Not that it Matters / Milne, A. A. (Alan Alexander), 1882-1956

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Not that it Matters, by A. A. Milne
(#3 in our series by A. A. Milne)

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.

This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.

Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.


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

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

*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****


Title: Not that it Matters

Author: A. A. Milne

Release Date: June, 2004  [EBook #5803]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on September 4, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, NOT THAT IT MATTERS ***




Scanned by Charles Aldarondo, text proof read by the volunteers
of the Distributed Proofreaders site
(http://charlz.dns2go.com/gutenberg/).
Post production formatting by JC Byers.



                      Not That it Matters
                               by
                          A. A. Milne



                            CONTENTS

The Pleasure of Writing
Acacia Road
My Library
The Chase
Superstition
The Charm of Golf
Goldfish
Saturday to Monday
The Pond
A Seventeenth-century Story
Our Learned Friends
A Word for Autumn
A Christmas Number
No Flowers by Request
The Unfairness of Things
Daffodils
A Household Book
Lunch
The Friend of Man
The Diary Habit
Midsummer Day
At the Bookstall
"Who's Who"
A Day at Lord's
By the Sea
Golden Fruit
Signs of Character
Intellectual Snobbery
A Question of Form
A Slice of Fiction
The Label
The Profession
Smoking as a Fine Art
The Path to Glory
A Problem in Ethics
The Happiest Half-hours of Life
Natural Science
On Going Dry
A Misjudged Game
A Doubtful Character
Thoughts on Thermometers
For a Wet Afternoon
Declined with Thanks
On Going into a House
The Ideal Author





Not That it Matters





The Pleasure of Writing



Sometimes when the printer is waiting for an article which really
should have been sent to him the day before, I sit at my desk and
wonder if there is any possible subject in the whole world upon
which I can possibly find anything to say. On one such occasion I
left it to Fate, which decided, by means of a dictionary opened
at random, that I should deliver myself of a few thoughts about
goldfish. (You will find this article later on in the book.) But
to-day I do not need to bother about a subject. To-day I am
without a care. Nothing less has happened than that I have a new
nib in my pen.

In the ordinary way, when Shakespeare writes a tragedy, or Mr.
Blank gives you one of his charming little essays, a certain
amount of thought goes on before pen is put to paper. One cannot
write "Scene I. An Open Place. Thunder and Lightning. Enter Three
Witches," or "As I look up from my window, the nodding daffodils
beckon to me to take the morning," one cannot give of one's best
in this way on the spur of the moment. At least, others cannot.
But when I have a new nib in my pen, then I can go straight from
my breakfast to the blotting-paper, and a new sheet of foolscap
fills itself magically with a stream of blue-black words. When
poets and idiots talk of the pleasure of writing, they mean the
pleasure of giving a piece of their minds to the public; with an
old nib a tedious business. They do not mean (as I do) the
pleasure of the artist in seeing beautifully shaped "k's" and
sinuous "s's" grow beneath his steel. Anybody else writing this
article might wonder "Will my readers like it?" I only tell
myself "How the compositors will love it!"

But perhaps they will not love it. Maybe I am a little above
their heads. I remember on one First of January receiving an
anonymous postcard wishing me a happy New Year, and suggesting
that I should give the compositors a happy New Year also by
writing more generously. In those days I got a thousand words
upon one sheet 8 in. by 5 in. I adopted the suggestion, but it
was a wrench; as it would be for a painter of miniatures forced
to spend the rest of his life painting the Town Council of
Boffington in the manner of Herkomer. My canvases are bigger now,
but they are still impressionistic. "Pretty, but what is it?"
remains the obvious comment; one steps back a pace and saws the
air with the hand; "You see it better from here, my love," one
says to one's wife. But if there be one compositor not carried
away by the mad rush of life, who in a leisurely hour (the
luncheon one, for instance) looks at the beautiful words with the
eye of an artist, not of a wage-earner, he, I think, will be
satisfied; he will be as glad as I am of my new nib. Does it
matter, then, what you who see only the printed word think of it?

A woman, who had studied what she called the science of
calligraphy, once offered to tell my character from my
handwriting. I prepared a special sample for her; it was full of
sentences like "To be good is to be happy," "Faith is the lode-
star of life," "We should always be kind to animals," and so on.
I wanted her to do her best. She gave the morning to it, and told
me at lunch that I was "synthetic." Probably you think that the
compositor has failed me here and printed "synthetic" when I
wrote "sympathetic." In just this way I misunderstood my
calligraphist at first, and I looked as sympathetic as I could.
However, she repeated "synthetic," so that there could be no
mistake. I begged her to tell me more, for I had thought that
every letter would reveal a secret, but all she would add was
"and not analytic." I went about for the rest of the day saying
proudly to myself "I am synthetic! I am synthetic! I am
synthetic!" and then I would add regretfully, "Alas, I am not
analytic!" I had no idea what it meant.

And how do you think she had deduced my syntheticness? Simply
from the fact that, to save time, I join some of my words
together. That isn't being synthetic, it is being in a hurry.
What she should have said was, "You are a busy man; your life is
one constant whirl; and probably you are of excellent moral
character and kind to animals." Then one would feel that one did
not write in vain.

My pen is getting tired; it has lost its first fair youth.
However, I can still go on. I was at school with a boy whose
uncle made nibs. If you detect traces of erudition in this
article, of which any decent man might be expected to be
innocent, I owe it to that boy. He once told me how many nibs his
uncle made in a year; luckily I have forgotten. Thousands,
probably. Every term that boy came back with a hundred of them;
one expected him to be very busy. After all, if you haven't the
brains or the inclination to work, it is something to have the
nibs. These nibs, however, were put to better uses. There is a
game you can play with them; you flick your nib against the other
boy's nib, and if a lucky shot puts the head of yours under his,
then a sharp tap capsizes him, and you have a hundred and one in
your collection. There is a good deal of strategy in the game
(whose finer points I have now forgotten), and I have no doubt
that they play it at the Admiralty in the off season. Another
game was to put a clean nib in your pen, place it lightly against
the cheek of a boy whose head was turned away from you, and then
call him suddenly. As Kipling says, we are the only really
humorous race. This boy's uncle died a year or two later and left
about œ80,000, but none of it to his nephew. Of course, he had
had the nibs every term. One mustn't forget that.

The nib I write this with is called the "Canadian Quill"; made, I
suppose, from some steel goose which flourishes across the seas,
and which Canadian housewives have to explain to their husbands
every Michaelmas. Well, it has  seen me to the end of what I
wanted to say--if indeed I wanted to say anything. For it was
enough for me this morning just to write; with spring coming in
through the open windows and my good Canadian quill in my hand, I
could have copied out a directory. That is the real pleasure of
writing.





Acacia Road




Of course there are disadvantages of suburban life. In the fourth
act of the play there may be a moment when the fate of the erring
wife hangs in the balance, and utterly regardless of this the
last train starts from Victoria at 11.15. It must be annoying to
have to leave her at such a crisis; it must be annoying too to
have to preface the curtailed pleasures of the play with a meat
tea and a hasty dressing in the afternoon. But, after all, one
cannot judge life from its facilities for playgoing. It would be
absurd to condemn the suburbs because of the 11.15.

There is a road eight miles from London up which I have walked
sometimes on my way to golf. I think it is called Acacia Road;
some pretty name like that. It may rain in Acacia Road, but never
when I am there. The sun shines on Laburnum Lodge with its pink
may tree, on the Cedars with its two clean limes, it  casts its
shadow on the ivy of Holly House, and upon the whole road there
rests a pleasant afternoon peace. I cannot walk along Acacia Road
without feeling that life could be very happy in it--when the sun
is shining. It must be jolly, for instance, to live in Laburnum
Lodge with its pink may tree. Sometimes I fancy that a suburban
home is the true home after all.

When I pass Laburnum Lodge I think of Him saying good-bye to Her
at the gate, as he takes the air each morning on his way to the
station. What if the train is crowded? He has his newspaper. That
will see him safely to the City. And then how interesting will be
everything which happens to him there, since he has Her to tell
it to when he comes home. The most ordinary street accident
becomes exciting if a story has to be made of it. Happy the man
who can say of each little incident, "I must remember to tell Her
when I get home." And it is only in the suburbs that one "gets
home." One does not "get home" to Grosvenor Square; one is simply
"in" or "out."

But the master of Laburnum Lodge may have something better to
tell his wife than the incident of the runaway horse; he may have
heard a new funny story at lunch. The joke may have been all over
the City, but it is unlikely that his wife in the suburbs will
have heard it. Put it on the credit side of marriage that you can
treasure up your jokes for some one else. And perhaps She has
something for him too; some backward plant, it may be, has burst
suddenly into flower; at least he will walk more eagerly up
Acacia Road for wondering. So it will be a happy meeting under
the pink may tree of Laburnum Lodge when these two are restored
safely to each other after the excitements of the day. Possibly
they will even do a little gardening together in the still
glowing evening.

If life has anything more to offer than this it will be found at
Holly House, where there are babies. Babies give an added
excitement to the master's homecoming, for almost anything may
have happened to them while he has been away. Dorothy perhaps has
cut a new tooth and Anne may have said something really clever
about the baker's man. In the morning, too, Anne will walk with
him to the end of the road; it is perfectly safe, for in Acacia
Road nothing untoward could occur. Even the dogs are quiet and
friendly. I like to think of the master of Holly House saying
good-bye to Anne at the end of the road and knowing that she will
be alive when he comes back in the evening. That ought to make
the day's work go quickly.

But it is the Cedars which gives us the secret of the happiness
of the suburbs. The Cedars you observe is a grander house
altogether; there is a tennis lawn at the back. And there are
grown-up sons and daughters at the Cedars. In such houses in
Acacia Road the delightful business of love-making is in full
swing. Marriages are not "arranged" in the suburbs; they grow
naturally out of the pleasant intercourse between the Cedars, the
Elms, and Rose Bank. I see Tom walking over to the Elms, racket
in hand, to play tennis with Miss Muriel. He is hoping for an
invitation to remain to supper, and indeed I think he will get
it. Anyhow he is going to ask Miss Muriel to come across to lunch
to-morrow; his mother has so much to talk to her about. But it
will be Tom who will do most of the talking.

I am sure that the marriages made in Acacia Road are happy. That
is why I have no fears for Holly House and Laburnum Lodge. Of
course they didn't make love in this Acacia Road; they are come
from the Acacia Road of some other suburb, wisely deciding that
they will be better away from their people. But they met each
other in the same way as Tom and Muriel are meeting; He has seen
Her in Her own home, in His home, at the tennis club, surrounded
by the young bounders (confound them!) of Turret Court and the
Wilderness; She has heard of him falling off his bicycle or
quarrelling with his father. Bless you, they know all about each
other; they are going to be happy enough together.

And now I think of it, why of course there is a local theatre
where they can do their play- going, if they are as keen on it as
that. For ten shillings they can spread from the stage box an air
of luxury and refinement over the house; and they can nod in an
easy manner across the stalls to the Cedars in the opposite box--
in the deep recesses of which Tom and Muriel, you may be sure,
are holding hands.





My Library



When I moved into a new house a few weeks ago, my books, as was
natural, moved with me. Strong, perspiring men shovelled them
into packing-cases, and staggered with them to the van, cursing
Caxton as they went. On arrival at this end, they staggered with
them into the room selected for my library, heaved off the lids
of the cases, and awaited orders. The immediate need was for an
emptier room. Together we hurried the books into the new white
shelves which awaited them, the order in which they stood being
of no matter so long as they were off the floor. Armful after
armful was hastily stacked, the only pause being when (in the
curious way in which these things happen) my own name suddenly
caught the eye of the foreman. "Did you write this one, sir?" he
asked. I admitted it. "H'm," he said noncommittally. He glanced
along the names of every armful after that, and appeared a
little surprised at the number of books which I hadn't written.
An easy-going profession, evidently.

So we got the books up at last, and there they are still. I told
myself that when a wet afternoon came along I would arrange them
properly. When the wet afternoon came, I told myself that I would
arrange them one of these fine mornings. As they are now, I have
to look along every shelf in the search for the book which I
want. To come to Keats is no guarantee that we are on the road to
Shelley. Shelley, if he did not drop out on the way, is probably
next to How to Be a Golfer Though Middle-aged.

Having written as far as this, I had to get up and see where
Shelley really was. It is worse than I thought. He is between
Geometrical Optics and  Studies in New Zealand Scenery. Ella
Wheeler Wilcox, whom I find myself to be entertaining unawares,
sits beside Anarchy or Order, which was apparently "sent in the
hope that you will become a member of the Duty and Discipline
Movement"--a vain hope, it would seem, for I have not yet paid my
subscription. What I Found Out, by an English Governess, shares a
corner with The Recreations of a Country Parson; they are
followed by Villette and Baedeker's Switzerland. Something will
have to be done about it.
But I am wondering what is to be done. If I gave you the
impression that my books were precisely arranged in their old
shelves, I misled you. They were arranged in the order known as
"all anyhow." Possibly they were a little less "anyhow" than they
are now, in that the volumes of any particular work were at least
together, but that is all that can be claimed for them. For years
I put off the business of tidying them up, just as I am putting
it off now. It is not laziness; it is simply that I don't know
how to begin.

Let us suppose that we decide to have all the poetry together. It
sounds reasonable. But then Byron is eleven inches high (my
tallest poet), and Beattie (my shortest) is just over four
inches. How foolish they will look standing side by side. Perhaps
you don't know Beattie, but I assure you that he was a poet. He
wrote those majestic lines:--

  "The shepherd-swain of whom I mention made
   On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock;
   The sickle, scythe or plough he never swayed--
   An honest heart was almost all his stock."

Of course, one would hardly expect a shepherd to sway a plough in
the ordinary way, but Beattie  was quite right to remind us that
Edwin didn't either. Edwin was the name of the shepherd- swain.
"And yet poor Edwin was no vulgar boy," we are told a little
further on in a line that should live. Well, having satisfied you
that Beattie was really a poet, I can now return to my argument
that an eleven-inch Byron cannot stand next to a four-inch
Beattie, and be followed by an eight-inch Cowper, without making
the shelf look silly. Yet how can I discard Beattie-- Beattie who
wrote:--

"And now the downy cheek and deepened voice
 Gave dignity to Edwin's blooming prime."

You see the difficulty. If you arrange your books according to
their contents you are sure to get an untidy shelf. If you
arrange your books according to their size and colour you get an
effective wall, but the poetically inclined visitor may lose
sight of Beattie altogether. Before, then, we decide what to do
about it, we must ask ourselves that very awkward question, "Why
do we have books on our shelves at all?" It is a most
embarrassing question to answer.

Of course, you think that the proper answer (in your own case) is
an indignant protest that you bought them in order to read them,
and that yon put them on your shelves in order that you could
refer to them when necessary. A little reflection will show you
what a stupid answer that is. If you only want to read them, why
are some of them bound in morocco and half-calf and other
expensive coverings? Why did you buy a first edition when a
hundredth edition was so much cheaper? Why have you got half a
dozen copies of The Rubaiyat? What is the particular value of
this other book that you treasure it so carefully? Why, the fact
that its pages are uncut. If you cut the pages and read it, the
value would go.

So, then, your library is not just for reference. You know as
well as I do that it furnishes your room; that it furnishes it
more effectively than does paint or mahogany or china. Of course,
it is nice to have the books there, so that one can refer to them
when one wishes. One may be writing an article on sea-bathing,
for instance, and have come to the sentence which begins: "In the
well-remembered words of Coleridge, perhaps almost too familiar
to be quoted"--and then one may have to look them up. On these
occasions a library is not only ornamental but useful. But do not
let us be ashamed that we find it ornamental. Indeed, the more I
survey it, the more I feel that my library is sufficiently
ornamental as it stands. Any reassembling of the books might
spoil the colour-scheme. Baedeker's Switzerland and Villette are
both in red, a colour which is neatly caught up again, after an
interlude in blue, by a volume of Browning and Jevons' Elementary
Logic. We had a woman here only yesterday who said, "How pretty
your books look," and I am inclined to think that that is good
enough. There is a careless rapture about them which I should
lose if I started to arrange them methodically.

But perhaps I might risk this to the extent of getting all their
heads the same way up. Yes, on one of these fine days (or wet
nights) I shall take my library seriously in hand. There are
still one or two books which are the wrong way round. I shall put
them the right way round.





The Chase



The fact, as revealed in a recent lawsuit, that there is a
gentleman in this country who spends œ10,000 a year upon his
butterfly collection would have disturbed me more in the early
nineties than it does to-day. I can bear it calmly now, but
twenty-five years ago the knowledge would have spoilt my pride in
my own collection, upon which I was already spending the best
part of threepence a week pocket-money. Perhaps, though, I should
have consoled myself with the thought that I was the truer
enthusiast of the two; for when my rival hears of a rare
butterfly in Brazil, he sends a man out to Brazil to capture it,
whereas I, when I heard that there was a Clouded Yellow in the
garden, took good care that nobody but myself encompassed its
death. Our aims also were different. I purposely left Brazil out
of it.

Whether butterfly-hunting is good or bad for the character I
cannot undertake to decide. No doubt it can be justified as
clearly as fox- hunting. If the fox eats chickens, the
butterfly's child eats vegetables; if fox-hunting improves the
breed of horses, butterfly-hunting improves the health of boys.
But at least, we never told ourselves that butterflies liked
being pursued, as (I understand) foxes like being hunted. We were
moderately honest about it. And we comforted ourselves in the end
with the assurance of many eminent naturalists that "insects
don't feel pain."

I have often wondered how naturalists dare to speak with such
authority. Do they never have dreams at night of an after-life in
some other world, wherein they are pursued by giant insects eager
to increase their "naturalist collection"--insects who assure
each other carelessly that "naturalists don't feel pain"? Perhaps
they do so dream. But we, at any rate, slept well, for we had
never dogmatized about a butterfly's feelings. We only quoted the
wise men.

But if there might be doubt about the sensitiveness of a
butterfly, there could be no doubt about his distinguishing
marks. It was amazing to us how many grown-up and (presumably)
educated men and women did not know that a butterfly had knobs on
the end of his antennae, and that the moth had none. Where had
they been all these years to be so ignorant? Well-meaning but
misguided aunts, with mysterious promises of a new butterfly for
our collection, would produce some common Yellow Underwing from
an envelope, innocent (for which they may be forgiven) that only
a personal capture had any value to us, but unforgivably ignorant
that a Yellow Underwing was a moth. We did not collect moths;
there were too many of them. And moths are nocturnal creatures. A
hunter whose bed-time depends upon the whim of another is
handicapped for the night-chase.

But butterflies come out when the sun comes out, which is just
when little boys should be out; and there are not too many
butterflies in England. I knew them all by name once, and could
have recognized any that I saw--yes, even Hampstead's Albion Eye
(or was it Albion's Hampstead Eye?), of which only one specimen
had ever been caught in this country; presumably by Hampstead--or
Albion. In my day-dreams the second specimen was caught by me.
Yet he was an insignificant-looking fellow, and perhaps I should
have been better pleased with a Camberwell Beauty, a Purple
Emperor, or a Swallowtail. Unhappily the Purple Emperor (so the
book told us) haunted the tops of trees, which was to take an
unfair advantage of a boy small for his age, and the Swallowtail
haunted Norfolk, which was equally inconsiderate of a family
which kept holiday in the south. The Camberwell Beauty sounded
more hopeful, but I suppose the trams disheartened him. I doubt
if he ever haunted Camberwell in my time.

With threepence a week one has to be careful. It was necessary to
buy killing-boxes and setting-boards, but butterfly-nets could be
made at home. A stick, a piece of copper wire, and some muslin
were all that were necessary. One liked the muslin to be green,
for there was a feeling that this deceived the butterfly in some
way; he thought that Birnam Wood was merely coming to Dunsinane
when he saw it approaching, arid that the queer- looking thing
behind was some local efflorescence. So he resumed his dalliance
with the herbaceous border, and was never more surprised in his
life than when it turned out to be a boy and a butterfly-net.
Green muslin, then, but a plain piece of cane for the stick. None
of your collapsible fishing-rods--"suitable for a Purple
Emperor." Leave those to the millionaire's sons.

It comes back to me now that I am doing this afternoon what I did
more than twenty-five years ago; I am writing an article upon the
way to make a butterfly-net. For my first contribution to the
press was upon this subject. I sent it to the editor of some
boys' paper, and his failure to print it puzzled me a good deal,
since every word in it (I was sure) was correctly spelt. Of
course, I see now that you want more in an article than that. But
besides being puzzled I was extremely disappointed, for I wanted
badly the money that it should have brought in. I wanted it in
order to buy a butterfly-net; the stick and the copper wire and
the green muslin being (in my hands, at any rate) more suited to
an article.





Superstition



I have just read a serious column on the prospects for next year.
This article consisted of contributions from experts in the
various branches of industry (including one from a meteorological
expert who, I need hardly tell you, forecasted a wet summer) and
ended with a general summing up of the year by Old Moore or one
of the minor prophets. Old Moore, I am sorry to say, left me
cold.

I should like to believe in astrology, but I cannot. I should
like to believe that the heavenly bodies sort themselves into
certain positions in order that Zadkiel may be kept in touch with
the future; the idea of a star whizzing a million miles out of
its path by way of indicating a "sensational divorce case in high
life" is extraordinarily massive. But, candidly, I do not believe
the stars bother. What the stars are for, what they are like when
you get there, I do not know; but a starry night would not be so
beautiful if it were simply meant as a warning to some unpleasant
financier that Kaffirs were going up. The ordinary man looks at
the heavens and thinks what an insignificant atom he is beneath
them; the believer in astrology looks up and realizes afresh his
overwhelming importance. Perhaps, after all, I am glad I do not
believe.

Life must be a very tricky thing for the superstitious. At dinner
a night or two ago I happened to say that I had never been in
danger of drowning. I am not sure now that it was true, but I
still think that it was harmless. However, before I had time to
elaborate my theme (whatever it was) I was peremptorily ordered
to touch wood. I protested that both my feet were on the polished
oak and both my elbows on the polished mahogany (one always knew
that some good instinct inspired the pleasant habit of elbows on
the table) and that anyhow I did not see the need. However,
because one must not argue at dinner I tapped the table two or
three times... and now I suppose I am immune. At the same time I
should like to know exactly whom I have appeased.

For this must be the idea of the wood-touching superstition, that
a malignant spirit dogs one's conversational footsteps, listening
eagerly for the complacent word. "I have never had the mumps,"
you say airily. "Ha, ha!" says the spirit, "haven't you? Just you
wait till next Tuesday, my boy." Unconsciously we are crediting
Fate with our own human weaknesses. If a man standing on the edge
of a pond said aloud, "I have never fallen into a pond in my
life," and we happened to be just behind him, the temptation to
push him in would be irresistible. Irresistible, that is by us;
but it is charitable to assume that Providence can control itself
by now.

Of course, nobody really thinks that our good or evil spirits
have any particular feeling about wood, that they like it
stroked; nobody, I suppose, not even the most superstitious,
really thinks that Fate is especially touchy in the matter of
salt and ladders. Equally, of course, many people who throw spilt
salt over their left shoulders are not superstitious in the
least, and are only concerned to display that readiness in the
face of any social emergency which is said to be the mark of good
manners. But there are certainly many who feel that it is the
part of a wise man to propitiate the unknown, to bend before the
forces which work for harm; and they pay tribute to Fate by means
of these little customs in the hope that they will secure in
return an immunity from evil. The tribute is nominal, but it is
an acknowledgment all the same.

A proper sense of proportion leaves no room for superstition. A
man says, "I have never been in a shipwreck," and becoming
nervous touches wood. Why is he nervous? He has this paragraph
before his eyes: "Among the deceased was Mr. ----. By a
remarkable coincidence this gentleman had been saying only a few
days before that he had never been in a shipwreck. Little did he
think that his next voyage would falsify his words so
tragically." It occurs to him that he has read paragraphs like
that again and again. Perhaps he has. Certainly he has never read
a paragraph like this: "Among the deceased was Mr. ----. By a
remarkable coincidence this gentleman had never made the remark
that he had not yet been in a shipwreck." Yet that paragraph
could have been written truthfully thousands of times. A sense of
proportion would tell you that, if only one side of a case is
ever recorded, that side acquires an undue importance. The truth
is that Fate does not go out of its way to be dramatic. If you or
I had the power of life and death in our hands, we should no
doubt arrange some remarkably bright and telling effects. A man
who spilt the salt callously would be drowned next week in the
Dead Sea, and a couple who married in May would expire
simultaneously in the May following. But Fate cannot worry to
think out all the clever things that we should think out. It goes
about its business solidly and unromantically, and by the
ordinary laws of chance it achieves every now and then something
startling and romantic. Superstition thrives on the fact that
only the accidental dramas are reported.

But there are charms to secure happiness as well as charms to
avert evil. In these I am a firm believer. I do not mean that I
believe that a horseshoe hung up in the house will bring me good
luck; I mean that if anybody does believe this, then the hanging
up of his horseshoe will probably bring him good luck. For if you
believe that you are going to be lucky, you go about your
business with a smile, you take disaster with a smile, you start
afresh with a smile. And to do that is to be in the way of
happiness.





The Charm of Golf



When he reads of the notable doings of famous golfers, the
eighteen-handicap man has no envy in his heart. For by this time
he has discovered the great secret of golf. Before he began to
play he wondered wherein lay the fascination of it; now he knows.
Golf is so popular simply because it is the best game in the
world at which to be bad.

Consider what it is to be bad at cricket. You have bought a new
bat, perfect in balance; a new pair of pads, white as driven
snow; gloves of the very latest design. Do they let you use them?
No. After one ball, in the negotiation of which neither your bat,
nor your pads, nor your gloves came into play, they send you back
into the pavilion to spend the rest of the afternoon listening to
fatuous stories of some old gentleman who knew Fuller Pilch. And
when your side takes the field, where are you? Probably at long
leg both ends, exposed to the public gaze as the worst fieldsman
in London. How devastating are your emotions. Remorse, anger,
mortification, fill your heart; above all, envy--envy of the
lucky immortals who disport themselves on the green level of
Lord's.

Consider what it is to be bad at lawn tennis. True, you are
allowed to hold on to your new racket all through the game, but
how often are you allowed to employ it usefully? How often does
your partner cry "Mine!" and bundle you out of the way? Is there
pleasure in playing football badly? You may spend the full eighty
minutes in your new boots, but your relations with the ball will
be distant. They do not give you a ball to yourself at football.

But how different a game is golf. At golf it is the bad player
who gets the most strokes. However good his opponent, the bad
player has the right to play out each hole to the end; he will
get more than his share of the game. He need have no fears that
his new driver will not be employed. He will have as many swings
with it as the scratch man; more, if he misses the ball
altogether upon one or two tees. If he buys a new niblick he is
certain to get fun out of it on the very first day.

And, above all, there is this to be said for golfing mediocrity--
the bad player can make the strokes of the good player. The poor
cricketer has perhaps never made fifty in his life; as soon as he
stands at the wickets he knows that he is not going to make fifty
to-day. But the eighteen-handicap man has some time or other
played every hole on the course to perfection. He has driven a
ball 250 yards; he has made superb approaches; he has run down
the long putt. Any of these things may suddenly happen to him
again. And therefore it is not his fate to have to sit in the
club smoking- room after his second round and listen to the
wonderful deeds of others. He can join in too. He can say with
perfect truth, "I once carried the ditch at the fourth with my
second," or "I remember when I drove into the bunker guarding the
eighth green," or even "I did a three at the eleventh this
afternoon"--bogey being five. But if the bad cricketer says, "I
remember when I took a century in forty minutes off Lockwood and
Richardson," he is nothing but a liar.

For these and other reasons golf is the best game in the world
for the bad player. And sometimes I am tempted to go further and
say that it is a better game for the bad player than for the good
player. The joy of driving a ball straight after a week of
slicing, the joy of putting a mashie shot dead, the joy of even a
moderate stroke with a brassie; best of all, the joy of the
perfect cleek shot--these things the good player will never know.
Every stroke we bad players make we make in hope. It is never so
bad but it might have been worse; it is never so bad but we are
confident of doing better next time. And if the next stroke is
good, what happiness fills our soul. How eagerly we tell
ourselves that in a little while all our strokes will be as good.

What does Vardon know of this? If he does a five hole in four he
blames himself that he did not do it in three; if he does it in
five he is miserable. He will never experience that happy
surprise with which we hail our best strokes. Only his bad
strokes surprise him, and then we may suppose that he is not
happy. His length and accuracy are mechanical; they are not the
result, as so often in our case, of some suddenly applied maxim
or some suddenly discovered innovation. The only thing which can
vary in his game is his putting, and putting is not golf but
croquet.

But of course we, too, are going to be as good as Vardon one day.
We are only postponing the day because meanwhile it is so
pleasant to be bad. And it is part of the charm of being bad at
golf that in a moment, in a single night, we may become good. If
the bad cricketer said to a good cricketer, "What am I doing
wrong?" the only possible answer would be, "Nothing particular,
except that you can't play cricket." But if you or I were to say
to our scratch friend, "What am I doing wrong?" he would reply at
once, "Moving the head" or "Dropping the right knee" or "Not
getting the wrists in soon enough," and by to-morrow we should be
different players. Upon such a little depends, or seems to the
eighteen-handicap to depend, excellence in golf.

And so, perfectly happy in our present badness and perfectly
confident of our future goodness, we long-handicap men remain.
Perhaps it would be pleasanter to be a little more certain of
getting the ball safely off the first tee; perhaps at the
fourteenth hole, where there is a right of way and the public
encroach, we should like to feel that we have done with topping;
perhaps---

Well, perhaps we might get our handicap down to fifteen this
summer. But no lower; certainly no lower.





Goldfish



Let us talk about--well, anything you will. Goldfish, for
instance.

Goldfish are a symbol of old-world tranquillity or mid-Victorian
futility according to their position in the home. Outside the
home, in that wild state from which civilization has dragged
them, they may have stood for dare-devil courage or constancy or
devotion; I cannot tell. I may only speak of them now as I find
them, which is in the garden or in the drawing-room. In their
lily-leaved pool, sunk deep in the old flagged terrace, upon
whose borders the blackbird whistles his early-morning song, they
remind me of sundials and lavender and old delightful things. But
in their cheap glass bowl upon the three- legged table, above
which the cloth-covered canary maintains a stolid silence, they
remind me of antimacassars and horsehair sofas and all that is
depressing. It is hard that the goldfish himself should have so
little choice in the matter. Goldfish look pretty in the terrace
pond, yet I doubt if it was the need for prettiness which brought
them there. Rather the need for some thing to throw things to. No
one of the initiate can sit in front of Nature's most wonderful
effect, the sea, without wishing to throw stones into it, the
physical pleasure of the effort and the aesthetic pleasure of the
splash combining to produce perfect contentment. So by the margin
of the pool the same desires stir within one, and because ants'
eggs do not splash, and look untidy on the surface of the water,
there must be a gleam of gold and silver to put the crown upon
one's pleasure.

Perhaps when you have been feeding the goldfish you have not
thought of it like that. But at least you must have wondered why,
of all diets, they should prefer ants' eggs. Ants' eggs are, I
should say, the very last thing which one would take to without
argument. It must be an acquired taste, and, this being so, one
naturally asks oneself how goldfish came to acquire it.

I suppose (but I am lamentably ignorant on these as on all other
matters) that there was a time when goldfish lived a wild free
life of their own. They roamed the sea or the river, or whatever
it was, fighting for existence, and Nature showed them, as she
always does, the food which suited them. Now I have often come
across ants' nests in my travels, but never when swimming. In
seas and rivers, pools and lakes, I have wandered, but Nature has
never put ants' eggs in my way. No doubt--it would be only right-
-the goldfish has a keener eye than I have for these things, but
if they had been there, should I have missed them so completely?
I think not, for if they had been there, they must have been
there in great quantities. I can imagine a goldfish slowly
acquiring the taste for them through the centuries, but only if
other food were denied to him, only if, wherever he went, ants'
eggs, ants' eggs, ants' eggs drifted down the stream to him.

Yet, since it would seem that he has acquired the taste, it can
only be that the taste has come to him with captivity--has been
forced upon him, I should have said. The old wild goldfish (this
is my theory) was a more terrible beast than we think. Given his
proper diet, he could not have been kept within the limits of the
terrace pool. He would have been unsuited to domestic life; he
would have dragged in the shrieking child as she leant to feed
him. As the result of many experiments ants' eggs were given him
to keep him thin (you can see for yourself what a bloodless diet
it is), ants' eggs were given him to quell his spirit; and just
as a man, if he has sufficient colds, can get up a passion even
for ammoniated quinine, so the goldfish has grown in captivity to
welcome the once-hated omelette.

Let us consider now the case of the goldfish in the house. His
diet is the same, but how different his surroundings! If his bowl
is placed on a table in the middle of the floor, he has but to
flash his tail once and he has been all round the drawing-room.
The drawing-room may not seem much to you, but to him this
impressionist picture through the curved glass must be amazing.
Let not the outdoor goldfish boast of his freedom. What does he,
in his little world of water-lily roots, know of the vista upon
vista which opens to his more happy brother as he passes jauntily
from china dog to ottoman and from ottoman to Henry's father? Ah,
here is life! It may be that in the course of years he will get
used to it, even bored by it; indeed, for that reason I always
advocate giving him a glance at the dining-room or the bedrooms
on Wednesdays and Saturdays; but his first day in the bowl must
be the opening of an undreamt of heaven to him.

Again, what an adventurous life is his. At any moment a cat may
climb up and fetch him out, a child may upset him, grown-ups may
neglect to feed him or to change his water. The temptation to
take him up and massage him must be irresistible to outsiders.
All these dangers the goldfish in the pond avoids; he lives a
sheltered and unexciting life, and when he wants to die he dies
unnoticed, unregretted, but for his brother the tears and the
solemn funeral.

Yes; now that I have thought it out, I can see that I was wrong
in calling the indoor goldfish a symbol of mid-Victorian
futility. An article of this sort is no good if it does not teach
the writer something as well as his readers. I recognize him now
as the symbol of enterprise and endurance, of restlessness and
Post-Impressionism. He is not mid-Victorian, he is Fifth
Georgian.

Which is all I want to say about goldfish.





Saturday to Monday



The happy man would have happy faces round him; a sad face is a
reproach to him for his happiness. So when I escape by the 2.10
on Saturday I distribute largesse with a liberal hand. The
cabman, feeling that an effort is required of him, mentions that
I am the first gentleman he has met that day; he penetrates my
mufti and calls me captain, leaving it open whether he regards me
as a Salvation Army captain or the captain of a barge. The
porters hasten to the door of my cab; there is a little struggle
between them as to who shall have the honour of waiting upon me.
...

Inside the station things go on as happily. The booking-office
clerk gives me a pleasant smile; he seems to approve of the
station I am taking. "Some do go to Brighton," he implies, "but
for a gentleman like you--" He pauses to point out that with this
ticket I can come back on the Tuesday if I like (as, between
ourselves, I hope to do). In exchange for his courtesies I push
him my paper through the pigeon hole. A dirty little boy thrust
it into my cab; I didn't want it, but as we are all being happy
to- day he had his penny.

I follow my porter to the platform. "On the left," says the
ticket collector. He has said it mechanically to a hundred
persons, but he becomes human and kindly as he says it to me. I
feel that he really wishes me to get into the right train, to
have a pleasant journey down, to be welcomed heartily by my
friends when I arrive. It is not as to one of a mob but to an
individual that he speaks.

The porter has found me an empty carriage. He is full of ideas
for my comfort; he tells me which way the train will start, where
we stop, and when we may be expected to arrive. Am I sure I
wouldn't like my bag in the van? Can he get me any papers? No;
no, thanks. I don't want to read. I give him sixpence, and there
is another one of us happy.

Presently the guard. He also seems pleased that I have selected
this one particular station from among so many. Pleased, but not
astonished; he expected it of me. It is a very good run down in
his train, and he shouldn't be surprised if we had a fine week-
end. ...

I stand at the door of ray carriage feeling very happy. It is
good to get out of London. Come to think of it, we are all
getting out of London, and none of us is going to do any work to-
morrow. How jolly! Oh, but what about my porter? Bother! I wish
now I'd given him more than sixpence. Still, he may have a
sweetheart and be happy that way.

We are off. I have nothing to read, but then I want to think. It
is the ideal place in which to think, a railway carriage; the
ideal place in which to be happy. I wonder if I shall be in good
form this week-end at cricket and tennis, and croquet and
billiards, and all the other jolly games I mean to play. Look at
those children trying to play cricket in that dirty backyard.
Poor little beggars! Fancy living in one of those horrible
squalid houses. But you cannot spoil to- day for me, little
backyards. On Tuesday perhaps, when I am coming again to the ugly
town, your misery will make me miserable; I shall ask myself
hopelessly what it all means; but just now I am too happy for
pity. After all, why should I assume that you envy me, you two
children swinging on a gate and waving to me? You are happy,
aren't you? Of course; we are all happy to-day. See, I am waving
back to you.

My eyes wander round the carriage and rest on my bag. Have I put
everything in? Of course I have. Then why this uneasy feeling
that I have left something very important out? Well, I can soon
settle the question. Let's start with to-night. Evening clothes--
they're in, I know. Shirts, collars ...

I go through the whole programme for the week-end, allotting
myself in my mind suitable clothes for each occasion. Yes; I seem
to have brought everything that I can possibly want. But what a
very jolly programme I am drawing up for myself! Will it really
be as delightful as that? Well, it was last time, and the time
before; that is why I am so happy.

The train draws up at its only halt in the glow of a September
mid-afternoon. There is a little pleasant bustle; nice people get
out and nice people meet them; everybody seems very cheery and
contented. Then we are off again ... and now the next station is
mine.

We are there. A porter takes my things with a kindly smile and a
"Nice day." I see Brant outside with the wagonette, not the trap;
then I am not the only guest coming by this train. Who are the
others, I wonder. Anybody I know? ... Why, yes, it's Bob and Mrs.
Bob, and--hallo!--Cynthia! And isn't that old Anderby? How
splendid! I must get that shilling back from Bob that I lost to
him at billiards last time. And if Cynthia really thinks that she
can play croquet ...

We greet each other happily and climb into the wagonette. Never
has the country looked so lovely. "No; no rain at all," says
Brant, "and the glass is going up." The porter puts our luggage
in the cart and comes round with a smile. It is a rotten life
being a porter, and I do so want everybody to enjoy this
afternoon. Besides, I haven't any coppers.

I slip half a crown into his palm. Now we are all very, very
happy.





The Pond



My friend Aldenham's pond stands at a convenient distance from
the house, and is reached by a well-drained gravel path; so that
in any weather one may walk, alone or in company, dry shod to its
brink, and estimate roughly how many inches of rain have fallen
in the night. The ribald call it the hippopotamus pond, tracing a
resemblance between it and the bath of the hippopotamus at the
Zoo, beneath the waters of which, if you particularly desire to
point the hippopotamus out to somebody, he always lies hidden. To
the rest of us it is known simply as "the pond"--a designation
which ignores the existence of several neighbouring ponds, the
gifts of nature, and gives the whole credit to the handiwork of
man. For "the pond" is just a small artificial affair of cement,
entirely unpretentious.

There are seven steps to the bottom of the pond, and each step is
10 in. high. Thus the steps help to make the pond a convenient
rain- gauge; for obviously when only three steps are left
uncovered, as was the case last Monday, you know that there have
been 40 in. of rain since last month, when the pond began to
fill. To strangers this may seem surprising, and it is only fair
to tell them the great secret, which is that much of the
surrounding land drains secretly into the pond too. This seems to
me to give a much fairer indication of the rain that has fallen
than do the official figures in the newspapers. For when your
whole day's cricket has been spoilt, it is perfectly absurd to be
told that .026 of an inch of rain has done the damage; the soul
yearns for something more startling than that The record of the
pond, that there has been another 5 in., soothes us, where the
record of the ordinary pedantic rain-gauge would leave us
infuriated. It speaks much for my friend Aldenham's breadth of
view that he understood this, and planned the pond accordingly.

A most necessary thing in a country house is that there should be
a recognized meeting-place, where the people who have been
writing a few letters after breakfast may, when they have
finished, meet those who have no intention of writing any, and
arrange plans with them for the  morning. I am one of those who
cannot write letters in another man's house, and when my pipe is
well alight I say to Miss Robinson--or whoever it may be--"Let's
go and look at the pond." "Right oh," she says willingly enough,
having spent the last quarter of an hour with The Times Financial
Supplement, all of the paper that is left to the women in the
first rush for the cricket news. We wander down to the pond
together, and perhaps find Brown and Miss Smith there. "A lot of
rain in the night," says Brown. "It was only just over the third
step after lunch yesterday." We have a little argument about it,
Miss Robinson being convinced that she stood on the second step
after breakfast, and Miss Smith repeating that it looks exactly
the same to her this morning. By and by two or three others
stroll up, and we all make measurements together. The general
opinion is that there has been a lot of rain in the night, and
that 43 in. in three weeks must be a record. But, anyhow, it is
fairly fine now, and what about a little lawn tennis? Or golf? Or
croquet? Or---? And so the arrangements for the morning are made.

And they can be made more readily out of doors; for--supposing it
is fine--the fresh air calls you to be doing something, and the
sight of the newly marked tennis lawn fills you with thoughts of
revenge for your accidental defeat the evening before. But
indoors it is so easy to drop into a sofa after breakfast, and,
once there with all the papers, to be disinclined to leave it
till lunch-time. A man or woman as lazy as this must not be
rushed. Say to such a one, "Come and play," and the invitation
will be declined. Say, "Come and look at the pond," and the worst
sluggard will not refuse such gentle exercise. And once he is out
he is out.

All this for those delightful summer days when there are fine
intervals; but consider the advantages of the pond when the rain
streams down in torrents from morning till night. How tired we
get of being indoors on these days, even with the best of books,
the pleasantest of companions, the easiest of billiard tables.
Yet if our hostess were to see us marching out with an umbrella,
how odd she would think us. "Where are you off to?" she would
ask, and we could only answer lamely, "Er--I was just going to--
er--walk about a bit." But now we tell her brightly, "I'm going
to see the pond. It must be nearly full. Won't you come too?" And
with any luck she comes.  And you know, it even reconciles us a
little to these streaming days to reflect that it all goes to
fill the pond. For there is ever before our minds that great
moment in the future when the pond is at last full. What will
happen then? Aldenham may know, but we his guests do not. Some
think there will be merely a flood over the surrounding paths and
the kitchen garden, but for myself I believe that we are promised
something much bigger than that. A man with such a broad and
friendly outlook towards rain-gauges will be sure to arrange
something striking when the great moment arrives. Some sort of
fete will help to celebrate it, I have no doubt; with an open-air
play, tank drama, or what not. At any rate we have every hope
that he will empty the pond as speedily as possible so that we
may watch it fill again.

I must say that he has been a little lucky in his choice of a
year for inaugurating the pond. But, all the same, there are now
45 in. of rain in it, 45 in. of rain have fallen in the last
three weeks, and I think that something ought to be done about
it.





A Seventeenth-Century Story



There is a story in every name in that first column of The Times-
-Births, Marriages, and Deaths--down which we glance each
morning, but, unless the name is known to us, we do not bother
about the stories of other people. They are those not very
interesting people, our contemporaries. But in a country
churchyard a name on an old tombstone will set us wondering a
little. What sort of life came to an end there a hundred years
ago?

In the parish register we shall find the whole history of them;
when they were born, when they were married, how many children
they had, when they died--a skeleton of their lives which we can
clothe with our fancies and make living again. Simple lives, we
make them, in that pleasant countryside; "Man comes and tills the
field and lies beneath"; that is all. Simple work, simple
pleasures, and a simple death.

Of course we are wrong. There were passions and pains in those
lives; tragedies perhaps. The tombstones and the registers say
nothing of them; or, if they say it, it is in a cypher to which
we have not the key. Yet sometimes the key is almost in our
hands. Here is a story from the register of a village church--
four entries only, but they hide a tragedy which with a little
imagination we can almost piece together for ourselves.

The first entry is a marriage. John Meadowes of Littlehaw Manor,
bachelor, took Mary Field to wife (both of this parish) on 7th
November 1681.

There were no children of the marriage. Indeed, it only lasted a
year. A year later, on l2th November 1682, John died and was
buried.

Poor Mary Meadowes was now alone at the Manor. We picture her
sitting there in her loneliness, broken-hearted, refusing to be
comforted. ...

Until we come to the third entry. John has only been in his grave
a month, but here is the third entry, telling us that on l2th
December 1682, Robert Cliff, bachelor, was married to Mary
Meadowes, widow. It spoils our picture of her. ...

And then the fourth entry. It is the fourth entry which reveals
the tragedy, which makes us wonder what is the story hidden away
in the parish register of Littlehaw--the mystery of Littlehaw
Manor. For here is another death, the death of Mary Cliff, and
Mary Cliff died on ... l3th December 1682.

And she was buried in unconsecrated ground. For Mary Cliff (we
must suppose) had killed herself. She had killed herself on the
day after her marriage to her second husband.

Well, what is the story? We shall have to make it up for
ourselves. Here is my rendering of it. I have no means of finding
out if it is the correct one, but it seems to fit itself within
the facts as we know them.

Mary Field was the daughter of well-to-do parents, an only child,
and the most desirable bride, from the worldly point of view, in
the village. No wonder, then, that her parents' choice of a
husband for her fell upon the most desirable bridegroom of the
village--John Meadowes. The Fields' land adjoined Littlehaw
Manor; one day the child of John and Mary would own it all. Let a
marriage, then, be arranged.

But Mary loved Robert Cliff whole-heartedly --Robert, a man of no
standing at all. A ridiculous notion, said her parents, but the
silly girl would grow out of it. She was taken by a handsome
face. Once she was safely wedded to John, she would forget her
foolishness. John might not be handsome, but he was a solid,
steady fellow; which was more--much more, as it turned out--than
could be said for Robert.

So John and Mary married. But she still loved Robert. ...

Did she kill her husband? Did she and Robert kill him together?
Or did she only hasten his death by her neglect of him in some
illness? Did she dare him to ride some devil of a horse which she
knew he could not master; did she taunt him into some foolhardy
feat; or did she deliberately kill him--with or without her
lover's aid? I cannot guess, but of this I am certain. His death
was on her conscience. Directly or indirectly she was responsible
for it --or, at any rate, felt herself responsible for it. But
she would not think of it too closely; she had room for only one
thought in her mind. She was mistress of Littlehaw Manor now, and
free to marry whom she wished. Free, at last, to marry Robert.
Whatever had been done had been worth doing for that.

So she married him. And then--so I read the story--she discovered
the truth. Robert had never loved her. He had wanted to marry the
rich Miss Field, that was all. Still more, he had wanted to marry
the rich Mrs. Meadowes. He was quite callous about it. She might
as well know the truth now as later. It would save trouble in the
future, if she knew.

So Mary killed herself. She had murdered John for nothing.
Whatever her responsibility for John's death, in the bitterness
of that discovery she would call it murder. She had a murder on
her conscience for love's sake--and there was no love. What else
to do but follow John? ...

Is that the story? I wonder.





Our Learned Friends



I do not know why the Bar has always seemed the most respectable
of the professions, a profession which the hero of almost any
novel could adopt without losing caste. But so it is. A
schoolmaster can be referred to contemptuously as an usher; a
doctor is regarded humorously as a licensed murderer; a solicitor
is always retiring to gaol for making away with trust funds, and,
in any case, is merely an attorney; while a civil servant sleeps
from ten to four every day, and is only waked up at sixty in
order to be given a pension. But there is no humorous comment to
be made upon the barrister--unless it is to call him "my learned
friend." He has much more right than the actor to claim to be a
member of the profession. I don't know why. Perhaps it is because
he walks about the Temple in a top-hat.

So many of one's acquaintances at some time or other have "eaten
dinners" that one hardly dares to say anything against the
profession. Besides, one never knows when one may not want to be
defended. However, I shall take the risk, and put the barrister
in the dock. "Gentlemen of the jury, observe this well-dressed
gentleman before you. What shall we say about him?"

Let us begin by asking ourselves what we expect from a
profession. In the first place, certainly, we expect a living,
but I think we want something more than that. If we were offered
a thousand a year to walk from Charing Cross to Barnet every day,
reasons of poverty might compel us to accept the offer, but we
should hardly be proud of our new profession. We should prefer to
earn a thousand a year by doing some more useful work. Indeed, to
a man of any fine feeling the profession of Barnet walking would
only be tolerable if he could persuade himself that by his
exertions he was helping to revive the neglected art of
pedestrianism, or to make more popular the neglected beauties of
Barnet; if he could hope that, after his three- hundredth
journey, inquisitive people would begin to follow him, wondering
what he was after, and so come suddenly upon the old Norman
church at the cross-roads, or, if they missed this, at any rate
upon a much better appetite for their dinner. That is to say, he
would have to persuade himself that he was walking, not only for
himself, but also for the community.

It seems to me, then, that a profession is a noble or an ignoble
one, according as it offers or denies to him who practises it the
opportunity of working for some other end than his own
advancement. A doctor collects fees from his patients, but he is
aiming at something more than pounds, shillings, and pence; he is
out to put an end to suffering. A schoolmaster earns a living by
teaching, but he does not feel that he is fighting only for
himself; he is a crusader on behalf of education. The artist,
whatever his medium, is giving a message to the world, expressing
the truth as he sees it; for his own profit, perhaps, but not for
that alone. All these and a thousand other ways of living have
something of nobility in them. We enter them full of high
resolves. We tell ourselves that we will follow the light as it
has been revealed to us; that our ideals shall never be lowered;
that we will refuse to sacrifice our principles to our interests.
We fail, of course. The painter finds that "Mother's Darling"
brings in the stuff, and he turns out Mother's Darlings
mechanically. The doctor neglects research and cultivates instead
a bedside manner. The schoolmaster drops all his theories of
education and conforms hastily to those of his employers. We
fail, but it is not because the profession is an ignoble one; we
had our chances. Indeed, the light is still there for those who
look. It beckons to us.

Now what of the Bar? Is the barrister after anything other than
his own advancement? He follows what gleam? What are his ideals?
Never mind whether he fails more often or less often than others
to attain them; I am not bothering about that. I only want to
know what it is that he is after. In the quiet hours when we are
alone with ourselves and there is nobody to tell us what fine
fellows we are, we come sometimes upon a weak moment in which we
wonder, not how much money we are earning, nor how famous we are
becoming, but what good we are doing. If a barrister ever has
such a moment, what is his consolation? It can only be that he is
helping Justice to be administered. If he is to be proud of his
profession, and in that lonely moment tolerant of himself, he
must feel that he is taking a noble part in the vindication of
legal right, the punishment of legal wrong. But he must do more
than this. Just as the doctor, with increased knowledge and
experience, becomes a better fighter against disease, advancing
himself, no doubt, but advancing also medical science; just as
the schoolmaster, having learnt new and better ways of teaching,
can now give a better education to his boys, increasing thereby
the sum of knowledge; so the barrister must be able to tell
himself that the more expert he becomes as an advocate, the
better will he be able to help in the administration of this
Justice which is his ideal.

Can he tell himself this? I do not see how he can. His increased
expertness will be of increased service to himself, of increased
service to his clients, but no ideal will be the better served by
reason of it. Let us take a case--Smith v. Jones. Counsel is
briefed for Smith. After examining the case he tells himself in
effect this: "As far as I can see, the Law is all on the other
side. Luckily, however, sentiment is on our side. Given an
impressionable jury, there's just a chance that we might pull it
off. It's worth trying." He tries, and if he is sufficiently
expert he pulls it off. A triumph for himself, but what has
happened to the ideal? Did he even think, "Of course I'm bound to
do the best for my client, but he's in the wrong, and I hope we
lose?" I imagine not. The whole teaching of the Bar is that he
must not bother about justice, but only about his own victory.
What ultimately, then, is he after? What does the Bar offer its
devotees--beyond material success?

I asked just now what were a barrister's ideals. Suppose we ask
instead, What is the ideal barrister? If one spoke loosely of an
ideal doctor, one would not necessarily mean a titled gentleman
in Harley Street. An ideal schoolmaster is not synonymous with
the Headmaster of Eton or the owner of the most profitable
preparatory school. But can there be an ideal barrister other
than a successful barrister? The eager young writer, just
beginning a literary career, might fix his eyes upon Francis
Thompson rather than upon Sir Hall Caine; the eager young
clergyman might dream dreams over the Life of Father Damien more
often than over the Life of the Archbishop of Canterbury; but to
what star can the eager young barrister hitch his wagon, save to
the star of material success? If he does not see himself as Sir
Edward Carson, it is only because he thinks that perhaps after
all Sir John Simon's manner is the more effective.

There may be other answers to the questions I have asked than the
answers I have given, but it is no answer to ask me how the law
can be administered without barristers. I do not know; nor do I
know how the roads can be swept without getting somebody to sweep
them. But that would not disqualify me from saying that road-
sweeping was an unattractive profession. So also I am entitled to
my opinion about the Bar, which is this. That because it offers
material victories only and never spiritual ones, that because
there can be no standard by which its disciples are judged save
the earthly standard, that because there is no place within its
ranks for the altruist or the idealist--for these reasons the Bar
is not one of the noble professions.





A Word for Autumn



Last night the waiter put the celery on with the cheese, and I
knew that summer was indeed dead. Other signs of autumn there may
be--the reddening leaf, the chill in the early-morning air, the
misty evenings--but none of these comes home to me so truly.
There may be cool mornings in July; in a year of drought the
leaves may change before their time; it is only with the first
celery that summer is over.

I knew all along that it would not last. Even in April I was
saying that winter would soon be here. Yet somehow it had begun
to seem possible lately that a miracle might happen, that summer
might drift on and on through the months--a final upheaval to
crown a wonderful year. The celery settled that. Last night with
the celery autumn came into its own.

There is a crispness about celery that is of the essence of
October. It is as fresh and clean as a rainy day after a spell of
heat. It crackles pleasantly in the mouth. Moreover it is
excellent, I am told, for the complexion. One is always hearing
of things which are good for the complexion, but there is no
doubt that celery stands high on the list. After the burns and
freckles of summer one is in need of something. How good that
celery should be there at one's elbow.

A week ago--("A little more cheese, waiter") --a week ago I
grieved for the dying summer. I wondered how I could possibly
bear the waiting --the eight long months till May. In vain to
comfort myself with the thought that I could get through more
work in the winter undistracted by thoughts of cricket grounds
and country houses. In vain, equally, to tell myself that I could
stay in bed later in the mornings. Even the thought of after-
breakfast pipes in front of the fire left me cold. But now,
suddenly, I am reconciled to autumn. I see quite clearly that all
good things must come to an end. The summer has been splendid,
but it has lasted long enough. This morning I welcomed the chill
in the air; this morning I viewed the falling leaves with
cheerfulness; and this morning I said to myself, "Why, of course,
I'll have celery for lunch." ("More bread, waiter.")  "Season of
mists and mellow fruitfulness," said Keats, not actually picking
out celery in so many words, but plainly including it in the
general blessings of the autumn. Yet what an opportunity he
missed by not concentrating on that precious root. Apples,
grapes, nuts, and vegetable marrows he mentions specially--and
how poor a selection! For apples and grapes are not typical of
any month, so ubiquitous are they, vegetable marrows are
vegetables pour rire and have no place in any serious
consideration of the seasons, while as for nuts, have we not a
national song which asserts distinctly, "Here we go gathering
nuts in May"? Season of mists and mellow celery, then let it be.
A pat of butter underneath the bough, a wedge of cheese, a loaf
of bread and--Thou.

How delicate are the tender shoots unfolded layer by layer. Of
what, a whiteness is the last baby one of all, of what a
sweetness his flavour. It is well that this should be the last
rite of the meal--finis coronat opus--so that we may go straight
on to the business of the pipe. Celery demands a pipe rather than
a cigar, and it can be eaten better in an inn or a London tavern
than in the home. Yes, and it should be eaten alone, for it is
the only food which one really wants to hear oneself eat.
Besides, in company one may have to consider the wants of others.
Celery is not a thing to share with any man. Alone in your
country inn you may call for the celery; but if you are wise you
will see that no other traveller wanders into the room. Take
warning from one who has learnt a lesson. One day I lunched alone
at an inn, finishing with cheese and celery. Another traveller
came in and lunched too. We did not speak--I was busy with my
celery. From the other end of the table he reached across for the
cheese. That was all right; it was the public cheese. But he also
reached across for the celery--my private celery for which I
owed. Foolishly--you know how one does--I had left the sweetest
and crispest shoots till the last, tantalizing myself pleasantly
with the thought of them. Horror! to see them snatched from me by
a stranger. He realized later what he had done and apologized,
but of what good is an apology in such circumstances? Yet at
least the tragedy was not without its value. Now one remembers to
lock the door.

Yes, I can face the winter with calm. I suppose I had forgotten
what it was really like. I had been thinking of the winter as a
horrid wet, dreary time fit only for professional football. Now I
can see other things--crisp and sparkling days, long pleasant
evenings, cheery fires. Good work shall be done this winter. Life
shall be lived well. The end of the summer is not the end of the
world. Here's to October--and, waiter, some more celery.





A Christmas Number



The common joke against the Christmas number is that it is
planned in July and made up in September. This enables it to be
published in the middle of November and circulated in New Zealand
by Christmas. If it were published in England at Christmas, New
Zealand wouldn't get it till February. Apparently it is more
important that the colonies should have it punctually than that
we should.

Anyway, whenever it is made up, all journalists hate the
Christmas number. But they only hate it for one reason--this
being that the ordinary weekly number has to be made up at the
same time. As a journalist I should like to devote the autumn
exclusively to the Christmas number, and as a member of the
public I should adore it when it came out. Not having been asked
to produce such a number on my own I can amuse myself here by
sketching out a plan for it. I follow the fine old tradition.
First let us get the stories settled. Story No. 1 deals with the
escaped convict. The heroine is driving back from the country-
house ball, where she has had two or three proposals, when
suddenly, in the most lonely part of the snow-swept moor, a
figure springs out of the ditch and covers the coachman with a
pistol. Alarms and confusions. "Oh, sir," says the heroine,
"spare my aunt and I will give you all my jewels." The convict,
for such it is, staggers back. "Lucy!" he cries. "Harold!" she
gasps. The aunt says nothing, for she has swooned. At this point
the story stops to explain how Harold came to be in
knickerbockers. He had either been falsely accused or else he had
been a solicitor. Anyhow, he had by this time more than paid for
his folly, and Lucy still loved him. "Get in," she says, and
drives him home. Next day he leaves for New Zealand in an
ordinary lounge suit. Need I say that Lucy joins him later? No;
that shall be left for your imagination. The End.


So much for the first story. The second is an "i'-faith-and-stap-
me" story of the good old days. It is not seasonable, for most of
the action takes place in my lord's garden amid the scent of
roses; but it brings back to us the old romantic days when
fighting and swearing were more picturesque  than they are now,
and when women loved and worked samplers. This sort of story can
be read best in front of the Christmas log; it is of the past,
and comes naturally into a Christmas number. I shall not describe
its plot, for that is unimportant; it is the "stap me's" and the
"la, sirs," which matter. But I may say that she marries him all
right in the end, and he goes off happily to the wars.

We want another story. What shall this one be about? It might be
about the amateur burglar, or the little child who reconciled old
Sir John to his daughter's marriage, or the ghost at Enderby
Grange, or the millionaire's Christmas dinner, or the accident to
the Scotch express. Personally, I do not care for any of these;
my vote goes for the desert-island story. Proud Lady Julia has
fallen off the deck of the liner, and Ronald, refused by her that
morning, dives off the hurricane deck--or the bowsprit or
wherever he happens to be--and seizes her as she is sinking for
the third time. It is a foggy night and their absence is
unnoticed. Dawn finds them together on a little coral reef. They
are in no danger, for several liners are due to pass in a day or
two and Ronald's pockets are full of biscuits and chocolate, but
it is awkward for Lady Julia, who had hoped that they would never
meet again. So they sit on the beach back to back (drawn by Dana
Gibson) and throw sarcastic remarks over their shoulders at each
other. In the end he tames her proud spirit--I think by hiding
the turtles' eggs from her--and the next liner but one takes the
happy couple back to civilization.

But it is time we had some poetry. I propose to give you one
serious poem about robins, and one double-page humorous piece,
well illustrated in colours. I think the humorous verses must
deal with hunting. Hunting does not lend itself to humour, for
there are only two hunting jokes --the joke of the horse which
came down at the brook and the joke of the Cockney who overrode
hounds; but there are traditions to keep up, and the artist
always loves it. So far we have not considered the artist
sufficiently. Let us give him four full pages. One of pretty
girls hanging up mistletoe, one of the squire and his family
going to church in the snow, one of a brokendown coach with
highwaymen coming over the hill, and one of the postman bringing
loads and loads of parcels. You have all Christmas in those four
pictures. But there is room for another page--let it be a
coloured page, of half a dozen sketches, the period and the
lettering very early English. "Ye Baron de Marchebankes calleth
for hys varlet." "Ye varlet cometh righte hastilie---" You know
the delightful kind of thing.

I confess that this is the sort of Christmas number which I love.
You may say that you have seen it all before; I say that that is
why I love it. The best of Christmas is that it reminds us of
other Christmases; it should be the boast of Christmas numbers
that they remind us of other Christmas numbers.

But though I doubt if I shall get quite what I want from any one
number this year, yet there will surely be enough in all the
numbers to bring Christmas very pleasantly before the eyes. In a
dull November one likes to be reminded that Christmas is coming.
It is perhaps as well that the demands of the colonies give us
our Christmas numbers so early. At the same time it is difficult
to see why New Zealand wants a Christmas number at all. As I
glance above at the plan of my model paper I feel more than ever
how adorable it would be--but not, oh not with the thermometer at
a hundred in the shade.





No Flowers by Request



If a statement is untrue, it is not the more respectable because
it has been said in Latin. We owe the war, directly, no doubt, to
the Kaiser, but indirectly to the Roman idiot who said, "Si vis
pacem, para bellum." Having mislaid my Dictionary of Quotations I
cannot give you his name, but I have my money on him as the
greatest murderer in history.

Yet there have always been people who would quote this classical
lie as if it were at least as authoritative as anything said in
the Sermon on the Mount. It was said a long time ago, and in a
strange language--that was enough for them. In the same way they
will say, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum." But I warn them solemnly
that it will take a good deal more than this to stop me from
saying what I want to say about the recently expired month of
February.

I have waited purposely until February was  dead. Cynics may say
that this was only wisdom, in that a damnatory notice from me
might have inspired that unhappy month to an unusually brilliant
run, out of sheer wilfulness. I prefer to think that it was good
manners which forbade me to be disrespectful to her very face. It
is bad manners to speak the truth to the living, but February is
dead. De mortuis nil nisi veritas.

The truth about poor February is that she is the worst month of
the year. But let us be fair to her. She has never had a chance.
We cannot say to her, "Look upon this picture and on this. This
you might have been; this you are." There is no "might have been"
for her, no ideal February. The perfect June we can imagine for
ourselves. Personally I do not mind how hot it be, but there must
be plenty of strawberries. The perfect April--ah, one dare not
think of the perfect April. That can only happen in the next
world. Yet April may always be striving for it, though she never
reach it. But the perfect February--what is it? I know not. Let
us pity February, then, even while we blame her.

For February comes just when we are sick of winter, and therefore
she may not be wintry. Wishing to do her best, she ventures her
spring costume, crocus and primrose and daffodil days; days when
the first faint perfume of mint is blown down the breezes, and
one begins to wonder how the lambs are shaping. Is that the ideal
February? Ah no! For we cannot be deceived. We know that spring
is not here; that March is to come with its frosts and perchance
its snows, a worse March for the milder February, a plunge back
into the winter which poor February tried to flatter us was over.

Such a February is a murderer--an accessory to the murders of
March. She lays the ground-bait for the victims. Out pop the
stupid little flowers, eager to be deceived (one could forgive
the annuals, but the perennials ought to know better by now), and
down comes March, a roaring lion, to gobble them up.

And how much lost fruit do we not owe to February! One feels--a
layman like myself feels--that it should be enough to have a
strawberry-bed, a peach-tree, a fig-tree. If these are not
enough, then the addition of a gardener should make the thing a
certainty. Yet how often will not a gardener refer one back to
February as the real culprit. The tree blossomed too early; the
late frosts killed it; in the annoyance of the moment one may
reproach the gardener for allowing it to blossom so prematurely,
but one cannot absolve February of all blame.

It is no good, then, for February to try to be spring; no hope
for her to please us by prolonging winter. What is left to her?
She cannot even give us the pleasure of the hairshirt. Did April
follow her, she could make the joys of that wonderful month even
keener for us by the contrast, but--she is followed by March.
What can one do with March? One does not wear a hair-shirt merely
to enjoy the pleasure of following it by one slightly less hairy.

Well, we may agree that February is no good. "Oh, to be out of
England now that February's here," is what Browning should have
said. One has no use for her in this country. Pope Gregory, or
whoever it was that arranged the calendar, must have had
influential relations in England who urged on him the need for
making February the shortest month of the year. Let us be
grateful to His Holiness that he was so persuaded. He was a
little obstinate about Leap Year; a more imaginative pontiff
would have given the extra day to April; but he was amenable
enough for a man who only had his relations' word for it. Every
first of March I raise my glass to Gregory. Even as a boy I used
to drink one of his powders to him at about this time of the
year.

February fill-dyke! Well, that's all that can be said for it.





The Unfairness of Things



The most interesting column in any paper (always excepting those
which I write myself) is that entitled "The World's Press,"
wherein one may observe the world as it appears to a press of
which one has for the most part never heard. It is in this column
that I have just made the acquaintance of The Shoe Manufacturers'
Monthly, the journal to which the elect turn eagerly upon each
new moon. (Its one-time rival, The Footwear Fortnightly, has, I
am told, quite lost its following.) The bon mot of the current
number of The S.M.M. is a note to the effect that Kaffirs have a
special fondness for boots which make a noise. I quote this
simply as an excuse for referring to the old problem of the
squeaky boots and the squeaky collar; the problem, in fact, of
the unfairness of things.

The majors and clubmen who assist their country with columns of
advice on clothes have often tried to explain why a collar
squeaks, but have never done so to the satisfaction of any man of
intelligence. They say that the collar is too large or too small,
too dirty or too clean. They say that if you have your collars
made for you (like a gentleman) you will be all right, but that
if you buy the cheap, ready-made article, what can you expect?
They say that a little soap on the outside of the shirt, or a
little something on the inside of something else, that this,
that, and the other will abate the nuisance. They are quite
wrong.

The simple truth, and everybody knows it really, is that collars
squeak for some people and not for others. A squeaky collar round
the neck of a man is a comment, not upon the collar, but upon the
man. That man is unlucky. Things are against him. Nature may have
done all for him that she could, have given him a handsome
outside and a noble inside, but the world of inanimate objects is
against him.

We all know the man whom children or dogs love instinctively. It
is a rare gift to be able to inspire this affection. The Fates
have been kind to him. But to inspire the affection of inanimate
things is something greater. The man to whom a collar or a window
sash takes instinctively is a man who may truly be said to have
luck on his side. Consider him for a moment. His collar never
squeaks; his clothes take a delight in fitting him. At a dinner-
party he walks as by instinct straight to his seat, what time you
and I are dragging our partners round and round the table in
search of our cards. The windows of taxicabs open to him easily.
When he travels by train his luggage works its way to the front
of the van and is the first to jump out at Paddington. String
hastens to undo itself when he approaches; he is the only man who
can make a decent impression with sealing-wax. If he is asked by
the hostess in a crowded drawing-room to ring the bell, that bell
comes out from behind the sofa where it hid from us and places
itself in a convenient spot before his eyes. Asparagus stiffens
itself at sight of him, macaroni winds itself round his fork.

You will observe that I am not describing just the ordinary lucky
man. He may lose thousands on the Stock Exchange; he may be
jilted; whenever he goes to the Oval to see Hobbs, Hobbs may be
out first ball; he may invariably get mixed up in railway
accidents. That is a kind of ill-luck which one can bear, not
indeed without grumbling, but without rancour. The man who is
unlucky to experience these things at least has the consolation
of other people's sympathy; but the man who is the butt of
inanimate things has no one's sympathy. We may be on a motor bus
which overturns and nobody will say that it is our fault, but if
our collar deliberately and maliciously squeaks, everybody will
say that we ought to buy better collars; if our dinner cards hide
from us, or the string of our parcel works itself into knots, we
are called clumsy; our asparagus and macaroni give us a
reputation for bad manners; our luggage gets us a name for
dilatoriness.

I think we, we others, have a right to complain. However lucky we
may be in other ways, if we have not this luck of inanimate
things we have a right to complain. It is pleasant, I admit, to
win œ500 on the Stock Exchange by a stroke of sheer good fortune,
but even in the blue of this there is a cloud, for the next œ500
that we win by a stroke of shrewd business will certainly be put
down to luck. Luck is given the credit of all our successes, but
the other man is given the credit of all his luck. That is why we
have a right to complain.

I do not know why things should conspire against a man. Perhaps
there is some justice in it. It is possible--nay, probable--that
the man whom things love is hated by animals and children--even
by his fellow-men. Certainly he is hated by me. Indeed, the more
I think of him, the more I see that he is not a nice man in any
way. The gods have neglected him; he has no good qualities. He is
a worm. No wonder, then, that this small compensation is doled
out to him--the gift of getting on with inanimate things. This
gives him (with the unthinking) a certain reputation for
readiness and dexterity. If ever you meet a man with such a
reputation, you will know what he really is.

Circumstances connected with the hour at which I rose this
morning ordained that I should write this article in a dressing-
gown. I shall now put on a collar. I hope it will squeak.





Daffodils



The confession-book, I suppose, has disappeared. It is twenty
years since I have seen one. As a boy I told some inquisitive
owner what was my favourite food (porridge, I fancy), my
favourite hero in real life and in fiction, my favourite virtue
in woman, and so forth. I was a boy, and it didn't really matter
what were my likes and dislikes then, for I was bound to outgrow
them. But Heaven help the journalist of those days who had to
sign his name to opinions so definite! For when a writer has said
in print (as I am going to say directly) that the daffodil is his
favourite flower, simply because, looking round his room for
inspiration, he has seen a bowl of daffodils on his table and
thought it beautiful, it would be hard on him if some confession-
album-owner were to expose him in the following issue as already
committed on oath to the violet. Imaginative art would become
impossible. Fortunately I have no commitments, and I may affirm
that the daffodil is, and always has been, my favourite flower.
Many people will put their money on the rose, but it is
impossible that the rose can give them the pleasure which the
daffodil gives them, just as it is impossible that a thousand
pounds can give Rockefeller the pleasure which it gives you or
me. For the daffodil comes, not only before the swallow comes--
which is a matter of indifference, as nobody thinks any the worse
of the swallow in consequence--but before all the many flowers of
summer; it comes on the heels of a flowerless winter. Whereby it
is as superior to the rose as an oasis in the Sahara is to
champagne at a wedding.

Yes, a favourite flower must be a spring flower--there is no
doubt about that. You have your choice, then, of the daffodil,
the violet, the primrose, and the crocus. The bluebell comes too
late, the cowslip is but an indifferent primrose; camelias and
anemones and all the others which occur to you come into a
different class. Well, then, will you choose the violet or the
crocus? Or will you follow the legendary Disraeli and have
primroses on your statue?

I write as one who spends most of his life in London, and for me
the violet, the primrose, and the crocus are lacking in the same
necessary quality--they pick badly. My favourite flower must
adorn my house; to show itself off to the best advantage within
doors it must have a long stalk. A crocus, least of all, is a
flower to be plucked. I admit its charm as the first hint of
spring that is vouchsafed to us in the parks, but I want it
nearer home than that. You cannot pick a crocus and put it in
water; nor can you be so cruel as to spoil the primrose and the
violet by taking them from their natural setting; but the
daffodil cries aloud to be picked. It is what it is waiting for.

"Long stalks, please." Who, being commanded by his lady to bring
in flowers for the house, has not received this warning? And was
there ever a stalk to equal the daffodil's for length and
firmness and beauty? Other flowers must have foliage to set them
off, but daffodils can stand by themselves in a bowl, and their
green and yellow dress brings all spring into the room. A house
with daffodils in it is a house lit up, whether or no the sun be
shining outside. Daffodils in a green bowl--and let it snow if it
will.

Wordsworth wrote a poem about daffodils. He wrote poems about
most flowers. If a plant would be unique it must be one which had
never inspired him to song. But he did not write about daffodils
in a bowl. The daffodils which I celebrate are stationary;
Wordsworth's lived on the banks of Ullswater, and fluttered and
tossed their heads and danced in the breeze. He hints that in
their company even he might have been jocose--a terrifying
thought, which makes me happier to have mine safely indoors. When
he first saw them there (so he says) he gazed and gazed and
little thought what wealth the show to him had brought. Strictly
speaking, it hadn't brought him in anything at the moment, but he
must have known from his previous experiences with the daisy and
the celandine that it was good for a certain amount.

   A simple daffodil to him
   Was so much matter for a slim
   Volume at two and four.

You may say, of course, that I am in no better case, but then I
have never reproached other people (as he did) for thinking of a
primrose merely as a primrose.

But whether you prefer them my way or Wordsworth's--indoors or
outdoors--will make no difference in this further matter to which
finally I call your attention. Was there ever a more beautiful
name in the world than daffodil? Say it over to yourself, and
then say "agapanthus" or "chrysanthemum," or anything else you
please, and tell me if the daffodils do not have it.

  Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies,   Let them live upon their
praises;   Long as there's a sun that sets,   Primroses will have
their glory;   Long as there are violets   They will have a place
in story;   But for flowers my bowls to fill,   Give me just the
daffodil.

As Wordsworth ought to have said.






A Household Book



Once on a time I discovered Samuel Butler; not the other two, but
the one who wrote The Way of All Flesh, the second-best novel in
the English language. I say the second-best, so that, if you
remind me of Tom Jones or The Mayor of Casterbridge or any other
that you fancy, I can say that, of course, that one is the best.
Well, I discovered him, just as Voltaire discovered Habakkuk, or
your little boy discovered Shakespeare the other day, and I
committed my discovery to the world in two glowing articles. Not
unnaturally the world remained unmoved. It knew all about Samuel
Butler.

Last week I discovered a Frenchman, Claude Tillier, who wrote in
the early part of last century a book called Mon Oncle Benjamin,
which may be freely translated My Uncle Benjamin. (I read it in
the translation.) Eager as I am to be lyrical about it, I shall
refrain. I think that I am probably safer with Tillier than with
Butler, but I dare not risk it. The thought of your scorn at my
previous ignorance of the world-famous Tillier, your amused
contempt because I have only just succeeded in borrowing the
classic upon which you were brought up, this is too much for me.
Let us say no more about it. Claude Tillier--who has not heard of
Claude Tillier? Mon oncle Benjamin--who has not read it, in
French or (as I did) in American? Let us pass on to another book.

For I am going to speak of another discovery; of a book which
should be a classic, but is not; of a book of which nobody has
heard unless through me. It was published some twelve years ago,
the last-published book of a well-known writer. When I tell you
his name you will say, "Oh yes! I LOVE his books!" and you will
mention SO-AND-SO, and its equally famous sequel SUCH-AND-SUCH.
But when I ask you if you have read MY book, you will profess
surprise, and say that you have never heard of it. "Is it as good
as SO-AND-SO and SUCH-AND-SUCH?" you will ask, hardly believing
that this could be possible. "Much better," I shall reply--and
there, if these things were arranged properly, would be another
ten per cent, in my pocket. But, believe me, I shall be quite
content with your gratitude. Well, the writer of my book is
Kenneth Grahame. You have heard of him? Good, I thought so. The
books you have read are The Golden Age. and Dream Days. Am I not
right? Thank you. But the book you have not read-- my book--is
The Wind in the Willows. Am I not right again? Ah, I was afraid
so.

The reason why I knew you had not read it is the reason why I
call it "my" book. For the last ten or twelve years I have been
recommending it. Usually I speak about it at my first meeting
with a stranger. It is my opening remark, just as yours is
something futile about the weather. If I don't get it in at the
beginning, I squeeze it in at the end. The stranger has got to
have it some time. Should I ever find myself in the dock, and one
never knows, my answer to the question whether I had anything to
say would be, "Well, my lord, if I might just recommend a book to
the jury before leaving." Mr. Justice Darling would probably
pretend that he had read it, but he wouldn't deceive me.

For one cannot recommend a book to all the hundreds of people
whom one has met in ten years without discovering whether it is
well known or not. It is the amazing truth that none of those
hundreds had heard of The Wind in the Willows  until I told them
about it. Some of them had never heard of Kenneth Grahame; well,
one did not have to meet them again, and it takes all sorts to
make a world. But most of them were in your position--great
admirers of the author and his two earlier famous books, but
ignorant thereafter. I had their promise before they left me, and
waited confidently for their gratitude. No doubt they also spread
the good news in their turn, and it is just possible that it
reached you in this way, but it was to me, none the less, that
your thanks were due. For instance, you may have noticed a couple
of casual references to it, as if it were a classic known to all,
in a famous novel published last year. It was I who introduced
that novelist to it six months before. Indeed, I feel sometimes
that it was I who wrote The Wind in the Willows, and recommended
it to Kenneth Grahame ... but perhaps I am wrong here, for I have
not the pleasure of his acquaintance. Nor, as I have already
lamented, am I financially interested in its sale, an explanation
which suspicious strangers require from me sometimes.

I shall not describe the book, for no description would help it.
But I shall just say this; that it is what I call a Household
Book. By a Household Book I mean a book which everybody in the
household loves and quotes continually ever afterwards; a book
which is read aloud to every new guest, and is regarded as the
touchstone of his worth. But it is a book which makes you feel
that, though everybody in the house loves it, it is only you who
really appreciate it at its true value, and that the others are
scarcely worthy of it. It is obvious, you persuade yourself, that
the author was thinking of you when he wrote it. "I hope this
will please Jones," were his final words, as he laid down his
pen.

Well, of course, you will order the book at once. But I must give
you one word of warning. When you sit down to it, don't be so
ridiculous as to suppose that you are sitting in judgment on my
taste, still less on the genius of Kenneth Grahame. You are
merely sitting in judgment on yourself. ... You may be worthy; I
do not know. But it is you who are on trial.





Lunch



Food is a subject of conversation more spiritually refreshing
even than the weather, for the number of possible remarks about
the weather is limited, whereas of food you can talk on and on
and on. Moreover, no heat of controversy is induced by mention of
the atmospheric conditions (seeing that we are all agreed as to
what is a good day and what is a bad one), and where there can be
no controversy there can be no intimacy in agreement. But tastes
in food differ so sharply (as has been well said in Latin and, I
believe, also in French) that a pronounced agreement in them is
of all bonds of union the most intimate. Thus, if a man hates
tapioca pudding he is a good fellow and my friend.

To each his favourite meal. But if I say that lunch is mine I do
not mean that I should like lunch for breakfast, dinner, and tea;
I do not mean that of the four meals (or five, counting supper)
lunch is the one which I most enjoy--at which I do myself most
complete justice. This is so far from being true that I
frequently miss lunch altogether ... the exigencies of the
journalistic profession. To-day, for instance, I shall probably
miss it. No; what I mean is that lunch is the meal which in the
abstract appeals to me most because of its catholicity.

We breakfast and dine at home, or at other people's homes, but we
give ourselves up to London for lunch, and London has provided an
amazing variety for us. We can have six courses and a bottle of
champagne, with a view of the river, or one poached egg and a box
of dominoes, with a view of the skylights; we can sit or we can
stand, and without doubt we could, if we wished, recline in the
Roman fashion; we can spend two hours or five minutes at it; we
can have something different, every day of the week, or cling
permanently (as I know one man to do) to a chop and chips--and
what you do with the chips I have never discovered, for they
combine so little of nourishment with so much of inconvenience
that Nature can never have meant them for provender. Perhaps as
counters. ... But I am wandering from my theme.

There is this of romance about lunch, that one can imagine great
adventures with stockbrokers, actor-managers, publishers, and
other demigods to have had their birth at the luncheon table. If
it is a question of "bulling" margarine or "bearing" boot-polish,
if the name for the new play is still unsettled, if there is some
idea of an American edition--whatever the emergency, the final
word on the subject is always the same, "Come and have lunch with
me, and we'll talk it over"; and when the waiter has taken your
hat and coat, and you have looked diffidently at the menu, and in
reply to your host's question, "What will you drink?" have made
the only possible reply, "Oh, anything that you're drinking"
(thus showing him that you don't insist on a bottle to yourself)-
-THEN you settle down to business, and the history of England is
enlarged by who can say how many pages.

And not only does one inaugurate business matters at lunch, but
one also renews old friendships. Who has not had said to him in
the Strand, "Hallo, old fellow, I haven't seen you for ages; you
must come and lunch with me one day"? And who has not answered,
"Rather! I should love to," and passed on with a glow at the
heart which has not died out until the next day, when the
incident is forgotten? An invitation to dinner is formal, to tea
unnecessary, to breakfast impossible, but there is a casualness,
very friendly and pleasant, about invitations to lunch which make
them complete in themselves, and in no way dependent on any lunch
which may or may not follow.

Without having exhausted the subject of lunch in London (and I
should like to say that it is now certain that I shall not have
time to partake to-day), let us consider for a moment lunch in
the country. I do not mean lunch in the open air, for it is
obvious that there is no meal so heavenly as lunch thus eaten,
and in a short article like this I have no time in which to dwell
upon the obvious. I mean lunch at a country house. Now, the most
pleasant feature of lunch at a country house is this--that you
may sit next to whomsoever you please. At dinner she may be
entrusted to quite the wrong man; at breakfast you are faced with
the problem of being neither too early for her nor yet too late
for a seat beside her; at tea people have a habit of taking your
chair at the moment when a simple act of courtesy has drawn you
from it in search of bread and butter; but at lunch you follow
her in and there you are--fixed.

But there is a place, neither London nor the country, which
brings out more than any other place all that is pleasant in
lunch. It was really the recent experience of this which set me
writing about lunch. Lunch in the train! It should be the "second
meal"--about 1.30-- because then you are really some distance
from London and are hungry. The panorama flashes by outside,
nearer and nearer comes the beautiful West; you cross rivers and
hurry by little villages, you pass slowly and reverently through
strange old towns ... and, inside, the waiter leaves the potatoes
next to you and slips away.

Well, it is his own risk. Here goes. ... What I say is that, if a
man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of
fellow.





The Friend of Man



When swords went out of fashion, walking-sticks, I suppose, came
into fashion. The present custom has its advantages. Even in his
busiest day the hero's sword must have returned at times to its
scabbard, and what would he do then with nothing in his right
hand? But our walking-sticks have no scabbards. We grasp them
always, ready at any moment to summon a cab, to point out a view,
or to dig an enemy in the stomach. Meanwhile we slash the air in
defiance of the world.

My first stick was a malacca, silver at the collar and polished
horn as to the handle. For weeks it looked beseechingly at me
from a shop window, until a lucky birthday tip sent me in after
it. We went back to school together that afternoon, and if
anything can lighten the cloud which hangs over the last day of
holidays, it is the glory of some such stick as mine. Of course
it was too beautiful to live long; yet its death became it. I had
left many a parental umbrella in the train unhonoured and unsung.
My malacca was mislaid in an hotel in Norway. And even now when
the blinds are drawn and we pull up our chairs closer round the
wood fire, what time travellers tell to awestruck stay-at-homes
tales of adventure in distant lands, even now if by a lucky
chance Norway is mentioned, I tap the logs carelessly with the
poker and drawl, "I suppose you didn't happen to stay at
Vossvangen? I left a malacca cane there once. Rather a good one
too." So that there is an impression among my friends that there
is hardly a town in Europe but has had its legacy from me. And
this I owe to my stick.

My last is of ebony, ivory-topped. Even though I should spend
another fortnight abroad I could not take this stick with me. It
is not a stick for the country; its heart is in Piccadilly.
Perhaps it might thrive in Paris if it could stand the sea
voyage. But no, I cannot see it crossing the Channel; in a cap I
am no companion for it. Could I step on to the boat in a silk hat
and then retire below--but I am always unwell below, and that
would not suit its dignity. It stands now in a corner of my room
crying aloud to be taken to the opera. I used to dislike men who
took canes to Covent Garden, but I see now how it must have been
with them. An ebony stick topped with ivory has to be humoured.
Already I am considering a silk-lined cape, and it is settled
that my gloves are to have black stitchings.

Such is my last stick, for it was given to me this very morning.
At my first sight of it I thought that it might replace the
common one which I lost in an Easter train. That was silly of me.
I must have a stick of less gentle birth which is not afraid to
be seen with a soft hat. It must be a stick which I can drop, or
on occasion kick; one with which I can slash dandelions; one for
which, when ultimately I leave it in a train, conscience does not
drag me to Scotland Yard. In short, a companionable stick for a
day's journey; a country stick.

The ideal country stick will never be found. It must be thick
enough to stand much rough usage of a sort which I will explain
presently, and yet it must be thin so that it makes a pleasant
whistling sound through the air. Its handle must be curved so
that it can pull down the spray of blossom of which you are in
need, or pull up the luncheon basket which you want even more
badly, and yet it must be straight so that you can drive an old
golf ball with it. It must be unadorned, so that it shall lack
ostentation, and yet it must have a band, so that when you throw
stones at it you can count two if you hit the silver. You begin
to see how difficult it is to achieve the perfect stick.

Well, each one of us must let go those properties which his own
stick can do best without. For myself I insist on this--my stick
must be good for hitting and good to hit with. A stick, we are
agreed, is something to have in the hand when walking. But there
are times when we sit down; and if our journey shall have taken
us to the beach, our stick must at once be propped in the sand
while from a suitable distance we throw stones at it. However
beautiful the sea, its beauty can only be appreciated properly in
this fashion. Scenery must not be taken at a gulp; we must absorb
it unconsciously. With the mind gently exercised as to whether we
scored a two on the band or a one just below it, and with the
muscles of the arm at stretch, we are in a state ideally
receptive of beauty.

And, for my other essential of a country stick, it must be
possible to grasp it by the wrong end and hit a ball with it. So
it must have no ferrule, and the handle must be heavy and
straight. In this way was golf born; its creator roamed the
fields after his picnic lunch, knocking along the cork from his
bottle. At first he took seventy-nine from the gate in one field
to the oak tree in the next; afterwards fifty-four. Then suddenly
he saw the game. We cannot say that he w;is no lover of Nature.
The desire to knock a ball about, to play silly games with a
stick, comes upon a man most keenly when he is happy; let it be
ascribed that he is happy to the streams and the hedges and the
sunlight through the trees. And so let my stick have a handle
heavy and straight, and let there be no ferrule on the end. Be
sure that I have an old golf ball in my pocket.

In London one is not so particular. Chiefly we want a stick for
leaning on when we are talking to an acquaintance suddenly met.
After the initial "Hulloa!" and the discovery that we have
nothing else of importance to say, the situation is distinctly
eased by the remembrance of our stick. It gives us a support
moral and physical, such as is supplied in a drawing-room by a
cigarette. For this purpose size and shape are immaterial. Yet
this much is essential--it must not be too slippery, or in our
nervousness we may drop it altogether. My ebony stick with the
polished ivory top--

But I have already decided that my ebony stick is out of place
with the everyday hat. It stands in its corner waiting for the
opera season, I must get another stick for rough work.





The Diary Habit



A newspaper has been lamenting the decay of the diary-keeping
habit, with the natural result that several correspondents have
written to say that they have kept diaries all their lives. No
doubt all these diaries now contain the entry, "Wrote to the
Daily ---- to deny the assertion that the diary-keeping habit is
on the wane." Of such little things are diaries made.

I suppose this is the reason why diaries are so rarely kept
nowadays--that nothing ever happens to anybody. A diary would be
worth writing up if it could be written like this:--

MONDAY.--"Another exciting day. Shot a couple of hooligans on my
way to business and was forced to give my card to the police. On
arriving at the office was surprised to find the building on
fire, but was just in time to rescue the confidential treaty
between England and Switzerland. Had this been discovered by the
public, war would infallibly have resulted. Went out to lunch and
saw a runaway elephant in the Strand. Thought little of it at the
time, but mentioned it to my wife in the evening. She agreed that
it was worth recording."

TUESDAY.--"Letter from solicitor informing me that I have come
into œ1,000,000 through the will of an Australian gold-digger
named Tomkins. On referring to my diary I find that I saved his
life two years ago by plunging into the Serpentine. This is very
gratifying. Was late at the office as I had to look in at the
Palace on the way, in order to get knighted, but managed to get a
good deal of work done before I was interrupted by a madman with
a razor, who demanded œ100. Shot him after a desperate struggle.
Tea at an ABC, where I met the Duke of ---. Fell into the Thames
on my way home, but swam ashore without difficulty."

Alas! we cannot do this. Our diaries are very prosaic, very dull
indeed. They read like this:--

Monday.--"Felt inclined to stay in bed this morning and send an
excuse to the office, but was all right after a bath and
breakfast. Worked till 1.30 and had lunch. Afterwards worked till
five, and had my hair cut on the way home. After dinner read A
Man's Passion, by Theodora Popgood. Rotten. Went to bed at
eleven."

Tuesday.--"Had a letter from Jane. Did some good work in the
morning, and at lunch met Henry, who asked me to play golf with
him on Saturday. Told him I was playing with Peter, but said I
would like a game with him on the Saturday after. However, it
turned out he was playing with William then, so we couldn't fix
anything up. Bought a pair of shoes on my way home, but think
they will be too tight. The man says, though, that they will
stretch."

Wednesday.--"Played dominoes at lunch and won fivepence."

If this sort of diary is now falling into decay, the world is not
losing much. But at least it is a harmless pleasure to some to
enter up their day's doings each evening, and in years to come it
may just possibly be of interest to the diarist to know that it
was on Monday, 27th April, that he had his hair cut. Again, if in
the future any question arose as to the exact date of Henry's
decease, we should find in this diary proof that anyhow he was
alive as late as Tuesday, 28th April. That might, though it
probably won't, be of great importance. But there is another sort
of diary which can never be of any importance at all. I make no
apology for giving a third selection of extracts.

Monday.--"Rose at nine and came down to find a letter from Mary.
How little we know our true friends! Beneath the mask of outward
affection there may lurk unknown to us the serpent's tooth of
jealousy. Mary writes that she can make nothing for my stall at
the bazaar as she has her own stall to provide for. Ate my
breakfast mechanically, my thoughts being far away. What, after
all, is life? Meditated deeply on the inner cosmos till lunch-
time. Afterwards I lay down for an hour and composed my mind. I
was angry this morning with Mary. Ah, how petty! Shall I never be
free from the bonds of my own nature? Is the better self within
me never to rise to the sublime heights of selflessness of which
it is capable? Rose at four and wrote to Mary, forgiving her.
This has been a wonderful day for the spirit."

Yes; I suspect that a good many diaries record adventures of the
mind and soul for lack of stirring adventures to the body. If
they cannot say, "Attacked by a lion in Bond Street to-day," they
can at least say, "Attacked by doubt in St. Paul's Cathedral."
Most people will prefer, in the absence of the lion, to say
nothing, or nothing more important than "Attacked by the
hairdresser with a hard brush"; but there are others who must get
pen to paper somehow, and who find that only in regard to their
emotions have they anything unique to say.

But, of course, there is ever within the breasts of all diarists
the hope that their diaries may some day be revealed to the
world. They may be discovered by some future generation, amazed
at the simple doings of the twentieth century, or their
publication may be demanded by the next generation, eager to know
the inner life of the great man just dead. Best of all, they may
be made public by the writers themselves in their
autobiographies.

Yes; the diarist must always have his eye on a possible
autobiography. "I remember," he will write in that great work,
having forgotten all about it, "I distinctly remember"--and here
he will refer to his diary--"meeting X. at lunch one Sunday and
saying to him ..."

What he said will not be of much importance, but it will show you
what a wonderful memory the distinguished author retains in his
old age.






Midsummer Day



There is magic in the woods on Midsummer Day--so people tell me.
Titania conducts her revels. Let others attend her court; for
myself I will beg to be excused. I have no heart for revelling on
Midsummer Day. On any other festival I will be as jocund as you
please, but on the longest day of the year I am overburdened by
the thought that from this moment the evenings are beginning to
draw in. We are on the way to winter.

It is on Midsummer Day, or thereabouts, that the cuckoo changes
his tune, knowing well that the best days are over and that in a
little while it will be time for him to fly away. I should like
this to be a learned article on "The Habits of the Cuckoo," and
yet, if it were, I doubt if I should love him at the end of it.
It is best to know only the one thing of him, that he lays his
eggs in another bird's nest--a friendly idea--and beyond that to
take him as we find him. And we find that his only habit which
matters is the delightful one of saying "Cuckoo."

The nightingale is the bird of melancholy, the thrush sings a
disturbing song of the good times to come, the blackbird whistles
a fine, cool note which goes best with a February morning, and
the skylark trills his way to a heaven far out of the reach of
men; and what the lesser white-throat says I have never rightly
understood. But the cuckoo is the bird of present joys; he keeps
us company on the lawns of summer, he sings under a summer sun in
a wonderful new world of blue and green. I think only happy
people hear him. He is always about when one is doing pleasant
things. He never sings when the sun hides behind banks of clouds,
or if he does, it is softly to himself so that he may not lose
the note. Then "Cuckoo!" he says aloud, and you may be sure that
everything is warm and bright again.

But now he is leaving us. Where he goes I know not, but I think
of him vaguely as at Mozambique, a paradise for all good birds
who like their days long. If geography were properly taught at
schools, I should know where Mozambique was, and what sort of
people live there. But it may be that, with all these cuckoos
cuckooing and swallows swallowing from July to April, the country
is so full of immigrants that there is no room for a stable
population. It may also be, of course, that Mozambique is not the
place I am thinking of; yet it has a birdish sound.

The year is arranged badly. If Mr. Willett were alive he would do
something about it. Why should the days begin to get shorter at
the moment when summer is fully arrived? Why should it be
possible for the vicar to say that the evenings are drawing in,
when one is still having strawberries for tea? Sometimes I think
that if June were called August, and April June, these things
would be easier to bear. The fact that in what is now called
August we should be telling each other how wonderfully hot it was
for October would help us to bear the slow approach of winter. On
a Midsummer Day in such a calendar one would revel gladly, and
there would be no midsummer madness.

Already the oak trees have taken on an autumn look. I am told
that this is due to a local irruption of caterpillars, and not to
the waning of the summer, but it has a suspicious air. Probably
the caterpillars knew. It seems strange now to reflect that there
was a time when I liked caterpillars; when I chased them up
suburban streets, and took them home to fondle them; when I knew
them all by their pretty names, assisted them to become
chrysalises, and watched over them in that unprotected state as
if I had been their mother. Ah, how dear were my little charges
to me then! But now I class them with mosquitoes and blight and
harvesters, the pests of the countryside. Why, I would let them
crawl up my arm in those happy days of old, and now I cannot even
endure to have them dropping gently into my hair. And I should
not know what to say to a chrysalis.

There are great and good people who know all about solstices and
zeniths, and they can tell you just why it is that 24th June is
so much hotter and longer than 24th December--why it is so in
England, I should say. For I believe (and they will correct me if
I am wrong) that at the equator the days and nights are always of
equal length. This must make calling almost an impossibility, for
if one cannot say to one's hostess, "How quickly the days are
lengthening (or drawing in)," one might as well remain at home.
"How stationary the days are remaining" might pass on a first
visit, but the old inhabitants would not like it rubbed into
them. They feel, I am sure, that however saddening a Midsummer
Day may be, an unchanging year is much more intolerable. One can
imagine the superiority of a resident who lived a couple of miles
off the equator, and took her visitors proudly to the end of the
garden where the seasons were most mutable. There would be no
bearing with her.

In these circumstances I refuse to be depressed. I console myself
with the thought that if 25th June is the beginning of winter, at
least there is a next summer to which I may look forward. Next
summer anything may happen. I suppose a scientist would be
considerably surprised if the sun refused to get up one morning,
or, having got up, declined to go to bed again. It would not
surprise ME. The amazing thing is that Nature goes on doing the
same things in the same way year after year; any sudden little
irrelevance on her part would be quite understandable. When the
wise men tell us so confidently that there will be an eclipse of
the sun in 1921, invisible at Greenwich, do they have no qualms
of doubt as the day draws near? Do they glance up from their
whitebait at the appointed hour, just in case it IS visible after
all? Or if they have journeyed to Pernambuco, or wherever the
best view is to be obtained, do they wonder ... perhaps ... and
tell each other the night before that, of course, they were
coming to Pernambuco anyhow, to see an aunt?

Perhaps they don't. But for myself I am not so certain, and I
have hopes that, certainly next year, possibly even this year,
the days will go on lengthening after midsummer is over.





At the Bookstall



I have often longed to be a grocer. To be surrounded by so many
interesting things-- sardines, bottled raspberries, biscuits with
sugar on the top, preserved ginger, hams, brawn under glass,
everything in fact that makes life worth living; at one moment to
walk up a ladder in search of nutmeg, at the next to dive under a
counter in pursuit of cinnamon; to serve little girls with a
ha'porth of pear drops and lordly people like you and me with a
pint of cherry gin --is not this to follow the king of trades?
Some day I shall open a grocer's shop, and you will find me in my
spare evenings aproned behind the counter. Look out for the
currants in the window as you come in--I have an idea for
something artistic in the way of patterns there; but, as you love
me, do not offer to buy any. We grocers only put the currants out
for show, and so that we may run our fingers through them
luxuriously when business is slack. I have a good  line in
shortbreads, madam, if I can find the box, but no currants this
evening, I beg you.

Yes, to be a grocer is to live well; but, after all, it is not to
see life. A grocer, in as far as it is possible to a man who
sells both scented soap and pilchards, would become narrow. We do
not come into contact with the outside world much, save through
the medium of potted lobster, and to sell a man potted lobster is
not to have our fingers on his pulse. Potted lobster does not
define a man. All customers are alike to the grocer, provided
their money is good. I perceive now that I was over-hasty in
deciding to become a grocer. That is rather for one's old age.
While one is young, and interested in persons rather than in
things, there is only one profession to follow--the profession of
bookstall clerk.

To be behind a bookstall is indeed to see life. The fascination
of it struck me suddenly as 1 stood in front of a station
bookstall last Monday and wondered who bought the tie-clips. The
answer came to me just as I got into my train-- Ask the man
behind the bookstall. He would know. Yes, and he would know who
bought all his papers and books and pamphlets, and to know this
is to know something about the people in the world. You cannot
tell a man by the lobster he eats, but you can tell something
about him by the literature he reads.

For instance, I once occupied a carriage on an eastern line with,
among others, a middle-aged woman. As soon as we left Liverpool
Street she produced a bag of shrimps, grasped each individual in
turn firmly by the head and tail, and ate him. When she had
finished, she emptied the ends out of the window, wiped her
hands, and settled down comfortably to her paper. What paper?
You'll never guess; I shall have to tell you--The Morning Post.
Now doesn't that give you the woman? The shrimps alone, no; the
paper alone, no; but the two to-gether. Conceive the holy joy of
the bookstall clerk as she and her bag of shrimps-- yes, he could
have told at once they were shrimps--approached and asked for The
Morning Post.

The day can never be dull to the bookstall clerk. I imagine him
assigning in his mind the right paper to each customer. This man
will ask for Golfing--wrong, he wants Cage Birds; that one over
there wants The Motor--ah, well, The Auto-Car, that's near
enough. Soon he would begin to know the different types; he would
learn to distinguish between the patrons of The Dancing Times and
of The Vote, The Era and The Athenaeum. Delightful surprises
would overwhelm him at intervals; as when--a red-letter day in
all the great stations--a gentleman in a check waistcoat makes
the double purchase of Homer's Penny Stories and The Spectator.
On those occasions, and they would be very rare, his faith in
human nature would begin to ooze away, until all at once he would
tell himself excitedly that the man was obviously an escaped
criminal in disguise, rather overdoing the part. After which he
would hand over The Winning Post and The Animals' Friend to the
pursuing detective in a sort of holy awe. What a life!

But he has other things than papers to sell. He knows who buys
those little sixpenny books of funny stories--a problem which has
often puzzled us others; he understands by now the type of man
who wants to read up a few good jokes to tell them down at old
Robinson's, where he is going for the week-end. Our bookstall
clerk doesn't wait to be asked. As soon as this gentleman
approaches, he whips out the book, dusts it, and places it before
the raconteur. He recognizes also at a glance the sort of silly
ass who is always losing his indiarubber umbrella ring. Half-way
across the station he can see him, and he hastens to get a new
card out in readiness. ("Or we would let you have seven for
sixpence, sir.") And even when one of those subtler characters
draws near, about whom it is impossible to say immediately
whether they require a fountain pen with case or the Life and
Letters, reduced to 3s. 6d., of Major-General Clement Bulger,
C.B., even then the man behind the bookstall is not found
wanting. If he is wrong the first time, he never fails to recover
with his second. "Bulger, sir. One of our greatest soldiers."

I thought of these things last Monday, and definitely renounced
the idea of becoming a grocer; and as I wandered round the
bookstall, thinking, I came across a little book, sixpence in
cloth, a shilling in leather, called Proverbs and Maxims. It
contained some thousands of the best thoughts in all languages,
such as have guided men along the path of truth since the
beginning of the world, from "What ho, she bumps!" to "Ich dien,"
and more. The thought occurred to me that an interesting article
might be extracted from it, so I bought the book. Unfortunately
enough I left it in the train before I had time to master it. I
shall be at the bookstall next Monday and I shall have  to buy
another copy. That will be all right; you shan't miss it.

But I am wondering now what the bookstall clerk will make of me.
A man who keeps on buying Proverbs and Maxims. Well, as I say,
they see life.





"Who's Who"



I like my novels long. When I had read three pages of this one I
glanced at the end, and found to my delight that there were two
thousand seven hundred and twenty-five pages more to come. I
returned with a sigh of pleasure