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JEROME. K. J.E ROME

A/, 7'EMOS’ /2/D/ZZO/V
T H E

IDLE THOUGHTS
AN IDLE FELLOW
A BOOK FOR
A N ID L E H O LI DAY
By ... “
J E ROM E K. J.E ROME
Author of “On the Stage—and Off.”
PHILADELPHIA :
H E N RY A. L T E M US
- I 892
oc ºf 34.3 & 4- )
Entered According to Act of Congress in the Year 1890.
BY HENRY ALTEMU.S.
TO
THE VERY DEAR AND WELL-PELOVED
F. R I E N D
OF MY PROSPEROUS AND EVIL DAYS-
TO THE FRIEND
WHO, THOUGH, IN THE EARLY STAGES OF OUR ACQUAINT-
ANCESHIP, DID OFTTIMES DISAGREE WITH
ME, HAS SINCE BECOME TO BE MY
WERY WARM EST COMRADE—
TO THE I'RIENI)
WHO, HowevKR OFTEN I MAY PUT IIIM OUT, NEVER
(NOW) UPSETS ME IN REVENGE–
TO TIIE FRIEND
WHO, TREATED WITH MARKED COLDNESS BY ALL THE
FEMALE MEMBERS OF MY HOUSEHOLD, AND RE-
GARDED WITII SUSPICION BY MY VERY DOG,
NEVERTHELESS, SEEMS DAY BY DAY TO BE
MORE DRAWN BY ME, AND, IN RETURN,
TO MORE AND MORE IMPREGNATE
ME WITH THE ODOUR OF
HIS FRIENDSHIP-
TO THE ITRIEND
WHO NEVER TELLS MIC OF MY FAULTS, NEVER WANTS TO
BORROW MONEY, AND NEVER TALKS ABOUT HIMSELF—
TO THE COMPANION OF MY IDLE HOURs,
THE SOOTHER OF MY SORROWS,
THE CONFIDANT OF MY JOYS AND HOPES-
MY OLDEST AND STRONG EST
E I PE,
THIS LITTLE VOLUME
IS
GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED.
C O N T E N T S.
PAGE
ON BEING HARD UP . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
ON BEING IN THE BLUES . . . . . . . . . . 22
ON VANITY AND VANITIES . . . . . . . . . 32
ON GETTING ON IN THE WORLD . . . . . . . 47
ON BEING IDLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6o
ON BEING IN LOVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
ON THE WEATHER . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
ON CATS AND DOGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . IO5
ON BEING SHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I28
ON BABIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I43
ON EATING AND DRINKING . . . . . . . . . I 58
ON FURNISHED APARTMENTS . . . . . . . . . I74
ON DRESS AND DEPORTMENT I9 I
º
º
e
©
e
e
º
o
ON MEMORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
PR E F A C E.
ONE or two friends to whom I showed these
papers in MS. having observed that they were
not half bad; and some of my relations 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-speaking peoples of the earth.
What readers ask now-a-days in a book is that
it should improve, instruct, and elevate. This
book wouldn’t elevate a cow. I cannot con-
scientiously recommend it for any useful pur-
poses 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.
T H E
ID LE THOUG HTS
OF
AN ID L E FELLO W.
OW BE/AWG 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
9
IO On Being Hard U2.
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 gentlemanly. I am
hanged if I can see why. I could understand
its not being considered gentlemanly to put
your hands in other people's pockets (especially
by the other people), but how, O 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 awkward 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
On Aeing Hard Op. I I
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 pocket as you do with a
shilling. Had I been “La-di-da,” that im-
pecunious 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, which 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 fifteen 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
I 2 On Being Hard U2.
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 inter-
vals, 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
then. There are some people to whom it would
do a world 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 cat’s 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 novelists. I never hear of one of these
creatures discussing a menu card, but I feel a
mad desire to drag him off to the bar of some
common east-end public-house, and Cram a
six-penny dinner down his throat—beefsteak
pudding, fourpence; potatoes, a penny ; half
a pint of porter, a penny. The recollection of
On Being Hard Üß. I 3
it (and the mingled fragrance of beer, tobacco,
and roast pork generally leaves a vivid impres-
sion) might induce him to turn up his nose a
little less frequently 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,” explained 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 remembered near Covent Garden,
where the waiter, for the better discharge of his
duties, goes about in his shirt sleeves—and very
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.
I4 On Being Hard UA.
-g
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 labours of Hercules,
has had his heart broken by its petty miseries.
It is not the actual discomforts themselves
that are hard to bear. Who would mind rough-
ing it a bit, if that were all it meant? What
cared Robinson Crusoe for a patch on his
trousers?—Did he wear trousers? I forget; or
did he go about like he does in the panto-
mimes P 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 shabbiness 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
On Being Hard Už. I 5
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 considers 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 is 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 demagogue as by a footman, and
not all the copy-book maxims ever set for ink-
stained youth will make him respected. Ap-
pearances are everything, so far as human
opinion goes, and the man who will walk down
Picadilly arm in arm with the most notorious
scamp in London, provided 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 acquaintance. Those that knew
him in his prosperity need never trouble them-
Selves to look the other way. He is a thousand
I6 On Being Hard Up.
times more anxious that they should not see
him than they can be ; and as to their assist-
ance, 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, like one
becomes used to everything else, by the help
of that wonderful old homoeopathic 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 beginner, striving to hide his misery, and
in a constant agony of fear lest he should be
found out. Nothing shows this difference more
clearly than the 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
On Aeing Hard Cº. 17
don’t mind being kept waiting “if it is a
reg’lar customer.” Why, from the pleasant
and business-like manner in which the trans-
action 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
neighbourhood, and has aroused strong sus-
picions 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-standers with the
notion that he is going in to purchase 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
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
I8 On Being Hard Up.
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 watching him. When he does
get to the right place he has forgotten his
name and address, and is in a general Con-
dition of hopeless imbecility. Asked in a
severe tone how he came by “this,” he stam-
mers and contradicts himself, and it is only a
miracle if he does not confess to having stolen
it that very day. He is thereupon 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, without the slightest knowledge of 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 to get a glimpse of the public-house
clock from the outside, are attended with great
difficulties. If you gently push the swing door
On Being Hard ܺ. I9
ajar and peer in, you draw upon yourself the
contemptuous looks of the barmaid, 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 customers. 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 window. After this latter
proceeding, however, if you do not bring out
a banjo and commence to sing, the youthful
inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who have
gathered round in expectation, become disap-
pointed. --
I should like to know, too, by what mys-
terious 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. Nobody even
feels the slightest curiosity on the subject when
you’ve got it on.
Dear old ladies and gentlemen, who know
nothing about being hard up—and may they
never, bless their grey old heads—look upon
2O On Being Hard Up.
the pawnshop as the last stage of degradation ;
but those who know it better (and my readers
have, no doubt, noticed this themselves), are
often surprised, 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 borrowing from friends, and I
always try to impress this upon those of my
acquaintance who incline towards “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. cer-
tainly 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
On Being Hard Up. 2 I
kindly lend it me, I should be very much
obliged indeed. They could send it to me,
under cover to Mr. Henry Altemus, only, in
such case, please let the envelope be carefully
sealed. I would give you my I. O. U. as
security.
OW BEING IN THE BLUES.
I 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 unbrella
in the train. Its effect upon you is somewhat
similar to what would probably be produced
by a combined attack of toothache, indiges-
tion, and cold in the head. You become
stupid, restless, and irritable ; rude to strangers,
and dangerous towards your friends; clumsy,
maudlin, and quarrelsome; a nuisance to your-
self, 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
22
On Being in the B/ues. 23
put on your hat and go for a walk; but before
you get to the 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, Thackeray 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 “Deares?
Auntie, -ſ find / have five minutes to spare,
and so hastem ſo zeriſe to you,” for a quarter of
an hour, without being able to think of another
sentence, 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 Thompsons. 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
24 On Being in the Blues.
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
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
bitterly 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 repre-
Sent) whether you were blown up, or hung up,
or married, or drowned. Nobody cares for
you. You never have been properly appre-
ciated, 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 con-
siderations works you up into a state of Savage
On Being in the B/ues. 25
fury against everybody and everything, espe-
cially 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 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’s going to bed. All of
which, creating, as it does, a good deal of dis-
turbance 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 which he can
take any interest.
The symptoms of the infirmity are much the
26 On Being in the Blues.
Same in every case, but the affliction itself is
variously 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 everyday-young-man
is “so awfully glad to meet you, old fellow,”
for he does “feel so jolly miserable, this even-
ing.” 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 elſin 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
Io o'clock in the morning, we–or rather you
—swear and knock the furniture about ; but
On Being in the Blues. 27
if the misfortune comes at Io 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 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 suf-
fered from it at first, the recollection has
become by then a pleasure. Many dear old
ladies, who daily look at tiny shoes, lying in
lavender-scented drawers, and weep 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 non-
28 On Being in the Blues.
sense; but I believe, nevertheless, 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 Englishwoman goes a step further, and
takes her pleasures in sadness itself.
I am not sneering. I would not for a mo-
ment 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 always sentimental and soft-
hearted, as you are—be the soothing butter to
our coarse dry bread. Besides, sentiment is to
women what fun is to us. They do not care
for our humour, 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
On Being in the Blues. 29
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 P
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 beauti-
ful face of Sorrow e'er 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 bitter-
ness 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 pleas-
ure and pity that we feel when old knight-
hearted Colonel Newcome answers “adsum’’ to
the great roll-call, or when Tom and Maggie
Tulliver, 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.
3o On Being in the Blues.
She speaks somewhere of the “sadness of a sum-
mer's evening.” How wonderfully true—like
everything that came from that wonderful pen
—the observation is Who has not felt the
sorrowful enchantment of those lingering sun-
sets? 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 hum-drum city, her spirit
comes to us. There is a sombre presence in
each long, dull street; and the dark river
creeps ghost-like, under the black arches, as if
bearing some hidden secret beneath its muddy
W2 VeS.
In the silent country, when the trees and
hedges loom dim and blurred against the ris-
ing night, and the bat's wing flutters in our
face, and the landrail’s cry sounds drearily
On Aeing in the B/ues. 3I
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 work-
ing day grow small and trivial, and bread and
cheese—aye, and even kisses—do not seem the
only things worth striving for. Thoughts we
cannot speak but only listen to flood in upon
us, and, standing in the stillness under earth’s
dark’ning 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 God's.
OW WAAV/TV AAWD WAAV/TVES.
LL is vanity, and everybody's vain. Wo-
men are terribly vain. So are men—
more so, if possible. So are children, particu-
larly 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 inde-
scribable 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
I ſecl 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 suc-
cess. She had requested my judgment upon
her general conduct and behavior, the exact
case submitted being, “Wot oo tink of me?
Oo peased wi' me?” and l had thought it a
32
On Vanity and Vanities. 33
good opportunity to make a few salutary re-
marks upon her late moral career, and said,
“No, I am not pleased with you.” I recalled to
her mind the events of that very morning, and I
put 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 7 ; had endeavoured to put the cat in the
bath at 8; and sat on her father's hat at 9.35.
What did she do? Was she grateful to me
for my plain speaking P Did she ponder upon
my words, and determine to profit by them,
and to lead, from that hour, a better and a
nobler life P
No 1 she howled.
That done, she became abusive. She said—
“OO naughty—OO naughty, bad unkie—oo
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, irre
34 On Vanity and Vanities.
spective 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 dis-
tant Sounds 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 wickednesses.
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
*Early English for biscuits.
On Vanity and Vanities. 35
an amount of smug satisfaction that I have
never seen equalled elsewhere, outside a vestry
meeting.
I was at a farmhouse once, when some high
holiday was being celebrated. I don’t remem-
ber what the occasion was, but it was something
festive, a May-day or Quarter-day, or Some-
thing of that sort, and they put a garland of
flowers round the head of one of the cows.
Well, that 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 an “How dare you!” “Go away,
3 y
don’t touch me” sort of air. Now there is
36 On Manity and Vanities.
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 opprobrious 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 approbation 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 saying, “Poor pussy.” After which, add,
“did 'ums,” 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 her feelings to such an extent that, if
you are of good manners and passable appear-
ance, she will stick her back up and rub her
nose against you. Matters having reached this
stage, you may venture to chuck her under the
chin, and tickle the side of her head, and the
intelligent creature will then stick her claws
On Vanity and Vanities. 37
into your legs; and all is friendship and affec-
tion, 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 goodness. It is evident that in her
Opinion goodness consists of stroking her, and
patting her, and 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 esti-
mate 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 conviction
that the whole world, with everybody and
everything in it, was created as a sort of
necessary appendage 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
38 On Vanity and Vamilies.
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 something 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
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 ex-
tremely uncomfortable person to have anything
to do with. He would, of course, be a very
good man, and we should respect him very
much. He would be a very admirable man—a
man to be put under a glass case, and shown
around as a specimen—a man to be stuck upon
On Vani/y and Vaſſifies. 39
a pedestal, and copied, like a 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 ex-
cellent sort of folk in their way, but we, poor
mortals, in our present state, would probably
find them precious slow company. Even mere
good people are rather depressing. It is in
our faults and ſailings, 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 few of us are honest, com-
paratively speaking ; and some, ſewer still,
may possibly be truthful. But in vanity and
kindred weakness we can all join hands.
Vanity is one of those touches of Nature that
makes the whole world kin. I’rom the Indian
hunter, proud of his belt of scalps, to the
European general, swelling beneath his row of
stars and medals; from the Chinee, gleeful at
the length of his pigtail, to the “professional
beauty,” suffering tortures in order that her
waist may resemble a peg-top ; ſron draggle-
4O On Vanity and Vazifies.
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 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 dis-
On Vanity and Vanities. 4 I
cernment 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 in-
stead 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 un-
comfortable. Anyhow, whatever 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 ploughboy to a poet—
and the poet far easier than the ploughboy, 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 themselves, and
what runs over will be your share, says a
certain witty and truthful Frenchman, whose
name I can’t for the life of me remember.
(Confound it, I never can remember names
when I want to ). Tell a girl she is an
angel ; only more angelic than an angel;
42 On Vanity and Vanities.
that she is a goddess, only more graceful,
queenly, and heavenly than the average god-
dess; that she is more fairy-like than Titania,
more beautiful than Venus, more enchanting
than Parthenopé ; 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 favourable 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 beautiful, the most good, the most
charming, the most divine, the most perfect
human creature that ever trod this earth,’’
they will Smile a quiet, approving Smile, and,
leaning against your manly shoulder, murmur
that you are a dear good fellow after all.
By Jove, fancy a man trying to make love
on strictly truthſul principles, determining
never to utter a word of mere compliment or
hyperbole, but to scrupulously confine himself
On Vanity and l'anities. 43
to exact fact Fancy his gazing rapturously
into his mistress' 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 colour, 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 wander-
ing sunbcam 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 sub-
ject. Some people like it laid on with a
trowel, and this requires very little art. With
scnsible 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-“You are a
perfect fool, you are. You would give your
44 On Vanity and Vanities.
—w
last sixpence to the first hungry-looking 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, otherwise he won’t.
Those fine, sturdy John Bulls, who “ hate
flattery, sir,” “Never let anybody get over
me by flattery,” &c., &c., 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 sinfulness, 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 admiration—or Fame as we prefer to name
it—and so we write great books, and paint
grand pictures, and sing Sweet Songs; and
toil with willing hands in study, loom, and
laboratory.
On Vanity and Vanities. 45
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 any-
where for two hundred pounds per annum—
but that our houses may be bigger and more
gaudily furnished than our neighbours'; that
our horses and servants may be more numer-
ous; 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, spreading commerce
among its peoples, carrying civilisation to its
renn OteSt COrnerS.
Do not let us abuse vanity, therefore.
Rather let us use it. Honour 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
46 On Vanity and Vanities.
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
single hearted, upright gentlemen in the midst
of a world of knaves. Let us pride ourselves
upon thinking high thoughts achieving great
deeds, living good lives.
ON GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
No. exactly the sort of thing for an idle
fellow to think about, is it? But out-
siders, you know often see most of the game ;
and sitting in my arbour by the wayside,
Smoking my hookah of contentment, and eat-
ing 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
47
48 On Ge/ſing on in Zhe World.
pushing aside the weak, the cunning creeping
past the foolish ; 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 matron ; 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, stoop-
ing 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 for-
ward; and here a youth with a noble face
stands, hesitating as he looks from the distant
goal to the mud beneath his feet.
And now into sight comes a fair girl, with
her dainty face growing more wrinkled at
On Geſting on tº the Wor/a. 49
every step; and now a careworn man, and
now a hopeful lad.
A motley throng—a motley throng ! Prince
and beggar, sinner and Saint, butcher and baker
and candlestick-maker, tinkers and tailors, and
ploughboys and sailors—all jostling along to-
gether. Here the counsel in his wig and gown,
and here the old Jew clothesman under his dingy
tiara ; here the soldier in his scarlet, and here
the undertaker’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 labourer; here
the man of science, and here the shoe-black ;
here the poet, and here the water-rate col-
lector; here the cabiºet minister, and there
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 Swindler; here a
... priest, and there a gambler. Here a jewelled
5O On Geſſing on in the World.
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.
Screaming, cursing, and praying, laughing,
singing, and moaning, they rush past side by
side. Their speed never slackens, the race
never ends. There is no wayside 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 P’ Who-like
the belated traveller 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 P Not I, for one. I confess to the
On Getting on in the World. 5 I
wayside arbour, 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 arbours, smoking pipes,
when there is any fun going on Outside. I
think I more resemble the Irishman, who, see-
ing a crowd collecting, sent his little girl 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—bat-
tling 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''
thrilled us in our schoolboy 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'
52 On Geſſing on in the World.
time, rolling in riches. The authors do not
tell us “how it’s done,” which 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 their hero. They
linger for a dozen pages over a tea-party, but
sum up a life's history with “he had become
one of our merchant princes,” or “he was
now a great artist, with the world at his feet.”
Why, there is more real life in one of Gilbert's
patter-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 ex-
plains to us how the briefless barrister man-
aged to become a great and good judge,
“ready to try this breach of promise of mar-
riage.” 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 in-
On Getting on in the World. 53
teresting 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 incon-
sistent, 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
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. Why could she
not have smiled when her smiles would have
thrilled you with ecstasy P 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.
54 On Getting on in the World.
Bosh Good people are altogether wrong.
(They always are, 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 Norfolk dumpling. Ambitious people are
the leaven which rises it into wholesome bread.
Without ambitious people, the world would
never get up. They are busybodies who are
about early in the morning, hammering, shout-
ing 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
wrong, who, with bent back and Sweating
brow, cut the smooth road over which Human-
ity marches forward from generation to gener-
ation I 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 themselves they are working for
us all. We are so bound together that no man
On Getting on in the World. 55
can labour for himself alone. Each blow he
strikes in his own behalf helps to mould the
Universe. The stream, in struggling onward,
turns the mill-wheel; the coral insect, fashion-
ing its tiny cell, joins continents to one
another; and the ambitious man, building a
pedestal for himself, leaves a monument to
posterity. Alexander and Caesar fought for
their own ends, but, in doing so, they put a
belt of civilisation half round the earth.
Stephenson, 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
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
56 On Getting on in the Woz ad.
are the deadheads, 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 conse-
quence is that both are put anywhere and are
treated anyhow. “Oh, you need not bother
about him,” is what is said; “he is very con-
tented 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 you can do with a little, ask for a great deal.
Because if you don’t you won’t get any. In
this world, it is necessary to adopt the prin-
ciple pursued by the plaintiff in an action for
damages, and to demand ten times more than
you are ready to accept. If you can feel Satis-
fied with a hundred, begin by insisting on a
On Getting on in the World. 57
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 amiable, 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-azis—a
really amiable woman. s
- What a terrible 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, sup-
posing that they have any P Reading the paper
and smoking seems to be the intellectual food
of the majority of them, to which the more
energetic add playing the flute and talking
about the affairs of the next-door neighbour.
58 On Getting on in the World.
They never know the excitement of expecta-
tion, nor the stern delight of accomplished
effort, such as stir 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,
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 going. The only genuine sport in all
the fair, gentlemen—highly respectable, and
strictly moral—patronised by the nobility,
On Getting on in the World. 59
clergy, and gentry. Established in the year
one, gentleman, and been flourishing ever
since 1—walk up. Walk up, ladies and gentle-
men, 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.”
OAV BAE/AVG /D/A2.
Now this is a subject on which I flatter
myself I really am au fait. The gentle-
man 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 grandmother once inci-
dentally observing in the course of an instruc-
tion upon the use of the prayer-book, that it
was highly improbable that I should ever do
much that I ought not 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
judgment so far as neglecting much that I
6o
On Being /a/e. 61
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 possess 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 about with his hands in his
pockets. On the contrary, his most startling
characteristic is that he is always intensely
busy.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly
unless 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 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 (whatever it was) had gone on for
another week he would not have answered for
62 On Being Jale.
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 Providence,
that is what it is.
Well, as I was saying, I was very ill, and
was ordered to Buxton for a month, with
strict injunctions 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 prospect. “This
man evidently understands my complaint,”
said I, and I pictured to myself a glorious
time—a four weeks' do/ce far mienſe with a
dash of illness in it. Not too much illness,
but just illness enough—just sufficient to give
it the flavour of suffering, and make it poetical.
I should get up late, sip chocolate, and have
my breakfast in slippers and dressing-gown.
I should lie out in the garden in a hammock,
and read sentimental novels with a melancholy
On Being /d/e. 63
ending, until the book would fall from my
listless hand, and T should recline there,
dreamily gazing into the deep blue of the
firmament, watching the fleecy clouds, floating
like white-sailed ships, across its depths, and
listening to the joyous song of the birds, and
the low rustling 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 drink a
64 On Being /d/e.
glassful of them every day until he was
recovered. I drank them neat for six consecu-
tive days, and they nearly killed me; but, after
then, 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 chaly-
beate properties contained in the water. I am
glad I was lucky enough to hit upon the right
thing.
But ‘‘ drinking the waters” was only 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 re-
ligiously 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—es-
pecially if you are not used to the exhilarating
exercise—than might appear to the casual Ob-
On Aeing /a/e. 65
server. A sense of danger, Such as a mere
outsider might not understand, is ever present
to the mind of the occupant. He feels con-
vinced every minute that the whole concern is
going over, a conviction which becomes es-
pecially lively whenever a ditch or a stretch of
newly macadamised road comes in sight.
Every vehicle that passes he expects is going to
run into him ; and he never finds himself as-
cending or descending a hill, without im-
mediately beginning to speculate upon his
chances, supposing—as seems extremely proba-
ble—that the weak knee’d controller of his
destiny should let go.
But even this diversion failed to enliven after
a while, and the enmui became perfectly un-
bearable. 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 Hayfield 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
66 On Being Idle.
then ; one passed me on the bridge, and, I
think, Smiled; and the other was standing at
an open door, making an unremunerative in-
vestment of kisses upon a red-faced baby. But
it is years ago, and I daresay they have both
grown stout and snappish since that time.
Coming back, I saw an old man breaking
stones, and it roused such strong longing 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 humoured 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, and 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, consump-
tive Buxton to London with its stern work and
life. I looked out of the carriage as we rushed
through Hendon in the evening. The lurid
On Being Jale. 67
glare overhanging the mighty city seemed to
warm my heart, and, when later on, my cab
rattled out of St. Pancras’ 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 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, calculating 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 particulary early in the morning, it is then,
more than at 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 “tale for boys,” who
ever gets up willingly P. There are some men
68 On /3cing /d/e.
to whom getting up at the proper time is an
utter impossibility. 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 manner of schemes. They buy
alarm clocks (artful contrivances that go off at
the wrong time, and 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 comfortably to sleep
again. I know one man who would actually
get out, and have a cold bath; and even that
was of no use, for, afterwards, 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 wrench-
ing away of the hand from the pillow that I
find so hard, and no amount of over-night de-
termination makes it easier. I say to myself,
after having wasted the whole evening, “Well,
On Being /a/e. 69
I won’t do any more work to-night; I’ll get
up early to-morrow 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 dress-
ing, and the more one thinks about that, the
more one wants to put it off.
It is a strange thing this bed, this mimic
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 the weary head,” as sang 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 wayward 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.
Our trouble is sore indeed, when you turn
away, and will not comfort us. How long the
7o On Being /d/e.
dawn seems coming, when we cannot sleep !
Oh ! 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 I those still more hideous
nights, when we sit by another in pain, when
the low fire startles us every now and then with
a falling cinder, and the tick of the clock
seems a hammer, beating out the life that we
are watching. -
But enough of beds and bed-rooms. 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 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 for ever fighting
and rowing. If, by any extraordinary chance,
there was no war going, then they got up a
On Aeing /a/e. 71
deadly family feud with the next-door neigh-
bour, and if, in spite of this, they still had a
few spare moments on their hands, they occu-
pied them with discussions as to whose Sweet-
heart was the best looking, the arguments
employed on both sides being battle-axes,
clubs, &c. Questions of taste were soon de-
cided in those days. When a twelfth century
youth fell in love, he did not take three paces
backwards, 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 fel-
low, that is, because of course the other 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
fellow who zvas 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
72 On Aeing /a/e.
—us
pretty girl, but B’s girl was. That was their
method of conducting art criticism.
Now-a-days we light a pipe, and let the girls
fight it out amongst themselves.
They do it very well. They are getting to
do all our work. They are doctors, and bar-
risters, 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 discus-
sions upon the latest patterns 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 fellows.
OAW BAE/WG //V ZO WAE.
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 never need 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 the ravishing waltz, and rest after-
wards in a dark conservatory, catching noth-
ing more lasting than a cold. He can brave a
moonlight walk adown sweet-scented lanes,
73
74 On Being in Love.
or a twilight pull among the sombre rushes.
He can get over a stile without danger, scram-
ble through a tangled hedge without being
caught, come 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 unveered helm. He clasps
white hands in his, but no 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 life-long
friends. Respect, and Admiration, and Af-
fection, 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 commonplace
life closes in around it, and the burnt-out case,
falling back to earth, lies useless and uncared
On Being in Zoze. 75
for, slowly smouldering 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'
chariot the fire of the gods. Happy those
who, hastening down again e'er it dies out,
can kindle their earthly 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, the warming glow is more
Suited to our cold little back parlour 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 flames of love is flick-
ered out. Affection is a fire that can be fed
from day to day, and be piled up even higher
as the winter 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 neighbour has his wel-
come corner by its side, and even shaggy Fido
76 On Being in Love.
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 unselfish deeds. Fan it with good
humour, 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 around it will make sunshine in
spite of the clouds without.
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 unsteady 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,
On Being in Zove. 77
and, putting her arms around his neck, Say
that she cannot 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 waist.
COat.
Both are astonished at the falling off in the
other one, but neither sees their own change.
If 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 building their houses 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,
78 On Being in Zove.
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
affection is not yet lit, and you have to grope
about in 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 comes.
But, there, of what use is it to preach P
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. He cannot call to mind any mid-
dle-aged or elderly gentleman of his acquain-
tance who is known to exhibit symptoms of
frantic attachment, 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 ! e'er thirty, he has joined the ranks
of the sneerers. It is not his fault. Our pas-
sions, both the good and bad, cease with our
On Aeing in Zoze. 79
blushes. We do not hate, nor grieve, nor joy,
nor despair in our thirties like we do in our
teens. Disappointment does not suggest Sui-
cide, and we quaff success without intoxica-
tion.
We take all things in a minor key as we
grow older. There are few majestic passages
in the later acts of life's opera. Ambition
takes a less ambitious aim. Honour becomes
more reasonable, and conveniently adapts itself
to circumstances. And love—love dies. “Irre-
verence for the dreams of youth '' soon creeps
like a killing frost upon our hearts. The ten-
der 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.
My fair friènds 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 grey in his hair that they think
his protestations at all worthy of attention,
Young ladies take their notions of our sex
from the novels written by their own, and com-
pared with the monstrosities that masquerade
8o On Being in Love.
for men in the pages of that nightmare literature
Pythagoras's plucked bird and Frankenstein’s
demon were fair average specimens of hu-
manity.
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 drivel-
ling Silenus, the god of abstruse mysteries.
He resembles the whole family of them, how-
ever, in being a blackguard, 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 young RO-
meos, and Leanders, this &/ase Old beau loves
with an hysterical fervour 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 man-
On Being in Zove. 81
kind, you would know that the lad's shy stam-
mering tells a truer tale than our bold eloquence.
A boy's love comes from a full 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 foun-
tain 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 better its bitter flavour;
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 shameful 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-Helps, what mischief they are
doing, crawling about God’s garden, and tell-
ing childish Eves and silly Adams that sin is
82 On Being in Love.
sweet, and that decency is ridiculous and vul-
gar P. How many an innocent girl do they not
degrade into an evil-minded woman P. To how
many a weak lad do they not point out the
dirty by-path as the shortcst 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 pictures are coarse daubs
painted from sickly ſancies of their own dis-
eased imagination.
We want to think of women, not—as their
own sex would show them—as Lore-Leis 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 has the
making or marring of him. Unconsciously,
he moulds 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
oſten the female world is bounded hard and
fast within the limits of the commonplace,
Their ideal hero is a prince of littleness, and
On Being in Love. 83
to become that many a powerful mind, enchan-
ted by love, is “lost to life and use, and name
and ſame.’’
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, eſfrontery, and aſſectation | Stand
forth once more a queen in your royal robe of
simple purity. A thousand swords, now rust-
ing in ignoble sloth, shall leap from their scab-
bards to do battle for your honour 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 colours.
84 On Being in Zove.
What noble deeds were we not ripe for in
the days when we loved P 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
sang, 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 enchant-
ment 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 de-
licious 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
On Aeing in Zove. 85
floods of extravagant nonsense you poured
forth, and oh, how cruel it was of her to pre-
tend not to believe you ! In 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, every 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 forward to seeing
her, 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 your-
self eventually opposite her windows You
hadn't pluck 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 in-
86 On Being in Zove.
sured, so it wouldn’t have mattered—and you
Could have rushed in and saved her at the risk
of your life, and have been terribly burnt and
injured Anything to save her. Even in
little things 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 a humble 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 ribbon 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 won-
drous 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 sing-
On Being in Zoze. 87
ing comic songs in a cathedral. It was dese-
cration 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 truth, and faith, and reverence Ah,
those foolish 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
THINGs 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; “some-
thing 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 something of this kind ; and
I couldn’t. And Mrs. Cutting, our Char-
woman, came yesterday—I don’t mind men-
tioning her name, because I know she will not
see this book. She would not look at such a
frivolous publication. She never reads any-
thing but the Bible and Zloyd’s Weekly AVews.
All other literature she considers unnecessary
and sinful.
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
88
On the Weather. 89
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 freshness.” -
She laughed, and said I was a funny gentle-
II].2.1].
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
towards the Reformation, and I said something,
and immediately added, “Ah, that reminds
me ; such a funny thing happened the other
day in Whitechapel.” “Oh,” said they ;
“what was that P” “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?”
90 On the Weather.
I assured them that it was, and they were
very polite, 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 explain 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 re-
pudiated the accusation of frivolity, and
pressed Mrs. Cutting for practical ideas. She
then became thoughſul and hazarded “Sam-
plers; ” saying that she never heard them
On the Weather. 91
spoken much of now, but they used to be all
the rage when she was a girl.
I declined samplers, and begged her to think
again. She pondered a long while, with the
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 weatner. At
all events, it is so now, at the time I am writ-
ing, 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
92 On £he Weather.
become of our good old-fashioned winters, and
talk as if we had been cheated out of some-
thing we had bought and paid for; and when
it does Snow, our language is a disgrace to a
Christian nation. We shall never be content
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 so 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 soft-
ness, 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 peals faintly clear
like Alpine bells across the open hills | 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,
On ſhe Weafhez". 93
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
white-washed cottage in a cloud of fragile
splendour; and the cuckoo's note upon the
breeze is waſted through the woods ! And
summer, with its deep, dark green, and drowsy
hum—when the rain drops whisper solemn
secrets to the listening 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 hedgerows.
But in the city, where the painted stucco
94 On the Weather.
blisters 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, gas-lit 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 lass, and does not ap-
pear to advantage in town. We like 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 trying.
Just lately she has been favouring 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 neighbour comes out in the
back garden every now and then, and says it’s
doing the country a world of good—not his
On the Weather. 95
gº-
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 agriculturist, 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, he is correct, and that the weather really
is doing good to something, because it is doing
me a considerable amount of damage. It is
spoiling both my 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 is 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
96 On the Weather.
a wild yell, the moment he caught sight of it,
and exclaimed that he had “got 'em again ”
I said: “Does it fit all right behind P’’
“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.
I said: “Do you think it will really please
'em P’’
He said it would be like a day in the coun-
try 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.
On the Weather. 97
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 ; its 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
dreadful happens to 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 had become 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 ob-
ject to. Somehow or other, I seem to possess
an irresistible alluring power over mud. I have
only to show myself in the street on a muddy
day to be half smothered by it. It all comes
of being so attractive, 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
98 On the Weather.
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
competitors.
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 miserable 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 seem
to me to be more people, and dogs, and per-
ambulators, 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 dis-
agreeable—except myself—and it does make
me so wild. And then, too, somehow, I
always 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 unmbrella.
On the Weaſher. 99
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
appreciate 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 /
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. 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
:
§
I OO On the Weather.
º * * *
regularly bad day, but these ha'porth of all sorts
kind of days do not suit me. It aggravates
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 P 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—
“Yessir ; 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.
“Try an ‘automaton,’” said the shopman.
“What’s an ‘automaton P’” said I.
“Oh, it's a beautiful arrangement,” replied
On the Weather. I O I
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 alter-
nate 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 absurb 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 down one's back on suddenly becoming
I O2 On the Weather.
aware that one's head is bare is among the
most bitter ills that the flesh is heir to. And
then there is the wild chase after it, accom-
panied 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—
butt a fat old gentleman on to the top of a
perambulator, and cannon off a ladies’ semi-
nary into the arms of a wet sweep. After this,
the idiotic hilarity of the spectators, and the
disreputable appearance of the hat, when
recovered, appear but of 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 abol-
ished. In the world’s grim workshops, it is
like the children—out of place. Neither show
to advantage amidst 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 hu-
On the Weaſhe?'. IO3
man atoms, they are not children. Children
are bright-eyed, chubby, and shy. These are
dingy, screeching elves, their tiny faces seared
and withered, their baby laughter cracked and
hoarse.
The spring of life, 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 amongst the leafless
woods, and the brambly lanes, on the healthy
moors, and the great, still hills, if we want to
feel its joyous breath, and hear its silent
voices. There is a glorious freshness 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 rain-
bow 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 March wind.
IO4 On the Weather.
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 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 thoughts, and very
vague; we cannot see their end.
It must be so. All thoughts that peer out-
side this narrow world cannot 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 pleasant 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.
OW CATS AWD DOG.S.
HAT I’ve suffered from them this morn-
ing no tongue can tell. It began with
Gustavus Adolphus. Gustavus Adolphus (they
call him “Gusty” downstairs for short) is a
very good sort of a dog, when he is in the
middle of a 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
what-not. 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 Sud-
denly; the first intimation we have of his
movements being given by the table, which
appears animated by a desire to turn somer-
saults. We all clutch at it frantically, and
endeavour to maintain it in a horizontal posi-
Io5
I of On Cats and Dogs.
tion ; 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 in-
furiated 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 waist-coat.
I rose from my chair, hurriedly, and remark-
ing, “ ,” approached him at
a rapid rate. He preceded me in the direc-
tion 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 downstairs, and not
let me see him again for the next hour or so ;
and he, seeming to agree with me, dodged the
On Cats and Dogs. Io 7
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 at 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—
mind, this is strictly between ourselves, please;
I shouldn’t like your wife to know I said it,
the women folk 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
vapouring. When a man has said: “Bless
Io8 On Cats and Dogs.
you, my dear, sweet sir. What the sun, moon,
and stars made you so careless (if I may be
permitted the expression) as to allow your light
and delicate foot to descend upon my corn with
so much force P 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
chimney. 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 out-
let, the anger caused by the ever-occurring
troubles of life is apt to rankle and fester with-
in. The petty annoyance, instead of being
thrown from us, sits down beside us, and
becomes a sorrow, and the little offense is
brooded over till, in the hot-bed of rumina-
tion, it grows into a great injury, under
On Cats and ZXags. Io9
Assº-
whose poisonous shadow springs 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 feel-
ings.
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 so
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
to 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
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
I IO On Cats and Dogs.
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 grey-headed
Scotch collie.
Tittum’s mother has come in, and Tim has
got his nose scratched, for which I am remark-
ably 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 contractor 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 conversation. They never make stupid
remarks. They never observe to Miss Brown
across a dinner-table, that they always under-
stood she was very sweet on Mr. Jones (who
has just married Miss Robinson). They never
On Cats and Dogs. I I I
mistake your wiſe’s cousin for her husband,
and ſancy that you are the father-in-law. And
they never ask a young author with fourteen
tragedics, 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 mo-
ments, 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 inform 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 humours. They are merry
when we are glad, sober when we feel solemn,
sad when we are sorrowful.
“Hulloa 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 P
I I 2 On Cats and Dogs.
A romp in the drawing-room, and never mind
the furniture, 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, neither. 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 keep-
ing 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
On Cats and Dogs. II 3
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 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 misfortune, good repute or bad,
honour or shame, he is going to stick to you,
to comfort you, guard you, give his life for
you, if need be—foolish, brainless, Soulless
dog
Ah old staunch 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 P Do you know that dull-
eyed, gin-sodden lout, leaning against the post
out there, is immeasurably your intellectual
superior P Do you know that every little-
minded, selfish scoundrel, who lives by cheat-
ing and tricking, who never did a gentle deed,
or said a kind word, who never had a thought
II 4 On Cats and Dogs.
that was not mean and 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 there are mil-
lions of them in the world), do you know they
are all as much superior to you as the sun is
Superior to rushlight, you honourable, brave-
hearted, unselfish brute? They are MEN, you
know, and MEN are the greatest, noblest, and
wisest, and best Beings in the whole vast eter-
nal Universe. 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 philoso-
phy, 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 woman, and a woman's ideal man
is some one she can call a “dear old stupid.”
It is so pleasant to come across people more
On Caſs and Dogs. I I5
--e.
stupid than ourselves. 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.
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 selfish-
ness. Cats certainly 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 libelled.
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
I 16 On Cats and Dogs.
-ms
everywhere, until it even got quite embarrass-
ing, and I had to beg her, as a personal favour,
not to accompany me any further down the
High Street. She used to sit up for me when
I was 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 outside the cellar door for the pur-
pose of sneaking in on the first opportunity,
and lapping up the 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 trans-
migration 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
particularly 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
On Cats and Dogs. 117
cats and dogs may gain credit for killing them,
and chemists make a fortune by inventing
specialities in poison for their destruction.
And yet there is something fascinating about
them. There is a weirdness 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 creak-
ing 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 forgotten.
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, sob-
II 8 On Cats and Dogs.
bing, round the ruined turrent towers, and
passes wailing like a woman through the cham-
bers bare and tenantless.
And dying prisoners, in their loathsome
dungeons, 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 them all to death.
But the next day there came thousands upon
thousands of rats, sent to do judgment on him.
Then Bishop Hatto fled to 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
On Cats and Dogs. . I 19
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
afterwards, 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 a meaning at all P There seems some-
thing strange and deep lying hid beneath the
rippling rhyme. It haunts me, that picture of
the quaint, mysterious old piper, piping
through Hamelin's narrow streets, and the
children following with dancing feet and
thoughtful, eager faces. The old folk 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
:
©
I 20 On Cats and Dogs.
the playthings drop from their careless hands.
They know not whither they are hastening.
The mystic music calls to them, and they fol-
low, heedless and unasking where. It stirs
and vibrates in their hearts, and other sounds
grow faint. So they wander through Pied
Piper street away from Hamelin town.
I get thinking sometimes if the Pied Piper
is really dead, or if he may not still be roam-
ing 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 wrapt, with straining
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 Piper, 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
On Cats aud Dogs. I 2 I
is 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 learnt to listen for will cry to
us to stop. But we shall push the fond arms
gently back, and pass out through the Sorrow-
ing 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
getting maudlin over them, as so many do.
Women are the most hardened offenders in
such respect, but even our intellectual sex often
degrade pets into nuisances by absurd idolatry.
There are the gushing young ladies who, hav-
ing read David Copperfield, have thereupon
sought out a small, long-haired dog of nonde-
script breed, possessed of an irritating habit of
criticising a man’s trousers, and of finally
commenting upon the same by a sniff, indi-
cative of contempt and disgust. They talk
I 2.2 On Cats and Dogs.
sweet girlish prattle to this animal (when there
is any one near enough to overhear them), and
they kiss its nose, and put its unwashed head
up against their cheek in a most touching man-
ner; 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 centred upon the dog. Cats,
by the way, rarely suffer from excess of adula-
tion. 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 en-
courage their owners in the tomfoolery, and
On Cats and Dogs. I 23
the consequence is, that in the circles I am
speaking of, what “dear Fido ’’ has done,
does do, will do, won’t do, can do, can’t do,
was doing, is doing, is going to do, shall do,
shan’t do, and is about to be going to 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 remem-
bering 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, who 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 recollec-
tions, they vie with each other in bursts of
admiration for the brute, until some more
than usually enthusiastic member, unable any
longer to control his feelings, Swoops down
upon the unhappy quadruped, in a frenzy of
I 24 On Cats and Dogs.
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 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 doggy nature has been warped by the un-
natural treatment he has received, responds to
your overtures of friendship by viciously snap-
ping at you, your cause is lost for ever.
“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 I
he knows, bless him.”
Drat him
On Cats and Dogs. I 25
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 in at one end, to come out old and
crabbed and wrinkled at the other.
Look even at Pussy Sobersides, with her dull
sleepy glance, her grave slow walk, and digni-
fied, prudish airs; who could ever think that
once she was the blue-eyed, whirling, scamper-
ing, head-over-heels, mad little firework that
we called a kitten.
What marvellous vitality a kitten has. It is
really something very beautiful the way life
bubbles over in the little creatures. They rush
about, and mew, and Spring ; dance on their
hind legs, embrace everything with their front
ones, roll over and over, lie on their backs and
kick. They don’t know what to do with
themselves, they are so full of life.
Can you rememember, reader, when you
and I felt something of the same sort of thing?
I 26 On Cats and Dogs.
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 thought—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 knew 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 throbbing 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 woman and the
little children to our breast, and love them all
—all. Ah they were grand days, those deep
full days, when our coming life, like an unseen
organ, pealed strange, yearnful music in our
ears, and our young blood cried out like a war-
horse for the battle. Ah, our pulse beats slow
On Caſs and ZXags. 127
and steady now, and our old joints are rheu-
matic, 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.
O/W BEING SP/V.
Aºi. great literary men are shy. I am my-
self though I am told it is hardly notice-
able.
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
One about me—my lady friends, especially,
complained most bitterly about it
A shy man's lot is not a happy one. The
men dislike him, the women despise him, and
he dislikes and despises himself. Use brings
him no relief, and there is no cure for him
except time ; though I once came across a de-
licious receipt for overcoming the misſortune.
It appeared among the “answers to corre-
spondents’’ in a small, weekly journal, and ran
as follows—I have never forgotten it:-‘‘Adopt
an easy and pleasing manner, especially towards
ladies.”
Poor wretch I can imagine the grin with
I 28
On Being Shy. I 29
which he must have read that advice. “Adopt
an easy and pleasing manner, especially towards
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 becom-
ing ridiculously 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 com-
municate his misery. He frightens other people
as much as they frighten him. He acts like a
damper upon the whole room, and the most
jovial spirits become, in his presence, depressed
and nervous.
This is a good deal brought about by mis-
understanding. 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 completely fails him, he is
I 30 On Being Shy.
regarded as an awful example 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 endeavours 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 afterwards.
These, and the rest of a shy man's troubles,
are always very amusing, to other people; and
have afforded material for comic writing from
time immemorial. But if we look a little
deeper, we shall find there is a pathetic, one
might almost say a tragic, side to the 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
•ver an impassable barrier—a strong, invisible
On Being Shy. I 3 I
wall, that, trying 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 cannot 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 gaily to one an-
other, and he cannot stay them. He trics to
reach them, but his prison walls move with
him, and hem him in on cvery side. In the
busy street, in the crowded room, in the grind
of work, in the whirl of pleasure, amidst the
many or amidst the few ; wherever men con-
gregate 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 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 sym-
I 32 On Being Shy.
pathy 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, in-
stead 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 rhinoc-
eros. Thick skin is, indeed, our moral clothes,
and without it, we are not fit to be seen about
in civilised society. A poor gasping, blushing
creature, with trembling knees and twitching
hands, is a painful sight to every one, and if it
cannot cure itself, the sooner it goes and hangs
itself the better.
The disease can be cured. For the comfort
of the shy, I can assure them of that from per-
sonal experience. I do not like speaking
about myself, 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,
On Being Shy. I 33
as the young man in the Bab Ballad says, “the
shyest of the shy,” and “whenever I was in
troduced to any pretty maid, my knees they
knocked together just as if I was afraid.” Now,
I would—nay, have—on this very day before
yesterday I did the deed. Alone and entirely
by myself (as the schoolboy said in translating
the Bellum Gallicum) did I beard a railway
refreshment-room young lady in her own lair.
I rebuked her in terms of mingled bitterness and
sorrow for her callousness and want of con-
descension. I insisted, courteously but firmly,
on being accorded that deference and attention
that was the right of the travelling Briton ;
and, at the end, / looked her ful/ in the face.
Need I say more ?
True, that immediately after doing so, I left
the room with what may possibly have ap-
peared to be precipitation, and without waiting
for any refreshment. But that was because I
had changed my mind, not because I was
frightened, you understand.
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
I 34 On Being Shy.
clowns to sneer at nerves, but the highest na-
tures 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 philosophy.
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
roomful of people, and think that each one is a
mere child in intellect compared with your-
self, you feel no more shy of them than you
would of a select company of magpies or
Orang-Outangs.
Conceit is the finest armour 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 sword of talent cannot force its way
On AEeing Shy. I 35
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 con-
ceited ; like children play at being kings and
queens, and go strutting about with feathers
and long trains. Genuine conceit does not
make a man objectionable. 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 deep-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, valu-
ing no one’s standard but his own, he is never
tempted to practise that miserable pretence
that less self-reliant people offer up as an
hourly sacrifice to the god of their neighbours'
opinion.
The shy man, on the other hand, is humble,
modest of his own judgment, and over-
I 36 On Being Shy.
anxious concerning that of others. But this,
in the case of a young man, is surely right
enough. His character 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 hobbledehoy
period. Even if his own inward strength does
not throw it off, the rubbings 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-bye, he is much ad-
mired, 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 gallery 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
On Being Shy. I 37
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 him,
and jeer at him, but he takes it all so gently,
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 every-
body 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 generally 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 in-
teresting there as in the fiction. He is a little
more clumsy and stupid, and a little less de-
voted 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 in 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
I 38 On Being Shy.
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.
Now, it is different with the young man who
is not shy. He has temptations which his
bashful brother never encounters. He looks
around, and everywhere sees roguish eyes and
laughing lips. What more natural than that
amidst 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 be-
longs 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
On Aeing Shy. I 39
by a tremendous effort, plunge into roguish-
ness. 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
never is pitied. There are certain misfortunes
which, while inflicting a vast amount of suffer-
ing upon their victims, gain for them no
sympathy. Losing an umbrella, falling in love,
toothache, black eyes, and having your hat sat
upon, may 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 colour,” sneers a
millitary-looking gentleman.
“Pity he's got so many hands,” murmurs
an elderly lady, with her own calmy folded on
her lap. “They quite confuse him.”
I 4o On Being Shy.
“A yard or two off his feet wouldn’t be a
disadvantage,” chimes in the comic man,
“especially as he seems so anxious to hide
them.’’ e
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 ex-
hausted.
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 amongst themselves, they insist on
his seeing the joke. They mimic and caricature
him for his own edification. One, pretending
to imitate him, goes outside, and comes in
again in a ludicrously nervous manner, explain-
ing to him afterwards that that is the way he—
meaning the shy fellow—walks into a room ;
or, turning to him with, “This is the way you
shake hands,” proceeds to go through a comic
On Being Shy. I4 I
pantomime with the rest of the room, taking
hold of every one's hand as if it were a hot
plate, and flabbily dropping it again. And
then they ask him why he blushes, and zwhy he
stammers, and zohy he always speaks in an
almost inaudible tone, as if they thought he
did it on purpose. Then one of them, stick-
ing 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 be ashamed of, Algernon, and then yon
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 the sex
by indignantly exclaiming that they are sure
no girl would be half so 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
I42 On Being Shy.
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 theo-
ries, mere nonsense. The girl of twelve is self-
Contained, and as cool as the proverbial cucum-
ber, 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 audience without moving
a hair, while her husband follows her, a crushed
heap of apologising 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 com-
ment. Nor is the example a fair one to cite in
the present instance, 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.
OW BAA/ES.
H yes, I do—I know a lot about 'em. I
was one myself once—though not long,
not so long as my clothes. 7/ey were very
long, I recollect, and always in my way when I
wanted to kick. Why do babies have such
yards of unnecessary clothing P 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—
“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 dis-
posed of my difficulty, she replied—
‘‘Ilor', sir, you wouldn’t have 'em in short
clothes, poor little dears?” And she said it in
a tone that seemed to imply l had suggested
Some unmanly outrage.
I 43
I 44 On Aabies.
Since then, I have felt shy at making in-
quiries on the subject, and the reason—if reason
there be—is still a mystery to me. But, in-
deed, putting 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 day-time?
Very likely, however, I am only making my-
self ridiculous—I often do ; SO I am informed
—and I will, therefore, say no more upon this
matter of clothes, except only that it would be
of great convenience 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
On Aabies. I 45
clue, and you are left to guess. By some
mysterious law of Nature you invariably guess
wrong, and are thereupon regarded by all the
relatives and friends as a mixture of fool and
knave, the enormity of alluding to a male babe
as “she” being only equalled by the atrocity of
referring to a female infant as “he.” Which-
ever sex the particular child in question happens
not to belong to is considered as beneath con-
tempt, 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
murdering a large and respected family in cold
blood, and afterwards depositing their bodies
in the water companies’ reservoir, you will
gain much unpopularity in the neighbourhood
of your crime, and even robbing a church will
get you cordially disliked, 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.”
I 46 On Aabies.
Your best plan is to address the article as
“little angel.” The noun angel “being of
Common gender, suits the case admirably, and
the epithet is sure of being favourably 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, nonsense ! ” You must
then get excited, and insist that it is a fact.
You need ilave no conscientious scruples on
the subject, because the thing’s nose really
does resemble its father's—at all events quite
as much as it does anything else in nature—
being, as it is, a mere smudge.
Do not despise these hints, my friends.
There may come a time when, with mamma
on one side and grandmannma on the other, a
group of admiring young ladies (not admiring
On Aabies. I47
—A-----—
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 de-
lighted he shall be, ought surely to move even
a mother's heart, unless, as I am inclined to
believe, the whole proceeding is a mere device,
adopted by wives to discourage the visits of
bachelor friends.
It is a cruel trick, though, whatever its
excuse may be. The bell is rung, and some-
body sent to tell nurse to bring baby down.
This is the signal for all the females present to
commence talking “baby,” during which
time, you are left to your own sad thoughts,
and to speculations upon the practicability of
suddenly recollecting an important engage-
ment, and the likelihood of your being believed
if you do. Just when you have concocted an
absurdly implausible tale about a man outside,
the door opens, and a tall, severe-looking
I 48 On AEabies.
woman enters, carrying what at first sight ap-
pears 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 appearing 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
forward. 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 every
one is waiting for you to speak. You try to
think of something to say, but find, to your
horror, that your reasoning faculties have left
you. It is a moment of despair, and your evil
genius, seizing the opportunity, suggests to
you some of the most idiotic remarks that it is
possible for a human being to perpetrate.
Glancing round with an imbecile Smile, you
sniggeringly observe that “It hasn't got much
On Aabies. I 49
hair, has it?” Nobody answers you 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 towards you, “Take
her in your arms, sir.” You are too crushed
to offer any resistance, and so meekly accept
the burden. “Put your 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
I5o On Babies.
to you is to heave the unhappy infant up and
down to the accompaniment of “oopsee-
daisy,” or some remark of equal intelligence.
“I wouldn'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 with,
“There, there, there ! What did ums do to
ums?” “How very extraordinary ’’ you
say pleasantly. “Whatever made it go off like
that P” “Oh, why you must have done some-
thing to her l’’ says the mother indignantly ;
“ the child wouldn’t scream like that for
nothing.” It is evident they think you have
been running pins into it.
The brat is calmed at last, and would no
doubt remain quiet enough, only Some mis-
chievous busybody points you out again with
“Who’s this, baby?” and the intelligent
On Aabies. I5 I
child, recognising you, howls louder than ever.
Whereupon, some fat old lady remarks that
“It’s strange how children take a dislike to
any one.” “Oh, they know,” replies another
mysteriously. “It’s a wonderful thing,” adds
a third ; and then everybody looks sideways at
you, convinced that you are a scoundrel of the
blackest dye ; and then glory in the beautiful
idea that your true character, unguessed by
your fellowmen, has been discovered by the
untaught instinct 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 uncon-
scious comedians of the world's great stage,
They supply the humour in life’s all too heavy
drama. Each one, a small but determined
opposition to the order of things in general,
is for ever doing the wrong thing, at the wrong
time, in the wrong place, and in the wrong
I52 On Babies.
way. The nurse-girl, who sent Jenny to see
what Tommy and Totty were doing, and “tell
'em they musn't,” knew infantile nature.
Give an average baby a fair chance, and if it
doesn’t do something it oughn’t to, a doctor
should be called in at once.
They have a genius for doing the most
ridiculous things, and they do them in a grave,
Stoical manner that is irresistible. The busi-
ness-like air with which two of them will join
hands and proceed 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—except, perhaps, for the big
sister. They walk round a soldier, staring at
his legs with the greatest curiosity, and poke
him to see if he is real. They stoutly main-
tain, 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 favourable 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 door-
On A'affaes. I53
step 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 walk-
ing 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 blackleading the stove, and nothing
will relieve their feelings but to embrace her
then and there. With regard to food, their
favourite dishes are coke and cat's-meat.
They nurse pussy upside down, and they show
their affection for the dog by pulling his tail.
They are a great deal of trouble, and they
make a place untidy, and they cost a lot of
money to keep ; but still we 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 without 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,
dividing. It is a bearish task to quarrel with
I 54 On Babies.
that purest of all human affections—that per-
fecting touch to a woman’s life—a mother's
love. It is a holy love, that we coarser-fibred
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 af.
fections. The baby need not take your whole
heart like the rich man who walled up the
desert well. Is there not another thirsty
traveller standing by ?
Do not, in your desire to be a good mother,
forget to be a good wife. No need for all the
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 burnt 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
On Aabzes. I55
deal to 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 parlour 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 wife too busy
to think of him has lost their hold on that so
unreasonable husband of yours, and he has
learnt to look elsewhere for comfort and com.
panionship.
But there, there, there ! I shall get myself
the character of a baby hater, if I talk any
more in this strain. And Heaven knows I am
not one. Who could be, to look into the inno-
cent faces clustered in timid helplessness round
those great gates that open down into the
world.
The world ! the small round world ! what a
156 One Babzes.
vast, mysterious place it must seem to baby
eyes | What a trackless continent the back
garden appears | What marvellous explora-
tions 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, ghost-like, and struck its
heart dead with horror.
Poor little feet, just commencing the stony
journey ! We, old travellers, 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
towards us. God speed you ! We would stay
Om Pabzes. I57
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
shadow ships are waiting to spread their sable
sails.
OW EAT/AWG AMVD DRIAWKING.
ALWAYS was fond of eating and drinking,
even as a child—especially eating, in those
early days. I had an appetite then, also a
digestion. I remember a dull-eyed, livid-com-
plexioned gentleman coming to dine at our
house once. He watched me eating for about
five minutes, quite fascinated, seemingly, and
then he turned to my father, with, “Does your
boy ever suffer from dyspepsia?”
‘‘I never heard him complain of anything of
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 P”
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.”
158
On Eating and Drinking. I59
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 feed-
ing 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 pre-
ferred, as being more substantial), plenty of
greens, and four thick slices of Yorkshire pud-
ding, followed by a couple of currant dump-
lings, a few green apples, a pen'orth of nuts,
half-a-dozen jumbles, and a bottle of ginger
beer. After that, they 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
I6o On Eating and Drinking.
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
whatever to a boy. To a man, it is a good
fairy's potion, and, after it, the world appears a
brighter and a better place. A man who has
dined satisfactorily experiences a yearning love
towards all his fellow creatures. He strokes
the cat quite gently, and calls it “poor pussy,”
in tones full of the tenderest emotion. He
sympathises 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 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 children on the head,
and to talk to them—vaguely—about sixpences.
On Eating and Drinking. I61
Serious young men thaw, and become mildly
cheerful; and snobbish young men, of the
heavy moustache type, forget to make them-
selves objectionable.
I always feel sentimental myself after dinner.
It is the only time when I can properly appre-
ciate love stories. Then, when the hero clasps
‘‘ her ’’ 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. Diges-
tion, or rather indigestion, has a marvellous
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 unut-
terable melancholy has come over me. I picture
heart-broken lovers parting for ever at lonely
wayside stiles, while the sad twilight deepens
around them, and Only the tinkling of a
distant sheep bell breaks the Sorrow-laden
162 On Eating and Drinking.
—,
silence. Old men sit and gaze at withered
flowers 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 playmates 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
wailing 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 melancholy 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
On Aating and ZXrinking. I 63
or inclination to indulge in fanciful troubles,
until we have got rid of our real misfortunes.
We do not sigh over dead dicky-birds with the
bailiffs in the house ; and, when we do not
know where on earth to get our next shilling
from, we do not worry as to whether our
mistress's Smiles are cold, or hot, or lukewarm,
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 agonising than
bodily. Romantic and touching theory ! so
comforting to the love-sick young sprig who
looks down patronisingly at some poor devil
with a white starved face, and thinks to himself,
“Ah, how happy you are compared with
me !” So soothing to fat old gentlemen who
cackle about the Superiority of poverty over
riches. But it is all nonsense—all cant. An
I64 On AEaſing and Drinking.
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 any-
thing else.
We sleek, well-fed folk can hardly realise
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 understand 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 windows, 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, flavour-
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
walk after breakfast, and don’t touch anything
till you get back. How your eyes will glisten
On AEaſing and Drinking. I65
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 afterwards, as you push
back your chair, light a cigar, and beam round
upon cverybody.
Make sure, however, when adopting this
plan, that the good dinner is really to be had
at the end, or the disappointment is trying. I
remember 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 holiday together, and one morning
we had breakfast early, and started for a
tremendous long walk. We had ordered a
duck for dinner over night. 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.
I66 On Bating and Drinking.
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 knew their own power.
Then we started.
We lost our way, of course. I always do in
the country, and it does make me so wild,
because it is no use asking direction of any of
the people you meet. One might as well
inquire of 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. You yell it at him
then for a 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, request-
ing his advice. The two then argue the case
On Faſing and Drinking. 167
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 windmill
used to be—but its 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 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 !
We 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
I 68 On Jºating and Drinking.
vision, it ſloated before our tired eyes, and
drew us onward. The thought of it was as a
trumpet call to the ſainting. We talked of it,
and cheered cach other with our recollections
of it. “Come along,” we said, “the duck
will be spoilt.”
We felt a strong temptation, at one point,
to turn into a village inn we passed, and have
a checse and a few loaves between us; but we
heroically restrained ourselves; we should
enjoy the duck all the better for being
famished.
We ſancied we smelt it when we got into
the town and did the last quarter of a mile in
three minutes. We rushed upstairs, and
washed ourselves, and changed Our clothes,
and came down, and pulled our chairs up to
the table, and sat and rul)bed our hands while
the landlady removed the covers, when I Ścized
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
On Eating and Drinking. 169
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 eſſort. But Joe
was getting unpleasant. He said that if he
had thought we were to have a game of blind
hockey with the dinner, he would have got a
bit of bread and cheese outside.
I was too exhausted to argue. I 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 a
while, and then he muttered, “IDamn the
duck,” and took his coat off.
We did break the thing up at length, with
the aid of a chisel; but it was perfectly im-
possible to eat it, and we had to make a dinner
off the vegetables and an apple tart. We tried
a mouthful of 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 7o On Eating and Drinking.
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 effeminacy. On the contrary, in
these Sadly degenerate 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 gentleman.
Even now-a-days, though, the thirstiness of
mankind is something supernatural. We are
for ever drinking on one excuse or other. A
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 healths, and spoil our
own. We drink the Queen, and the Army,
On AEaſing and Z277/king. I 71
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 eaf anybody's health,
always drink it. Why 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
labour is quite unaccountable. I can under-
stand people drinking to drown care, or to
drive away maddening thoughts, well enough.
1 can understand 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 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
172 On Eating and Drinking.
wretched creatures really means. Picture the
squalid misery of their brutish existence,
dragged on from year to year in the narrow,
noisome room where, huddled like vermin in
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
munches 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 bed to the hour when they lounge
back into it again, they never live one moment
of real life. Recreation, amusement, com-
panionship, they know not the meaning of.
Joy, Sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship,
On Jºating and Drinking. I 73
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 for ever, and their
bones are shovelled 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 happi-
ness 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.
ON “FURAWISHED 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’ll be up
in a minute.”
So you step inside, and, after a minute,
“mother’’ comes slowly up the kitchen stairs,
untying her apron as she comes, and calling
down instructions 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.”
y
I 74
On “A”urnished Apartments.” I 75
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.
At the first landing, you run up against a pail
and a broom, whereupon ‘‘mother ’’ expatiates
upon the unreliability of servant girls, and
bawls over the balusters for Sarah to come and
take them away at once. When you get out-
side 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; and she also adds that this is
their cleaning day—it always is. With this
understanding, you enter, and both stand
solemnly feasting your eyes upon the scene
before you. The rooms cannot be said to ap-
pear inviting. Even “mother’s’’ face betrays
no admiration. Untenanted “furnished apart-
ments,” viewed in the morning sunlight, do
not inspire cheery sensations. There is a life-
less 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
176 On “A”urnished Apartments.”
all your little nick-nacks 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 posi-
tions—with one carpet slipper peeping from
beneath the coal-box, and the other perched on
the top of the piano—with the well-known
pictures to hide the dingy walls, and those 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 bygone days, when the
sweet old face was laughing 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 1 Many a summer and winter have come
and gone since then, my friend, and you have
played with the dancing firelight, until you
have grown sad and grey. Your brilliant
colours are fast fading now, and the envious
On “ Fºrmished Apartments.” 177
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 young days, when
you lay on my little mother's lap, and her
girlish fingers played with your rainbow tresses.
Was there never a lad near, sometimes—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 interfering 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 P 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
178 On “Furmished Apartments.”
-
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 reverence, 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 re-arrange you, before he was
forgiven, and his curly head smoothed by my
mother's little hand P Ah old screen, and
did the lads and the lassies go making love fifty
years ago just as they do now P Are men and
women so unchanged? Did little maidens'
hearts beat the same under pearl embroidered
bodices as they do under Mother Hubbard
cloaks P Have steel casques and chimney-pot
hats made no difference to the brains that work
beneath them P Oh, Time ! great Chronos
and is this your power? Have you dried up
seas and levelled mountains, and left the tiny
human heart strings to defy you? Ah, yes!
they were spun by a Mightier than thou, and
they stretch beyond your narrow ken, for their
ends are made fast in eternity. Ay, you may
On “A”urnished Apartments.” I 79
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 cannot 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 king-
dom, for in its birthplace “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 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 | What passionate whisperings
the settee must have overheard |
New furniture has no charms for me, com-
pared with old. It is the old things that we
I8o On “Furmished Apartments.”
love—the old faces, the old books, the old
jokes. New furniture can make a palace, but
it takes old furniture 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 recollections. The furni-
ture of furnished apartments, 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 diſference between the two species some-
times) everything impresses you with its worst
aspect. The knobby woodwork and 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 was rested on it. The grate
is cheerless, the wall-paper hideous. The ceiling
appears to have had coffee spilt all over it, and
the ornaments—well, they are worse than the
wall-paper.
There must surely be some special and secret
manufactory for the production of lodging-
On “A”urnished Apartments.” I 81
house ornaments. Precisely the same articles
are to be found at every lodging-house all over
the kingdom, and they are never seen anyz0/here
e/se. There are the two—what do you call
them P 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 anything else you like to
fancy. Somewhere about the room you come
across a bilious-looking object, 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 underdone 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.
I82 On “Furmished Apartments.”
You examine these various attractions, and
then dismally ask what the rent is.
“That’s rather a good deal,” you say, on
hearing the figure.
“Well, to tell you the truth,” answers the
landlady with a sudden burst of candour, “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, when-
ever the subject crops up, that she used to get
twice as 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
On “A”urnished Apartments.” 183
in 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
dictionary, 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 Goldsmith wrote in garrets.
Faraday and De Quincey knew them well.
Dr. Johnson camped cheerfully in them, sleep-
ing - Soundly—too soundly sometimes—upon
their truckle beds, like 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, dreamt his sweet
fancies beneath their sloping roofs. Poor,
wayward-hearted Collins leant his head upon
I84 On “A”urnished Apartments.”
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, Watts, 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 honours 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 art—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 instance:–These mighty truths
were flashed forth in the brilliant salon, amidst
the ripple of light laughter and the sparkle of
bright eyes; and This deep knowledge was
dug up in the quiet study, where the bust of
Pallas looks serenely down on leather-scented
shelves; and This heap belongs to the crowded
street; and That to the daisied field,—the
heap that would tower up high above the rest,
On “A”urnished Apartments.” 185
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 amidst
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
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, for-
gotten.
I86 On “Furnished Apartments.”
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 no, 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 housetops 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 Revolution,
and civilisation 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 facili-
ties for bumping your head, and too few for
shaving. And the note of the tom cat, as he
sings to his love in the stilly night, outside on
On “Furnished Apartments.” 187
the tiles, becomes positively distasteful when
heard so near.
No, for living in, give me a suite of rooms
on the first floor of a Picadilly mansion (I wish
somebody 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
Teufelsdröckh's affection for attics. There is a
sublimity about their loftiness. I love to “sit
at ease and look down upon the wasps' nest
beneath;” to listen to the dull murmur of the
human tide, ebbing and flowing ceaselessly
through the narrow streets and lanes below.
How small men seem, how like a swarm of ants
sweltering in endless confusion on their tiny
hill! How pretty seems the work on which
they are hurrying and skurrying ! How child-
ishly they jostle against one another, and turn
to snarl and scratch 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
I88 On “A”urnished Apartments.”
years ago. Of all eccentrically planned things,
from Bradshaw to the maze at Hampton Court,
that room was the eccentricalist. The archi-
tect 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 fireplace. The only possible
position for the bedstead 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 commod-
ities thus obtained were absorbed by the bed-
clothes. Indeed, so many things were spilled,
and dropped upon the bed that, towards 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
exciting moment when we reached the middle
On “Aurnished Apartments.” 189
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 the shovel, and the bed would be
all mixed up together.
I’ve heard of 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
humour. The arrangement of the whole house
was a marvel of originality. All the doors
opened outwards, so that if any one wanted to
leave a room at the same moment that you were
coming downstairs 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 enter-
ing 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 mur-
der, as they lay on their backs at the bottom,
till somebody came and picked them up.
I 9o On “A”urnished Apartments.”
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 difference to me. Life tastes much the
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-ceiling'd
rooms, yet disappointments have come neither
less nor lighter since I quitted them. Life
works upon a compensating balance, and the
happiness we gain in one direction we lose in
another. As our means increase, so do our
desires; and we never 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 elaborate
dinner at the “Continental '' to give us the
same amount of Satisfaction.
OW DA’ESS AAWD DAEPORTMENT
They 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 correct. I know that when l 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 washerwoman 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 himself 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
I 9 I
I 92 On Dress and Deportment.
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 this unpleasant
sort of things happened, and I felt crushed, I
put on all my best clothes, and went out. It
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 was somebody, and that
there were other washerwomen; aye, 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 maidens, I felt that
in those clothes I could do it.
They have a wonderful deal to do with
courting, clothes have. It is half the battle.
At 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
On Dress and Deportment. I 93
to wear his light suit with a cane and a 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 evening
trying to hide his boots. If, on the other
hand, he decides in favour 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 with-
out 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. It lasts me a very long while. I’ve
had my present one five years. It was rather
old-fashioned last summer, but the shape has
come round again now, and I look quite
stylish. g
But to return to our young man and his
courting. If he starts off with the top hat and
umbrella, the afternoon turns out fearfully hot,
and the perspiration takes all the soap out of
his moustache, and converts the beautifully.
I94 On Dress and Deportment.
arranged curl over his forehead into a limp
wisp, resembling a lump of seaweed. The
Fates are never favourable 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 encased in smalls, their dainty
Hessian boots, their ruffling 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 com-
pletely won. Men could win hearts in clothes
like that. But what can you expect from
baggy trousers and a monkey jacket P
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
hanging down, like a man going out to fetch
his own supper beer. But deck out the same
On Dress and Deportment. I95
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 broad-cloth and tweed as ever
existed beneath silk and velvet; but the spirit
of that knightly chivalry, that “ rode a tilt for
lady's love,” and “fought for lady’s smiles,”
needs the clatter of steel and the rustle of
plumes to summon it from its grave between
the dusty folds of tapestry and underneath the
musty leaves of mouldering 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
196 On Dress and Deportment.
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 became 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 gentleman—to think it could
ever have gone gadding about as a troubadour
or a knight-errant, dressed in all those fancy
colours Ah, well ! we are more sensible in
this age.
Or, at least, we think ourselves so. It is a
On Dress and Deportment. 197
general theory now-a-days that sense and dulness
go together.
Goodness is another quality that always
goes with blackness. Very good people in-
deed, you will notice, dress altogether in
black, even to gloves and neckties, and they
will probably take to black shirts before long.
Medium goods indulge in light trousers on
weekdays, and some of them even go so far as
to wear fancy waistcoats. On the other hand,
people who care nothing for a future state go
about in light suits; and there have been
known wretches so abandoned 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 afterwards. The popu-
lation 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 ex-
perience. I do not wear such things at all
myself. As I said, only sinful people do so.
198 On Dress and Deportment.
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, cylin-
drical 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 mat-
ter.) I want to put on lavender-coloured
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 P Why shouldn’t we dress a little gaily P 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 them-
On Dress and Deportment. I99
selves 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, good-
ness knows, the old world would be dull
enough without their pretty 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 bach-
elor chambers and what a delightful litter their
ribbons and laces, and gloves and hats, and
parasols and 'kerchiefs make It is as if a wan-
dering rainbow had dropt 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 colours. 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 colours such a long way
off. There are four white dresses climbing a
hill in front of my window now. I can see
them distinctly, though it is three miles away.
I thought, at first, they were milestones out
2OO On Dress and Deportment.
for a lark. It’s so nice to be able to see the
darlings a long way off. Especially if they
happen to be your wife and your mother-in-
law.
Talking of fields and milestones, 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 farther, 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 bootmakers to reform.
Our wives, our daughters, and our cousins are
not to be lamed and tortured with impunity.
Why cannot “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 dress-
makers make these things so loose that the
On Dress and Deportment. 2O I
hooks and eyes by which they are fastened
burst off, every now and then, with a report
like thunder.
Why women suffer these wrongs—why they
do not insist in having their clothes made small
enough for them, I cannot 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 to-
gether, you may bet your bottom dollar they
are discussing their own or their friends'
clothes. You notice a couple of child-like
beings, conversing by a window, and you won-
der 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-coloured body to the Jones's, with a yel-
low plastron ; and they’ve got some lovely
gloves at Puttick's, only one and elevenpence.”
I went for a drive through a part of Derby-
2O2 On Dress and Deportment.
*
shire once, with a couple of ladies. It was a
beautiful bit of country, and they enjoyed
themselves immensely. They talked dress-
making the whole time.
“Pretty view, that,” I would say, waving
my umbrella round. “Look at those blue,
distant hills | That little white speck, nest-
ling 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 “charm-
ing,” “sweetly pretty,” and immediately go
off into raptures over each other's pocket-hand-
kerchiefs, and mourn with one another over
the decadence of cambric frilling.
I believe if two women were cast together
upon a desert island, they would spend each
day arguing the respective merits of sea-shells
and birds' eggs, considered as trimmings, and
would have a new fashion in fig leaves every
month.
On Dress and ZXe/or/menſ. 2O3
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 favourite with his own sex.
Indeed, he gets a good deal more abuse from
them than is necessary. His is a harmless
failing, and it soon wears out. Besides, a man
who has no foppery at twenty will be a slat-
ternly, 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, retiring 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 this
world. Uriah Heap's father was a very poor
judge of human nature, or he would not have
told his son, as he did, that people liked
humbleness. 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-
hearted individuals. They turn away our wrath,
and that is just what we do not want. We want
2O4 On Dress and Deportment.
to let it out. We have worked ourselves up into
a state of exhilirating fury, and then just as we
are anticipating the enjoyment of a vigorous set-
to, they spoil all our plans with their exasper-
ating humility.
Xantippe's life must have been one long
misery, tied to that calmly irritating man, Soc-
rates. Fancy a married woman doomed to live
on from day to day without one single quarrel
with her husband A man ought to humour his
wife in these things. Heaven knows their lives
are dull enough, poor girls. They have none
of the enjoyments we have. They go to no
political meetings; they may not even belong
to the local amateur parliament; they are ex-
cluded from smoking carriages on the Metro-
politan 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 sen-
sible man does so, and is loved accordingly, for
it is little acts of kindness such as this that go
On Dress and Deſortment. 2O5
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 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 afterwards. 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 P 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 backwards, and paste sea-
weed in a book; that he knew how many times
the word “begat’’ occurred in the Old Testa-
2O6 On Dress and Deportment.
ment; and could recite “The Boy stood on the
Burning Deck,” and Wordsworth’s “We are
Seven.’’
“Werry good—werry good, indeed,” said
the man of the sea, “ and ken yer kerry
coals P’’
It is just the same when you want to marry.
Great ability is not required so much as little
usefulness. Brains are at a discount in the
married state. There is no demand for them,
no appreciation even. Our wives sum us up
according to a standard of their own, in which
brilliancy 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 non-
sense of that kind ; and who can be trusted to
hold a child the right way up, and not make
himself objectionable whenever there is luke-
warm 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 every-
body out with their foolishness.
OAW MEMORY
“I remember, I remember,
In days of chill November,
How the blackbird on the ––
FORGET the rest. It is the beginning of
the first piece of poetry I ever learnt ; for
“Hey, diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,”
I take no note of, it being of a frivolous
character, and lacking in the qualities of true
poetry. I collected fourpence by the recital of
“I remember, I remember.” I knew it was
fourpence, because they told me that if I kept
it until I got twopence more I should have six-
pence, 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
2O7
208 On Memory.
that she brings to us is complete. She is a
wilful child; all her toys are broken. I
remember tumbling into a huge dusthole, 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 interesting 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, where a massive portal stood ;
the broken shaft of a window to mark my
lady's bower; and a mouldering heap of
blackened stones where the glowing flames
once leapt, and, over all, the tinted lichen and
the ivy clinging green.
On Memory. 209
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
gingerbread. 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 any-
thing 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 wayside, and the strong briars
that stung us are, to our distant eyes, but
gentle tendrils waving in the wind. God be
thanked that it is 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 morrow. s
2 I O On Memory.
It seems as though the brightest side of
everything were also its highest and best, so
that, as our little lives sink back behind us into
the dark Sea of forgetſulness, 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 folk 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 different. Also winters were
something like winters, and Summers not at all
the wretched things we get put off with now-a-
days. As for the wonderful deeds people did
in those times, and the extraordinary 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
cannot contradict him. It is odd if, after a
On Memory. 2 II
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 the favourite
sport at his School.
It always has been, and always will be the
same. The old folk of our grandfathers'
young days sang a song bearing exactly the
same burden; 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 impossible 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 remarkably 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
2 I 2 On Memory.
in the sunshine, and take the rain good-
temperedly.
Yet there is no gainsaying but what it must
have been somewhat sweeter in that dewy
morning of creation, when it was young and
fresh, when the feet of the tramping millions
had not trodden its grass to dust, nor the din
of the myriad cities chased the silence for ever
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 amidst 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 child-
hood of Humanity, spent in the far-off forest
glades, and by the murmuring rivers, is gone
for ever; and human life is deepening down to
manhood amidst tumult, doubt, and hope. Its
age of restful 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
On Memory. 2 I 3
ºr—
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 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
happiness that comes to us we heed not, because
of the happiness that is gone.
Years ago, when I used to wander of an
evening 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, maybe, upon such seasons when
2I4. On Memory.
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 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 rob-
bers 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 gentle steed. But,
when in haste he turned and looked behind,
much marvelled 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 Saint Cuth-
bert, and setting spurs into his steed, rode for-
On Memory. 2 I5
ward 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 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, nor idly
weep because we cannot 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 won-
derful system by which you never forget
anything. I don't know why he was so eager
on the subject, unless it be that I occasionally
borrow an umbrella, 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,
2I 6 On Memory.
however, in spite of the advantages he so
attractively set forth. I have no wish to remem-
ber 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 honourably, quite as up-
rightly, as we, perhaps, should have done—that
unfortunate deviation from the path of strict
probity we once committed, and in which, more
unfortunate still, we were found out—that act
of folly, of meanness, of wrong. Ah well,
we paid the penalty, suffered 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 over-
burdened 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 remember Dickens's “Haunted Man,”
On Memory. 217
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 spec-
tres 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
churchyards nor sleep in moated granges, to see
their shadowy faces, and hear the rustling of
their garments in the night. Every house, every
room, every creaking chair has its own parti-
cular 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, quar-
relled 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 for-
ever. Their eyes will never look into ours
again, and their voices we shall never hear.
218 On Memory.
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 them,
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!
cannot you hear their low laughter from behind
the blackberry bushes, and their distant whoops
along the grassy glades P 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
On Memory. 2 I 9
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 playmates, 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 friends and faces are not
like the old, and we cannot love them, nay,
nor laugh with them as we have loved and
laughed with you. And when we walked to-
gether, 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.
22O On Memory.
Through the broken casements we watch the
flitting shadows of the dead, and the saddest
shadows of them all are the shadows of our own
dead selves.
Oh, those young bright faces, so full of truth
and honour, of pure, good thoughts, of noble
longings, 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
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 upward, 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
On Memory. 22 I
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
firelight. 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 mo-
ment 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 / became myself.
We don’t talk much at first, but look at one
another : I down at his curly hair and little
blue bow, 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 a while his bashfulness wears off, and
he begins to chat. He tells me his favourite
fairy tales, he can do up to six times, and he
has a guinea-pig, and pa says fairy tales aint
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 prac-
tical view of life when he reaches seven, and
2 22 On Memory.
would prefer to grow up, be a bargee, and earn
a lot of money. Maybe, this is the conse-
quence of falling in love, which he does about
this time, with the young lady at the milk-shop
aet.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 corkscrew,
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 fails in the attempt, the boy at
the cigar emporium next door punching his in-
stead.
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
grammars and silly old copy-books. It is at
On Memory. 223
school that he injures himself for life—as I
firmly believe—trying to pronounce German ;
and it is there, too, that he learns of the im-
portance 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 fel-
low’s brother ; what he wants to know now is,
has the neighbour of the other fellow's mother
got 'em P “The neighbour 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 paper to make everybody mis-
erable, it turns out that the child of his own
female gardener hasn't any. Such a discovery
would shut up any one but a French exercise
man. It has no effect at all, though, on this
shameless creature. He never thinks of apolo-
gising, but says his aunt has some mustard.
224 On Memory.
So, in the acquisition of more or less useless
knowledge, soon happily to be forgotten, boy-
hood passes away. The red-brick schoolhouse
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 combi-
nation of pocket-handkerchief, drinking-cup,
and weapon of attack, has grown high and
glossy; and instead 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 Havannah. It doesn’t
seem altogether to agree with him, for I find
him sitting over a bucket in the back kitchen
afterwards, Solemnly swearing never to smoke
again.
And now his moustache begins to be almost
visible to the naked eye, whereupon he im-
mediately takes to brandy-and-sodas, and
fancies himself a man. He talks about “two
to one against the favourite,” refers to actresses
as “Little Emmy,” and “Kate,” and
“Baby,” and murmurs about his “ losses at
cards the other night,” in a style implying
On Memory. 225
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 over 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
dissipation; and the prediction of his first
schoolmaster, 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 sociably patronising manner towards all
the elderly male friends of the family.
Altogether, it must be confessed, he is some-
what 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 wonderfully arranged. He reads
poetry more than he used, and he keeps a rhym-
226 On Memory.
ing dictionary in his bedroom. Every morn-
ing, 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 lovers' 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
walking 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
stumble 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.
*:: - - - º,
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