THE ANGEL AND THE AUTHOR--AND OTHERS

BYJEROME K. JEROME

Author of"Paul Kelver, " "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, " "The Passingof the Third Floor Back, " and others. 

LONDON:HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED182, HIGH HOLBORN, W. C. 1908

CHAPTER I

I had a vexing dream one night, not long ago: it was about a fortnightafter Christmas. I dreamt I flew out of the window in my nightshirt. Iwent up and up. I was glad that I was going up. "They have beennoticing me, " I thought to myself. "If anything, I have been a bit toogood. A little less virtue and I might have lived longer. But onecannot have everything. " The world grew smaller and smaller. The last Isaw of London was the long line of electric lamps bordering theEmbankment; later nothing remained but a faint luminosity buried beneathdarkness. It was at this point of my journey that I heard behind me theslow, throbbing sound of wings. 

I turned my head. It was the Recording Angel. He had a weary look; Ijudged him to be tired. 

"Yes, " he acknowledged, "it is a trying period for me, your Christmastime. "

"I am sure it must be, " I returned; "the wonder to me is how you getthrough it all. You see at Christmas time, " I went on, "all we men andwomen become generous, quite suddenly. It is really a delightfulsensation. "

"You are to be envied, " he agreed. 

"It is the first Christmas number that starts me off, " I told him; "thosebeautiful pictures--the sweet child looking so pretty in her furs, givingBovril with her own dear little hands to the shivering street arab; thegood old red-faced squire shovelling out plum pudding to the crowd ofgrateful villagers. It makes me yearn to borrow a collecting box and goround doing good myself. 

"And it is not only me--I should say I, " I continued; "I don't want youto run away with the idea that I am the only good man in the world. That's what I like about Christmas, it makes everybody good. The lovelysentiments we go about repeating! the noble deeds we do! from a littlebefore Christmas up to, say, the end of January! why noting them downmust be a comfort to you. "

"Yes, " he admitted, "noble deeds are always a great joy to me. "

"They are to all of us, " I said; "I love to think of all the good deeds Imyself have done. I have often thought of keeping a diary--jotting themdown each day. It would be so nice for one's children. "

He agreed there was an idea in this. 

"That book of yours, " I said, "I suppose, now, it contains all the goodactions that we men and women have been doing during the last six weeks?"It was a bulky looking volume. 

Yes, he answered, they were all recorded in the book. 

The Author tells of his Good Deeds. 

It was more for the sake of talking of his than anything else that I keptup with him. I did not really doubt his care and conscientiousness, butit is always pleasant to chat about one's self. "My five shillingssubscription to the _Daily Telegraph's_ Sixpenny Fund for theUnemployed--got that down all right?" I asked him. 

Yes, he replied, it was entered. 

"As a matter of fact, now I come to think of it, " I added, "it was tenshillings altogether. They spelt my name wrong the first time. "

Both subscriptions had been entered, he told me. 

"Then I have been to four charity dinners, " I reminded him; "I forgetwhat the particular charity was about. I know I suffered the nextmorning. Champagne never does agree with me. But, then, if you don'torder it people think you can't afford it. Not that I don't like it. It's my liver, if you understand. If I take more--"

He interrupted me with the assurance that my attendance had been noted. 

"Last week I sent a dozen photographs of myself, signed, to a charitybazaar. "

He said he remembered my doing so. 

"Then let me see, " I continued, "I have been to two ordinary balls. Idon't care much about dancing, but a few of us generally play a littlebridge; and to one fancy dress affair. I went as Sir Walter Raleigh. Some men cannot afford to show their leg. What I say is, if a man can, why not? It isn't often that one gets the opportunity of really lookingone's best. "

He told me all three balls had been duly entered: and commented upon. 

"And, of course, you remember my performance of Talbot Champneys in _OurBoys_ the week before last, in aid of the Fund for Poor Curates, " I wenton. "I don't know whether you saw the notice in the _Morning Post_, but--"

He again interrupted me to remark that what the _Morning Post_ man saidwould be entered, one way or the other, to the critic of the _MorningPost_, and had nothing to do with me. "Of course not, " I agreed; "andbetween ourselves, I don't think the charity got very much. Expenses, when you come to add refreshments and one thing and another, mount up. But I fancy they rather liked my Talbot Champneys. "

He replied that he had been present at the performance, and had made hisown report. 

I also reminded him of the four balcony seats I had taken for the monstershow at His Majesty's in aid of the Fund for the Destitute British inJohannesburg. Not all the celebrated actors and actresses announced onthe posters had appeared, but all had sent letters full of kindly wishes;and the others--all the celebrities one had never heard of--had turned upto a man. Still, on the whole, the show was well worth the money. Therewas nothing to grumble at. 

There were other noble deeds of mine. I could not remember them at thetime in their entirety. I seemed to have done a good many. But I didremember the rummage sale to which I sent all my old clothes, including acoat that had got mixed up with them by accident, and that I believe Icould have worn again. 

And also the raffle I had joined for a motor-car. 

The Angel said I really need not be alarmed, that everything had beennoted, together with other matters I, may be, had forgotten. 

The Angel appears to have made a slight Mistake. 

I felt a certain curiosity. We had been getting on very well together--soit had seemed to me. I asked him if he would mind my seeing the book. Hesaid there could be no objection. He opened it at the page devoted tomyself, and I flew a little higher, and looked down over his shoulder. Ican hardly believe it, even now--that I could have dreamt anything sofoolish:

He had got it all down wrong!

Instead of to the credit side of my account he had put the whole bag oftricks to my debit. He had mixed them up with my sins--with my acts ofhypocrisy, vanity, self-indulgence. Under the head of Charity he had butone item to my credit for the past six months: my giving up my seatinside a tramcar, late one wet night, to a dismal-looking old woman, whohad not had even the politeness to say "thank you, " she seemed just halfasleep. According to this idiot, all the time and money I had spentresponding to these charitable appeals had been wasted. 

I was not angry with him, at first. I was willing to regard what he haddone as merely a clerical error. 

"You have got the items down all right, " I said (I spoke quite friendly), "but you have made a slight mistake--we all do now and again; you haveput them down on the wrong side of the book. I only hope this sort ofthing doesn't occur often. "

What irritated me as much as anything was the grave, passionless face theAngel turned upon me. 

"There is no mistake, " he answered. 

"No mistake!" I cried. "Why, you blundering--"

He closed the book with a weary sigh. 

I felt so mad with him, I went to snatch it out of his hand. He did notdo anything that I was aware of, but at once I began falling. The faintluminosity beneath me grew, and then the lights of London seemed shootingup to meet me. I was coming down on the clock tower at Westminster. Igave myself a convulsive twist, hoping to escape it, and fell into theriver. 

And then I awoke. 

But it stays with me: the weary sadness of the Angel's face. I cannotshake remembrance from me. Would I have done better, had I taken themoney I had spent upon these fooleries, gone down with it among the poormyself, asking nothing in return. Is this fraction of our superfluity, flung without further thought or care into the collection box, likely tosatisfy the Impracticable Idealist, who actually suggested--one shrugsone's shoulders when one thinks of it--that one should sell all one hadand give to the poor?

The Author is troubled concerning his Investments. 

Or is our charity but a salve to conscience--an insurance, at decidedlymoderate premium, in case, after all, there should happen to be anotherworld? Is Charity lending to the Lord something we can so easily dowithout?

I remember a lady tidying up her house, clearing it of rubbish. Shecalled it "Giving to the Fresh Air Fund. " Into the heap of lumber one ofher daughters flung a pair of crutches that for years had been knockingabout the house. The lady picked them out again. 

"We won't give those away, " she said, "they might come in useful again. One never knows. "

Another lady, I remember coming downstairs one evening dressed for afancy ball. I forget the title of the charity, but I remember that everylady who sold more than ten tickets received an autograph letter ofthanks from the Duchess who was the president. The tickets were twelveand sixpence each and included light refreshments and a very substantialsupper. One presumes the odd sixpence reached the poor--or at least thenoisier portion of them. 

"A little _decolletee_, isn't it, my dear?" suggested a lady friend, asthe charitable dancer entered the drawing-room. 

"Perhaps it is--a little, " she admitted, "but we all of us ought to doall we can for the Cause. Don't you think so, dear?"

Really, seeing the amount we give in charity, the wonder is there are anypoor left. It is a comfort that there are. What should we do withoutthem? Our fur-clad little girls! our jolly, red-faced squires! we shouldnever know how good they were, but for the poor? Without the poor howcould we be virtuous? We should have to go about giving to each other. And friends expect such expensive presents, while a shilling here andthere among the poor brings to us all the sensations of a good Samaritan. Providence has been very thoughtful in providing us with poor. 

Dear Lady Bountiful! does it not ever occur to you to thank God for thepoor? The clean, grateful poor, who bob their heads and curtsey andassure you that heaven is going to repay you a thousandfold. One doeshope you will not be disappointed. 

An East-End curate once told me, with a twinkle in his eye, of a smartlady who called upon him in her carriage, and insisted on his going roundwith her to show her where the poor hid themselves. They went down manystreets, and the lady distributed her parcels. Then they came to one ofthe worst, a very narrow street. The coachman gave it one glance. 

"Sorry, my lady, " said the coachman, "but the carriage won't go down. "

The lady sighed. 

"I am afraid we shall have to leave it, " she said. 

So the gallant greys dashed past. 

Where the real poor creep I fear there is no room for Lady Bountiful'sfine coach. The ways are very narrow--wide enough only for little SisterPity, stealing softly. 

I put it to my friend, the curate:

"But if all this charity is, as you say, so useless; if it touches butthe fringe; if it makes the evil worse, what would you do?"

And questions a Man of Thought. 

"I would substitute Justice, " he answered; "there would be no need forCharity. "

 "But it is so delightful to give, " I answered. 

"Yes, " he agreed. "It is better to give than to receive. I was thinkingof the receiver. And my ideal is a long way off. We shall have to worktowards it slowly. "

CHAPTER II

Philosophy and the Daemon. 

Philosophy, it has been said, is the art of bearing other people'stroubles. The truest philosopher I ever heard of was a woman. She wasbrought into the London Hospital suffering from a poisoned leg. Thehouse surgeon made a hurried examination. He was a man of blunt speech. 

"It will have to come off, " he told her. 

"What, not all of it?"

"The whole of it, I am sorry to say, " growled the house surgeon. 

"Nothing else for it?"

"No other chance for you whatever, " explained the house surgeon. 

"Ah, well, thank Gawd it's not my 'ead, " observed the lady. 

The poor have a great advantage over us better-off folk. Providenceprovides them with many opportunities for the practice of philosophy. Iwas present at a "high tea" given last winter by charitable folk to aparty of char-women. After the tables were cleared we sought to amusethem. One young lady, who was proud of herself as a palmist, set out tostudy their "lines. " At sight of the first toil-worn hand she took holdof her sympathetic face grew sad. 

"There is a great trouble coming to you, " she informed the ancient dame. 

The placid-featured dame looked up and smiled:

"What, only one, my dear?"

"Yes, only one, " asserted the kind fortune-teller, much pleased, "afterthat all goes smoothly. "

"Ah, " murmured the old dame, quite cheerfully, "we was all of us a short-lived family. "

Our skins harden to the blows of Fate. I was lunching one Wednesday witha friend in the country. His son and heir, aged twelve, entered and tookhis seat at the table. 

"Well, " said his father, "and how did we get on at school to-day?"

"Oh, all right, " answered the youngster, settling himself down to hisdinner with evident appetite. 

"Nobody caned?" demanded his father, with--as I noticed--a sly twinkle inhis eye. 

"No, " replied young hopeful, after reflection; "no, I don't think so, "adding as an afterthought, as he tucked into beef and potatoes, "'cepting, o' course, me. "

When the Daemon will not work. 

It is a simple science, philosophy. The idea is that it never matterswhat happens to you provided you don't mind it. The weak point in theargument is that nine times out of ten you can't help minding it. 

"No misfortune can harm me, " says Marcus Aurelius, "without the consentof the daemon within me. "

The trouble is our daemon cannot always be relied upon. So often he doesnot seem up to his work. 

"You've been a naughty boy, and I'm going to whip you, " said nurse to afour-year-old criminal. 

"You tant, " retorted the young ruffian, gripping with both hands thechair that he was occupying, "I'se sittin' on it. "

His daemon was, no doubt, resolved that misfortune, as personified bynurse, should not hurt him. The misfortune, alas! proved stronger thanthe daemon, and misfortune, he found did hurt him. 

The toothache cannot hurt us so long as the daemon within us (that is tosay, our will power) holds on to the chair and says it can't. But, sooner or later, the daemon lets go, and then we howl. One sees theidea: in theory it is excellent. One makes believe. Your bank hassuddenly stopped payment. You say to yourself. 

"This does not really matter. "

Your butcher and your baker say it does, and insist on making a row inthe passage. 

You fill yourself up with gooseberry wine. You tell yourself it isseasoned champagne. Your liver next morning says it is not. 

The daemon within us means well, but forgets it is not the only thingthere. A man I knew was an enthusiast on vegetarianism. He argued thatif the poor would adopt a vegetarian diet the problem of existence wouldbe simpler for them, and maybe he was right. So one day he assembledsome twenty poor lads for the purpose of introducing to them a vegetarianlunch. He begged them to believe that lentil beans were steaks, thatcauliflowers were chops. As a third course he placed before them amixture of carrots and savoury herbs, and urged them to imagine they wereeating saveloys. 

"Now, you all like saveloys, " he said, addressing them, "and the palateis but the creature of the imagination. Say to yourselves, 'I am eatingsaveloys, ' and for all practical purposes these things will be saveloys. "

Some of the lads professed to have done it, but one disappointed-lookingyouth confessed to failure. 

"But how can you be sure it was not a saveloy?" the host persisted. 

"Because, " explained the boy, "I haven't got the stomach-ache. "

It appeared that saveloys, although a dish of which he was fond, invariably and immediately disagreed with him. If only we were all daemonand nothing else philosophy would be easier. Unfortunately, there ismore of us. 

Another argument much approved by philosophy is that nothing matters, because a hundred years hence, say, at the outside, we shall be dead. What we really want is a philosophy that will enable us to get alongwhile we are still alive. I am not worrying about my centenary; I amworrying about next quarter-day. I feel that if other people would onlygo away, and leave me--income-tax collectors, critics, men who come roundabout the gas, all those sort of people--I could be a philosopher myself. I am willing enough to make believe that nothing matters, but they arenot. They say it is going to be cut off, and talk about judgmentsummonses. I tell them it won't trouble any of us a hundred years hence. They answer they are not talking of a hundred years hence, but of thisthing that was due last April twelvemonth. They won't listen to mydaemon. He does not interest them. Nor, to be candid, does it comfortmyself very much, this philosophical reflection that a hundred yearslater on I'll be sure to be dead--that is, with ordinary luck. Whatbucks me up much more is the hope that they will be dead. Besides, in ahundred years things may have improved. I may not want to be dead. If Iwere sure of being dead next morning, before their threat of cutting offthat water or that gas could by any possibility be carried out, beforethat judgment summons they are bragging about could be made returnable, Imight--I don't say I should--be amused, thinking how I was going to dishthem. The wife of a very wicked man visited him one evening in prison, and found him enjoying a supper of toasted cheese. 

"How foolish of you, Edward, " argued the fond lady, "to be eating toastedcheese for supper. You know it always affects your liver. All day longto-morrow you will be complaining. "

"No, I shan't, " interrupted Edward; "not so foolish as you think me. Theyare going to hang me to-morrow--early. "

There is a passage in Marcus Aurelius that used to puzzle me until I hitupon the solution. A foot-note says the meaning is obscure. Myself, Ihad gathered this before I read the foot-note. What it is all about Idefy any human being to explain. It might mean anything; it might meannothing. The majority of students incline to the latter theory, though aminority maintain there is a meaning, if only it could be discovered. Myown conviction is that once in his life Marcus Aurelius had a real goodtime. He came home feeling pleased with himself without knowing quitewhy. 

"I will write it down, " he said to himself, "now, while it is fresh in mymind. "

It seemed to him the most wonderful thing that anybody had ever said. Maybe he shed a tear or two, thinking of all the good he was doing, andlater on went suddenly to sleep. In the morning he had forgotten allabout it, and by accident it got mixed up with the rest of the book. Thatis the only explanation that seems to me possible, and it comforts me. 

We are none of us philosophers all the time. 

Philosophy is the science of suffering the inevitable, which most of uscontrive to accomplish without the aid of philosophy. Marcus Aureliuswas an Emperor of Rome, and Diogenes was a bachelor living rent free. Iwant the philosophy of the bank clerk married on thirty shillings a week, of the farm labourer bringing up a family of eight on a precarious wageof twelve shillings. The troubles of Marcus Aurelius were chiefly thoseof other people. 

"Taxes will have to go up, I am afraid, " no doubt he often sighed. "But, after all, what are taxes? A thing in conformity with the nature ofman--a little thing that Zeus approves of, one feels sure. The daemonwithin me says taxes don't really matter. "

Maybe the paterfamilias of the period, who did the paying, worried aboutnew sandals for the children, his wife insisting she hadn't a frock fitto be seen in at the amphitheatre; that, if there was one thing in theworld she fancied, it was seeing a Christian eaten by a lion, but now shesupposed the children would have to go without her, found that philosophycame to his aid less readily. 

"Bother these barbarians, " Marcus Aurelius may have been tempted, in anunphilosophical moment, to exclaim; "I do wish they would not burn thesepoor people's houses over their heads, toss the babies about on spears, and carry off the older children into slavery. Why don't they behavethemselves?"

But philosophy in Marcus Aurelius would eventually triumph over passingfretfulness. 

"But how foolish of me to be angry with them, " he would argue withhimself. "One is not vexed with the fig-tree for yielding figs, with thecucumber for being bitter! One must expect barbarians to behavebarbariously. "

Marcus Aurelius would proceed to slaughter the barbarians, and thenforgive them. We can most of us forgive our brother his transgressions, having once got even with him. In a tiny Swiss village, behind the angleof the school-house wall, I came across a maiden crying bitterly, herhead resting on her arm. I asked her what had happened. Between hersobs she explained that a school companion, a little lad about her ownage, having snatched her hat from her head, was at that moment playingfootball with it the other side of the wall. I attempted to console herwith philosophy. I pointed out to her that boys would be boys--that toexpect from them at that age reverence for feminine headgear was to seekwhat was not conformable with the nature of boy. But she appeared tohave no philosophy in her. She said he was a horrid boy, and that shehated him. It transpired it was a hat she rather fancied herself in. Hepeeped round the corner while we were talking, the hat in his hand. Heheld it out to her, but she took no notice of him. I gathered theincident was closed, and went my way, but turned a few steps further on, curious to witness the end. Step by step he approached nearer, looking alittle ashamed of himself; but still she wept, her face hidden in herarm. 

He was not expecting it: to all seeming she stood there thepersonification of the grief that is not to be comforted, oblivious toall surroundings. Incautiously he took another step. In an instant shehad "landed" him over the head with a long narrow wooden box containing, one supposes, pencils and pens. He must have been a hard-headedyoungster, the sound of the compact echoed through the valley. I met heragain on my way back. 

"Hat much damaged?" I inquired. 

"Oh, no, " she answered, smiling; "besides, it was only an old hat. I'vegot a better one for Sundays. "

I often feel philosophical myself; generally over a good cigar after asatisfactory dinner. At such times I open my Marcus Aurelius, my pocketEpicurus, my translation of Plato's "Republic. " At such times I agreewith them. Man troubles himself too much about the unessential. Let uscultivate serenity. Nothing can happen to us that we have not beenconstituted by Nature to sustain. That foolish farm labourer, on hisprecarious wage of twelve shillings a week: let him dwell rather on themercies he enjoys. Is he not spared all anxiety concerning safeinvestment of capital yielding four per cent. ? Is not the sunrise andthe sunset for him also? Many of us never see the sunrise. So many ofour so-termed poorer brethen are privileged rarely to miss that earlymorning festival. Let the daemon within them rejoice. Why should hefret when the children cry for bread? Is it not in the nature of thingsthat the children of the poor should cry for bread? The gods in theirwisdom have arranged it thus. Let the daemon within him reflect upon theadvantage to the community of cheap labour. Let the farm labourercontemplate the universal good. 

CHAPTER III

Literature and the Middle Classes. 

I am sorry to be compelled to cast a slur upon the Literary profession, but observation shows me that it still contains within its ranks writersborn and bred in, and moving amidst--if, without offence, one may put itbluntly--a purely middle-class environment: men and women to whom ParkLane will never be anything than the shortest route between Notting Hilland the Strand; to whom Debrett's Peerage--gilt-edged and bound in red, atasteful-looking volume--ever has been and ever will remain a drawing-room ornament and not a social necessity. Now what is to become of thesewriters--of us, if for the moment I may be allowed to speak asrepresentative of this rapidly-diminishing yet nevertheless stillnumerous section of the world of Art and Letters? Formerly, provided wewere masters of style, possessed imagination and insight, understoodhuman nature, had sympathy with and knowledge of life, and could expressourselves with humour and distinction, our pathway was, comparativelyspeaking, free from obstacle. We drew from the middle-class life aroundus, passed it through our own middle-class individuality, and presentedit to a public composed of middle-class readers. 

But the middle-class public, for purposes of Art, has practicallydisappeared. The social strata from which George Eliot and Dickens drewtheir characters no longer interests the great B. P. Hetty Sorrell, Little Em'ly, would be pronounced "provincial;" a Deronda or a WilferFamily ignored as "suburban. "

I confess that personally the terms "provincial" and "suburban, " asepithets of reproach, have always puzzled me. I never met anyone moresevere on what she termed the "suburban note" in literature than a thinlady who lived in a semi-detached villa in a by-street of Hammersmith. IsArt merely a question of geography, and if so what is the exact limit? Isit the four-mile cab radius from Charing Cross? Is the cheesemonger ofTottenham Court Road of necessity a man of taste, and the Oxfordprofessor of necessity a Philistine? I want to understand this thing. Ionce hazarded the direct question to a critical friend:

"You say a book is suburban, " I put it to him, "and there is an end tothe matter. But what do you mean by suburban?"

"Well, " he replied, "I mean it is the sort of book likely to appeal tothe class that inhabits the suburbs. " He lived himself in Chancery Lane. 

May a man of intelligence live, say, in Surbiton?

"But there is Jones, the editor of _The Evening Gentleman_, " I argued;"he lives at Surbiton. It is just twelve miles from Waterloo. He comesup every morning by the eight-fifteen and returns again by the five-ten. Would you say that a book is bound to be bad because it appeals to Jones?Then again, take Tomlinson: he lives, as you are well aware, at ForestGate which is Epping way, and entertains you on Kakemonos whenever youcall upon him. You know what I mean, of course. I think 'Kakemono' isright. They are long things; they look like coloured hieroglyphicsprinted on brown paper. He gets behind them and holds them up above hishead on the end of a stick so that you can see the whole of them at once;and he tells you the name of the Japanese artist who painted them in theyear 1500 B. C. , and what it is all about. He shows them to you by thehour and forgets to give you dinner. There isn't an easy chair in thehouse. To put it vulgarly, what is wrong with Tomlinson from a high artpoint of view?

"There's a man I know who lives in Birmingham: you must have heard ofhim. He is the great collector of Eighteenth Century caricatures, theRowlandson and Gilray school of things. I don't call them artisticmyself; they make me ill to look at them; but people who understand Artrave about them. Why can't a man be artistic who has got a cottage inthe country?"

"You don't understand me, " retorted my critical friend, a littleirritably, as I thought. 

"I admit it, " I returned. "It is what I am trying to do. "

"Of course artistic people live in the suburbs, " he admitted. "But theyare not of the suburbs. "

"Though they may dwell in Wimbledon or Hornsey, " I suggested, "they singwith the Scotch bard: 'My heart is in the South-West postal district. Myheart is not here. '"

"You can put it that way if you like, " he growled. 

"I will, if you have no objection, " I agreed. "It makes life easier forthose of us with limited incomes. "

The modern novel takes care, however, to avoid all doubt upon thesubject. Its personages, one and all, reside within the half-mile squarelying between Bond Street and the Park--a neighbourhood that would appearto be somewhat densely populated. True, a year or two ago there appeareda fairly successful novel the heroine of which resided in Onslow Gardens. An eminent critic observed of it that: "It fell short only by a littleway of being a serious contribution to English literature. " Consultationwith the keeper of the cabman's shelter at Hyde Park Corner suggested tome that the "little way" the critic had in mind measures exactly elevenhundred yards. When the nobility and gentry of the modern novel do leaveLondon they do not go into the provinces: to do that would be vulgar. They make straight for "Barchester Towers, " or what the Duke calls "hislittle place up north"--localities, one presumes, suspended somewhere inmid-air. 

In every social circle exist great souls with yearnings towards higherthings. Even among the labouring classes one meets with naturallyrefined natures, gentlemanly persons to whom the loom and the plough willalways appear low, whose natural desire is towards the dignities andgraces of the servants' hall. So in Grub Street we can always reckonupon the superior writer whose temperament will prompt him to makerespectful study of his betters. A reasonable supply of high-classnovels might always have been depended upon; the trouble is that thepublic now demands that all stories must be of the upper ten thousand. Auld Robin Grey must be Sir Robert Grey, South African millionaire; andJamie, the youngest son of the old Earl, otherwise a cultured public cantake no interest in the ballad. A modern nursery rhymester to succeedwould have to write of Little Lord Jack and Lady Jill ascending one ofthe many beautiful eminences belonging to the ancestral estates of theirparents, bearing between them, on a silver rod, an exquisitely paintedSevres vase filled with ottar of roses. 

I take up my fourpenny-halfpenny magazine. The heroine is a youthfulDuchess; her husband gambles with thousand-pound notes, with the resultthat they are reduced to living on the first floor of the Carlton Hotel. The villain is a Russian Prince. The Baronet of a simpler age has beenunable, poor fellow, to keep pace with the times. What self-respectingheroine would abandon her husband and children for sin and a paltry fivethousand a year? To the heroine of the past--to the clergyman's daughteror the lady artist--he was dangerous. The modern heroine misbehavesherself with nothing below Cabinet rank. 

I turn to something less pretentious, a weekly periodical that my wifetells me is the best authority she has come across on blouses. I find init what once upon a time would have been called a farce. It is now a"drawing-room comedietta. All rights reserved. " The _dramatis personae_consist of the Earl of Danbury, the Marquis of Rottenborough (with apast), and an American heiress--a character that nowadays takes withlovers of the simple the place formerly occupied by "Rose, the miller'sdaughter. "

I sometimes wonder, is it such teaching as that of Carlyle and Tennysonthat is responsible for this present tendency of literature? Carlyleimpressed upon us that the only history worth consideration was the lifeof great men and women, and Tennyson that we "needs must love thehighest. " So literature, striving ever upward, ignores plain Romola forthe Lady Ponsonby de Tompkins; the provincialisms of a Charlotte Brontefor what a certain critic, born before his time, would have called the"doin's of the hupper succles. "

The British Drama has advanced by even greater bounds. It takes placenow exclusively within castle walls, and--what Messrs. Lumley & Co. 'scircular would describe as--"desirable town mansions, suitable forgentlemen of means. " A living dramatist, who should know, tells us thatdrama does not occur in the back parlour. Dramatists have, it has beenargued, occasionally found it there, but such may have been dramatistswith eyes capable of seeing through clothes. 

I once wrote a play which I read to a distinguished Manager. He said itwas a most interesting play: they always say that. I waited, wonderingto what other manager he would recommend me to take it. To my surprisehe told me he would like it for himself--but with alterations. 

"The whole thing wants lifting up, " was his opinion. "Your hero is abarrister: my public take no interest in plain barristers. Make him theSolicitor General. "

"But he's got to be amusing, " I argued. "A Solicitor General is neveramusing. "

My Manager pondered for a moment. "Let him be Solicitor General forIreland, " he suggested. 

I made a note of it. 

"Your heroine, " he continued, "is the daughter of a seaside lodging-housekeeper. My public do not recognize seaside lodgings. Why not thedaughter of an hotel proprietor? Even that will be risky, but we mightventure it. " An inspiration came to him. "Or better still, let the oldman be the Managing Director of an hotel Trust: that would account forher clothes. "

Unfortunately I put the thing aside for a few months, and when I wasready again the public taste had still further advanced. The doors ofthe British Drama were closed for the time being on all but members ofthe aristocracy, and I did not see my comic old man as a Marquis, whichwas the lowest title that just then one dared to offer to a low comedian. 

Now how are we middle-class novelists and dramatists to continue to live?I am aware of the obvious retort, but to us it absolutely is necessary. We know only parlours: we call them drawing-rooms. At the bottom of ourmiddle-class hearts we regard them fondly: the folding-doors thrown back, they make rather a fine apartment. The only drama that we know takesplace in such rooms: the hero sitting in the gentleman's easy chair, ofgreen repp: the heroine in the lady's ditto, without arms--the chair, Imean. The scornful glances, the bitter words of our middle-class worldare hurled across these three-legged loo-tables, the wedding-cakeornament under its glass case playing the part of white ghost. 

In these days, when "Imperial cement" is at a premium, who would daresuggest that the emotions of a parlour can by any possibility be the sameas those exhibited in a salon furnished in the style of Louis Quatorze;that the tears of Bayswater can possibly be compared for saltness withthe lachrymal fluid distilled from South Audley Street glands; that thelaughter of Clapham can be as catching as the cultured cackle of CurzonStreet? But we, whose best clothes are exhibited only in parlours, whatare we to do? How can we lay bare the souls of Duchesses, explain theheart-throbs of peers of the realm? Some of my friends who, beingConservative, attend Primrose "tourneys" (or is it "Courts of love"? Ispeak as an outsider. Something mediaeval, I know it is) do, it is true, occasionally converse with titled ladies. But the period forconversation is always limited owing to the impatience of the man behind;and I doubt if the interview is ever of much practical use to them, asconveying knowledge of the workings of the aristocratic mind. Those ofus who are not Primrose Knights miss even this poor glimpse into theworld above us. We know nothing, simply nothing, concerning the deeperfeelings of the upper ten. Personally, I once received a letter from anEarl, but that was in connection with a dairy company of which hislordship was chairman, and spoke only of his lordship's views concerningmilk and the advantages of the cash system. Of what I really wished toknow--his lordship's passions, yearnings and general attitude to life--thecircular said nothing. 

Year by year I find myself more and more in a minority. One by one myliterary friends enter into this charmed aristocratic circle; after whichone hears no more from them regarding the middle-classes. At once theyset to work to describe the mental sufferings of Grooms of theBed-chamber, the hidden emotions of Ladies in their own right, thereligious doubts of Marquises. I want to know how they do it--"how thedevil they get there. " They refuse to tell me. 

Meanwhile, I see nothing before me but the workhouse. Year by year thepublic grows more impatient of literature dealing merely with the middle-classes. I know nothing about any other class. What am I to do?

Commonplace people--friends of mine without conscience, counsel me inflippant phrase to "have a shot at it. "

"I expect, old fellow, you know just as much about it as these otherJohnnies do. " (I am not defending their conversation either as regardsstyle or matter: I am merely quoting. ) "And even if you don't, what doesit matter? The average reader knows less. How is he to find you out?"

But, as I explain to them, it is the law of literature never to writeexcept about what you really know. I want to mix with the aristocracy, study them, understand them; so that I may earn my living in the only waya literary man nowadays can earn his living, namely, by writing about theupper circles. 

I want to know how to get there. 

CHAPTER IV

Man and his Master. 

There is one thing that the Anglo-Saxon does better than the "French, orTurk, or Rooshian, " to which add the German or the Belgian. When theAnglo-Saxon appoints an official, he appoints a servant: when the othersput a man in uniform, they add to their long list of masters. If amongyour acquaintances you can discover an American, or Englishman, unfamiliar with the continental official, it is worth your while toaccompany him, the first time he goes out to post a letter, say. Headvances towards the post-office a breezy, self-confident gentleman, borne up by pride of race. While mounting the steps he talks airily of"just getting this letter off his mind, and then picking up Jobson andgoing on to Durand's for lunch. "

He talks as if he had the whole day before him. At the top of the stepshe attempts to push open the door. It will not move. He looks abouthim, and discovers that is the door of egress, not of ingress. It doesnot seem to him worth while redescending the twenty steps and climbinganother twenty. So far as he is concerned he is willing to pull thedoor, instead of pushing it. But a stern official bars his way, andhaughtily indicates the proper entrance. "Oh, bother, " he says, and downhe trots again, and up the other flight. 

"I shall not be a minute, " he remarks over his shoulder. "You can waitfor me outside. "

But if you know your way about, you follow him in. There are seatswithin, and you have a newspaper in your pocket: the time will pass morepleasantly. Inside he looks round, bewildered. The German post-office, generally speaking, is about the size of the Bank of England. Sometwenty different windows confront your troubled friend, each one bearingits own particular legend. Starting with number one, he sets to work tospell them out. It appears to him that the posting of letters is not athing that the German post-office desires to encourage. Would he notlike a dog licence instead? is what one window suggests to him. "Oh, never mind that letter of yours; come and talk about bicycles, " pleadsanother. At last he thinks he has found the right hole: the word"Registration" he distinctly recognizes. He taps at the glass. 

Nobody takes any notice of him. The foreign official is a man whose lifeis saddened by a public always wanting something. You read it in hisface wherever you go. The man who sells you tickets for the theatre! Heis eating sandwiches when you knock at his window. He turns to hiscompanion:

"Good Lord!" you can see him say, "here's another of 'em. If there hasbeen one man worrying me this morning there have been a hundred. Alwaysthe same story: all of 'em want to come and see the play. You listennow; bet you anything he's going to bother me for tickets. Really, itgets on my nerves sometimes. "

At the railway station it is just the same. 

"Another man who wants to go to Antwerp! Don't seem to care for rest, these people: flying here, flying there, what's the sense of it?" It isthis absurd craze on the part of the public for letter-writing that isspoiling the temper of the continental post-office official. He does hisbest to discourage it. 

"Look at them, " he says to his assistant--the thoughtful GermanGovernment is careful to provide every official with another official forcompany, lest by sheer force of _ennui_ he might be reduced to takinginterest in his work--"twenty of 'em, all in a row! Some of 'em beenthere for the last quarter of an hour. "

"Let 'em wait another quarter of an hour, " advises the assistant;"perhaps they'll go away. "

"My dear fellow, " he answers, "do you think I haven't tried that? There'ssimply no getting rid of 'em. And it's always the same cry: 'Stamps!stamps! stamps!' 'Pon my word, I think they live on stamps, some of'em. "

"Well let 'em have their stamps?" suggests the assistant, with a burst ofinspiration; "perhaps it will get rid of 'em. "

Why the Man in Uniform has, generally, sad Eyes. 

"What's the use?" wearily replies the older man. "There will only come afresh crowd when those are gone. "

"Oh, well, " argues the other, "that will be a change, anyhow. I'm tiredof looking at this lot. "

I put it to a German post-office clerk once--a man I had been boring formonths. I said:

"You think I write these letters--these short stories, these three-actplays--on purpose to annoy you. Do let me try to get the idea out ofyour head. Personally, I hate work--hate it as much as you do. This isa pleasant little town of yours: given a free choice, I could spend thewhole day mooning round it, never putting pen to paper. But what am I todo? I have a wife and children. You know what it is yourself: theyclamour for food, boots--all sorts of things. I have to prepare theselittle packets for sale and bring them to you to send off. You see, youare here. If you were not here--if there were no post-office in thistown, maybe I'd have to train pigeons, or cork the thing up in a bottle, fling it into the river, and trust to luck and the Gulf Stream. But, youbeing here, and calling yourself a post-office--well, it's a temptationto a fellow. "

I think it did good. Anyhow, after that he used to grin when I openedthe door, instead of greeting me as formerly with a face the picture ofdespair. But to return to our inexperienced friend. 

At last the wicket is suddenly opened. A peremptory official demands ofhim "name and address. " Not expecting the question, he is a littledoubtful of his address, and has to correct himself once or twice. Theofficial eyes him suspiciously. 

"Name of mother?" continues the official. 

"Name of what?"

"Mother!" repeats the official. "Had a mother of some sort, I suppose. "

He is a man who loved his mother sincerely while she lived, but she hasbeen dead these twenty years, and, for the life of him he cannotrecollect her name. He thinks it was Margaret Henrietta, but is not atall sure. Besides, what on earth has his mother got to do with thisregistered letter that he wants to send to his partner in New York?

"When did it die?" asks the official. 

"When did what die? Mother?"

"No, no, the child. "

"What child?" The indignation of the official is almost picturesque. 

"All I want to do, " explains your friend, "is to register a letter. "

"A what?"

"This letter, I want--"

The window is slammed in his face. When, ten minutes later he does reachthe right wicket--the bureau for the registration of letters, and not thebureau for the registration of infantile deaths--it is pointed out to himthat the letter either is sealed or that it is not sealed. 

I have never been able yet to solve this problem. If your letter issealed, it then appears that it ought not to have been sealed. 

If, on the other hand, you have omitted to seal it, that is your fault. In any case, the letter cannot go as it is. The continental officialbrings up the public on the principle of the nurse who sent the eldestgirl to see what Tommy was doing and tell him he mustn't. Your friend, having wasted half an hour and mislaid his temper for the day, decides toleave this thing over and talk to the hotel porter about it. Next to theBurgomeister, the hotel porter is the most influential man in thecontinental town: maybe because he can swear in seven differentlanguages. But even he is not omnipotent. 

The Traveller's one Friend. 

Three of us, on the point of starting for a walking tour through theTyrol, once sent on our luggage by post from Constance to Innsbruck. Ouridea was that, reaching Innsbruck in the height of the season, after aweek's tramp on two flannel shirts and a change of socks, we should beglad to get into fresh clothes before showing ourselves in civilizedsociety. Our bags were waiting for us in the post-office: we could seethem through the grating. But some informality--I have never been ableto understand what it was--had occurred at Constance. The suspicion ofthe Swiss postal authorities had been aroused, and special instructionshad been sent that the bags were to be delivered up only to theirrightful owners. 

It sounds sensible enough. Nobody wants his bag delivered up to anyoneelse. But it had not been explained to the authorities at Innsbruck howthey were to know the proper owners. Three wretched-looking creaturescrawled into the post-office and said they wanted those three bags--"thosebags, there in the corner"--which happened to be nice, clean, respectable-looking bags, the sort of bags that anyone might want. One of themproduced a bit of paper, it is true, which he said had been given to himas a receipt by the post-office people at Constance. But in the lonelypasses of the Tyrol one man, set upon by three, might easily be robbed ofhis papers, and his body thrown over a precipice. The chief clerk shookhis head. He would like us to return accompanied by someone who couldidentify us. The hotel porter occurred to us, as a matter of course. Keeping to the back streets, we returned to the hotel and fished him outof his box. 

"I am Mr. J. , " I said: "this is my friend Mr. B. And this is Mr. S. "

The porter bowed and said he was delighted. 

"I want you to come with us to the post-office, " I explained, "andidentify us. "

The hotel porter is always a practical man: his calling robs him of allsympathy with the hide-bound formality of his compatriots. He put on hiscap and accompanied us back to the office. He did his best: no one couldsay he did not. He told them who we were: they asked him how he knew. For reply he asked them how they thought he knew his mother: he just knewus: it was second nature with him. He implied that the question was asilly one, and suggested that, as his time was valuable, they should handus over the three bags and have done with their nonsense. 

They asked him how long he had known us. He threw up his hands with aneloquent gesture: memory refused to travel back such distance. Itappeared there was never a time when he had not known us. We had beenboys together. 

Did he know anybody else who knew us? The question appeared to himalmost insulting. Everybody in Innsbruck knew us, honoured us, respectedus--everybody, that is, except a few post-office officials, people quiteout of society. 

Would he kindly bring along, say; one undoubtedly respectable citizen whocould vouch for our identity? The request caused him to forget us andour troubles. The argument became a personal quarrel between the porterand the clerk. If he, the porter, was not a respectable citizen ofInnsbruck, where was such an one to be found?

The disadvantage of being an unknown Person. 

Both gentlemen became excited, and the discussion passed beyond myunderstanding. But I gathered dimly from what the clerk said, that ill-natured remarks relative to the porter's grandfather and a missing cowhad never yet been satisfactorily replied to: and, from observations madeby the porter, that stories were in circulation about the clerk's auntand a sergeant of artillery that should suggest to a discreet nephew ofthe lady the inadvisability of talking about other people's grandfathers. 

Our sympathies were naturally with the porter: he was our man, but he didnot seem to be advancing our cause much. We left them quarrelling, andpersuaded the head waiter that evening to turn out the gas at our end ofthe _table d'hote_. 

The next morning we returned to the post-office by ourselves. The clerkproved a reasonable man when treated in a friendly spirit. He was a bitof a climber himself. He admitted the possibility of our being therightful owners. His instructions were only not to _deliver up_ thebags, and he himself suggested a way out of the difficulty. We mightcome each day and dress in the post-office, behind the screen. It was anawkward arrangement, even although the clerk allowed us the use of theback door. And occasionally, in spite of the utmost care, bits of uswould show outside the screen. But for a couple of days, until theBritish Consul returned from Salzburg, the post-office had to be ourdressing room. The continental official, I am inclined to think, errs onthe side of prudence. 

CHAPTER V

If only we had not lost our Tails!

A friend of mine thinks it a pity that we have lost our tails. He arguesit would be so helpful if, like the dog, we possessed a tail that waggedwhen we were pleased, that stuck out straight when we were feeling mad. 

"Now, do come and see us again soon, " says our hostess; "don't wait to beasked. Drop in whenever you are passing. "

We take her at her word. The servant who answers our knocking says she"will see. " There is a scuffling of feet, a murmur of hushed voices, aswift opening and closing of doors. We are shown into the drawing-room, the maid, breathless from her search, one supposes, having discoveredthat her mistress _is_ at home. We stand upon the hearthrug, clinging toour hat and stick as to things friendly and sympathetic: the suggestionforcing itself upon us is that of a visit to the dentist. 

Our hostess enters wreathed in smiles. Is she really pleased to see us, or is she saying to herself, "Drat the man! Why must he choose the verymorning I had intended to fix up the clean curtains?"

But she has to pretend to be delighted, and ask us to stay to lunch. Itwould save us hours of anxiety could we look beyond her smiling face toher tail peeping out saucily from a placket-hole. Is it wagging, or isit standing out rigid at right angles from her skirt?

But I fear by this time we should have taught our tails polite behaviour. We should have schooled them to wag enthusiastically the while we weregrowling savagely to ourselves. Man put on insincerity to hide his mindwhen he made himself a garment of fig-leaves to hide his body. 

One sometimes wonders whether he has gained so very much. A smallacquaintance of mine is being brought up on strange principles. Whetherhis parents are mad or not is a matter of opinion. Their ideas arecertainly peculiar. They encourage him rather than otherwise to tell thetruth on all occasions. I am watching the experiment with interest. Ifyou ask him what he thinks of you, he tells you. Some people don't askhim a second time. They say:

"What a very rude little boy you are!"

"But you insisted upon it, " he explains; "I told you I'd rather not say. "

It does not comfort them in the least. Yet the result is, he is alreadyan influence. People who have braved the ordeal, and emergedsuccessfully, go about with swelled head. 

And little Boys would always tell the Truth!

Politeness would seem to have been invented for the comfort of theundeserving. We let fall our rain of compliments upon the unjust and thejust without distinction. Every hostess has provided us with the mostcharming evening of our life. Every guest has conferred a like blessingupon us by accepting our invitation. I remember a dear good lady in asmall south German town organizing for one winter's day a sleighing partyto the woods. A sleighing party differs from a picnic. The people whowant each other cannot go off together and lose themselves, leaving thebores to find only each other. You are in close company from early morntill late at night. We were to drive twenty miles, six in a sledge, dinetogether in a lonely _Wirtschaft_, dance and sing songs, and afterwardsdrive home by moonlight. Success depends on every member of the companyfitting into his place and assisting in the general harmony. Ourchieftainess was fixing the final arrangements the evening before in thedrawing-room of the _pension_. One place was still to spare. 

"Tompkins!"

Two voices uttered the name simultaneously; three others immediately tookup the refrain. Tompkins was our man--the cheeriest, merriest companionimaginable. Tompkins alone could be trusted to make the affair asuccess. Tompkins, who had only arrived that afternoon, was pointed outto our chieftainess. We could hear his good-tempered laugh from where wesat, grouped together at the other end of the room. Our chieftainessrose, and made for him direct. 

Alas! she was a short-sighted lady--we had not thought of that. Shereturned in triumph, followed by a dismal-looking man I had met the yearbefore in the Black Forest, and had hoped never to meet again. I drewher aside. 

"Whatever you do, " I said, "don't ask --- " (I forget his name. One ofthese days I'll forget him altogether, and be happier. I will call himJohnson. ) "He would turn the whole thing into a funeral before we werehalf-way there. I climbed a mountain with him once. He makes you forgetall your other troubles; that is the only thing he is good for. "

"But who is Johnson?" she demanded. "Why, that's Johnson, " Iexplained--"the thing you've brought over. Why on earth didn't you leaveit alone? Where's your woman's instinct?"

"Great heavens!" she cried, "I thought it was Tompkins. I've invitedhim, and he's accepted. "

She was a stickler for politeness, and would not hear of his being toldthat he had been mistaken for an agreeable man, but that the error, mostfortunately, had been discovered in time. He started a row with thedriver of the sledge, and devoted the journey outwards to an argument onthe fiscal question. He told the proprietor of the hotel what he thoughtof German cooking, and insisted on having the windows open. One of ourparty--a German student--sang, "Deutschland, Deutschland uberalles, "--which led to a heated discussion on the proper place ofsentiment in literature, and a general denunciation by Johnson ofTeutonic characteristics in general. We did not dance. Johnson saidthat, of course, he spoke only for himself, but the sight of middle-agedladies and gentlemen catching hold of each other round the middle andjigging about like children was to him rather a saddening spectacle, butto the young such gambolling was natural. Let the young ones indulgethemselves. Only four of our party could claim to be under thirty withany hope of success. They were kind enough not to impress the fact uponus. Johnson enlivened the journey back by a searching analysis ofenjoyment: Of what did it really consist?

Yet, on wishing him "Good-night, " our chieftainess thanked him for hiscompany in precisely the same terms she would have applied to Tompkins, who, by unflagging good humour and tact, would have made the day worthremembering to us all for all time. 

And everyone obtained his just Deserts!

We pay dearly for our want of sincerity. We are denied the payment ofpraise: it has ceased to have any value. People shake me warmly by thehand and tell me that they like my books. It only bores me. Not that Iam superior to compliment--nobody is--but because I cannot be sure thatthey mean it. They would say just the same had they never read a line Ihad written. If I visit a house and find a book of mine open facedownwards on the window-seat, it sends no thrill of pride through mysuspicious mind. As likely as not, I tell myself, the following is theconversation that has taken place between my host and hostess the daybefore my arrival:

"Don't forget that man J--- is coming down to-morrow. "

"To-morrow! I wish you would tell me of these things a little earlier. "

"I did tell you--told you last week. Your memory gets worse every day. "

"You certainly never told me, or I should have remembered it. Is heanybody important?"

"Oh, no; writes books. "

"What sort of books?--I mean, is he quite respectable?"

"Of course, or I should not have invited him. These sort of people goeverywhere nowadays. By the by, have we got any of his books about thehouse?"

"I don't think so. I'll look and see. If you had let me know in time Icould have ordered one from Mudie's. "

"Well, I've got to go to town; I'll make sure of it, and buy one. "

"Seems a pity to waste money. Won't you be going anywhere near Mudie's?"

"Looks more appreciative to have bought a copy. It will do for abirthday present for someone. "

On the other hand, the conversation may have been very different. Myhostess may have said:

"Oh, I _am_ glad he's coming. I have been longing to meet him foryears. "

She may have bought my book on the day of publication, and be reading itthrough for the second time. She may, by pure accident, have left it onher favourite seat beneath the window. The knowledge that insincerity isour universal garment has reduced all compliment to meaningless formula. A lady one evening at a party drew me aside. The chief guest--a famouswriter--had just arrived. 

"Tell me, " she said, "I have so little time for reading, what has hedone?"

I was on the point of replying when an inveterate wag, who had overheardher, interposed between us. 

"'The Cloister and the Hearth, '" he told her, "and 'Adam Bede. '"

He happened to know the lady well. She has a good heart, but was evermuddle-headed. She thanked that wag with a smile, and I heard her laterin the evening boring most evidently that literary lion with elongatedpraise of the "Cloister and the Hearth" and "Adam Bede. " They were amongthe few books she had ever read, and talking about them came easily toher. She told me afterwards that she had found that literary lion acharming man, but--

"Well, " she laughed, "he has got a good opinion of himself. He told mehe considered both books among the finest in the English language. "

It is as well always to make a note of the author's name. Some peoplenever do--more particularly playgoers. A well-known dramatic author toldme he once took a couple of colonial friends to a play of his own. Itwas after a little dinner at Kettner's; they suggested the theatre, andhe thought he would give them a treat. He did not mention to them thathe was the author, and they never looked at the programme. Their facesas the play proceeded lengthened; it did not seem to be their school ofcomedy. At the end of the first act they sprang to their feet. 

"Let's chuck this rot, " suggested one. 

"Let's go to the Empire, " suggested the other. The well-known dramatistfollowed them out. He thinks the fault must have been with the dinner. 

A young friend of mine--a man of good family--contracted a _mesalliance_:that is, he married the daughter of a Canadian farmer, a frank, amiablegirl, bewitchingly pretty, with more character in her little finger thansome girls possess in their whole body. I met him one day, some threemonths after his return to London. 

And only people would do Parlour Tricks who do them well!

"Well, " I asked him, "how is it shaping?"

"She is the dearest girl in the world, " he answered. "She has only gotone fault; she believes what people say. "

"She will get over that, " I suggested. 

"I hope she does, " he replied; "it's awkward at present. "

"I can see it leading her into difficulty, " I agreed. 

"She is not accomplished, " he continued. He seemed to wish to talk aboutit to a sympathetic listener. "She never pretended to be accomplished. Idid not marry her for her accomplishments. But now she is beginning tothink she must have been accomplished all the time, without knowing it. She plays the piano like a schoolgirl on a parents' visiting-day. Shetold them she did not play--not worth listening to--at least, she beganby telling them so. They insisted that she did, that they had heardabout her playing, and were thirsting to enjoy it. She is good natureitself. She would stand on her head if she thought it would give realjoy to anyone. She took it they really wanted to hear her, and so let'em have it. They tell her that her touch is something quite out of thecommon--which is the truth, if only she could understand it--why did shenever think of taking up music as a profession? By this time she iswondering herself that she never did. They are not satisfied withhearing her once. They ask for more, and they get it. The other eveningI had to keep quiet on my chair while she thumped through four pieces oneafter the other, including the Beethoven Sonata. We knew it was theBeethoven Sonata. She told us before she started it was going to be theBeethoven Sonata, otherwise, for all any of us could have guessed, itmight have been the 'Battle of Prague. ' We all sat round with woodenfaces, staring at our boots. Afterwards those of them that couldn't getnear enough to her to make a fool of her crowded round me. Wanted toknow why I had never told them I had discovered a musical prodigy. I'lllose my temper one day and pull somebody's nose, I feel I shall. She'sgot a recitation; whether intended to be serious or comic I had neverbeen able to make up my mind. The way she gives it confers upon it allthe disadvantages of both. It is chiefly concerned with an angel and achild. But a dog comes into it about the middle, and from that pointonward it is impossible to tell who is talking--sometimes you think it isthe angel, and then it sounds more like the dog. The child is theeasiest to follow: it talks all the time through its nose. If I haveheard that recitation once I have heard it fifty times; and now she isbusy learning an encore. 

And all the World had Sense!

"What hurts me most, " he went on, "is having to watch her making herselfridiculous. Yet what am I to do? If I explain things to her she will bemiserable and ashamed of herself; added to which her frankness--perhapsher greatest charm--will be murdered. The trouble runs througheverything. She won't take my advice about her frocks. She laughs, andrepeats to me--well, the lies that other women tell a girl who isspoiling herself by dressing absurdly; especially when she is a prettygirl and they are anxious she should go on spoiling herself. She boughta hat last week, one day when I was not with her. It only wants thecandles to look like a Christmas tree. They insist on her taking it offso they may examine it more closely, with the idea of having one builtlike it for themselves; and she sits by delighted, and explains to themthe secret of the thing. We get to parties half an hour before theopening time; she is afraid of being a minute late. They have told herthat the party can't begin without her--isn't worth calling a party tillshe's there. We are always the last to go. The other people don'tmatter, but if she goes they will feel the whole thing has been afailure. She is dead for want of sleep, and they are sick and tired ofus; but if I look at my watch they talk as if their hearts were breaking, and she thinks me a brute for wanting to leave friends so passionatelyattached to us. 

"Why do we all play this silly game; what is the sense of it?" he wantedto know. 

I could not tell him. 

CHAPTER VI

Fire and the Foreigner. 

They are odd folk, these foreigners. There are moments of despair when Ialmost give them up--feel I don't care what becomes of them--feel as if Icould let them muddle on in their own way--wash my hands of them, so tospeak, and attend exclusively to my own business: we all have our days offeebleness. They will sit outside a cafe on a freezing night, with aneast wind blowing, and play dominoes. They will stand outside a tramcar, rushing through the icy air at fifteen miles an hour, and refuse to goinside, even to oblige a lady. Yet in railway carriages, in which youcould grill a bloater by the simple process of laying it underneath theseat, they will insist on the window being closed, light cigars to keeptheir noses warm, and sit with the collars of their fur coats buttoned uparound their necks. 

In their houses they keep the double windows hermetically sealed forthree or four months at a time: and the hot air quivering about thestoves scorches your face if you venture nearer to it than a yard. Travelcan broaden the mind. It can also suggest to the Britisher that in somerespects his countrymen are nothing near so silly as they are supposed tobe. There was a time when I used to sit with my legs stretched outbefore the English coal fire and listen with respectful attention whilepeople who I thought knew all about it explained to me how wicked and howwasteful were our methods. 

All the heat from that fire, they told me, was going up the chimney. Idid not like to answer them that notwithstanding I felt warm and cosy. Ifeared it might be merely British stupidity that kept me warm and cosy, not the fire at all. How could it be the fire? The heat from the firewas going up the chimney. It was the glow of ignorance that was makingmy toes tingle. Besides, if by sitting close in front of the fire andlooking hard at it, I did contrive, by hypnotic suggestion, maybe, tofancy myself warm, what should I feel like at the other end of the room?

It seemed like begging the question to reply that I had no particular usefor the other end of the room, that generally speaking there was roomenough about the fire for all the people I really cared for, that sittingaltogether round the fire seemed quite as sensible as sulking by one'sself in a corner the other end of the room, that the fire made a cheerfuland convenient focus for family and friends. They pointed out to me howa stove, blocking up the centre of the room, with a dingy lookingfluepipe wandering round the ceiling, would enable us to sit ranged roundthe walls, like patients in a hospital waiting-room, and use up coke andpotato-peelings. 

Since then I have had practical experience of the scientific stove. Iwant the old-fashioned, unsanitary, wasteful, illogical, open fireplace. I want the heat to go up the chimney, instead of stopping in the room andgiving me a headache, and making everything go round. When I come in outof the snow I want to see a fire--something that says to me with acheerful crackle, "Hallo, old man, cold outside, isn't it? Come and sitdown. Come quite close and warm your hands. That's right, put your footunder him and persuade him to move a yard or two. That's all he's beendoing for the last hour, lying there roasting himself, lazy little devil. He'll get softening of the spine, that's what will happen to him. Putyour toes on the fender. The tea will be here in a minute. "

My British Stupidity. 

I want something that I can toast my back against, while standing withcoat tails tucked up and my hands in my pockets, explaining things topeople. I don't want a comfortless, staring, white thing, in a corner ofthe room, behind the sofa--a thing that looks and smells like a familytomb. It may be hygienic, and it may be hot, but it does not seem to dome any good. It has its advantages: it contains a cupboard into whichyou can put things to dry. You can also forget them, and leave themthere. Then people complain of a smell of burning, and hope the house isnot on fire, and you ease their mind by explaining to them that it isprobably only your boots. Complicated internal arrangements are workedby a key. If you put on too much fuel, and do not work this keyproperly, the thing explodes. And if you do not put on any coal at alland the fire goes out suddenly, then likewise it explodes. That is theonly way it knows of calling attention to itself. On the Continent youknow when the fire wants seeing to merely by listening:

"Sounded like the dining-room, that last explosion, " somebody remarks. 

"I think not, " observes another, "I distinctly felt the shock behindme--my bedroom, I expect. "

Bits of ceiling begin to fall, and you notice that the mirror over thesideboard is slowly coming towards you. 

"Why it must be this stove, " you say; "curious how difficult it is tolocate sound. "

You snatch up the children and hurry out of the room. After a while, when things have settled down, you venture to look in again. Maybe itwas only a mild explosion. A ten-pound note and a couple of plumbers inthe house for a week will put things right again. They tell me they areeconomical, these German stoves, but you have got to understand them. Ithink I have learnt the trick of them at last: and I don't suppose, alltold, it has cost me more than fifty pounds. And now I am trying toteach the rest of the family. What I complain about the family is thatthey do not seem anxious to learn. 

"You do it, " they say, pressing the coal scoop into my hand: "it makes usnervous. "

It is a pretty, patriarchal idea: I stand between the trusting, admiringfamily and these explosive stoves that are the terror of their lives. They gather round me in a group and watch me, the capable, all-knowingHead who fears no foreign stove. But there are days when I get tired ofgoing round making up fires. 

Nor is it sufficient to understand only one particular stove. Thepractical foreigner prides himself upon having various stoves, adapted tovarious work. Hitherto I have been speaking only of the stove supposedto be best suited to reception rooms and bedrooms. The hall is providedwith another sort of stove altogether: an iron stove this, that turns upits nose at coke and potato-peelings. If you give it anything else butthe best coal it explodes. It is like living surrounded by peppery oldcolonels, trying to pass a peaceful winter among these passionate stoves. There is a stove in the kitchen to be used only for roasting: this onewill not look at anything else but wood. Give it a bit of coal, meaningto be kind, and before you are out of the room it has exploded. 

Then there is a trick stove specially popular in Belgium. It has alittle door at the top and another little door at the bottom, and lookslike a pepper-caster. Whether it is happy or not depends upon those twolittle doors. There are times when it feels it wants the bottom doorshut and the top door open, or _vice versa_, or both open at the sametime, or both shut--it is a fussy little stove. 

Ordinary intelligence does not help you much with this stove. You wantto be bred in the country. It is a question of instinct: you have tohave Belgian blood in your veins to get on comfortably with it. On thewhole, it is a mild little stove, this Belgian pet. It does not oftenexplode: it only gets angry, and throws its cover into the air, andflings hot coals about the room. It lives, generally speaking, inside aniron cupboard with two doors. When you want it, you open these doors, and pull it out into the room. It works on a swivel. And when you don'twant it you try to push it back again, and then the whole thing tumblesover, and the girl throws her hands up to Heaven and says, "Mon Dieu!"and screams for the cook and the _femme journee_, and they all three say"Mon Dieu!" and fall upon it with buckets of water. By the timeeverything has been extinguished you have made up your mind to substitutefor it just the ordinary explosive stove to which you are accustomed. 

I am considered Cold and Mad. 

In your own house you can, of course, open the windows, and thus defeatthe foreign stove. The rest of the street thinks you mad, but then theEnglishman is considered by all foreigners to be always mad. It is hisprivilege to be mad. The street thinks no worse of you than it didbefore, and you can breathe in comfort. But in the railway carriage theydon't allow you to be mad. In Europe, unless you are prepared to draw atsight upon the other passengers, throw the conductor out of the window, and take the train in by yourself, it is useless arguing the question offresh air. The rule abroad is that if any one man objects to the windowbeing open, the window remains closed. He does not quarrel with you: herings the bell, and points out to the conductor that the temperature ofthe carriage has sunk to little more than ninety degrees, Fahrenheit. Hethinks a window must be open. 

The conductor is generally an old soldier: he understands being shot, heunderstands being thrown out of window, but not the laws of sanitation. If, as I have explained, you shoot him, or throw him out on the permanentway, that convinces him. He leaves you to discuss the matter with thesecond conductor, who, by your action, has now, of course, become thefirst conductor. As there are generally half a dozen of these conductorsscattered about the train, the process of educating them becomesmonotonous. You generally end by submitting to the law. 

Unless you happen to be an American woman. Never did my heart go outmore gladly to America as a nation than one spring day travelling fromBerne to Vevey. We had been sitting for an hour in an atmosphere thatwould have rendered a Dante disinclined to notice things. Dante, afterten minutes in that atmosphere, would have lost all interest in the show. He would not have asked questions. He would have whispered to Virgil:

"Get me out of this, old man, there's a good fellow!"

Sometimes I wish I were an American Woman. 

The carriage was crowded, chiefly with Germans. Every window was closed, every ventilator shut. The hot air quivered round our feet. Seventeenmen and four women were smoking, two children were sucking peppermints, and an old married couple were eating their lunch, consisting chiefly ofgarlic. At a junction, the door was thrown open. The foreigner opensthe door a little way, glides in, and closes it behind him. This was nota foreigner, but an American lady, _en voyage_, accompanied by five otherAmerican ladies. They marched in carrying packages. They could not findsix seats together, so they scattered up and down the carriage. Thefirst thing that each woman did, the moment she could get her hands free, was to dash for the nearest window and haul it down. 

"Astonishes me, " said the first woman, "that somebody is not dead in thiscarriage. "

Their idea, I think, was that through asphyxiation we had becomecomatose, and, but for their entrance, would have died unconscious. 

"It is a current of air that is wanted, " said another of the ladies. 

So they opened the door at the front of the carriage and four of themstood outside on the platform, chatting pleasantly and admiring thescenery, while two of them opened the door at the other end, and tookphotographs of the Lake of Geneva. The carriage rose and cursed them insix languages. Bells were rung: conductors came flying in. It was allof no use. Those American ladies were cheerful but firm. They arguedwith volubility: they argued standing in the open doorway. Theconductors, familiar, no doubt, with the American lady and her ways, shrugged their shoulders and retired. The other passengers undid theirbags and bundles, and wrapped themselves up in shawls and Jaegernightshirts. 

I met the ladies afterwards in Lausanne. They told me they had beencondemned to a fine of forty francs apiece. They also explained to methat they had not the slightest intention of paying it. 

CHAPTER VII

Too much Postcard. 

The postcard craze is dying out in Germany--the land of its birth--I amtold. In Germany they do things thoroughly, or not at all. The Germanwhen he took to sending postcards abandoned almost every other pursuit inlife. The German tourist never knew where he had been until on reachinghome again he asked some friend or relation to allow him to look over thepostcards he had sent. Then it was he began to enjoy his trip. 

"What a charming old town!" the German tourist would exclaim. "I wish Icould have found time while I was there to have gone outside the hoteland have had a look round. Still, it is pleasant to think one has beenthere. "

"I suppose you did not have much time?" his friend would suggest. 

"We did not get there till the evening, " the tourist would explain. "Wewere busy till dark buying postcards, and then in the morning there wasthe writing and addressing to be done, and when that was over, and we hadhad our breakfast, it was time to leave again. "

He would take up another card showing the panorama from a mountain top. 

"Sublime! colossal!" he would cry enraptured. "If I had known it wasanything like that, I'd have stopped another day and had a look at it. "

It was always worth seeing, the arrival of a party of German tourists ina Schwartzwald village. Leaping from the coach they would surge roundthe solitary gendarme. 

"Where is the postcard shop?" "Tell us--we have only two hours--where dowe get postcards?"

The gendarme, scenting _Trinkgeld_, would head them at the double-quick:stout old gentlemen unaccustomed to the double-quick, stouter Frauengathering up their skirts with utter disregard to all propriety, slim_Fraulein_ clinging to their beloved would run after him. Nervouspedestrians would fly for safety into doorways, careless loiterers wouldbe swept into the gutter. 

In the narrow doorway of the postcard shop trouble would begin. Thecries of suffocated women and trampled children, the curses of strongmen, would rend the air. The German is a peaceful, law-abiding citizen, but in the hunt for postcards he was a beast. A woman would pounce on atray of cards, commence selecting, suddenly the tray would be snatchedfrom her. She would burst into tears, and hit the person nearest to herwith her umbrella. The cunning and the strong would secure the bestcards. The weak and courteous be left with pictures of post offices andrailway stations. Torn and dishevelled, the crowd would rush back to thehotel, sweep crockery from the table, and--sucking stumpy pencils--writefeverishly. A hurried meal would follow. Then the horses would be putto again, the German tourists would climb back to their places and bedriven away, asking of the coachman what the name of the place they hadjust left might happen to be. 

The Postcard as a Family Curse. 

One presumes that even to the patient German the thing grew tiresome. Inthe _Fliegende Blatter_ two young clerks were represented discussing thequestion of summer holidays. 

"Where are you going?" asks A of B. 

"Nowhere, " answers B. 

"Can't you afford it?" asks the sympathetic A. 

"Only been able to save up enough for the postcards, " answers B, gloomily; "no money left for the trip. "

Men and women carried bulky volumes containing the names and addresses ofthe people to whom they had promised to send cards. Everywhere, throughwinding forest glade, by silver sea, on mountain pathway, one met withprematurely aged looking tourists muttering as they walked:

"Did I send Aunt Gretchen a postcard from that last village that westopped at, or did I address two to Cousin Lisa?"

Then, again, maybe, the picture postcard led to disappointment. Uninteresting towns clamoured, as ill-favoured spinsters in aphotographic studio, to be made beautiful. 

"I want, " says the lady, "a photograph my friends will really like. Someof these second-rate photographers make one look quite plain. I don'twant you to flatter me, if you understand, I merely want something nice. "

The obliging photographer does his best. The nose is carefully toneddown, the wart becomes a dimple, her own husband doesn't know her. Thepostcard artist has ended by imagining everything as it might have been. 

"If it were not for the houses, " says the postcard artist to himself, "this might have been a picturesque old High street of mediaeval aspect. "

So he draws a picture of the High street as it might have been. Thelover of quaint architecture travels out of his way to see it, and whenhe finds it and contrasts it with the picture postcard he gets mad. Ibought a postcard myself once representing the market place of a certainFrench town. It seemed to me, looking at the postcard, that I hadn'treally seen France--not yet. I travelled nearly a hundred miles to seethat market place. I was careful to arrive on market day and to getthere at the right time. I reached the market square and looked at it. Then I asked a gendarme where it was. 

He said it was there--that I was in it. 

I said, "I don't mean this one, I want the other one, the picturesqueone. "

He said it was the only market square they had. I took the postcard frommy pocket. 

"Where are all the girls?" I asked him. 

"What girls?" he demanded. 

The Artist's Dream. 

"Why, these girls;" I showed him the postcard, there ought to have beenabout a hundred of them. There was not a plain one among the lot. Manyof them I should have called beautiful. They were selling flowers andfruit, all kinds of fruit--cherries, strawberries, rosy-cheeked apples, luscious grapes--all freshly picked and sparkling with dew. The gendarmesaid he had never seen any girls--not in this particular square. Referring casually to the blood of saints and martyrs, he said he wouldlike to see a few girls in that town worth looking at. In the squareitself sat six motherly old souls round a lamp-post. One of them had amoustache, and was smoking a pipe, but in other respects, I have nodoubt, was all a woman should be. Two of them were selling fish. Thatis they would have sold fish, no doubt, had anyone been there to buyfish. The gaily clad thousands of eager purchasers pictured in thepostcard were represented by two workmen in blue blouses talking at acorner, mostly with their fingers; a small boy walking backwards, withthe idea apparently of not missing anything behind him, and a yellow dogthat sat on the kerb, and had given up all hope--judging from hisexpression--of anything ever happening again. With the gendarme andmyself, these four were the only living creatures in the square. Therest of the market consisted of eggs and a few emaciated fowls hangingfrom a sort of broom handle. 

"And where's the cathedral?" I asked the gendarme. It was a Gothicstructure in the postcard of evident antiquity. He said there had oncebeen a cathedral. It was now a brewery; he pointed it out to me. Hesaid he thought some portion of the original south wall had beenretained. He thought the manager of the brewery might be willing to showit to me. 

"And the fountain?" I demanded, "and all these doves!"

He said there had been talk of a fountain. He believed the design hadalready been prepared. 

I took the next train back. I do not now travel much out of my way tosee the original of the picture postcard. Maybe others have had likeexperience and the picture postcard as a guide to the Continent has lostits value. 

The dealer has fallen back upon the eternal feminine. The postcardcollector is confined to girls. Through the kindness of correspondents Ipossess myself some fifty to a hundred girls, or perhaps it would be morecorrect to say one girl in fifty to a hundred different hats. I have herin big hats, I have her in small hats, I have her in no hat at all. Ihave her smiling, and I have her looking as if she had lost her lastsixpence. I have her overdressed, I have her decidedly underdressed, butshe is much the same girl. Very young men cannot have too many of her, but myself I am getting tired of her. I suppose it is the result ofgrowing old. 

Why not the Eternal Male for a change?

Girls of my acquaintance are also beginning to grumble at her. I oftenthink it hard on girls that the artist so neglects the eternal male. Whyshould there not be portraits of young men in different hats; young menin big hats, young men in little hats, young men smiling archly, youngmen looking noble. Girls don't want to decorate their rooms withpictures of other girls, they want rows of young men beaming down uponthem. 

But possibly I am sinning my mercies. A father hears what young mendon't. The girl in real life is feeling it keenly: the impossiblestandard set for her by the popular artist. 

"Real skirts don't hang like that, " she grumbles, "it's not in the natureof skirts. You can't have feet that size. It isn't our fault, they arenot made. Look at those waists! There would be no room to putanything?"

"Nature, in fashioning woman, has not yet crept up to the artistic ideal. The young man studies the picture on the postcard; on the colouredalmanack given away at Christmas by the local grocer; on theadvertisement of Jones' soap, and thinks with discontent of PollyPerkins, who in a natural way is as pretty a girl as can be looked for inthis imperfect world. Thus it is that woman has had to take to shorthandand typewriting. Modern woman is being ruined by the artist. 

How Women are ruined by Art. 

Mr. Anstey tells a story of a young barber who fell in love with his ownwax model. All day he dreamed of the impossible. She--the young lady ofwax-like complexion, with her everlasting expression of dignity combinedwith amiability. No girl of his acquaintance could compete with her. IfI remember rightly he died a bachelor, still dreaming of wax-likeperfection. Perhaps it is as well we men are not handicapped to the sameextent. If every hoarding, if every picture shop window, if everyillustrated journal teemed with illustrations of the ideal young man inperfect fitting trousers that never bagged at the knees! Maybe it wouldresult in our cooking our own breakfasts and making our own beds to theend of our lives. 

The novelist and playwright, as it is, have made things difficult enoughfor us. In books and plays the young man makes love with a flow oflanguage, a wealth of imagery, that must have taken him years to acquire. What does the novel-reading girl think, I wonder, when the real young manproposes to her! He has not called her anything in particular. Possiblyhe has got as far as suggesting she is a duck or a daisy, or hintingshyly that she is his bee or his honeysuckle: in his excitement he is notquite sure which. In the novel she has been reading the hero has likenedthe heroine to half the vegetable kingdom. Elementary astronomy has beenexhausted in his attempt to describe to her the impression her appearanceleaves on him. Bond Street has been sacked in his endeavour to get itclearly home to her what different parts of her are like--her eyes, herteeth, her heart, her hair, her ears. Delicacy alone prevents hisextending the catalogue. A Fiji Island lover might possibly go further. We have not yet had the Fiji Island novel. By the time he is throughwith it she must have a somewhat confused notion of herself--a vagueconviction that she is a sort of condensed South Kensington Museum. 

Difficulty of living up to the Poster. 

Poor Angelina must feel dissatisfied with the Edwin of real life. I amnot sure that art and fiction have not made life more difficult for usthan even it was intended to be. The view from the mountain top is lessextensive than represented by the picture postcard. The play, I fear me, does not always come up to the poster. Polly Perkins is pretty enough asgirls go; but oh for the young lady of the grocer's almanack! Poor dearJohn is very nice and loves us--so he tells us, in his stupid, haltingway; but how can we respond when we remember how the man loved in theplay! The "artist has fashioned his dream of delight, " and the workadayworld by comparison seems tame to us. 

CHAPTER VIII

The Lady and the Problem. 

She is a good woman, the Heroine of the Problem Play, but accidents willhappen, and other people were to blame. 

Perhaps that is really the Problem: who was responsible for the heroine'spast? Was it her father? She does not say so--not in so many words. That is not her way. It is not for her, the silently-suffering victim ofcomplicated antecedent incidents, to purchase justice for herself bypointing the finger of accusation against him who, whatever his faultsmay be, was once, at all events, her father. That one fact in his favourshe can never forget. Indeed she would not if she could. That oneasset, for whatever it may be worth by the time the Day of Judgmentarrives, he shall retain. It shall not be taken from him. "After all hewas my father. " She admits it, with the accent on the "was. " That he isso no longer, he has only himself to blame. His subsequent behaviour hasapparently rendered it necessary for her to sever the relationship. 

"I love you, " she has probably said to him, paraphrasing Othello's speechto Cassio; "it is my duty, and--as by this time you must be aware--it ismy keen if occasionally somewhat involved, sense of duty that is thecause of almost all our troubles in this play. You will always remainthe object of what I cannot help feeling is misplaced affection on mypart, mingled with contempt. But never more be relative of mine. "

Certain it is that but for her father she would never have had a past. Failing anyone else on whom to lay the blame for whatever the lady mayhave done, we can generally fall back upon the father. He becomes oursheet-anchor, so to speak. There are plays in which at first sight itwould almost appear there was nobody to blame--nobody, except the heroineherself. It all seems to happen just because she is no better than sheought to be: clearly, the father's fault! for ever having had a daughterno better than she ought to be. As the Heroine of a certain Problem Playonce put it neatly and succinctly to the old man himself: "It is youparents that make us children what we are. " She had him there. He hadnot a word to answer for himself, but went off centre, leaving his hatbehind him. 

Sometimes, however, the father is merely a "Scientist"--which inStageland is another term for helpless imbecile. In Stageland, if agentleman has not got to have much brain and you do not know what else tomake of him, you let him be a scientist--and then, of course, he is onlyto blame in a minor degree. If he had not been a scientist--thinkingmore of his silly old stars or beetles than of his intricate daughter, hemight have done something. The heroine does not say precisely what:perhaps have taken her up stairs now and again, while she was still youngand susceptible of improvement, and have spanked some sense into her. 

The Stage Hero who, for once, had Justice done to him. 

I remember witnessing long ago, in a country barn, a highly moral play. It was a Problem Play, now I come to think of it. At least, that is, itwould have been a Problem Play but that the party with the past happenedin this case to be merely a male thing. Stage life presents no problemsto the man. The hero of the Problem Play has not got to wonder what todo; he has got to wonder only what the heroine will do next. The hero--hewas not exactly the hero; he would have been the hero had he not beenhanged in the last act. But for that he was rather a nice young man, full of sentiment and not ashamed of it. From the scaffold he pleadedfor leave to embrace his mother just once more before he died. It was apretty idea. The hangman himself was touched. The necessary leave wasgranted him. He descended the steps and flung his arms round the sobbingold lady, and--bit off her nose. After that he told her why he hadbitten off her nose. It appeared that when he was a boy, he had returnedhome one evening with a rabbit in his pocket. Instead of putting himacross her knee, and working into him the eighth commandment, she hadsaid nothing; but that it seemed to be a fairly useful sort of rabbit, and had sent him out into the garden to pick onions. If she had done herduty by him then, he would not have been now in his present mostunsatisfactory position, and she would still have had her nose. Thefathers and mothers in the audience applauded, but the children, scentingaddition to precedent, looked glum. 

Maybe it is something of this kind the heroine is hinting at. Perhapsthe Problem has nothing to do with the heroine herself, but with theheroine's parents: what is the best way of bringing up a daughter whoshows the slightest sign of developing a tendency towards a Past? Can itbe done by kindness? And, if not, how much?

Occasionally the parents attempt to solve the Problem, so far as they areconcerned, by dying young--shortly after the heroine's birth. No doubtthey argue to themselves this is their only chance of avoiding futureblame. But they do not get out of it so easily. 

"Ah, if I had only had a mother--or even a father!" cries the heroine:one feels how mean it was of them to slip away as they did. 

The fact remains, however, that they are dead. One despises them fordying, but beyond that it is difficult to hold them personallyresponsible for the heroine's subsequent misdeeds. The argument takes toitself new shape. Is it Fate that is to blame? The lady herself wouldseem to favour this suggestion. It has always been her fate, sheexplains, to bring suffering and misery upon those she loves. At first, according to her own account, she rebelled against this cruelFate--possibly instigated thereto by the people unfortunate enough to beloved by her. But of late she has come to accept this strange destiny ofhers with touching resignation. It grieves her, when she thinks of it, that she is unable to imbue those she loves with her own patient spirit. They seem to be a fretful little band. 

Considered as a scapegoat, Fate, as compared with the father, has thisadvantage: it is always about: it cannot slip away and die before thereal trouble begins: it cannot even plead a scientific head; it is thereall the time. With care one can blame it for most everything. Thevexing thing about it is, that it does not mind being blamed. One cannotmake Fate feel small and mean. It affords no relief to our harrowedfeelings to cry out indignantly to Fate: "look here, what you have done. Look at this sweet and well-proportioned lady, compelled to travel first-class, accompanied by an amount of luggage that must be a perpetualnightmare to her maid, from one fashionable European resort to another;forced to exist on a well-secured income of, apparently, five thousand ayear, most of which has to go in clothes; beloved by only the best peoplein the play; talked about by everybody incessantly to the exclusion ofeverybody else--all the neighbours interested in her and in nobody elsemuch; all the women envying her; all the men tumbling over one anotherafter her--looks, in spite of all her worries, not a day older thantwenty-three; and has discovered a dressmaker never yet known to havebeen an hour behind her promise! And all your fault, yours, Fate. Willnothing move you to shame?"

She has a way of mislaying her Husband. 

It brings no satisfaction with it, speaking out one's mind to Fate. Wewant to see him before us, the thing of flesh and blood that has broughtall this upon her. Was it that early husband--or rather the gentlemanshe thought was her husband. As a matter of fact, he was a husband. Onlyhe did not happen to be hers. That naturally confused her. "Then who ismy husband?" she seems to have said to herself; "I had a husband: Iremember it distinctly. "

"Difficult to know them apart from one another, " says the lady with thepast, "the way they dress them all alike nowadays. I suppose it does notreally matter. They are much the same as one another when you get themhome. Doesn't do to be too fussy. "

She is a careless woman. She is always mislaying that early husband. Andshe has an unfortunate knack of finding him at the wrong moment. Perhapsthat is the Problem: What is a lady to do with a husband for whom she hasno further use? If she gives him away he is sure to come back, like theclever dog that is sent in a hamper to the other end of the kingdom, andthree days afterwards is found gasping on the doorstep. If she leaveshim in the middle of South Africa, with most of the heavy baggage and allthe debts, she may reckon it a certainty that on her return from her nexthoneymoon he will be the first to greet her. 

Her surprise at meeting him again is a little unreasonable. She seems tobe under the impression that because she has forgotten him, he is for allpractical purposes dead. 

"Why I forgot all about him, " she seems to be arguing to herself, "sevenyears ago at least. According to the laws of Nature there ought to benothing left of him but just his bones. "

She is indignant at finding he is still alive, and lets him know it--tellshim he is a beast for turning up at his sister's party, and pleads to himfor one last favour: that he will go away where neither she nor anybodyelse of any importance will ever see him or hear of him again. That'sall she asks of him. If he make a point of it she will--though hercostume is ill adapted to the exercise--go down upon her knees to ask itof him. 

He brutally retorts that he doesn't know where to "get. " The ladytravels round a good deal and seems to be in most places. She acceptsweek-end invitations to the houses of his nearest relatives. She hasmarried his first cousin, and is now getting up a bazaar with the help ofhis present wife. How he is to avoid her he does not quite see. 

Perhaps, by the by, that is really the Problem: where is the earlyhusband to disappear to? Even if every time he saw her coming he were toduck under the table, somebody would be sure to notice it and makeremarks. Ought he to take himself out one dark night, tie a brick roundhis neck, and throw himself into a pond?

What is a Lady to do with a Husband when she has finished with him?

But men are so selfish. The idea does not even occur to him; and thelady herself is too generous to do more than just hint at it. 

Maybe it is Society that is to blame. There comes a luminous moment whenit is suddenly revealed to the Heroine of the Problem Play that it isSociety that is at the bottom of this thing. She has felt all alongthere was something the matter. Why has she never thought of it before?Here all these years has she been going about blaming her poor oldfather; her mother for dying too soon; the remarkable circumstancesattending her girlhood; that dear old stupid husband she thought washers; and all the while the really culpable party has been existingunsuspected under her very nose. She clears away the furniture a bit, and tells Society exactly what she thinks of it--she is always good atthat, telling people what she thinks of them. Other people's failings donot escape her, not for long. If Society would only step out for amoment, and look at itself with her eyes, something might be done. IfSociety, now that the thing has been pointed out to it, has still anylingering desire to live, let it look at her. This, that she is, Societyhas made her! Let Society have a walk round her, and then go home andreflect. 

Could she--herself--have been to blame?

It lifts a load from us, fixing the blame on Society. There were periodsin the play when we hardly knew what to think. The scientific father, the dead mother, the early husband! it was difficult to grasp the factthat they alone were to blame. One felt there was something to be saidfor even them. Ugly thoughts would cross our mind that perhaps theHeroine herself was not altogether irreproachable--that possibly therewould have been less Problem, if, thinking a little less about herclothes, yearning a little less to do nothing all day long and beperfectly happy, she had pulled herself together, told herself that theworld was not built exclusively for her, and settled down to theexistence of an ordinary decent woman. 

Looking at the thing all round, that is perhaps the best solution of theProblem: it is Society that is to blame. We had better keep to that. 

CHAPTER IX

Civilization and the Unemployed. 

Where Civilization fails is in not providing men and women withsufficient work. In the Stone Age man was, one imagines, kept busy. Whenhe was not looking for his dinner, or eating his dinner, or sleeping offthe effects of his dinner, he was hard at work with a club, clearing theneighbourhood of what one doubts not he would have described as aliens. The healthy Palaeolithic man would have had a contempt for Cobdenrivalling that of Mr. Chamberlain himself. He did not take the incursionof the foreigner "lying down. " One pictures him in the mind's eye:unscientific, perhaps, but active to a degree difficult to conceive inthese degenerate days. Now up a tree hurling cocoa-nuts, the next momenton the ground flinging roots and rocks. Both having tolerably hardheads, the argument would of necessity be long and heated. Phrases thathave since come to be meaningless had, in those days, a realsignificance. 

When a Palaeolithic politician claimed to have "crushed his critic, " hemeant that he had succeeded in dropping a tree or a ton of earth uponhim. When it was said that one bright and intelligent member of thatearly sociology had "annihilated his opponent, " that opponent's friendsand relations took no further interest in him. It meant that he wasactually annihilated. Bits of him might be found, but the most of himwould be hopelessly scattered. When the adherents of any particular CaveDweller remarked that their man was wiping the floor with his rival, itdid not mean that he was talking himself red in the face to a boredaudience of sixteen friends and a reporter. It meant that he wasdragging that rival by the legs round the enclosure and making the placedamp and untidy with him. 

Early instances of "Dumping. "

Maybe the Cave Dweller, finding nuts in his own neighbourhood growingscarce, would emigrate himself: for even in that age the politician wasnot always logical. Thus _roles_ became reversed. The defender of hiscountry became the alien, dumping himself where he was not wanted. Thecharm of those early political arguments lay in their simplicity. Achild could have followed every point. There could never have been amoment's doubt, even among his own followers, as to what a Palaeolithicstatesman really meant to convey. At the close of the contest the partywho considered it had won the moral victory would be cleared away, orburied neatly on the spot, according to taste: and the discussion, untilthe arrival of the next generation, was voted closed. 

All this must have been harassing, but it did serve to pass away thetime. Civilization has brought into being a section of the communitywith little else to do but to amuse itself. For youth to play isnatural; the young barbarian plays, the kitten plays, the colt gambols, the lamb skips. But man is the only animal that gambols and jumps andskips after it has reached maturity. Were we to meet an elderly beardedgoat, springing about in the air and behaving, generally speaking, like akid, we should say it had gone mad. Yet we throng in our thousands towatch elderly ladies and gentlemen jumping about after a ball, twistingthemselves into strange shapes, rushing, racing, falling over oneanother; and present them with silver-backed hair-brushes andgold-handled umbrellas as a reward to them for doing so. 

Imagine some scientific inhabitant of one of the larger fixed starsexamining us through a magnifying-glass as we examine ants. Ouramusements would puzzle him. The ball of all sorts and sizes, from themarble to the pushball, would lead to endless scientific argument. 

"What is it? Why are these men and women always knocking it about, seizing it wherever and whenever they find it and worrying it?"

The observer from that fixed star would argue that the Ball must be somemalignant creature of fiendish power, the great enemy of the human race. Watching our cricket-fields, our tennis-courts, our golf links, he wouldconclude that a certain section of mankind had been told off to do battlewith the "Ball" on behalf of mankind in general. 

"As a rule, " so he would report, "it is a superior class of insect towhich this special duty has been assigned. They are a friskier, gaudierspecies than their fellows. 

Cricket, as viewed from the fixed Stars. 

"For this one purpose they appear to be kept and fed. They do no otherwork, so far as I have been able to ascertain. Carefully selected andtrained, their mission is to go about the world looking for Balls. Whenever they find a Ball they set to work to kill it. But the vitalityof these Balls is extraordinary. There is a medium-sized, reddishspecies that, on an average, takes three days to kill. When one of theseis discovered, specially trained champions are summoned from every cornerof the country. They arrive in hot haste, eager for the battle, whichtakes place in the presence of the entire neighbourhood. The number ofchampions for some reason or another is limited to twenty-two. Each oneseizing in turn a large piece of wood, rushes at the Ball as it fliesalong the ground, or through the air, and strikes at it with all hisforce. When, exhausted, he can strike no longer, he throws down hisweapon and retires into a tent, where he is restored to strength bycopious draughts of a drug the nature of which I have been unable todiscover. Meanwhile, another has picked up the fallen weapon, and thecontest is continued without a moment's interruption. The Ball makesfrantic efforts to escape from its tormentors, but every time it iscaptured and flung back. So far as can be observed, it makes no attemptat retaliation, its only object being to get away; though, occasionally--whether by design or accident--it succeeds in inflictinginjury upon one or other of its executioners, or more often upon one ofthe spectators, striking him either on the head or about the region ofthe waist, which, judging by results, would appear, from the Ball's pointof view, to be the better selection. These small reddish Balls arequickened into life evidently by the heat of the sun; in the cold seasonthey disappear, and their place is taken by a much larger Ball. ThisBall the champions kill by striking it with their feet and with theirheads. But sometimes they will attempt to suffocate it by falling on it, some dozen of them at a time. 

"Another of these seemingly harmless enemies of the human race is a smallwhite Ball of great cunning and resource. It frequents sandy districtsby the sea coast and open spaces near the large towns. It is pursuedwith extraordinary animosity by a florid-faced insect of fierce aspectand rotundity of figure. The weapon he employs is a long stick loadedwith metal. With one blow he will send the creature through the airsometimes to a distance of nearly a quarter of a mile; yet so vigorous isthe constitution of these Balls that it will fall to earth apparently butlittle damaged. It is followed by the rotund man accompanied by asmaller insect carrying spare clubs. Though hampered by the prominentwhiteness of its skin, the extreme smallness of this Ball often enablesit to defy re-discovery, and at such times the fury of the little roundman is terrible to contemplate. He dances round the spot where the ballhas disappeared, making frenzied passes at the surrounding vegetationwith his club, uttering the while the most savage and bloodcurdlinggrowls. Occasionally striking at the small creature in fury, he willmiss it altogether, and, having struck merely the air, will sit downheavily upon the ground, or, striking the solid earth, will shatter hisown club. Then a curious thing takes place: all the other insectsstanding round place their right hand before their mouth, and, turningaway their faces, shake their bodies to and fro, emitting a strangecrackling sound. Whether this is to be regarded as a mere expression oftheir grief that the blow of their comrade should have miscarried, orwhether one may assume it to be a ceremonious appeal to their gods forbetter luck next time, I have not as yet made up my mind. The striker, meanwhile, raises both arms, the hands tightly clenched, towards theheavens, and utters what is probably a prayer, prepared expressly for theoccasion. "

The Heir of all Ages. His Inheritance. 

In similar manner he, the Celestial Observer, proceeds to describe ourbilliard matches, our tennis tournaments, our croquet parties. Maybe itnever occurs to him that a large section of our race surrounded byEternity, would devote its entire span of life to sheer killing of time. A middle-aged friend of mine, a cultured gentleman, a M. A. Of Cambridge, assured me the other day that, notwithstanding all his experiences oflife, the thing that still gave him the greatest satisfaction was theaccomplishment of a successful drive to leg. Rather a quaint commentaryon our civilization, is it not? "The singers have sung, and the buildershave builded. The artists have fashioned their dreams of delight. " Themartyrs for thought and freedom have died their death; knowledge hassprung from the bones of ignorance; civilization for ten thousand yearshas battled with brutality to this result--that a specimen gentleman ofthe Twentieth Century, the heir of all the ages, finds his greatest joyin life the striking of a ball with a chunk of wood!

Human energy, human suffering, has been wasted. Such crown of happinessfor a man might surely have been obtained earlier and at less cost. Wasit intended? Are we on the right track? The child's play is wiser. Thebattered doll is a princess. Within the sand castle dwells an ogre. Itis with imagination that he plays. His games have some relation to life. It is the man only who is content with this everlasting knocking about ofa ball. The majority of mankind is doomed to labour so constant, soexhausting, that no opportunity is given it to cultivate its brain. Civilization has arranged that a small privileged minority shall aloneenjoy that leisure necessary to the development of thought. And what isthe answer of this leisured class? It is:

"We will do nothing for the world that feeds us, clothes us, keeps us inluxury. We will spend our whole existence knocking balls about, watchingother people knocking balls about, arguing with one another as to thebest means of knocking balls about. "

Is it "Playing the Game?"

Is it--to use their own jargon--"playing the game?"

And the queer thing is this over-worked world, that stints itself to keepthem in idleness, approves of the answer. "The flannelled fool, " "Themuddied oaf, " is the pet of the people; their hero, their ideal. 

But maybe all this is mere jealousy. Myself, I have never been clever atknocking balls about. 

CHAPTER X

Patience and the Waiter. 

The slowest waiter I know is the British railway refreshment-room waiter. 

His very breathing--regular, harmonious, penetrating, instinct as it iswith all the better attributes of a well-preserved grandfather'sclock--conveys suggestion of dignity and peace. He is a huge, impressiveperson. There emanates from him an atmosphere of Lotusland. Theotherwise unattractive refreshment-room becomes an oasis of repose amidthe turmoil of a fretful world. All things conspire to aid him: theancient joints, ranged side by side like corpses in a morgue, each onedecently hidden under its white muslin shroud, whispering of death anddecay; the dish of dead flies, thoughtfully placed in the centre of thetable; the framed advertisements extolling the virtues of heavy beers andstouts, of weird champagnes, emanating from haunted-looking chateaux, situate--if one may judge from the illustration--in the midst of desertlands; the sleep-inviting buzz of the bluebottles. 

The spirit of the place steals over you. On entering, with a quarter ofan hour to spare, your idea was a cutlet and a glass of claret. In theface of the refreshment-room waiter, the notion appears frivolous, not tosay un-English. You order cold beef and pickles, with a pint of bitterin a tankard. To win the British waiter's approval, you must alwaysorder beer in a tankard. The British waiter, in his ideals, is mediaeval. There is a Shakespearean touch about a tankard. A soapy potato will, ofcourse, be added. Afterwards a ton of cheese and a basin of rabbit'sfood floating in water (the British salad) will be placed before you. Youwill work steadily through the whole, anticipating the somnolence thatwill subsequently fall upon you with a certain amount of satisfaction. Itwill serve to dispel the last lingering regret at the reflection that youwill miss your appointment, and suffer thereby serious inconvenience ifnot positive loss. These things are of the world--the noisy, tiresomeworld you have left without. 

To the English traveller, the foreign waiter in the earlier stages of hiscareer is a burden and a trial. When he is complete--when he really cantalk English I rejoice in him. When I object to him is when his Englishis worse than my French or German, and when he will, for his owneducational purposes, insist, nevertheless, that the conversation shallbe entirely in English. I would he came to me some other time. I wouldso much rather make it after dinner or, say, the next morning. I hategiving lessons during meal times. 

Besides, to a man with feeble digestion, this sort of thing can lead totrouble. One waiter I met at an hotel in Dijon knew very littleEnglish--about as much as a poll parrot. The moment I entered the _salle-a-manger_ he started to his feet. 

"Ah! You English!" he cried. 

"Well, what about us?" I answered. It was during the period of the BoerWar. I took it he was about to denounce the English nation generally. Iwas looking for something to throw at him. 

"You English--you Englishman, yes, " he repeated. 

And then I understood he had merely intended a question. I owned up thatI was, and accused him in turn of being a Frenchman. He admitted it. Introductions, as it were, thus over, I thought I would order dinner. Iordered it in French. I am not bragging of my French, I never wanted tolearn French. Even as a boy, it was more the idea of others than ofmyself. I learnt as little as possible. But I have learnt enough tolive in places where they can't, or won't, speak anything else. Left tomyself, I could have enjoyed a very satisfactory dinner. I was tiredwith a long day's journey, and hungry. They cook well at this hotel. Ihad been looking forward to my dinner for hours and hours. I had satdown in my imagination to a _consomme bisque_, _sole au gratin_, a_poulet saute_, and an _omelette au fromage_. 

Waiterkind in the making. 

It is wrong to let one's mind dwell upon carnal delights; I see that now. At the time I was mad about it. The fool would not even listen to me. Hehad got it into his garlic-sodden brain that all Englishmen live on beef, and nothing but beef. He swept aside all my suggestions as though theyhad been the prattlings of a foolish child. 

"You haf nice biftek. Not at all done. Yes?"

"No, I don't, " I answered. "I don't want what the cook of a Frenchprovincial hotel calls a biftek. I want something to eat. I want--"Apparently, he understood neither English nor French. 

"Yes, yes, " he interrupted cheerfully, "with pottitoes. "

"With what?" I asked. I thought for the moment he was suggesting pottedpigs' feet in the nearest English he could get to it. 

"Pottito, " he repeated; "boil pottito. Yes? And pell hell. "

I felt like telling him to go there; I suppose he meant "pale ale. " Ittook me about five minutes to get that beefsteak out of his head. By thetime I had done it, I did not care what I had for dinner. I took _pot-du-jour_ and veal. He added, on his own initiative, a thing that lookedlike a poultice. I did not try the taste of it. He explained it was"plum poodeen. " I fancy he had made it himself. 

This fellow is typical; you meet him everywhere abroad. He translatesyour bill into English for you, calls ten centimes a penny, calculatestwelve francs to the pound, and presses a handful of sous affectionatelyupon you as change for a napoleon. 

The cheating waiter is common to all countries, though in Italy andBelgium he flourishes, perhaps, more than elsewhere. But the Britishwaiter, when detected, becomes surly--does not take it nicely. Theforeign waiter is amiable about it--bears no malice. He is grieved, maybe, at your language, but that is because he is thinking of you--thepossible effect of it upon your future. To try and stop you, he offersyou another four sous. The story is told of a Frenchman who, not knowingthe legal fare, adopted the plan of doling out pennies to a London cabmanone at a time, continuing until the man looked satisfied. Myself, Idoubt the story. From what I know of the London cabman, I can see himleaning down still, with out-stretched hand, the horse between the shaftslong since dead, the cab chockfull of coppers, and yet no expression ofsatiety upon his face. 

But the story would appear to have crossed the Channel, and to havecommended itself to the foreign waiter--especially to the railwayrefreshment-room waiter. He doles out sous to the traveller, one at atime, with the air of a man who is giving away the savings of a lifetime. If, after five minutes or so, you still appear discontented he goes awayquite suddenly. You think he has gone to open another chest ofhalf-pence, but when a quarter of an hour has passed and he does notreappear, you inquire about him amongst the other waiters. 

A gloom at once falls upon them. You have spoken of the very thing thathas been troubling them. He used to be a waiter here once--one mightalmost say until quite recently. As to what has become of him--ah! thereyou have them. If in the course of their chequered career they ever comeacross him, they will mention to him that you are waiting for him. Meanwhile a stentorian-voiced official is shouting that your train is onthe point of leaving. You console yourself with the reflection that itmight have been more. It always might have been more; sometimes it is. 

His Little Mistakes. 

A waiter at the Gare du Nord, in Brussels, on one occasion pressed uponme a five-franc piece, a small Turkish coin the value of which wasunknown to me, and remains so to this day, a distinctly bad two francs, and from a quarter of a pound to six ounces of centimes, as change for atwenty-franc note, after deducting the price of a cup of coffee. He putit down with the air of one subscribing to a charity. We looked at oneanother. I suppose I must have conveyed to him the impression of beingdiscontented. He drew a purse from his pocket. The action suggestedthat, for the purpose of satisfying my inordinate demands, he would becompelled to draw upon his private resources; but it did not move me. Abstracting reluctantly a fifty-centime piece, he added it to the heapupon the table. 

I suggested his taking a seat, as at this rate it seemed likely we shouldbe doing business together for some time. I think he gathered I was nota fool. Hitherto he had been judging, I suppose, purely fromappearances. But he was not in the least offended. 

"Ah!" he cried, with a cheery laugh, "Monsieur comprend!" He swept thewhole nonsense back into his bag and gave me the right change. I slippedmy arm through his and insisted upon the pleasure of his society, until Ihad examined each and every coin. He went away chuckling, and toldanother waiter all about it. They both of them bowed to me as I wentout, and wished me a pleasant journey. I left them still chuckling. ABritish waiter would have been sulky all the afternoon. 

The waiter who insists upon mistaking you for the heir of all theRothschilds used to cost me dear when I was younger. I find the bestplan is to take him in hand at the beginning and disillusion him; sweepaside his talk of '84 Perrier Jouet, followed by a '79 Chateau Lafite, and ask him, as man to man, if he can conscientiously recommend the SaintJulien at two-and-six. After that he settles down to his work and talkssense. 

The fatherly waiter is sometimes a comfort. You feel that he knows best. Your instinct is to address him as "Uncle. " But you remember yourself intime. When you are dining a lady, however, and wish to appear important, he is apt to be in the way. It seems, somehow, to be his dinner. Youhave a sense almost of being _de trop_. 

The greatest insult you can offer a waiter is to mistake him for yourwaiter. You think he is your waiter--there is the bald head, the blackside-whiskers, the Roman nose. But your waiter had blue eyes, this mansoft hazel. You had forgotten to notice the eyes. You bar his progressand ask him for the red pepper. The haughty contempt with which heregards you is painful to bear. It is as if you had insulted a lady. Heappears to be saying the same thing:

"I think you have made a mistake. You are possibly confusing me withsomebody else; I have not the honour of your acquaintance. "

How to insult him. 

I do not wish it to be understood that I am in the habit of insultingladies, but occasionally I have made an innocent mistake, and have metwith some such response. The wrong waiter conveys to me precisely thesame feeling of humiliation. 

"I will send your waiter to you, " he answers. His tone implies thatthere are waiters and waiters; some may not mind what class of personthey serve: others, though poor, have their self-respect. It is clear toyou now why your waiter is keeping away from you; the man is ashamed ofbeing your waiter. He is watching, probably, for an opportunity toapproach you when nobody is looking. The other waiter finds him for you. He was hiding behind a screen. 

"Table forty-two wants you, " the other tells him. The tone of voiceadds:

"If you like to encourage this class of customer that is your business;but don't ask me to have anything to do with him. "

Even the waiter has his feelings. 

CHAPTER XI

The everlasting Newness of Woman. 

An Oriental visitor was returning from our shores to his native land. 

"Well, " asked the youthful diplomatist who had been told off to show himround, as on the deck of the steamer they shook hands, "what do you nowthink of England?"

"Too much woman, " answered the grave Orientalist, and descended to hiscabin. 

The young diplomatist returned to the shore thoughtful, and later in theday a few of us discussed the matter in a far-off, dimly-lighted cornerof the club smoking-room. 

Has the pendulum swung too far the other way? Could there be truth inour Oriental friend's terse commentary? The eternal feminine! TheWestern world has been handed over to her. The stranger from Mars orJupiter would describe us as a hive of women, the sober-clad male beingretained apparently on condition of its doing all the hard work andmaking itself generally useful. Formerly it was the man who wore thefine clothes who went to the shows. To-day it is the woman gorgeouslyclad for whom the shows are organized. The man dressed in a serviceableand unostentatious, not to say depressing, suit of black accompanies herfor the purpose of carrying her cloak and calling her carriage. Amongthe working classes life, of necessity, remains primitive; the law of thecave is still, with slight modification, the law of the slum. But inupper and middle-class circles the man is now the woman's servant. 

I remember being present while a mother of my acquaintance was instillinginto the mind of her little son the advantages of being born a man. Alittle girl cousin was about to spend a week with him. It was impressedupon him that if she showed a liking for any of his toys, he was at onceto give them up to her. 

"But why, mamma?" he demanded, evidently surprised. 

"Because, my dear, you are a little man. "

Should she break them, he was not to smack her head or kick her--as hisinstinct might prompt him to do. He was just to say:

"Oh, it is of no consequence at all, " and to look as if he meant it. 

Doctor says she is not to be bothered. 

She was always to choose the game--to have the biggest apple. There wasmuch more of a similar nature. It was all because he was a little manand she was a little woman. At the end he looked up, puzzled:

"But don't she do anything, 'cos she's a little girl?"

It was explained to him that she didn't. By right of being born a littlegirl she was exempt from all duty. 

Woman nowadays is not taking any duty. She objects to housekeeping; shecalls it domestic slavery, and feels she was intended for higher things. What higher things she does not condescend to explain. One or two wivesof my acquaintance have persuaded their husbands that these higher thingsare all-important. The home has been given up. In company with otherstrivers after higher things, they live now in dismal barracks differingbut little from a glorified Bloomsbury lodging-house. But they call them"Mansions" or "Courts, " and seem proud of the address. They are notbothered with servants--with housekeeping. The idea of the modern womanis that she is not to be bothered with anything. I remember the wordswith which one of these ladies announced her departure from her botheringhome. 

"Oh, well, I'm tired of trouble, " she confided to another lady, "so I'vemade up my mind not to have any more of it. "

Artemus Ward tells us of a man who had been in prison for twenty years. Suddenly a bright idea occurred to him; he opened the window and got out. Here have we poor, foolish mortals been imprisoned in this troublesomeworld for Lord knows how many millions of years. We have got so used totrouble we thought there was no help for it. We have told ourselves that"Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards. " We imagined the onlything to be done was to bear it philosophically. Why did not this brightyoung creature come along before--show us the way out. All we had to dowas to give up the bothering home and the bothering servants, and go intoa "Mansion" or a "Court. "

It seems that you leave trouble outside--in charge of the hall-porter, one supposes. He ties it up for you as the Commissionaire of the Armyand Navy Stores ties up your dog. If you want it again, you ask for itas you come out. Small wonder that the "Court" and "Mansion" are growingin popularity every day. 

That "Higher Life. "

They have nothing to do now all day long, these soaring wives of whom Iam speaking. They would scorn to sew on a shirt-button even. Are therenot other women--of an inferior breed--specially fashioned by Providencefor the doing of such slavish tasks? They have no more bothers of anykind. They are free to lead the higher life. What I am waiting for is aglimpse of the higher life. One of them, it is true, has taken up theviolin. Another of them is devoting her emancipation to poker work. Athird is learning skirt-dancing. Are these the "higher things" for whichwomen are claiming freedom from all duty? And, if so, is there notdanger that the closing of our homes may lead to the crowding up of theworld with too much higher things?

May there not, by the time all bothers have been removed from woman'spath, be too many amateur violinists in the world, too manyskirt-dancers, too much poker work? If not, what are they? these "higherthings, " for which so many women are demanding twenty-four hours a dayleisure. I want to know. 

One lady of my acquaintance is a Poor Law Guardian and secretary to alabour bureau. But then she runs a house with two servants, fourchildren, and a husband, and appears to be so used to bothers that shewould feel herself lost without them. You can do this kind of workapparently even when you are bothered with a home. It is theskirt-dancing and the poker work that cannot brook rivalry. The modernwoman has begun to find children a nuisance; they interfere with herdevelopment. The mere man, who has written his poems, painted hispictures, composed his melodies, fashioned his philosophies, in the midstof life's troubles and bothers, grows nervous thinking what this newwoman must be whose mind is so tremendous that the whole world must beshut up, so to speak, sent to do its business out of her sight andhearing, lest her attention should be distracted. 

An optimistic friend of mine tells me not to worry myself; tells me thatit is going to come out all right in the end. Woman just now, hecontends, is passing through her college period. The school life ofstrict surveillance is for ever done with. She is now the youngFreshwoman. The bothering lessons are over, the bothering schoolmastershe has said good-bye to. She has her latchkey and is "on her own. "There are still some bothering rules about being in at twelve o'clock, and so many attendances each term at chapel. She is indignant. Thisinterferes with her idea that life is to be one long orgie ofself-indulgence, of pleasure. The college period will pass--is passing. Woman will go out into the world, take her place there, discover thatbothers were not left behind in the old schoolhouse, will learn that lifehas duties, responsibilities, will take up her burden side by side withman, will accomplish her destiny. 

Is there anything left for her to learn?

Meanwhile, however, she is having a good time--some people think too gooda time. She wants the best of both. She demands the joys ofindependence together with freedom from all work--slavery she calls it. The servants are not to be allowed to bother her, the children are not tobe allowed to bother her, her husband is not to be allowed to bother her. She is to be free to lead the higher life. My dear lady, we all want tolead the higher life. I don't want to write these articles. I wantsomebody else to bother about my rates and taxes, my children's boots, while I sit in an easy-chair and dream about the wonderful books I amgoing to write, if only a stupid public would let me. Tommy Smith ofBrixton feels that he was intended for higher things. He does not wantto be wasting his time in an office from nine to six adding up figures. His proper place in life is that of Prime Minister or Field Marshal: hefeels it. Do you think the man has no yearning for higher things? Doyou think we like the office, the shop, the factory? We ought to bewriting poetry, painting pictures, the whole world admiring us. You seemto imagine your man goes off every morning to a sort of City picnic, haseight hours' fun--which he calls work--and then comes home to annoy youwith chatter about dinner. 

It is the old fable reversed; man said woman had nothing to do all daybut to enjoy herself. Making a potato pie! What sort of work was that?Making a potato pie was a lark; anybody could make a potato pie. 

So the woman said, "Try it, " and took the man's spade and went out intothe field, and left him at home to make that pie. 

The man discovered that potato pies took a bit more making than he hadreckoned--found that running the house and looking after the children wasnot quite the merry pastime he had argued. Man was a fool. 

Now it is the woman who talks without thinking. How did she like hoeingthe potato patch? Hard work, was it not, my dear lady? Made your backache? It came on to rain and you got wet. 

I don't see that it very much matters which of you hoes the potato patch, which of you makes the potato pie. Maybe the hoeing of the patch demandsmore muscle--is more suited to the man. Maybe the making of the pie maybe more in your department. But, as I have said, I cannot see that thismatter is of importance. The patch has to be hoed, the pie to be cooked;the one cannot do the both. Settle it between you, and, having settledit, agree to do each your own work free from this everlasting nagging. 

I know, personally, three ladies who have exchanged the woman's work forthe man's. One was deserted by her husband, and left with two youngchildren. She hired a capable woman to look after the house, and joineda ladies' orchestra as pianist at two pounds a week. She now earns four, and works twelve hours a day. The husband of the second fell ill. Sheset him to write letters and run errands, which was light work that hecould do, and started a dressmaker's business. The third was left awidow without means. She sent her three children to boarding-school, andopened a tea-room. I don't know how they talked before, but I know thatthey do not talk now as though earning the income was a sort of roundgame. 

When they have tried it the other way round. 

On the Continent they have gone deliberately to work, one would imagine, to reverse matters. Abroad woman is always where man ought to be, andman where most ladies would prefer to meet with women. The ladies _garde-robe_ is superintended by a superannuated sergeant of artillery. When Iwant to curl my moustache, say, I have to make application to a superbgolden-haired creature, who stands by and watches me with an interestedsmile. I would be much happier waited on by the superannuated sergeant, and my wife tells me she could very well spare him. But it is the law ofthe land. I remember the first time I travelled with my daughter on theContinent. In the morning I was awakened by a piercing scream from herroom. I struggled into my pyjamas, and rushed to her assistance. Icould not see her. I could see nothing but a muscular-looking man in ablue blouse with a can of hot water in one hand and a pair of boots inthe other. He appeared to be equally bewildered with myself at the sightof the empty bed. From a cupboard in the corner came a wail of distress:

"Oh, do send that horrid man away. What's he doing in my room?"

I explained to her afterwards that the chambermaid abroad is always anactive and willing young man. The foreign girl fills in her timebricklaying and grooming down the horses. It is a young and charminglady who serves you when you enter the tobacconist's. She doesn'tunderstand tobacco, is unsympathetic; with Mr. Frederic Harrison, regardssmoking as a degrading and unclean habit; cannot see, herself, anydifference between shag and Mayblossom, seeing that they are both thesame price; thinks you fussy. The corset shop is run by a mostpresentable young man in a Vandyck beard. The wife runs the restaurant;the man does the cooking, and yet the woman has not reached freedom frombother. 

A brutal suggestion. 

It sounds brutal, but perhaps woman was not intended to live free fromall bothers. Perhaps even the higher life--the skirt-dancing and thepoker work--has its bothers. Perhaps woman was intended to take hershare of the world's work--of the world's bothers. 

CHAPTER XII

Why I hate Heroes. 

When I was younger, reading the popular novel used to make me sad. Ifind it vexes others also. I was talking to a bright young girl upon thesubject not so very long ago. 

"I just hate the girl in the novel, " she confessed. "She makes me feelreal bad. If I don't think of her I feel pleased with myself, and good;but when I read about her--well, I'm crazy. I would not mind her beingsmart, sometimes. We can all of us say the right thing, now and then. This girl says them straight away, all the time. She don't have to digfor them even; they come crowding out of her. There never happens a timewhen she stands there feeling like a fool and knowing that she looks it. As for her hair: 'pon my word, there are days when I believe it is a wig. I'd like to get behind her and give it just one pull. It curls of itsown accord. She don't seem to have any trouble with it. Look at thismop of mine. I've been working at it for three-quarters of an hour thismorning; and now I would not laugh, not if you were to tell me thefunniest thing, you'd ever heard, for fear it would come down again. Asfor her clothes, they make me tired. She don't possess a frock that doesnot fit her to perfection; she doesn't have to think about them. Youwould imagine she went into the garden and picked them off a tree. Shejust slips it on and comes down, and then--my stars! All the other womenin the room may just as well go to bed and get a good night's rest forall the chance they've got. It isn't that she's beautiful. From whatthey tell you about her, you might fancy her a freak. Looks don't appearto matter to her; she gets there anyhow. I tell you she just makes meboil. "

Allowing for the difference between the masculine and feminine outlook, this is precisely how I used to feel when reading of the hero. He wasnot always good; sometimes he hit the villain harder than he hadintended, and then he was sorry--when it was too late, blamed himselfseverely, and subscribed towards the wreath. Like the rest of us, hemade mistakes; occasionally married the wrong girl. But how well he dideverything!--does still for the matter of that, I believe. Take it thathe condescends to play cricket! He never scores less than a hundred--doesnot know how to score less than a hundred, wonders how it could be done, supposing, for example, you had an appointment and wanted to catch anearly train. I used to play cricket myself, but I could always stop atten or twenty. There have been times when I have stopped at even less. 

It is the same with everything he puts his hand to. Either he does notcare for boating at all, or, as a matter of course, he pulls stroke inthe University Boat-race; and then takes the train on to Henley and winsthe Diamond Sculls so easily that it hardly seems worth while for theother fellow to have started. Were I living in Novel-land, and had Ientered for the Diamond Sculls, I should put it to my opponent before theword was given to us to go. 

"One minute!" I should have called out to him. "Are you the hero of thisnovel, or, like myself, only one of the minor characters? Because, ifyou are the hero you go on; don't you wait for me. I shall just pull asfar as the boathouse and get myself a cup of tea. "

Because it always seems to be his Day. 

There is no sense of happy medium about the hero of the popular novel. Hecannot get astride a horse without its going off and winning asteeplechase against the favourite. The crowd in Novel-land appears tohave no power of observation. It worries itself about the odds, discusses records, reads the nonsense published by the sporting papers. Were I to find myself on a racecourse in Novel-land I should not troubleabout the unessential; I should go up to the bookie who looked as if hehad the most money, and should say to him:

"Don't shout so loud; you are making yourself hoarse. Just listen to me. Who's the hero of this novel? Oh, that's he, is it? The heavy-lookingman on the little brown horse that keeps coughing and is sufferingapparently from bone spavin? Well, what are the odds against his winningby ten lengths? A thousand to one! Very well! Have you got abag?--Good. Here's twenty-seven pounds in gold and eighteen shillings insilver. Coat and waistcoat, say another ten shillings. Shirt andtrousers--it's all right, I've got my pyjamas on underneath--say sevenand six. Boots--we won't quarrel--make it five bob. That's twenty-ninepounds and sixpence, isn't it? In addition here's a mortgage on thefamily estate, which I've had made out in blank, an I O U for fourteenpounds which has been owing to me now for some time, and this bundle ofsecurities which, strictly speaking, belong to my Aunt Jane. You keepthat little lot till after the race, and we will call it in roundfigures, five hundred pounds. "

That single afternoon would thus bring me in five hundred thousandpounds--provided the bookie did not blow his brains out. 

Backers in Novel-land do not seem to me to know their way about. If thehero of the popular novel swims at all, it is not like an ordinary humanbeing that he does it. You never meet him in a swimming-bath; he neverpays ninepence, like the rest of us, for a machine. He goes out atuncanny hours, generally accompanied by a lady friend, with whom thewhile swimming he talks poetry and cracks jokes. Some of us, when we tryto talk in the sea, fill ourselves up with salt water. This chap lies onhis back and carols, and the wild waves, seeing him, go round the otherway. At billiards he can give the average sharper forty in a hundred. Hedoes not really want to play; he does it to teach these bad men a lesson. He has not handled a cue for years. He picked up the game when a youngman in Australia, and it seems to have lingered with him. 

He does not have to get up early and worry dumb-bells in his nightshirt;he just lies on a sofa in an elegant attitude and muscle comes to him. Ifhis horse declines to jump a hedge, he slips down off the animal's backand throws the poor thing over; it saves argument. If he gets cross andputs his shoulder to the massive oaken door, we know there is going to bework next morning for the carpenter. Maybe he is a party belonging tothe Middle Ages. Then when he reluctantly challenges the crack fencer ofEurope to a duel, our instinct is to call out and warn his opponent. 

"You silly fool, " one feels one wants to say; "why, it is the hero of thenovel! You take a friend's advice while you are still alive, and get outof it anyway--anyhow. Apologize--hire a horse and cart, do something. You're not going to fight a duel, you're going to commit suicide. "

If the hero is a modern young man, and has not got a father, or has onlysomething not worth calling a father, then he comes across alibrary--anybody's library does for him. He passes Sir Walter Scott andthe "Arabian Nights, " and makes a bee-line for Plato; it seems to be aninstinct with him. By help of a dictionary he worries it out in theoriginal Greek. This gives him a passion for Greek. 

When he has romped through the Greek classics he plays about among theLatins. He spends most of his spare time in that library, and forgets togo to tea. 

Because he always "gets there, " without any trouble. 

That is the sort of boy he is. How I used to hate him! If he has aproper sort of father, then he goes to college. He does no work: thereis no need for him to work: everything seems to come to him. That wasanother grievance of mine against him. I always had to work a good deal, and very little came of it. He fools around doing things that other menwould be sent down for; but in his case the professors love him for itall the more. He is the sort of man who can't do wrong. A fortnightbefore the examination he ties a wet towel round his head. That is allwe hear about it. It seems to be the towel that does it. Maybe, if thetowel is not quite up to its work, he will help things on by drinkinggallons of strong tea. The tea and the towel combined are irresistible:the result is always the senior wranglership. 

I used to believe in that wet towel and that strong tea. Lord! thethings I used to believe when I was young. They would make anEncyclopaedia of Useless Knowledge. I wonder if the author of thepopular novel has ever tried working with a wet towel round his or herhead: I have. It is difficult enough to move a yard, balancing a drytowel. A heathen Turk may have it in his blood to do so: the ordinaryChristian has not got the trick of it. To carry about a wet toweltwisted round one's head needs a trained acrobat. Every few minutes thewretched thing works loose. In darkness and in misery, you struggle toget your head out of a clammy towel that clings to you almost withpassion. Brain power is wasted in inventing names for that towel--namesexpressive of your feelings with regard to it. Further time is taken upbefore the glass, fixing the thing afresh. 

You return to your books in the wrong temper, the water trickles downyour nose, runs in rivulets down your back. Until you have finally flungthe towel out of the window and rubbed yourself dry, work is impossible. The strong tea always gave me indigestion, and made me sleepy. Until Ihad got over the effects of the tea, attempts at study were useless. 

Because he's so damned clever. 

But the thing that still irritates me most against the hero of thepopular novel is the ease with which he learns a modern foreign language. Were he a German waiter, a Swiss barber, or a Polish photographer, Iwould not envy him; these people do not have to learn a language. Myidea is that they boil down a dictionary, and take two table-spoonsfuleach night before going to bed. By the time the bottle is finished theyhave the language well into their system. But he is not. He is just anordinary Anglo-Saxon, and I don't believe in him. I walk about for yearswith dictionaries in my pocket. Weird-looking ladies and gentlemengesticulate and rave at me for months. I hide myself in lonely places, repeating idioms to myself out loud, in the hope that by this means theywill come readily to me if ever I want them, which I never do. And, after all this, I don't seem to know very much. This irritating ass, whohas never left his native suburb, suddenly makes up his mind to travel onthe Continent. I find him in the next chapter engaged in complicatedpsychological argument with French or German _savants_. It appears--theauthor had forgotten to mention it before--that one summer a French, orGerman, or Italian refugee, as the case may happen to be, came to live inthe hero's street: thus it is that the hero is able to talk fluently inthe native language of that unhappy refugee. 

I remember a melodrama visiting a country town where I was staying. Theheroine and child were sleeping peacefully in the customary attic. Forsome reason not quite clear to me, the villain had set fire to the house. He had been complaining through the three preceding acts of the heroine'scoldness; maybe it was with some idea of warming her. Escape by way ofthe staircase was impossible. Each time the poor girl opened the door aflame came in and nearly burned her hair off. It seemed to have beenwaiting for her. 

"Thank God!" said the lady, hastily wrapping the child in a sheet, "thatI was brought up a wire walker. "

Without a moment's hesitation she opened the attic window and took thenearest telegraph wire to the opposite side of the street. 

In the same way, apparently, the hero of the popular novel, findinghimself stranded in a foreign land, suddenly recollects that once upon atime he met a refugee, and at once begins to talk. I have met refugeesmyself. The only thing they have ever taught me is not to leave mybrandy flask about. 

And, finally, because I don't believe he's true. 

I don't believe in these heroes and heroines that cannot keep quiet in aforeign language they have taught themselves in an old-world library. Myfixed idea is that they muddle along like the rest of us, surprised thatso few people understand them, begging everyone they meet not to talk soquickly. These brilliant conversations with foreign philosophers! Thesepassionate interviews with foreign countesses! They fancy they have hadthem. 

I crossed once with an English lady from Boulogne to Folkestone. AtFolkestone a little French girl--anxious about her train--asked us asimple question. My companion replied to it with an ease that astonishedherself. The little French girl vanished; my companion sighed. 

"It's so odd, " said my companion, "but I seem to know quite a lot ofFrench the moment I get back to England. "

CHAPTER XIII

How to be Healthy and Unhappy. 

"They do say, " remarked Mrs. Wilkins, as she took the cover off the dishand gave a finishing polish to my plate with the cleanest corner of herapron, "that 'addicks, leastways in May, ain't, strictly speaking, thesafest of food. But then, if you listen to all they say, it seems to me, we'd have to give up victuals altogether. "

"The haddock, Mrs. Wilkins, " I replied, "is a savoury and nourishingdish, the 'poor man's steak' I believe it is commonly called. When I wasyounger, Mrs. Wilkins, they were cheaper. For twopence one could securea small specimen, for fourpence one of generous proportions. In thehalcyon days of youth, when one's lexicon contained not the word failure(it has crept into later editions, Mrs. Wilkins, the word it was foundwas occasionally needful), the haddock was of much comfort and support tome, a very present help in time of trouble. In those days a kind friend, without intending it, nearly brought about my death by slow starvation. Ihad left my umbrella in an omnibus, and the season was rainy. The kindrich friend gave me a new umbrella; it was a rich man's umbrella; we madean ill-assorted pair. Its handle was of ivory, imposing in appearance, ornamented with a golden snake. 

The unsympathetic Umbrella. 

"Following my own judgment I should have pawned that umbrella, purchasedone more suited to my state in life, and 'blued' the difference. But Iwas fearful of offending my one respectable acquaintance, and for weeksstruggled on, hampered by this plutocratic appendage. The humble haddockwas denied to me. Tied to this imposing umbrella, how could I hagglewith fishmongers for haddocks. At first sight of me--or, rather, of myumbrella--they flew to icy cellars, brought up for my inspection soles ateighteenpence a pound, recommended me prime parts of salmon, which mylandlady would have fried in a pan reeking with the mixed remains of porkchops, rashers of bacon and cheese. It was closed to me, the humblecoffee shop, where for threepence I could have strengthened my soul withhalf a pint of cocoa and four "doorsteps"--satisfactory slices of breadsmeared with a yellow grease that before the days of County Councilinspectors they called butter. You know of them, Mrs. Wilkins? At sightof such nowadays I should turn up my jaded nose. But those were the daysof my youth, Mrs. Wilkins. The scent of a thousand hopes was in mynostrils: so they smelt good to me. The fourpenny beefsteak pie, satisfying to the verge of repletion; the succulent saveloy, were not forthe owner of the ivory-handled umbrella. On Mondays and Tuesdays, perhaps, I could enjoy life at the rate of five hundred a year--cleanserviette a penny extra, and twopence to the waiter, whose income musthave been at least four times my own. But from Wednesday to Saturday Ihad to wander in the wilderness of back streets and silent squaresdinnerless, where there were not even to be found locusts and wild honey. 

"It was, as I have said, a rainy season, and an umbrella of some sort wasa necessity. Fortunately--or I might not be sitting here, Mrs. Wilkins, talking to you now--my one respectable acquaintance was called away toforeign lands, and that umbrella I promptly put 'up the spout. ' Youunderstand me?"

Mrs. Wilkins admitted she did, but was of opinion that twenty-five percent. , to say nothing of the halfpenny for the ticket every time, was awicked imposition. 

"It did not trouble me, Mrs. Wilkins, " I replied, "in this particularinstance. It was my determination never to see that umbrella again. Theyoung man behind the counter seemed suspicious, and asked where I got itfrom. I told him that a friend had given it to me. "

"'Did he know that he had given it to you?" demanded the young man. 

"Upon which I gave him a piece of my mind concerning the character ofthose who think evil of others, and he gave me five and six, and said heshould know me again; and I purchased an umbrella suited to my rank andstation, and as fine a haddock as I have ever tasted with the balance, which was sevenpence, for I was feeling hungry. 

"The haddock is an excellent fish, Mrs. Wilkins, " I said, "and if, as youobserve, we listened to all that was said we'd be hungrier at forty, witha balance to our credit at the bank, than ever we were at twenty, with'no effects' beyond a sound digestion. "

A Martyr to Health. 

"There was a gent in Middle Temple Lane, " said Mrs. Wilkins, "as I usedto do for. It's my belief as 'e killed 'imself worrying twenty-fourhours a day over what 'e called 'is 'ygiene. Leastways 'e's dead andburied now, which must be a comfort to 'imself, feeling as at last 'e'sout of danger. All 'is time 'e spent taking care of 'imself--didn't seemto 'ave a leisure moment in which to live. For 'alf an hour everymorning 'e'd lie on 'is back on the floor, which is a draughty place, Ialways 'old, at the best of times, with nothing on but 'is pyjamas, waving 'is arms and legs about, and twisting 'imself into shapesunnatural to a Christian. Then 'e found out that everything 'e'd beendoing on 'is back was just all wrong, so 'e turned over and did tricks on'is stomach--begging your pardon for using the word--that you'd 'avethought more fit and proper to a worm than to a man. Then all that wasdiscovered to be a mistake. There don't seem nothing certain in thesematters. That's the awkward part of it, so it seems to me. 'E got'imself a machine, by means of which 'e'd 'ang 'imself up to the wall, and behave for all the world like a beetle with a pin stuck through 'im, poor thing. It used to give me the shudders to catch sight of 'imthrough the 'alf-open door. For that was part of the game: you 'ad to'ave a current of air through the room, the result of which was that forsix months out of the year 'e'd be coughing and blowing 'is nose frommorning to night. It was the new treatment, so 'e'd explain to me. Yougot yourself accustomed to draughts so that they didn't 'urt you, and ifyou died in the process that only proved that you never ought to 'avebeen born. 

"Then there came in this new Japanese business, and 'e'd 'ire a littlesmiling 'eathen to chuck 'im about 'is room for 'alf an hour everymorning after breakfast. It got on my nerves after a while 'earing 'imbeing bumped on the floor every minute, or flung with 'is 'ead into thefire-place. But 'e always said it was doing 'im good. 'E'd argue thatit freshened up 'is liver. It was 'is liver that 'e seemed to livefor--didn't appear to 'ave any other interest in life. It was the samewith 'is food. One year it would be nothing but meat, and next door toraw at that. One of them medical papers 'ad suddenly discovered that wewere intended to be a sort of wild beast. The wonder to me is that 'edidn't go out 'unting chickens with a club, and bring 'em 'ome and eat'em on the mat without any further fuss. For drink it would be boilingwater that burnt my fingers merely 'andling the glass. Then some othercrank came out with the information that every other crank waswrong--which, taken by itself, sounds natural enough--that meat was fatalto the 'uman system. Upon that 'e becomes all at once a raging, tearingvegetarian, and trouble enough I 'ad learning twenty different ways ofcooking beans, which didn't make, so far as I could ever see, theslightest difference--beans they were, and beans they tasted like, whether you called them _ragout a la maison_, or cutlets _a laPompadour_. But it seemed to please 'im. 

He was never pig-headed. 

"Then vegetarianism turned out to be the mistake of our lives. It seemedwe made an error giving up monkeys' food. That was our natural victuals;nuts with occasional bananas. As I used to tell 'im, if that was so, then for all we 'ad got out of it we might just as well have stopped up atree--saved rent and shoe leather. But 'e was one of that sort thatdon't seem able to 'elp believing everything they read in print. If oneof those papers 'ad told 'im to live on the shells and throw away thenuts, 'e'd have made a conscientious endeavour to do so, contending that'is failure to digest them was merely the result of vicioustraining--didn't seem to 'ave any likes or dislikes of 'is own. Youmight 'ave thought 'e was just a bit of public property made to beexperimented upon. 

"One of the daily papers interviewed an old gent, as said 'e was a'undred, and I will say from 'is picture as any'ow 'e looked it. 'E saidit was all the result of never 'aving swallowed anything 'ot, upon whichmy gentleman for a week lives on cold porridge, if you'll believe me;although myself I'd rather 'ave died at fifty and got it over. Thenanother paper dug up from somewhere a sort of animated corpse that saidwas a 'undred and two, and attributed the unfortunate fact to 'is always'aving 'ad 'is food as 'ot as 'e could swallow it. A bit of sense didbegin to dawn upon 'im then, but too late in the day, I take it. 'E'dplayed about with 'imself too long. 'E died at thirty-two, looking toall appearance sixty, and you can't say as 'ow it was the result of nottaking advice. "

Only just in time. 

"On this subject of health we are much too ready to follow advice, " Iagreed. "A cousin of mine, Mrs. Wilkins, had a wife who sufferedoccasionally from headache. No medicine relieved her of them--notaltogether. And one day by chance she met a friend who said: 'Comestraight with me to Dr. Blank, ' who happened to be a specialist famousfor having invented a new disease that nobody until the year before hadever heard of. She accompanied her friend to Dr. Blank, and in less thanten minutes he had persuaded her that she had got this new disease, andgot it badly; and that her only chance was to let him cut her open andhave it out. She was a tolerably healthy woman, with the exception ofthese occasional headaches, but from what that specialist said it wasdoubtful whether she would get home alive, unless she let him operate onher then and there, and her friend, who appeared delighted, urged her notto commit suicide, as it were, by missing her turn. 

"The result was she consented, and afterwards went home in a four-wheeledcab, and put herself to bed. Her husband, when he returned in theevening and was told, was furious. He said it was all humbug, and bythis time she was ready to agree with him. He put on his hat, andstarted to give that specialist a bit of his mind. The specialist wasout, and he had to bottle up his rage until the morning. By then, hiswife now really ill for the first time in her life, his indignation hadreached boiling point. He was at that specialist's door at half-pastnine o'clock. At half-past eleven he came back, also in a four-wheeledcab, and day and night nurses for both of them were wired for. He also, it appeared, had arrived at that specialist's door only just in time. 

"There's this appendy--whatever they call it, " commented Mrs. Wilkins, "why a dozen years ago one poor creature out of ten thousand may possibly'ave 'ad something wrong with 'is innards. To-day you ain't 'ardlyconsidered respectable unless you've got it, or 'ave 'ad it. I 'ave nopatience with their talk. To listen to some of them you'd think asNature 'adn't made a man--not yet: would never understand the principleof the thing till some of these young chaps 'ad shown 'er 'ow to do it. "

How to avoid Everything. 

"They have now discovered, Mrs. Wilkins, " I said, "the germ of old age. They are going to inoculate us for it in early youth, with the resultthat the only chance of ever getting rid of our friends will be to givethem a motor-car. And maybe it will not do to trust to that for long. They will discover that some men's tendency towards getting themselvesinto trouble is due to some sort of a germ. The man of the future, Mrs. Wilkins, will be inoculated against all chance of gas explosions, stormsat sea, bad oysters, and thin ice. Science may eventually discover thegerm prompting to ill-assorted marriages, proneness to invest in thewrong stock, uncontrollable desire to recite poetry at evening parties. Religion, politics, education--all these things are so much wastedenergy. To live happy and good for ever and ever, all we have to do isto hunt out these various germs and wring their necks for them--orwhatever the proper treatment may be. Heaven, I gather from medicalscience, is merely a place that is free from germs. "

"We talk a lot about it, " thought Mrs. Wilkins, "but it does not seem tome that we are very much better off than before we took to worryingourselves for twenty-four 'ours a day about 'ow we are going to live. Lord! to read the advertisements in the papers you would think as 'owflesh and blood was never intended to 'ave any natural ills. 'Do youever 'ave a pain in your back?' because, if so, there's a picture of akind gent who's willing for one and sixpence halfpenny to take it quiteaway from you--make you look forward to scrubbing floors, and standingover the wash-tub six 'ours at a stretch like to a beanfeast. 'Do youever feel as though you don't want to get out of bed in the morning?'that's all to be cured by a bottle of their stuff--or two at the outside. Four children to keep, and a sick 'usband on your 'ands used to get meover it when I was younger. I used to fancy it was just because I wastired. 

The one Cure-All. 

"There's some of them seem to think, " continued Mrs. Wilkins, "that ifyou don't get all you want out of this world, and ain't so 'appy asyou've persuaded yourself you ought to be, that it's all because youain't taking the right medicine. Appears to me there's only one doctoras can do for you, all the others talk as though they could, and 'e onlycomes to each of us once, and then 'e makes no charge. "

CHAPTER XIV

Europe and the bright American Girl. 

"How does she do it?"

That is what the European girl wants to know. The American girl! Shecomes over here, and, as a British matron, reduced to slang by force ofindignation, once exclaimed to me: "You'd think the whole blessed showbelonged to her. " The European girl is hampered by her relatives. Shehas to account for her father: to explain away, if possible, hergrandfather. The American girl sweeps them aside:

"Don't you worry about them, " she says to the Lord Chamberlain. "It'sawfully good of you, but don't you fuss yourself. I'm looking after myold people. That's my department. What I want you to do is just tolisten to what I am saying and then hustle around. I can fill up yourtime all right by myself. "

Her father may be a soap-boiler, her grandmother may have gone outcharing. 

"That's all right, " she says to her Ambassador: "They're not coming. Youjust take my card and tell the King that when he's got a few minutes tospare I'll be pleased to see him. "

And the extraordinary thing is that, a day or two afterwards, theinvitation arrives. 

A modern writer has said that "I'm Murrican" is the _Civis Romanus sum_of the present-day woman's world. The late King of Saxony, did, Ibelieve, on one occasion make a feeble protest at being asked to receivethe daughter of a retail bootmaker. The young lady, nonplussed for themoment, telegraphed to her father in Detroit. The answer came back nextmorning: "Can't call it selling--practically giving them away. SeeAdvertisement. " The lady was presented as the daughter of an eminentphilanthropist. 

It is due to her to admit that, taking her as a class, the American girlis a distinct gain to European Society. Her influence is againstconvention and in favour of simplicity. One of her greatest charms, inthe eyes of the European man, is that she listens to him. I cannot saywhether it does her any good. Maybe she does not remember it all, butwhile you are talking she does give you her attention. The English womandoes not always. She greets you pleasantly enough:

"I've so often wanted to meet you, " she says, "must you really go?"

It strikes you as sudden: you had no intention of going for hours. Butthe hint is too plain to be ignored. You are preparing to agree that youreally must when, looking round, you gather that the last remark was notaddressed to you, but to another gentleman who is shaking hands with her:

"Now, perhaps we shall be able to talk for five minutes, " she says. "I'veso often wanted to say that I shall never forgive you. You have beensimply horrid. "

Again you are confused, until you jump to the conclusion that the latterportion of the speech is probably intended for quite another party withwhom, at the moment, her back towards you, she is engaged in a whisperedconversation. When he is gone she turns again to you. But the variedexpressions that pass across her face while you are discussing with herthe disadvantages of Protection, bewilder you. When, explaining your owndifficulty in arriving at a conclusion, you remark that Great Britain isan island, she roguishly shakes her head. It is not that she hasforgotten her geography, it is that she is conducting a conversation bysigns with a lady at the other end of the room. When you observe thatthe working classes must be fed, she smiles archly while murmuring:

"Oh, do you really think so?"

You are about to say something strong on the subject of dumping. Apparently she has disappeared. You find that she is reaching roundbehind you to tap a new arrival with her fan. 

She has the Art of Listening. 

Now, the American girl looks at you, and just listens to you with hereyes fixed on you all the time. You gather that, as far as she isconcerned, the rest of the company are passing shadows. She wants tohear what you have to say about Bi-metallism: her trouble is lest she maymiss a word of it. From a talk with an American girl one comes away withthe conviction that one is a brilliant conversationalist, who can hold acharming woman spell-bound. This may not be good for one: but while itlasts, the sensation is pleasant. 

Even the American girl cannot, on all occasions, sweep from her path thecobwebs of old-world etiquette. Two American ladies told me a sad taleof things that had happened to them not long ago in Dresden. An officerof rank and standing invited them to breakfast with him on the ice. Damesand nobles of the _plus haut ton_ would be there. It is a socialfunction that occurs every Sunday morning in Dresden during the skatingseason. The great lake in the Grosser Garten is covered with all sortsand conditions of people. Prince and commoner circle and recircle roundone another. But they do not mix. The girls were pleased. They securedthe services of an elderly lady, the widow of an analytical chemist:unfortunately, she could not skate. They wrapped her up and put her in asledge. While they were in the _garde robe_ putting on their skates, aGerman gentleman came up and bowed to them. 

He was a nice young man of prepossessing appearance and amiable manners. They could not call to mind his name, but remembered having met him, somewhere, and on more than one occasion. The American girl is alwayssociable: they bowed and smiled, and said it was a fine day. He repliedwith volubility, and helped them down on to the ice. He was really mostattentive. They saw their friend, the officer of noble family, and, withthe assistance of the German gentleman, skated towards him. He glidedpast them. They thought that maybe he did not know enough to stop, sothey turned and skated after him. They chased him three times round thepond and then, feeling tired, eased up and took counsel together. 

"I'm sure he must have seen us, " said the younger girl. "What does hemean by it?"

"Well, I have not come down here to play forfeits, " said the other, "added to which I want my breakfast. You wait here a minute, I'll go andhave it out with him. "

He was standing only a dozen yards away. Alone, though not a goodperformer on the ice, she contrived to cover half the distance dividingthem. The officer, perceiving her, came to her assistance and greetedher with effusion. 

The Republican Idea in practice. 

"Oh, " said the lady, who was feeling indignant, "I thought maybe you hadleft your glasses at home. "

"I am sorry, " said the officer, "but it is impossible. "

"What's impossible?" demanded the lady. 

"That I can be seen speaking to you, " declared the officer, "while youare in company with that--that person. "

"What person?" She thought maybe he was alluding to the lady in thesledge. The chaperon was not showy, but, what is better, she was good. And, anyhow, it was the best the girls had been able to do. So far asthey were concerned, they had no use for a chaperon. The idea had been athoughtful concession to European prejudice. 

"The person in knickerbockers, " explained the officer. 

"Oh, _that_, " exclaimed the lady, relieved: "he just came up and madehimself agreeable while we were putting on our skates. We have met himsomewhere, but I can't exactly fix him for the moment. "

"You have met him possibly at Wiesman's, in the Pragerstrasse: he is oneof the attendants there, " said the officer. 

The American girl is Republican in her ideas, but she draws the line athairdressers. In theory it is absurd: the hairdresser is a man and abrother: but we are none of us logical all the way. It made her mad, thethought that she had been seen by all Dresden Society skating with ahairdresser. 

"Well, " she said, "I do call that impudence. Why, they wouldn't do thateven in Chicago. "

And she returned to where the hairdresser was illustrating to her friendthe Dutch roll, determined to explain to him, as politely as possible, that although the free and enlightened Westerner has abolished socialdistinctions, he has not yet abolished them to that extent. 

Had he been a commonplace German hairdresser he would have understoodEnglish, and all might have been easy. But to the "classy" Germanhairdresser, English is not so necessary, and the American ladies hadreached, as regards their German, only the "improving" stage. In herexcitement she confused the subjunctive and the imperative, and told himthat he "might" go. He had no wish to go; he assured them--so theygathered--that his intention was to devote the morning to their service. He must have been a stupid man, but it is a type occasionallyencountered. Two pretty women had greeted his advances with apparentdelight. They were Americans, and the American girl was notoriouslyunconventional. He knew himself to be a good-looking young fellow. Itdid not occur to him that in expressing willingness to dispense with hisattendance they could be in earnest. 

There was nothing for it, so it seemed to the girls, but to request theassistance of the officer, who continued to skate round and round them ata distance of about ten yards. So again the elder young lady, seizingher opportunity, made appeal. 

What the Soldier dared not do. 

"I cannot, " persisted the officer, who, having been looking forward to amorning with two of the prettiest girls in Dresden, was also feeling mad. "I dare not be seen speaking to a hairdresser. You must get rid of him. "

"But we can't, " said the girl. "We do not know enough German, and hecan't, or he won't, understand us. For goodness sake come and help us. We'll be spending the whole morning with him if you don't. "

The German officer said he was desolate. Steps would be taken--later inthe week--the result of which would probably be to render that younghairdresser prematurely bald. But, meanwhile, beyond skating round andround them, for which they did not even feel they wanted to thank him, the German officer could do nothing for them. They tried being rude tothe hairdresser: he mistook it for American _chic_. They tried joininghands and running away from him, but they were not good skaters, and hethought they were trying to show him the cake walk. They both fell downand hurt themselves, and it is difficult to be angry with a man, even ahairdresser, when he is doing his best to pick you up and comfort you. 

The chaperon was worse than useless. She was very old. She had beenpromised her breakfast, but saw no signs of it. She could not speakGerman; and remembered somewhat late in the day that two young ladies hadno business to accept breakfast at the hands of German officers: and, ifthey did, at least they might see that they got it. She appeared to bewilling to talk about decadence of modern manners to almost any extent, but the subject of the hairdresser, and how to get rid of him, only boredher. 

Their first stroke of luck occurred when the hairdresser, showing themthe "dropped three, " fell down and temporarily stunned himself. It wasnot kind of them, but they were desperate. They flew for the bank justanyhow, and, scrambling over the grass, gained the restaurant. Theofficer, overtaking them at the door, led them to the table that had beenreserved for them, then hastened back to hunt for the chaperon. Thegirls thought their trouble was over. Had they glanced behind them theirjoy would have been shorter-lived than even was the case. Thehairdresser had recovered consciousness in time to see them waddling overthe grass. He thought they were running to fetch him brandy. When theofficer returned with the chaperon he found the hairdresser sittingopposite to them, explaining that he really was not hurt, and suggestingthat, as they were there, perhaps they would like something to eat anddrink. 

The girls made one last frantic appeal to the man of buckram andpipeclay, but the etiquette of the Saxon Army was inexorable. Ittranspired that he might kill the hairdresser, but nothing else: he mustnot speak to him--not even explain to the poor devil why it was that hewas being killed. 

Her path of Usefulness. 

It did not seem quite worth it. They had some sandwiches and coffee atthe hairdresser's expense, and went home in a cab: while the chaperon hadbreakfast with the officer of noble family. 

The American girl has succeeded in freeing European social intercoursefrom many of its hide-bound conventions. There is still much work forher to do. But I have faith in her. 

CHAPTER XV

Music and the Savage. 

I never visit a music-hall without reflecting concerning the great futurethere must be before the human race. 

How young we are, how very young! And think of all we have done! Man isstill a mere boy. He has only just within the last half-century been putinto trousers. Two thousand years ago he wore long clothes--the Grecianrobe, the Roman toga. Then followed the Little Lord Fauntleroy period, when he went about dressed in a velvet suit with lace collar and cuffs, and had his hair curled for him. The late lamented Queen Victoria puthim into trousers. What a wonderful little man he will be when he isgrown up!

A clergyman friend of mine told me of a German _Kurhaus_ to which he wassent for his sins and his health. It was a resort, for some reason, specially patronized by the more elderly section of the higher Englishmiddle class. Bishops were there, suffering from fatty degeneration ofthe heart caused by too close application to study; ancient spinsters ofgood family subject to spasms; gouty retired generals. Can anybody tellme how many men in the British Army go to a general? Somebody onceassured me it was five thousand, but that is absurd, on the face of it. The British Army, in that case, would have to be counted by millions. There are a goodish few American colonels still knocking about. TheAmerican colonel is still to be met with here and there by the curioustraveller, but compared with the retired British general he is an extinctspecies. In Cheltenham and Brighton and other favoured towns there arestreets of nothing but retired British generals--squares of retiredBritish generals--whole crescents of British generals. Abroad there are_pensions_ with a special scale of charges for British generals. InSwitzerland there has even been talk of reserving railway compartments"For British Generals Only. " In Germany, when you do not say distinctlyand emphatically on being introduced that you are not a British general, you are assumed, as a matter of course, to be a British general. Duringthe Boer War, when I was residing in a small garrison town on the Rhine, German military men would draw me aside and ask of me my own privatepersonal views as to the conduct of the campaign. I would give them myviews freely, explain to them how I would finish the whole thing in aweek. 

"But how in the face of the enemy's tactics--" one of them would begin. 

"Bother the enemy's tactics, " I would reply. "Who cares for tactics?"

"But surely a British general--" they would persist. "Who's a Britishgeneral?" I would retort, "I am talking to you merely as a plaincommonsense man, with a head on my shoulders. "

They would apologize for their mistake. But this is leading me away fromthat German _Kurhaus_. 

Recreation for the Higher clergy. 

My clergyman friend found life there dull. The generals and thespinsters left to themselves might have played cards, but they thought ofthe poor bishops who would have had to look on envious. The bishops andthe spinsters might have sung ballads, but the British general afterdinner does not care for ballads, and had mentioned it. The bishops andthe generals might have told each other stories, but could not before theladies. My clergyman friend stood the awful solemnity of three evenings, then cautiously felt his way towards revelry. He started with anintellectual game called "Quotations. " You write down quotations on apiece of paper, and the players have to add the author's name. It ropedin four old ladies, and the youngest bishop. One or two generals tried around, but not being familiar with quotations voted the game slow. 

The next night my friend tried "Consequences. " "Saucy Miss A. Met thegay General B. In"--most unlikely places. "He said. " Really it wasfortunate that General B. Remained too engrossed in the day beforeyesterday's _Standard_ to overhear, or Miss A. Could never have againfaced him. "And she replied. " The suppressed giggles excited thecuriosity of the non-players. Most of the bishops and half the generalsasked to be allowed to join. The giggles grew into roars. Thosestanding out found that they could not read their papers in comfort. 

From "Consequences" the descent was easy. The tables and chairs werepushed against the walls, the bishops and the spinsters and the generalswould sit in a ring upon the floor playing hunt the slipper. Musicalchairs made the two hours between bed and dinner the time of the day theyall looked forward to: the steady trot with every nerve alert, the earlistening for the sudden stoppage of the music, the eye seeking withartfulness the likeliest chair, the volcanic silence, the mad scramble. 

The generals felt themselves fighting their battles over again, thespinsters blushed and preened themselves, the bishops took interest inproving that even the Church could be prompt of decision and swift ofmovement. Before the week was out they were playing Puss-in-the-corner;ladies feeling young again were archly beckoning to stout deans, to whomwere returning all the sensations of a curate. The swiftness with whichthe gouty generals found they could still hobble surprised eventhemselves. 

Why are we so young?

But it is in the music-hall, as I have said, that I am most impressedwith the youthfulness of man. How delighted we are when the long man inthe little boy's hat, having asked his short brother a riddle, and beforehe can find time to answer it, hits him over the stomach with anumbrella! How we clap our hands and shout with glee! It isn't reallyhis stomach: it is a bolster tied round his waist--we know that; butseeing the long man whack at that bolster with an umbrella gives usalmost as much joy as if the bolster were not there. 

I laugh at the knockabout brothers, I confess, so long as they are on thestage; but they do not convince me. Reflecting on the performanceafterwards, my dramatic sense revolts against the "plot. " I cannotaccept the theory of their being brothers. The difference in size aloneis a strain upon my imagination. It is not probable that of two childrenof the same parents one should measure six foot six, and the other fivefoot four. Even allowing for a freak of nature, and accepting the factthat they might be brothers, I do not believe they would remain soinseparable. The short brother would have succeeded before now in losingthe long brother. Those continual bangings over the head and stomachwould have weakened whatever affection the short brother might originallyhave felt towards his long relation. At least, he would insist upon theumbrella being left at home. 

"I will go for a walk with you, " he might say, "I will stand stock stillwith you in Trafalgar Square in the midst of the traffic while you ask mesilly riddles, but not if you persist in bringing with you that absurdumbrella. You are too handy with it. Put it back in the rack before westart, or go out by yourself. "

Besides, my sense of justice is outraged. Why should the short brotherbe banged and thumped without reason? The Greek dramatist would haveexplained to us that the shorter brother had committed a crime againstthe gods. Aristophanes would have made the longer brother the instrumentof the Furies. The riddles he asked would have had bearing upon theshorter brother's sin. In this way the spectator would have enjoyedamusement combined with the satisfactory sense that Nemesis is everpresent in human affairs. I present the idea, for what it may be worth, to the concoctors of knockabout turns. 

Where Brotherly (and Sisterly) Love reigns supreme. 

The family tie is always strong on the music-hall stage. The acrobatictroupe is always a "Family": Pa, Ma, eight brothers and sisters, and thebaby. A more affectionate family one rarely sees. Pa and Ma are atrifle stout, but still active. Baby, dear little fellow, is full ofhumour. Ladies do not care to go on the music-hall stage unless they cantake their sister with them. I have seen a performance given by elevensisters, all the same size and apparently all the same age. She musthave been a wonderful woman--the mother. They all had golden hair, andall wore precisely similar frocks--a charming but _decolletee_arrangement--in claret-coloured velvet over blue silk stockings. So faras I could gather, they all had the same young man. No doubt he found itdifficult amongst them to make up his mind. 

"Arrange it among yourselves, " he no doubt had said, "it is quiteimmaterial to me. You are so much alike, it is impossible that a fellowloving one should not love the lot of you. So long as I marry into thefamily I really don't care. "

When a performer appears alone on the music-hall stage it is easy tounderstand why. His or her domestic life has been a failure. I listenedone evening to six songs in succession. The first two were sung by agentleman. He entered with his clothes hanging upon him in shreds. Heexplained that he had just come from an argument with his wife. Heshowed us the brick with which she had hit him, and the bump at the backof his head that had resulted. The funny man's marriage is never asuccess. But really this seems to be his own fault. "She was such alovely girl, " he tells us, "with a face--well, you'd hardly call it aface, it was more like a gas explosion. Then she had those wonderfulsort of eyes that you can see two ways at once with, one of them looksdown the street, while the other one is watching round the corner. Cansee you coming any way. And her mouth!"

It appears that if she stands anywhere near the curb and smiles, carelesspeople mistake her for a pillar-box, and drop letters into her. 

"And such a voice!" We are told it is a perfect imitation of a motor-car. When she laughs people spring into doorways to escape being runover. 

If he will marry that sort of woman, what can he expect? The man isasking for it. 

The lady who followed him also told us a sad story of misplaced trust. She also was comic--so the programme assured us. The humorist appears tohave no luck. She had lent her lover money to buy the ring, and thelicence, and to furnish the flat. He did buy the ring, and he furnishedthe flat, but it was for another lady. The audience roared. I haveheard it so often asked, "What is humour?" From observation, I shoulddescribe it as other people's troubles. 

A male performer followed her. He came on dressed in a night-shirt, carrying a baby. His wife, it seemed, had gone out for the evening withthe lodger. That was his joke. It was the most successful song of thewhole six. 

The one sure Joke. 

A philosopher has put it on record that he always felt sad when hereflected on the sorrows of humanity. But when he reflected on itsamusements he felt sadder still. 

Why was it so funny that the baby had the lodger's nose? We laughed fora full minute by the clock. 

Why do I love to see a flabby-faced man go behind curtains, and, emergingin a wig and a false beard, say that he is now Bismarck or Mr. Chamberlain? I have felt resentment against the Lightning Impersonatorever since the days of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. During thatsummer every Lightning Impersonator ended his show by shouting, while theband played the National Anthem, "Queen Victoria!" He was not a bit likeQueen Victoria. He did not even, to my thinking, look a lady; but atonce I had to stand up in my place and sing "God save the Queen. " It wasa time of enthusiastic loyalty; if you did not spring up quickly somepatriotic old fool from the back would reach across and hit you over thehead with the first thing he could lay his hands upon. 

Other music-hall performers caught at the idea. By ending up with "Godsave the Queen" any performer, however poor, could retire in a whirlwindof applause. Niggers, having bored us with tiresome songs about coonsand honeys and Swanee Rivers, would, as a last resource, strike up "Godsave the Queen" on the banjo. The whole house would have to rise andcheer. Elderly Sisters Trippet, having failed to arouse our enthusiasmby allowing us a brief glimpse of an ankle, would put aside allfrivolity, and tell us of a hero lover named George, who had foughtsomebody somewhere for his Queen and country. "He fell!"--bang from thebig drum and blue limelight. In a recumbent position he appears to haveimmediately started singing "God save the Queen. "

How Anarchists are made. 

Sleepy members of the audience would be hastily awakened by theirfriends. We would stagger to our feet. The Sisters Trippet, with eyesfixed on the chandelier, would lead us: to the best of our ability wewould sing "God save the Queen. "

There have been evenings when I have sung "God save the Queen" six times. Another season of it, and I should have become a Republican. 

The singer of patriotic songs is generally a stout and puffy man. Theperspiration pours from his face as the result of the violentgesticulations with which he tells us how he stormed the fort. He musthave reached it very hot. 

"There were ten to one agin us, boys. " We feel that this was amiscalculation on the enemy's part. Ten to one "agin" such wildlygesticulating Britishers was inviting defeat. 

It seems to have been a terrible battle notwithstanding. He shows uswith a real sword how it was done. Nothing could have lived within adozen yards of that sword. The conductor of the orchestra looks nervous. Our fear is lest he will end by cutting off his own head. Hisrecollections are carrying him away. Then follows "Victory!"

The gas men and the programme sellers cheer wildly. We conclude with theinevitable "God save the King. "

CHAPTER XVI

The Ghost and the Blind Children. 

Ghosts are in the air. It is difficult at this moment to avoid talkingof ghosts. The first question you are asked on being introduced thisseason is:

"Do you believe in ghosts?"

I would be so glad to believe in ghosts. This world is much too smallfor me. Up to a century or two ago the intellectual young man found itsufficient for his purposes. It still contained the unknown--thepossible--within its boundaries. New continents were still to bediscovered: we dreamt of giants, Liliputians, desert-fenced Utopias. Weset our sail, and Wonderland lay ever just beyond our horizon. To-daythe world is small, the light railway runs through the desert, thecoasting steamer calls at the Islands of the Blessed, the last mysteryhas been unveiled, the fairies are dead, the talking birds are silent. Our baffled curiosity turns for relief outwards. We call upon the deadto rescue us from our monotony. The first authentic ghost will bewelcomed as the saviour of humanity. 

But he must be a living ghost--a ghost we can respect, a ghost we canlisten to. The poor spiritless addle-headed ghost that has hithertohaunted our blue chambers is of no use to us. I remember a thoughtfulman once remarking during argument that if he believed in ghosts--thesilly, childish spooks about which we had been telling anecdotes--deathwould possess for him an added fear: the idea that his nextdwelling-place would be among such a pack of dismal idiots would saddenhis departing hours. What was he to talk to them about? Apparentlytheir only interest lay in recalling their earthly troubles. The ghostof the lady unhappily married who had been poisoned, or had her throatcut, who every night for the last five hundred years had visited thechamber where it happened for no other purpose than to scream about it!what a tiresome person she would be to meet! All her conversation duringthe long days would be around her earthly wrongs. The other ghosts, inall probability, would have heard about that husband of hers, what hesaid, and what he did, till they were sick of the subject. A newcomerwould be seized upon with avidity. 

A lady of repute writes to a magazine that she once occupied for a seasona wainscotted room in an old manor house. On several occasions she awokein the night: each time to witness the same ghostly performance. Fourgentlemen sat round a table playing cards. Suddenly one of them sprangto his feet and plunged a dagger into the back of his partner. The ladydoes not say so: one presumes it was his partner. I have, myself, whenplaying bridge, seen an expression on my partner's face that said quiteplainly:

"I would like to murder you. "

I have not the memory for bridge. I forget who it was that, last trickbut seven, played the two of clubs. I thought it was he, my partner. Ithought it meant that I was to take an early opportunity of forcingtrumps. I don't know why I thought so, I try to explain why I thoughtso. It sounds a silly argument even to myself; I feel I have not got itquite right. Added to which it was not my partner who played the two ofclubs, it was Dummy. If I had only remembered this, and had concludedfrom it--as I ought to have done--that my partner had the ace ofdiamonds--as otherwise why did he pass my knave?--we might have saved theodd trick. I have not the head for bridge. It is only an ordinaryhead--mine. I have no business to play bridge. 

Why not, occasionally, a cheerful Ghost. 

But to return to our ghosts. These four gentlemen must now and again, during their earthly existence, have sat down to a merry game of cards. There must have been evenings when nobody was stabbed. Why choose anunpleasant occasion to harp exclusively upon it? Why do ghosts nevergive a cheerful show? The lady who was poisoned! there must have beenother evenings in her life. Why does she not show us "The firstmeeting": when he gave her the violets and said they were like her eyes?He wasn't always poisoning her. There must have been a period before heever thought of poisoning her. Cannot these ghosts do somethingoccasionally in what is termed "the lighter vein"? If they haunt aforest glade, it is to perform a duel to the death, or an assassination. Why cannot they, for a change, give us an old-time picnic, or "Thehawking party, " which, in Elizabethan costume, should make a prettypicture? Ghostland would appear to be obsessed by the spirit of theScandinavian drama: murders, suicides, ruined fortunes, and broken heartsare the only material made use of. Why is not a dead humorist allowednow and then to write the sketch? There must be plenty of dead comiclovers; why are they never allowed to give a performance?

Where are the dead Humorists?

A cheerful person contemplates death with alarm. What is he to do inthis land of ghosts? there is no place for him. Imagine the commonplaceliver of a humdrum existence being received into ghostland. He entersnervous, shy, feeling again the new boy at school. The old ghosts gatherround him. 

"How do you come here--murdered?"

"No, at least, I don't think so. "

"Suicide?

"No--can't remember the name of it now. Began with a chill on the liver, I think. "

The ghosts are disappointed. But a happy suggestion is made. Perhaps hewas the murderer; that would be even better. Let him think carefully;can he recollect ever having committed a murder? He racks his brains invain, not a single murder comes to his recollection. He never forged awill. Doesn't even know where anything is hid. Of what use will he bein ghostland? One pictures him passing the centuries among a moody crowdof uninteresting mediocrities, brooding perpetually over their wastedlives. Only the ghosts of ladies and gentlemen mixed up in crime haveany "show" in ghostland. 

The Spirit does not shine as a Conversationalist. 

I feel an equal dissatisfaction with the spirits who are supposed toreturn to us and communicate with us through the medium of three-leggedtables. I do not deny the possibility that spirits exist. I am evenwilling to allow them their three-legged tables. It must be confessed itis a clumsy method. One cannot help regretting that during all the agesthey have not evolved a more dignified system. One feels that the three-legged table must hamper them. One can imagine an impatient spiritgetting tired of spelling out a lengthy story on a three-legged table. But, as I have said, I am willing to assume that, for some spiritualreason unfathomable to my mere human intelligence, that three-leggedtable is essential. I am willing also to accept the human medium. Sheis generally an unprepossessing lady running somewhat to bulk. If agentleman, he so often has dirty finger-nails, and smells of stale beer. I think myself it would be so much simpler if the spirit would talk to medirect; we could get on quicker. But there is that about the medium, Iam told, which appeals to a spirit. Well, it is his affair, not mine, and I waive the argument. My real stumbling-block is the spirithimself--the sort of conversation that, when he does talk, he indulgesin. I cannot help feeling that his conversation is not worth theparaphernalia. I can talk better than that myself. 

The late Professor Huxley, who took some trouble over this matter, attended some half-dozen _seances_, and then determined to attend nomore. 

"I have, " he said, "for my sins to submit occasionally to the society oflive bores. I refuse to go out of my way to spend an evening in the darkwith dead bores. "

The spiritualists themselves admit that their table-rapping spooks areprecious dull dogs; it would be difficult, in face of the communicationsrecorded, for them to deny it. They explain to us that they have not yetachieved communication with the higher spiritual Intelligences. The moreintelligent spirits--for some reason that the spiritualists themselvesare unable to explain--do not want to talk to them, appear to havesomething else to do. At present--so I am told, and can believe--it isonly the spirits of lower intelligence that care to turn up on theseevenings. The spiritualists argue that, by continuing, the higher-classspirits will later on be induced to "come in. " I fail to follow theargument. It seems to me that we are frightening them away. Anyhow, myself I shall wait awhile. 

When the spirit comes along that can talk sense, that can tell mesomething I don't know, I shall be glad to meet him. The class of spiritthat we are getting just at present does not appeal to me. The thoughtof him--the reflection that I shall die and spend the rest of eternity inhis company--does not comfort me. 

She is now a Believer. 

A lady of my acquaintance tells me it is marvellous how much thesespirits seem to know. On her very first visit, the spirit, through thevoice of the medium--an elderly gentleman residing obscurely inClerkenwell--informed her without a moment's hesitation that shepossessed a relative with the Christian name of George. (I am not makingthis up--it is real. ) This gave her at first the idea that spiritualismwas a fraud. She had no relative named George--at least, so she thought. But a morning or two later her husband received a letter from Australia. "By Jove!" he exclaimed, as he glanced at the last page, "I had forgottenall about the poor old beggar. "

"Whom is it from?" she asked. 

"Oh, nobody you know--haven't seen him myself for twenty years--a thirdor fourth cousin of mine--George--"

She never heard the surname, she was too excited. The spirit had beenright from the beginning; she _had_ a relative named George. Her faithin spiritualism is now as a rock. 

There are thousands of folk who believe in Old Moore's Almanac. Mydifficulty would be not to believe in the old gentleman. I see that forthe month of January last he foretold us that the Government would meetwith determined and persistent opposition. He warned us that there wouldbe much sickness about, and that rheumatism would discover its oldvictims. How does he know these things? Is it that the stars really docommunicate with him, or does he "feel it in his bones, " as the saying isup North?

During February, he mentioned, the weather would be unsettled. Heconcluded:

"The word Taxation will have a terrible significance for both Governmentand people this month. "

Really, it is quite uncanny. In March:

"Theatres will do badly during the month. "

There seems to be no keeping anything from Old Moore. In April "muchdissatisfaction will be expressed among Post Office employees. " Thatsounds probable, on the face of it. In any event, I will answer for ourlocal postman. 

In May "a wealthy magnate is going to die. " In June there is going to bea fire. In July "Old Moore has reason to fear there will be trouble. "

I do hope he may be wrong, and yet somehow I feel a conviction that hewon't be. Anyhow, one is glad it has been put off till July. 

In August "one in high authority will be in danger of demise. " InSeptember "zeal" on the part of persons mentioned "will outstripdiscretion. " In October Old Moore is afraid again. He cannot avoid ahaunting suspicion that "Certain people will be victimized by extensivefraudulent proceedings. "

In November "the public Press will have its columns full of importantnews. " The weather will be "adverse, " and "a death will occur in highcircles. " This makes the second in one year. I am glad I do not belongto the higher circles. 

How does he do it?

In December Old Moore again foresees trouble, just when I was hoping itwas all over. "Frauds will come to light, and death will find itsvictims. "

And all this information is given to us for a penny. 

The palmist examines our hand. "You will go a journey, " he tells us. Itis marvellous! How could he have known that only the night before we hadbeen discussing the advisability of taking the children to Margate forthe holidays?

"There is trouble in store for you, " he tells us, regretfully, "but youwill get over it. " We feel that the future has no secret hidden fromhim. 

We have "presentiments" that people we love, who are climbing mountains, who are fond of ballooning, are in danger. 

The sister of a friend of mine who went out to the South African War as avolunteer had three presentiments of his death. He came home safe andsound, but admitted that on three distinct occasions he had been inimminent danger. It seemed to the dear lady a proof of everything shehad ever read. 

Another friend of mine was waked in the middle of the night by his wife, who insisted that he should dress himself and walk three miles across amoor because she had had a dream that something terrible was happening toa bosom friend of hers. The bosom friend and her husband were ratherindignant at being waked at two o'clock in the morning, but theirindignation was mild compared with that of the dreamer on learning thatnothing was the matter. From that day forward a coldness sprang upbetween the two families. 

I would give much to believe in ghosts. The interest of life would bemultiplied by its own square power could we communicate with the myriaddead watching us from their mountain summits. Mr. Zangwill, in a poemthat should live, draws for us a pathetic picture of blind childrenplaying in a garden, laughing, romping. All their lives they have livedin darkness; they are content. But, the wonder of it, could their eyesby some miracle be opened!

Blind Children playing in a World of Darkness. 

May not we be but blind children, suggests the poet, living in a world ofdarkness--laughing, weeping, loving, dying--knowing nothing of the wonderround us?

The ghosts about us, with their god-like faces, it might be good to lookat them. 

But these poor, pale-faced spooks, these dull-witted, table-thumpingspirits: it would be sad to think that of such was the kingdom of theDead. 

CHAPTER XVII

Parents and their Teachers. 

My heart has been much torn of late, reading of the wrongs of Children. It has lately been discovered that Children are being hampered andharassed in their career by certain brutal and ignorant persons called, for want of a better name, parents. The parent is a selfish wretch who, out of pure devilment, and without consulting the Child itself upon thesubject, lures innocent Children into the world, apparently for thepurpose merely of annoying them. The parent does not understand theChild when he has got it; he does not understand anything, not much. Theonly person who understands the Child is the young gentleman fresh fromCollege and the elderly maiden lady, who, between them, produce most ofthe literature that explains to us the Child. 

The parent does not even know how to dress the Child. The parent willpersist in dressing the Child in a long and trailing garment thatprevents the Child from kicking. The young gentleman fresh from Collegegrows almost poetical in his contempt. It appears that the one thingessential for the health of a young child is that it should have perfectfreedom to kick. Later on the parent dresses the Child in short clothes, and leaves bits of its leg bare. The elderly maiden Understander ofChildren, quoting medical opinion, denounces us as criminals for leavingany portion of that precious leg uncovered. It appears that thepartially uncovered leg of childhood is responsible for most of thedisease that flesh is heir to. 

Then we put it into boots. We "crush its delicately fashioned feet intohideous leather instruments of torture. " That is the sort of phrase thatis hurled at us! The picture conjured up is that of some fiend in humanshape, calling itself a father, seizing some helpless cherub by the hair, and, while drowning its pathetic wails for mercy beneath roars of demonlaughter, proceeding to bind about its tender bones some ancientcuriosity dug from the dungeons of the Inquisition. 

If the young gentleman fresh from College or the maiden lady Understandercould be, if only for a month or two, a father! If only he or she couldguess how gladly the father of limited income would reply, "My dear, you are wrong in saying that the children must have boots. Thatis an exploded theory. The children must not have boots. I refuse to bea party to crushing their delicately fashioned feet into hideous leatherinstruments of torture. The young gentleman fresh from College and theelderly maiden Understander have decided that the children must not haveboots. Do not let me hear again that out-of-date word--boots. "

If there were only one young gentleman fresh from College, one maidenlady Understander teaching us our duty, life would be simpler. But thereare so many young gentlemen from College, so many maiden ladyUnderstanders, on the job--if I may be permitted a vulgarism; and as yetthey are not all agreed. It is distracting for the parent anxious to doright. We put the little dears into sandals, and then at once otheryoung gentlemen from College, other maiden lady Understanders, point tous as would-be murderers. Long clothes are fatal, short clothes aredeadly, boots are instruments of torture, to allow children to go aboutwith bare feet shows that we regard them as Incumbrances, and, with lowcunning, are seeking to be rid of them. 

Their first attempt. 

I knew a pair of parents. I am convinced, in spite of all that can besaid to the contrary, they were fond of their Child; it was their first. They were anxious to do the right thing. They read with avidity allbooks and articles written on the subject of Children. They read that aChild should always sleep lying on its back, and took it in turns to sitawake o' nights to make sure that the Child was always right side up. 

But another magazine told them that Children allowed to sleep lying ontheir backs grew up to be idiots. They were sad they had not read ofthis before, and started the Child on its right side. The Child, on thecontrary, appeared to have a predilection for the left, the result beingthat neither the parents nor the baby itself for the next three weeks gotany sleep worth speaking of. 

Later on, by good fortune, they came across a treatise that said a Childshould always be allowed to choose its own position while sleeping, andtheir friends persuaded them to stop at that--told them they would neverstrike a better article if they searched the whole British MuseumLibrary. It troubled them to find that Child sometimes sleeping curledup with its toe in its mouth, and sometimes flat on its stomach with itshead underneath the pillow. But its health and temper were decidedlyimproved. 

The Parent can do no right. 

There is nothing the parent can do right. You would think that now andthen he might, if only by mere accident, blunder into sense. But, no, there seems to be a law against it. He brings home woolly rabbits andindiarubber elephants, and expects the Child to be contented "forsooth"with suchlike aids to its education. As a matter of fact, the Child iscontent: it bangs its own head with the woolly rabbit and does itself noharm; it tries to swallow the indiarubber elephant; it does not succeed, but continues to hope. With that woolly rabbit and that indiarubberelephant it would be as happy as the day is long if only the younggentleman from Cambridge would leave it alone, and not put new ideas intoits head. But the gentleman from Cambridge and the maiden ladyUnderstander are convinced that the future of the race depends uponleaving the Child untrammelled to select its own amusements. A friend ofmine, during his wife's absence once on a visit to her mother, tried theexperiment. 

The Child selected a frying-pan. How it got the frying-pan remains tothis day a mystery. The cook said "frying-pans don't walk upstairs. " Thenurse said she should be sorry to call anyone a liar, but that there wascommonsense in everything. The scullery-maid said that if everybody didtheir own work other people would not be driven beyond the limits ofhuman endurance; and the housekeeper said that she was sick and tired oflife. My friend said it did not matter. The Child clung to the frying-pan with passion. The book my friend was reading said that was how thehuman mind was formed: the Child's instinct prompted it to seize uponobjects tending to develop its brain faculty. What the parent had got todo was to stand aside and watch events. 

The Child proceeded to black everything about the nursery with the bottomof the frying-pan. It then set to work to lick the frying-pan clean. Thenurse, a woman of narrow ideas, had a presentiment that later on it wouldbe ill. My friend explained to her the error the world had hithertocommitted: it had imagined that the parent knew a thing or two that theChild didn't. In future the Children were to do their bringing upthemselves. In the house of the future the parents would be allotted theattics where they would be out of the way. They might occasionally beallowed down to dinner, say, on Sundays. 

The Child, having exhausted all the nourishment the frying-pan contained, sought to develop its brain faculty by thumping itself over the head withthe flat of the thing. With the selfishness of the averageparent--thinking chiefly of what the Coroner might say, and indifferentto the future of humanity, my friend insisted upon changing the game. 

His foolish talk. 

The parent does not even know how to talk to his own Child. The Child isyearning to acquire a correct and dignified mode of expression. Theparent says: "Did ums. Did naughty table hurt ickle tootsie pootsies?Baby say: ''Oo naughty table. Me no love 'oo. '"

The Child despairs of ever learning English. What should we thinkourselves were we to join a French class, and were the Instructor tocommence talking to us French of this description? What the Child, according to the gentleman from Cambridge, says to itself is, "Oh for one hour's intelligent conversation with a human being who cantalk the language. "

Will not the young gentleman from Cambridge descend to detail? Will henot give us a specimen dialogue?

A celebrated lady writer, who has made herself the mouthpiece of feminineindignation against male stupidity, took up the cudgels a little whileago on behalf of Mrs. Caudle. She admitted Mrs. Caudle appeared to be asomewhat foolish lady. "_But what had Caudle ever done to improve Mrs. Caudle's mind_?" Had he ever sought, with intelligent illuminatingconversation, to direct her thoughts towards other topics than lentumbrellas and red-headed minxes?

It is my complaint against so many of our teachers. They scold us forwhat we do, but so rarely tell us what we ought to do. Tell me how totalk to my baby, and I am willing to try. It is not as if I took apersonal pride in the phrase: "Did ums. " I did not even invent it. Ifound it, so to speak, when I got here, and my experience is that itsoothes the Child. When he is howling, and I say "Did ums" withsympathetic intonation, he stops crying. Possibly enough it isastonishment at the ineptitude of the remark that silences him. Maybe itis that minor troubles are lost sight of face to face with the reflectionthat this is the sort of father with which fate has provided him. Butmay not even this be useful to him? He has got to meet with stupidpeople in the world. Let him begin by contemplating me. It will makethings easier for him later on. I put forward the idea in the hope ofcomforting the young gentleman from Cambridge. 

We injure the health of the Child by enforcing on it silence. We have astupid formula that children should be seen and not heard. We deny itexercise to its lungs. We discourage its natural and laudable curiosityby telling it not to worry us--not to ask so many questions. 

Won't somebody lend the young gentleman from Cambridge a small andhealthy child just for a week or so, and let the bargain be that he liveswith it all the time? The young gentleman from Cambridge thinks, when wecall up the stairs to say that if we hear another sound from the nurseryduring the next two hours we will come up and do things to that Child themere thought of which should appal it, that is silencing the Child. Itdoes not occur to him that two minutes later that Child is yelling againat the top of its voice, having forgotten all we ever said. 

The Child of Fiction. 

I know the sort of Child the weeper over Children's wrongs has in hismind. It has deep, soulful, yearning eyes. It moves about the housesoftly, shedding an atmosphere of patient resignation. It says: "Yes, dear papa. " "No, dear mamma. " It has but one ambition--to be good anduseful. It has beautiful thoughts about the stars. You don't knowwhether it is in the house or isn't: you find it with its little facepressed close against the window-pane watching the golden sunset. Nobodyunderstands it. It blesses the old people and dies. One of these daysthe young gentleman from Cambridge will, one hopes, have a Baby of hisown--a real Child: and serve him darn-well right. 

At present he is labouring under a wrong conception of the article. Hesays we over-educate it. We clog its wonderful brain with a mass ofuninteresting facts and foolish formulas that we call knowledge. He doesnot know that all this time the Child is alive and kicking. He is underthe delusion that the Child is taking all this lying down. We tell theChild it has got to be quiet, or else we will wring its neck. Thegentleman from Cambridge pictures the Child as from that moment a silentspirit moving voiceless towards the grave. 

We catch the Child in the morning, and clean it up, and put a littlesatchel on its back, and pack it off to school; and the maiden ladyUnderstander pictures that Child wasting the all too brief period ofyouth crowding itself up with knowledge. 

My dear Madam, you take it from me that your tears are being wasted. Youwipe your eyes and cheer up. The dear Child is not going to beoverworked: _he_ is seeing to that. 

As a matter of the fact, the Child of the present day is having, ifanything, too good a time. I shall be considered a brute for sayingthis, but I am thinking of its future, and my opinion is that we aregiving it swelled head. The argument just now in the air is that theparent exists merely for the Children. The parent doesn't count. It isas if a gardener were to say, "Bother the flowers, let them rot. The sooner they are out of the waythe better. The seed is the only thing that interests me. "

You can't produce respectable seed but from carefully cultivated flowers. The philosopher, clamouring for improved Children, will later grasp thefact that the parent is of importance. Then he will change his tactics, and address the Children, and we shall have our time. He will impress onthem how necessary it is for their own sakes that they should be carefulof us. We shall have books written about misunderstood fathers who wereworried into early graves. 

The misunderstood Father. 

Fresh Air Funds will be started for sending parents away to the seasideon visits to kind bachelors living in detached houses, miles away fromChildren. Books will be specially written for us picturing a world whereschool fees are never demanded and babies never howl o' nights. Societiesfor the Prevention of Cruelty to Parents will arise. Little girls whoget their hair entangled and mislay all their clothes just before theyare starting for the party--little boys who kick holes in their bestshoes will be spanked at the public expense. 

CHAPTER XVIII

Marriage and the Joke of it. 

Marriages are made in heaven--"but solely, " it has been added by acynical writer, "for export. " There is nothing more remarkable in humansociology than our attitude towards the institution of marriage. So itcame home to me the other evening as I sat on a cane chair in the ill-lighted schoolroom of a small country town. The occasion was a PennyReading. We had listened to the usual overture from _Zampa_, played bythe lady professor and the eldest daughter of the brewer; to "PhilBlood's Leap, " recited by the curate; to the violin solo by the prettywidow about whom gossip is whispered--one hopes it is not true. Then apale-faced gentleman, with a drooping black moustache, walked on to theplatform. It was the local tenor. He sang to us a song of love. Misunderstandings had arisen; bitter words, regretted as soon as uttered, had pierced the all too sensitive spirit. Parting had followed. Thebroken-hearted one had died believing his affection unrequited. But theangels had since told him; he knew she loved him now--the accent on thenow. 

I glanced around me. We were the usual crowd of mixed humanity--tinkers, tailors, soldiers, sailors, with our cousins, and our sisters, and ourwives. So many of our eyes were wet with tears. Miss Butcher couldhardly repress her sobs. Young Mr. Tinker, his face hidden behind hisprogramme, pretended to be blowing his nose. Mrs. Apothecary's largebosom heaved with heartfelt sighs. The retired Colonel sniffed audibly. Sadness rested on our souls. It might have been so different but forthose foolish, hasty words! There need have been no funeral. Instead, the church might have been decked with bridal flowers. How sweet shewould have looked beneath her orange wreath! How proudly, gladly, hemight have responded "I will, " take her for his wedded wife, to have andto hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer forpoorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death didthem part. And thereto he might have plighted his troth. 

In the silence which reigned after the applause had subsided thebeautiful words of the Marriage Service seemed to be stealing through theroom: that they might ever remain in perfect love and peace together. Thywife shall be as the fruitful vine. Thy children like the olive branchesround about thy table. Lo! thus shall a man be blessed. So shall menlove their wives as their own bodies, and be not bitter against them, giving honour unto them as unto the weaker vessel. Let the wife see thatshe reverence her husband, wearing the ornament of a meek and quietspirit. 

Love and the Satyr. 

All the stories sung by the sweet singers of all time were echoing in ourears--stories of true love that would not run smoothly until the lastchapter; of gallant lovers strong and brave against fate; of tendersweethearts, waiting, trusting, till love's golden crown was won; so theymarried and lived happy ever after. 

Then stepped briskly on the platform a stout, bald-headed man. Wegreeted him with enthusiasm--it was the local low comedian. The pianotinkled saucily. The self-confident man winked and opened wide hismouth. It was a funny song; how we roared with laughter! The last lineof each verse was the same:

"And that's what it's like when you're married. "

"Before it was 'duckie, ' and 'darling, ' and 'dear. ' Now it's 'Take yourcold feet away, Brute! can't you hear?'

"Once they walked hand in hand: 'Me loves ickle 'oo. ' Now he strides onahead" (imitation with aid of umbrella much appreciated; the bald-headedman, in his enthusiasm and owing to the smallness of the platform, sweeping the lady accompanist off her stool), "bawling: 'Come along, do. '"

The bald-headed man interspersed side-splitting patter. The husbandcomes home late; the wife is waiting for him at the top of the stairswith a broom. He kisses the servant-girl. She retaliates by discoveringa cousin in the Guards. 

The comic man retired to an enthusiastic demand for an encore. I lookedaround me at the laughing faces. Miss Butcher had been compelled tostuff her handkerchief into her mouth. Mr. Tinker was wiping his eyes;he was not ashamed this time, they were tears of merriment. Mrs. Apothecary's motherly bosom was shaking like a jelly. The Colonel wasgrinning from ear to ear. 

Later on, as I noticed in the programme, the schoolmistress, an unmarriedlady, was down to sing "Darby and Joan. " She has a sympathetic voice. Her "Darby and Joan" is always popular. The comic man would also againappear in the second part, and would oblige with (by request) "His Mother-in-Law. "

So the quaint comedy continues: To-night we will enjoy _Romeo andJuliet_, for to-morrow we have seats booked for _The Pink Domino_. 

What the Gipsy did not mention. 

"Won't the pretty lady let the poor old gipsy tell her fortune?" Blushes, giggles, protestations. Gallant gentleman friend insists. A dark man isin love with pretty lady. Gipsy sees a marriage not so very far ahead. Pretty lady says "What nonsense!" but looks serious. Pretty lady'spretty friends must, of course, be teasing. Gallant gentleman friend, bycurious coincidence, happens to be dark. Gipsy grins and passes on. 

Is that all the gipsy knows of pretty lady's future? The rheumy, cunningeyes! They were bonny and black many years ago, when the parchment skinwas smooth and fair. They have seen so many a passing show--do they seein pretty lady's hand nothing further?

What would the wicked old eyes foresee did it pay them to speak:--Prettylady crying tears into a pillow. Pretty lady growing ugly, spite andanger spoiling pretty features. Dark young man no longer loving. Darkyoung man hurling bitter words at pretty lady--hurling, maybe, thingsmore heavy. Dark young man and pretty lady listening approvingly tocomic singer, having both discovered: "That's what it's like when you'remarried. "

My friend H. G. Wells wrote a book, "The Island of Dr. Moreau. " I readit in MS. One winter evening in a lonely country house upon the hills, wind screaming to wind in the dark without. The story has haunted meever since. I hear the wind's shrill laughter. The doctor had taken thebeasts of the forest, apes, tigers, strange creatures from the deep, hadfashioned them with hideous cruelty into the shapes of men, had giventhem souls, had taught to them the law. In all things else were theyhuman, but their original instincts their creator's skill had failed toeliminate. All their lives were one long torture. The Law said, "We aremen and women; this we shall do, this we shall not do. " But the ape andtiger still cried aloud within them. 

Civilization lays her laws upon us; they are the laws of gods--of the menthat one day, perhaps, shall come. But the primeval creature of the cavestill cries within us. 

A few rules for Married Happiness. 

The wonder is that not being gods--being mere men and women--marriageworks out as well as it does. We take two creatures with the instinctsof the ape still stirring within them; two creatures fashioned on the lawof selfishness; two self-centred creatures of opposite appetites, ofdesires opposed to one another, of differing moods and fancies; twocreatures not yet taught the lesson of self-control, ofself-renunciation, and bind them together for life in an union so closethat one cannot snore o'nights without disturbing the other's rest; thatone cannot, without risk to happiness, have a single taste unshared bythe other; that neither, without danger of upsetting the whole applecart, so to speak, can have an opinion with which the other does not heartedlyagree. 

Could two angels exist together on such terms without ever quarrelling? Idoubt it. To make marriage the ideal we love to picture it in romance, the elimination of human nature is the first essential. Supremeunselfishness, perfect patience, changeless amiability, we should have tostart with, and continue with, until the end. 

The real Darby and Joan. 

I do not believe in the "Darby and Joan" of the song. They belong tosong-land. To accept them I need a piano, a sympathetic contralto voice, a firelight effect, and that sentimental mood in myself, the foundationof which is a good dinner well digested. But there are Darbys and Joansof real flesh and blood to be met with--God bless them, and send more forour example--wholesome living men and women, brave, struggling, soulswith common-sense. Ah, yes! they have quarrelled; had their dark houseof bitterness, of hate, when he wished to heaven he had never met her, and told her so. How could he have guessed those sweet lips could uttersuch cruel words; those tender eyes, he loved to kiss, flash with scornand anger?

And she, had she known what lay behind; those days when he knelt beforeher, swore that his only dream was to save her from all pain. Passionlies dead; it is a flame that burns out quickly. The most beautiful facein the world grows indifferent to us when we have sat opposite it everymorning at breakfast, every evening at supper, for a brief year or two. Passion is the seed. Love grows from it, a tender sapling, beautiful tolook upon, but wondrous frail, easily broken, easily trampled on duringthose first years of wedded life. Only by much nursing, by long caring-for, watered with tears, shall it grow into a sturdy tree, defiant of thewinds, 'neath which Darby and Joan shall sit sheltered in old age. 

They had commonsense, brave hearts. Darby had expected too much. Darbyhad not made allowance for human nature which he ought to have done, seeing how much he had of it himself. Joan knows he did not mean it. Joan has a nasty temper; she admits it. Joan will try, Darby will try. They kiss again with tears. It is a workaday world; Darby and Joan willtake it as it is, will do their best. A little kindness, a littleclasping of the hands before night comes. 

Many ways of Love. 

Youth deems it heresy, but I sometimes wonder if our English speaking wayis quite the best. I discussed the subject once with an old French lady. The English reader forms his idea of French life from the French novel;it leads to mistaken notions. There are French Darbys, French Joans, many thousands of them. 

"Believe me, " said my old French friend, "your English way is wrong; ourway is not perfect, but it is the better, I am sure. You leave itentirely to the young people. What do they know of life, of themselves, even. He falls in love with a pretty face. She--he danced so well! hewas so agreeable that day of the picnic! If marriage were only for amonth or so; could be ended without harm when the passion was burnt out. Ah, yes! then perhaps you would be right. I loved at eighteen, madly--nearly broke my heart. I meet him occasionally now. My dear"--herhair was silvery white, and I was only thirty-five; she always called me"my dear"; it is pleasant at thirty-five to be talked to as a child. "Hewas a perfect brute, handsome he had been, yes, but all that was changed. He was as stupid as an ox. I never see his poor frightened-looking wifewithout shuddering thinking of what I have escaped. They told me allthat, but I looked only at his face, and did not believe them. Theyforced me into marriage with the kindest man that ever lived. I did notlove him then, but I loved him for thirty years; was it not better?"

"But, my dear friend, " I answered; "that poor, frightened-looking wife ofyour first love! Her marriage also was, I take it, the result ofparental choosing. The love marriage, I admit, as often as not turns outsadly. The children choose ill. Parents also choose ill. I fear thereis no sure receipt for the happy marriage. "

"You are arguing from bad examples, " answered my silver-haired friend;"it is the system that I am defending. A young girl is no judge ofcharacter. She is easily deceived, is wishful to be deceived. As I havesaid, she does not even know herself. She imagines the mood of themoment will remain with her. Only those who have watched over her withloving insight from her infancy know her real temperament. 

"The young man is blinded by his passion. Nature knows nothing ofmarriage, of companionship. She has only one aim. That accomplished, she is indifferent to the future of those she has joined together. Iwould have parents think only of their children's happiness, giving toworldly considerations their true value, but nothing beyond, choosing fortheir children with loving care, with sense of their greatresponsibility. "

Which is it?

"I fear our young people would not be contented with our choosing, " Isuggested. 

"Are they so contented with their own, the honeymoon over?" she respondedwith a smile. 

We agreed it was a difficult problem viewed from any point. 

But I still think it would be better were we to heap less ridicule uponthe institution. Matrimony cannot be "holy" and ridiculous at the sametime. We have been familiar with it long enough to make up our minds inwhich light to regard it. 

CHAPTER XIX

Man and his Tailor. 

What's wrong with the "Made-up Tie"? I gather from the fashionablenovelist that no man can wear a made-up tie and be a gentleman. He maybe a worthy man, clever, well-to-do, eligible from every other point ofview; but She, the refined heroine, can never get over the fact that hewears a made-up tie. It causes a shudder down her high-bred spinewhenever she thinks of it. There is nothing else to be said against him. There is nothing worse about him than this--he wears a made-up tie. Itis all sufficient. No true woman could ever care for him, no reallyclassy society ever open its doors to him. 

I am worried about this thing because, to confess the horrid truth, Iwear a made-up tie myself. On foggy afternoons I steal out of the housedisguised. They ask me where I am going in a hat that comes down over myears, and why I am wearing blue spectacles and a false beard, but I willnot tell them. I creep along the wall till I find a common hosier'sshop, and then, in an assumed voice, I tell the man what it is I want. They come to fourpence halfpenny each; by taking the half-dozen I getthem for a trifle less. They are put on in a moment, and, to my vulgareye, look neat and tasteful. 

Of course, I know I am not a gentleman. I have given up hopes of everbeing one. Years ago, when life presented possibilities, I thought thatwith pains and intelligence I might become one. I never succeeded. Itall depends on being able to tie a bow. Round the bed-post, or the neckof the water-jug, I could tie the wretched thing to perfection. If onlythe bed-post or the water-jug could have taken my place and gone to theparty instead of me, life would have been simpler. The bed-post and thewater-jug, in its neat white bow, looked like a gentleman--thefashionable novelist's idea of a gentleman. Upon myself the result wasotherwise, suggesting always a feeble attempt at suicide bystrangulation. I could never understand how it was done. There weremoments when it flashed across me that the secret lay in being able toturn one's self inside out, coming up with one's arms and legs the otherway round. Standing on one's head might have surmounted the difficulty;but the higher gymnastics Nature has denied to me. "The Boneless Wonder"or the "Man Serpent" could, I felt, be a gentleman so easily. To one towhom has been given only the common ordinary joints gentlemanliness isapparently an impossible ideal. 

It is not only the tie. I never read the fashionable novel withoutmisgiving. Some hopeless bounder is being described:

"If you want to know what he is like, " says the Peer of the Realm, throwing himself back in his deep easy-chair, and puffing lazily at hiscigar of delicate aroma, "he is the sort of man that wears three studs inhis shirt. "

The difficulty of being a Gentleman. 

Merciful heavens! I myself wear three studs in my shirt. I also am ahopeless bounder, and I never knew it. It comes upon me like athunderbolt. I thought three studs were fashionable. The idiot at theshop told me three studs were all the rage, and I ordered two dozen. Ican't afford to throw them away. Till these two dozen shirts are wornout, I shall have to remain a hopeless bounder. 

Why have we not a Minister of the Fine Arts? Why does not a paternalGovernment fix notices at the street corners, telling the would-begentleman how many studs he ought to wear, what style of necktie nowdistinguishes the noble-minded man from the base-hearted? They areprompt enough with their police regulations, their vaccination orders--thehigher things of life they neglect. 

I select at random another masterpiece of English literature. 

"My dear, " says Lady Montresor, with her light aristocratic laugh, "yousurely cannot seriously think of marrying a man who wears socks withyellow spots?"

Lady Emmelina sighs. 

"He is very nice, " she murmurs, "but I suppose you are right. I supposethat sort of man does get on your nerves after a time. "

"My dear child, " says Lady Montresor, "he is impossible. "

In a cold sweat I rush upstairs into my bedroom. 

I thought so: I am always wrong. All my best socks have yellow spots. Irather fancied them. They were expensive, too, now I come to think ofit. 

What am I to do? If I sacrifice them and get red spots, then red spots, for all I know, may be wrong. I have no instinct. The fashionablenovelist never helps one. He tells us what is wrong, but he does nottell us what is right. It is creative criticism that I feel the need of. Why does not the Lady Montresor go on? Tell me what sort of socks theideal lover ought to wear. There are so many varieties of socks. Whatis a would-be-gentleman to do? Would it be of any use writing to thefashionable novelist:--

How we might, all of us, be Gentlemen. 

"Dear Mr. Fashionable Novelist (or should it be Miss?), --Before going tomy tailor, I venture to write to you on a subject of some importance. Iam fairly well educated, of good family and address, and, so my friendstell me, of passable appearance. I yearn to become a gentleman. If itis not troubling you too much, would you mind telling me how to set aboutthe business? What socks and ties ought I to wear? Do I wear a flowerin my button-hole, or is that a sign of a coarse mind? How many buttonson a morning coat show a beautiful nature? Does a stand-up collar with atennis shirt prove that you are of noble descent, or, on the contrary, stamp you as a _parvenu_? If answering these questions imposes too greata tax on your time, perhaps you would not mind telling me how youyourself know these things. Who is your authority, and when is he athome? I should apologize for writing to you but that I feel you willsympathize with my appeal. It seems a pity there should be so manyvulgar, ill-bred people in the world when a little knowledge on thesetrivial points would enable us all to become gentlemen. Thanking you inanticipation, I remain . . . "

Would he or she tell us? Or would the fashionable novelist reply as Ionce overheard a harassed mother retort upon one of her inquiringchildren. Most of the afternoon she had been rushing out into thegarden, where games were in progress, to tell the children what they mustnot do:--"Tommy, you know you must not do that. Haven't you got anysense at all?" "Johnny, you wicked boy, how dare you do that; how manymore times do you want me to tell you?" "Jane, if you do that again youwill go straight to bed, my girl!" and so on. 

At length the door was opened from without, and a little face peeped in:"Mother!"

"Now, what is it? can't I ever get a moment's peace?"

"Mother, please would you mind telling us something we might do?"

The lady almost fell back on the floor in her astonishment. The idea hadnever occurred to her. 

"What may you do! Don't ask me. I am tired enough of telling you whatnot to do. "

Things a Gentleman should never do. 

I remember when a young man, wishful to conform to the rules of goodsociety, I bought a book of etiquette for gentlemen. Its fault was justthis. It told me through many pages what not to do. Beyond that itseemed to have no idea. I made a list of things it said a gentlemanshould _never_ do: it was a lengthy list. 

Determined to do the job completely while I was about it, I bought otherbooks of etiquette and added on their list of "Nevers. " What one bookleft out another supplied. There did not seem much left for a gentlemanto do. 

I concluded by the time I had come to the end of my books, that to be atrue gentleman my safest course would be to stop in bed for the rest ofmy life. By this means only could I hope to avoid every possible _fauxpas_, every solecism. I should have lived and died a gentleman. I couldhave had it engraved upon my tombstone:

"He never in his life committed a single act unbecoming to a gentleman. "

To be a gentleman is not so easy, perhaps, as a fashionable novelistimagines. One is forced to the conclusion that it is not a questionentirely for the outfitter. My attention was attracted once by a noticein the window of a West-End emporium, "Gentlemen supplied. "

It is to such like Universal Providers that the fashionable novelist goesfor his gentleman. The gentleman is supplied to him complete in everydetail. If the reader be not satisfied, that is the reader's fault. Heis one of those tiresome, discontented customers who does not know a goodarticle when he has got it. 

I was told the other day of the writer of a musical farce (or is itcomedy?) who was most desirous that his leading character should be aperfect gentleman. During the dress rehearsal, the actor representingthe part had to open his cigarette case and request another perfectgentleman to help himself. The actor drew forth his case. It caught thecritical eye of the author. 

"Good heavens!" he cried, "what do you call that?"

"A cigarette case, " answered the actor. 

"But, my dear boy, " exclaimed the author, "surely it is silver?"

"I know, " admitted the actor, "it does perhaps suggest that I am livingbeyond my means, but the truth is I picked it up cheap. "

The author turned to the manager. 

"This won't do, " he explained, "a real gentleman always carries a goldcigarette case. He must be a gentleman, or there's no point in theplot. "

"Don't let us endanger any point the plot may happen to possess, forgoodness sake, " agreed the manager, "let him by all means have a goldcigarette case. "

How one may know the perfect Gentleman. 

So, regardless of expense, a gold cigarette case was obtained and putdown to expenses. And yet on the first night of that musical play, whenthat leading personage smashed a tray over a waiter's head, and, after arow with the police, came home drunk to his wife, even that goldcigarette case failed to convince one that the man was a gentleman beyondall doubt. 

The old writers appear to have been singularly unaware of the importanceattaching to these socks, and ties, and cigarette-cases. They told usmerely what the man felt and thought. What reliance can we place uponthem? How could they possibly have known what sort of man he wasunderneath his clothes? Tweed or broadcloth is not transparent. Evencould they have got rid of his clothes there would have remained hisflesh and bones. It was pure guess-work. They did not observe. 

The modern writer goes to work scientifically. He tells us that thecreature wore a made-up tie. From that we know he was not a gentleman;it follows as the night the day. The fashionable novelist notices theyoung man's socks. It reveals to us whether the marriage would have beensuccessful or a failure. It is necessary to convince us that the hero isa perfect gentleman: the author gives him a gold cigarette case. 

A well-known dramatist has left it on record that comedy cannot existnowadays, for the simple reason that gentlemen have given up taking snuffand wearing swords. How can one have comedy in company withfrock-coats--without its "Las" and its "Odds Bobs. "

The sword may have been helpful. I have been told that at _levees_ Citymen, unaccustomed to the thing, have, with its help, provided comedy forthe rest of the company. 

But I take it this is not the comedy our dramatist had in mind. 

Why not an Exhibition of Gentlemen?

It seems a pity that comedy should disappear from among us. If it dependentirely on swords and snuff-boxes, would it not be worth the while ofthe Society of Authors to keep a few gentlemen specially trained? Maybesome sympathetic theatrical manager would lend us costumes of theeighteenth century. We might provide them with swords and snuff-boxes. They might meet, say, once a week, in a Queen Anne drawing-room, especially prepared by Gillow, and go through their tricks. Authorsseeking high-class comedy might be admitted to a gallery. 

Perhaps this explains why old-fashioned readers complain that we do notgive them human nature. How can we? Ladies and gentlemen nowadays don'twear the proper clothes. Evidently it all depends upon the clothes. 

CHAPTER XX

Woman and her behaviour. 

Should women smoke?

The question, in four-inch letters, exhibited on a placard outside asmall newsvendor's shop, caught recently my eye. The wanderer throughLondon streets is familiar with such-like appeals to his decision:"Should short men marry tall wives?" "Ought we to cut our hair?" "Shouldsecond cousins kiss?" Life's problems appear to be endless. 

Personally, I am not worrying myself whether women should smoke or not. It seems to me a question for the individual woman to decide for herself. I like women who smoke; I can see no objection to their smoking. Smokingsoothes the nerves. Women's nerves occasionally want soothing. Thetiresome idiot who argues that smoking is unwomanly denounces thedrinking of tea as unmanly. He is a wooden-headed person who derives allhis ideas from cheap fiction. The manly man of cheap fiction smokes apipe and drinks whisky. That is how we know he is a man. The womanlywoman--well, I always feel I could make a better woman myself out of anold clothes shop and a hair-dresser's block. 

But, as I have said, the question does not impress me as one demanding myparticular attention. I also like the woman who does not smoke. I havemet in my time some very charming women who do not smoke. It may be asign of degeneracy, but I am prepared to abdicate my position of woman'sgod, leaving her free to lead her own life. 

Woman's God. 

Candidly, the responsibility of feeling myself answerable for all a womandoes or does not do would weigh upon me. There are men who are willingto take this burden upon themselves, and a large number of women arestill anxious that they should continue to bear it. I spoke quiteseriously to a young lady not long ago on the subject of tight lacing;undoubtedly she was injuring her health. She admitted it herself. 

"I know all you can say, " she wailed; "I daresay a lot of it is true. Those awful pictures where one sees--well, all the things one does notwant to think about. If they are correct, it must be bad, squeezing itall up together. "

"Then why continue to do so?" I argued. 

"Oh, it's easy enough to talk, " she explained; "a few old fogies likeyou"--I had been speaking very plainly to her, and she was cross withme--"may pretend you don't like small waists, but _the average mandoes_. "

Poor girl! She was quite prepared to injure herself for life, to damageher children's future, to be uncomfortable for fifteen hours a day, allto oblige the average man. 

It is a compliment to our sex. What man would suffer injury and tortureto please the average woman? This frenzied desire of woman to conform toour ideals is touching. A few daring spirits of late years haveexhibited a tendency to seek for other gods--for ideals of their own. Wecall them the unsexed women. The womanly women lift up their hands inhorror of such blasphemy. 

When I was a boy no womanly woman rode a bicycle--tricycles werepermitted. On three wheels you could still be womanly, but on two youwere "a creature"! The womanly woman, seeing her approach, would drawdown the parlour blind with a jerk, lest the children looking out mightcatch a glimpse of her, and their young souls be smirched for alleternity. 

No womanly woman rode inside a hansom or outside a 'bus. I remember theday my own dear mother climbed outside a 'bus for the first time in herlife. She was excited, and cried a little; but nobody--heaven bepraised!--saw us--that is, nobody of importance. And afterwards sheconfessed the air was pleasant. 

"Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor yet the last to lay theold aside, " is a safe rule for those who would always retain the goodopinion of that all-powerful, but somewhat unintelligent, incubus, "theaverage person, " but the pioneer, the guide, is necessary. That is, ifthe world is to move forward. 

The freedom-loving girl of to-day, who can enjoy a walk by herselfwithout losing her reputation, who can ride down the street on her "bike"without being hooted at, who can play a mixed double at tennis withoutbeing compelled by public opinion to marry her partner, who can, inshort, lead a human creature's life, and not that of a lap-dog led aboutat the end of a string, might pause to think what she owes to the"unsexed creatures" who fought her battle for her fifty years ago. 

Those unsexed Creatures. 

Can the working woman of to-day, who may earn her own living, if shewill, without loss of the elementary rights of womanhood, think of thebachelor girl of a short generation ago without admiration of her pluck?There were ladies in those day too "unwomanly" to remain helpless burdenson overworked fathers and mothers, too "unsexed" to marry the first manthat came along for the sake of their bread and butter. They foughttheir way into journalism, into the office, into the shop. The reformeris not always the pleasantest man to invite to a tea-party. Maybe thesewomen who went forward with the flag were not the most charming of theirsex. The "Dora Copperfield" type will for some time remain the youngman's ideal, the model the young girl puts before herself. Myself, Ithink Dora Copperfield charming, but a world of Dora Copperfields!

The working woman is a new development in sociology. She has manylessons to learn, but one has hopes of her. It is said that she isunfitting herself to be a wife and mother. If the ideal helpmeet for aman be an animated Dresden china shepherdess--something that looks prettyon the table, something to be shown round to one's friends, somethingthat can be locked up safely in a cupboard, that asks no questions, and, therefore, need be told no lies--then a woman who has learnt something ofthe world, who has formed ideas of her own, will not be the ideal wife. 

References given--and required. 

Maybe the average man will not be her ideal husband. Each Michaelmas ata little town in the Thames Valley with which I am acquainted there isheld a hiring fair. A farmer one year laid his hand on a lively-lookinglad, and asked him if he wanted a job. It was what the boy was lookingfor. 

"Got a character?" asked the farmer. The boy replied that he had for thelast two years been working for Mr. Muggs, the ironmonger--felt sure thatMr. Muggs would give him a good character. 

"Well, go and ask Mr. Muggs to come across and speak to me, I will waithere, " directed the would-be employer. Five minutes went by--tenminutes. No Mr. Muggs appeared. Later in the afternoon the farmer metthe boy again. 

"Mr. Muggs never came near me with that character of yours, " said thefarmer. 

"No, sir, " answered the boy, "I didn't ask him to. "

"Why not?" inquired the farmer. 

"Well, I told him who it was that wanted it"--the boy hesitated. 

"Well?" demanded the farmer, impatiently. 

"Well, then, he told me yours, " explained the boy. 

Maybe the working woman, looking for a husband, and not merely alivelihood, may end by formulating standards of her own. She may end bydemanding the manly man and moving about the world, knowing something oflife, may arrive at the conclusion that something more is needed than thesmoking of pipes and the drinking of whiskies and sodas. We must beprepared for this. The sheltered woman who learnt her life from fairystories is a dream of the past. Woman has escaped from her "shelter"--sheis on the loose. For the future we men have got to accept theemancipated woman as an accomplished fact. 

The ideal World. 

Many of us are worried about her. What is going to become of the home? Iadmit there is a more ideal existence where the working woman would findno place; it is in a world that exists only on the comic opera stage. There every picturesque village contains an equal number of ladies andgentlemen nearly all the same height and weight, to all appearance of thesame age. Each Jack has his Jill, and does not want anybody else's. There are no complications: one presumes they draw lots and fall in lovethe moment they unscrew the paper. They dance for awhile on grass whichis never damp, and then into the conveniently situated ivy-covered churchthey troop in pairs and are wedded off hand by a white-haired clergyman, who is a married man himself. 

Ah, if the world were but a comic opera stage, there would be no need forworking women! As a matter of fact, so far as one can judge from thefront of the house, there are no working men either. 

But outside the opera house in the muddy street Jack goes home to histhird floor back, or his chambers in the Albany, according to his caste, and wonders when the time will come when he will be able to support awife. And Jill climbs on a penny 'bus, or steps into the familybrougham, and dreams with regret of a lost garden, where there was justone man and just one woman, and clothes grew on a fig tree. 

With the progress of civilization--utterly opposed as it is to allNature's intentions--the number of working women will increase. Withsome friends the other day I was discussing motor-cars, and one gentlemanwith sorrow in his voice--he is the type of Conservative who would haveregretted the passing away of the glacial period--opined that motor-carshad come to stay. 

"You mean, " said another, "they have come to go. " The working woman, however much we may regret it, has come to go, and she is going it. Weshall have to accept her and see what can be done with her. One thing iscertain, we shall not solve the problem of the twentieth century byregretting the simple sociology of the Stone Age. 

A Lover's View. 

Speaking as a lover, I welcome the openings that are being given to womento earn their own livelihood. I can conceive of no more degradingprofession for a woman--no profession more calculated to unfit her forbeing that wife and mother we talk so much about than the profession thatup to a few years ago was the only one open to her--the profession ofhusband-hunting. 

As a man, I object to being regarded as woman's last refuge, her one andonly alternative to the workhouse. I cannot myself see why the woman whohas faced the difficulties of existence, learnt the lesson of life, should not make as good a wife and mother as the ignorant girl takendirect, one might almost say, from the nursery, and, without theslightest preparation, put in a position of responsibility that to athinking person must be almost appalling. 

It has been said that the difference between men and women is this: Thatthe man goes about the world making it ready for the children, that thewoman stops at home making the children ready for the world. Will notshe do it much better for knowing something of the world, for knowingsomething of the temptations, the difficulties, her own children willhave to face, for having learnt by her own experience to sympathize withthe struggles, the sordid heart-breaking cares that man has daily tocontend with?

Civilization is ever undergoing transformation, but human nature remains. The bachelor girl, in her bed-sitting room, in her studio, in her flat, will still see in the shadows the vision of the home, will still hear inthe silence the sound of children's voices, will still dream of thelover's kiss that is to open up new life to her. She is not quite sounsexed as you may think, my dear womanly madame. A male friend of minewas telling me of a catastrophe that once occurred at a station in theEast Indies. 

No time to think of Husbands. 

A fire broke out at night, and everybody was in terror lest it shouldreach the magazine. The women and children were being hurried to theships, and two ladies were hastening past my friend. One of them paused, and, clasping her hands, demanded of him if he knew what had become ofher husband. Her companion was indignant. 

"For goodness' sake, don't dawdle, Maria, " she cried; "this is no time tothink of husbands. "

There is no reason to fear that the working woman will ever cease tothink of husbands. Maybe, as I have said, she will demand a betterarticle than the mere husband-hunter has been able to stand out for. Maybe she herself will have something more to give; maybe she will bringto him broader sympathies, higher ideals. The woman who has herself beendown among the people, who has faced life in the open, will know that thehome is but one cell of the vast hive. 

We shall, perhaps, hear less of the woman who "has her own home andchildren to think of--really takes no interest in these matters"--thesematters of right and wrong, these matters that spell the happiness ormisery of millions. 

The Wife of the Future. 

Maybe the bridegroom of the future will not say, "I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come, " but "I have married a wife; we will bothcome. "