\ 
 
4 
 
fi 
 
 ,, Idle Fellow 
 I 
 
 |{ JEROME KV.'^^ 
 JEROME 
 
 \W 
 
 H. M. CALDWELL CO., PUBLISHERS 
 NEW YORK AND BOSTON ^ Jt 
 

 To Replace lost copy 
 
 MAR 2 8 1946 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 On being Hard Up 9 
 
 On being in the Blues 20 
 
 On Vanity and Vanities 29 
 
 On Getting on in the World 42 
 
 On being Idle 53 
 
 On being in Love 65 
 
 On the Weather 78 
 
 On Cats and Dogs 93 
 
 On being Shy 113 
 
 On Babies , 127 
 
 On Eating and Drinking 140 
 
 On Furnished Apartments 155 
 
 On Dress and Deportment 170 
 
 On Memory ...... .^ •• 188 
 
 5 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 One or two friends to whom I showed 
 these papers in MS., having observed that 
 they were not half bad, and some of my rela- 
 tions having promised to buy the book, if it 
 ever came out, I feel I have no right to longer 
 delay its issue. But for this, as one may say, 
 public demand, I, perhaps, should not have 
 ventured to offer these mere "idle thoughts" 
 of mine as mental food for the English-speak- 
 ing peoples of the earth. What readers ask 
 nowadays in a book is that it should improve, 
 instruct, and elevate. This book wouldn't 
 elevate a cow. I can not conscientiously re- 
 commend it for any useful purpose whatever. 
 All I can suggest is, that when you get tired 
 of reading " the best hundred books," you 
 may take this up for half an hour. It will be 
 a change. 
 
 7 
 
THE 
 
 Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. 
 
 ON BEING HARD UP. 
 
 IT is a most remarkable thing. I sat down 
 with the full intention of writing something 
 clever and original ; but for the life of me I can't 
 think of anything clever and original — at least 
 not at this moment. The only thing I can think 
 about now is being hard up. I suppose having 
 my hands in my pockets has made me think 
 about this. I always do sit with my hands in my 
 pockets, except when I am in the company of 
 my sisters, my cousins, or my aunts ; and they 
 kick up such a shindy — I should say expostulate so 
 eloquently upon the subject — that I have to give 
 in and take them out — my hands, I mean. The 
 chorus to their objections is that it is not gentle- 
 manly. I am hanged if I can see why. I could 
 9 
 
On Being .Hard Up. 
 
 understand its not being considered gentlemanly 
 to put your hands in other people's pockets (espe- 
 cially by the other people), but how, oh, ye 
 sticklers for what looks this and what looks that, 
 can putting his hands in his own pockets make a 
 man less gentle ? Perhaps you are right, though. 
 Now I come to think of it, I have heard some 
 people grumble most savagely when doing it. 
 But they were mostly old gentlemen. We young 
 fellows, as a rule, are never quite at ease unless 
 we have our hands in our pockets. We are awk- 
 ward and shifty. We are like what a music-hall 
 Lion Comique would be without his opera-hat, 
 if such a thing can be imagined. But let us put 
 our hands in our trousers pockets, and let there 
 be some small change in the right-hand one and 
 a bunch of keys in the left, and we will face a 
 female post-office clerk. 
 
 It is a little difficult to know what to do with 
 your hands, even in your pockets, when there is 
 nothing else there. Years ago, when my whole 
 capital would occasionally come down to *' what 
 in town the people call a bob," I would recklessly 
 spend a penny of it, merely for the sake of having 
 the change, all in coppers, to jingle. You don't 
 feel nearly so hard up with elevenpence in your 
 
 lO 
 
On Being Hard Up. 
 
 pocket as you do with a shilling. Had I been 
 "La-di-da," that impecunious youth about whom 
 we superior folk are so sarcastic, I would have 
 changed my penny for two ha'pennies. 
 
 I can speak with authority on the subject of 
 being hard up. I have been a provincial actor. 
 If further evidence be required, whiclf I do not 
 think likely, I can add that I have been a ' ' gen- 
 tleman connected with the press." I have lived 
 on fifteen shillings a week. I have lived a week 
 on ten, owing the other five; and I have lived 
 for a fortnight on a great-coat. 
 
 It is wonderful what an insight into domestic 
 economy being really hard up gives one. If you 
 want to find out the value of money, live on fif- 
 teen shillings a week, and see how much you can 
 put by for clothes and recreation. You will find 
 out that it is worth while to wait for the farthing 
 change, that it is worth while to walk a mile to 
 save a penny, that a glass of beer is a luxury 
 to be indulged in only at rare intervals, and 
 that a collar can be worn for four days. 
 
 Try it just before you get married. It will 
 
 be excellent practice. Let your son and heir 
 
 try it before sending him to college. He won't 
 
 grumble at a hundred a year pocket-money 
 
 II 
 
On ^eing Hard Up. 
 
 then. There are some people to whom it would 
 do a w^orld of good. There is that delicate 
 blossom, who can't drink any claret under 
 ninety-four^ and who would as soon think of 
 dining off cats' meat as off plain roast mutton. 
 You do come across these poor wretches now 
 and then ; though, to the credit of humanity, 
 they are principally confined to that fearful 
 and wonderful society known only to lady nov- 
 elists. I never hear of one of these creatures 
 discussing a 7nenii card but I feel a mad desire 
 to drag him off to the bar of some common 
 East End public-house, and cram a sixpenny 
 dinner down his throat — beef-steak pudding, 
 fourpence ; potatoes, a penny ; half a pint of 
 porter, a penny. The recollection of it (and the 
 mingled fragrance of beer, tobacco, and roast 
 pork generally leaves a vivid impression) might 
 induce him to turn up his nose a little less fre- 
 quently in the future at everything that is put 
 before him. Then, there is that generous party, 
 the cadger's delight, who is so free with his small 
 change, but who never thinks of paying his 
 debts. It might teach even him a little common 
 sense. " I always give the waiter a shilling. 
 One can't give the fellow less, you know," ex- 
 
 12 
 
On Being Hard Up. 
 
 plained a young government clerk with whom I 
 was lunching the other day in Regent Street. I 
 agreed with him as to the utter impossibility of 
 making it elevenpence ha'penny; but, at the 
 same time, I resolved to one day decoy him to 
 an eating-house I ren\embered near Covent Gar- 
 den, where the waiter, for the better discharge of 
 his duties, goes about in his shirt-sleeves — and 
 Tery dirty sleeves they are, too, when it gets near 
 the end of the month. I know that waiter. If 
 my friend gives him anything beyond a penny, 
 the man will insist on shaking hands with him 
 then and there, as a mark of his esteem ; of that 
 I feel sure. 
 
 There have been a good many funny things 
 said and written about hardupishness, but the 
 reality is not funny, for all that. It is not funny 
 to have to haggle over pennies. It isn't funny 
 to be thought mean and stingy. It isn't funny 
 to be shabby, and to be ashamed of your address. 
 No, there is nothing at all funny in poverty — to 
 the poor. It is hell upon earth to a sensitive 
 man ; and many a brave gentleman, who would 
 have faced the labors of Hercules, has had his 
 heart broken by its petty miseries. 
 
 It is not actual discomforts themselves that are 
 13 
 
On Being Hard Up. 
 
 hard to bear. Who would mind roughing it a 
 bit, if that were all it meant ? What cared Rob- 
 inson Crusoe for a patch on his trousers ? Did 
 he wear trousers ? I forget ; or did he go about 
 as he does in the pantomimes? What did it 
 matter to him if his toes did stick out of his 
 boots? and what if his umbrella was a cotton 
 one, so long as it kept the rain off? His shabbi- 
 ness did not trouble him ; there were none of 
 his friends round about to sneer at him. 
 
 Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known 
 to be poor that is the sting. It is not cold that 
 makes a man without a great-coat hurry along so 
 quickly. It is not all shame at telling lies — 
 which he knows will not be believed — that makes 
 him turn so red when he informs you that he con- 
 siders great coats unhealthy, and never carries an 
 umbrella on principle. It is easy enough to say 
 that poverty is no crime. No ; if it were, men 
 wouldn't be ashamed of it. It's a blunder, 
 though, and is punished as such. A poor man is 
 despised the whole world over ; despised as much 
 by a Christian as by a lord, as much by a dema- 
 gogue as by a footman, and not all the copy- 
 book maxims ever set for ink-stained youth will 
 make him respected. Appearances are every- 
 14 
 
On Being Hard Up. 
 
 thing, so far as human opinion goes, and the 
 man who will walk down Piccadilly arm in arm 
 with the most notorious scamp in London, pro- 
 vided he is a well-dressed one, will slink up a 
 back street to say a couple of words to a seedy- 
 looking gentleman. And the seedy-looking 
 gentleman knows this — no one better — and will 
 go a mile round to avoid meeting an acquaint- 
 ance. Those that knew him in his prosperity 
 need never trouble themselves to look the other 
 way. He is a thousand times more anxious that 
 they should not see him than they can be ', and 
 as to their assistance, there is nothing he dreads 
 more than the offer of it. All he wants is to be 
 forgotten; and in this respect he is generally 
 fortunate enough to get what he wants. 
 
 One becomes used to being hard up, as one 
 becomes used to everything else, by the help of 
 that wonderful old homeopathic doctor, Time. 
 You can tell at a glance the difference between 
 the old hand and the novice ; between the case- 
 hardened man who has been used to shift and 
 struggle for years, and the poor devil of a begin- 
 ner, striving to hide his misery, and in a constant 
 agony of fear lest he should be found out. Noth- 
 ing shows this difference more clearly than the 
 15 
 
On Being Hard Up. 
 
 way in which each will pawn his watch. As the 
 poet says somewhere: '* True ease in pawning 
 comes from art, not chance." The one goes 
 into his ''Uncle's" with as much composure as 
 he would into his tailor's — very likely with more. 
 The assistant is even civil and attends to him at 
 once, to the great indignation of the lady in the 
 next box, who, however, sarcastically observes 
 that she don't mind being kept waiting '* if it is 
 a regular customer." Why, from the pleasant 
 and business-like manner in which the transac- 
 tion is carried out, it might be a large purchase 
 in the three per cents. Yet what a piece of work 
 a man makes of his first ^' pop." A boy popping 
 his first question is confidence itself compared 
 with him. He hangs about outside the shop, 
 until he has succeeded in attracting the attention 
 of all the loafers in the neighborhood, and has 
 aroused strong suspicions in the mind of the 
 policeman on the beat. At last, after a careful 
 examination of the contents of the windows, 
 made for the purpose of impressing the by-stand- 
 ers with the notion that he is going in to pur- 
 chase a diamond bracelet or some such trifle, he 
 enters, trying to do so with a careless swagger, 
 and giving himself really the air of a member of 
 i6 
 
On Being Hard Up. 
 
 the swell mob. When inside, he speaks in so 
 low a voice as to be perfectly inaudible, and has 
 to say it all over again. When, in the course of 
 his rambling conversation about a ^'friend" of 
 his, the word '' lend " is reached, he is promptly 
 told to go up the court on the right, and take 
 the first door round the corner. He comes out 
 of the shop with a face that you could easily light 
 a cigarette at, and firmly under the impression 
 that the whole population of the district is watch- 
 ing him. When he does get to the right place 
 he has forgotten his name and address and is in a 
 general condition of hopeless imbecihty. Asked 
 in a severe tone how he came by ''this," he 
 stammers and contradicts himself, and it is only 
 a miracle if he does not confess to having stolen 
 it that very day. He is therefore informed that 
 they don't want anything to do with his sort, 
 and that he had better get out of this as quickly 
 as possible, which he does, recollecting nothing 
 more until he finds himself three miles off, with- 
 out the slightest knowledge how he got there. 
 
 By the way, how awkward it is, though, having 
 
 to depend on public-houses and churches for the 
 
 time ! The former are generally too fast, and 
 
 the latter too slow. Besides which your efforts 
 
 2 17 
 
On Being Hard Up. 
 
 to get a glimpse of the public-house clock from 
 the outside are attended with great difficulties. 
 If you gently push the swing-door ajar and peer 
 in you draw upon yourself the contemptuous 
 looks of the bar-maid, who at once puts you 
 down in the same category with area sneaks and 
 cadgers. You also create a certain amount of 
 agitation among the married portion of the cus- 
 tomers. You don't see the clock, because it is 
 behind the door; and in trying to withdraw 
 quietly you jamb your head. The only other 
 method is to jump up and down outside the win- 
 dow. After this latter proceeding, however, if 
 you do not bring out a banjo and commence to 
 sing, the youthful inhabitants of the neighbor- 
 hood, who have gathered round in expectation, 
 become disappointed. I should like to know, 
 too, by what mysterious law of nature it is that, 
 before you have left your watch ^' to be repaired ' ' 
 half an hour, some one is sure to stop you in the 
 street and conspicuously ask you the time. No- 
 body even feels the slightest curiosity on the sub- 
 ject when you've got it on. 
 
 Dear old ladies and gentlemen, who know 
 nothing about being hard up — and may they 
 never, bless their gray old heads — look upon the 
 iS 
 
On Being Hard Up. 
 
 pawn-shop as the last stage of degradation ; but 
 those who know it better (and my readers have, 
 no doubt, noticed this themselves) are often sur=- 
 prised, like the little boy who dreamed he went 
 to heaven, at meeting so many people there that 
 they never expected to see. For my part I think 
 it a much more independent course than borrow- 
 ing from friends, and I always try to impress this 
 upon those of my acquaintance who incline to- 
 ward *' wanting a couple of pounds till the day 
 after to-morrow." But they won't all see it. 
 One of them once remarked that he objected to 
 the principle of the thing. I fancy if he had 
 said it was the interest that he objected to he, 
 would have been nearer the truth : twenty-five 
 per cent, certainly does come heavy. 
 
 There are degrees in being hard up. We are 
 all hard up, more or less — most of us more. 
 Some are hard up for a thousand pounds, some 
 for a shilling. Just at this moment I am 
 hard up myself for a fiver. I only want it for 
 a day or two. I should be certain of paying 
 it back within a week at the outside, and 
 if any lady or gentleman among my readers 
 would kindly lend it to me, I should be very 
 much obliged indeed. They could send it to me, 
 19 
 
On Being in the Blues. 
 
 under cover, to Messrs. Field & Tuer, only, in 
 such case, please let the envelope be carefully- 
 sealed. I would give you my I O U as security. 
 
 ON BEING IN THE BLUES. 
 
 T CAN enjoy feeling melancholy— and there 
 ^ is a good deal of satisfaction about being 
 thoroughly miserable — but nobody likes a fit of 
 the blues. Nevertheless, everybody has them ;, 
 notwithstanding which, nobody can tell why. 
 There is no accounting for them. You are just 
 as likely to have one on the day after you have 
 come into a large fortune, as on the day after 
 you have left your new silk umbrella in the train. 
 Its effect upon you is somewhat similar to what 
 would probably be produced by a combined 
 attack of toothache, indigestion, and cold in the 
 head. You become stupid, restless and irritable ; 
 rude to strangers, and dangerous toward your 
 friends; clumsy, maudlin, and quarrelsome; a 
 nuisance to yourself and everybody about you. 
 
 While it is on, you can do nothing and think 
 of nothing, though feeling at the time bound to 
 do something. You can't sit still, so put on your 
 hat and go for a walk ; but before you get to the 
 
On Being in the Blues. 
 
 corner of the street you wish you hadn't come 
 out, and you turn back. You open a book and 
 try to read, but you find Shakespeare trite and 
 commonplace, Dickens is dull and prosy, Thack- 
 eray a bore, and Carlyle too sentimental. You 
 throw the book aside, and call the author names. 
 Then you " shoo " the cat out of the room, and 
 kick the door to after her. You think you will 
 write your letters, but after sticking at '' Dearest 
 Auntie,— I find I have five minutes to spare, and 
 so hasten to write to you" for a quarter of an 
 hour without being able to think of another sen- 
 tence, you tumble the paper into the desk, fling 
 the wet pen down upon the table-cloth, and start 
 up with the resolution of going to see the Thomp- 
 sons. While pulling on your gloves, however, it 
 occurs to you that the Thompsons are idiots; 
 that they never have supper ; and that you will 
 be expected to jump the baby. You curse the 
 Thompsons, and decide not to go. 
 
 By this time you feel completely crushed. 
 You bury your face in your hands, and think 
 you would like to die and go to heaven. You 
 picture to yourself your own sick-bed, with all 
 your friends and relations standing round you 
 weeping. You bless them all, especially the 
 
 21 
 
On Being in the Blues. 
 
 young and pretty ones. They will value you 
 when you are gone, so you say to yourself, and 
 learn too late what they have lost ; and you bit- 
 terly contrast their presumed regard for you then 
 with their decided want of veneration now. 
 
 These reflections make you feel a little more 
 cheerful, but only for a brief period ; for the 
 next moment you think what a fool you must be 
 to imagine for an instant that anybody would be 
 sorry at anything that might happen to you. 
 Who would care two straws (whatever precise 
 amount of care two straws may represent) whether 
 you were blown up or hung up, or married, or 
 drowned ? Nobody cares for you. You never 
 have been properly appreciated, never met with 
 your due deserts in any one particular. You 
 review the whole of your past life, and it is 
 painfully apparent that you have been ill-used 
 from your cradle. 
 
 Half an hour's indulgence in these considera- 
 tions works you up into a state of savage fury 
 against everybody and everything, especially 
 yourself, whom anatomical reasons alone prevent 
 your kicking. Bed-time at last comes, to save 
 you from doing something rash, and you spring 
 upstairs, throw off your clothes, leaving them^ 
 
 22 
 
On Being in the Blues. 
 
 strewn all over the room, blow out the candle, 
 and jump into bed as if you had backed yourself 
 for a heavy wager to do the whole thing against 
 time. There, you toss and tumble about for a 
 couple of hours or so, varying the monotony by 
 occasionally jerking the clothes off, and getting 
 out and putting them on again. At length you 
 drop into an uneasy and fitful slumber, have bad 
 dreams, and wake up late the next morning. 
 
 At least, this is all we poor single men can do 
 under the circumstances. Married men bully 
 their wives, grumble at the dinner, and insist on 
 the children going to bed. All of which, creat- 
 ing, as it does, a good deal of disturbance in the 
 house, must be a great relief to the feelings of a 
 man in the blues ; rows being the only form of 
 amusement in Avhich he can take any interest. 
 
 The symptoms of the infirmity are much the 
 same in every case, but the affliction itself is vari- 
 ously termed. The poet says that * ' a feeling of 
 sadness comes o'er him." 'Arry refers to the 
 heavings of his wayward heart by confiding to 
 Jimee that he has ''got the blooming hump." 
 Your sister doesn't know what is the matter with 
 her to-night. She feels out of sorts altogether, and 
 hopes nothing is going to happen. The every- 
 23 
 
On Being in the Blues. 
 
 day-young-man is ''so awfully glad to meet you^ 
 old fellow," for he does " feel so jolly miserable 
 this evening." As for myself, I generally say 
 that ''I have a strange, unsettled feeling to- 
 night," and ''think I'll go out." 
 
 By the way, it never does come except in the 
 evening. In the sun-time, when the world is 
 bounding forward full of life, we cannot stay to 
 sigh and sulk. The roar of the working day 
 drowns the voices of the elfin sprites that are 
 ever singing their low-toned "Miserere" in our 
 ears. In the day we are angry, disappointed, or 
 indignant, but never "in the blues," and never 
 melancholy. When things go wrong at ten o'clock 
 in the morning, we — or rather you — swear and 
 knock the furniture about ; but if the misfortune 
 comes at lo p.m., we read poetry, or sit in the 
 dark, and think what a hollow world this is. 
 
 But, as a rule, it is not trouble that makes us 
 melancholy. The actuality is too stern a thing 
 for sentiment. We linger to weep over a picture, 
 but from the original we should quickly turn our 
 eyes away. There is no pathos in real misery; 
 no luxury in real grief. We do not toy with 
 sharp swords, nor hug a gnawing fox to our 
 breasts for choice. When a man or woman loves 
 24 
 
On Being in the Blues. 
 
 to brood over a sorrow, and takes care to keep it 
 green in their memory, you may be sure it is no 
 longer a pain to them. However they may have 
 suffered from it at first, the recollection has be- 
 come by then a pleasure. Many dear old ladies, 
 who daily look at tiny shoes, lying in laven- 
 der-scented drawers, and w^eep as they think of 
 the tiny feet whose toddling march is done ; and 
 sweet-faced young ones, who place each night 
 beneath their pillow some lock that once curled 
 on a boyish head that the salt waves have kissed 
 to death, will call me a nasty cynical brute, and 
 say I'm talking nonsense ; but I believe, neverthe- 
 less, that if they will ask themselves truthfully 
 whether they find it unpleasant to dwell thus on 
 their sorrow, they will be compelled to answer 
 *'No." Tears are as sweet as laughter to some 
 natures. The proverbial Englishman, we know 
 from old chronicler Froissart, takes his pleasures 
 sadly, and the English woman goes a step further, 
 and takes her pleasures in sadness itself. 
 
 I am not sneering. I would not for a moment 
 sneer at anything that helps to keep hearts tender 
 in this hard old world. We men are cold and 
 common-sensed enough for all; we would not 
 have women the same. No, no, ladies dear, be 
 25 
 
On Being in the Blues. 
 
 always sentimental and soft-hearted, as you are — ■■ 
 be the soothing butter to our coarse dry bread. 
 Besides, sentiment is to woman what fun is to us. 
 They do not care for our humor, surely it would 
 be unfair to deny them their grief. And who 
 shall say that their mode of enjoyment is not as 
 sensible as ours ? Why assume that a doubled-up 
 body, a contorted, purple face, and a gaping 
 mouth, emitting a series of ear-splitting shrieks, 
 point to a state of more intelligent happiness than 
 a pensive face, reposing upon a little white hand, 
 and a pair of gentle, tear-dimmed eyes, looking 
 back through Time's dark avenue upon a fading 
 past? 
 
 I am glad when I see Regret walked with as a 
 friend — glad because I know the saltness has been 
 washed from out the tears, and that the sting must 
 have been plucked from the beautiful face of Sor- 
 row ere we dare press her pale lips to ours. Time 
 has laid his healing hand upon the wound, when 
 we can look back upon the pain we once fainted 
 under, and no bitterness or despair rises in our 
 hearts. The burden is no longer heavy, when we 
 have for our past troubles only the same sweet 
 mingling of pleasure and pity that we feel when 
 old knight-hearted Colonel Newcome answers 
 26 
 
On Being in the Blues. 
 
 *'adsum" to the great roll-call, or when Tom 
 and Maggie Tullivcr, clasping hands through the 
 mists that have divided them, go down, locked 
 in each other's arms, beneath the swollen waters 
 of the Floss. 
 
 Talking of poor Tom and Maggie Tulliver 
 brings to my mind a saying of George Eliot's in 
 connection with this subject of melancholy. She 
 speaks somewhere of the "sadness of a summer's 
 evening." How wonderfully true — like every- 
 thing that came from that wonderful pen — the 
 observation is ! Who has not felt the sorrowful 
 enchantment of those lingering sunsets? The 
 world belongs to Melancholy, then a thoughtful, 
 deep-eyed maiden who loves not the glare of day. 
 It is not till " light thickens, and the crow wings 
 to the rocky wood," that she steals forth from 
 her groves. Her palace is in twilight land. It 
 is there she meets us. At her shadowy gate she 
 takes our hand in hers, and walks beside us 
 through her mystic realm. We see no form, but 
 seem to hear the rustling of her wings. 
 
 Even in the toiling, humdrum city, her spirit 
 
 comes to us. There is a somber presence 
 
 in each long, dull street; and the dark river 
 
 creeps ghost-like under the black arches, as if 
 
 27 
 
On Being in the Blues 
 
 bearing some hidden secret beneath its muddy 
 waves. 
 
 In the silent country, when the trees and 
 hedges loom dim and blurred against the rising 
 night, and the bat's wing flutters in our face, and 
 the land-rail's cry sounds drearily across the 
 fields, the spell sinks deeper still into our hearts. 
 We seem in that hour to be standing by some 
 unseen death-bed, and in the swaying of the elms 
 we hear the sigh of the dying day. 
 
 A solemn sadness reigns. A great peace is 
 around us. In its light, our cares of the working 
 day grow small and trivial, and bread and cheese 
 — ay, and even kisses — do not seem the only 
 things worth striving for. Thoughts we can not 
 speak, but only listen to flood in upon us, and, 
 standing in the stillness under earth's darkening 
 dome, we feel that we are greater than our petty 
 lives. Hung round with those dusky curtains, 
 the world is no longer a mere dingy workshop, 
 but a stately temple wherein man may worship^ 
 and where, at times, in the dimness, his groping 
 hands touch Gqd's. 
 
 2S 
 
On Vanity and Vanities. 
 
 ON VANITY AND VANITIES. 
 
 A LL is vanity, and everybody's vain. Women 
 -*^ are terribly vain. So are men — more so, if 
 possible. So are children, particularly children. 
 One of them at this very moment is hammering 
 upon my legs. She wants to know what I think 
 of her new shoes. Candidly I don't think much 
 of them. They lack symmetry and curve, and 
 possess an indescribable appearance of lumpiness. 
 (I believe, too, they've put them on the wrong 
 feet.) But I don't say this. It is not criticism, 
 but flattery that she wants; and I gush over them 
 with what 1 feel to myself to be degrading 
 effusiveness. Nothing else would satisfy this self- 
 opinionated cherub. I tried the conscientious 
 friend dodge with her on one occasion, but it was 
 not a success. She had requested my judgment 
 upon her general conduct and behavior, the exact 
 case submitted being: ''Wot oo t'ink of me? 
 Oo peased wi' me ?" and I had thought it a good 
 opportunity to make a few salutary remarks upon 
 her late moral career, and said : " No, I am not 
 pleased with you." I recalled to her mind the 
 29 
 
On Vanity and Vanities. 
 
 events of that very morning, and I jjut it to her 
 how she, as a Christian child, could expect a wise 
 and good uncle to be satisfied with the carryings- 
 on of an infant who that very day had roused the 
 whole house at 5 a. m. ; had upset a water-jug, 
 and tumbled down-stairs after it at seven ; had en- 
 deavored to put the cat in the bath at eight ; and 
 sat on her own father's hat at 9.35. 
 
 What did she do ? Was she grateful to me for 
 my plain speaking ? Did she ponder upon my 
 words, and determine to profit by them, and to 
 lead from that hour a better and nobler life? 
 
 No ! she howled. 
 
 That done, she became abusive. She said : 
 
 * * Oo naughty — 00 naughty, bad unkic — 00 bad 
 man— me tell MAR." 
 
 And she did, too. 
 
 Since then, when my views have been called 
 for, I have kept my real sentiments more to myself 
 like, preferring to express unbounded admiration 
 of this young person's actions, irrespective of 
 their actual merits. And she nods her head 
 approvingly, and trots off to advertise my opinion 
 to the rest of the household. She appears to 
 employ it as a sort of testimonial for mercenary 
 purposes, for I subsequently hear distant sounds 
 30 
 
On Vanity and Vanities. 
 
 of " Unkie says me dood dirl — me dot to have 
 two bikkies." * 
 
 There she goes, now, gazing rapturously at her 
 own toes, and murmuring " Pittie " — two-foot- 
 ten of conceit and vanity, to say nothing of other 
 wickedness. 
 
 They are all alike. I remember sitting in a 
 garden one sunny afternoon in the suburbs of 
 London. Suddenly I heard a shrill, treble voice 
 calling from a top-story window to some unseen 
 being, presumably in one of the other gardens, 
 *^ Gamma, me dood boy, me wery dood boy, 
 gamma; me dot on Bob's knickie-bockies." 
 
 Why, even animals are vain. I saw a great 
 Newfoundland dog, the other day, sitting in 
 front of a mirror at the entrance to a shop in 
 Regent's Circus, and examining himself with an 
 amount of smug satisfaction that I have never 
 seen equaled elsewhere, outside a vestry meeting. 
 
 I was at a farm-house orce, when some high 
 holiday was being celebrated. I don't remember 
 what the occasion was, but it was something 
 festive, a May-day or Quarter-day, or something 
 of that sort, and they put a garland of flowers 
 round the head of one of the cows. Well, that 
 * Early English for biscuits, 
 31 
 
On Vanity and Vanities. 
 
 absurd quadruped went about all day as perky as 
 a school-girl in a new frock ; and when they took 
 the wreath off she became quite sulky, and they 
 had to put it on again before she would stand 
 still to be milked. This is not a Percy anecdote. 
 It is plain, sober truth. 
 
 As for cats, they nearly equal human beings for 
 vanity. I have known a cat get up and walk out 
 of the room, on a remark derogatory to her 
 species being made by a visitor, while a neatly 
 turned compliment will set them purring for an 
 hour. 
 
 I do like cats. They are so unconsciously 
 amusing. There is such a comic dignity about 
 them, such a ''How dare you!" ''Go away, 
 don't touch me" sort of air. Now, there is 
 nothing haughty about a dog. They are " Hail 
 fellow well met" with every Tom, Dick, or Harry 
 that they come across. When I meet a dog of 
 my acquaintance, I slap his head, call him oppro- 
 brious epithets, and roll him over on his back ; 
 and there he lies, gaping at me, and doesn't mind 
 it a bit. 
 
 Fancy carrying on like that with a cat ! Why, 
 she would never speak to you again as long as 
 you lived. No, when you want to win the appro- 
 32 
 
On Vanity and Vanities. 
 
 bation of a cat you must mind what you are 
 about, and work your way carefully. If you 
 don't know the cat, you had best begin by say- 
 ing : "Poor pussy." After which add, ''did 
 'urns," in a tone of soothing sympathy. You 
 don't know what you mean, any more than the 
 cat does, but the sentiment seems to imply a 
 proper spirit on your part, and generally touches 
 ber feelings to such an extent that, if you are of 
 good manners and passable appearance, she will 
 stick her back up and rub her nose against you. 
 Matters having reached this stage, you may ven- 
 ture to chuck her under the chin, and tickle the 
 side of her head, and the intelligent creature will 
 then stick her claws into your legs ; and all is 
 friendship and affection, as so sweetly expressed 
 in the beautiful lines : 
 
 I love little pussy, her coat is so warm, 
 
 And if I don't tease her she'll do me no harm ; 
 
 So I'll stroke her, and pat her, and feed her with food, 
 
 And pussy will love me because I am good. 
 
 The last two lines of the stanza give us a pretty 
 true insight into pussy's notions of human good- 
 ness. It is evident that in her opinion goodness 
 consists of stroking her and patting her, and 
 3 33 
 
On Vanity and Vanities. 
 
 feeding her with food. I fear this narrow-minded 
 view of virtue, though, is not confined to pussies. 
 We are all inclined to adopt a similar standard 
 of merit in our estimate of other people. A good 
 man is a man who is good to us, and a bad man 
 is a man who doesn't do what we want him to. 
 The truth is, we each of us have an inborn con- 
 viction that the whole world, with everybody 
 and everything in it, was created as a sort ©f 
 necessary ai)pendage to ourselves. Our fellow- 
 men and women were made to admire us, and to 
 minister to our various requirements. You and I, 
 dear reader, are each the centre of the universe 
 in our respective opinions. You, as I understand 
 it, were brought into being by a considerate 
 Providence in order that you might read and pay 
 me for what I write ; while I, in your opinion, 
 am an article sent into the world to write some- 
 thing for you to read. The stars — as we term 
 the myriad other worlds that are rushing down 
 beside us through the eternal silence — were put 
 into the heavens to make the sky look interesting 
 for us at night. And the moon, with its dark 
 mysteries and ever-hidden face, is an arrangement 
 for us to flirt under. 
 
 I fear we are most of us like Mrs. Poyser's 
 34 • 
 
On Vanity and Vanities. 
 
 bantam cock, who fancied the sun got up every 
 morning to hear him crow. " 'Tis vanity that 
 makes the world go round." I don't believe 
 any man ever existed without vanity, and if he 
 did, he would be an extremely uncomfortable per- 
 son to have anything to do with. He would, 
 of course, be a very good man, and we should re- 
 spect him very much. He would be a very ad- 
 mirable man — a man to be put under a glass case, 
 and shown round as a specimen — a man to be 
 stuck upon a pedestal, and copied, like ai school 
 exercise — a man to be reverenced, but not a man 
 to be loved, not a human brother whose hand we 
 should care to grip. Angels may be very excel- 
 lent sort of folk in their way, but we poor mor- 
 tals, in our present state, would probably find 
 them precious slow company. Even mere good 
 people are rather depressing. It is in our faults 
 and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch 
 one another and find sympathy. We differ 
 widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in 
 our follies that we are at one. Some of us are 
 pious, some of us are generous. Some of us are 
 honest, comparatively speaking ; and some, fewer 
 still, may possibly be truthful. But in vanity 
 and kindred weaknesses we can all join hands. 
 35 
 
On Vanity and Vanities. 
 
 Vanity is one of those touches of Nature that 
 make the whole world kin. From the Indian 
 hunter, proud of his belt of scalps, to the Euro- 
 pean general, swelling beneath his row of stars 
 and medals ; from the Chinese, gleeful at the 
 length of his pigtail, to the *^ professional 
 beauty," suffering tortures in order that her waist 
 may resemble a peg-top ; from draggle-tailed 
 little Polly Stiggins, strutting through Seven 
 Dials with a tattered parasol over her head, to 
 the princess, sweeping through a drawing-room 
 with a train of four yards long ; from 'Arry, 
 winning by vulgar chaff the loud laughter of his 
 pals, to the statesman, whose ears are tickled by 
 the cheers that greet his high-sounding periods ; 
 from the dark-skinned African, bartering his rare 
 oils and ivory for a few glass-beads to hang about 
 his neck, to the Christian maiden, selling her 
 white body for a score of tiny stones and an 
 empty title to tack before her name — all march, 
 and fight, and bleed, and die beneath its tawdry 
 flag. 
 
 Ay, ay, vanity is truly the motive-power that 
 
 moves humanity, and it is flattery that greases the 
 
 wheels. If .you want to win affection and respect 
 
 in this world, you must flatter people. Flatter 
 
 36 
 
On Vanity and Vanities. 
 
 high and low, and rich and poor, and silly and 
 wise. You will get on famously. Praise this 
 man's virtues and that man's vices. Compliment 
 everybody upon everything, and especially upon 
 what they haven't got. Admire guys for their 
 beauty, fools for their wit, and boors for their 
 breeding. Your discernment and intelligence 
 will be extolled to the skies. 
 
 Every one can be got over by flattery. The 
 belted earl — ''belted earl " is the correct phrase, 
 I believe. I don't know what it means, unless it 
 be an earl that wears a belt instead of braces. 
 Some men do. I don't like it myself. You 
 have to keep the thing so tight for it to be of any 
 use, and that is uncomfortable. Anyhow, what- 
 ever particular kind of an earl a belted earl may 
 be, he is, I assert, get-overable by flattery, just as 
 every other human being is, from a duchess to a 
 cat's-meat man, from a plowboy to a poet — and 
 the poet far easier than the plowboy, for butter 
 sinks better into wheaten bread than into oaten 
 cakes. 
 
 As for love, flattery is its very life-blood. Fill 
 
 a person with love for himself, and what runs 
 
 over will be your share, says a certain witty and 
 
 truthful Frenchman, whose name I can't for the 
 
 37 
 
On Vanity and Vanities. 
 
 life of me remember. (Confound it, I never 
 can remember names when I wan^ to.) Tell a 
 girl she is an angel, only more angelic than an 
 angel ; that she is a goddess, only more graceful, 
 queenly, and heavenly than the average goddess ; 
 that she is more fairy-like than Titania, more 
 beautiful than Venus, more enchanting than 
 Parthenope ; more adorable, lovely, and radiant, 
 in short, than any other woman that ever did 
 live, does live or could live, and you will make a 
 very favorable impression upon her trusting little 
 heart. Sweet innocent ! she will believe every 
 word you say. It is so easy to deceive a woman 
 — in this way. 
 
 Dear little souls, they hate flattery, so they tell 
 you; and when you say, ''Ah, darling, it isn't 
 flattery in your case, it's plain, sober truth ; you 
 really are, without exaggeration, the most beauti- 
 ful, the most good, the most charming, the most 
 divine, the most perfect human creature that ever 
 trod this earth," they will smile a quiet, approv- 
 ing smile, and, leaning against your manly shoul- 
 der, murmur that you are a dear good fellow 
 
 after all. 
 
 By Jove, fancy a man trying to make love on 
 strictly truthful principles, determining never to 
 38 
 
On Vanity and Vanities. 
 
 utter a word of mere compliment or hyperbole, 
 but to scrupulously confine himself to exact fact ! 
 Fancy his gazing rapturously into his mistress's 
 eyes, and whispering softly to her that she wasn't, 
 on the whole, bad-looking, as girls went. Fancy 
 his holding up her little hand, and assuring her 
 that it was of a light-drab color, shot with red ; 
 and telling her, as he pressed her to his heart, 
 that her nose, for a turned-up one, seemed rather 
 pretty ; and that her eyes appeared to him, as 
 far as he could judge, to be quite up to the 
 average standard of such things ! 
 
 A nice chance he would stand against the man 
 who would tell her that her face was like a fresh 
 blush rose, that her hair was a wandering sun- 
 beam imprisoned by her smiles, and her eyes like 
 two evening stars. 
 
 There are various ways of flattering, and, of 
 course, you must adapt your style to your subject. 
 Some people like it laid on with a trowel, and this 
 requires very little art. With sensible persons, 
 however, it needs to be done very delicately, and 
 more by suggestion than actual words. A good 
 many like it wrapped up in the form of an insult, as, 
 '' Oh, you are a perfect fool, you are. You would 
 give your last sixpence to the first hungry-looking 
 39 . 
 
On Vanity and Vanities. 
 
 beggar you met; " while others will swallow it 
 only when administered through the medium of 
 a third person, so that if C wishes to get at an A 
 of this sort, he must confide to A's particular 
 friend B that he thinks A a splendid fellow, and 
 beg him, B, not to mention it, especially to A. 
 Be careful that B is a reliable man, though other- 
 wise he won't. 
 
 Those fine sturdy John Bulls who "hate flat- 
 tery, sir," "Never let anybody get over me by 
 flattery," etc., etc., are very simply managed. 
 Flatter them enough upon their absence of vanity 
 and you can do what you like with them. After 
 all, vanity is as much a virtue as a vice. It is 
 easy to recite copy-book maxims against its sin- 
 fulness, but it is a passion that can move us to 
 good as well as to evil. Ambition is only vanity 
 ennobled. We want to win praise and admira- 
 tion — or Fame, as we prefer to name it — and so 
 we write great books, and paint great pictures, 
 and sing sweet songs, and toil with willing hands 
 in study, loom, and laboratory. 
 
 We wish to become rich men, not in order to 
 
 enjoy ease and comfort — all that any one man 
 
 can taste of those may be purchased anywhere 
 
 for two hundred pounds per annum — but that our 
 
 40 
 
On Vanity and Vanities. 
 
 houses maybe bigger and more gaudily furnished 
 than our neighbors'; that our horses and servants 
 may be more numerous ; that we may dress our 
 wives and daughters in absurd but expensive 
 clothes ; and that we may give costly dinners of 
 which we ourselves individually do not eat a 
 shilling's worth. And to do this, we aid the 
 world's work with clear and busy brain, spread- 
 ing commerce among its peoples, carrying civili- 
 zation to its remotest comers. 
 
 Do not let us abuse vanity, therefore. Rather 
 let us use it. Honor itself is but the highest form 
 of vanity. The instinct is not confined solely 
 to Beau Brummels and Dolly Vardens. There is 
 the vanity of the peacock, and the vanity of the 
 eagle. Snobs are vain. But so, too, are heroes. 
 Come, oh ! my young brother bucks, let us be 
 vain together. Let us join hands, and help each 
 other to increase our vanity. Let us be vain, not 
 of our trousers and hair, but of brave hearts and 
 working hands, of truth, of purity, of nobility. 
 Let us be too vain to stoop to aught that is mean 
 or base, too vain for petty selfishness and little- 
 minded envy, too vain to say an unkind word or 
 do an unkind act. Let us be vain of being sin- 
 gle-hearted, upright gentlemen in the midst of a 
 41 
 
On Getting On in the World. 
 
 world of knaves. Let us pride ourselves upon 
 thinking high thoughts, achieving great deeds, 
 living good lives. 
 
 ON GETTING ON IN THE WORLD. 
 
 j\TOT exactly the sort of thing for an idle fellow 
 ^ ^ to think about, is it? But outsiders, you 
 know, often see most of the game; and sitting 
 in my arbor by the way-side, smoking my hookah 
 of contentment, and eating the sweet lotus leaves 
 of indolence, I can look out musingly upon the 
 whirling throng that rolls and tumbles past me 
 on the great high-road of life. 
 
 Never-ending is the wild procession. Day and 
 night you can hear the quick tramp of the myriad 
 feet — some running, some walking, some halting 
 and lame; but all hastening, all eager in the 
 feverish race, all straining life and limb and heart 
 and soul to reach the ever-receding horizon of 
 success. 
 
 Mark them as they surge along — men and 
 women, old and young, gentle and simple, fair 
 and foul, rich and poor, merry and sad — all 
 hurrying, bustling, scrambling. The strong push- 
 ing aside the weak, the cunning creeping past 
 42 
 
On Getting On in the World. 
 
 the foohsh; those behind elbowing those before; 
 those in front kicking, as they run, at those behind. 
 Look close, and see the flitting show. Here is 
 an old man panting for breath; and there a 
 timid maiden, driven by a hard and sharp-faced 
 aiatron ; here is a studious youth, reading ' ' How 
 to get on in the World," and letting everybody 
 pass him as he stumbles along with his eyes on 
 his book ; here is a bored-looking man, with a 
 fashionably dressed woman jogging his elbow; 
 here a boy gazing wistfully back at the sunny 
 village that he never again will see ; here, with a 
 firm and easy step, strides a broad-shouldered 
 man ; and here, with a stealthy tread, a thin-faced, 
 stooping fellow dodges and shuffles upon his way ; 
 here, with gaze fixed always on the ground, an 
 artful rogue carefully works his way from side to 
 side of the road, and thinks he is going forward ; 
 and here a youth with a noble face stands, hesi- 
 tating as he looks from the distant goal to tht 
 mud beneath his feet. 
 
 And now into the sight comes a fair girl, with 
 her dainty face growing more wrinkled at every 
 step; and now a care-worn man, and now a 
 hopeful lad. 
 
 A motley throng — a motley throng ! Prince 
 43 
 
On Getting On in the World. 
 
 and beggar, sinner and saint, butcher and baker 
 and candlestickmaker, tinkers, and tailors, and 
 plowboys and sailors — all jostling along together. 
 Here the counsel in his wig and gown, and here 
 the old Jew clothes-man under his dingy tiara ; 
 here the soldier in scarlet, and here the under- 
 taker's mute in streaming hat-band and worn 
 cotton gloves ; here the musty scholar, fumbling 
 his faded leaves, and *here the scented actor, 
 dangling his showy seals ; here the glib politician, 
 crying his legislative panaceas; and here the 
 peripatetic Cheap Jack, holding aloft his quack 
 cures for human ills ; here the sleek capitalist, 
 and there the sinewy laborer ; here the man of 
 science, and here the shoe-black ; here the poet, 
 and here the water-rate collector ; here the cabi- 
 net minister, and here the ballet dancer ; here a 
 red-nosed publican, shouting the praises of his 
 vats; and here a temperance lecturer at fifty 
 pounds a night; here a judge, and there a swind- 
 ler ; here a priest, and there a gambler ; here a 
 jeweled duchess, smiling and gracious ; here a 
 thin lodging-house keeper, irritable with cooking; 
 and here a wabbling, strutting thing, tawdry in 
 paint and finery. 
 
 Cheek by cheek, they struggle onward. Scream- 
 44 
 
On Getting On in the World. 
 
 ing, cursing, and praying, laughing, singing, and 
 moaning, they rush past side by side. Their 
 speed never slackens, the race never ends. There 
 is no way-side rest for them, no halt by cooling 
 fountains, no pause beneath green shades. On, 
 on, on — on through the heat and the crowd and 
 the dust — on, or they will be trampled down and 
 lost — on, with throbbing brain and tottering 
 limbs — on, till the heart grows sick, and the eyes 
 grow blurred, and a gurgling groan tells those 
 behind they may close up another space. 
 
 And yet in spite of the killing pace and the 
 stony track, who but the sluggard or the dolt can 
 hold aloof from the course? Who — like the 
 belated traveler that stands watching fairy revels 
 till he snatches and drains the goblin cup, and 
 springs into the whirling circle — can view the 
 mad tumult, and not be drawn into its midst? 
 Not I, for one. I confess to the way-side arbor, 
 the pipe of contentment, and the lotus leaves 
 being altogether unsuitable metaphors. They 
 sounded very nice and philosophical, but I'm 
 afraid I am not the sort of person to sit in arbors, 
 smoking pipes, when there is any fun going on 
 outside. I think I more resemble the Irishman 
 who, seeing a crowd collecting, sent his little girl 
 45 
 
On Getting On in the World. 
 
 out to ask if there was going to be a row — " 'Cos, 
 if so, father would like to be in it." 
 
 I love the fierce strife. I like to watch it. I 
 like to hear of people getting on in it — battling 
 their way bravely and fairly — that is, not slipping 
 through by luck or trickery. It stirs one's old 
 Saxon fighting blood, like the tales of " knights 
 who fought 'gainst fearful odds ' ' that thrilled us 
 in our school-boys days. 
 
 And fighting the battle of life is fighting against 
 fearful odds, too. There are giants and dragons 
 in this nineteenth century, and the golden casket 
 that they guard is not so easy to win as it 
 appears in the story-books. There, Algernon 
 takes one long, last look at the ancestral hall, 
 dashes the tear-drop from his eye, and goes off — 
 to return in three years' time, rolling in riches. 
 The authors do not tell us " how it's done," whicli 
 is a pity, for it would surely prove exciting. 
 
 But then not one novelist in a thousand ever 
 does tell us the real story of his hero. He lingers 
 for a dozen pages over a tea-party, but sums up a 
 life's history with ''he had become one of our 
 merchant princes," or, ''he was now a great 
 artist, with the whole world at his feet." Why, 
 there is more real life in one of Gilbert's patter- 
 46 
 
On Getting On in the World. 
 
 songs than in half the biographical novels ever 
 written. He relates to us all the various steps by 
 which his office-boy rose to be the '' ruler of the 
 queen's navee," and explains to us how the brief- 
 less barrister managed to become a great and 
 good judge, " ready to try this breach of promise 
 of marriage." It is in the petty details, not in 
 the great results, that the interest of existence 
 lies. 
 
 What we really want is a novel showing us all 
 the hidden under-current of an ambitious man's 
 career — his struggles, and failures, and hopes, his 
 disappointments and victories. It would be an 
 immense success. I am sure the wooing of 
 Fortune would prove quite as interesting a tale 
 as the wooing of any flesh and blood maiden ; 
 though, by the way, it would read extremely 
 similar, for Fortune is, indeed, as the ancients 
 painted her, very like a woman — not quite so 
 unreasonable and inconsistent, but nearly so — 
 and the pursuit is much the same in one case as 
 in the other. Ben Jonson's couplet — 
 
 " Court a mistress, she denies you ; 
 Let her alone, she will court you " — 
 
 puts them both in a nutshell. A woman never 
 47 
 
On Getting On in the World. 
 
 thoroughly cares for her lover until he has ceased 
 to care for her; and it is not until you have 
 snapped your fingers in Fortune's face, and 
 turned on your heel, that she begins to smile 
 upon you. 
 
 But, by that time, you do not much care 
 whether she smiles or frowns. Wliy could she not 
 have smiled when her smiles would have thrilled 
 you with ecstasy ? Everything comes too late in 
 this world. 
 
 Good people say that it is quite right and 
 proper that it should be so, and that it proves 
 ambition is wicked. 
 
 Bosh ! Good people are altogether Avrong. 
 (They always arc, in my opinion. We never 
 agree on any single point.) What would the 
 world do without ambitious people, I should like 
 to know ? Why, it would be as flabby as a Nor- 
 folk dumpling. Ambitious people are the leaven 
 which raises it into wholesome bread. Without 
 ambitious people the world would never get up. 
 They are busy-bodies who are about early in the 
 morning, hammering, shouting, and rattling the 
 fire-irons, and rendering it generally impossible 
 for the rest of the house to remain in bed. 
 
 Wrong to be ambitious, forsooth ! The men 
 48 
 
On Getting On in the World. 
 
 wrong who, with bent back and sweating brow, 
 cut the smooth road over which Humanity 
 marches forward from generation to generation ! 
 Men wrong for using the talents that their Master 
 has entrusted to them — for toiling while others 
 play! 
 
 Of course, they are seeking their reward. Man 
 is not given that God-like unselfishness that thinks 
 only of others' good. But in working for them- 
 selves they are working for us all. We are so 
 bound together that no man can labor for himself 
 alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf 
 helps to mold the universe. The stream, in 
 struggling onward, turns the mill-wheel; the 
 coral insect, fashioning its tiny cells, joins con- 
 tinents to one another ; and the ambitious man, 
 building a pedestal for himself, leaves a monu- 
 ment to posterity. Alexander and Csesar fought 
 for their own ends, but, in doing so, they put a 
 belt of civilization half round the earth. Stephen- 
 son, to win a fortune, invented the steam-engine; 
 and Shakespeare wrote his plays in order to keep 
 a comfortable home for Mrs. Shakespeare and the 
 little Shakespeares. 
 
 Contented, unambitious 'people are all very 
 well in their way. They form a neat, useful 
 4 49 
 
On Getting On in the World. 
 
 background for great portraits to be painted 
 against; and they make a respectable, if not 
 particularly intelligent, audience for the active 
 spirits of the age to play before. I have not a 
 word to say against contented people so long as 
 they keep quiet.* But do not, for goodness' sake, 
 let them go strutting about, as they are so fond of 
 doing, crying out that they are the true models 
 for the whole species. Why, they are the dead- 
 heads, the drones in the great hive, the street 
 crowds that lounge about, gaping at those who 
 are working. 
 
 And let them not imagine either — as they are 
 also fond of doing — that they are very wise and 
 philosophical, and that it is a very artful thing to 
 be contented. It may be true that *' a contented 
 mind is happy anywhere," but so is a Jerusalem 
 pony, and the consequence is that both are put 
 anywhere and are treated anyhow. ''Oh, you 
 need not bother about him,^* is what is said; 
 ''he is very contented as he is, and it would be 
 a pity to disturb him." And so your contented 
 party is passed over, and the discontented man 
 gets his place. 
 
 If you are foolish enough to be contented, 
 don't show it, but grumble with the rest; and if 
 50 
 
On Getting On in the World. 
 
 you can do with a httle, ask for a great deal. 
 Because if you don't you won't get any. In this 
 world it is necessary to adopt the principle pur- 
 sued by the plaintiff in an action for damages, 
 and to demand ten times more than you are 
 ready to accept. If you can feel satisfied with a 
 hundred, begin by insisting on a thousand; if 
 you start by suggesting a hundred, you will only 
 get ten. 
 
 It was by not following this simple plan that 
 poor Jean Jacques Rousseau came to such grief. 
 He fixed the summit of his earthly bliss at living 
 in an orchard with an amiable woman and a cow, 
 and he never attained even that. He did get as 
 far as the orchard, but the woman was not ami- 
 able, and she brought her mother with her, and 
 there was no cow. Now, if he had made up his 
 mind for a large country estate, a houseful of 
 angels, and a cattle show, he might have lived to 
 possess his kitchen garden and one head of live 
 stock, and even possibly have come across that 
 rara avis — a really amiable woman. 
 
 What a terribly dull affair, too, life must be for 
 
 contented people ! How heavy the time must 
 
 hang upon their hands, and what on earth do 
 
 they occupy their thoughts with, supposing that 
 
 51 
 
On Getting On in the World. 
 
 they have any ? Reading the paper and smoking 
 seems to be the intellectual food of the majority 
 of them, to which the more energetic add play- 
 ing the flute and talking about the affairs of the 
 next-door neighbor. 
 
 They never knew the excitement of expecta- 
 tion, nor the stern delight of accomplished effort, 
 such as stirs the pulse of the man who has objects, 
 and hopes, and plans. To the ambitious man, 
 life is a brilliant game — a game that calls forth 
 all his tact, and energy, and nerve — a game to be 
 won, in the long run, by the quick eye and the 
 steady hand, and yet having sufficient chance 
 about its working out to give it all the glorious 
 zest of uncertainty. He exults in it, as the 
 strong swimmer in the heaving billows, as the 
 athlete in the wrestle, as the soldier in the battle. 
 
 And if he be defeated, he wins the grim joy of 
 fighting; if he lose the race, he at least has had 
 a run. Better to work and fail than to sleep 
 one's life away. 
 
 So, walk up, walk up, walk up. Walk up, 
 ladies and gentlemen ! walk up, boys and girls ! 
 Show your skill and try your strength; brave 
 your luck, and prove your pluck. Walk up ! 
 The show is never closed, and the game is always 
 52 
 
On Being Idle. 
 
 going. The only genuine sport in all the fair, 
 gentlemen — highly respectable and strictly moral 
 — patronized by the nobility, clergy, and gentry. 
 Established in the year one, gentlemen, and been 
 flourishing ever since ! — walk up. Walk up, 
 ladies and gentlemen, and take a hand. There 
 are prizes for all, and all can play. There is 
 gold for the man and fame for the boy; rank for 
 the maiden and pleasure for the fool. So walk 
 up, ladies and gentlemen, walk up! — all prizes, 
 and no blanks; for some few win, and as to the 
 rest, why — 
 
 " The rapture of pursuing 
 Is the prize the vanquished gain." 
 
 ON BEING IDLE. 
 
 1\ TOW this is a subject on which I flatter myself 
 ^ ^ I really am au fait. The gentleman who, 
 when I was young, bathed me at wisdom's font 
 for nine guineas a term — no extras — used to say 
 he never knew a boy who could do less work in 
 more time; and I remember my poor grand- 
 mother once incidentally observing, in the course 
 of an instruction upon the use of the prayer- 
 book, that it was highly improbable that I should 
 53 
 
On Being Idle. 
 
 ever do much that I ought to do, but that she felt 
 convinced, beyond a doubt, that I should leave 
 undone pretty well everything that I ought to do. 
 
 I am afraid I have somewhat belied half the 
 dear old lady's prophecy. Heaven help me ! I 
 have done a good many things that I ought not 
 to have done, in spite of my laziness. But I 
 have fully confirmed the accuracy of her judg- 
 ment so far as neglecting much that I ought not 
 to have neglected is concerned. Idling always 
 has been my strong point. I take no credit to 
 myself in the matter — it is a gift. Few i)Ossess 
 it. There are plenty of lazy people and plenty 
 of slow-coaches, but a genuine idler is a rarity. 
 He is not a man who slouches al^out with his 
 hands in his pockets. On the contrary, his most 
 startling characteristic is that he is always in- 
 tensely busy. 
 
 It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly un- 
 less one has plenty of work to do. There is no 
 fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to 
 do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, 
 and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, 
 to be sweet must be stolen. 
 
 Many years ago, when I was a young man, I 
 was taken very ill — I never could see myself that 
 54 
 
On Being Idle. 
 
 much was the matter with me, except that I had 
 a beastly cold. But I suppose it was something 
 very serious, for the doctor said that I ought to 
 have come to him a month before, and that if it 
 (whatever it was) had gone on for another week 
 he would not have answered for the consequences. 
 It is an extraordinary thing, but I never knew a 
 doctor called into any case yet, but what it 
 transpired that another day's delay would have 
 rendered cure hopeless. Our medical guide, 
 philosopher, and friend is like the hero in a 
 melodrama, he always comes upon the scene just, 
 and only just, in the nick of time. It is Provi- 
 dence, that is what it is. 
 
 Well, as I was saying, I was very ill, and was 
 ordered to Buxton for a month, with strict injunc- 
 tions to do nothing whatever all the while that I 
 was there. ''Rest is what you require," said 
 the doctor, ''perfect rest." 
 
 It seemed a delightful i)rospect. "This man 
 evidently understands my complaint," said I, 
 and I pictured to myself a glorious time — a four 
 weeks' dolce far niente with a dasli of illness in 
 it. Not too much illness, but just illness enough 
 — just sufficient to give it the flavor of suffering, 
 and make it poetical. I should get up late, sip 
 55 
 
On Being Idle. 
 
 chocolate, and have my breakfast in slippers and 
 a dressing-gown. I should lie out in the garden 
 in a hammock, and read sentimental novels with 
 a melancholy ending, until the book would fall 
 from my listless hand, and I should recline there, 
 dreamily gazing into the deep blue of the firma- 
 ment, watching the fleecy clouds floating like 
 white-sailed ships across its depths, and listening 
 to the joyous song of the birds, and the low rust- 
 ling of the trees. Or, when I became too weak 
 to go out-of-doors, I should sit propped up with 
 pillows, at the open window of the ground-floor 
 front, and look wasted and interesting, so that all 
 the pretty girls would sigh as they passed by. 
 
 And, twice a day, I should go down in a Bath 
 chair to the Colonnade, to drink the waters. 
 Oh, those waters ! I knew nothing about them 
 then, and was rather taken with the idea. 
 " Drinking the waters " sounded fashionable and 
 Queen Anneified, and I thought I should like 
 them. But, ugh ! after the first three or four 
 mornings ! Sam Weller's description of them, as 
 '' having a taste of warm flat-irons," conveys 
 only a faint idea of their hideous nauseousness. 
 If anything could make a sick man get well 
 quickly, it would be the knowledge that he must 
 56 
 
On Being Idle. 
 
 drink a glassful of them every day until he had 
 recovered. I drank them neat for six consecutive 
 days, and they nearly killed me ; but, after them, 
 I adopted the plan of taking a stiff glass of brandy 
 and water immediately on the top of them, and 
 found much relief thereby. I have been informed 
 since, by various eminent medical gentlemen, 
 that the alcohol must have entirely counteracted 
 the effects of the chalybeate properties contained 
 in the water. I am glad I was lucky enough to 
 hit upon the right thing. 
 
 But *' drinking the waters" was ( nly a small 
 portion of the torture I experienced during that 
 memorable month, a month which was, without 
 exception, the most miserable I have ever spent. 
 During the best part of it, I religiously followed 
 the doctor's mandate, and did nothing whatever, 
 except moon about the house and garden, and go 
 out for two hours a day in a Bath chair. That did 
 break the monotony to a certain extent. There 
 is more excitement about Bath-chairing — espe- 
 cially if you are not used to the exhilarating ex- 
 ercise — than might appear to the casual observer. 
 A sense of danger, such as a mere outsider might 
 not understand, is ever present to the mind of the 
 occupant. He feels convinced every minute that 
 57 
 
On Being Idle. 
 
 the whole concern is going over, a conviction 
 which becomes especially lively whenever a ditch 
 or a stretch of newly macadamized road comes 
 in sight. Every vehicle that passes he expects 
 is going to run into him ; and he never finds 
 himself ascending or descending a hill without 
 immediately beginning to speculate upon his 
 chances, supposing — ^as seems extremely probable 
 — that the weak-kneed controller of his destiny- 
 should let go. 
 
 But even this diversion failed to enliven after 
 a while, and the ennui became perfectly unbeara- 
 ble. I felt my mind giving way under it. It 
 is not a strong mind, and I thought it would be 
 unwise to tax it too far. So somewhere about 
 the twentieth morning, I got up early, had a 
 good breakfast, and walked straight off to Hay- 
 field, at the foot of the Kinder Scout — a pleasant, 
 busy, little town, reached through a lovely valley, 
 and with two sweetly pretty women in it. At 
 least they were sweetly pretty then ; one passed 
 me on the bridge, and, I think, smiled ; and the 
 other was standing at an open door, making an 
 unremunerative investment of kisses upon a red- 
 faced baby. But it is years ago, and I dare say 
 they have both grown stout and snappish since 
 58 
 
On Being Idle. 
 
 that time. Coming back, I saw an old man 
 breaking stones, and it roused such strong long- 
 ing in me to use my arms that I offered him a 
 drink to let me take his place. He was a kindly 
 old man, and he humored me. I went for those 
 stones with the accumulated energy of three 
 weeks, and did more work in half an hour than 
 he had done all day. But it did not make him 
 jealous. 
 
 Having taken the plunge, I went further and 
 further into dissipation, going out for a long 
 walk every morning, listening to the band in the 
 pavilion every evening. But the days still passed 
 slowly notwithstanding, and I was heartily glad 
 when the last one came, and I was being whirled 
 away from gouty, consumptive Buxton to London 
 with its stem work and life. I looked out of the 
 carriage as we rushed through Hendon in the 
 evening. The lurid glare overhanging the mighty 
 city seemed to warm my heart, and when, later 
 on, my cab rattled out of St. Pancras's Station, 
 the old familiar roar that came swelling up around 
 me sounded the sweetest music I had heard for 
 many a long day. 
 
 I certainly did not enjoy that month's idling. 
 I like idling when I ought not to be idling ; not 
 59 
 
On Being Idle. 
 
 when it is the only thing I have to do. That is 
 my pig-headed nature. The time when I like 
 best to stand with my back to the fire, calcula- 
 ting how much I owe, is when my desk is heaped 
 highest with letters that must be answered by the 
 next post. When I like to dawdle longest over 
 my dinner is when I have a heavy evening's work 
 before me. And if, for some urgent reason, I 
 ought to be up particularly early in the morning, 
 it is then, more than any other time, that I love 
 to lie an extra half hour in bed. 
 
 Ah ! how delicious it is to turn over and go to 
 sleep again: "just for five minutes! " Is there 
 any human being, I wonder, besides the hero of 
 a Sunday-school 'Hale for boys," who ever gets 
 up willingly ? There are some men to whom 
 getting up at the proper time is an utter impossi- 
 bility. If eight o'clock happens to be the time 
 that they should turn out, then they lie till half- 
 past. If circumstances change, and half-past 
 eight becomes early enough for them, then it is 
 nine before they can rise ; they are like the 
 statesman of whom it was said that he was always 
 punctually half an hour late. They try all man- 
 ner of schemes. They buy alarm clocks (artful 
 contrivances, they go off at the wrong time, and 
 60 
 
Idle Thoughts. p. 66. 
 
 "HE CAN LOOK INTO SUNNY EYES AND NOT BE DAZZLED." 
 
On Being Idle. 
 
 alarm the wrong people). They tell Sarah Jane 
 to knock at the door and call them, and Sarah 
 Jane does knock at the door, and does call them, 
 and they grunt back '^ Awri," and then go com- 
 fortably to sleep again. I knew one man who 
 would actually get out, and have a cold bath; 
 and even that was of no use, for, afterward, he 
 would jump into bed again to warm himself. 
 
 I think myself that I could keep out of bed all 
 right, if I once got out. It is the wrenching 
 away of the head from the pillow that I find so 
 hard, and no amount of overnight determination 
 makes it easier. I say to myself, after having 
 wasted the whole evening, ''Well, I won't do 
 any more work to-night ; I'll get up early to-mor- 
 row morning ;" and I am thoroughly resolved to 
 do so — then. In the morning, however, I feel 
 less enthusiastic about the idea, and reflect that it 
 would have been much better if I had stopped up 
 last night. And then there is the trouble of 
 dressing, and the more one thinks about that, the 
 more one wants to put it off. 
 
 It is a strange thing this bed, this m.imic grave, 
 
 where we stretch our tired limbs, and sink away 
 
 so quietly into the silence and rest. " Oh, bed, 
 
 oh, bed, delicious bed, that heaven on earth to 
 
 6i 
 
On Being Idle. 
 
 the weary head,' ' as sung poor Hood, you are a 
 kind old nurse to us fretful boys and girls. 
 Clever and foolish, naughty and good, you take 
 us all in your motherly lap, and hush our way- 
 ward crying. The strong man full of care — the 
 sick man full of pain — the little maiden, sobbing 
 for her faithless lover — like children, we lay our 
 aching heads on your white bosom, and you gently 
 soothe us off to by-by. 
 
 Ouc trouble is sore indeed when you turn away 
 and will not comfort us. How long the dawn 
 seems coming, when we can not sleep ! Oh I 
 those hideous nights, when we toss and turn in 
 fever and pain, when we lie, like living men 
 among the dead, staring out into the dark hours 
 that drift so slowly between us and the light. 
 And oh ! those still more hideous nights, when we 
 sit by another in pain, when the low fire startles 
 us every now and then with a fallen cinder, and 
 the tick of the clock seems a hammer, beating out 
 the life that we are watching. 
 
 But enough of beds and bedrooms. I have 
 kept to them too long, even for an idle fellow. 
 Let us come out, and have a smoke. That wastes 
 time just as well, and does not look so bad. 
 Tobacco has been a blessing to us idlers. What 
 62 
 
On Being Idle. 
 
 the civil-service clerks before Sir Walter's time 
 found to occupy their minds with, it is hard to 
 imagine. I attribute the quarrelsome nature of 
 the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want 
 of the soothing weed. They had no work to do, 
 and could not smoke, and the consequence was 
 they were forever fighting and rowing. If, by 
 any extraordinary chance, there was no war going, 
 then they got up a deadly family feud with the 
 next-door neighbor, and if, in spite of this, they 
 still had a few spare moments on their hands, 
 they occupied them with discussions as to whose 
 sweetheart was the best looking, the arguments 
 employed on both sides being battle-axes, clubs, 
 etc. Questions of taste were soon decided in 
 those days. When a twelfth century youth fell in 
 love, he did not take three paces backward, gaze 
 into her eyes, and tell her she was too beautiful 
 to live. He said he would step outside and see 
 about it. And if, when he got out, he met a 
 man and broke his head — the other man's head, 
 I mean — then that proved that his — the first 
 fellow's — girl was a pretty girl. But if the other 
 fellow broke his head — not his own, you know, 
 but the other fellow's — the other fellow to the 
 second fellow, that is, because of course the other 
 63 
 
On Being Idle. 
 
 fellow would only be the other fellow to him, not 
 the first fellow, who — well, if he broke his head, 
 then his girl — not the other fellow's, but the fel- 
 low who was the — Look here, if A broke B's 
 head, then A's girl was a pretty girl ; but if B 
 broke A's head, then A's girl wasn't a pretty girl, 
 but B's girl was. That was their method of con- 
 ducting art criticism. 
 
 Nowadays we light a pipe, and let the girls 
 fight it out among themselves. 
 
 They do it very well. They are getting to do 
 all our work. They are doctors, and barristers, 
 and artists. They manage theatres, and promote 
 swindles, and edit newspapers. I am looking 
 forward to the time when we men shall have 
 nothing to do but lie in bed till twelve, read two 
 novels a day, have nice little five-o'clock teas all 
 to ourselves, and tax our brains with nothing 
 more trying than discussions upon the latest pat- 
 terns in trousers, and arguments as to what Mr. 
 Jones's coat was made of, and whether it fitted 
 him. It is a glorious prospect— for idle fellowSc 
 
 64 
 
On Being in Love. 
 
 ON BEING IN LOVE. 
 
 V/'OU'VE been in love, of course! If not 
 ^ you've got it to come. Love is like the 
 measles; we all have to go through it. Also, like 
 the measles, we take it only once. One need 
 never be afraid of catching it a second time. 
 The man who has had it can go into the most 
 dangerous places, and play the most fool-hardy 
 tricks with perfect safety. He can picnic in 
 shady woods, ramble through leafy aisles, and 
 linger on mossy seats to watch the sunset. He 
 fears a quiet country house no more than he 
 would his own club. He can join a family party 
 to go down the Rhine. He can, to see the last 
 of a friend, venture into the very jaws of the 
 marriage ceremony itself. He can keep his head 
 through the whirl of a ravishing waltz, and rest 
 afterward in a dark conservatory, catching nothing 
 more lasting than a cold. He can brave a moon- 
 light walk adown sweet-scented lanes, or a 
 twilight pull among the somber rushes. He can 
 get over a stile without danger, scramble through 
 a tangled hedge without being caught, come 
 5 65 
 
On Being in Love. 
 
 down a slippery path without falling. He can 
 look into sunny eyes, and not be dazzled. He 
 listens to the siren voices, yet sails on with un- 
 veered helm. He clasps white hands in his, but 
 *vo electric ''Lulu "-like force holds him bound 
 in their dainty pressure. 
 
 No, we never sicken with love twice. Cupid 
 spends no second arrow on the same heart. Love's 
 handmaids are our lifelong friends. Respect, 
 and Admiration, and Affection, our doors may 
 always be left open for, but their great celestial 
 master, in his royal progress, pays but one visit, 
 and departs. We like, we cherish, we are very, 
 very fond of — but we never love again. A man's 
 heart is a fire-work that once in its time flashes 
 heavenward. Meteor-like it blazes for a moment, 
 and lights with its glory the whole world beneath. 
 Then the night of our sordid common-place life 
 closes in around it, and the burned-out case, fall- 
 ing back to earth, lies useless and uncared for, 
 slowly smoldering into ashes. Once, breaking 
 loose from our prison bonds, we dare, as mighty 
 old Prometheus dared, to scale the Olympian 
 mount, and snatch from Phoebus' s chariot the fire 
 of the gods. Happy those who, hastening down 
 again ere it dies out, can kindle their earthly. 
 66 
 
On Being in Love. 
 
 altars at its flame. Love is too pure a light to 
 burn long among the noisome gases that we 
 breathe, but before it is choked out we may use 
 it as a torch to ignite the cosy fire of affection. 
 
 And, after all, that warming glow is more 
 suited to our cold little back parlor of a world 
 than is the burning spirit, love. Love should be 
 the vestal fire of some mighty temple — some vast, 
 dim fane whose organ music is the rolling of the 
 spheres. Affection will burn cheerily when the 
 white flame of love is flickered out. Affection is 
 a fire that can be fed from day to day, and be 
 piled up ever higher as the wintery years draw 
 nigh. Old men and women can sit by it with 
 their thin hands clasped, the little children can 
 nestle down in front, the friend and neighbor 
 has his welcome corner by its side, and even 
 shaggy Fido and sleek Titty can toast their noses 
 at the bars. 
 
 Let us heap the coals of kindness upon that 
 fire. Throw on your pleasant words, your gentle 
 pressures of the hand, your thoughtful and unsel- 
 fish deeds. Fan it with good-humor, patience, 
 and forbearance. You can let the wind blow 
 and the rain fall unheeded then, for your hearth 
 will be warm, and bright, and the faces round 
 67 
 
On Being in Love. 
 
 it will make sunshine in spite of the clouds with- 
 out. 
 
 I am afraid, dear Edwin and Angelina, you 
 expect too much from love. You think there is 
 enough of your little hearts to feed this fierce, 
 devouring passion for all your long lives. Ah, 
 young folk! don't rely too much upon that un- 
 steady flicker. It will dwindle and dwindle as 
 the months roll on, and there is no replenishing 
 the fuel. You will watch it die out in anger and 
 disappointment. To each it will seem that it is 
 the other who is growing colder. Edwin sees 
 with bitterness that Angelina no longer runs to 
 the gate to meet him, all smiles and blushes ; and 
 when he has a cough now, she doesn't begin to 
 cry, and, putting her arms round his neck, say 
 that she can not live without him. The most 
 she will probably do is to suggest a lozenge, and 
 even that in a tone implying that it is the noise 
 more than anything else she is anxious to get 
 rid of. 
 
 Poor little Angelina, too, sheds silent tears, for 
 Edwin has given up carrying her old handkerchief 
 in the inside pocket of his waistcoat. 
 
 Both are astonished at the falling off in the 
 other one, but neither sees their own change. It 
 68 
 
On Being in Love. 
 
 they did, they would not suffer as they do. They 
 would look for the cause in the right quarter — in 
 the littleness of poor human nature — ^join hands 
 over their common failing, and start buildiaig 
 their house anew on a more earthly and enduring 
 foundation. But we are so blind to our own 
 shortcomings, so wide awake to those of others. 
 Everything that happens to us is always the other 
 person's fault. Angelina would have gone on 
 loving Edwin for ever and ever and ever, if only 
 Edwin had not grown so strange and different. 
 Edwin would have adored Angelina through 
 eternity, if Angelina had only remained the same 
 as when he first adored her. 
 
 It is a cheerless hour for you both, when the 
 lamp of love has gone out, and the fire of affec- 
 tion is not yet lighted, and you have to grope 
 about m the cold raw dawn of life to kindle it. 
 God grant it catches light before the day is too 
 far spent. Many sit shivering by the dead coals 
 till night come. 
 
 But, there ! of what use is it to preach ? Who 
 that feels the rush of young love through his.veins 
 can think it will ever flow feeble and slow ? To 
 the boy of twenty it seems impossible that he 
 will not love as wildly at sixty as he does then.- 
 69 
 
On Being in Love. 
 
 He can not call to mind any middle-aged or 
 elderly gentleman of his acquaintance who is 
 known to exhibit symptoms of frantic attach- 
 ment, but that does not interfere in his belief in 
 himself. His love will never fail, whoever else's 
 may. Nobody ever loved as he loves, and so, of 
 course, the rest of the world's experience can be 
 no guide in his case. Alas, alas ! ere thirty he 
 has joined the ranks of the sneerers. It is not 
 his fault. Our passions, both the good and bad, 
 cease with our blushes. We do not hate, nor 
 grieve, nor joy, nor despair in our thirties like 
 we did in our teens. Disappointment does not 
 suggest suicide, and we quaff success without 
 intoxication. 
 
 We take all things in a minor key as we grow 
 older. There are few majestic passages in the 
 latter acts of life's opera. Ambition takes a less 
 ambitious aim. Honor becomes more reasona- 
 ble and conveniently adapts itself to circum- 
 stances. And love — love dies. " Irreverence 
 for the dreams of youth " soon creeps like a kill- 
 ing frost upon our hearts. The tender shoots and 
 the expanding flowers are nipped and withered, 
 and of a vine that yearned to stretch its tendrils 
 round the world, there is left but a sapless stump. 
 70 
 
On Being in Love. 
 
 My fair friends will deem all this rank heresy, I 
 know. So far from a man's not loving after he 
 has passed boyhood, it is not till there is a good 
 deal of gray in his hair that they think his pro- 
 testations at all worthy of attention. Young 
 ladies take their notions of our sex from the 
 novels written by their own, and compared with 
 the monstrosities that masquerade for men in the 
 pages of that nightmare literature, Pythagoras's 
 plucked bird and Frankenstein's demon were 
 fair average specimens of humanity. 
 
 In these so-called books, the chief lover, or 
 Greek god, as he is admiringly referred to — by 
 the way, they do not say which "Greek god" 
 it is that the gentleman bears such a striking 
 likeness to, it might be hump-backed Vulcan, or 
 double-faced Janus, or even driveling Silenus, 
 the god of abstruse mysteries. He resembles the 
 whole family of them, however, in being a black- 
 guard, and perhaps this is what is meant. To 
 even the little manliness his classical prototypes 
 possessed, though, he can lay no claim whatever, 
 being a listless, effeminate noodle, on the shady 
 side of forty. But oh ! the depth and strength 
 of this elderly party's emotion for some bread- 
 and-butter school-girl ! Hide your heads, ye 
 71 
 
On Being in Love. 
 
 young Romeos and Leandcrs, this blase old beau 
 loves with an hysterical fervor that requires four 
 adjectives to every noun to properly describe. 
 
 It is well, dear ladies, for us old sinners, that 
 you study only books. Did you read mankind, 
 you would know that the lad's shy stammering 
 tells a truer tale than our bold eloquence. A 
 boy's love comes from a ftiU heart ; a man's is 
 more often the result of a full stomach. Indeed, 
 a man's sluggish current may not be called love, 
 compared with the rushing fountain that wells up 
 when a boy's heart is struck with the heavenly 
 rod. If you would taste love, drink of the 
 pure stream that youth pours out at your feet. 
 Do not wait till it has become a muddy river 
 before you stoop to catch its waves. 
 
 Or is it that you like its bitter flavor ; that the 
 clear, limpid water is insipid to your palate, and 
 that the pollution of its after-course gives it a 
 relish to your lips ? Must we believe those who 
 tell us that a hand foul with the filth of a shame- 
 ful life is the only one a young girl cares to be 
 caressed by ? 
 
 That is the teaching that is bawled out day by 
 day from between those yellow covers. Do they 
 ever pause to think, I wonder, those devil's lady- 
 
 72 
 
On Being in Love. 
 
 helps, what mischief they are doin^^ crawling 
 about God's garden, and telling childish Eves 
 and silly Adams that sin is sweet, and that 
 decency is ridiculous and vulgar? How many 
 an innocent girl do they not degrade into an 
 evil-minded woman ? To how many a weak lad 
 do they not point out the dirty by-path as the 
 shortest cut to a maiden's heart ? It is not as if 
 they wrote of life as it really is. Speak truth, 
 and right will take care of itself. But their pic- 
 tures are coarse daubs painted from the sickly 
 fancies of their own diseased imaginations. 
 
 We want to think of women not — as their own 
 sex would show them — as Loreleis luring us to 
 destruction, but as good angels beckoning us 
 upward. They have more power for good or 
 evil than they dream of. It is just at the very 
 age when a man's character is forming that he 
 tumbles into love, and then the lass he loves has 
 the making or marring of him. Unconsciously 
 he molds himself to what she would have him, 
 good or bad. I am sorry to have to be ungal- 
 lant enough to say that I do not think they 
 always use their influence for the best. Too 
 often the female world is bounded hard and fast 
 within the limits of the commonplace. Their 
 73 
 
On Being in Love. 
 
 ideal hero is a prince of littleness, and to become 
 that many a powerful mind, enchanted by love, 
 is " lost to life and use, and name and fame." 
 
 And yet, women, you could make us so much 
 better, if you only would. It rests with you more 
 than with all the preachers, to roll this world a 
 little nearer heaven. Chivalry is not dead; it 
 only sleeps for want of work to do. It is you 
 who must wake it to noble deeds. You must 
 be worthy of knightly worship. You must be 
 higher than ourselves. It was for Una that the 
 Red Cross Knight did war. For no painted, 
 mincing Court dame could the dragon have been 
 slain. Oh, ladies fair, be fair in mind and soul 
 as well as face, so that brave knights may win 
 glory in your service ! Oh, woman, throw off 
 your disguising cloaks of selfishness, effrontery, 
 and affectation ! Stand forth once more a queen 
 in your royal robe of simple purity. A thousand 
 swords, now rusting in ignoble sloth, shall leap 
 from their scabbards to do battle for your honor 
 against wrong. A thousand Sir Rolands shall 
 lay lance in rest, and Fear, Avarice, Pleasure, 
 and Ambition shall go down in the dust before 
 your colors. 
 
 What noble deeds were we not ripe for in the 
 74 
 
Oil Being in Love. 
 
 days when we loved? What noble lives could 
 we not have lived for her sake ? Our love was a 
 religion we could have died for. It was no mere 
 human creature like ourselves that we adored. It 
 was a queen that we paid homage to, a goddess 
 that we worshipped. 
 
 And how madly we did worship ! And how 
 sweet it was to worship ! Ah, lad, cherish love's 
 young dream while it lasts ! You will know, too 
 soon, how truly little Tom Moore sung when he 
 said that there was nothing half so sweet in life. 
 Even when it brings misery, it is a wild, romantic 
 misery, all unlike the dull, worldly pain of after 
 sorrows. When you have lost her — when the 
 light is gone out from your life, and the world 
 stretches before you a long, dark horror, even 
 then a half enchantment mingles with your 
 •despair. 
 
 And who would not risk its terrors to gain its 
 raptures ? Ah, what raptures they were ! The 
 mere recollection thrills you. How delicious it 
 was to tell her that you loved her, that you lived 
 for her, that you would die for her ! How you 
 did rave, to be sure ; what floods of extravagant 
 nonsense you poured forth, and oh, how cruel it 
 was of her to pretend not to believe you ! In 
 75 
 
On Being in Love. 
 
 what awe you stood of her ! How miserable you 
 were when you had offended her ! And yet, how 
 pleasant to be bullied by her, and to sue for 
 pardon without having the slightest notion of 
 what your fault was ! How dark the world was 
 when she snubbed you, as she often did, the 
 little rogue, just to see you look wretched ; 
 how sunny when she smiled ! How jealous 
 you were of every one about her ! How you 
 hated every man she shook hands with, e\ery 
 woman she kissed — the maid that did her hair, 
 the boy that cleaned her shoes, the dog she 
 nursed — though you had to be respectful to the 
 last named ! How you looked forAvard to seeing 
 lier, how stupid you were when you did see her, 
 staring at her without saying a word ! How 
 impossible it was for you to go out at any time 
 of the day or night without finding yourself 
 eventually opposite her windows ! You hadn't 
 plu' k enough to go in, but you hung about the 
 corner and gazed at the outside. Oh, if the house 
 had only caught fire — it was insured, so it 
 wouldn't have mattered — and you could have 
 rushed in and saved her at the risk of your life, 
 and ha\'e been terribly burned and injured ! 
 Anything to serve her. Even in little things 
 76 
 
On Being in Love. 
 
 that was so sweet. How you would watch her, 
 spaniel-like, to anticipate her slightest wish ! 
 How proud you were to do her bidding ! How 
 delightful it was to be ordered about by her ! 
 To devote your whole life to her, and to never 
 think of yourself, seemed such a simple thing. 
 You would go without a holiday to lay an hum- 
 ble offering at her shrine, and felt more than 
 repaid if she only deigned to accept it. How 
 precious to you was everything that she had 
 hallowed by her touch — her little glove, the rib- 
 bon she had worn, the rose that had nestled in 
 her hair, and whose withered leaves still mark 
 the» poems you never care to look at now ! 
 
 And oh, how beautiful she was, how wondrous 
 beautiful ! It was as some angel entering the 
 room, and all else became plain and earthly. She 
 was too sacred to be touched. It seemed almost 
 presumption to gaze at her. You would as soon 
 have thought of kissing her as of singing comic 
 songs in a cathedral. It was desecration enough 
 to kneel and timidly raise the gracious little hand 
 to your lips. 
 
 Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days, 
 when we were unselfish and pure-minded ; those 
 foolish days, when our simple hearts were full of 
 77 
 
On the Weather. 
 
 truth, and faith, and reverenc : ! Ah, those fool- 
 ish days of noble longings and of noble strivings ! 
 And oh, these wise, clever days, when we know 
 that money is the only prize worth striving for, 
 when we believe in nothing else but meanness 
 and lies, when we care for no living creature but 
 ourselves ! 
 
 ON THE WEATHER. 
 
 T^HINGS do go so contrary-like with me. I 
 -■• wanted to hit upon an especially novel, out- 
 of-the-way subject for one of these articles. " I 
 will write one paper about something altogether 
 new," I said to myself; ''something that nobody 
 else has ever written or talked about before ; and 
 then I can have it all my own way." And I 
 went about for days, trying to think of some- 
 thing of this kind, and I couldn't. And Mrs. 
 Cutting, our charwoman, came yesterday — I don't 
 mind mentioning her name, because I know she 
 will not see this book. She would not look at 
 such a frivolous publication. She never reads 
 anything but the Bible and ''Lloyd's Weekly 
 News." All other literature she considers un- 
 necessary and sinful. 
 
 78' 
 
On the Weather. 
 
 She said : " Lor', sir, you do look worried." 
 
 I said: ''Mrs. Cutting, I am trying to think 
 of a subject the discussion of which will come 
 upon the world in the nature of a startler — some 
 subject upon which no previous human being has 
 ever said a word — some subject that will attract 
 by its novelty, invigorate by its surprising fresh- 
 ness." 
 
 She laughed, and said I was a funny gentleman. 
 
 That's my luck again. When I make serious 
 observations, people chuckle ; when I attempt a 
 joke, nobody sees it. I had a beautiful one last 
 week. I thought it so good, and I worked it up, 
 and brought it in artfully at a dinner-party. I 
 forget how exactly, but we had been talking 
 about the attitude of Shakespeare toward the 
 Reformation, and I said something and immedi- 
 ately added : ' ' Ah, that reminds me ; such a 
 funny thing happened the other day in White- 
 chapel." "Oh," said they, ''what was that ? " 
 "Oh, 'twas awfully funny," I replied, beginning 
 to giggle myself; " it will make you roar; " and 
 I told it them. 
 
 There was a dead silence when I finished — it 
 was one of those long jokes, too — and then, at 
 last, somebody said : " And that was the joke ? '* 
 79 
 
On the Weather. 
 
 I assured them that it was, and they were very 
 poHte, and took my word for it. All but one old 
 gentleman, at the other end of the table, who 
 wanted to know which was the joke — what he 
 said to her, or what she said to him ; and we 
 argued it out. 
 
 Some people are too much the other way. I 
 knew a fellow once whose natural tendency to 
 laugh at everything was so strong that, if you 
 wanted to talk seriously to him, you had to ex- 
 plain beforehand that what you were going to 
 say would not be amusing. Unless you got him 
 to clearly understand this, he would go off into 
 fits of merriment over every word you uttered. 
 I have known him, on being asked the time, stop 
 short in the middle of the road, slap his leg, and 
 burst into a roar of laughter. One never dared 
 say anything really funny to that man. A good 
 joke would have killed him on the spot. 
 
 In the present instance, I vehemently repudi- 
 ated the accusation of frivolity, and pressed Mrs. 
 Cutting for practical ideas. She then became 
 thoughtful, and hazarded ''samplers," saying 
 that she never heard them spoken much of now, 
 but that they used to be all the rage when she 
 was a girl. 
 
 80 
 
On the Weather. 
 
 I decHned samplers, and begged her to think 
 again. She pondered a long while, with a tea- 
 tray in her hands, and at last suggested the 
 weather, which she was sure had been most trying 
 of late. 
 
 And ever since that idiotic suggestion I have 
 been unable to get the weather out of my thoughts, 
 or anything else in. 
 
 It certainly is most wretched weather. At all 
 events, it is so now, at the time I am writing, and 
 if it isn't particularly unpleasant when I come 
 to be read, it soon will be. 
 
 It always is wretched weather, according to us» 
 The weather is like the government — always in 
 the wrong. In summer time we say it is stifling; 
 in winter that it is killing ; in spring and autumn 
 we find fault with it for being neither one thing 
 nor the other, and wish it would make up its 
 mind. If it is fine, we say the country is being 
 ruined for want of rain ; if it does rain, we pray 
 for fine weather. If December passes without 
 snow, we indignantly demand to know what has 
 become of our good old-fashioned winters, and 
 talk as if we had been cheated out of something 
 we had bought and paid for ; and when it does 
 snow, our language is a disgrace to a Christian 
 6 8i 
 
On the Weather. 
 
 nation. We shall never be consent until each 
 man makes his own weather and keeps it to 
 himself. 
 
 If that cannot be arranged, we would rather 
 do without it altogether. 
 
 Yet I think it is only to us in cities that all 
 weather is unwelcome. In her own home, the 
 country. Nature is sweet in all her moods. What 
 can be more beautiful than the snow, falling big 
 with mystery in silent softness, decking the fields 
 and trees with white as if for a fairy wedding ! 
 And how delightful is a walk when the frozen 
 ground rings beneath our swinging tread — when 
 our blood tingles in the rare keen air, and the 
 sheep dog's distant bark and children's laughter 
 peal faintly clear like Alpine bells across the 
 open hills 1 And then skating ! scudding with 
 wings of steel across the swaying ice, waking 
 whirring music as we fly. And oh, how dainty 
 is spring — Nature at sweet eighteen ! When the 
 little, hopeful leaves peep out so fresh and green, 
 so pure and bright, like young lives pushing shyly 
 out into the bustling world ; when the fruit-tree 
 blossoms, pink and white, like village maidens 
 in their Sunday frocks, hide each whitewashed 
 cottage in a cloud of fragile splendor ; and the 
 82 
 
On the Weather. 
 
 cuckoo's note upon the breeze is wafted through 
 the woods ! And summer, with its deep, dark- 
 green, and drowsy hum — when the rain-drops 
 whisper solemn secrets to the Hstening leaves, 
 and the twilight lingers in the lanes ! And 
 autumn ! ah, how sadly fair, with its golden 
 glow, and the dying grandeur of its tinted woods 
 — its blood-red sunsets^ and its ghostly evening 
 mists, with its busy murmur of reapers, and its 
 laden orchards, and the calling of the gleaners, 
 and the festivals of praise ! 
 
 The very rain, and sleet, and hail seem only 
 Nature's useful servants, when found doing their 
 simple duties in the country ; and the East Wind 
 himself is nothing worse than a boisterous friend, 
 when we meet him between the hedge-rows. 
 
 But in the city, where the painted stucco blis- 
 ters under the smoky sun, and the sooty rain 
 brings slush and mud, and the snow lies piled in 
 dirty heaps, and the chill blasts whistle down 
 dingy streets, and shriek round flaring, gaslit 
 corners, no face of Nature charms us. Weather 
 in towns is like a skylark in a counting-house — 
 out of place and in the way. Towns ought to 
 be covered in, warmed by hot- water pipes, and 
 lighted by electricity. The weather is a country 
 83 
 
On the Weather. 
 
 lass, and does not appear to advantage in town. 
 We liked well enough to flirt with her in the hay- 
 field; but she does not seem so fascinating when 
 we meet her in Pall Mall. There is too much of 
 her there. The frank, free laugh and hearty 
 voice that sounded so pleasant in the dairy jars 
 against the artificiality of town-bred life, and her 
 ways become exceedingly trymg. 
 
 Just lately she has been favoring us with almost 
 incessant rain for about three weeks ; and I am 
 a demd, damp, moist, unpleasant body, as Mr. 
 Mantalini puts it. 
 
 Our next-door neighbor comes out in the back 
 garden every now and then, and says it's doing 
 the country a world of good — not his coming 
 out into the back garden, but the weather. He 
 doesn't understand anything about it, but ever 
 since he started a cucumber frame last summer, 
 he has regarded himself in the light of an agri- 
 culturist, and talks in this absurd way with the 
 idea of impressing the rest of the terrace with 
 the notion that he is a retired farmer. I can 
 only hope that for this once be is correct, and 
 that the weather really is doing good to some- 
 thing, because it is doing me a considerable 
 amount of damage. It is spoiling both my 
 84 
 
On the Weather. 
 
 clothes and my temper. The latter I can afford,. 
 as I have a good supply of it, but it wounds me 
 to the quick to see my dear old hats and trousers, 
 sinking, prematurely worn and aged, beneath the 
 cold world's blasts and snows. 
 
 There was my new spring suit, too. A beauti- 
 ful suit it was, and now it is hanging up so 
 bespattered with mud, I can't bear to look at it. 
 
 That was Jim's fault, that was. I should never 
 have gone out in it that night, if it had not been 
 for him. I was just trying it on when he came 
 in. He threw up his arms with a wild yell, the 
 moment he caught sight of it, and exclaimed 
 that he had " got 'em again ! " 
 
 I said : '' Docs it fit all right behind ? " 
 
 '^ Spiffin, old man," he replied. And then 
 he wanted to know if I was coming out. 
 
 I said ' ' No " at first, but he overruled me. 
 He said that a man with a suit like that had no 
 right to stop indoors. '' Every citizen," said he, 
 '* owes a duty to the public. Each one should 
 contribute to the general happiness, as far as lies 
 in his power. Come out, and give the girls a 
 treat." 
 
 Jim is slangy, I don't know where he picks it 
 up. It certainly is not from me. 
 85 
 
On the Weather. 
 
 I said: *'Do you think it will really please 
 'em?" 
 
 He said it would be like a day in the country 
 to them. 
 
 That decided me. It was a lovely evening, 
 and I went. 
 
 When I got home, I undressed and rubbed 
 myself down with whisky, put my feet in hot 
 water, and a mustard plaster on my chest, had a 
 basin of gruel and a glass of hot brandy and 
 water, tallowed my nose and went to bed. 
 
 These prompt and vigorous measures, aided by 
 a naturally strong constitution, were the means 
 of preserving my life ; but as for the suit ! Well, 
 there, it isn't a suit ; it's a splash-board. 
 
 And I did fancy that suit too. But that's just 
 the way, I never do get particularly fond of 
 anything in this world but what something dread- 
 ful happens it, I had a tame rat when I was a 
 boy, and I loved that animal as only a boy would 
 love an old water-rat ; and one day it fell into a 
 large dish of gooseberry-fool that was standing to 
 cool in the kitchen, and 'nobody knew what be- 
 came of the poor creature until the second helping. 
 
 I do hate wet weather in town. At least, it is 
 not so much the wet as the mud that I object to, 
 86 
 
On the Weather. 
 
 Somehow or other, I seem to possess an irresisti- 
 ble alluring power over mud. I have only to show 
 myself on the streets on a muddy day to be half 
 smothered by it. It all comes of being so at- 
 tractive, as the old lady said when she was struck 
 by lightning, Other people can go out on dirty 
 days, and walk about for hours without getting 
 a speck upon themselves ; while if I go across the 
 road, I come back a perfect disgrace to be seen 
 (as in my boyish days my poor dear mother used 
 often to tell me). If there were only one dab of 
 mud to be found in the whole of London, I am 
 convinced I should carry it off from all com- 
 petitors. 
 
 I wish I could return the affection, but I fear 
 I never shall be able to. I have a horror of what 
 they call the ''London particular." I feel mis- 
 erable and muggy all through a dirty day, and it 
 is quite a relief to pull one's clothes off and get 
 into bed, out of the way of it all. Everything 
 goes wrong in wet weather. I don't know how 
 it is, but there always seems to me to be more 
 people, and dogs, and perambulators, and cabs, 
 and carts, about in wet weather than at any other 
 time, and they all get in your way more, and 
 everybody is so disagreeable — except myself — • 
 87 
 
On the Weather. 
 
 and it does make me so wild. And then, too, 
 somehow, I ahvays find myself carrying more 
 things in wet weather than in dry; and when you 
 have a bag, and three parcels, and a newspaper, 
 and it suddenly comes on to rain, you can't open 
 your umbrella. 
 
 Which reminds me of another phase of the 
 weather that I can't bear, and that is April 
 weather (so-called, because it always comes in 
 May). Poets think it very nice. As it does not 
 know its own mind five minutes together, they 
 liken it to a woman ; and it is supposed to be 
 very charming on that account. I don't appre- 
 ciate it myself. Such lightning change business 
 may be all very agreeable in a girl. It is no doubt 
 highly delightful to have to do with a person 
 who grins one moment about nothing at all, and 
 snivels the next for precisely the same cause, and 
 who then giggles, and then sulks, and who is 
 rude, and affectionate, and bad-tempered, and 
 jolly, and boisterous, and silent, and passionate, 
 and cold, and stand-offish, and flopping, all in 
 one minute (mind I don't say this. It is those 
 poets. And they are supposed to be connoisseurs 
 of this sort of thing) ; but in the weather, the 
 disadvantages of the system are more apparent. 
 
On the Weather. 
 
 A woman's tears do not make one wet, but the 
 rain does; and her coldness does not lay the 
 foundations of asthma and rheumatism, as the 
 east wind is apt to, I can prepare for and put 
 up with a regularly bad day, but these ha'porth- 
 of-all-sorts kind of days do not suit me. It ag- 
 gravates me to see a bright blue sky above me, 
 when I am walking along wet through ; and there 
 is something so exasperating about the way the sun 
 comes out smiling after a drenching shower, and 
 seems to say: '' Lord love you, you don't mean 
 to say you're wet? Well, I am surprised. Why; 
 it was only my fun." 
 
 They don't give you time to open or shut your 
 umbrella in an English April, especially if it is 
 an ** automaton" one — ^the umbrella, I mean, 
 not the April. 
 
 I bought an *' automaton " once in April, and 
 I did have a time with it ! I wanted an umbrella, 
 and I went into a shop in the Strand, and told 
 them so, and they said : 
 
 ''Yes, sir ; what sort of an umbrella would you 
 like?" 
 
 I said I should like one that would keep the 
 rain off, and that would not allow itself to be left 
 behind in a railway carriage. 
 
On the Weather. 
 
 **Tryan 'automaton,' " said the shopman. 
 
 "What's an ' automaton? ' " said I. 
 
 "Oh, it's a beautiful arrangement," repHed 
 the man, with a touch of enthusiasm. " It opens 
 and shuts itself." 
 
 I bought one, and found that he was quite 
 correct. It did open and shut itself. I had no 
 control over it whatever. When it began to rain, 
 which it did, that season, every alternate five 
 minutes, I used to try and get the machine to 
 open, but it would not budge ; and then I used to 
 stand and struggle with the wretched thing, and 
 shake it, and swear at it, while the rain poured 
 down in torrents. Then the moment the rain 
 ceased, the absurd thing would go up suddenly 
 with a jerk, and would not come down again; 
 and I had to walk about under a bright blue sky 
 with an umbrella over my head, wishing that it 
 would come on to rain again, so that it might not 
 seem that I was insane. 
 
 When it did shut, it did so unexpectedly, and 
 knocked one's hat off. 
 
 I don't know why it should be so, but it is an 
 
 undeniable fact that there is nothing makes a 
 
 man look so supremely ridiculous as losing his 
 
 hat. The feeling of helpless misery that shoots 
 
 90 
 
On the Weather. 
 
 down one's back on suddenly becoming aware 
 that one's head is bare is among the most bitter 
 ills that flesh is heir to. And then there is the 
 wild chase after it, accompanied by an excitable 
 small dog, who thinks it is a game, and in the 
 course of which you are certain to upset three or 
 four innocent children — to say nothing of their 
 mothers — but a fat old gentleman on the top of a 
 perambulator, and cannon off a ladies' seminary 
 into the arms of a wet sweep. After this, the 
 idiotic hilarity of the spectators, and the dis- 
 reputable appearance of the hat, when recovered^ 
 appear of but minor importance. 
 
 Altogether, what between March winds, April 
 showers, and the entire absence of May flowers, 
 spring is not a success in cities. It is all very 
 well in the country, as I have said ; but in towns 
 whose population is anything over ten thousand, 
 it most certainly ought to be abolished. In the 
 world's grim workshops, it is like the children — • 
 out of place. Neither show to advantage amid 
 the dust and din. It seems so sad to see the little 
 dirt-grimed brats trying to play in the noisy 
 courts and muddy streets. Poor little uncared- 
 for, unwanted human atoms, they are not chil- 
 dren. Children are bright-eyed, chubby and 
 91 
 
On the Weather. 
 
 shy. These are dingy, screeching eh-es, their 
 tiny faces seared and withered, their baby laugh- 
 ter cracked and hoarse. 
 
 The spring of hfe and the spring of the year 
 were alike meant to be cradled in the green lap 
 of Nature. To us, in the town, spring brings but 
 its cold winds and drizzling rains. We must seek 
 it among the leafless woods, and the brambly 
 lanes, on the heathy moors, and the great still 
 hills, if we want to feel its joyous breath, and 
 hear its silent voices. There is a glorious fresh- 
 ness in the spring there. The scurrying clouds, 
 the open bleakness, the rushing wind, and the 
 clear bright air, thrill one with vague energies 
 and hopes. Life, like the landscape around us, 
 seems bigger, and wider, and freer — a rainbow 
 road, leading to unknown ends. Through the 
 silvery rents that bar the sky, we seem to catch a 
 glimpse of the great hope and grandeur that lies 
 around this little throbbing world, and a breath 
 of its scent is wafted us on the wings of the wild 
 ISIarch wind. 
 
 Strange thoughts we do not understand are 
 
 stirring in our hearts. Voices are calling us to 
 
 some great effort, to some mighty work. But we 
 
 do not comprehend their meaning yet, and the 
 
 92 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 hidden echoes within us that would reply are 
 struggling, inarticulate, and dumb. 
 
 We stretch our hands like children to the 
 light, seeking to grasp we know not what. Our 
 thoughts, like the boys' thoughts in the Danish 
 song, are very long, long thoughts, and very 
 vague : we cannot see their end. 
 
 It must be so. All thoughts that peer outside 
 this narrow world can not be else than dim and 
 shapeless. The thoughts that we can clearly 
 grasp are very little thoughts — that two and two 
 make four — that when we are hungry it is plea- 
 sant to eat — that honesty is the best policy ; all 
 greater thoughts are undefined and vast to our 
 poor childish brains. We see but dimly through 
 the mists that roll around our time-girt isle of 
 life, and only hear the distant surging of the 
 great sea beyond. 
 
 # 
 
 ON CATS AND DOGS. 
 
 AIT" HAT I've suffered from them this morning 
 ' ' no tongue can tell. It began with Gus- 
 tavus Adolphus. Gustavus Adolphus (they call 
 him ''Gusty" down-stairs for short) is a very 
 good sort of dog, when he is in the middle of a 
 93 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 large field, or on a fairly extensive common, but 
 I won't have him in-doors. He means well, but 
 this house is not his size. He stretches himself, 
 and over go two chairs and a whatnot. He wags 
 his tail, and the room looks as if a devastating 
 army had marched through it. He breathes, 
 and it puts the fire out. 
 
 At dinner-time he creeps in under the table, 
 lies there for a while, and then gets up suddenly ; 
 the first intimation we have of his movements 
 being given by the table, which appears animated 
 by a desire to turn somersaults. We all clutch 
 at it frantically, and endeavor to maintain it in a 
 horizontal position ; whereupon his struggles, he 
 being under the impression that some wicked 
 conspiracy is being hatched against him, become 
 fearful, and the final picture presented is generally 
 that of an overturned table and a smashed-up 
 dinner, sandwiched between two sprawling layers 
 of infuriated men and women. 
 
 He came in this morning in his usual style, 
 which he appears to have founded on that of an 
 American cyclone, and the first thing he did was 
 to sweep my coffee-cup off the table with his tail, 
 sending the contents full into the middle of my 
 waistcoat. 
 
 94 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 I rose from my chair, hurriedly, and remark- 
 ing " ," approached him at a rapid rate. He 
 
 preceded me in the direction of the door. At 
 the door he met Eliza coming in with eggs. 
 Eliza observed, '*Ugh! " and sat down on the 
 floor, the eggs took up different positions about 
 the carpet, where they spread themselves out, and 
 Gustavus Adolphus left the room. I called after 
 him, strongly advising him to go straight down- 
 stairs, and not let me see him again for the next 
 hour or so ; and he, seeming to agree with me, 
 dodged the coal-scoop, and went ; while I 
 returned, dried myself, and finished breakfast. I 
 made sure that he had gone into the yard, but 
 when I looked into the passage ten minutes later, 
 he was sitting ^t the top of the stairs. I ordered 
 him down at once, but he only barked and 
 jumped about, so I went to see what was the 
 matter. It was Tittums. She was sitting on the 
 top stair but one, and wouldn't let him pass. 
 
 Tittums is our kitten. She is about the size of 
 a penny roll. Her back was up, and she was 
 swearing like a medical student. 
 
 She does swear fearfully. I do a little that 
 way myself sometimes, but I am a mere amateur 
 compared with her. To tell you the truth — 
 95 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 mind, this is strictly between ourselves, please — I 
 shouldn't like your wife to know I said it, the 
 women don't understand these things; but 
 between you and me, you know, I think it does 
 a man good to swear. Swearing is the safety- 
 valve through which the bad temper, that might 
 otherwise do serious internal injury to his mental 
 mechanism, escapes in harmless vaporing. When 
 a man has said : * ' Bless you, my dear, sweet sir. 
 What the sun, moon, and stars made you so care- 
 less (if I may be permitted the expression) as to 
 allow your light and delicate foot to descend 
 upon my corn with so much force ! Is it that 
 you are physically incapable of comprehending 
 the direction in which you are proceeding ? you 
 nice, clever young man, you ! " or words to that 
 effect, he feels better. Swearing has the same 
 soothing effect upon our angry passions that 
 smashing the furniture or slamming the doors is 
 so well known to exercise ; added to which, it is 
 much cheaper. Swearing clears a man out like a 
 pen'orth of gunpowder does the wash-house chim- 
 ney. An occasional explosion is good for both. 
 I rather distrust a man who never swears, or 
 savagely kicks the footstool, or pokes the fire with 
 unnecessary violence. Without some outlet, the 
 96 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 anger caused by the ever-occurring troubles of 
 life is apt to rankle and fester within. The petty- 
 annoyances, instead of being thrown from us, sit 
 down beside us, and become a sorrow, and the 
 little offense is brooded over till, in the hot-bed 
 of rumination, it grows into a great injury, under 
 whose poisonous shadow spring up hatred and 
 revenge. 
 
 Swearing relieves the feelings, that is what 
 swearing does. I explained this to my aunt on 
 one occasion, but it didn't answer with her. She 
 said I had no business to have such feelings. 
 
 That is what I told Tittums. I told her she 
 ought to be ashamed of herself, brought up in a 
 Christian family as she was, too. I don't sc^ 
 much mind hearing an old cat swear, but I can't 
 bear to see a mere kitten give way to it. It 
 seems sad in one so young. 
 
 I put Tittums in my pocket, and returned ta 
 my desk. I forgot her for the moment, and when 
 I looked I found that she had squirmed out of 
 my pocket on to the table, and was trying to 
 swallow the pen ; then she put her leg into the 
 ink-pot and upset it ; then she licked her leg, 
 then she swore again — at me this time. 
 
 I put her down on the floor, and there Tim 
 7 97 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 "began rowing with her. I do wish Tim would 
 mind his own business. It was no concern of 
 his what she had been doing. Besides, he is not 
 a saint himself. He is only a two-year old fox 
 terrier, and he interferes with everything, and 
 gives himself the airs of a gray-headed Scotch 
 colly. 
 
 Tittums's mother has come in, and Tim has 
 got his nose scratched, for which I am remarka- 
 bly glad. I have put them all three out in the 
 passage, where they are fighting at the present 
 moment. I'm in a mess with the ink, and in a 
 thundering bad temper ; and if anything more in 
 the cat or dog line comes fooling about me this 
 morning, it had better bring its own funeral con- 
 tractor with it. 
 
 Yet, in general, I like cats and dogs very much 
 indeed. What jolly chaps they are ! They are 
 much superior to human beings as companions. 
 They do not quarrel or argue with you. They 
 never talk about themselves, but listen to you 
 while you talk about yourself, and keep up an 
 appearance of being interested in the conversa- 
 tion. They never make stupid remarks. They 
 never observe to Miss Brown across a dinner- 
 table that they always understood she was very 
 98 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 sweet on Mr. Jones (who has just married Miss 
 Robinson). They never mistake your wife's 
 cousin for her husband, and fancy that you are 
 the father-in-law. And they never ask a young 
 author with fourteen tragedies, sixteen comedies, 
 seven farces, and a couple of burlesques in his 
 desk why he doesn't write a play. 
 
 They never say unkind things. They never 
 tell us of our faults, " merely for our own good." 
 They do not, at inconvenient moments, mildly 
 remind us of our past follies and mistakes. They 
 do not say, ^' Oh, yes, a lot of use you are, if you 
 are ever really wanted " — sarcastic-like. They 
 never infoi"m us, like our inamoratas sometimes 
 do, that we are not nearly so nice as we used to 
 be. We are always the same to them. 
 
 They are always glad to see us. They are with 
 US in all our humors. They are merry when we 
 are glad, sober when we feel solemn, and sad 
 when we are sorrowful. 
 
 '' Halloo ! happy, and want a lark ! Right you 
 are ; I'm your man. Here I am, frisking round 
 you, leaping, barking, pirouetting, ready for any 
 amount of fun and mischief. Look at my eyes 
 if you doubt me. What shall it be ? A romp 
 in the drawing-room, and never mind the furni- 
 99 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 ture, or a scamper in the fresh, cool air, a scud 
 across the fields, and down the hill, and won't 
 we let old Gaffer Goggles' s geese know what time 
 o' day it is, neidier. Whoop ! come along." 
 
 Or you'd like to be quiet and think. Very 
 well. Pussy can sit on the arm of the chair and 
 purr, and Montmorency will curl himself up on 
 the rug, and blink at the fire, yet keeping one 
 eye on you the while, in case you are seized with 
 any sudden desire in the direction of rats. 
 
 And when we bury our face in our hands and 
 wish we had never been born, they don't sit up 
 very straight, and observe that we have brought 
 it all upon ourselves. They don't even hope it 
 will be a warning to us. But they come up 
 softly, and shove their heads against us. If it is 
 a cat, she stands on your shoulder, rumples your 
 hair, and says: '' Lor', I am sorry for you, old 
 man," as plain as words can speak ; and if it is a 
 dog, he looks up at you with his big, true eyes, 
 and says with them : '' Well, you've always got 
 me, you know. We'll go through the world 
 together, and always stand by each other, won't 
 we?" 
 
 He is very imprudent, a dog is. He never 
 makes it his business to inquire whether you are 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 in the right or in the wrong, never bothers as to 
 whether you are going up or down upon life's 
 ladder, never asks whether you are rich or poor^, 
 silly or wise, sinner or saint. You are his pal. 
 That is enough for him, and, come luck or mis- 
 fortune, good repute or bad, honor or shame, he 
 is going to stick to you, to comfort you, guard 
 you and give his life for you, if need be — foolish,,- 
 brainless, soulless dog ! 
 
 Ah ! old stanch friend, with your deep, clear 
 eyes, and bright, quick glances, that take in all 
 one has to say before one has time to speak it, dO' 
 you know you are only an animal, and have no» 
 mind ? Do you know that that dull-eyed, gin- 
 sodden lout, leaning against the post out there is 
 immeasurably your intellectual superior ? Do- 
 you know that every little-minded, selfish scoun- 
 drel who lives by cheating and tricking, who 
 never did a gentle deed, or said a kind word,, 
 w^lio never had a thought that was not mean andi 
 low, or a desire that was not base^ whose every 
 action is a fraud, whose every utterance is a lie ; 
 do you know that these crawling skulks (and 
 tliere are millions of them in the world), do you 
 know they are 'all as much superior to you as the 
 sun is superior 'to rush-light, you honorable^ 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 brave-hearted, unselfish brute? They are men, 
 you know, and men are the greatest, and noblest, 
 and wisest, and best beings in the whole vast uni- 
 verse. Any man will tell you that. 
 
 Yes, poor doggie, you are very stupid, very 
 stupid indeed, compared with us clever men, who 
 understand all about politics and philosophy, and 
 who know everything, in short, except what we 
 are, and where we came from, and whither we are 
 going, and what everything outside this tiny 
 -world and most things in it are. 
 
 Never mind, though, pussy and doggie, we like 
 you both all the better for your being stupid. 
 We all like stupid things. Men can't bear clever 
 women, and a woman's ideal man is some one 
 she can call a '' dear old stupid." It is so plea- 
 sant to come across people more stupid than our- 
 selves. We love them at once for being so. The 
 world must be rather' a rough place for clever 
 people. Ordinary folk dislike them, and as for 
 themselves they hate each other most cordially. 
 
 But, there ! the clever people are such a very 
 insignificant minority that it really doesn't much 
 matter if they are unhappy. So long as the 
 foolish people can be made comfortable, the 
 world, as a whole, will get on tolerably well. 
 
 I02 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 Cats have the credit of being more worldly 
 wise than dogs— of looking more after their own 
 interests, and being less blindly devoted to those 
 of their friends. And we men and women are 
 naturally shocked at such selfishness. Cats cer- 
 tainly do love a family that has a carpet in the 
 kitchen more than a family that has not ; and if 
 there are many children about, they prefer to 
 spend their leisure time next door. But, taken 
 altogether, cats are libeled. Make a friend of 
 one, and she will stick to you through thick and 
 thin. All the cats that I have had have been 
 most firm comrades. I had a cat once that used 
 to follow me about everywhere, until it even got 
 quite embarrassing, and I had to beg her, as a 
 personal favor, not to accompany me any further 
 down the High Street. She used to sit up for 
 me when I w^as late home, and meet me in the 
 passage. It made me feel quite like a married 
 man, except that she never asked where I had 
 been and then didn't believe me when I told 
 her. 
 
 Another cat I had used to get drunk regularly 
 every day. She would hang about for hours out- 
 side the cellar door for the purpose of sneaking 
 m on' the first opportunity, and lapping up the 
 103 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 drippings from the beer cask. I do not mention 
 this habit of hers in praise of the species, but 
 merely to show how almost human some of them 
 are. If the transmigration of souls is a fact, this 
 animal was certainly qualifying most rapidly for 
 a Christian. For her vanity was only second to 
 her love of drink. Whenever she caught a par- 
 ticularly big rat, she would bring it up into the 
 room where we were all sitting, lay the corpse 
 down in the midst of us, and wait to be praised. 
 Lord ! how the girls used to scream. 
 
 Poor rats ! They seem only to exist so that 
 cats and dogs may gain credit for killing them 
 and chemists make a fortune by inventing spe- 
 cialties in poison for their destruction. And yet 
 there is something fascinating about them. There 
 is aweirdness and uncanniness attaching to them. 
 They are so cunning and strong, so terrible in 
 their numbers, so cruel, so secret. They swarm 
 in deserted houses, where the broken casements 
 hang rotting to the crumbling walls, and the 
 doors swing creaking on their rusty hinges. They 
 know the sinking ship, and leave her, no one 
 knows how or whither. They whisper to each 
 other in their hiding-places how a doom will fall 
 upon the Hall, and the great name die forgot- 
 104 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 ten. They do fearful deeds in ghastly charnel- 
 houses. 
 
 No tale of horror is complete without the rats. 
 In stories of ghosts and murderers, they scamper 
 through the echoing rooms, and the gnawing of 
 their teeth is heard behind the wainscot, and 
 their gleaming eyes peer through the holes in the 
 worm-eaten tapestry, and they scream in shrill, 
 unearthly notes in the dead of night, while the 
 moaning wind sweeps, sobbing, round the ruined 
 turret towers, and passes wailing like a woman 
 through the chambers bare and tenantless. 
 
 And dying prisoners, in their loathsome dun- 
 geons, see, through the horrid gloom, their small 
 red eyes, like glittering coals ; hear, in the death- 
 like silence, the rush of their claw-like feet, and 
 start up shrieking in the darkness, and watch 
 through the awful night. 
 
 I love to read tales about rats. They make my 
 flesh creep so. I like that tale of Bishop Hatto 
 and the rats. The wicked bishop, you know, 
 had ever so much corn stored in his granaries, 
 and would not let the starving people touch it, 
 but when they prayed to him for food, gathered 
 them together in his barn, and then shutting the 
 doors on them, set fire to the place and burned 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 them all to death. But next day there came 
 thousands upon thousands of rats, sent to do judg- 
 ment on him. Then Bishop Hatto fled to his 
 strong tower that stood in the middle of the 
 Rhine, and barred himself in, and fancied he was 
 safe. But the rats! they swam the river, they 
 gnawed their way through the thick stone walls, 
 and ate him alive where he sat. 
 
 " They have whetted their teeth against the stones, 
 And now they pick the bishop's bones ; 
 They gnawed the flesh from every limb, 
 For they were sent to do judgment on him." 
 
 Oh, it's a lovely tale. 
 
 Then there is the story of the Pied Piper of 
 Hamelin, how first he piped the rats away, and 
 afterward, when the mayor broke faith with him, 
 drew all the children along with him and went 
 into the mountain. What a curious old legend 
 that is ! I wonder what it means, or has it any 
 meaning at all ? There seems something strange 
 and deep lying hid beneath the rippling rhyme. 
 It haunts me, that picture of the quaint, myster- 
 ious old piper, piping through Hamelin's narrow- 
 streets, and the children following with dancing 
 feet and thoughtful, eager faces. The old folks 
 io6 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 try to stay them, but the children pay no heed. 
 They hear the weird, witched music, and must 
 follow. The games are left unfinished, and the 
 playthings drop from their careless hands. They 
 know not whither they are ^hastening. The 
 mystic music calls to them, and they follow, 
 heedless and unasking where. It stirs and 
 vibrates in their hearts, and other sounds grow 
 faint. So they wander through Pied Piper streets 
 away from Hamelin town. I get thinking some- 
 times if the Pied Piper is really dead, or if he 
 may not still be roaming up and down our streets 
 and lanes, but playing now so softly that only the 
 children hear him. Why do the little faces look 
 so grave and solemn when they pause awhile from 
 romping, and stand, deep wrapped, with strain- 
 ing eyes? They only shake their curly heads, 
 and dart back, laughing to their playmates when 
 we question them. But I fancy myself they 
 have been listening to the magic music of the old 
 Pied Pilfer, and, perhaps, with those bright eyes 
 of theirs, have even seen his odd, fantastic figure 
 gliding unnoticed through the whirl and throng. 
 Even we grown-up children hear his piping 
 now and then. But the yearning notes are very 
 far away, and the noisy, blustering world is 
 107 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 always bellowing so loud it drowns the dream- 
 like melody. One day the sweet, sad strains will 
 sound out full and clear, and then we, too, shall, 
 like the little children, throw our playthings all 
 aside, and follow. The loving hands will be 
 stretched out to stay us, and the voices we have 
 learned to listen for will cry to us to stop. But 
 we shall push the fond arms gently back, and pass 
 out through the sorrowing house and through the 
 open door. For the wild, strange music will be 
 ringing in our hearts, and we shall know the 
 meaning of its song by then. 
 
 i wish people could love animals without get- 
 ting maudlin over them, as so many do. Women 
 are the most hardened offenders in such respects, 
 but even our intellectual sex often degrade pets 
 into nuisances by absurd idolatry. There are the 
 gushing young ladies who, having read '■ David 
 Copperfield," have thereupon sought out a small, 
 long-haired dog of nondescript breed, possessed 
 of an irritating habit of criticising a man's 
 trousers, and of finally commenting upon the 
 same by a sniff, indicative of contempt and dis- 
 gust. They talk sweet, girlish prattle to this 
 animal (when there is any one near enough to 
 overhear them), and they kiss its nose, and put 
 1 08 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 its unwashed head up against their cheek in a 
 most touching manner ; though I have noticed 
 that these caresses are principally performed when 
 there are young men hanging about. 
 
 Then there are the old ladies who worship a 
 fat poodle scant of breath and full of fleas. I 
 knew a couple of elderly spinsters once who had 
 a sort of German sausage on legs, which they 
 called a dog, between them. They used to wash 
 its face with warm water every morning. It had 
 a mutton cutlet regularly for breakfast ; and on 
 Sundays, when one of the ladies went to church, 
 the other always stopped at home to keep the dog 
 company. 
 
 There are many families where the whole 
 interest of life is centered upon the dog. Cats, 
 by the way, rarely suffer from excess of adulation. 
 A cat possesses a very fair sense of the ridiculous, 
 and will put her paw down kindly, but firmly, 
 upon any nonsense of this kind. Dogs, however, 
 seem to like it. They encourage their owners in 
 the tom-foolery, and the consequence is that 
 in the circles I am speaking of, what ''dear 
 Fido " has done, does do, won't do, will do, can 
 do, can't do, was doing, is doing, is going to do, 
 shall do, sha'n't do, and is about to be going to 
 109 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 have done, is the continual theme of discussion 
 from morning till night. 
 
 All the conversation, consisting, as it does, of 
 the very dregs of imbecility, is addressed to this 
 confounded animal. The family sit in a row all 
 day long, watching him, commenting upon his 
 actions, telling each other anecdotes about him, 
 recalling his virtues, and remembering with tears 
 how one day they lost him for two whole hours, 
 on which occasion he was brought home in a 
 most brutal manner by the butcher boy, v.ho had 
 been met carrying him by the scruff of his neck 
 with one hand while soundly cuffing his head 
 with the other. 
 
 After recovering from these bitter recollections, 
 they vie with each other in bursts of admiration 
 for the brute, until some more than iisually 
 enthusiastic member, unable any longer to con- 
 trol his feelings, swoops down upon the unhappy 
 quadruped in a frenzy of affection, clutches it 
 to his heart, and slobbers over it. Whereupon, 
 the others, mad with envy, rise up, and, seizing 
 as much of the dog as the greed of the first one 
 has left to them, murmur praise and devotion. 
 
 Among these people, everything is done through 
 the dog. If you want to make love to the eldest 
 no 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 daughter, or get the old man to lend you the 
 garden roller, or the mother to subscribe to the 
 Society for the Suppression of Solo-cornet Players 
 in Theatrical Orchestras (it's a pity there isn't 
 one, anyhow), you have to begin with the dog. 
 You must gain its approbation before they will 
 even listen to you, and if, as is highly probable, 
 the animal, whose frank, doggie nature has been 
 warped by the unnatural treatment he has received, 
 responds to your overtures of friendship by vic- 
 iously snapping at you, your cause is lost forever. 
 
 ''If Fido won't take to any one," the father 
 has thoughtfully remarked beforehand, '' I say 
 that man is not to be trusted. You know, 
 Maria, how often I have said that. Ah, he 
 knows, bless him ! ' ' 
 
 Drat him ! 
 
 And to think that the surly brute was once an 
 innocent puppy, all legs and head, full of fun 
 and play, and burning with ambition to become 
 a big, good dog, and bark like mother. 
 
 Ah, me ! life sadly changes us all. The world 
 seems a vast, horrible grinding machine, into 
 which what is fresh and bright and pure is pushed 
 at one end, to come out old and crabbed and 
 wrinkled at the other. 
 
 Ill 
 
On Cats and Dogs. 
 
 Look even at Pussy Sobersides, Avith her dull, 
 -sleepy glance, her grave, slow walk, and digni- 
 fied, i^rudish airs ; who could ever think that 
 once she was the blue-eyed, whirling, scamper- 
 ing, head-over-heels, mad little fire-work that we 
 call a kitten. 
 
 ^Vhat marvelous vitality a kitten has ! It is 
 really something very beautiful the way life bub- 
 bles over in the little creatures. They rush about, 
 and mew, and s])ring ; dance on their hind legs, 
 embrace everything with their front ones, roll 
 over and over and over, lie on their backs and 
 kick. They don't know what to do with them- 
 selves, they are so full of life. 
 
 Can you remember, reader, when you and I 
 felt something of the same sort of thing ? Can 
 you remember those glorious days of fresh young 
 manhood ; how, when coming home along the 
 moonlit road, we felt too full of life for sober 
 walking, and had to spring and skip, and wave 
 our arms, and shout, till belated farmers' wives 
 thouglit — and with good reason, too — that we 
 were mad, and kept close to the hedge, while we 
 stood and laughed aloud to see them scuttle off 
 so fast, and made their blood run cold with a 
 wild parting whoop; and the tears came, we 
 
 112 
 
On Being Shy. 
 
 kne^y not why. Oh, that magnificent young 
 Life ! that crowned us kings of the earth ; that 
 rushed through every tingling vein, till we seemed 
 to walk on air ; that thrilled through our throb- 
 bing brains, and told us to go forth and conquer 
 the whole world ; that welled up in our young 
 hearts; till we longed to stretch out our arms 
 and gather all the toiling men and women and 
 the little children to our breasts, and love them 
 all — all. Ah ! they were grand days, those deep, 
 full days, when our coming life, like an unseen 
 organ, pealed strange, yearn ful music in our ears, 
 and our young blood cried out like a war-horse 
 for the battle. Ah, our pulse beats slow and 
 steady now, and our old joints are rheumatic, 
 and we love our easy-chair and pipe, and sneer 
 at boys' enthusiasm. But, oh ! for one brief 
 moment of that god-like life again. 
 
 ON BEING SHY. 
 
 A LL great literary men are shy. I am myself, 
 ■**- though I am told it is hardly noticeable. 
 
 I am glad it is not. It used to be extremely 
 prominent at one time, and was the cause of 
 much misery to myself, and discomfort to every 
 8 113 
 
On Being Shy. 
 
 one about me — my lady friends, especially, com- 
 plained most bitterly about it. 
 
 A shy man's lot is not a happy one. The men 
 dislike him, the women despise him, and he dis- 
 likes and despises himself. Use brings him no 
 relief, and there is no cure for him except time ; 
 though I once came across a delicious receipt 
 for overcoming the misfortune. It appeared 
 among the ''Answers to Correspondents" in a 
 small weekly journal, and ran as follows — I have 
 never forgotten it: '' Adopt an easy and pleasing 
 manner, especially toward ladies." 
 
 Poor wretch ! I can imagine the grin with 
 which he must have read that advice. ''Adopt 
 an easy and pleasing manner, especially toward 
 ladies," forsooth ! Don't you adopt anything of 
 the kind, my dear young shy friend. Your 
 attempt to put on any other disposition than your 
 own will infallibly result in your becoming ridic- 
 ulously gushing and offensively familiar. Be 
 your own natural self, and then you will only be 
 thought to be surly and stupid. 
 
 The shy man does have some slight revenge 
 
 upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him. 
 
 He is able, to a certain extent, to communicate 
 
 his misery. He frightens other people as muck 
 
 114 
 
On Being Shy. 
 
 as they frighten him. He acts hke a damper 
 upon the whole room, and the most jovial spirits 
 become, in his presence, dej^ressed and nervous. 
 
 This is a good deal brought about by misun- 
 derstanding. Many people mistake the shy man's 
 timidity for overbearing arrogance, and are awed 
 and insulted by it. His awkwardness is resented 
 as insolent carelessness, and when, terror-stricken 
 at the first word addressed to him, the blood 
 rushes to his head, and the power of speech com- 
 pletely fails him, he is regarded as an awful ex- 
 ample of the evil effects of giving way to passion. 
 
 But, indeed, to be misunderstood is the shy 
 man's fate on every occasion ; and, whatever 
 impression he endeavors to create, he is sure to 
 convey its opposite. When he makes a joke, it 
 is looked upon as a pretended relation of fact, 
 and his want of veracity much condemned. His 
 sarcasm is accepted as his literal opinion, and 
 gains for him the reputation of being an ass; 
 while if, on the other hand, wishing to ingratiate 
 himself, he ventures upon a little bit of flattery, 
 it is taken for satire, and he is hated ever after- 
 ward. 
 
 These, and the rest of a shy man's troubles, 
 are always very amusing, to other people, and 
 115 
 
On Being Shy. 
 
 have offered material for comic writing fronr 
 time immemorial. But if we look a little deeper, 
 we shall find there is a pathetic, one might 
 almost say a tragic, side to tlie picture. A shy 
 man means a lonely man — a man cut off from all 
 companionship, all sociability. He moves about 
 the world, but does not mix with it. Between 
 him and his fellow-men there runs ever an impas- 
 sable barrier — a strong, invisible wall, that, try- 
 ing in vain to scale, he but bruises himself 
 against. He sees the pleasant faces and hears 
 the pleasant voices on the other side, but he can 
 not stretch his hand across to grasp another hand. 
 He stands watching the merry groups, and he 
 longs to speak, and to claim kindred with them. 
 But they pass him by, chatting gayly to one 
 another, and he can not stay them. He 'tries to 
 reach them, but his prison walls move with him, 
 and hem him in on every side. In the busy 
 street, in the crowded room, in the grind of work, 
 in the whirl of pleasure, amid the many or amid 
 the few; wherever men congregate together, 
 wherever the music of human speech is heard, 
 and human thought is flashed from human eyes, 
 there, shunned and solitary, the shy man, like a 
 leper, stands apart. His soul is full of love and 
 ii6 
 
On Being Shy. 
 
 longing, but the world knows it not. The iron 
 mask of shyness is riveted before his face, and 
 the man beneath is never seen. Genial words; 
 and hearty greetings are ever rising to his lips, 
 but they die away in unheard whispers behind, 
 the steel clamps. His heart aches for the weary 
 brother, but his sympathy is dumb. Contempt 
 and indignation against wrong choke up his 
 throat, and, finding no safety-valve, when in 
 passionate utterance they may burst forth, they 
 only turn in again and harm him. All the hate, 
 and scorn, and love of a deep nature, such as the 
 shy man is ever cursed by, fester and corrupt 
 within, instead of spending themselves abroad, 
 and sour him into a misanthrope and cynic. 
 
 Yes, shy men, like ugly women, have a bad 
 time of it in this world, to go through which, 
 with any comfort, needs the hide of a rhinoceros. 
 Thick skin is, indeed^ our moral clothes, and 
 without it we are not fit to be seen about in 
 civilized society. A poor gasping, blushing 
 creature, with trembling knees and twitching 
 hands, is a painful sight to every one, and if it 
 can not cure itself, the sooner it goes and hangs 
 itself the better. 
 
 The disease can be cured. For the comfort of 
 117 
 
On Being Shy. 
 
 the shy^ I can assure them of that from personal 
 experience. I do not like speaking about my- 
 self, as may have been noticed, but in the cause 
 of humanity, I, on this occasion, will do so, and 
 will confess that at one time I was, as the young 
 man in one of the ''Bab Ballads" says, "the 
 shyest of the shy," and ''whenever I was intro- 
 duced to any pretty maid, my knees they knocked 
 together just as if I was afraid." Now, I would 
 — nay, have — on the very day before yesterday 
 I did the deed. Alone and entirely by myself 
 (as the school-boy said in translating the " Bel- 
 lum Gallicum ") did I beard a railway refresh- 
 ment-room young lady in her own lair. I 
 rebuked her, in terms of mingled bitterness and 
 sorrow, for her callousness and want of condescen- 
 sion. I insisted courteously, but firmly, on being 
 accorded that deference and attention that was the 
 right of the traveling Briton ; and, in the end, / 
 iooked her full in the face I Need I say more ? 
 True, that immediately after doing so, I left 
 the room, with what may possibly have appeared 
 to be precipitation, and without waiting for any 
 refreshment. But that was because I had changed 
 my mind, and not because I was frightened, you 
 understand. 
 
 ii8 
 
On Being Shy. 
 
 One consolation that shy folk can take unto 
 themselves is that shyness is certainly no sign of 
 ■stupidity. It is easy enough for bull-headed 
 clowns to sneer at nerves, but the highest natures 
 are not necessarily those containing the greatest 
 amount of moral brass. The horse is not an 
 inferior animal to -the cock-sparrow, nor the deer 
 of the forest to the pig. Shyness simply means 
 extreme sensibility, and has nothing whatever to 
 do with self-consciousness, or with conceit, 
 though its relationship to both is continually 
 insisted upon by the poll-parrot school of philo- 
 sophy. 
 
 Conceit, indeed, is the quickest cure for it. 
 When it once begins to dawn upon you that you 
 are a good deal cleverer than any one else in 
 this world, bashfulness becomes shocked, and 
 leaves you. When you can look round a room- 
 ful of people, and think that each one is a mere 
 child in intellect compared with yourself, you 
 feel no more shy of them than you would of a 
 select company of magpies or orang-outangs. 
 
 Conceit is the finest armor that a man can 
 
 wear. Upon its smooth, impenetrable surface 
 
 the puny dagger-thrusts of spite and envy glance 
 
 harmlessly aside. Without that breast-plate, the 
 
 119 
 
On Being Shy. 
 
 sword of talent can not force its way through the 
 battle of life, for blows have to be borne as well 
 as dealt. I do not, of course, speak of the 
 conceit that displays itself in an elevated nose 
 and a falsetto voice. That is not real conceit ; 
 that is only playing at being conceited, like chil- 
 dren play at being kings and queens, and go 
 strutting about with feathers and long trains. 
 Genuine conceit does not make a man objection- 
 able. On the contrary, it tends to make him 
 genial, kind-hearted, and simple. He has nO' 
 need of affectation ; he is far too well satisfied 
 with his own character; and his pride is too 
 deeply seated to appear at all on the outside. 
 Careless alike of praise or blame, he can afford to 
 be truthful. Too far, in fancy, above the rest of 
 mankind to trouble about their petty distinctions, 
 he is equally at home with duke or costermonger. 
 And, valuing no one's standard but his own, he 
 is never tempted to practice that miserable pre- 
 tense that less self-reliant people offer up as an 
 hourly sacrifice to the god of their neighbor's 
 opinion. 
 
 The shy man, on the other hand, is humble — 
 modest of his own judgment, and over-anxious 
 concerning that of others. But this, in the case of 
 1 20 
 
On Being Shy. 
 
 •a young man, is surely right enough. His char- 
 acter is unformed. It is slowly evolving itself 
 out of a chaos of doubt and disbelief. Before 
 the growing insight and experience the diffidence 
 recedes. A man rarely carries his shyness past 
 the hobble-dehoy period. Even if his own 
 inward strength does not throw it off, the rub- 
 bings of the world generally smooth it down. 
 You scarcely ever meet a really shy man — except 
 in novels or on the stage, where, by the by, he 
 is much admired, especially by the women. 
 
 There, in that supernatural land; he appears as 
 a fair-haired and saint-like young man — fair hair 
 and goodness always go together on the stage. 
 No respectable audience would believe in one 
 without the other. I knew an actor who mislaid 
 his wig once, and had to rush on to play the hero 
 in his own hair, which was jet black, and the gab ^ 
 lery howled at all his noble sentiments under the 
 impression that he was the villain. He— the shy 
 young man — loves the heroine, oh, so devotedly 
 (but only in asides, for he dare not tell her of it), 
 and he is so noble and unselfish, and speaks in 
 .such a low voice, and is so good to his mother ; 
 and the bad people in the play, they laugh at 
 ihim, and jeer at him, but he takes it all so gently, 
 
On Being Shy. 
 
 and, in the end, it transpires that he is such 
 a clever man, though nobody knew it, and then 
 the heroine tells him she loves him, and he is so 
 surprised, and oh, so happy! and everybody 
 loves him, and asks him to forgive them, which 
 he does in a few well-chosen and sarcastic words, 
 and blesses them ; and he seems to have gener- 
 ally such a good time of it that all the young 
 fellows who are not shy long to be shy. But the 
 really shy man knows better. He knows that it 
 is not quite so pleasant in reality. He is not 
 quite so interesting there as in the fiction. He 
 is a little more clumsy and stupid, and a lit- 
 tle less devoted and gentle, and his hair is much- 
 darker, which, taken altogether, considerably 
 alters the aspect of the case. 
 
 The point where he does resemble his ideal is- 
 ^m his faithfulness. I am fully prepared to allow 
 the shy young man that virtue : he is constant in 
 his love. But the reason is not far to seek. The 
 fact is, it exhausts all his stock of courage to look 
 one woman in the face, and it would be simply 
 impossible for him to go through the ordeal with 
 a second. He stands in far too much dread of the 
 whole female sex to want to go gadding about, 
 with many of them. One is quite enough for him.. 
 
On Being Shy. 
 
 Now, it is different with the young man who 
 is not shy. He has temptations which his bash- 
 ful brother never encounters. He looks around, 
 and everywhere sees roguish eyes and laughing 
 lips. What more natural than that amid so many 
 roguish eyes and laughing lips he should become 
 confused, and, forgetting for the moment which 
 particular pair of roguish eyes and laughing lips 
 it is that he belongs to, go off making love to 
 the wrong set-! The shy man, who never looks 
 at anything but his own boots, sees not, and is 
 not tempted. Happy shy man ! 
 
 Not but what the shy man himself would much 
 rather not be happy in that way. He longs to 
 *'go it" with the others, and curses himself 
 every day for not being able to. He will, now 
 and again, screwing up his courage by a tre- 
 mendous effort, plunge into roguishness. But it is 
 always a terrible fiasco, and after one or two feeble 
 flounders, he crawls out again, limp and pitiable. 
 
 I say ''pitiable," though I am afraid he is 
 never pitied. There are certain misfortunes 
 which, while inflicting a vast amount of suffering 
 upon their victims, gain for them no sympathy. 
 Losing an umbrella, falling in love, toothache, 
 black eyes, and having your hat sat upon, may 
 123 
 
On Being Shy. 
 
 be mentioned as a few examples, but the chief 
 of them all is shyness. The shy man is regarded 
 as an animate joke. His tortures are the sport of 
 the drawing-room arena, and are pointed out 
 and discussed with much gusto. 
 
 ''Look," cry his tittering audience to each 
 other, " he's blushing ! " 
 
 ''Just watch his legs," says one. 
 
 "Do you notice how he is sitting?" adds 
 another; " right on the edge of the chair." 
 
 ^' Seems to have plenty of color," sneers a 
 military-looking gentleman. 
 
 "Pity he's got so many hands," murmurs an 
 elderly lady, with her own calmly folded on her 
 lap. " They quite confuse him." 
 
 " A yard or two off his feet wouldn't be a dis- 
 advantage," chimes in the comic man, "espe- 
 cially as he seems so anxious to hide them." 
 
 And then another suggests that with such a 
 voice he ought to have been a sea-captain. Some 
 draw attention to the desperate way in which he 
 is grasping his hat. Some comment upon his 
 limited powers of conversation. Others remark 
 upon the troublesome nature of his cough. And 
 so on, until his peculiarities and the company are 
 both thoroughly exhausted. 
 124 
 
Idle Thoughts. P- ^24. 
 
 "HIS TORTURES ARE THE SPORT O^ ^HE DRAWING ROOM ARENA." 
 
On Being Shy. 
 
 His friends and relations make matters still 
 more unpleasant for the poor boy. (Friends and 
 relations are privileged to be more disagreeable 
 than other people.) Not content with making 
 fun of him among themselves, they insist on his 
 seeing the joke. They mimic and caricature him 
 for his own edification. One, pretending to imi- 
 tate him, goes outside, and comes in again in a 
 ludicrously nervous manner, explaining to him 
 afterward that that is the way he — meaning the 
 shy fellow — Avalks into a room ; or, turning to 
 him with " This is the way you shake hands," 
 proceeds to go through a comic pantomime with 
 the rest of the room, taking hold of every one's 
 hand as if it were a hot plate, and flabbily drop- 
 ping it again. And then they ask him why he 
 blushes, and why he stammers, and why he always 
 speaks in an almost inaudible tone, as if they 
 thought he did it on purpose. Then one of 
 them, sticking out his chest, and strutting about 
 the room like a pouter pigeon, suggests quite 
 seriously that that is the style he should adopt. 
 The old man slaps him on the back, and says, 
 ''Be bold, my boy. Don't be afraid of any 
 one." The mother says, ''Never do anything 
 that you need to be ashamed of, Algernon, and 
 125 
 
On Being, Shy. 
 
 then you never need be ashamed of anything you 
 do," and, beaming mildly at him, seems surprised 
 at the clearness of her own logic. The boys tell 
 him that he's ''worse than a girl," and the girls 
 repudiate the implied slur upon their sex by in- 
 dignantly exclaiming that they are sure no girl 
 would be half as bad 
 
 They are quite right ; no girl would be. There 
 is no such thing as a shy woman, or, at all events, 
 I have never come across one, and, until I do, 
 I shall not believe in them. I know that the 
 ■generally accepted belief is quite the reverse. 
 All women are supposed to be like timid, startled 
 fawns, blushing and casting down their gentle 
 eyes when looked at, and running away when 
 spoken to ; while we men are supposed to be a 
 bold and rollicky lot, and the poor, dear little 
 women admire us for it, but are terribly afraid of 
 us. It is a pretty theory, but, like most generally 
 accepted theories, mere nonsense. The girl of 
 twelve is self-contained, and as cool as the 
 proverbial cucumber, while her brother of 
 twenty stammers and stutters by her side. A 
 woman will enter a concert-room late, interrupt 
 the performance and disturb the whole audi- 
 ence without moving a hair, while her hus- 
 126 
 
On Babies. 
 
 band follows her, a crushed heap of apologizing 
 misery. 
 
 The superior nerve of women in all matters 
 connected with love, from the casting of the first 
 sheep's eye down to the end of the honey-moon, 
 is too well acknowledged to need comment. Nor 
 is the example a fair one to cite in the present in- 
 stance, the positions not being equally balanced. 
 Love is woman's business, and in ''business" we 
 all lay aside our natural weaknesses. The shyest 
 man I ever knew was a photographic tout. 
 
 ON BABIES. 
 
 /^H, yes, I do — I know a lot about 'em. I 
 ^^ was one myself once — though not long, not 
 so long as my clothes. T/iey were very long, I 
 recollect, and always in my way when I wanted 
 to kick. Why do babies have such yards of un- 
 necessary clothing ? It is not a riddle. I really 
 want to know. I never could understand it. Is 
 it that the parents are ashamed of the size of the 
 child, and wish to make believe that it is longer 
 than it actually is ? I asked a nurse once why 
 it was. She said : 
 
 127 
 
On Babies. 
 
 ^' Lor', sir, they always have long clothes, bless 
 their little hearts." 
 
 And when I explained that her answer, although 
 doing credit to her feelings, hardly disposed of 
 my difficulty, she replied : 
 
 "Lor', sir, you wouldn't have 'em in short 
 clothes, poor httle dears?" And she said it in a 
 tone that seemed to imply I had suggested some 
 unmanly outrage. 
 
 Since then I have felt shy at making inquiries 
 on the subject, and the reason — if reason there 
 be — is still a mystery to me. But, indeed, put- 
 ting them in any clothes at all seems absurd to 
 my mind. Goodness knows, there is enough of 
 dressing and undressing to be gone through in 
 life, without beginning it before we need ; and 
 •one would think that people who live in bed 
 might, at all events, be spared the torture. Why 
 wake the poor little wretches up in the morning 
 to take one lot of clothes off, fix another lot on, 
 and put them to bed again ; and then, at night, 
 haul them out once more, merely to change 
 everything back? And when all is done, what 
 difference is there, I should like to know, between 
 •a baby's night-shirt and the thing it wears in the 
 <i ay-time ? 
 
 128 
 
On Babies. 
 
 Very likely, however, I am only making myself 
 ridiculous — I often do, so I am informed — and I 
 will, therefore, say no more upon this matter of 
 clothes, excej^t only that it would be of great con- 
 venience if some fashion were adopted enabling 
 you to tell a boy from a girl. 
 
 At present it is most awkward. Neither hair, 
 dress, nor conversation affords the slightest clew, 
 and you are left to guess. By some mysterious 
 law of Nature, you invariably guess Avrong, and 
 are thereupon regarded by all relatives and friends 
 as a mixture of fool and knave, the enormity of 
 alluding to a male babe as ''she" being only 
 equaled by the atrocity of referring to a female 
 infant as "he." Whichever sex the particular 
 child in question happens not to belong to is con- 
 sidered as beneath contempt, and any mention of 
 it is taken as a personal insult to the family. 
 
 And, as you value your fair name, do not 
 attempt to get out of the difficulty by talking of 
 "it." There are various methods by which you 
 may achieve ignominy and shame. By murder- 
 ing a large and respected family in cold blood, 
 and afterward depositing their bodies in the water 
 companies' reservoir, you will gain much unpopu- 
 larity in the neighborhood of your crime, and 
 9 129 
 
On Babies. 
 
 even robbing a church will get you cordially dis- 
 liked, especially by the vicar. But if you desire 
 to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and 
 hatred that a fellow human creature can pour out 
 for you, let a young mother hear you call dear 
 baby '^ it." 
 
 Your best plan is to address the article as ''lit- 
 tle angel." The noun ''angel," being of com- 
 mon gender, suits the case admirably, and the 
 epithet is sure of being favorably received. 
 *' Pet " or "beauty" are useful for variety's 
 :sake, but "angel" is the term that brings you 
 the greatest credit for sense and good feeling. 
 The word should be preceded by a short giggle, 
 and accompanied by as much smile as possible. 
 And, whatever you do, don't forget to say that 
 the child has got its father's nose. This "fetches " 
 the parents (if I may be allowed a vulgarism) 
 more than anything. They will pretend to laugh 
 at the idea at first, and will say: "Oh, non- 
 sense !" You must then get excited, and insist 
 that it is a fact. You need have no conscientious 
 .scruples on the subject, because the thing's nose 
 really does resemble its father's — at all events 
 -quite as much as its does anything else in nature 
 — being, as it is, a mere smudge. 
 
On Babies. 
 
 Do not despise these hints, my friends. There 
 may come a time when, with mamma on one side 
 and grandmamma on the other, a group of ad- 
 miring young ladies (not admiring you, though) 
 behind, and a bald-headed dab of humanity in 
 front, you will be extremely thankful for some 
 idea of what to say. A man — an unmarried man, 
 that is — is never seen to such disadvantage as 
 when undergoing the ordeal of ''seeing baby." 
 A cold shudder runs down his back at the bare 
 proposal, and the sickly smile with which he says 
 how delighted he shall be, ought surely to move 
 €ven a mother's heart, unless, as I am inclined 
 to believe, the w^hole proceeding is a mere device 
 adopted by wives to discourage the visits of 
 bachelor friends. 
 
 It is a cruel tripk, though, whatever its excuse 
 may be. The bell is rung, and somebody sent 
 to tell the nurse to bring baby down. This is 
 the signal for all the females present to com- 
 mence talking ' ' baby, ' ' during which time you 
 are left to your own sad thoughts, and to specu- 
 lations upon the practicability of suddenly recol- 
 lecting an important engagement, and the likeli- 
 hood of your being believed if you do. Just 
 "when you have concocted an absurdly implausi- 
 131 
 
On Babies. 
 
 "ble tale about a man outside, the door opens, 
 and a tall, severe -looking woman enters, carrying 
 what at first sight appears to be a particularly 
 skinny bolster, with the feathers all at one end. 
 Instinct, however, tells you that this is the baby^ 
 and you rise with a miserable attempt at ap- 
 pearing eager. When the first gush of feminine 
 enthusiasm with which the object in question is 
 received has died out, and the number of ladies 
 talking at once has been reduced to the ordinary 
 four or five, the circle of fluttering petticoats 
 divides, and room is made for you to step for- 
 ward. This you do with much the same air that 
 you would walk into the dock at Bow Street, and 
 then, feeling unutterably miserable, you stand 
 solemnly staring at the child. There is dead 
 silence, and you know that e^*ery one is waiting 
 for you to speak. You try to think of something 
 to say, but find, to your horror, that your reason- 
 ing faculties have left you. It is a moment of 
 despair, and your evil genius, seizing the oppor- 
 tunity, suggests to you some of the most idiotic 
 remarks that it is possible for a human being ta 
 perpetrate. Glancing round with an imbecile 
 smile, you sniggeringly observe that *' It hasn't 
 got much hair, has it?" Nobody answers you 
 132 
 
On Babies. 
 
 for a minute, but at last the stately nurse says 
 with much gravity: "It is not customary for 
 children five weeks old to have long hair." 
 Another silence follows this, and you feel you 
 are being given a second chance, which you avail 
 yourself of by inquiring if it can walk yet, or 
 what they feed it on. By this time you have got 
 to be regarded as not quite right in your head, 
 and pity is the only thing felt for you. The 
 nurse, however, is determined that, insane or not, 
 there shall be no shirking, and that you shall go 
 through your task to the end. In the tones of a 
 high priestess, directing some religious mystery, 
 she says, holding the bundle toward you, *' Take 
 her in your, arms, sir." You are too crushed to 
 offer any resistance, and so meekly accept the 
 burden. "Put you arm more down her middle, 
 sir," says the high priestess, and then all step 
 back and watch you intently, as though you were 
 going to do a trick with it. 
 
 "What to do you know no more than you did 
 what to say. It is certain something must be 
 done, however, and the only thing that occurs 
 to you is to heave the unhappy infant up and 
 down to the accompaniment of " oopsee-daisy," 
 or some remark of equal intelligence. "1 
 133 
 
On Babies. 
 
 Avouldn't jig her, sir, if I were you," says the 
 nurse; " a very little upsets her." You promptly 
 decide not to jig her, and sincerely hope that 
 you have not gone too far already. 
 
 At this point the child itself, who has hitherto 
 been regarding you with an expression of mingled 
 horror and disgust, puts an end to the nonsense 
 by beginning to yell at the top of its voice, at 
 which the priestess rushes forward and snatches it 
 from you w4th, '' There, there, there ! What did 
 ums do to urns ? " *' How very extraordinary ! ' ' 
 you say, pleasantly. ' ' Whatever made it go off 
 like that?" ''Oh, why, you must have done 
 something to her ! ' ' says the mother, indignantly ; 
 ''the child wouldn't scream like that for noth- 
 ing." It is evident they think you have been 
 Tunning pins into it. 
 
 The brat is calmed at last, and would no doubt 
 remain quiet enough, only some mischievous 
 busybody points you out again with "Who's this, 
 baby?" and the intelligent child, recognizing 
 you, howls louder than ever. 
 
 Wliereupon, some fat old lady remarks that 
 "It's strange how children take a dislike to any 
 one." "Oh, they know," replies another, mys- 
 teriously. "It's a wonderful thing," adds a 
 134 
 
On Babies. 
 
 third ; and then somebody looks sideways at you, 
 convinced you are a scoundrel of the blackest 
 dye ; and they glory in the beautiful idea that 
 your true character, unguessed by your fellow- 
 men, has been discovered by the untaught in- 
 stinct of a little child. 
 
 Babies, though, with all their crimes and errors, 
 are not without their use — not without use, surely, 
 when they fill an empty heart ; not without use 
 when, at their call, sunbeams of love break 
 through care-clouded faces ; not without use 
 when their little fingers press wrinkles into smiles. 
 
 Odd little people ! They are the unconscious 
 comedians of the world's great stage. They sup- 
 ply the humor in life's all too heavy drama. Each 
 one, a small but determined opposition to the 
 order of things in general, is forever doing the 
 wrong thing, at the wrong time, in the wrong 
 place, and in the wrong way. The nurse-girl, 
 who sent Jenny to see what Tommy and Totty 
 were doing, and "tell 'em they mustn't," knew 
 infantile nature. Give an average baby a fair 
 chance, and if it doesn't do something it oughtn't 
 to, a doctor should be called in at once. 
 
 They have a genius for doing the most ridicu- 
 lous things, and they do them in a grave, stoical 
 135 
 
On Babies. 
 
 manner that is irresistible. The business-like air 
 with which two of them will join hands and pro- 
 ceed due east at a break-neck toddle, while an 
 excitable big sister is roaring for them to follow 
 her in a westerly direction, is most amusing — ex- 
 cept, perhaps, for the big sister. They walk 
 round a soldier, staring at his legs with the great- 
 est curiosity, and poke him to see if he is real. 
 They stoutly maintain, against all argument, and 
 much to the discomfort of the victim, that the 
 bashful young man at the end of the 'bus is. 
 "dadda." A crowded street corner suggests. 
 itself to their minds as a favorable spot for the 
 discussion of family affairs at a shrill treble. 
 When in the middle of crossing the road, they 
 are seized with a sudden impulse to dance, and 
 the doorstep of a busy shop is the place they 
 always select for sitting down and taking off their 
 shoes. 
 
 When at home they find the biggest walking- 
 stick in the house, or an umbrella — open preferred 
 — of much assistance in getting upstairs. They 
 discover that they love Mary Ann at the precise 
 moment when that faithful domestic is black- 
 leading the stove, and nothing will relieve their 
 feelings but to embrace her then and there. 
 136 
 
On Babies. 
 
 With regard to food, their favorite dishes are 
 €oke and cats' meat. They nurse pussy upside 
 down, and they show their affection for the dog 
 by pulUng his tail. 
 
 They are a deal of trouble, and they make a 
 place untidy, and they cost a lot of money to 
 keep ; but still you would not have the house 
 without them. It would not be home without 
 their noisy tongues and their mischief-making 
 hands. Would not the rooms seem silent with- 
 out their pattering feet, and might not you stray 
 apart if no prattling voices called you together. 
 
 It should be so, and yet I have sometimes 
 thought the tiny hand seemed as a wedge, divi- 
 ding. It is a bearish task to quarrel with that 
 purest of all human affections — that perfecting 
 touch to a woman's life — a mother's love. It is 
 a holy love, that we coarser-fibered men can 
 hardly understand, and I would not be deemed 
 to lack reverence for it when I say that surely it 
 need not swallow up all other affection. The 
 baby need not take your whole heart, like the 
 rich man who walled up the desert well. Is there 
 not another thirsty traveler standing by ? 
 
 Do not, in your desire to be a good mother, 
 forget to be a good wife. No need for all the 
 137 
 
On Babies. 
 
 thought and care to be only for one. Do not, 
 whenever poor Edwin wants you to come out, 
 answer indignantly, "What and leave baby?" 
 Do not spend all your evenings upstairs, and do 
 not confine your conversation exclusively to 
 whooping-cough and measles. My dear little 
 woman, the child is not going to die every time 
 it sneezes, the house is not bound to get burned 
 down, and the nurse run away with a soldier 
 every time you go outside the front door; nor 
 the cat sure to come and sit on the precious 
 child's chest the moment you leave the bedside. 
 You worry yourself a good deal too much about 
 that solitary chick, and you worry everybody 
 else, too. Try and think of your other duties, 
 and your pretty face will not be always puckered 
 into wrinkles, and there will be cheerfulness in 
 the parlor as well as in the nursery. Think of 
 your big baby a little. Dance him about a bit ; 
 call him pretty names; laugh at him now and 
 then. It is only the first baby that takes up the 
 whole of a woman's time. Five or six do not 
 require nearly so much attention as one. But 
 before then the mischief has been done. A house 
 where there seems no room for him, and a w^ife 
 too busy to think of him, have lost their hold on 
 
On Babies. 
 
 that so unreasonable husband of yours, and he 
 has learned to look elsewhere for comfort and 
 companionship. 
 
 But there, there, there ! I shall get myself the 
 character of ^ baby hater if I talk any more in 
 this strain. And Heaven knows I am not one. 
 Who could be, to look into the little innocent 
 faces clustered in timid helplessness round those 
 great gates that open down into the world ? 
 
 The world ! the small round world ! what a 
 vast, mysterious place it must seem to baby eyes ! 
 What a trackless continent the back garden 
 appears ! What marvelous explorations they 
 make in the cellar under the stairs ! With what 
 awe they gaze down the long street, wondering, 
 like us bigger babies, when we gaze up at the 
 stars, where it all ends ! 
 
 And down that longest street of all, that long,, 
 dim street of life that stretches out before them — 
 what grave, old-fashioned looks they seem to 
 cast ! What pitiful, frightened looks sometimes ! 
 I saw a little mite sitting on a doorstep in a Soho 
 slum one night, and I shall never forget the look 
 that the gas-lamp showed me on its wizen face — 
 a look of dull despair, as if, from the squalid 
 court, the vista of its own squalid life had risen, 
 139 
 
On Eating and Drinking. 
 
 ghost-like, and struck its heart dead with hor- 
 ror. Poor Uttle feet, just commencing the stony 
 journey ! We, old travelers, far down the road, 
 can only pause to wave a hand to you. You 
 come out of the dark mist, and we, looking back, 
 see you, so tiny in the distance, standing on the 
 brow of the hill, your arms stretched out toward 
 lis. God speed you ! We would stay and take 
 your little hands in ours, but the murmur of the 
 .great sea is in our ears, and we may not linger. 
 We must hasten down, for the shadowy ships are 
 waiting to spread their sable sails. 
 
 ON EATING AND DRINKING. 
 
 I ALWAYS was fond of eating and drinking, 
 even as a child — especially eating, in those 
 early days. I had an appetite then, also a diges- 
 tion. I remember a dull-eyed, livid-complex- 
 ioned gentleman coming to dine at our house 
 ■once. He watched me eating for about five min- 
 utes, quite fascinated, seemingly, and then he 
 turned to my father, with, '' Does your boy ever 
 isuffer from dyspepsia ? ' ' 
 
 ^'I never heard him complain of anything of 
 140 
 
On Eating and Drinking. 
 
 that kind," replied my father. "Do you ever 
 suffer from dyspepsia, Collywobbles ? ' ' (They 
 called me Collywobbles, but it was not my real 
 name.) 
 
 '' No, pa," I answered. After which, I added, 
 ■'' What is dyspepsia, pa? " 
 
 My livid-complexioned friend regarded me 
 with a look of mingled amazement and envy. 
 Then in a tone of infinite pity he slowly said, 
 ^' You will know — some day." 
 
 My poor, dear mother used to say she liked to 
 see me eat, and it has always been a pleasant 
 reflection to me since that I must have given her 
 much gratification in that direction. A growing, 
 healthy lad, taking plenty of exercise, and careful 
 to restrain himself from indulging in too much 
 study, can generally satisfy the most exacting 
 expectations as regards his feeding powers. 
 
 It is amusing to see boys eat, when you have not 
 got to pay for it. Their idea of a square meal is 
 a pound and a half of roast beef with five or six 
 good-sized potatoes (soapy ones preferred, as 
 being more substantial), plenty of greens, and 
 four thick slices of Yorkshire pudding, followed 
 by a couple of currant dumplings, a few green 
 apples, and a pen'orth of nuts, half a dozen jum- 
 141 
 
On Eating and Drinking. 
 
 bles, and a bottle of ginger beer. After that the7 
 play at horses. 
 
 How they must despise us men, who require to 
 sit quiet for a couple of hours after dining off a 
 spoonful of clear soup and the wing of a chicken ! 
 
 But the boys have not all the advantages on 
 their side. A boy never enjoys the luxury of 
 being satisfied. A boy never feels full. He can 
 never stretch out his legs, put his hands behind 
 his head, and, closing his eyes, sink into the 
 ethereal blissfulness that encompasses the well- 
 dined man. A dinner makes no difference what- 
 ever to a boy. To a man, it is as a good fairy's 
 jDotion, and, after it, the world appears a brighter 
 and a better place. A man who has dined satis- 
 factorily experiences a yearning love toward all 
 his fellow-creatures. He strokes the cat quite 
 gently, and calls it '' poor pussy," in tones full 
 of the tenderest emotion. He sympathizes with 
 the members of the German band outside, and 
 wonders if they are cold ; and, for the moment,, 
 he does not even hate his wife's relations. 
 
 A good dinner brings out all the softer side of 
 
 a man. Under its genial influence, the gloomy 
 
 and morose become jovial and chatty. Sour, 
 
 starchy individuals, who all the rest of the day go 
 
 142 
 
On Eating and Drinking. 
 
 about looking as if they lived on vinegar and 
 Epsom salts, break out into wreathed smiles after 
 dinner and exhibit a tendency to pat small chil- 
 dren on the head, and to talk to them — vaguely — 
 about sixpences. Serious young men thaw, and 
 become mildly cheerful ; and snobbish young 
 men, of the heavy mustache type, forget to make 
 themselves objectionable. 
 
 I always feel sentimental myself after dinner. 
 It is the only time when I can properly appreciate 
 love stories. Then, when the hero clasps 'Mier" 
 to his heart in One last wild embrace, and stifles 
 a sob, I feel as sad as though I had dealt at whist 
 and turned up only a deuce ; and when the 
 heroine dies in the end I weep. If I read the 
 same tale early in the morning, I should sneer at 
 it. Digestion, or rather indigestion, has a mar- 
 velous effect upon the heart. If I want to write 
 anything very pathetic — I mean if I want to try 
 to write anything very pathetic — I eat a large 
 plateful of hot buttered muffins about an hour 
 beforehand, and then, by the time I sit down to 
 my work, a feeling of unutterable melancholy 
 has come over me. I picture heart-broken lovers 
 parting forever at lonely way-side stiles, while the 
 sad twilight deepens around them, and only the. 
 143 
 
On Eating and Drinking. 
 
 tinkling of a distant sheep-bell breaks the sorrow- 
 laden silence. Old men sit and gaze at withered 
 fiowsrs till their sight is dimmed by the mist of 
 tears. Little dainty maidens wait and watch at 
 open casements; but '^ he cometh not," and the 
 heavy years roll by, and the sunny gold tresses 
 wear white and thin. The babies that they 
 dandled have become grown men and women 
 with podgy torments of their own, and the play- 
 mates that they laughed with are lying very silent 
 under the waving grass. But still they wait and 
 watch, till the dark shadows of the unknown night 
 steal up and gather round them, and the world with 
 its childish troubles fades from their aching eyes. 
 
 I see pale corpses tossed on white-foamed waves, 
 and death-beds stained with bitter tears, and 
 graves in trackless deserts. I hear the wild wail- 
 ing of women, the low moaning of the little 
 children, the dry sobbing of strong men. It's all 
 the muffins. I could not conjure up one melan- 
 choly fancy upon a mutton chop and a glass of 
 champagne. 
 
 A full stomach is a great aid to poetry, and 
 
 indeed no sentiment of any kind can stand upon 
 
 an empty one. We have not time or inclination 
 
 to indulge in fanciful troubles, until we have got 
 
 144 
 
On Eating and Drinking. 
 
 rid of our real misfortunes. We do not sigh over 
 dead dicky-birds with the baiUff in the house ; 
 and, when we do not know where on earth to get 
 our next shilling from, we do not w^orry whether 
 our mistress's smiles are cold, or hot, or luke- 
 warm, or anything else about them. 
 
 Foolish people — when I say '^ foolish people " 
 in this contemptuous way, I mean people who 
 entertain different opinions to mine. If there is 
 one person I do despise more than another, it is 
 the man who does not think exactly the same on 
 all topics as I do. Foolish people, I say, then, 
 who have never experienced much of either, will 
 tell you that mental distress is far more agonizing 
 than bodily. Romantic and touching theory ! so 
 comforting to the love-sick young sprig who looks 
 down patronizingly at some poor devil with a 
 white starved face, and thinks to himself, ''Ah, 
 how happy you are compared with me !" so sooth- 
 ing to fat old gentlemen who cackle about the 
 superiority of poverty over riches. But it is all' 
 nonsense — all cant. An aching head soon makes 
 one forget an aching heart. A broken finger will 
 drive away all recollections of an empty chair. 
 And when a man feels really hungry, he does not" 
 feel anything else. 
 
 lo 145 
 
On Eating and Drinking. 
 
 We sleek, well-fed folk can hardly realize what 
 feeling hungry is like. We know what it is to 
 have no appetite, and not to care for the dainty 
 victuals placed before us ; but we do not under- 
 stand what it means to sicken for food — to die for' 
 bread while others waste it — to gaze with famished 
 eyes upon coarse fare steaming behind dingy win- 
 dows, longing for a pen'orth of pease pudding, 
 and not having the penny to buy it — to feel that 
 a crust would be delicious, and that a bone would 
 be a banquet. 
 
 Hunger is a luxury to us, a piquant, flavor- 
 giving sauce. It is well worth while to get 
 hungry and thirsty, merely to discover how much 
 gratification can be obtained from eating and 
 drinking. If you wish to thoroughly enjoy your 
 dinner, take a thirty-mile country w^alk after 
 breakfast, and don't touch anything till you get 
 back. How" yqpr eyes will glisten at sight of the 
 white table-cloth and steaming dishes then ! 
 With what a sigh of content you will put down 
 the empty beer tankard, and take up your knife 
 and fork ! And how comfortable you feel after- 
 w^ard, as you push back your chair, light a cigar, 
 and beam round upon everybody. 
 
 Make sure, however, when adopting this plan, 
 146 
 
On Eating and Drinking. 
 
 that the good dinner is really to be had at the 
 end, or the disappointment is trying. I remem- 
 ber once a friend and I — dear old Joe, it was. 
 Ah ! how we lose one another in life's mist. It 
 .must be eight years since I last saw Joseph 
 Taboys. How pleasant it would be to meet his 
 jovial face again, to clasp his strong hand, and to 
 hear his cheery laugh once more ! He owes me 
 fourteen shillings, too. Well, we were on a holi- 
 day together, and one morning we had breakfast 
 €arly, and started for a tremendously long walk. 
 We had ordered a duck for dinner overnicrht. 
 
 o 
 
 We said, " Get a big one, because we shall come 
 home awfully hungry;" and as we were going 
 •out our landlady came up in great spirits. She 
 said, " I have got you gentlemen a duck, if you 
 like. If you get through that, you'll do well;" 
 and she held up a bird about the size of a door- 
 mat. We chuckled at the sight, and said we 
 would try. We said it with self-conscious pride, 
 like men who know their own power. Then we 
 started. 
 
 We lost our v/ay, of course. I always do in 
 the country, and it does make me so wild, be- 
 cause it is no use asking directions of any of the 
 people you meet. One might as well inquire of 
 147 
 
On Eating and Drinking. 
 
 a lodging-house slavey the way to make beds, as 
 expect a country bumpkin to know the road to 
 the next village. You have to shout the question 
 about three times before the sound of your voice 
 penetrates his skull. At the third time, he slowly 
 raises his head, and stares blankly at you. Yon 
 yell it at him then for the fourth time, and he 
 repeats it after you. He ponders while you could 
 count a couple of hundred, after which, speaking 
 at the rate of three words a minute, he fancies. 
 you '^ couldn't do better than — " Here he 
 catches sight of another idiot coming down the 
 road, and bawls out to him the particulars, re- 
 questing his advice. The two then argue the 
 case for a quarter of an hour or so, and finally 
 agree that you had better go straight down the 
 lane, round to the right, and cross by the third 
 stile, and keep to the left by old Jimmy Milcher's; 
 cow-shed and across the seven-acre field, and 
 through the gate by 'Squire Grubbin's hay-stack, 
 keeping the bridle-path for a while, till you come 
 opposite the hill where the wind-mill used to be 
 — but it's gone now — and round to the right, 
 leaving Stiggin's plantation behind you; and you 
 say " Thank you," and go away with a splitting 
 headache, but without the faintest notion of your 
 148 
 
On Eating and Drinking. 
 
 way, the only clear idea you have on the subject 
 being that somewhere or other there is a stile 
 which has to be got over; and at the next turn^ 
 you come upon four stiles, all leading in different 
 directions ! 
 
 AVe had undergone this ordeal two or three 
 times. We had tramped over fields. We had 
 waded through brooks, and scrambled over hedges- 
 and walls. We had had a row as to whose fault 
 it was that we had first lost our way. We had 
 got thoroughly disagreeable, foot-sore, and weary.. 
 But, throughout it all, the hope of that duck 
 kept us up. A fairy-like vision, it floated before 
 cur tired eyes, and drew us onward. 
 
 The thought of it was as a trumpet-call to the 
 fainting. We talked of it, and cheered each 
 other with our recollections of it. " Come 
 along," we said, '' the duck will be spoiled." 
 
 We felt a strong temptation, at one point, to 
 turn into a village inn as we passed, and have a 
 cheese and a few loaves between us; but we 
 heroically restrained ourselves : we should enjoy 
 the duck all the better for being famished. 
 
 W^e fancied we smelled it when we got into the 
 town, and did the last quarter of a mile in three 
 minutes. We rushed upstairs and washed our- 
 149 
 
On Eating and Drinking. 
 
 selves, and changed our clothes, and came down, 
 and pulled our chairs up to the table, and sat and 
 rubbed our hands while the landlady removed 
 the covers, when I seized the knife and fork and 
 started to carve. 
 
 It seemed to want a lot of carving. I struggled 
 with it for about five minutes without making the 
 slightest impression, and then Joe, who had been 
 •eating potatoes, wanted to know if it wouldn't be 
 better for some one to do the job that understood 
 carving. I took no notice of his foolish remark, 
 but attacked the bird again, and so vigorously 
 this time, that the animal left the dish, and took 
 refuge in the fender. 
 
 We soon had it out of that, though, and I was 
 prepared to make another effort. But Joe was 
 getting unpleasant. He said that if he had thought 
 we were to have a game of blind hookey with the 
 dinner, he would have got a bit of bread and 
 cheese outside. 
 
 I was too exhausted to argue. 1 laid down the 
 knife and fork with dignity, and took a side seat ', 
 and Joe went for the wretched creature. He 
 worked away, in silence for awhile, and then 
 he muttered: '' Damn the duck ! " and took his 
 coat off. 
 
 150 
 
On Eating and Drinking. 
 
 We did break the thing up at length, with the 
 aid of a chisel ; but it was perfectly impossible 
 to eat it, and we had to make a dinner off the 
 A^egetables and an apple tart. We tried a mouth- 
 ful of the duck, but it was like eating India- 
 rubber. 
 
 It was a wicked sin to kill that drake. But 
 there ! there's no respect for old institutions in 
 this country. 
 
 I started this paper with the idea of writing about 
 eating and drinking, but I seem to have confined 
 my remarks entirely to eating as yet. Well, you 
 see, drinking is one of those subjects with which 
 it is unadvisable to appear too well acquainted. 
 The days are gone by when it was considered 
 manly to go to bed intoxicated every night, and 
 a clear head and a firm hand no longer draw 
 down upon their owner the reproach of effemi- 
 nacy. On the contrary, in these sadly degen- 
 erate days, an evil-smelling breath, a blotchy face, 
 a reeling gait, and a husky voice are regarded as 
 the hall-marks of the cad rather than of the gen- 
 tleman. 
 
 Even nowadays, though, the thirstiness of 
 mankind is something supernatural. We are 
 forever drinking on one excuse or another. A 
 151 
 
On Eating and Drinking-. 
 
 man never feels comfortable unless he has a glass 
 before him. We drink before meals, and with 
 mealS; and after meals. We drink when we meet 
 a friend, also when we part from a friend. We 
 drink when we are talking, when we are reading, 
 and when we are thinking. We drink one 
 another's health, and spoil our own. We drink 
 the Queen, and the Army, and the Ladies, and 
 everybody else that is drinkable; and I believe, 
 if the supply ran short, we should drink our 
 mothers-in-law. 
 
 By the way, we never eat anybody's health, 
 always drink it. AVhy should we not stand up 
 now and then and eat a tart to somebody's 
 success ? 
 
 To me, I confess, the constant necessity of 
 drinking under which the majority of men labor 
 is quite unaccountable. I can understand people 
 drinking to drown care, or to drive away mad- 
 dening thoughts, well enough. I can undersSbd 
 the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in 
 drink — oh, yes, it's very shocking that they 
 should, of course — very shocking to us who live 
 in cosy homes, with all the graces and pleasures 
 of life around us, that the dwellers in damp 
 cellars and windy attics should creep from their 
 152 
 
On Eating and Drinking. 
 
 dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the 
 public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief 
 space away from their dull world upon a Lethe 
 stream of gin. 
 
 But think, before you hold up your hands in 
 horror at their ill-living, what ''life" for these 
 wretched creatures really means. Picture the 
 squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged 
 on from year to year in the narrow, noisome 
 Toom where, huddled like vermin in the sewers, 
 they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt- 
 grimed children scream and fight, and sluttish, 
 shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; 
 where the street outside teems with roaring filth, 
 and the house around is a bedlam of riot and 
 stench. 
 
 Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of 
 life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. 
 The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay, and 
 il^nches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch- 
 dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, 
 dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, 
 and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a 
 caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these 
 human logs never knows one ray of light. From 
 the hour when they crawl from their comfortless 
 153 
 
On Eating and Drinking. 
 
 bed to the hour when they lounge back into it 
 again, they never hve one moment of real life. 
 Recreation, amusement, companionship, they 
 know not the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, 
 tears, love, friendship, longing, despair, are idle 
 words to them. From the day when their baby 
 eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the 
 day when, with an oath, they close them forever^ 
 and their bones are shoveled out of sight, they 
 never warm to one touch of human sympathy, 
 never thrill to a single thought, never start to a 
 single hope. In the name of the God of Mercy 
 let them pour the maddening liquor down their 
 throats, and feel for one brief moment that they 
 live ! 
 
 Ah ! we may talk sentiment as much as we like^. 
 but the stomach is the real seat of happiness in 
 this world. The kitchen is the chief temple 
 wherein we worship, its roaring fire is our vestal 
 flame, and the cook is our great high priest. He 
 is a mighty magician and a kindly one. He 
 soothes away all sorrow and care. He drives 
 forth all enmity, gladdens all love. Our God is 
 great, and the cook is his prophet. Let us eat, 
 drink, and be merry. 
 
 154 
 
On Furnished Apartments. 
 
 ON FURNISHED APARTMENTS. 
 
 *'/^H, you have some rooms to let." 
 ^ "Mother!" 
 
 "Well, what is it?" 
 
 " 'Ere's a gentleman about the rooms." 
 
 "Ask 'im in. I'll be up in a minute." 
 
 "Will yer step inside, sir? Mother'U be up 
 in a minute. ' ' 
 
 So you step inside, and, after a minute, " moth- 
 er ' ' comes slowly up the kitchen stairs, untying 
 her apron as she comes, and calling down instruc- 
 tions to some one below about the potatoes. 
 
 "Good-morning, sir," says " mother," with a 
 washed-out smile ; ' ' will you step this way, 
 please ? ' ' 
 
 " Oh, it's hardly worth while my coming up," 
 you say ; " what sort of rooms are they, and how- 
 much ? " 
 
 "Well," says the landlady, " if you'll step 
 upstairs, I'll show them to you. ' ' 
 
 So, with a protesting murmur, meant to imply 
 that any waste of time complained of hereafter 
 must not be laid to your charge, you follow 
 "mother " upstairs. 
 
 155 
 
On Furnished Apartments. 
 
 At the first landing you run up against a pail 
 and a broom, whereupon " mother " expatiates 
 upon the unrehabiHty of servant-girls, and bawls 
 over the balusters for Sarah to come and take 
 them away at once. When you get outside the 
 rooms, she pauses, with her hand upon the door, 
 to explain to you that they are rather untidy just 
 at present, as the last lodger left only yesterday j 
 and she also adds that this is their cleaning day 
 — it always is. With this understanding you 
 enter, and both stand solemnly " feasting " their 
 eyes upon the scene before them. The rooms 
 can not be said to appear inviting. Even 
 *' mother's" face betrays no admiration. Un- 
 tenanted ''furnished apartments," viewed in the 
 morning sunlight, do not inspire cheery sensa- 
 tions. There is a lifeless air about them. It is a 
 very different thing when you have settled down 
 and are living in them. With your old familiar 
 household gods to greet your gaze whenever you 
 glance up, and all your little knicknacks spread 
 'around you — with the photos of all the girls that 
 you have loved and lost ranged upon the mantel- 
 piece, and half a dozen disreputable-looking pipes 
 ■scattered about in painfully prominent positions 
 ^ — with one carpet slipper peeping from beneath 
 156 
 
On Furnished Apartments. 
 
 the coal-box, and the other perched on the top of 
 the piano — with the well-known pictures to hide 
 the dingy walls, and these dear old friends, your 
 books, higgledy-piggledy all over the place — 
 with the bits of old blue china that your mother 
 prized, and the screen she worked in those far 
 by-gone days, when the sweet old face was laugh- 
 ing and young, and the white soft hair tumbled 
 in gold-brown curls from under the coal-scuttle 
 bonnet — 
 
 Ah, old screen, what a gorgeous personage you 
 must have been in your young days, when the 
 tulips and roses and lilies (all growing from one 
 stem) were fresh in their glistening sheen ! 
 Many a summer and winter have come and gone 
 since then, my friend, and you have played with 
 the dancing fire-light, until you have grown sad 
 and gra}'. Your brilliant colors are fast fading 
 now, and the envious moths have gnawed your 
 silken threads. You are withering away like the 
 dead hands that wove you. Do you ever think 
 of those dead hands ? You seem so grave and 
 thoughtful, sometimes, that I almost think you 
 do. Come, you and I and the deep-glowing 
 embers, let us talk together. Tell me, in your 
 silent language, what you remember of those 
 157 
 
. On Furnished Apartments. 
 
 young days, when you lay on my Httle mother's 
 lap, and her girlish fingers played with your rain- 
 bow tresses. Was there never a lad near, some- 
 times — never a lad who would seize one of those 
 little hands to smother it with kisses, and who 
 would persist in holding it, thereby sadly inter- 
 fering with the progress of your making ? Was 
 not your frail existence often put in jeopardy by 
 this same clumsy, headstrong lad, who would toss 
 you disrespectfully aside that he — not satisfied 
 with one — might hold both hands, and gaze up 
 into the loved eyes ? I can see that lad now 
 through the haze of the flickering twilight. He 
 is an eager, bright-eyed boy, with pinching, 
 dandy shoes, and tight-fitting smalls, snowy shirt- 
 frill and stock, and — oh ! such curly hair. A 
 wild, light-hearted boy! Can he be the great,, 
 grave gentleman upon whose stick I used to ride 
 cross-legged, the care-worn man into whose 
 thoughtful face I used to gaze with childish rev- 
 erence, and whom I used to call "father?" 
 You say "Yes," old screen; but are you quite 
 sure ? It is a serious charge you are bringing ; 
 can it be possible ? Did he have to kneel down 
 in those wonderful smalls, and pick you up, and 
 rearrange you, before he was forgiven, and his 
 158 
 
On Furnished. Apartments. 
 
 curly head smoothed by my mother's Uttle hand ? 
 Ah ! old screen, and did the lads and the lassies 
 go making love fifty years ago just as they do- 
 now ? Are men and women so unchanged ? Did 
 Httle maidens' hearts beat the same under pearl- 
 embroidered bodices as they do under Mother 
 Hubbard cloaks ? Have steel casques and chim- 
 ney-pot hats made no difference to the brains 
 that work beneath them ? Oh, Time ! great 
 Chronos ! and is this your power ? Have you 
 dried up seas and leveled mountains, and left the 
 tiny human heart-strings to defy you? Ah, yes ! 
 they were spun by a Mightier Hand than thou, 
 and they stretch beyond your narrow ken, for 
 their ends are made fast in eternity. Ay, you 
 may mow down the leaves and the blossoms, but 
 the roots of life lie too deep for your sickle to 
 sever. You refashion Nature's garments, but you 
 can not vary by a jot the throbbings of her pulse. 
 The world rolls round obedient to your laws, but 
 the heart of man is not of your kingdom, for in 
 its , birth-place "a. thousand years are but as 
 yesterday. ' ' 
 
 I am getting away, though, I fear, from my 
 " furnished apartments," and I hardly know how 
 to get back. But I have some excuse for my 
 159 
 
On Furnished Apartments. 
 
 ^meanderings this time. It is a piece of old 
 furniture that has led me astray, and fancies 
 gather, somehow, round old furniture, like moss 
 around old stones. One's chairs and tables get 
 to be almost part of one's life, and to seem like 
 'quiet friends. What strange tales the wooden- 
 headed old fellows could tell, did they but choose 
 to speak ! At what unsuspected comedies and 
 tragedies have they not assisted ! What bitter 
 tears have been sobbed into that old sofa cushion ! 
 AVhat passionate whisperings the settee must have 
 overheard ! 
 
 New furniture has no charms for me, compared 
 -with old. It is the old things that we love — the 
 old faces, the old books, the old jokes. New 
 furniture can make a palace, but it takes old fur- 
 niture to make a home. Not merely old in itself 
 — lodging-house furniture generally is that — but 
 it must be old to us, old in associations and re- 
 collections. The furniture of furnished apart- 
 ments, however ancient it may be in reality, is 
 new to our eyes, and we feel as though we could 
 never get on with it. As, too, in the case of all 
 fresh acquaintances, whether wooden or human 
 (and there is very little difference between the 
 two species sometimes), everything impresses you 
 i6o 
 
On Furnished Apartments. 
 
 with its worst aspect. The knobby wood-worlc 
 and the shiny horse-hair covering of the easy- 
 chair suggest anything but ease. The mirror is 
 smoky. The curtains want washing. The carpet 
 is frayed. The table looks as if it would go over 
 the instant anything w^as rested on it. The grate 
 is cheerless, the wall-paper hideous The ceil- 
 ing appears to have had coffee spilled all over it,. 
 and the ornaments — well, they are worse thaw 
 the wall-paper. 
 
 There must surely be some special and secret 
 manufactory for the production of lodging-house 
 ornaments. Precisely the same articles are to be 
 found at every lodging-house all over the king- 
 dom, and they are never seen anywhere else. 
 There are the two — what do you call them? they 
 stand one at each end of the mantel-piece, where 
 they are never safe ; and they are hung round 
 with long triangular slips of glass that clank 
 against one another and make you nervous. In 
 the commoner class of rooms, these works of art 
 are supplemented by a couple of pieces of china 
 which might each be meant to represent a cow 
 sitting upon its hind legs, or a model of the 
 Temple of Diana at Ephesus, or a dog, or any- 
 thing else you like to fancy. Somewhere about 
 II i6i 
 
On Furnished Apartments. 
 
 the room you come across a bihous-looking ob- 
 ject which, at first, you take to be a lump of 
 •dough, left about by one of the children, but 
 which, on scrutiny, seems to resemble an under- 
 done Cupid. This thing the landlady calls a 
 statue. Then there is a ''sampler," worked by 
 some idiot related to the family, a picture of the 
 Huguenots, two or three Scripture texts, and a 
 highly framed and glazed certificate to the effect 
 that the father has been vaccinated,, or is an Odd 
 Fellow, or something of that sort. 
 
 You examine these various attractions, and then 
 dismally ask what the rent is. 
 
 "That's rather a good deal," you say, on hear- 
 ing the figure. 
 
 '' Well, to tell you the truth," answers the 
 landlady, with a sudden burst of candor, " I've 
 always had" — (mentioning a sum a good deal 
 in excess of the first-named amount), ''and 
 before that I used to have ' ' — (a still higher 
 figure) . 
 
 What the rent of apartments must have been 
 twenty years ago makes one shudder to think 
 of. Every landlady makes you feel thoroughly 
 ashamed of yourself by informing you, whenever 
 the subject crops up, that she used to get twice as 
 162 
 
On Furnished Apartments. 
 
 much for her rooms as you are paying. Young 
 men lodgers of the last generation must have 
 been of a wealthier class than they are now, or 
 they must have ruined themselves. I should 
 have had to live in an attic. 
 
 Curious, that in lodgings, the rule of life is 
 reversed. The higher you get up in the world, 
 the lower you come down in your lodgings. On 
 the lodging-house ladder, the poor man is at the 
 top, the rich man underneath. You start in at 
 the attic, and work your way down to the first 
 floor. 
 
 A good many great men have lived in attics, 
 and some have died there. Attics, says the dic- 
 tionary, are ''places where lumber is stored," 
 and the world has used them to store a good deal 
 of its lumber in at one time or another. Its 
 preachers and painters and poets, its deep-browed 
 men who will find out things, its fire-eyed men 
 who will tell truths that no one wants to hear — 
 these are the lumber that the world hides away 
 in its attics. Haydn grew up in an attic, and 
 Chatterton starved in one. Addison and Gold- 
 smith wrote in garrets. Faraday and De Quincey 
 knew them well. Dr. Johnson camped cheerfully 
 in them, sleeping soundly — too soundly some- 
 163 
 
On Furnished Apartments. 
 
 times — upon their truckle-beds, hke the sturdy- 
 old soldier of fortune that he was, inured to 
 hardship and all careless of himself. Dickens 
 spent his youth among them, Morland his old age 
 — alas ! a drunken, premature old age. Hans 
 Andersen, the fairy king, dreamed his sweet 
 fancies beneath their sloping roofs. Poor, way- 
 ward-hearted Collins leaned his head upon their 
 crazy tables ; priggish Benjamin Franklin ; Savage, 
 the wrong-headed, much-troubled, when he could 
 afford any softer bed than a doorstep ; young 
 Bloomfield, '' Bobby" Burns, Hogarth, Watt the 
 engineer — the roll is endless. Ever since the 
 habitations of men were reared two stories high, 
 has the garret been the nursery of genius. 
 
 No one who honors the aristocracy of mind 
 can feel ashamed of acquaintanceship with them. 
 Their damp-stained walls are sacred to the memory 
 of noble names. If all the wisdom of the world 
 and all its arts — all the spoils that it has won from 
 Nature, all the fire that it has snatched from 
 heaven — were gathered together, and divided 
 into heaps, and we could point and say, for in- 
 stance : These mighty truths were flashed forth 
 in the brilliant salon, amid the ripple of light 
 laughter and the sparkle of bright eyes ; and This 
 164 
 
On Furnished Apartments. 
 
 deep knowledge was dug up in the quiet study^ 
 where the bust of Pallas looks serenely down on 
 the leather-scented shelves; and This heap be- 
 longs to the crowded street ; and That to the 
 daisied field — the heap that would tower up high 
 above the rest, as a mountain above hills, would 
 be the one at which we should look up and say : 
 This noblest pile of all — these glorious paintings 
 and this wondrous music, these trumpet words, 
 these solemn thoughts, these daring deeds, they 
 were forged and fashioned amid misery and pain 
 in the sordid squalor of the city garret. There, 
 from their eyries, while the world heaved and 
 throbbed below, the kings of men sent forth their 
 eagle thoughts to wing their flight through the 
 ages. There, where the sunlight, streaming 
 through the broken panes, fell on rotting boards 
 and crumbling walls ; there, from their lofty 
 thrones, those rag-clothed Joves have hurled their 
 thunder-bolts and shaken, before now, the earth 
 to its foundations. 
 
 Huddle them up in your lumber-rooms, oh, 
 world ! Shut them fast in, and turn the key of 
 poverty upon them. Weld close the bars, and 
 let them fret their hero lives away within the 
 narrow cage. Leave them there to starve, and 
 165 
 
On Furnished Apartments. 
 
 rot, and die. Laugh at the frenzied beatings of 
 their hands against the door. Roll onward in 
 your dust and noise, and pass them by, forgotten. 
 
 But take care lest they turn and sting you. 
 All do not, like the fabled phoenix, warble sweet 
 melodies in their agony; sometimes they spit 
 venom — venom you must breathe whether you 
 will or not, for you cannot seal their mouths, 
 though you may fetter their limbs. You can 
 lock the door upon them, but they burst open 
 their shaky lattices, and call out over the house- 
 tops so that men cannot but hear. You hounded 
 wild Rousseau into the meanest garret of the Rue 
 St. Jacques, and jeered at his angry shrieks. But 
 the thin, piping tones swelled, a hundred years 
 later, into the sullen roar of the French Revolu- 
 tion, and civilization to this day is quivering to 
 the reverberations of his voice. 
 
 As for myself, however, I like an attic. Not 
 to live in ; as residences they are inconvenient. 
 There is too much getting up and down-stairs 
 connected with them to please me. It puts one 
 unpleasantly in mind of the tread-mill. The 
 form of the ceiling offers too many facilities for 
 bumping your head, and too few for shaving. 
 And the note of the tom-cat, as he sings to his 
 i66 
 
On Furnished Apartments. 
 
 love in the stilly night, outside on the tiles, be- 
 comes positively distasteful when heard so near. 
 
 No, for living in, give me a suite of rooms on 
 the fyrst floor of a Piccadilly mansion (I wish some- 
 body would !); but, for thinking in, let me have 
 an attic up ten flights of stairs in the densest 
 quarter of the city. I have all Herr Teufels- 
 drockh's affection for attics. There is a sub- 
 limity about loftiness. I love to '^sit at ease 
 and look down upon the wasps' nests beneath; " 
 to listen to the dull murmur of the human tide, 
 ebbing and flowing ceaselessly through the nar- 
 row streets and lanes below. How small men 
 seem, how like a swarm of ants sweltering in 
 endless confusion on their tiny hill ! How petty 
 seems the work on which they are hurrying and 
 skurrying ! How childishly they jostle against 
 one another, and turn to snarl and scratch I 
 They jabber and screech and curse, but their 
 puny voices do not reach up here. They fret, 
 and fume, and rage, and pant, and die; " but I, 
 mein Werther, sit above it all ; I am alone with 
 the stars." 
 
 The most extraordinary attic I ever came across 
 was one a friend and I once shared, many years 
 ago. Of all eccentrically planned things from 
 
On Furnished Apartments. 
 
 Bradshaw to the maze at Hampton Court, that 
 room was the eccentricalest. The architect who 
 designed it must have been a genius, though I 
 cannot help thinking that his talents would have 
 been better employed in contriving puzzles than 
 in shaping human habitations. No figure in 
 Euclid could give any idea of that apartment. 
 It contained seven corners, two of the walls sloped 
 to a point, and the window was just over the fire- 
 place. The only possible position for the bed- 
 stead was between the door and the cupboard. 
 To get anything out of the cupboard, we had 
 to scramble over the bed, and a large percentage 
 of the various commodities thus obtained were 
 absorbed by the bed-clothes. Indeed, so many 
 things were spilled and dropped upon the bed 
 that, toward night-time, it had become a sort of 
 small co-operative store. Coal was what it always 
 had most in stock. We used to keep our coal in 
 the bottom part of the cupboard, and, when any 
 was wanted, we had to climb over the bed, fill a 
 shovelful, and then crawl back. It was an excit- 
 ing moment when we reached the middle of the 
 bed. We would hold our breath, fix our eyes 
 upon the shovel, and poise ourselves for the last 
 move. The next instant we, and the coals, and 
 i68 
 
On Furnished Apartments. 
 
 the shovel, and the bed would be all mixed up 
 together. 
 
 I've heard of the people going into raptures 
 over beds of coal. We slept in one every night, 
 and were not in the least stuck up about it. 
 
 But our attic, unique though it was, had by no 
 means exhausted the architect's sense of humor. 
 The arrangement of the whole house was a marvel 
 of originality. All the doors opened outward, 
 so that, if any one wanted to leave a room at the 
 same moment that you were coming down-stairs 
 it was unpleasant for you. There was no ground 
 floor ; its ground floor belonged to a house in the 
 next court, and the front door opened direct 
 upon a flight of stairs leading down to the cellar. 
 Visitors, on entering the house, would suddenly 
 shoot past the person who had answered the door 
 to them, and disappear down these stairs. Those 
 of a nervous temperament used to imagine that it 
 was a trap laid for them, and would shout murder, 
 as they lay on their backs at the bottom, till 
 somebody came and picked them up. 
 
 It is a long time ago, now, that I last saw the 
 
 inside of an attic. I have tried various floors 
 
 since, but I have not found that they have made 
 
 much difl'erence to me. Life tastes much the 
 
 169 
 
On Dress and Deportment. 
 
 same, whether we quaff it from a golden goblet or 
 drink it out of a stone mug. The hours come 
 laden with the same mixture of joy and sorrow, 
 no matter where we wait for them. A waistcoat 
 of broadcloth or of fustian is alike to an aching 
 heart, and we laugh no merrier on velvet cushions 
 than we did on wooden chairs. Often have I 
 sighed in those low-ceilinged rooms, yet disap- 
 pointments have come neither less nor lighter 
 since I quitted them. Life works upon a com- 
 pensating balance, and the happiness we gain in 
 one direction we lose in another. As our means 
 increase, so do our desires ; and we ever stand 
 midway between the two. When we reside in an 
 attic, we enjoy a supper of fried fish and stout. 
 When we occupy the first floor, it takes an elabo- 
 rate dinner at the Continental to give us the 
 same amount of satisfaction. 
 
 ON DRESS AND DEPORTMENT. 
 
 T^HEY say — people who ought to be ashamed 
 -'' of themselves do — that the consciousness of 
 being well dressed imparts a blissfulness to the 
 human heart that religion is powerless to bestow. 
 I am afraid these cynical persons are sometimes 
 170 
 
On Dress and Deportment. 
 
 correct. I know that when I was a very young 
 man (many, many years ago, as the story-books 
 say), and wanted cheering up, I used to go and 
 dress myself in all my best clothes. If I had been 
 annoyed in any manner — if my washer-woman 
 had discharged me, for instance ; or my blank 
 verse poem had been returned for the tenth time, 
 with the editor's compliments, ''and regrets that 
 owing to want of space he is unable to avail him- 
 self of kind offer ; " or I had been snubbed by 
 the woman I loved as man never loved before. 
 By the way, it's really extraordinary what a 
 variety of ways of loving there must be. We all 
 do it as it was never done before. I don't know 
 how our great-grandchildren will manage. They 
 will have to do it on their heads by their time, if 
 they persist in not clashing with any previous 
 method. 
 
 Well, as I was saying, when these unpleasant 
 sort of things happened, and I felt crushed, I put 
 on all my best clothes, and went out. I brought 
 back my vanishing self-esteem. In a glossy new 
 hat, and a pair of trousers with a fold down the 
 front (carefully preserved by keeping them under 
 the bed — I don't mean on the floor, you know, 
 but between the bed and the mattress), I felt I 
 171 
 
On Dress and Deportment. 
 
 was somebody, and that there were other washer- 
 women ; ay, and even other girls to love, and 
 who would, perhaps, appreciate a clever, good- 
 looking young fellow. I didn't care ; that was my 
 reckless way. I would make love to other maid= 
 ens ; I felt that in those clothes I could do it. 
 They have a wonderful deal to do with court- 
 ing, clothes have. It is half the battle. ^t all 
 events, the young man thinks so, and it generally 
 takes him a couple of hours to get himself up for 
 the occasion. His first half hour is occupied in 
 trying to decide whether to wear his light suit 
 with a cane and drab billycock, or his black tails 
 with a chimney-pot hat and his new umbrella. 
 He is sure to be unfortunate in either decision. 
 If he wears his light suit and takes the stick, it 
 •comes on to rain, and he reaches the house in a 
 damp and muddy condition, and spends the eve- 
 ning trying to hide his boots. If, on the other 
 hand, he decides in favor of the top hat and 
 umbrella — nobody would ever dream of going 
 •out in a top hat without an umbrella ; it would 
 be like letting baby (bless it) toddle out without 
 its nurse. How I do hate a top hat ! One lasts 
 me a very long while, I can tell you. I only 
 wear it when — well, never mind when I wear it. 
 172 
 
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 Idle Thoughts 
 
 P- 174. 
 
 COULD NOT HELP BEING FIERCE WITH A PLUME IN HIS BONNET, 
 A DAGGER IN HIS BELT." 
 
On Dress and Deportment. 
 
 It lasts me a very long while. I've had my pre- 
 sent one five years. It was rather old-fashioned 
 last summer, but the shape has come round again 
 now, and I look quite stylish. 
 
 But to return to our young man and his court- 
 ing. If he starts off with the top hat and um- 
 brella, the afternoon turns out fearfully hot, and 
 the perspiration takes all the soap out of his mus- 
 tache^ and converts the beautifully arranged curl 
 over his forehead into a limp wisp, resembling a 
 lump of sea- weed. The Fates are never favora- 
 ble to the poor wretch. If he does by any chance 
 reach the door in proper condition, she has gone 
 out with her. cousin, and won't be back till late. 
 
 How a young lover, made ridiculous by the 
 gawkiness of modern costume, must envy the 
 picturesque gallants of seventy years ago ! Look 
 at them (on the Christmas cards), with their curly 
 hair and natty hats, their well-shaped legs incased 
 in smalls, their dainty Her.sian boots, their ruf- 
 fling frills, their canes, and dangling seals. No 
 wonder the little maiden in the big poke bonnet 
 and the light blue sash casts down her eyes and is 
 completely won. Men could win hearts in clothes 
 like that. But what can you expect from baggy 
 trousers and a monkey jacket ? 
 173 
 
On Dress and Deportment. 
 
 Clothes have more effect upon us than we 
 imagine. Our deportment depends upon our 
 dress. Make a man get into seedy, worn out 
 rags, and he will skulk along with his head hang- 
 ing down, like a man going out to fetch his own 
 supper-beer. But deck out the same article in 
 gorgeous raiment and fine linen, and he will strut 
 down the main thoroughfare, swinging his cane, 
 and looking at the girls, as perky as a bantam 
 cock. 
 
 Clothes alter our very nature. A man could 
 not help being fierce and daring with a plume in 
 his bonnet, a dagger in his belt, and a lot of 
 puffy white things all down his sleeves. But in 
 an ulster, he wants to get behind a lamp-post and 
 call police. 
 
 I am quite ready to admit that you can find 
 sterling merit, honest worth, deep affection, and 
 all such like virtues of the roast-beef and plum- 
 pudding school, as much, and perhaps more, 
 .under broadcloth and tweed as ever existed 
 beneath silk and velvet ; but the spirit of that 
 knightly chivalry, that ''rode atilt for lady's 
 love," and '/fought for lady's smiles," needs 
 the clatter of steel and the rustje of plumes to 
 summon it from its grave between the dusty folds 
 174 
 
On Dress and Deportment. 
 
 of tapestry and underneath the musty leaves of 
 moldering chronicles. 
 
 The world must be getting old, I think ; it 
 dresses so very soberly now. We have been 
 through the infant period of humanity, when we 
 used to run about with nothing on but a. long, 
 loose robe, and liked to have our feet bare. And 
 then came the rough, barbaric age, the boyhood 
 of our race. We didn't care what we wore 
 then, but thought it nice to tattoo ourselves all 
 over, and we never did our hair. And, after 
 that, the world grew into a young man, and be- 
 came foppish. It decked itself in flowing 
 curls and scarlet doublets, and went courting, 
 and bragging, and bouncing — making a brave 
 show. 
 
 But all those merry, foolish days of youth are 
 gone, and we are very sober, very solemn, and 
 very stupid, some say — now. The world is a 
 grave, middle aged gentleman in this nineteenth 
 century, and would be shocked to see itself with 
 a bit of finery on. So it dresses in black coats 
 and trousers, and black hats, and black boots, 
 and, dear me, it is such a very respectable gentle- 
 man — to think it could ever have gone gadding 
 about as a troubadour or a knight-errant, dressed 
 175 
 
On Dress and Deportment. 
 
 in all those fancy colors ! Ah, well ! we are more 
 sensible in this age. 
 
 Or, at least, we think ourselves so. It is a 
 general theory nowadays that sense and dullness 
 go together. 
 
 Goodness is another quality that always goes 
 with blackness. Very good people, indeed, you 
 will notice, dress altogether in black, even to 
 gloves and neck-ties, and they will probably take 
 to black shirts before long. Medium goods 
 indulge in light trousers on week days and some 
 of them even go so far as to wear fancy waist- 
 coats. On the other hand, people who care 
 nothing for a future state go about in light suits ; 
 and there have been known wretches so aban- 
 doned as to wear a white hat. Such people, 
 however, are never spoken of in genteel society, 
 and perhaps I ought not to have referred to them 
 here. 
 
 By the way, talking of light suits, have you 
 ever noticed how people stare at you the first time 
 you go out in a new light suit ? They do not 
 notice it so much afterward. The population of 
 London have got accustomed to it by the third 
 time you wear it. I say ''you," because I am 
 not speaking from my own experience. I do not 
 176 
 
On Dress and Deportment. 
 
 wear such things at all myself. As I said, only 
 sinful people do so. 
 
 I wish, though, it were not so, and that one 
 could be good, and respectable, and sensible 
 without making one's self a guy. I look in the 
 glass sometimes at my two long cylindrical bags 
 (so picturesquely rugged about the knees), my 
 stand-up collar, and billycock hat, and wonder 
 what right I have to go about making God's world 
 hideous. Then wild and wicked thoughts come 
 into my heart. I don't want to be good and 
 respectable. (I never can be sensible, I'm told, 
 so that don't matter.) I want to put on laven- 
 der-colored tights, with red velvet breeches and a 
 green doublet, slashed with yellow; to have a 
 light-blue silk cloak on my shoulder, and a black 
 eagle's plume waving from my hat, and a big 
 sword, and a falcon, and a lance, and a prancing 
 horse, so that I might go about and gladden the 
 eyes of the people. Why should we all try to 
 look like ants, crawling over a dust-heap ? Why 
 shouldn't we dress a little gayly ? I am sure, if 
 we did, we should be happier. True, it is a 
 little thing, but we are a little race, and what 
 is the use of our pretending otherwise, and 
 spoiling fun? Let philosophers get themselves 
 12 177 
 
On Dress and Deportment. 
 
 up like old crows if they like ; but let me be a 
 butterfly. 
 
 Women, at all events, ought to dress prettily. 
 It is their duty. They are the flowers of the 
 earth, and were meant to show, it up. We abuse 
 them a good deal, we men ; but, goodness knows, 
 the old world would be dull enough without their 
 dresses and fair faces. How they brighten up 
 every place they come into ! What a sunny 
 commotion they — relations, of course — make in 
 our dingy bachelor chambers ! and what a delight- 
 ful litter their ribbons and laces, and gloves and 
 hats, and parasols and kerchiefs make ! It is as 
 if a wandering rainbow had dropped in to pay 
 us a visit. 
 
 It is one of the chief charms of the summer, 
 to my mind, the way our little maids come out in 
 pretty colors. I like to see the pink and blue 
 and white glancing between the trees, dotting the 
 green fields, and flashing back the sunlight. You 
 can see the bright colors such a long way off. 
 There are four white dresses climbing a hill in 
 front of my window now. I can see them dis- 
 tinctly, though it is three miles away. I thought, 
 at first, they were mile-stones out for a lark. It's 
 so nice to be able to see the darlings a long way 
 178 
 
On Dress and Deportment. 
 
 off — especially if they happen to be your wife and 
 your mother-in-law. 
 
 Talking of fields and mile-stones, reminds me 
 that I want to say, in all seriousness, a few words 
 about women's boots. 
 
 The women of these islands all wear boots 
 too big for them. They can never get a boot to 
 fit. The boot-makers do not keep sizes small 
 enough. 
 
 Over and over again have I known women sit 
 down on the top rail of a stile, and declare they 
 could not go a step further because their boots 
 hurt them so ; and it has always been the same 
 complaint — too big. 
 
 It is time this state of things was altered. In 
 the name of the husbands and fathers of Eng- 
 land, I call upon the boot-makers to reform. Our 
 wives, our daughters, and our cousins are not to 
 be lamed and tortured with impunity. Why can 
 not " narrow twos " be kept more in stock ? That 
 is the size I find most women take. 
 
 The waistband is another item of feminine 
 apparel that is always too big. The dressmakers 
 make these things so loose that the hooks and 
 eyes by which they are fastened burst off, every 
 now and then, with a report like thunder. 
 179 
 
On Dress and Deportment. 
 
 Why women suffer these wrongs — why they do 
 not insist in having their clothes made small 
 enough for them, I can not conceive. It can 
 hardly be that they are disinclined to trouble 
 themselves about matters of mere dress, for dress 
 is the one subject that they really do think about; 
 It is the only topic they ever get thoroughly 
 interested in, and they talk about it all day long. 
 If you see two women together, you may bet your 
 bottom dollar they are discussing their own or 
 their friend's clothes. You notice a couple of 
 child-like beings, conversing by a window, and 
 you wonder what sweet, helpful words are falling 
 from their sainted lips. So you move nearer, and 
 then you hear one say : 
 
 "So I took in the waistband, and let out a 
 seam, and it fits beautifully now." 
 
 "Well," says the other, "I shall wear my 
 plum-colored body to the Jones's, with a yellow 
 plastron ; and they've got some lovely gloves at 
 Puttick's only one and elevenpence." 
 
 I went for a drive through a part of Derbyshire 
 once, with a couple of ladies. It was a beautiful 
 bit of country, and they enjoyed themselves im- 
 mensely. They talked dressmaking the whole 
 time. 
 
 i8o 
 
On Dress and Deportment. 
 
 *' Pretty view, that," I would say, waving my 
 umbrella round. " Look at those blue, distant 
 hills ! That little white speck, nestling in the 
 woods, is Chatsworth, and over there — ' ' 
 
 ''Yes, very pretty indeed," one would reply. 
 " Well, why not get a yard of sarsenet? " 
 
 "What, and leave the skirt exactly as it is? " 
 
 " Certainly. What place d'ye call this? " 
 
 Then I would draw their attention to the fresh 
 beauties that kept sweeping into view, and they 
 would glance round, and say ''Charming!" 
 '' Sweetly pretty ! " and immediately go off into 
 raptures over each other's pocket-handkerchiefs, 
 and mourn with each other over the decadence 
 of cambric frilling. 
 
 I believe if two women were cast together upon 
 a desert island they would spend each day argu- 
 ing the respective merits of sea-shells and birds' 
 eggs, considered as trimmings, and would have 
 a new fashion in fig leaves every month. 
 
 Very young men think a good deal about 
 clothes, but they don't talk about them to each 
 other. They would not find much encourage- 
 ment. A fop is not a favorite with his own sex. 
 Indeed he gets a good deal more abuse from 
 them than is necessary. His is a harmless failing, 
 i8i 
 
On Dress and Deportment. 
 
 and it soon wears out. Besides, a man who has 
 no foppery at twenty will be a slatternly, dirty- 
 collar, unbrushed-coat man at forty. A little 
 foppishness in a young man is good ; it is human. 
 I like to see a young cock ruffle his feathers, 
 stretch his neck, and crow as if the whole world 
 belonged to him. I don't like a modest, retiriijg 
 man. Nobody does — not really, however much 
 they may prate about modest worth, and other 
 things they do not understand. 
 
 A meek deportment is a great mistake in the 
 world. Uriah Heep's father was a very poor 
 judge of human nature, or he would not have 
 told his son, as he did, that people liked humble- 
 ness. There is nothing annoys them more, as a 
 rule. Rows are half the fun of life, and you 
 can't have rows with humble, meek-answering 
 individuals. They turn away our wrath, and that 
 is just what we do not want. We want to let it 
 out. We have worked ourselves up into a state 
 of exhilarating fury, and then just as we are an- 
 ticipating the enjoyment of a vigorous set-to, 
 they spoil all our plans with their exasperating 
 humility. 
 
 Xantippe's life must have been one long misery, 
 tied to that calmly irritating man, Socrates. 
 182 
 
On Dress and Deportment. 
 
 Fancy a married woman doomed to live on from 
 day to day without one single quarrel with her 
 husband. A man ought to humor his wife in 
 these things. Heaven knows their lives are dull 
 enough, poor girls ! They have none of the en- 
 joyments we have. They go to no political 
 meetings ; they may not even belong to the local 
 amateur parliament; they are excluded from 
 smoking carriages on the Metropolitan Railway, 
 and they never see a comic paper — or, if they do, 
 they do not know it is comic; nobody tells them. 
 
 Surely, with existence such a dreary blank for 
 them as this, we might provide a little row for 
 their amusement now and then, even if we do 
 not feel inclined for it ourselves. A really sensi- 
 ble man does so, and is loved accordingly, for it 
 is little acts of kindness such as this that go 
 straight to a woman's heart. It is such like 
 proofs of loving self-sacrifice that make her tell 
 her female friends what a good husband he was — 
 after he is dead. 
 
 Yes, poor Xantippe must have had a hard time 
 of it. The bucket episode was particularly sad 
 for her. Poor woman ! she did think she would 
 rouse him up a bit with that. She had taken the 
 trouble to fill the bucket, perhaps been a long 
 183 
 
On Dress and Deportment. 
 
 way to get specially dirty water. And she waited 
 for him. And then to be met in such a way, 
 after all ! Most likely she sat down, and had a 
 good cry afterward. It must have seemed all so 
 hopeless to the poor child ; and, for all we know, 
 she had no mother to whom she could go and 
 abuse him. 
 
 What was it to her that her husband was a great 
 philosopher? Great philosophy don't count in 
 married life. 
 
 There was a very good little boy once who 
 wanted to go to sea. And the captain asked him 
 what he could do. He said he could do the 
 multiplication table backward, and paste sea-weed 
 in a book; that he knew how many times the 
 word *' begat" occurred in the Old Testament; 
 and could recite " The Boy Stood on the Burn- 
 ing Deck," and Wordsworth's '' We Are Seven." 
 
 ''Werrygood — werry good indeed," said the 
 man of the sea, '^ and ken yer kerry coals? " 
 
 It is just the same when you want to marry. 
 Great ability is not required so much as a little 
 usefulness. Brains are at a discount in the mar- 
 ried state. There is no demand for them, no 
 appreciation even. Our wives sum us up accord- 
 ing to a standard of their own, in which brilliancy 
 184 
 
On Memory. 
 
 of intellect obtains no marks. Your lady and 
 mistress is not at all impressed by your cleverness 
 and talent, my dear reader — not in the slightest. 
 Give her a man who can do an errand neatly, 
 without attempting to use his own judgment over 
 it, or any damned nonsense of that kind; and 
 who can be trusted to hold a child the right way 
 up, and not make himself objectionable when- 
 ever there is lukewarm mutton for dinner. That 
 is the sort of a husband a sensible woman likes , 
 not one of your scientific or literary nuisances, 
 who go upsetting the whole house and putting 
 everybody out with their foolishness. 
 
 ON MEMORY. 
 
 *« I remember, I remember, 
 In the days of chill November, 
 How the blackbird on the — " 
 
 I FORGET the rest. It is the beginning of the 
 first piece of poetry I ever learned ; for 
 " Hey, diddle diddle, 
 The cat and the fiddle," 
 
 I take no note of, it being of a frivolous char- 
 acter, and lacking in the qualities of true poetry. 
 I collected fourpence by the recital of " I re- 
 185 
 
On Memory. 
 
 member, I remember. ' ' I knew it was fourpence 
 because they told me that if I kept it until I got 
 twopence more I should have sixpence, which 
 argument, albeit undeniable, moved me not, and 
 the money was squandered, to the best of my 
 •recollection, on the very next morning, although 
 upon what memory is a blank. 
 
 That is just the way with Memory; nothing 
 that she brings to us is complete. She is a will- 
 ful child ; all her toys are broken. I remember 
 tumbling into a huge dust-hole, when a very 
 small boy, but I have not the faintest recollection 
 of ever getting out again ; and, if memory were 
 all we had to trust to, I should be compelled to 
 believe I was there still. At another time — some 
 years later — I was assisting at an exceedingly in- 
 teresting love scene ; but the only thing about it 
 I can call to mind distinctly is that, at the most 
 critical moment, somebody suddenly opened the 
 door and said: ''Emily, you're wanted," in a 
 sepulchral tone, that gave one the idea the police 
 had come for her. All the tender words she said 
 to me, and all the beautiful things I said to her, 
 are utterly forgotten. 
 
 Life, altogether, is but a crumbling ruin, when 
 we turn to look behind ; a shattered column here^ 
 1 86 
 
On Memory. 
 
 where a massive portal stood ; the broken shaft 
 of a window to mark my lady's bower; and a 
 moldering heap of blackened stones where the 
 glowing flames once leaped, and, over all, the 
 tinted lichen and the ivy clinging green. 
 
 For everything looms pleasant through the 
 softening haze of time. Even the sadness that is 
 past seems sweet. Our boyish days look very 
 merry to us now, all nutting, hoop, and ginger- 
 bread. The snubbings and toothaches and the 
 Latin verbs are all forgotten — the Latin verbs 
 especially. And we fancy we were very happy 
 when we were hobbledehoys, and loved ; and we 
 wish that we could love again. We never think 
 of the heartaches, or the sleepless nights, or the 
 hot dryness of our throats, when she said she 
 could never be anything to us but a sister — as if 
 any man wanted more sisters ! 
 
 Yes, it is the brightness, not the darkness, that 
 we see when we look back. The sunshine casts 
 no shadows on the past. The road that we have 
 traversed stretches very fair behind us. We see 
 not the sharp stones. We dwell but on the roses 
 by the way-side, and the strong briers that stung 
 us are, to our distant eyes, but gentle tendrils 
 waving in the wind. God be thanked that it is. 
 187 
 
On Memory. 
 
 so — that the ever-lengthening chain of memory 
 has only pleasant links, and that the bitterness 
 and sorrow of to-day are smiled at on the mor- 
 row. 
 
 It seems as though the brightest side of every- 
 thing were also its highest and best, so that, as our 
 little lives sink back behind us into the dark sea of 
 forgetfulness, all that which is the lightest and 
 the most gladsome is the last to sink, and stands 
 above the waters, long in sight, when the angry 
 thoughts and smarting pain are buried deep 
 below the waves and trouble us no more. 
 
 It is this glamour of the past, I suppose, that 
 makes old folks talk so much nonsense about the 
 days when they were young. The world appears 
 to have been a very superior sort of place then, 
 and things were more like what they ought to be. 
 Boys were boys then, and girls were very differ- 
 ent. Also, winters were something like winters, 
 and summers not at all the wretched things we 
 get put off with nowadays. As for the wonderful 
 deeds people did in those times, and the extra- 
 ordinary events that happened, it takes three 
 strong men to believe half of them. 
 
 I like to hear one of the old boys telling all 
 about it to a party of youngsters who he knows 
 i88 
 
On Memory. 
 
 can not contradict him. It is odd if, after 
 a while, he doesn't swear that the moon shone 
 every night when he was a boy, and that tossing 
 mad bulls in a blanket was a favorite sport at his 
 school ! 
 
 It always has been, and always will be, the 
 same. The old folk of our grandfathers' young 
 days sung a song bearing exactly the same bur- 
 den ; and the young folk of to-day will drone 
 out precisely similar nonsense for the aggravation 
 of the next generation. " Oh, give me back the 
 good old days of fifty years ago," has been the 
 cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birthday. Take 
 up the literature of 1835, and you will find the 
 poets and novelists asking for the same impossi- 
 ble gift as did the German minnesingers long 
 before them, and the old Norse saga writers long 
 before that. And for the same thing sighed the 
 early prophets and the philosophers of ancient 
 Greece. From all accounts, the world has been 
 getting worse and worse ever since it was created. 
 All I can say is that it must have been a remarka- 
 bly delightful place when it was first opened to 
 the public, for it is very pleasant even now, if 
 you only keep as much as possible in the sun- 
 shine, and take the rain good-temperedly. 
 189 
 
On Memory. 
 
 Yet there is no gainsaying but what it must 
 have been somewhat sweeter in that dewy morn- 
 ing of creation, when it was young and fresh, 
 when the feet of the tramping milHons had not 
 trodden its grass to dust, nor the din of the 
 myriad cities chased the silence forever away. 
 Life must have been noble and solemn to those 
 free-footed, loose-robed fathers of the human 
 race, walking hand in hand with God under the 
 great sky. They lived in sun-kissed tents amid 
 the lowing herds. They took their simple wants 
 from the loving hand of Nature, They toiled 
 and talked and thought; and the great earth 
 rolled around in stillness, not yet laden with 
 trouble and wrong. 
 
 Those days are past now. The quiet childhood 
 of Humanity, spent in the far-off forest glades, 
 and by the murmuring rivers, is gone forever; 
 and human life is deepening down to manhood 
 amid tumult, doubt, and hope. Its age of rest- 
 ful peace is past. It has its work to finish, and 
 must hasten on. What that work may be — what 
 this world's share is in the great Design — we 
 know not, though our unconscious hands are 
 helping to accomplish it. Like the tiny coral 
 insect, working deep under the dark waters, we 
 190 
 
On Memory. 
 
 strive and struggle, each for our own little ends, 
 nor dream of the vast fabric we are building up 
 for God. 
 
 Let us have done with vain regrets and long- 
 ings for the days that never will be ours again. 
 Our work lies in front, not behind us ; and 
 '' Forward ! " is our motto. Let us not sit with 
 folded hands, gazing upon the past as if it were 
 the building ; it is but the foundation. Let us 
 not waste heart and life, thinking of what might 
 have been, and forgetting the may be that lies 
 before us. Opportunities flit by while we sit 
 regretting the chances we have lost, and the hap- 
 piness that comes to us we heed not, because of 
 the happiness that is gone. 
 
 Years ago, when I used to wander of an even- 
 ing from the fireside to the pleasant land of fairy 
 tales, I met a doughty knight and true. Many 
 dangers had he overcome, in many lands had 
 been ; and all men knew him for a brave and 
 well-tried knight, and one that knew not fear, 
 except, may be, upon such seasons when even a 
 brave man might feel afraid, and yet not be 
 ashamed. Now, as this knight, one day, was 
 pricking wearily along a toilsome road, his heart 
 misgave him, and was sore within him, because 
 191 
 
On Memory. 
 
 of the trouble of the way. Rocks, dark and of a 
 monstrous size, hung high above his head, and 
 like enough it seemed unto the knight that they 
 should fall, and he lie low beneath them. 
 Chasms there were on either side, and darksome 
 caves, wherein fierce robbers lived, and dragons, 
 very terrible, whose jaws dripped blood. And 
 upon the road there hung a darkness as of night. 
 So it came over that good knight that he would 
 no more press forward, but seek another road, 
 less grievously beset with difficulty unto his gen- 
 tle steed. But, when in haste he turned and 
 looked behind, much marveled our brave knight, 
 for, lo ! of all the way that he had ridden, there 
 was naught for eye to see; but, at his horse's 
 heels there yawned a mighty gulf, whereof no 
 man might ever spy the bottom, so deep was that 
 same gulf. Then, when Sir Ghelent saw that of 
 going back there was none, he prayed to good St. 
 Cuthbert, and, setting spurs into his steed, rode 
 forward bravely and most joyously. And naught 
 harmed him. 
 
 There is no returning on the road of life. The 
 
 frail bridge of Time, on which we tread, sinks 
 
 back into eternity at every step we take. The 
 
 past is gone from us forever. It is gathered in 
 
 192 
 
On Memory. 
 
 and garnered. It belongs to us no more. No 
 single word can ever be unspoken ; no single step 
 retraced. Therefore, it beseems us, as true 
 knights, to prick on bravely, nqt idly weep be- 
 cause we can not now recall. 
 
 A new life begins for us with every second. 
 Let us go forward joyously to meet it. We must 
 press on, whether we will or no, and we shall 
 walk better with our eyes before us than with 
 them ever cast behind. 
 
 A friend came to me the other day, and urged 
 me very eloquently to learn some wonderful sys- 
 tem by which you never forgot anything. I 
 don't know why he was so eager on the subject, 
 unless it be that I occasionally borrow an um- 
 brella, and have a knack of coming out, in the 
 middle of a game of whist, with a mild : " Lor' ! 
 I've been thinking all along that clubs were 
 trumps." I declined the suggestion, however, 
 in spite of the advantages he so attractively set 
 forth. I have no wish to remember everything. 
 There are many things in most men*s lives that 
 had better be forgotten. There is that time, 
 many years ago, when we did not act quite as 
 honorably, quite as uprightly, as we, perhaps, 
 should have done — that unfortunate deviation 
 13 193 
 
On Memory. 
 
 from the path of strict probity we once com- 
 mitted, and in which, more unfortunate still, we 
 were found out — that act of folly, of meanness, 
 of wrong. Ah, well ! we paid the penalty, suf- 
 fered the maddening hours of vain remorse, the 
 hot agony of shame, the scorn, perhaps, of those 
 we loved. Let us forget. Oh, Father Time, lift 
 with your kindly hands those bitter memories 
 from off our overburdened hearts, for griefs are 
 ever coming to us with the coming hours, and our 
 little strength is only as the day. 
 
 Not that the past should be buried. The music 
 of life would be mute if the chords of memory 
 were snapped asunder. It is but the poisonous 
 weeds, not the flowers, that we should root out 
 from the garden of Mnemosyne. Do you remem- 
 ber Dickens's '' Haunted Man," how he prayed 
 for forgetfulness, and how, when his prayer was 
 answered, he prayed for memory once more ? 
 We do not want all the ghosts laid. It is only 
 the haggard, cruel-eyed spectres that we flee from. 
 Let the gentle, kindly phantoms haunt us as they 
 will ; we are not afraid of them. 
 
 Ah, me ! the world grows very full of ghosts 
 as we grow older. We need not seek in dismal 
 church-yards nor sleep in moated granges, to see 
 194 
 
■^ On Memory. 
 
 their shadowy faces, and hear the rustling of their 
 garments in the night. Every house, every room, 
 every creaking chair has its own particular ghost. 
 They haunt the empty chambers of our lives, they 
 throng around us like dead leaves whirled in the 
 autumn wind. Some are living, some are dead. 
 We know not. We clasped their hands once, 
 loved them, quarreled with them, laughed with 
 them, told them our thoughts and hopes and 
 aims, as they told us theirs, till it seemed our 
 very hearts had joined in a grip that would defy 
 the puny power of Death. They are gone now ; 
 lost to us forever. Their eyes will never look 
 into ours again, and their voices we shall never 
 hear. Only their ghosts come to us, and talk 
 with us. We see them, dim and shadowy, through 
 our tears. We stretch our yearning hands to 
 t»hem, but they are air. 
 
 Ghosts ! They are with us night and day. 
 They walk beside us in the busy street, under the 
 glare of the sun. They sit by us in the twilight 
 at home. We see their little faces looking from 
 the windows of the old school-house. We meet 
 them in the woods and lanes, where we shouted 
 and played as boys. Hark ! can not you hear 
 their low laughter from behind the blackberry 
 195 
 
On Memory. 
 
 bushes, and their distant whoops along the grassy 
 glades ? Down here, through the quiet fields, 
 and by the wood, where the evening shadows are 
 lurking, winds the path where we used to watch 
 for her at sunset. Look, she is there now, in the 
 dainty white frock we knew so well, with the big 
 bonnet dangling from her little hands, and the 
 sunny brown hair all tangled. Five thousand 
 miles away ! Dead, for all we know ! What of 
 that? She is beside us now, and we can look 
 into her laughing eyes, and hear her voice. She 
 will vanish at the stile by the wood, and we shall 
 be alone ; and the shadows will creep out across 
 the fields, and the night-wind will sweep past^ 
 moaning. Ghosts ! they are always with us, and 
 always will be, while the sad old world keeps 
 echoing to the sob of long good-byes, while the 
 cruel ships sail away across the great seas, and the 
 cold, green earth lies heavy on the hearts of those 
 we loved. 
 
 But, oh, ghosts, the world would be sadder still 
 without you. Come to us, and speak to us, oh, 
 you ghosts of our old loves! Ghosts of play- 
 mates, and of sweethearts, and old friends, of all 
 you laughing boys and girls, oh, come to us, and 
 be with us, for the world is very 'lonely, and new 
 196 
 
On Memory. 
 
 friends and faces are not like the old, and we can 
 not love them, nay, nor laugh with them as we 
 have loved and laughed with you. And when we 
 walked together, oh, ghosts of our youth, the 
 world was very gay and bright ; but now it has 
 grown old, and we are growing weary ; and only 
 you can bring the brightness and the freshness 
 back to us. 
 
 Memory is a rare ghost-raiser. Like a haunted 
 house, its walls are ever echoing to unseen feet. 
 Through the broken casements we watch the flit- 
 ting shadows of the dead, and the saddest sha- 
 dows of them all are the shadows of our own 
 dead selves. 
 
 Oh, those young, bright faces, so full of truth 
 and honor, of pure, good thoughts, of noble long- 
 ings, how reproachfully they look upon us, with 
 their deep, clear eyes ! 
 
 I fear they have good cause for their sorrow, 
 poor lads. Lies and cunning and disbelief have 
 crept into our hearts since those pre-shaving days 
 = — and we meant to be so great and good. 
 
 It is well we cannot see into the future. There 
 are few boys of fourteen who would not feel 
 ashamed of themselves at forty. 
 
 I like to sit and have a talk sometimes with 
 197 
 
On Memory. 
 
 that odd little chap that was myself long ago. I 
 think he likes it too, for he comes so often of an 
 evening when I am alone with my pipe, listening 
 to the whispering of the flames. I see his solemn 
 little face looking at me through the scented 
 smoke as it floats upAvard, and I smile at him ; 
 and he smiles back at me, but his is such a grave, 
 old-fashioned smile ! We chat about old times; 
 and now and then he takes me by the hand, and 
 then we slip through the black bars of the grate 
 and down the dusky, glowing caves, to the land 
 that lies behind the iire-light. There we find the 
 days that used to be, and we wander along them 
 together. He tells me as we walk all he thinks 
 and feels. I laugh at him now and then, but the 
 next moment I wish I had not, for he looks so 
 grave I am ashamed of being frivolous. Besides, 
 it is not showing proper respect to one so much 
 older than myself — to one who was myself so very 
 long before I became myself. 
 
 We don't talk much at first, but look at one 
 another: I down at his curly hair and little blue 
 brow, he up sideways at me as he trots. And, 
 somehow, I fancy the shy, round eyes do not 
 altogether approve of me, and he heaves a little 
 sigh, as though he were disappointed. But, after 
 198 
 
On Memory. 
 
 awhile, his bashfulness wears off, and he begins 
 to chat. He tells me his favorite fairy tales, he 
 can do up to six times, and he has a guinea-pig, 
 and pa says fairy tales ain't true ; and isn't it a 
 pity, 'cos he would so like to be a knight and 
 fight a dragon and marry a beautiful princess. 
 But he takes a more practical view of life when 
 he reaches seven, and would prefer to grow up, 
 be a bargee, and earn a lot of money. May be 
 this is the consequence of falling in love, which 
 he does about this time, with the young lady at 
 the milk-shop cet. six. (God bless her little ever- 
 dancing feet, whatever size they may be now!) 
 He must be very fond of her, for he gives her 
 one day his chiefest treasure — to wit, a huge 
 pocket-knife with four rusty blades and a cork- 
 screw, which latter has a knack of working itself 
 out in some mysterious manner, and sticking into 
 its owner's leg. She is an affectionate little 
 thing, and she throws her arms round his neck 
 and kisses him for it, then and there, outside the 
 shop. But the stupid world, in the person of the 
 boy at the cigar emporium next door, jeers at 
 such tokens of love. Whereupon my young 
 friend very properly prepares to punch the head 
 of the boy at the cigar emporium next door; but 
 199 
 
On Memory. 
 
 fails in the attempt, the boy at the cigar empor- 
 ium next door punching his instead. 
 
 And then comes school life with its bitter little 
 sorrows and its joyous shoutings, its jolly larks, 
 and its hot tears falling on beastly Latin gram- 
 mars and silly old copy-books. It is at school 
 that he injures himself for life — as I firmly be- 
 lieve — trying to pronounce German; and it is 
 there, too, that he learns of the importance 
 attached by the French nation to pens, ink, and 
 paper. "Have you pens, ink, and paper?" is 
 the first question asked by one Frenchman of 
 another on their meeting. The other fellow has 
 not any of them, as a rule, but says that the uncle 
 of his brother has got them all three. The first 
 fellow doesn't appear to care a hang about the 
 uncle of the other fellow's brother ; what he 
 wants to know now is, has the neighbor of the 
 other fellow's mother got 'em ? " The neighbor 
 of my mother has no pens, no ink, and no 
 paper," replies the other man, beginning to get 
 wild. " Has the child of thy female gardener 
 some pens, some ink, or some paper ?' ' He has 
 him there. After worrying enough about these 
 wretched inks, pens, and papers to make every- 
 body miserable, it turns out that the child of his 
 
On Memory. 
 
 own female gardener hasn't any. Such a dis- 
 covery would shut up any one but a French exer- 
 cise man. It has no effect at all, though, on this 
 shameless creature. He never thinks of apologiz- 
 ing, but says his aunt had some mustard. 
 
 So, in the acquisition of more or less useless 
 knowledge, soon happily to be forgotten, boy- 
 hood passes away. The red-brick school-house 
 fades from view, and we turn down into the 
 world's high-road. My little friend is no longer 
 little now. The short jacket has sprouted tails. 
 The battered cap, so useful as a combination of 
 pocket-handkerchief, drinking-cup, and weapon 
 of attack, has grown high and glossy; and in- 
 stead of a slate-pencil in his mouth there is a 
 cigarette, the smoke of which troubles him, for 
 it will get up his nose. He tries a cigar a little 
 later on, as being more stylish — a big, black 
 Havana. It doesn't seem altogether to agree with 
 him, for I find him sitting over a bucket in the 
 back kitchen afterward, solemnly swearing never 
 to smoke again. 
 
 And now his mustache begins to be almost vis- 
 ible to the naked eye, Avhereupon he immediately 
 takes to brandy and soda, and fancies himself a 
 man. He talks about ''two to one against the 
 
On Memory. 
 
 favorite," refers to actresses as ''Little Emmy," 
 and "Kate," and ''Baby," and murmurs about 
 his " losses at cards the other night," in a style 
 implying that thousands have been squandered, 
 though, to do him justice, the actual amount is 
 most probably one and twopence. Also, if I see 
 aright — for it is always twilight in this land of 
 memories — he sticks an eyeglass in his eye and 
 stumbles at everything. 
 
 His female relations, much troubled at these 
 things, pray for him (bless their gentle hearts !), 
 and see visions of Old Bailey trials and halters as 
 the only possible outcome of such reckless dissi- 
 pation ; and the prediction of his first school- 
 master, that he would come to a bad end, assumes 
 the proportions of inspired prophecy- 
 He has a lordly contempt at this age for the 
 other sex, a blatantly good opinion of himself, 
 and a sociably patronizing manner toward all th^ 
 elderly male friends of the family. Altogether, 
 it must be confessed, he is somewhat of a nuisance 
 about this time. 
 
 It does not last long, though. He falls in love 
 in a little while, and that soon takes the bounce 
 out of him. I notice his boots are much too 
 small for him now, and his hair is fearfully and 
 
On Memory. 
 
 wonderfully arranged. He reads poetry more 
 than he used to, and he keeps a rhyming dictionary 
 in his bedroom. Every morning, on the floor, 
 Emily Jane finds scraps of torn-up paper, and 
 reads thereon of ''cruel hearts and love's deep 
 darts," of "beauteous eyes and lover's sighs," 
 and much more of the old, old song that lads so 
 love to sing, and lassies love to listen to while 
 giving their dainty heads a toss, and pretending 
 never to hear. 
 
 The course of love, however, seems not to have 
 run smoothly, for, later on, he takes more walk- 
 ing exercise and less sleep, poor boy, than is good 
 for him ; and his face is suggestive of anything 
 but wedding- bells and happiness ever after. 
 
 And here he seems to vanish. The little, 
 boyish self that has grown up beside me as we 
 walked, is gone. 
 
 I am alone, and the road is very dark. I stum- 
 ble on, I know not how nor care, for the way 
 seems leading nowhere, and there is no light to 
 guide. 
 
 But at last the morning comes, and I find that 
 I have grown into myself. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 203, 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 491 210 A •