman; that all noble thought is but a

politician's catchword. History sees only the destroying

conflagrations, she takes no thought of the sweet fire-sides.

History notes the wrong; but the patient suffering, the heroic

endeavour, that, slowly and silently, as the soft processes of

Nature re-clothing with verdure the passion-wasted land, obliterate

that wrong, she has no eyes for. In the days of cruelty and

oppression--not altogether yet of the past, one fears--must have

lived gentle-hearted men and women, healing with their help and

sympathy the wounds that else the world had died of. After the

thief, riding with jingle of sword and spur, comes, mounted on his

ass, the good Samaritan. The pyramid of the world's evil--God help

us! it rises high, shutting out almost the sun. But the record of

man's good deeds, it lies written in the laughter of the children,

in the light of lovers' eyes, in the dreams of the young men; it

shall not be forgotten. The fires of persecution served as torches

to show Heaven the heroism that was in man. From the soil of

tyranny sprang self-sacrifice, and daring for the Right. Cruelty!

what is it but the vile manure, making the ground ready for the

flowers of tenderness and pity? Hate and Anger shriek to one

another across the ages, but the voices of Love and Comfort are none

the less existent that they speak in whispers, lips to ear.

We have done wrong, oh, ye witnessing Heavens, but we have done

good. We claim justice. We have laid down our lives for our

friends: greater love hath no man than this. We have fought for

the Right. We have died for the Truth--as the Truth seemed to us.

We have done noble deeds; we have lived noble lives; we have

comforted the sorrowful; we have succoured the weak. Failing,

falling, making in our blindness many a false step, yet we have

striven. For the sake of the army of just men and true, for the

sake of the myriads of patient, loving women, for the sake of the

pitiful and helpful, for the sake of the good that lies hidden

within us,--spare us, O Lord.

ON THE MOTHERLINESS OF MAN

It was only a piece of broken glass. From its shape and colour, I

should say it had, in its happier days, formed portion of a cheap

scent-bottle. Lying isolated on the grass, shone upon by the early

morning sun, it certainly appeared at its best. It attracted him.

He cocked his head, and looked at it with his right eye. Then he

hopped round to the other side, and looked at it with his left eye.

With either optic it seemed equally desirable.

That he was an inexperienced young rook goes without saying. An

older bird would not have given a second glance to the thing.

Indeed, one would have thought his own instinct might have told him

that broken glass would be a mistake in a bird's nest. But its

glitter drew him too strongly for resistance. I am inclined to

suspect that at some time, during the growth of his family tree,

there must have occurred a mesalliance, perhaps worse. Possibly a

strain of magpie blood?--one knows the character of magpies, or

rather their lack of character--and such things have happened. But

I will not pursue further so painful a train: I throw out the

suggestion as a possible explanation, that is all.

He hopped nearer. Was it a sweet illusion, this flashing fragment

of rainbow; a beautiful vision to fade upon approach, typical of so

much that is un-understandable in rook life? He made a dart forward

and tapped it with his beak. No, it was real--as fine a lump of

jagged green glass as any newly-married rook could desire, and to be

had for the taking. SHE would be pleased with it. He was a well-

meaning bird; the mere upward inclination of his tail suggested

earnest though possibly ill-directed endeavour.

He turned it over. It was an awkward thing to carry; it had so very

many corners. But he succeeded at last in getting it firmly between

his beak, and in haste, lest some other bird should seek to dispute

with him its possession, at once flew off with it.

A second rook who had been watching the proceedings from the lime

tree, called to a third who was passing. Even with my limited

knowledge of the language I found it easy to follow the

conversation: it was so obvious.

"Issachar!"

"Hallo!"

"What do you think? Zebulan's found a piece of broken bottle. He's

going to line his nest with it."

"No!"

"God's truth. Look at him. There he goes, he's got it in his

beak."

"Well, I'm --!"

And they both burst into a laugh.

But Zebulan heeded them not. If he overheard, he probably put down

the whole dialogue to jealousy. He made straight for his tree. By

standing with my left cheek pressed close against the window-pane, I

was able to follow him. He is building in what we call the Paddock

elms--a suburb commenced only last season, but rapidly growing. I

wanted to see what his wife would say.

At first she said nothing. He laid it carefully down on the branch

near the half-finished nest, and she stretched up her head and

looked at it.

Then she looked at him. For about a minute neither spoke. I could

see that the situation was becoming strained. When she did open her

beak, it was with a subdued tone, that had a vein of weariness

running through it.

"What is it?" she asked.

He was evidently chilled by her manner. As I have explained, he is

an inexperienced young rook. This is clearly his first wife, and he

stands somewhat in awe of her.

"Well, I don't exactly know what it's CALLED," he answered.

"Oh."

"No. But it's pretty, isn't it?" he added. He moved it, trying to

get it where the sun might reach it. It was evident he was

admitting to himself that, seen in the shade, it lost much of its

charm.

"Oh, yes; very pretty," was the rejoinder; "perhaps you'll tell me

what you're going to do with it."

The question further discomforted him. It was growing upon him that

this thing was not going to be the success he had anticipated. It

would be necessary to proceed warily.

"Of course, it's not a twig," he began.

"I see it isn't."

"No. You see, the nest is nearly all twigs as it is, and I thought-

"Oh, you did think."

"Yes, my dear. I thought--unless you are of opinion that it's too

showy--I thought we might work it in somewhere."

Then she flared out.

"Oh, did you? You thought that a good idea. An A1 prize idiot I

seem to have married, I do. You've been gone twenty minutes, and

you bring me back an eight-cornered piece of broken glass, which you

think we might 'work into' the nest. You'd like to see me sitting

on it for a month, you would. You think it would make a nice bed

for the children to lie on. You don't think you could manage to

find a packet of mixed pins if you went down again, I suppose.

They'd look pretty 'worked in' somewhere, don't you think?--Here,

get out of my way. I'll finish this nest by myself." She always

had been short with him.

She caught up the offending object--it was a fairly heavy lump of

glass--and flung it out of the tree with all her force. I heard it

crash through the cucumber frame. That makes the seventh pane of

glass broken in that cucumber frame this week. The couple in the

branch above are the worst. Their plan of building is the most

extravagant, the most absurd I ever heard of. They hoist up ten

times as much material as they can possibly use; you might think

they were going to build a block, and let it out in flats to the

other rooks. Then what they don't want they fling down again.

Suppose we built on such a principle? Suppose a human husband and

wife were to start erecting their house in Piccadilly Circus, let us

say; and suppose the man spent all the day steadily carrying bricks

up the ladder while his wife laid them, never asking her how many

she wanted, whether she didn't think he had brought up sufficient,

but just accumulating bricks in a senseless fashion, bringing up

every brick he could find. And then suppose, when evening came, and

looking round, they found they had some twenty cart-loads of bricks

lying unused upon the scaffold, they were to commence flinging them

down into Waterloo Place. They would get themselves into trouble;

somebody would be sure to speak to them about it. Yet that is

precisely what those birds do, and nobody says a word to them. They

are supposed to have a President. He lives by himself in the yew

tree outside the morning-room window. What I want to know is what

he is supposed to be good for. This is the sort of thing I want him

to look into. I would like him to be worming underneath one evening

when those two birds are tidying up: perhaps he would do something

then. I have done all I can. I have thrown stones at them, that,

in the course of nature, have returned to earth again, breaking more

glass. I have blazed at them with a revolver; but they have come to

regard this proceeding as a mere expression of light-heartedness on

my part, possibly confusing me with the Arab of the Desert, who, I

am given to understand, expresses himself thus in moments of deep

emotion. They merely retire to a safe distance to watch me; no

doubt regarding me as a poor performer, inasmuch as I do not also

dance and shout between each shot. I have no objection to their

building there, if they only would build sensibly. I want somebody

to speak to them to whom they will pay attention.

You can hear them in the evening, discussing the matter of this

surplus stock.

"Don't you work any more," he says, as he comes up with the last

load, "you'll tire yourself."

"Well, I am feeling a bit done up," she answers, as she hops out of

the nest and straightens her back.

"You're a bit peckish, too, I expect," he adds sympathetically. "I

know I am. We will have a scratch down, and be off."

"What about all this stuff?" she asks, while titivating herself;

"we'd better not leave it about, it looks so untidy."

"Oh, we'll soon get rid of that," he answers. "I'll have that down

in a jiffy."

To help him, she seizes a stick and is about to drop it. He darts

forward and snatches it from her.

"Don't you waste that one," he cries, "that's a rare one, that is.

You see me hit the old man with it."

And he does. What the gardener says, I will leave you to imagine.

Judged from its structure, the rook family is supposed to come next

in intelligence to man himself. Judging from the intelligence

displayed by members of certain human families with whom I have come

in contact, I can quite believe it. That rooks talk I am positive.

No one can spend half-an-hour watching a rookery without being

convinced of this. Whether the talk be always wise and witty, I am

not prepared to maintain; but that there is a good deal of it is

certain. A young French gentleman of my acquaintance, who visited

England to study the language, told me that the impression made upon

him by his first social evening in London was that of a

parrot-house. Later on, when he came to comprehend, he, of course,

recognized the brilliancy and depth of the average London

drawing-room talk; but that is how, not comprehending, it impressed

him at first. Listening to the riot of a rookery is much the same

experience. The conversation to us sounds meaningless; the rooks

themselves would probably describe it as sparkling.

There is a Misanthrope I know who hardly ever goes into Society. I

argued the question with him one day. "Why should I?" he replied;

"I know, say, a dozen men and women with whom intercourse is a

pleasure; they have ideas of their own which they are not afraid to

voice. To rub brains with such is a rare and goodly thing, and I

thank Heaven for their friendship; but they are sufficient for my

leisure. What more do I require? What is this 'Society' of which

you all make so much ado? I have sampled it, and I find it

unsatisfying. Analyze it into its elements, what is it? Some

person I know very slightly, who knows me very slightly, asks me to

what you call an 'At Home.' The evening comes, I have done my day's

work and I have dined. I have been to a theatre or concert, or I

have spent a pleasant hour or so with a friend. I am more inclined

for bed than anything else, but I pull myself together, dress, and

drive to the house. While I am taking off my hat and coat in the

hall, a man enters I met a few hours ago at the Club. He is a man I

have very little opinion of, and he, probably, takes a similar view

of me. Our minds have no thought in common, but as it is necessary

to talk, I tell him it is a warm evening. Perhaps it is a warm

evening, perhaps it isn't; in either case he agrees with me. I ask

him if he is going to Ascot. I do not care a straw whether he is

going to Ascot or not. He says he is not quite sure, but asks me

what chance Passion Flower has for the Thousand Guineas. I know he

doesn't value my opinion on the subject at a brass farthing--he

would be a fool if he did, but I cudgel my brains to reply to him,

as though he were going to stake his shirt on my advice. We reach

the first floor, and are mutually glad to get rid of one another. I

catch my hostess' eye. She looks tired and worried; she would be

happier in bed, only she doesn't know it. She smiles sweetly, but

it is clear she has not the slightest idea who I am, and is waiting

to catch my name from the butler. I whisper it to him. Perhaps he

will get it right, perhaps he won't; it is quite immaterial. They

have asked two hundred and forty guests, some seventy-five of whom

they know by sight, for the rest, any chance passer-by, able, as the

theatrical advertisements say, 'to dress and behave as a gentleman,'

would do every bit as well. Indeed, I sometimes wonder why people

go to the trouble and expense of invitation cards at all. A

sandwich-man outside the door would answer the purpose. 'Lady

Tompkins, At Home, this afternoon from three to seven; Tea and

Music. Ladies and Gentlemen admitted on presentation of visiting

card. Afternoon dress indispensable.' The crowd is the thing

wanted; as for the items, well, tell me, what is the difference,

from the Society point of view, between one man in a black

frock-coat and another?

"I remember being once invited to a party at a house in Lancaster

Gate. I had met the woman at a picnic. In the same green frock and

parasol I might have recognized her the next time I saw her. In any

other clothes I did not expect to. My cabman took me to the house

opposite, where they were also giving a party. It made no

difference to any of us. The hostess--I never learnt her name--said

it was very good of me to come, and then shunted me off on to a

Colonial Premier (I did not catch his name, and he did not catch

mine, which was not extraordinary, seeing that my hostess did not

know it) who, she whispered to me, had come over, from wherever it

was (she did not seem to be very sure) principally to make my

acquaintance. Half through the evening, and by accident, I

discovered my mistake, but judged it too late to say anything then.

I met a couple of people I knew, had a little supper with them, and

came away. The next afternoon I met my right hostess--the lady who

should have been my hostess. She thanked me effusively for having

sacrificed the previous evening to her and her friends; she said she

knew how seldom I went out: that made her feel my kindness all the

more. She told me that the Brazilian Minister's wife had told her

that I was the cleverest man she had ever met. I often think I

should like to meet that man, whoever he may be, and thank him.

"But perhaps the butler does pronounce my name rightly, and perhaps

my hostess actually does recognize me. She smiles, and says she was

so afraid I was not coming. She implies that all the other guests

are but as a feather in her scales of joy compared with myself. I

smile in return, wondering to myself how I look when I do smile. I

have never had the courage to face my own smile in the

looking-glass. I notice the Society smile of other men, and it is

not reassuring. I murmur something about my not having been likely

to forget this evening; in my turn, seeking to imply that I have

been looking forward to it for weeks. A few men shine at this sort

of thing, but they are a small percentage, and without conceit I

regard myself as no bigger a fool than the average male. Not

knowing what else to say, I tell her also that it is a warm evening.

She smiles archly as though there were some hidden witticism in the

remark, and I drift away, feeling ashamed of myself. To talk as an

idiot when you ARE an idiot brings no discomfort; to behave as an

idiot when you have sufficient sense to know it, is painful. I hide

myself in the crowd, and perhaps I'll meet a woman I was introduced

to three weeks ago at a picture gallery. We don't know each other's

names, but, both of us feeling lonesome, we converse, as it is

called. If she be the ordinary type of woman, she asks me if I am

going on to the Johnsons'. I tell her no. We stand silent for a

moment, both thinking what next to say. She asks me if I was at the

Thompsons' the day before yesterday. I again tell her no. I begin

to feel dissatisfied with myself that I was not at the Thompsons'.

Trying to get even with her, I ask her if she is going to the

Browns' next Monday. (There are no Browns, she will have to say,

No.) She is not, and her tone suggests that a social stigma rests

upon the Browns. I ask her if she has been to Barnum's Circus; she

hasn't, but is going. I give her my impressions of Barnum's Circus,

which are precisely the impressions of everybody else who has seen

the show.

"Or if luck be against me, she is possibly a smart woman, that is to

say, her conversation is a running fire of spiteful remarks at the

expense of every one she knows, and of sneers at the expense of

every one she doesn't. I always feel I could make a better woman

myself, out of a bottle of vinegar and a penn'orth of mixed pins.

Yet it usually takes one about ten minutes to get away from her.

"Even when, by chance, one meets a flesh-and-blood man or woman at

such gatherings, it is not the time or place for real conversation;

and as for the shadows, what person in their senses would exhaust a

single brain cell upon such? I remember a discussion once

concerning Tennyson, considered as a social item. The dullest and

most densely-stupid bore I ever came across was telling how he had

sat next to Tennyson at dinner. 'I found him a most uninteresting

man,' so he confided to us; 'he had nothing to say for himself--

absolutely nothing.' I should like to resuscitate Dr. Samuel

Johnson for an evening, and throw him into one of these 'At Homes'

of yours."

My friend is an admitted misanthrope, as I have explained; but one

cannot dismiss him as altogether unjust. That there is a certain

mystery about Society's craving for Society must be admitted. I

stood one evening trying to force my way into the supper room of a

house in Berkeley Square. A lady, hot and weary, a few yards in

front of me was struggling to the same goal.

"Why," remarked she to her companion, "why do we come to these

places, and fight like a Bank Holiday crowd for eighteenpenny-worth

of food?"

"We come here," replied the man, whom I judged to be a philosopher,

"to say we've been here."

I met A----- the other evening, and asked him to dine with me on

Monday. I don't know why I ask A----- to dine with me, but about

once a month I do. He is an uninteresting man.

"I can't," he said, "I've got to go to the B-----s'; confounded

nuisance, it will be infernally dull."

"Why go?" I asked.

"I really don't know," he replied.

A little later B----- met me, and asked me to dine with him on

Monday.

"I can't," I answered, "some friends are coming to us that evening.

It's a duty dinner, you know the sort of thing."

"I wish you could have managed it," he said, "I shall have no one to

talk to. The A-----s are coming, and they bore me to death."

"Why do you ask him?" I suggested.

"Upon my word, I really don't know," he replied.

But to return to our rooks. We were speaking of their social

instincts. Some dozen of them--the "scallywags" and bachelors of

the community, I judge them to be--have started a Club. For a month

past I have been trying to understand what the affair was. Now I

know: it is a Club.

And for their Club House they have chosen, of course, the tree

nearest my bedroom window. I can guess how that came about; it was

my own fault, I never thought of it. About two months ago, a single

rook--suffering from indigestion or an unhappy marriage, I know not-

-chose this tree one night for purposes of reflection. He woke me

up: I felt angry. I opened the window, and threw an empty

soda-water bottle at him. Of course it did not hit him, and finding

nothing else to throw, I shouted at him, thinking to frighten him

away. He took no notice, but went on talking to himself. I shouted

louder, and woke up my own dog. The dog barked furiously, and woke

up most things within a quarter of a mile. I had to go down with a

boot-jack--the only thing I could find handy--to soothe the dog.

Two hours later I fell asleep from exhaustion. I left the rook

still cawing.

The next night he came again. I should say he was a bird with a

sense of humour. Thinking this might happen, I had, however, taken

the precaution to have a few stones ready. I opened the window

wide, and fired them one after another into the tree. After I had

closed the window, he hopped down nearer, and cawed louder than

ever. I think he wanted me to throw more stones at him: he

appeared to regard the whole proceeding as a game. On the third

night, as I heard nothing of him, I flattered myself that, in spite

of his bravado, I had discouraged him. I might have known rooks

better.

What happened when the Club was being formed, I take it, was this:

"Where shall we fix upon for our Club House?" said the secretary,

all other points having been disposed of. One suggested this tree,

another suggested that. Then up spoke this particular rook:

"I'll tell you where," said he, "in the yew tree opposite the porch.

And I'll tell you for why. Just about an hour before dawn a man

comes to the window over the porch, dressed in the most comical

costume you ever set eyes upon. I'll tell you what he reminds me

of--those little statues that men use for decorating fields. He

opens the window, and throws a lot of things out upon the lawn, and

then he dances and sings. It's awfully interesting, and you can see

it all from the yew tree."

That, I am convinced, is how the Club came to fix upon the tree next

my window. I have had the satisfaction of denying them the

exhibition they anticipated, and I cheer myself with the hope that

they have visited their disappointment upon their misleader.

There is a difference between Rook Clubs and ours. In our clubs the

respectable members arrive early, and leave at a reasonable hour; in

Rook Clubs, it would appear, this principle is reversed. The Mad

Hatter would have liked this Club--it would have been a club after

his own heart. It opens at half-past two in the morning, and the

first to arrive are the most disreputable members. In Rook-land the

rowdy-dowdy, randy-dandy, rollicky-ranky boys get up very early in

the morning and go to bed in the afternoon. Towards dawn, the

older, more orderly members drop in for reasonable talk, and the

Club becomes more respectable. The tree closes about six. For the

first two hours, however, the goings-on are disgraceful. The

proceedings, as often as not, open with a fight. If no two

gentlemen can be found to oblige with a fight, the next noisiest

thing to fall back upon is held to be a song. It is no satisfaction

to me to be told that rooks cannot sing. _I_ know that, without the

trouble of referring to the natural history book. It is the rook

who does not know it; HE thinks he can; and as a matter of fact, he

does. You can criticize his singing, you can call it what you like,

but you can't stop it--at least, that is my experience. The song

selected is sure to be one with a chorus. Towards the end it

becomes mainly chorus, unless the soloist be an extra powerful bird,

determined to insist upon his rights.

The President knows nothing of this Club. He gets up himself about

seven--three hours after all the others have finished breakfast--and

then fusses round under the impression that he is waking up the

colony, the fat-headed old fool. He is the poorest thing in

Presidents I have ever heard of. A South American Republic would

supply a better article. The rooks themselves, the married

majority, fathers of families, respectable nestholders, are as

indignant as I am. I hear complaints from all quarters.

Reflection comes to one as, towards the close of these chill

afternoons in early spring, one leans upon the paddock gate watching

the noisy bustling in the bare elms.

So the earth is growing green again, and love is come again unto the

hearts of us old sober-coated fellows. Oh, Madam, your feathers

gleam wondrous black, and your bonnie bright eye stabs deep. Come,

sit by our side, and we'll tell you a tale such as rook never told

before. It's the tale of a nest in a topmost bough, that sways in

the good west wind. It's strong without, but it's soft within,

where the little green eggs lie safe. And there sits in that nest a

lady sweet, and she caws with joy, for, afar, she sees the rook she

loves the best. Oh, he has been east, and he has been west, and his

crop it is full of worms and slugs, and they are all for her.

We are old, old rooks, so many of us. The white is mingling with

the purple black upon our breasts. We have seen these tall elms

grow from saplings; we have seen the old trees fall and die. Yet

each season come to us again the young thoughts. So we mate and

build and gather that again our old, old hearts may quiver to the

thin cry of our newborn.

Mother Nature has but one care, the children. We talk of Love as

the Lord of Life: it is but the Minister. Our novels end where

Nature's tale begins. The drama that our curtain falls upon, is but

the prologue to her play. How the ancient Dame must laugh as she

listens to the prattle of her children. "Is Marriage a Failure?"

"Is Life worth Living?" "The New Woman versus the Old." So,

perhaps, the waves of the Atlantic discuss vehemently whether they

shall flow east or west.

Motherhood is the law of the Universe. The whole duty of man is to

be a mother. We labour: to what end? the children--the woman in

the home, the man in the community. The nation takes thought for

its future: why? In a few years its statesmen, its soldiers, its

merchants, its toilers, will be gathered unto their fathers. Why

trouble we ourselves about the future? The country pours its blood

and treasure into the earth that the children may reap. Foolish

Jacques Bonhomie, his addled brain full of dreams, rushes with

bloody hands to give his blood for Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

He will not live to see, except in vision, the new world he gives

his bones to build--even his spinning word-whipped head knows that.

But the children! they shall live sweeter lives. The peasant leaves

his fireside to die upon the battle-field. What is it to him, a

grain in the human sand, that Russia should conquer the East, that

Germany should be united, that the English flag should wave above

new lands? the heritage his fathers left him shall be greater for

his sons. Patriotism! what is it but the mother instinct of a

people?

Take it that the decree has gone forth from Heaven: There shall be

no more generations, with this life the world shall die. Think you

we should move another hand? The ships would rot in the harbours,

the grain would rot in the ground. Should we paint pictures, write

books, make music? hemmed in by that onward creeping sea of silence.

Think you with what eyes husband and wife would look on one another.

Think you of the wooing--the spring of Love dried up; love only a

pool of stagnant water.

How little we seem to realize this foundation of our life. Herein,

if nowhere else, lies our eternity. This Ego shall never die--

unless the human race from beginning to end be but a passing jest of

the Gods, to be swept aside when wearied of, leaving room for new

experiments. These features of mine--we will not discuss their

aesthetic value--shall never disappear; modified, varied, but in

essential the same, they shall continue in ever increasing circles

to the end of Time. This temperament of mine--this good and evil

that is in me, it shall grow with every age, spreading ever wider,

combining, amalgamating. I go into my children and my children's

children, I am eternal. I am they, they are I. The tree withers

and you clear the ground, thankful if out of its dead limbs you can

make good firewood; but its spirit, its life, is in fifty saplings.

The tree dies not, it changes.

These men and women that pass me in the street, this one hurrying to

his office, this one to his club, another to his love, they are the

mothers of the world to come.

This greedy trickster in stocks and shares, he cheats, he lies, he

wrongs all men--for what? Follow him to his luxurious home in the

suburbs: what do you find? A man with children on his knee,

telling them stories, promising them toys. His anxious, sordid

life, for what object is it lived? That these children may possess

the things that he thinks good for them. Our very vices, side by

side with our virtues, spring from this one root, Motherhood. It is

the one seed of the Universe. The planets are but children of the

sun, the moon but an offspring of the earth, stone of her stone,

iron of her iron. What is the Great Centre of us all, life animate

and inanimate--if any life be inanimate? Is the eternal universe one

dim figure, Motherhood, filling all space?

This scheming Mother of Mayfair, angling for a rich son-in-law! Not

a pleasing portrait to look upon, from one point of view. Let us

look at it, for a moment, from another. How weary she must be!

This is her third "function" to-night; the paint is running off her

poor face. She has been snubbed a dozen times by her social

superiors, openly insulted by a Duchess; yet she bears it with a

patient smile. It is a pitiful ambition, hers: it is that her

child shall marry money, shall have carriages and many servants,

live in Park Lane, wear diamonds, see her name in the Society

Papers. At whatever cost to herself, her daughter shall, if

possible, enjoy these things. She could so much more comfortably go

to bed, and leave the child to marry some well-to-do commercial

traveller. Justice, Reader, even for such. Her sordid scheming is

but the deformed child of Motherhood.

Motherhood! it is the gamut of God's orchestra, savageness and

cruelty at the one end, tenderness and self-sacrifice at the other.

The sparrow-hawk fights the hen: he seeking food for his brood, she

defending hers with her life. The spider sucks the fly to feed its

myriad young; the cat tortures the mouse to give its still throbbing

carcase to her kittens, and man wrongs man for children's sake.

Perhaps when the riot of the world reaches us whole, not broken, we

shall learn it is a harmony, each jangling discord fallen into its

place around the central theme, Motherhood.

ON THE INADVISABILITY OF FOLLOWING ADVICE

I was pacing the Euston platform late one winter's night, waiting

for the last train to Watford, when I noticed a man cursing an

automatic machine. Twice he shook his fist at it. I expected every

moment to see him strike it. Naturally curious, I drew near softly.

I wanted to catch what he was saying. However, he heard my

approaching footsteps, and turned on me. "Are you the man," said

he, "who was here just now?"

"Just where?" I replied. I had been pacing up and down the platform

for about five minutes.

"Why here, where we are standing," he snapped out. "Where do you

think 'here' is--over there?" He seemed irritable.

"I may have passed this spot in the course of my peregrinations, if

that is what you mean," I replied. I spoke with studied politeness;

my idea was to rebuke his rudeness.

"I mean," he answered, "are you the man that spoke to me, just a

minute ago?"

"I am not that man," I said; "good-night."

"Are you sure?" he persisted.

"One is not likely to forget talking to you," I retorted.

His tone had been most offensive. "I beg your pardon," he replied

grudgingly. "I thought you looked like the man who spoke to me a

minute or so ago."

I felt mollified; he was the only other man on the platform, and I

had a quarter of an hour to wait. "No, it certainly wasn't me," I

returned genially, but ungrammatically. "Why, did you want him?"

"Yes, I did," he answered. "I put a penny in the slot here," he

continued, feeling apparently the need of unburdening himself:

"wanted a box of matches. I couldn't get anything put, and I was

shaking the machine, and swearing at it, as one does, when there

came along a man, about your size, and--you're SURE it wasn't you?"

"Positive," I again ungrammatically replied; "I would tell you if it

had been. What did he do?"

"Well, he saw what had happened, or guessed it. He said, 'They are

troublesome things, those machines; they want understanding.' I

said, 'They want taking up and flinging into the sea, that's what

they want!' I was feeling mad because I hadn't a match about me,

and I use a lot. He said, 'They stick sometimes; the thing to do is

to put another penny in; the weight of the first penny is not always

sufficient. The second penny loosens the drawer and tumbles out

itself; so that you get your purchase together with your first penny

back again. I have often succeeded that way.' Well, it seemed a

silly explanation, but he talked as if he had been weaned by an

automatic machine, and I was sawney enough to listen to him. I

dropped in what I thought was another penny. I have just discovered

it was a two-shilling piece. The fool was right to a certain

extent; I have got something out. I have got this."

He held it towards me; I looked at it. It was a packet of Everton

toffee.

"Two and a penny," he remarked, bitterly. "I'll sell it for a third

of what it cost me."

"You have put your money into the wrong machine," I suggested.

"Well, I know that!" he answered, a little crossly, as it seemed to

me--he was not a nice man: had there been any one else to talk to I

should have left him. "It isn't losing the money I mind so much;

it's getting this damn thing, that annoys me. If I could find that

idiot Id ram it down his throat."

We walked to the end of the platform, side by side, in silence.

"There are people like that," he broke out, as we turned, "people

who will go about, giving advice. I'll be getting six months over

one of them, I'm always afraid. I remember a pony I had once." (I

judged the man to be a small farmer; he talked in a wurzelly tone.

I don't know if you understand what I mean, but an atmosphere of

wurzels was the thing that somehow he suggested.) "It was a

thoroughbred Welsh pony, as sound a little beast as ever stepped.

I'd had him out to grass all the winter, and one day in the early

spring I thought I'd take him for a run. I had to go to Amersham on

business. I put him into the cart, and drove him across; it is just

ten miles from my place. He was a bit uppish, and had lathered

himself pretty freely by the time we reached the town.

"A man was at the door of the hotel. He says, 'That's a good pony

of yours.'

"'Pretty middling,' I says.

"'It doesn't do to over-drive 'em, when they're young,' he says.

"I says, 'He's done ten miles, and I've done most of the pulling. I

reckon I'm a jolly sight more exhausted than he is.

"I went inside and did my business, and when I came out the man was

still there. 'Going back up the hill?' he says to me.

"Somehow, I didn't cotton to him from the beginning. 'Well, I've

got to get the other side of it,' I says, 'and unless you know any

patent way of getting over a hill without going up it, I reckon I

am.'

"He says, 'You take my advice: give him a pint of old ale before you

start.'

"'Old ale,' I says; 'why he's a teetotaler.'

"'Never you mind that,' he answers; 'you give him a pint of old ale.

I know these ponies; he's a good 'un, but he ain't set. A pint of

old ale, and he'll take you up that hill like a cable tramway, and

not hurt himself.'

"I don't know what it is about this class of man. One asks oneself

afterwards why one didn't knock his hat over his eyes and run his

head into the nearest horse-trough. But at the time one listens to

them. I got a pint of old ale in a hand-bowl, and brought it out.

About half-a-dozen chaps were standing round, and of course there

was a good deal of chaff.

"'You're starting him on the downward course, Jim,' says one of

them. 'He'll take to gambling, rob a bank, and murder his mother.

That's always the result of a glass of ale, 'cording to the tracts.'

"'He won't drink it like that,' says another; 'it's as flat as ditch

water. Put a head on it for him.'

"'Ain't you got a cigar for him?' says a third.

"'A cup of coffee and a round of buttered toast would do him a sight

more good, a cold day like this,' says a fourth.

"I'd half a mind then to throw the stuff away, or drink it myself;

it seemed a piece of bally nonsense, giving good ale to a

four-year-old pony; but the moment the beggar smelt the bowl he

reached out his head, and lapped it up as though he'd been a

Christian; and I jumped into the cart and started off, amid cheers.

We got up the hill pretty steady. Then the liquor began to work

into his head. I've taken home a drunken man more than once and

there's pleasanter jobs than that. I've seen a drunken woman, and

they're worse. But a drunken Welsh pony I never want to have

anything more to do with so long as I live. Having four legs he

managed to hold himself up; but as to guiding himself, he couldn't;

and as for letting me do it, he wouldn't. First we were one side of

the road, and then we were the other. When we were not either side,

we were crossways in the middle. I heard a bicycle bell behind me,

but I dared not turn my head. All I could do was to shout to the

fellow to keep where he was.

"'I want to pass you,' he sang out, so soon as he was near enough.

"'Well, you can't do it,' I called back.

"'Why can't I?' he answered. 'How much of the road do YOU want?'

"'All of it and a bit over,' I answered him, 'for this job, and

nothing in the way.'

"He followed me for half-a-mile, abusing me; and every time he

thought he saw a chance he tried to pass me. But the pony was

always a bit too smart for him. You might have thought the brute

was doing it on purpose.

"'You're not fit to be driving,' he shouted. He was quite right; I

wasn't. I was feeling just about dead beat.

"'What do you think you are?' he continued, 'the charge of the Light

Brigade?' (He was a common sort of fellow.) 'Who sent YOU home with

the washing?'

"Well, he was making me wild by this time. 'What's the good of

talking to me?' I shouted back. 'Come and blackguard the pony if

you want to blackguard anybody. I've got all I can do without the

help of that alarm clock of yours. Go away, you're only making him

worse.'

"'What's the matter with the pony?' he called out.

"'Can't you see?' I answered. 'He's drunk.'

"Well, of course it sounded foolish; the truth often does.

"'One of you's drunk,' he retorted; 'for two pins I'd come and haul

you out of the cart.'

"I wish to goodness he had; I'd have given something to be out of

that cart. But he didn't have the chance. At that moment the pony

gave a sudden swerve; and I take it he must have been a bit too

close. I heard a yell and a curse, and at the same instant I was

splashed from head to foot with ditch water. Then the brute bolted.

A man was coming along, asleep on the top of a cart-load of windsor

chairs. It's disgraceful the way those wagoners go to sleep; I

wonder there are not more accidents. I don't think he ever knew

what had happened to him. I couldn't look round to see what became

of him; I only saw him start. Half-way down the hill a policeman

holla'd to me to stop. I heard him shouting out something about

furious driving. Half-a-mile this side of Chesham we came upon a

girls' school walking two and two--a 'crocodile' they call it, I

think. I bet you those girls are still talking about it. It must

have taken the old woman a good hour to collect them together again.

"It was market-day in Chesham; and I guess there has not been a

busier market-day in Chesham before or since. We went through the

town at about thirty miles an hour. I've never seen Chesham so

lively--it's a sleepy hole as a rule. A mile outside the town I

sighted the High Wycombe coach. I didn't feel I minded much; I had

got to that pass when it didn't seem to matter to me what happened;

I only felt curious. A dozen yards off the coach the pony stopped

dead; that jerked me off the seat to the bottom of the cart. I

couldn't get up, because the seat was on top of me. I could see

nothing but the sky, and occasionally the head of the pony, when he

stood upon his hind legs. But I could hear what the driver of the

coach said, and I judged he was having trouble also.

"'Take that damn circus out of the road,' he shouted. If he'd had

any sense he'd have seen how helpless I was. I could hear his

cattle plunging about; they are like that, horses--if they see one

fool, then they all want to be fools.

"'Take it home, and tie it up to its organ,' shouted the guard.

"Then an old woman went into hysterics, and began laughing like an

hyena. That started the pony off again, and, as far as I could

calculate by watching the clouds, we did about another four miles at

the gallop. Then he thought he'd try to jump a gate, and finding, I

suppose, that the cart hampered him, he started kicking it to

pieces. I'd never have thought a cart could have been separated

into so many pieces, if I hadn't seen it done. When he had got rid

of everything but half a wheel and the splashboard he bolted again.

I remained behind with the other ruins, and glad I was to get a

little rest. He came back later in the afternoon, and I was pleased

to sell him the next week for a five-pound-note: it cost me about

another ten to repair myself.

"To this day I am chaffed about that pony, and the local temperance

society made a lecture out of me. That's what comes of following

advice."

I sympathized with him. I have suffered from advice myself. I have

a friend, a City man, whom I meet occasionally. One of his most

ardent passions in life is to make my fortune. He button-holes me

in Threadneedle Street. "The very man I wanted to see," he says;

"I'm going to let you in for a good thing. We are getting up a

little syndicate." He is for ever "getting up" a little syndicate,

and for every hundred pounds you put into it you take a thousand

out. Had I gone into all his little syndicates, I could have been

worth at the present moment, I reckon, two million five hundred

thousand pounds. But I have not gone into all his little

syndicates. I went into one, years ago, when I was younger. I am

still in it; my friend is confident that my holding, later on, will

yield me thousands. Being, however, hard-up for ready money, I am

willing to part with my share to any deserving person at a genuine

reduction, upon a cash basis. Another friend of mine knows another

man who is "in the know" as regards racing matters. I suppose most

people possess a friend of this type. He is generally very popular

just before a race, and extremely unpopular immediately afterwards.

A third benefactor of mine is an enthusiast upon the subject of

diet. One day he brought me something in a packet, and pressed it

into my hand with the air of a man who is relieving you of all your

troubles.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Open it and see," he answered, in the tone of a pantomime fairy.

I opened it and looked, but I was no wiser.

"It's tea," he explained.

"Oh!" I replied; "I was wondering if it could be snuff."

"Well, it's not exactly tea," he continued, "it's a sort of tea.

You take one cup of that--one cup, and you will never care for any

other kind of tea again."

He was quite right, I took one cup. After drinking it I felt I

didn't care for any other tea. I felt I didn't care for anything,

except to die quietly and inoffensively. He called on me a week

later.

"You remember that tea I gave you?" he said.

"Distinctly," I answered; "I've got the taste of it in my mouth

now."

"Did it upset you?" he asked.

"It annoyed me at the time," I answered; "but that's all over now."

He seemed thoughtful. "You were quite correct," he answered; "it

WAS snuff, a very special snuff, sent me all the way from India."

"I can't say I liked it," I replied.

"A stupid mistake of mine," he went on--"I must have mixed up the

packets!"

"Oh, accidents will happen," I said, "and you won't make another

mistake, I feel sure; so far as I am concerned."

We can all give advice. I had the honour once of serving an old

gentleman whose profession it was to give legal advice, and

excellent legal advice he always gave. In common with most men who

know the law, he had little respect for it. I have heard him say to

a would-be litigant--

"My dear sir, if a villain stopped me in the street and demanded of

me my watch and chain, I should refuse to give it to him. If he

thereupon said, 'Then I shall take it from you by brute force,' I

should, old as I am, I feel convinced, reply to him, 'Come on.' But

if, on the other hand, he were to say to me, 'Very well, then I

shall take proceedings against you in the Court of Queen's Bench to

compel you to give it up to me,' I should at once take it from my

pocket, press it into his hand, and beg of him to say no more about

the matter. And I should consider I was getting off cheaply."

Yet that same old gentleman went to law himself with his next-door

neighbour over a dead poll parrot that wasn't worth sixpence to

anybody, and spent from first to last a hundred pounds, if he spent

a penny.

"I know I'm a fool," he confessed. "I have no positive proof that

it WAS his cat; but I'll make him pay for calling me an Old Bailey

Attorney, hanged if I don't!"

We all know how the pudding OUGHT to be made. We do not profess to

be able to make it: that is not our business. Our business is to

criticize the cook. It seems our business to criticize so many

things that it is not our business to do. We are all critics

nowadays. I have my opinion of you, Reader, and you possibly have

your own opinion of me. I do not seek to know it; personally, I

prefer the man who says what he has to say of me behind my back. I

remember, when on a lecturing tour, the ground-plan of the hall

often necessitated my mingling with the audience as they streamed

out. This never happened but I would overhear somebody in front of

me whisper to his or her companion--"Take care, he's just behind

you." I always felt so grateful to that whisperer.

At a Bohemian Club, I was once drinking coffee with a Novelist, who

happened to be a broad-shouldered, athletic man. A fellow-member,

joining us, said to the Novelist, "I have just finished that last

book of yours; I'll tell you my candid opinion of it." Promptly

replied the Novelist, "I give you fair warning--if you do, I shall

punch your head." We never heard that candid opinion.

Most of our leisure time we spend sneering at one another. It is a

wonder, going about as we do with our noses so high in the air, we

do not walk off this little round world into space, all of us. The

Masses sneer at the Classes. The morals of the Classes are

shocking. If only the Classes would consent as a body to be taught

behaviour by a Committee of the Masses, how very much better it

would be for them. If only the Classes would neglect their own

interests and devote themselves to the welfare of the Masses, the

Masses would be more pleased with them.

The Classes sneer at the Masses. If only the Masses would follow

the advice given them by the Classes; if only they would be thrifty

on their ten shillings a week; if only they would all be

teetotalers, or drink old claret, which is not intoxicating; if only

all the girls would be domestic servants on five pounds a year, and

not waste their money on feathers; if only the men would be content

to work for fourteen hours a day, and to sing in tune, "God bless

the Squire and his relations," and would consent to be kept in their

proper stations, all things would go swimmingly--for the Classes.

The New Woman pooh-poohs the Old; the Old Woman is indignant with

the New. The Chapel denounces the Stage; the Stage ridicules Little

Bethel; the Minor Poet sneers at the world; the world laughs at the

Minor Poet.

Man criticizes Woman. We are not altogether pleased with woman. We

discuss her shortcomings, we advise her for her good. If only

English wives would dress as French wives, talk as American wives,

cook as German wives! if only women would be precisely what we want

them to be--patient and hard-working, brilliantly witty and

exhaustively domestic, bewitching, amenable, and less suspicious;

how very much better it would be for them--also for us. We work so

hard to teach them, but they will not listen. Instead of paying

attention to our wise counsel, the tiresome creatures are wasting

their time criticizing us. It is a popular game, this game of

school. All that is needful is a doorstep, a cane, and six other

children. The difficulty is the six other children. Every child

wants to be the schoolmaster; they will keep jumping up, saying it

is their turn.

Woman wants to take the stick now, and put man on the doorstep.

There are one or two things she has got to say to him. He is not at

all the man she approves of. He must begin by getting rid of all

his natural desires and propensities; that done, she will take him

in hand and make of him--not a man, but something very much

superior.

It would be the best of all possible worlds if everybody would only

follow our advice. I wonder, would Jerusalem have been the cleanly

city it is reported, if, instead of troubling himself concerning his

own twopenny-halfpenny doorstep, each citizen had gone out into the

road and given eloquent lectures to all the other inhabitants on the

subject of sanitation?

We have taken to criticizing the Creator Himself of late. The world

is wrong, we are wrong. If only He had taken our advice, during

those first six days!

Why do I seem to have been scooped out and filled up with lead? Why

do I hate the smell of bacon, and feel that nobody cares for me? It

is because champagne and lobsters have been made wrong.

Why do Edwin and Angelina quarrel? It is because Edwin has been

given a fine, high-spirited nature that will not brook

contradiction; while Angelina, poor girl, has been cursed with

contradictory instincts.

Why is excellent Mr. Jones brought down next door to beggary? Mr.

Jones had an income of a thousand a year, secured by the Funds. But

there came along a wicked Company promoter (why are wicked Company

promoters permitted?) with a prospectus, telling good Mr. Jones how

to obtain a hundred per cent. for his money by investing it in some

scheme for the swindling of Mr. Jones's fellow-citizens.

The scheme does not succeed; the people swindled turn out, contrary

to the promise of the prospectus, to be Mr. Jones and his

fellow-investors. Why does Heaven allow these wrongs?

Why does Mrs. Brown leave her husband and children, to run off with

the New Doctor? It is because an ill-advised Creator has given Mrs.

Brown and the New Doctor unduly strong emotions. Neither Mrs. Brown

nor the New Doctor are to be blamed. If any human being be

answerable it is, probably, Mrs. Brown's grandfather, or some early

ancestor of the New Doctor's.

We shall criticize Heaven when we get there. I doubt if any of us

will be pleased with the arrangements; we have grown so exceedingly

critical.

It was once said of a very superior young man that he seemed to be

under the impression that God Almighty had made the universe chiefly

to hear what he would say about it. Consciously or unconsciously,

most of us are of this way of thinking. It is an age of mutual

improvement societies--a delightful idea, everybody's business being

to improve everybody else; of amateur parliaments, of literary

councils, of playgoers' clubs.

First Night criticism seems to have died out of late, the Student of

the Drama having come to the conclusion, possibly, that plays are

not worth criticizing. But in my young days we were very earnest at

this work. We went to the play, less with the selfish desire of

enjoying our evening, than with the noble aim of elevating the

Stage. Maybe we did good, maybe we were needed--let us think so.

Certain it is, many of the old absurdities have disappeared from the

Theatre, and our rough-and-ready criticism may have helped the happy

dispatch. A folly is often served by an unwise remedy.

The dramatist in those days had to reckon with his audience.

Gallery and Pit took an interest in his work such as Galleries and

Pits no longer take. I recollect witnessing the production of a

very blood-curdling melodrama at, I think, the old Queen's Theatre.

The heroine had been given by the author a quite unnecessary amount

of conversation, so we considered. The woman, whenever she appeared

on the stage, talked by the yard; she could not do a simple little

thing like cursing the Villain under about twenty lines. When the

hero asked her if she loved him she stood up and made a speech about

it that lasted three minutes by the watch. One dreaded to see her

open her mouth. In the Third Act, somebody got hold of her and shut

her up in a dungeon. He was not a nice man, speaking generally, but

we felt he was the man for the situation, and the house cheered him

to the echo. We flattered ourselves we had got rid of her for the

rest of the evening. Then some fool of a turnkey came along, and

she appealed to him, through the grating, to let her out for a few

minutes. The turnkey, a good but soft-hearted man, hesitated.

"Don't you do it," shouted one earnest Student of the Drama, from

the Gallery; "she's all right. Keep her there!"

The old idiot paid no attention to our advice; he argued the matter

to himself. "'Tis but a trifling request," he remarked; "and it

will make her happy."

"Yes, but what about us?" replied the same voice from the Gallery.

"You don't know her. You've only just come on; we've been listening

to her all the evening. She's quiet now, you let her be."

"Oh, let me out, if only for one moment!" shrieked the poor woman.

"I have something that I must say to my child."

"Write it on a bit of paper, and pass it out," suggested a voice

from the Pit. "We'll see that he gets it."

"Shall I keep a mother from her dying child?" mused the turnkey.

"No, it would be inhuman."

"No, it wouldn't," persisted the voice of the Pit; "not in this

instance. It's too much talk that has made the poor child ill."

The turnkey would not be guided by us. He opened the cell door

amidst the execrations of the whole house. She talked to her child

for about five minutes, at the end of which time it died.

"Ah, he is dead!" shrieked the distressed parent.

"Lucky beggar!" was the unsympathetic rejoinder of the house.

Sometimes the criticism of the audience would take the form of

remarks, addressed by one gentleman to another. We had been

listening one night to a play in which action seemed to be

unnecessarily subordinated to dialogue, and somewhat poor dialogue

at that. Suddenly, across the wearying talk from the stage, came

the stentorian whisper--

"Jim!"

"Hallo!"

"Wake me up when the play begins."

This was followed by an ostentatious sound as of snoring. Then the

voice of the second speaker was heard--

"Sammy!"

His friend appeared to awake.

"Eh? Yes? What's up? Has anything happened?"

"Wake you up at half-past eleven in any event, I suppose?"

"Thanks, do, sonny." And the critic slept again.

Yes, we took an interest in our plays then. I wonder shall I ever

enjoy the British Drama again as I enjoyed it in those days? Shall

I ever enjoy a supper again as I enjoyed the tripe and onions washed

down with bitter beer at the bar of the old Albion? I have tried

many suppers after the theatre since then, and some, when friends

have been in generous mood, have been expensive and elaborate. The

cook may have come from Paris, his portrait may be in the

illustrated papers, his salary may be reckoned by hundreds; but

there is something wrong with his art, for all that, I miss a

flavour in his meats. There is a sauce lacking.

Nature has her coinage, and demands payment in her own currency. At

Nature's shop it is you yourself must pay. Your unearned increment,

your inherited fortune, your luck, are not legal tenders across her

counter.

You want a good appetite. Nature is quite willing to supply you.

"Certainly, sir," she replies, "I can do you a very excellent

article indeed. I have here a real genuine hunger and thirst that

will make your meal a delight to you. You shall eat heartily and

with zest, and you shall rise from the table refreshed, invigorated,

and cheerful."

"Just the very thing I want," exclaims the gourmet delightedly.

"Tell me the price."

"The price," answers Mrs. Nature, "is one long day's hard work."

The customer's face falls; he handles nervously his heavy purse.

"Cannot I pay for it in money?" he asks. "I don't like work, but I

am a rich man, I can afford to keep French cooks, to purchase old

wines."

Nature shakes her head.

"I cannot take your cheques, tissue and nerve are my charges. For

these I can give you an appetite that will make a rump-steak and a

tankard of ale more delicious to you than any dinner that the

greatest chef in Europe could put before you. I can even promise

you that a hunk of bread and cheese shall be a banquet to you; but

you must pay my price in my money; I do not deal in yours."

And next the Dilettante enters, demanding a taste for Art and

Literature, and this also Nature is quite prepared to supply.

"I can give you true delight in all these things," she answers.

"Music shall be as wings to you, lifting you above the turmoil of

the world. Through Art you shall catch a glimpse of Truth. Along

the pleasant paths of Literature you shall walk as beside still

waters."

"And your charge?" cries the delighted customer.

"These things are somewhat expensive," replies Nature. "I want from

you a life lived simply, free from all desire of worldly success, a

life from which passion has been lived out; a life to which appetite

has been subdued."

"But you mistake, my dear lady," replies the Dilettante; "I have

many friends, possessed of taste, and they are men who do not pay

this price for it. Their houses are full of beautiful pictures,

they rave about 'nocturnes' and 'symphonies,' their shelves are

packed with first editions. Yet they are men of luxury and wealth

and fashion. They trouble much concerning the making of money, and

Society is their heaven. Cannot I be as one of these?"

"I do not deal in the tricks of apes," answers Nature coldly; "the

culture of these friends of yours is a mere pose, a fashion of the

hour, their talk mere parrot chatter. Yes, you can purchase such

culture as this, and pretty cheaply, but a passion for skittles

would be of more service to you, and bring you more genuine

enjoyment. My goods are of a different class. I fear we waste each

other's time."

And next comes the boy, asking with a blush for love, and Nature's

motherly old heart goes out to him, for it is an article she loves

to sell, and she loves those who come to purchase it of her. So she

leans across the counter, smiling, and tells him that she has the

very thing he wants, and he, trembling with excitement, likewise

asks the figure.

"It costs a good deal," explains Nature, but in no discouraging

tone; "it is the most expensive thing in all my shop."

"I am rich," replies the lad. "My father worked hard and saved, and

he has left me all his wealth. I have stocks and shares, and lands

and factories; and will pay any price in reason for this thing."

But Nature, looking graver, lays her hand upon his arm.

"Put by your purse, boy," she says, "my price is not a price in

reason, nor is gold the metal that I deal in. There are many shops

in various streets where your bank-notes will be accepted. But if

you will take an old woman's advice, you will not go to them. The

thing they will sell you will bring sorrow and do evil to you. It

is cheap enough, but, like all things cheap, it is not worth the

buying. No man purchases it, only the fool."

"And what is the cost of the thing YOU sell then?" asks the lad.

"Self-forgetfulness, tenderness, strength," answers the old Dame;

"the love of all things that are of good repute, the hate of all

things evil--courage, sympathy, self-respect, these things purchase

love. Put by your purse, lad, it will serve you in other ways, but

it will not buy for you the goods upon my shelves."

"Then am I no better off than the poor man?" demands the lad.

"I know not wealth or poverty as you understand it," answers Nature.

"Here I exchange realities only for realities. You ask for my

treasures, I ask for your brain and heart in exchange--yours, boy,

not your father's, not another's."

"And this price," he argues, "how shall I obtain it?"

"Go about the world," replies the great Lady. "Labour, suffer,

help. Come back to me when you have earned your wages, and

according to how much you bring me so we will do business."

Is real wealth so unevenly distributed as we think? Is not Fate the

true Socialist? Who is the rich man, who the poor? Do we know?

Does even the man himself know? Are we not striving for the shadow,

missing the substance? Take life at its highest; which was the

happier man, rich Solomon or poor Socrates? Solomon seems to have

had most things that most men most desire--maybe too much of some

for his own comfort. Socrates had little beyond what he carried

about with him, but that was a good deal. According to our scales,

Solomon should have been one of the happiest men that ever lived,

Socrates one of the most wretched. But was it so?

Or taking life at its lowest, with pleasure its only goal. Is my

lord Tom Noddy, in the stalls, so very much jollier than 'Arry in

the gallery? Were beer ten shillings the bottle, and champagne

fourpence a quart, which, think you, we should clamour for? If

every West End Club had its skittle alley, and billiards could only

be played in East End pubs, which game, my lord, would you select?

Is the air of Berkeley Square so much more joy-giving than the

atmosphere of Seven Dials? I find myself a piquancy in the air of

Seven Dials, missing from Berkeley Square. Is there so vast a

difference between horse-hair and straw, when you are tired? Is

happiness multiplied by the number of rooms in one's house? Are

Lady Ermintrude's lips so very much sweeter than Sally's of the

Alley? What IS success in life?

ON THE PLAYING OF MARCHES AT THE FUNERALS OF MARIONETTES

He began the day badly. He took me out and lost me. It would be so

much better, would he consent to the usual arrangement, and allow me

to take him out. I am far the abler leader: I say it without

conceit. I am older than he is, and I am less excitable. I do not

stop and talk with every person I meet, and then forget where I am.

I do less to distract myself: I rarely fight, I never feel I want

to run after cats, I take but little pleasure in frightening

children. I have nothing to think about but the walk, and the

getting home again. If, as I say, he would give up taking me out,

and let me take him out, there would be less trouble all round. But

into this I have never been able to persuade him.

He had mislaid me once or twice, but in Sloane Square he lost me

entirely. When he loses me, he stands and barks for me. If only he

would remain where he first barked, I might find my way to him; but,

before I can cross the road, he is barking half-way down the next

street. I am not so young as I was and I sometimes think he

exercises me more than is good for me. I could see him from where I

was standing in the King's Road. Evidently he was most indignant.

I was too far off to distinguish the barks, but I could guess what

he was saying--

"Damn that man, he's off again."

He made inquiries of a passing dog--

"You haven't smelt my man about anywhere, have you?"

(A dog, of course, would never speak of SEEING anybody or anything,

smell being his leading sense. Reaching the top of a hill, he would

say to his companion--"Lovely smell from here, I always think; I

could sit and sniff here all the afternoon." Or, proposing a walk,

he would say--"I like the road by the canal, don't you? There's

something interesting to catch your nose at every turn.")

"No, I haven't smelt any man in particular," answered the other dog.

"What sort of a smelling man is yours?"

"Oh, an egg-and-bacony sort of a man, with a dash of soap about

him."

"That's nothing to go by," retorted the other; "most men would

answer to that description, this time of the morning. Where were

you when you last noticed him?"

At this moment he caught sight of me, and came up, pleased to find

me, but vexed with me for having got lost.

"Oh, here you are," he barked; "didn't you see me go round the

corner? Do keep closer. Bothered if half my time isn't taken up,

finding you and losing you again."

The incident appeared to have made him bad-tempered; he was just in

the humour for a row of any sort. At the top of Sloane Street a

stout military-looking gentleman started running after the Chelsea

bus. With a "Hooroo" William Smith was after him. Had the old

gentleman taken no notice, all would have been well. A butcher boy,

driving just behind, would--I could read it in his eye--have caught

Smith a flick as he darted into the road, which would have served

him right; the old gentleman would have captured his bus; and the

affair would have been ended. Unfortunately, he was that type of

retired military man all gout and curry and no sense. He stopped to

swear at the dog. That, of course, was what Smith wanted. It is

not often he gets a scrimmage with a full-grown man. "They're a

poor-spirited lot, most of them," he thinks; "they won't even answer

you back. I like a man who shows a bit of pluck." He was frenzied

with delight at his success. He flew round his victim, weaving

whooping circles and curves that paralyzed the old gentleman as

though they had been the mystic figures of a Merlin. The colonel

clubbed his umbrella, and attempted to defend himself. I called to

the dog, I gave good advice to the colonel (I judged him to be a

colonel; the louder he spoke, the less one could understand him),

but both were too excited to listen to me. A sympathetic bus driver

leaned over, and whispered hoarse counsel.

"Ketch 'im by the tail, sir," he advised the old gentleman; "don't

you be afraid of him; you ketch 'im firmly by the tail."

A milkman, on the other hand, sought rather to encourage Smith,

shouting as he passed--

"Good dog, kill him!"

A child, brained within an inch by the old gentleman's umbrella,

began to cry. The nurse told the old gentleman he was a fool--a

remark which struck me as singularly apt The old gentleman gasped

back that perambulators were illegal on the pavement; and, between

his exercises, inquired after myself. A crowd began to collect; and

a policeman strolled up.

It was not the right thing: I do not defend myself; but, at this

point, the temptation came to me to desert William Smith. He likes

a street row, I don't. These things are matters of temperament. I

have also noticed that he has the happy instinct of knowing when to

disappear from a crisis, and the ability to do so; mysteriously

turning up, quarter of a mile off, clad in a peaceful and

pre-occupied air, and to all appearances another and a better dog.

Consoling myself with the reflection that I could be of no practical

assistance to him and remembering with some satisfaction that, by a

fortunate accident, he was without his collar, which bears my name

and address, I slipped round the off side of a Vauxhall bus, making

no attempt at ostentation, and worked my way home through Lowndes

Square and the Park.

Five minutes after I had sat down to lunch, he flung open the

dining-room door, and marched in. It is his customary "entrance."

In a previous state of existence, his soul was probably that of an

Actor-Manager.

From his exuberant self-satisfaction, I was inclined to think he

must have succeeded in following the milkman's advice; at all

events, I have not seen the colonel since. His bad temper had

disappeared, but his "uppishness" had, if possible, increased.

Previous to his return, I had given The O'Shannon a biscuit. The

O'Shannon had been insulted; he did not want a dog biscuit; if he

could not have a grilled kidney he did not want anything. He had

thrown the biscuit on the floor. Smith saw it and made for it. Now

Smith never eats biscuits. I give him one occasionally, and he at

once proceeds to hide it. He is a thrifty dog; he thinks of the

future. "You never know what may happen," he says; "suppose the

Guv'nor dies, or goes mad, or bankrupt, I may be glad even of this

biscuit; I'll put it under the door-mat--no, I won't, somebody will

find it there. I'll scratch a hole in the tennis lawn, and bury it

there. That's a good idea; perhaps it'll grow!" Once I caught him

hiding it in my study, behind the shelf devoted to my own books. It

offended me, his doing that; the argument was so palpable.

Generally, wherever he hides it somebody finds it. We find it under

our pillows--inside our boots; no place seems safe. This time he

had said to himself--"By Jove! a whole row of the Guv'nor's books.

Nobody will ever want to take these out; I'll hide it here." One

feels a thing like that from one's own dog.

But The O'Shannon's biscuit was another matter. Honesty is the best

policy; but dishonesty is the better fun. He made a dash for it,

and commenced to devour it greedily; you might have thought he had

not tasted food for a week.

The indignation of The O'Shannon was a sight for the gods. He has

the good-nature of his race: had Smith asked him for the biscuit he

would probably have given it to him; it was the insult--the

immorality of the proceeding, that maddened The O'Shannon.

For a moment he was paralyzed.

"Well, of all the--Did ye see that now?" he said to me with his

eyes. Then he made a rush and snatched the biscuit out of Smith's

very jaws. "Ye onprincipled black Saxon thief," growled The

O'Shannon; "how dare ye take my biscuit?"

"You miserable Irish cur," growled Smith; "how was I to know it was

your biscuit? Does everything on the floor belong to you? Perhaps

you think I belong to you, I'm on the floor. I don't believe it is

your biscuit, you long-eared, snubbed-nosed bog-trotter; give it me

back."

"I don't require any of your argument, you flop-eared son of a tramp

with half a tail," replied The O'Shannon. "You come and take it, if

you think you are dog enough."

He did think he was dog enough. He is half the size of The

O'Shannon, but such considerations weigh not with him. His argument

is, if a dog is too big for you to fight the whole of him, take a

bit of him and fight that. He generally gets licked, but what is

left of him invariably swaggers about afterwards under the

impression it is the victor. When he is dead, he will say to

himself, as he settles himself in his grave--"Well, I flatter myself

I've laid out that old world at last. It won't trouble ME any more,

I'm thinking."

On this occasion, _I_ took a hand in the fight. It becomes

necessary at intervals to remind Master Smith that the man, as the

useful and faithful friend of dog, has his rights. I deemed such

interval had arrived. He flung himself on to the sofa, muttering.

It sounded like--"Wish I'd never got up this morning. Nobody

understands me."

Nothing, however, sobers him for long. Half-an-hour later, he was

killing the next-door cat. He will never learn sense; he has been

killing that cat for the last three months. Why the next morning

his nose is invariably twice its natural size, while for the next

week he can see objects on one side of his head only, he never seems

to grasp; I suppose he attributes it to change in the weather.

He ended up the afternoon with what he no doubt regarded as a

complete and satisfying success. Dorothea had invited a lady to

take tea with her that day. I heard the sound of laughter, and,

being near the nursery, I looked in to see what was the joke. Smith

was worrying a doll. I have rarely seen a more worried-looking

doll. Its head was off, and its sawdust strewed the floor. Both

the children were crowing with delight; Dorothea, in particular, was

in an ecstasy of amusement.

"Whose doll is it?" I asked.

"Eva's," answered Dorothea, between her peals of laughter.

"Oh no, it isn't," explained Eva, in a tone of sweet content;

"here's my doll." She had been sitting on it, and now drew it forth,

warm but whole. "That's Dorry's doll."

The change from joy to grief on the part of Dorothea was distinctly

dramatic. Even Smith, accustomed to storm, was nonplussed at the

suddenness of the attack upon him.

Dorothea's sorrow lasted longer than I had expected. I promised her

another doll. But it seemed she did not want another; that was the

only doll she would ever care for so long as life lasted; no other

doll could ever take its place; no other doll would be to her what

that doll had been. These little people are so absurd: as if it

could matter whether you loved one doll or another, when all are so

much alike! They have curly hair, and pink-and-white complexions,

big eyes that open and shut, a little red mouth, two little hands.

Yet these foolish little people! they will love one, while another

they will not look upon. I find the best plan is not to reason with

them, but to sympathize. Later on--but not too soon--introduce to

them another doll. They will not care for it at first, but in time

they will come to take an interest in it. Of course, it cannot make

them forget the first doll; no doll ever born in Lowther Arcadia

could be as that, but still-- It is many weeks before they forget

entirely the first love.

We buried Dolly in the country under the yew tree. A friend of mine

who plays the fiddle came down on purpose to assist. We buried her

in the hot spring sunshine, while the birds from shady nooks sang

joyously of life and love. And our chief mourner cried real tears,

just for all the world as though it were not the fate of dolls,

sooner or later, to get broken--the little fragile things, made for

an hour, to be dressed and kissed; then, paintless and stript, to be

thrown aside on the nursery floor. Poor little dolls! I wonder do

they take themselves seriously, not knowing the springs that stir

their sawdust bosoms are but clockwork, not seeing the wires to

which they dance? Poor little marionettes! do they talk together, I

wonder, when the lights of the booth are out?

You, little sister doll, were the heroine. You lived in the

white-washed cottage, all honeysuckle and clematis without--earwiggy

and damp within, maybe. How pretty you always looked in your

simple, neatly-fitting print dress. How good you were! How nobly

you bore your poverty. How patient you were under your many wrongs.

You never harboured an evil thought, a revengeful wish--never,

little doll? Were there never moments when you longed to play the

wicked woman's part, live in a room with many doors, be-clad in furs

and jewels, with lovers galore at your feet? In those long winter

evenings? the household work is done--the greasy dishes washed, the

floor scrubbed; the excellent child is asleep in the corner; the

one-and-elevenpenny lamp sheds its dismal light on the darned

table-cloth; you sit, busy at your coarse sewing, waiting for Hero

Dick, knowing--guessing, at least, where he is--! Yes, dear, I

remember your fine speeches, when you told her, in stirring language

the gallery cheered to the echo, what you thought of her and of such

women as she; when, lifting your hand to heaven, you declared you

were happier in your attic, working your fingers to the bone, than

she in her gilded salon--I think "gilded salon" was the term, was it

not?--furnished by sin. But speaking of yourself, weak little

sister doll, not of your fine speeches, the gallery listening, did

you not, in your secret heart, envy her? Did you never, before

blowing out the one candle, stand for a minute in front of the

cracked glass, and think to yourself that you, too, would look well

in low-cut dresses from Paris, the diamonds flashing on your white

smooth skin? Did you never, toiling home through the mud, bearing

your bundle of needlework, feel bitter with the wages of virtue, as

she splashed you, passing by in her carriage? Alone, over your cup

of weak tea, did you never feel tempted to pay the price for

champagne suppers, and gaiety, and admiration? Ah, yes, it is easy

for folks who have had their good time, to prepare copybooks for

weary little inkstained fingers, longing for play. The fine maxims

sound such cant when we are in that mood, do they not? You, too,

were young and handsome: did the author of the play think you were

never hungry for the good things of life? Did he think that reading

tracts to crotchety old women was joy to a full-blooded girl in her

twenties? Why should SHE have all the love, and all the laughter?

How fortunate that the villain, the Wicked Baronet, never opened the

cottage door at that moment, eh, dear! He always came when you were

strong, when you felt that you could denounce him, and scorn his

temptations. Would that the villain came to all of us at such time;

then we would all, perhaps, be heroes and heroines.

Ah well, it was only a play: it is over now. You and I, little

tired dolls, lying here side by side, waiting to know our next part,

we can look back and laugh. Where is she, this wicked dolly, that

made such a stir on our tiny stage? Ah, here you are, Madam; I

thought you could not be far; they have thrown us all into this

corner together. But how changed you are, Dolly: your paint rubbed

off, your golden hair worn to a wisp. No wonder; it was a trying

part you had to play. How tired you must have grown of the glare

and the glitter! And even hope was denied you. The peace you so

longed for you knew you had lost the power to enjoy. Like the girl

bewitched in the fairy tale, you knew you must dance ever faster and

faster, with limbs growing palsied, with face growing ashen, and

hair growing grey, till Death should come to release you; and your

only prayer was he might come ere your dancing grew comic.

Like the smell of the roses to Nancy, hawking them through the hot

streets, must the stifling atmosphere of love have been to you. The

song of passion, how monotonous in your ears, sung now by the young

and now by the old; now shouted, now whined, now shrieked; but ever

the one strident tune. Do you remember when first you heard it?

You dreamt it the morning hymn of Heaven. You came to think it the

dance music of Hell, ground from a cracked hurdy-gurdy, lent out by

the Devil on hire.

An evil race we must have seemed to you, Dolly Faustine, as to some

Old Bailey lawyer. You saw but one side of us. You lived in a

world upside down, where the leaves and the blossoms were hidden,

and only the roots saw your day. You imagined the worm-beslimed

fibres the plant, and all things beautiful you deemed cant.

Chivalry, love, honour! how you laughed at the lying words. You

knew the truth--as you thought: aye, half the truth. We were swine

while your spell was upon us, Daughter of Circe, and you, not

knowing your island secret, deemed it our natural shape.

No wonder, Dolly, your battered waxen face is stamped with an angry

sneer. The Hero, who eventually came into his estates amid the

plaudits of the Pit, while you were left to die in the streets! you

remembered, but the house had forgotten those earlier scenes in

always wicked Paris. The good friend of the family, the breezy man

of the world, the Deus ex Machina of the play, who was so good to

everybody, whom everybody loved! aye, YOU loved him once--but that

was in the Prologue. In the Play proper, he was respectable. (How

you loathed that word, that meant to you all you vainly longed for!)

To him the Prologue was a period past and dead; a memory, giving

flavour to his life. To you, it was the First Act of the Play,

shaping all the others. His sins the house had forgotten: at

yours, they held up their hands in horror. No wonder the sneer lies

on your waxen lips.

Never mind, Dolly; it was a stupid house. Next time, perhaps, you

will play a better part; and then they will cheer, instead of

hissing you. You were wasted, I am inclined to think, on modern

comedy. You should have been cast for the heroine of some old-world

tragedy. The strength of character, the courage, the power of

self-forgetfulness, the enthusiasm were yours: it was the part that

was lacking. You might have worn the mantle of a Judith, a

Boadicea, or a Jeanne d'Arc, had such plays been popular in your

time. Perhaps they, had they played in your day, might have had to

be content with such a part as yours. They could not have played

the meek heroine, and what else would there have been for them in

modern drama? Catherine of Russia! had she been a waiter's daughter

in the days of the Second Empire, should we have called her Great?

The Magdalene! had her lodging in those days been in some bye-street

of Rome instead of in Jerusalem, should we mention her name in our

churches?

You were necessary, you see, Dolly, to the piece. We cannot all

play heroes and heroines. There must be wicked people in the play,

or it would not interest. Think of it, Dolly, a play where all the

women were virtuous, all the men honest! We might close the booth;

the world would be as dull as an oyster-bed. Without you wicked

folk there would be no good. How should we have known and honoured

the heroine's worth, but by contrast with your worthlessness? Where

would have been her fine speeches, but for you to listen to them?

Where lay the hero's strength, but in resisting temptation of you?

Had not you and the Wicked Baronet between you robbed him of his

estates, falsely accused him of crime, he would have lived to the

end of the play an idle, unheroic, incomplete existence. You

brought him down to poverty; you made him earn his own bread--a most

excellent thing for him; gave him the opportunity to play the man.

But for your conduct in the Prologue, of what value would have been

that fine scene at the end of the Third Act, that stirred the house

to tears and laughter? You and your accomplice, the Wicked Baronet,

made the play possible. How would Pit and Gallery have known they

were virtuous, but for the indignation that came to them, watching

your misdeeds? Pity, sympathy, excitement, all that goes to the

making of a play, you were necessary for. It was ungrateful of the

house to hiss you.

And you, Mr. Merryman, the painted grin worn from your pale lips,

you too were dissatisfied, if I remember rightly, with your part.

You wanted to make the people cry, not laugh. Was it a higher

ambition? The poor tired people! so much happens in their life to

make them weep, is it not good sport to make them merry for awhile?

Do you remember that old soul in the front row of the Pit? How she

laughed when you sat down on the pie! I thought she would have to

be carried out. I heard her talking to her companion as they passed

the stage-door on their way home. "I have not laughed, my dear,

till to-night," she was saying, the good, gay tears still in her

eyes, "since the day poor Sally died." Was not that alone worth the

old stale tricks you so hated? Aye, they were commonplace and

conventional, those antics of yours that made us laugh; are not the

antics that make us weep commonplace and conventional also? Are not

all the plays, played since the booth was opened, but of one

pattern, the plot old-fashioned now, the scenes now commonplace?

Hero, villain, cynic--are their parts so much the fresher? The love

duets, are they so very new? The death-bed scenes, would you call

them UNcommonplace? Hate, and Evil, and Wrong--are THEIR voices new

to the booth? What are you waiting for, people? a play with a plot

that is novel, with characters that have never strutted before? It

will be ready for you, perhaps, when you are ready for it, with new

tears and new laughter.

You, Mr. Merryman, were the true philosopher. You saved us from

forgetting the reality when the fiction grew somewhat strenuous.

How we all applauded your gag in answer to the hero, when, bewailing

his sad fate, he demanded of Heaven how much longer he was to suffer

evil fortune. "Well, there cannot be much more of it in store for

you," you answered him; "it's nearly nine o'clock already, and the

show closes at ten." And true to your prophecy the curtain fell at

the time appointed, and his troubles were of the past. You showed

us the truth behind the mask. When pompous Lord Shallow, in ermine

and wig, went to take his seat amid the fawning crowd, you pulled

the chair from under him, and down he sat plump on the floor. His

robe flew open, his wig flew off. No longer he awed us. His aped

dignity fell from him; we saw him a stupid-eyed, bald little man; he

imposed no longer upon us. It is your fool who is the only true

wise man.

Yours was the best part in the play, Brother Merryman, had you and

the audience but known it. But you dreamt of a showier part, where

you loved and fought. I have heard you now and again, when you did

not know I was near, shouting with sword in hand before your

looking-glass. You had thrown your motley aside to don a dingy red

coat; you were the hero of the play, you performed the gallant

deeds, you made the noble speeches. I wonder what the play would be

like, were we all to write our own parts. There would be no clowns,

no singing chambermaids. We would all be playing lead in the centre

of the stage, with the lime-light exclusively devoted to ourselves.

Would it not be so?

What grand acting parts they are, these characters we write for

ourselves alone in our dressing-rooms. We are always brave and

noble--wicked sometimes, but if so, in a great, high-minded way;

never in a mean or little way. What wondrous deeds we do, while the

house looks on and marvels. Now we are soldiers, leading armies to

victory. What if we die: it is in the hour of triumph, and a

nation is left to mourn. Not in some forgotten skirmish do we ever

fall; not for some "affair of outposts" do we give our blood, our

very name unmentioned in the dispatches home. Now we are passionate

lovers, well losing a world for love--a very different thing to

being a laughter-provoking co-respondent in a sordid divorce case.

And the house is always crowded when we play. Our fine speeches

always fall on sympathetic ears, our brave deeds are noted and

applauded. It is so different in the real performance. So often we

play our parts to empty benches, or if a thin house be present, they

misunderstand, and laugh at the pathetic passages. And when our

finest opportunity comes, the royal box, in which HE or SHE should

be present to watch us, is vacant.

Poor little dolls, how seriously we take ourselves, not knowing the

springs that stir our bosoms are but clockwork, not seeing the wires

to which we dance. Poor little marionettes, shall we talk together,

I wonder, when the lights of the booth are out?

We are little wax dollies with hearts. We are little tin soldiers

with souls. Oh, King of many toys, are you merely playing with us?

IS it only clockwork within us, this thing that throbs and aches?

Have you wound us up but to let us run down? Will you wind us again

to-morrow, or leave us here to rust? IS it only clockwork to which

we respond and quiver? Now we laugh, now we cry, now we dance; our

little arms go out to clasp one another, our little lips kiss, then

say good-bye. We strive, and we strain, and we struggle. We reach

now for gold, now for laurel. We call it desire and ambition: are

they only wires that you play? Will you throw the clockwork aside,

or use it again, O Master?

The lights of the booth grow dim. The springs are broken that kept

our eyes awake. The wire that held us erect is snapped, and

helpless we fall in a heap on the stage. Oh, brother and sister

dollies we played beside, where are you? Why is it so dark and

silent? Why are we being put into this black box? And hark! the

little doll orchestra--how far away the music sounds! what is it

they are playing:--

[Start of Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette]

End of The Project Gutenberg Etext The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow