95a Qaai peb 1917 UC-NRLF B 3 57b 12b ' fi I w \ & FkWm ,; ::jy" .^ "^ CJy^i J ?./£" PEBBLES ON THE SHORE First Issue of this Edition, October 1917 All rights reserved 1)11 ) » • > . ) ) ) - ' 1*1 JjM WM % 1* 7 wui tos bewildered by uu the nJbu jluni^cys to refuse cmylhina tluil tvus ciiertu me PARIS: J. M. DENT & FILS, QUAI DES GRANDS AUGUSTINS dp 6 ...... • It < • < < « ». t * f I • * I To ALL WHO LOVE THE COTTAGE IN THE BEECHWOODS M.111797 PREFACE These papers were begun as a part of a causerie in The Star, the other contributors to which — men whose names are household words in contemporary literature — wrote under the pen names of " Alde- baran," " Arcturus " and " Sirius." But the con- stellation, formed in the early days of the war, did not long survive the agitations of that event, and when "Arcturus" left for the battlefield it was finally dissolved and " Alpha of the Plough " alone remained to continue the causerie. This selection from his papers is a sort of informal diary of moods in a time of peril. They are pebbles gathered on the shore of a wild sea. The volume was originally published in the Wayfarers* Library, and its cordial reception in that form has encouraged the publishers to re-issue it with Mr Brock's pictorial comments. CONTENTS -'Onv-Choosing a Name ^n Letter- Writing On Reading in Bed y On Cats and Dogs «W. G." . On Seeing Visions . On Black Sheep The Village and the War On Rumour ^On Umbrella Morals >On Talking to One's Self On Boswell and his Miracle On Sefing Ouk selves On the English Spirit On Falling is Love On a Bit of Seaweed V On Living Again . Tu-Whit, Tu-Whoo ! On Points of View On Beer and Porcelain page i 7 *3 18 23 2 9 35 40 47 53 59 64 70 76 81 88 92 97 102 108 CONTENTS On a Case of Conscience On the Guinea Stamp OK the Dislike of Lawyers On the Cheerfulness of the Blin On Taxing Vanity On Thoughts at Fifty The One- Eyed Cat ^0n the Philosophy of Hats vOn Seeing London v'On Catching the Train In Praise of Chess On the Downs On Short Legs and Long Legs On a Painted Face |On Writing an Article . On a City that was Otr Pleasant Sounds On Slackening the Bow . On the Intelligent Golf Ball On a Prisoner of War On the World we live in "I'm Telling You" On Courage On Spendthrifts On a Top Hat On Losing One's Memory J>, n Wearing a Fur-Lined Coat x>In Praise of Walking vOn Rewards and Riches . ^On Taste . On a Hawthorn Hedge . L-^-v^J- LIST OF I LLAgggr RATIONS « I was too bewildered by all the noble flunkeys to refuse anything that was offered me ' Headpiece — On Choosing a Name ' All Spinks and no Milton ' On Choosing a Name Tailpiece — On Choosing a Name Headpiece — On Letter-writing Headpiece — On Reading in Bed Tailpiece — do. Headpiece— On Cats and Dogs Tailbiccc — do. Headpiece—' W. G.' . Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On Seeing Visions Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On Black Sheep Tailpiece — do. Headpiece— The Village and the War Frontispiece PAGE I 3 5 6 7 i3 17 18 22 *3 28 29 34 35 39 40 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ' I never seed such a sight in my life ' Tailpiece — The Village and the War Headpiece — On Rumour Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On Umbrella Morals Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On Talking to One's Self Headpiece — On Boswell and his Miracle Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On Seeing Ourselves Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On the English Spirit . Headpiece — On Falling in Love ' P'raps you'd recollect to say that Barkis was would you ? ' Tailpiece — On Falling in Love Headpiece — On a Bit of Seaweed Headpiece — On Living Again Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — Tu-whit, Tu-whoo 1 Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On Points of View ' Disgraceful the way parents allow their children about in the streets' Tailpiece — On Points of View Headpiece — On Beer and Porcelain . Headpiece — On a Case of Conscience Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On the Guinea Stamp . Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On the Dislike of Lawyers Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On the Cheerfulness of the Blind Tailpiece — do. willin', to play LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Xlll Headpiece — On Taxing Vanity 1 White spats ' Tailpiece — On Taxing Vanity Headpiece — On Thoughts at Fifty Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — The One-eyed Cat Tailp iece — d o . Headpiece — On the Philosophy of Hats Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On Seeing London Headpiece — On Catching the Train Headpiece — In Praise of Chess Tailpiece — do. Heaapiece — On the Downs Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On Short Legs and Long Legs 'A nuisance in a world made for people of five-feet and-a-half . Tailpiece — On Short Legs and Long Legs Headpiece — On a Painted Face Headpiece — On Writing an Article Tailpiece — do. Heaapiece — On a City that Was Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On Pleasant Sounds Tailpiece — do. Heaapiece — On Slackening the Bow Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On the Intelligent Golf Ball Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — A Prisoner of War c David is alive ! David is a prisoner in Germany Tailpiece — A Prisoner of War Headpiece — On the World we Live In PAGE »37 140 141 HS 146 150 *55 156 160 166 170 171 «75 176 179 181 182 186 190 191 '95 196 200 201 204 205 209 210 213 215 216 XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Tailpiece — On the World we Live in Headpiece — ' I'm Telling You ' Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On Courage Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On Spendthrifts Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On a Top -hat Headpiece — On Losing One's Memory Tailpiece do. Heaapiece — On Wearing a Fur-lined Coat < Unworthy of the fur-lined standard ' Headpiece — In Praise of Walking Headpiece — On Rewards and Riches Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On Taste Tailpiece — do. Headpiece — On a Hawthorn Hedge . Tailpiece — do. PAGE 220 225 226 230 231 2 35 236 241 245 246 249 252 *57 262 263 267 268 272 ON CHOOSING A NAME " As for your name, I offer you the whole firma- ment to choose from." In that prodigal spirit the editor of the Star invites me to join the constellation that he has summoned from the vasty deeps of Fleet Street. I am, he says, to shine punctually every Wednesday evening, wet or fine, on winter nights and summer eves, at home or abroad, until such time as he cries: "Hold, enough!" and applies the extinguisher that comes to all. The invitation reaches me in a tiny village on a spur of a range of beech clad hills, whither I have fled for a breathing space from the nightmare of the war and the menacing gloom of the London streets at night. Here the darkness has no terrors. In the wide arch of the sky our lamps are lit nightly as the sun sinks down far over the great plain that stretches at our feet. None of the palpitations of A 1 3 ON CHOOSING A NAME '■' Fl«eet 'Street disturb us, and the rumours of the ;'.' •War:c0mc to ,us like echoes from a far-off world. •' • -The: only, /sensation of our day is when, just after darkness has fallen, the sound of a whistle in the tiny street of thatched cottages announces that the postman has called to collect letters. In this solitude one discovers how dependent one is upon men and books for inspiration. It is hard even to find a name. Not that finding a name is easy in any circumstances. Every one who lives by his pen knows the difficulty of the task. I would rather write an article than find a title for it. The thousand words come easily (sometimes); but the five- words summary of the thousand, that is to flame at the top like a beacon light, is a gem that has to be sought in travail, almost in tears. I have written books, but I have never found a title for one that I have written. That has always come to me from a friend. Even the men of genius suffer from this perplexity. When Goldsmith had finished the finest English comedy written since Shakespeare he did not know what to call it, and had to leave Johnson to write the label. And an excellent label it was. Dickens suffered from the luxuriance of his fancy at the baptismal font, and David Copperfield was subjected to a multitude of trial christenings before he received the name by which he lives immortally. I like to think that Shakespeare himself shared the affliction — that he, too, sat biting the feather of his quill in that condition of despair that is so familiar to smaller men. Indeed, ON CHOOSING A NAME CS'Srrt^ we have proof that it was so in the titles them- selves. Is not the title, As Tou Like It, a confession that he had bitten his quill until he was tired of the vain search for a name ? And what is Twelfth Night: or What Tou Will but an evidence that he could not hit upon any name that would fit the most joyous offspring of his genius ? What parent does not know the same agony ? To name a child, to give him a sign that shall go with him to his grave, and that shall fit that mystery of the cradle which time and temptation and trial shall alone reveal — hoc opus, hie labor est. Many fail by starting from false grounds — fashion, ambition, or momentary interest. Perhaps the little stranger arrives with the news of a battle, or when a popular novel appears, or at a moment when you are under the influence of some austere 4 ON CHOOSING A NAME or heroic name. And forgetful that it is the child that has to bear the burden of your momentary impulse, you call him Inkerman Jones, or Kitchener Smith, or Milton Spinks. And so he is started on his journey, like a little historical memory, or challenging comparison with some hero of fact or fable. Perhaps Milton Spinks grows up bow-legged and commonplace — all Spinks and no Milton. As plain John he would pass through life happy and unnoticed, but the great name of Milton hangs about him like a jest from which he can never escape — no, not even in the grave, for it will be continued there until the lichen has covered the name on the headstone with stealthy and kindly oblivion. It is a good rule, I think, to avoid the fanciful in names. So few of our children are going to be heroes or sages that we should be careful not to stamp them with the mark of greatness at the outset of the journey. Horatio was a happy stroke for Nelson, but how few Horatios win immortality, or deserve it ! And how disastrous if Horatio turns out a knave and a coward ! If young Spinks has any Miltonic fire within him, it will shine through plain John more naturally and lustrously than through any borrowed patronymic. You may be as humble as you like, and John will fit you : as illustrious as you like, and John will blaze as splendid as your deeds, linking you with that great order of nobility of which John Milton, John Hampden, and John Bright are types. I had written thus far when it occurred to me ON CHOOSING A NAME C« (g>,«i^ L that I had still my own name to choose and that soon the whistle of the postman would be heard in the street. I went out into the orchard to take counsel with the stars. The far horizon was still stained wine-red with the last embers of the day ; northward over the shoulder of the hill the yellow moon was rising full-orbed into the night sky and the firmament glittered with a thousand lamps. How near and familiar they seem to one in the solitude of the country ! In the town our vision is limited to the street. We see only the lights of the pavement and hear only the rattle of the un- ceasing traffic. The stars seem infinitely removed from our life. But here they are like old neighbours for whom we never look in vain, intimate though eternal, friendly and companionable though far off. There is Orion coming over the hill, and there the many- jewelled Pleiades, and across the great central dome 6 ON CHOOSING A NAME of the sky the vast triangle formed by the Pole Star, golden Arcturus (not now visible), and ice- blue Vega. But these are not names for me. Better are those homely sounds that link the pageant of night with the immemorial life of the fields. Arcturus is Alpha of the Herdsman. Shall it be that ? And then my eye roves westward to where the Great Bear hangs head downwards as if to devour the earth. Great Bear, Charles's "Wain, the Plough, the Dipper, the Chariot of David — with what fancies the human mind through all the ages has played in contemplating that glorious constellation ! Let my fancy play with it too. There at the head of the Plough flames the star that points to the pole. I will hitch my little waggon to that sublime image. I will be Alpha of the Plough. SsT^ %f%f Z*£± s«s ON LETTER -WRITING Two soldiers, evidently brothers, stood at the door of the railway carriage — one inside the compartment, the other on the platform. " Now, you won't forget to write, Bill," said the latter. "No," said Bill. "I shall be back at to- night, and I'll write all round to-morrow. But, lor, what a job. There's mother and the missus and Bob and Sarah and Aunt Jane and Uncle Jim, and — well, you know the lot. You've had to do it, Sam." " Yes," said Sam, ruefully ; " it's a fair teaser." " And if you write to one and miss another they're offended, " continued Bill. "But I always mention all of 'em. I say 'love to Sarah,' and 8 ON LETTER-WRITING ' hope Aunt Jane's cold's better,' and that sort of thing, and that fills out a page. But I'm blowed if I can find anything else to say. I just begin ' hoping this finds you well, as it leaves me at present,' and then I'm done. What else is there to say ? " " Nothing," said Sam, mournfully. " I just sit and scratch my head over the blessed paper, but nothing'll come. Seems as though my head's as empty as a drum." " Same here. 'Tisn't like writing love-letters. When I was up to that game 'twas easy enough. When I got stuck I just put in half a page of crosses, and that filled up fine. But writing to mother and the missus and Sarah and Jim and the rest is different. You can't fill up with crosses. It would look ridiklus." " It would," said Sam. Then the train began to move, and the soldier inside sank back on his seat, took out a cigar- ette, and began to smoke. I found he had been twice out at the front, and was now home on sick leave. He had been at the battle of Mons, through the retreat to the Marne, the advance to the Aisne, the first battle of Ypres, and the fight- ing at Festubert. In a word, he had seen some of the greatest events in the world's history, face to face, and yet he confessed that when he came to write a letter, even to his wife, he could find nothing to say. He was in the position of the lady mentioned by Horace Walpole, whose letter to her husband began and ended thus : "I write to ON LETTER-WRITING 9 you because I have nothing to do : I finish because I have nothing to say." I suppose there has never been so much letter- writing in the world as is going on to-day, and much of it is good writing, as the papers show. But the case of my companion in the train is the case of thousands and tens of thousands of young fellows who for the first time in their lives want to write and discover that they have no gift of self- expression. It is not that they are stupid. It is that somehow the act of writing paralyses them. They cannot condense the atmosphere in which they live to the concrete word. You have to draw them out. They need a friendly lead. When they have got that they can talk well enough, but with- out it they are dumb. In the great sense letter-writing is no doubt a lost art. It was killed by the penny post and modern hurry. When Madame de Sevigne, Cowper, Horace Walpole, Byron, Lamb, and the Carlyles wrote their immortal letters the world was a leisurely place where there was time to indulge in the luxury of writing to your friends. And the cost of frank- ing a letter made that letter a serious affair. If you could only send a letter once in a month or six months, and then at heavy expense, it became a matter of first-rate consequence. The poor, of course, couldn't enjoy the luxury of letter-writing at all. De Quincey tells us how the dalesmen of Lakeland a century ago used to dodge the postal charges. The letter that came by stage coach was received at the door by the poor mother, who io ON LETTER-WRITING glanced at the superscription, saw from a certain agreed sign on it that Tom or Jim was well, and handed it back to the carrier unopened. In those days a letter was an event. Now when you can send a letter half round the globe for a penny, and when the postman calls half a dozen times a day, few of us take letter-writing seriously. Carlyle saw that the advent of the penny post would kill the letter by making it cheap. " I shall send a penny letter next time," he wrote to his mother when the cheap postage was about to come in, and he foretold that people would not bother to write good letters when they could send them for next to nothing. He was right, and the telegraph, the telephone, and the typewriter have completed the destruction of the art of letter-writing. It is the difficulty or the scarcity of a thing that makes it treasured. If diamonds were as plentiful as pebbles we shouldn't stoop to pick them up. But the case of Bill and Sam and thousands of their comrades to-day is different. They don't want to write literary letters, but they do want to tell the folks at home something about their life and the great things of which they are a part. But the great things are too great for them. They cannot put them into words. And they ought not to try, for the secret of letter-writing is intimate triviality. Bill could not have described the retreat from Mons ; but he could have told, as he told me, about the blister he got on his heel, how he hungered for a smoke, how he marched and marched until he fell asleep marching, how he lost his pal at ON LETTER-WRITING u Le Cateux, and how his boot sole dropped off at Meaux. And through such trivialities he would have given a living picture of the great retreat. In short, to write a good letter you must approach the job in the lightest and most casual way. You must be personal, not abstract. You must not say, " This is too small a thing to put down." You must say, " This is just the sort of small thing we talk about at home. If I tell them this they will see me, as it were, they'll hear my voice, they'll know what I'm about." That is the purpose of a letter. Carlyle had the trick to per- fection. He is writing from Scotsbrig to his brother Alec in Canada, and he begins talking about his mother. " Good old Mother," he says, " she is even now sitting at my back, trying at another table to write you a small word with her own hand ; the first time she has tried such a thing for a year past. It is Saturday night, after dark ; we are in the east room in a hard, dry evening with a bright fire to ourselves two ; Jenny and her bairns are * scouring up things ' in the other end of the house ; and below stairs the winter operations of the farm go on, in a subdued tone : you can conceive the scene ! " How simple it is and yet how perfect. Cannot you see Alec reading it in his far-off home and his eyes moistening at the picture of his old mother sitting and writing her last message to him on earth ? Keats expresses the idea very well in one of those voluminous letters which he wrote to his brother George and his wife in America and in which he poured out the wealth of family 12 ON LETTER-WRITING affection which was one of the most amiable features of his character. He has described how he had been to see his mother, how she had laughed at his bad jokes, how they went out to tea at Mrs Millar's, and how in going they were struck with the light and shade through the gate- way at the Horse Guards. And he goes on: "I intend to write you such volumes that it will be impossible for me to keep any order or method in what I write ; that will come first which is upper- most in my mind, not that which is uppermost in my heart — besides I should wish to give you a picture of our lives here whenever by a touch I can do it ; even as you must see by the last sentence our walk past Whitehall all in good health and spirits — this I am certain of because I felt so much pleasure from the simple idea of your playing a game of cricket." There is the recipe by one of the masters of the craft. A letter written in this vein annihilates distance ; it continues the personal gossip, the intimate communion, that has been interrupted by separation ; it preserves one's presence in absence. It cannot be too simple, too commonplace, too colloquial. Its familiarity is not its weakness, but its supreme virtue. If it attempts to be orderly and stately and elaborate, it may be a good essay, but it will certainly be a bad letter. ON READING IN BED Among the few legacies that my father left me was a great talent for sleeping. I think I can say, without boasting, that in a sleeping match I could do as well as any man. I can sleep long, I can sleep often, and I can sleep sound. When I put my head on the pillow I pass into a fathomless peace where no dreams come, and about eight hours later I emerge to consciousness, as though 1 have come up from the deeps of infinity. That is my normal way, but occasionally I have periods of wakefulness in the middle of the night. My sleep is then divided into two chapters, and between the chapters there is a slab of unmitigated dreariness. It is my hour of pessimism. The tide has ebbed, the water is dead-low, and there is a vista of endless mud. It is then that this tragi- 13 14 ON READING IN BED comedy of life touches bottom, and I see the heavens all hung with black. I despair of humanity, I despair of the war, I despair of myself. There is not one gleam of light in all the sad landscape, and the abyss seems waiting at my feet to swallow me up with everything that I cherish. It is no use saying to this demon of the darkness that I know he is a humbug, a mere Dismal Jemmy of the brain, who sits there croaking like a night owl or a tenth- rate journalist. My Dismal Jemmy is not to be exorcised by argument. He can only be driven out by a little sane companionship. So I turn on a light and call for one of my bed- side friends. They stand there in noble comrade- ship, ready to talk, willing to remain silent, only asking to do my pleasure. Oh, blessed be the name of Gutenberg, the Master Printer. A German ? I care not. Even if he had been a Prussian — which I rejoice to think he was not — I would still say : " Blessed be the name of Gutenberg," though Sir Richard Cooper, M.P., sent me to the Tower for it. For Gutenberg is the Prometheus not of legend but of history. He brought down the sacred flame and scattered the darkness that lay on the face of the waters. He gave us the Daily Owf, it is true, but he made us also freemen of time and thought, companions of the saints and the sages, sharers in the wisdom and the laughter of the ages. Thanks to him I can, for the expenditure of a few shillings, hear Homer sing and Socrates talk and Rabelais laugh ; I can go chivvying the sheep with Don Quixote and roaming the hills ON READING IN BED 15 with Borrow ; I can carry the whole universe of Shakespeare in my pocket, and call up spirits to drive Dismal Jemmy from my pillow. Who are these spirits ? In choosing them it is necessary to avoid the deep-browed argumentative fellows. I do not want Plato or Gibbon or any of the learned brotherhood by my bedside, nor the poets, nor the novelists, nor the dramatists, nor even the professional humorists. These are all capital fellows in their way, but let them stay downstairs. To the intimacy of the bedside I admit only the kindly fellows who come in their dressing-gowns and slippers, so to speak, and sit down and just talk to you as though they had known you ever since you were a little nipper, and your father and your grandfather before you. Of course, there is old Montaigne. What a glorious gossip he is ! What strange things he has to tell you, what a noble candour he shows! He turns out his mind as carelessly as a boy turns out his pockets, and gives you the run of his whole estate. You may wander everywhere, and never see a board warning you to keep off the grass or re- minding you that you are a trespasser. And Bozzy. Who could do without Bozzy by his bedside — dear, garrulous old Bozzy, most splendid of toadies, most miraculous of reporters ? When Bozzy begins to talk to me, and the old Doctor growls " Sir," all the worries and anxieties of life fall magically away, and Dismal Jemmy vanishes like the ghost at cock-crow. I am no longer imprisoned in time and the flesh : I am of 1 6 ON READING IN BED the company of the immortals. I share their triumphant aloofness from the play that fills our stage and sec its place in the scheme of the un- ending drama of men. That sly rogue Pepys, of course, is there — more thumb-stained than any of them except Bozzy. What a miracle is this man who lives more vividly in our eyes than any creature that ever walked the earth ! What was the secret of his magic ? Is it not this, that he succeeded in putting down on paper the real truth about himself? A small thing ? Well, I beg you to try it. You will find it the hardest job you have ever tackled. No matter what secrecy you adopt you will discover that you cannot tell yourself the whole truth about yourself. Pepys did that. Benvenuto Cellini pretended to do that, but I refuse to believe the fellow. Ben- jamin Franklin tried to do it and very nearly succeeded. St Augustine was frank enough about his early wickedness, but it was the overcharged frankness of the subsequent saint. No, Pepys is the man. He did the thing better than it has ever been done in this world. I like to have the Paston Letters at my bedside, too. Then I go off to sleep again in the fifteenth century with the voice of old Agnes Paston sound- ing in my ears. Dead half a thousand years, yet across the gulf of time I hear the painful scratching of her quill as she sends " Goddis blyssyng " to her son in London, and tells him all her motherly gossip and makes the rough life of far-off Tudor England live for ever. Dear old Agnes ! She ON READING IN BED 17 little thought as she struggled with her spelling and her pen that she was writing something that was immortal. If she had known, I don't think she would have bothered. For she was a very matter-of-fact old lady, and was too full of worries to have much room for vanities. I should like to say more about my bedside friends — strapping George Borrow sitting with Petulengro's sister under the hedge or righting the Flaming Tinman ; the dear little Boston doctor who talks so engagingly over the Breakfast Table ; the Compleat Angler that takes you out into an eternal May morning, and Sainte-Beuve whom I have found a first-rate bedside talker. But I must close. There is one word, however, to be added. Your bedside friends should be dressed in soft leather and printed on thin paper. Then you can talk to them quite snugly. It is a great nuisance if you have to stick your arms out of bed and hold your hands rigid. &i*S IC~ /v ^> ON CATS AND DOGS A friend of mine calling to see me the other day and observing my faithful Airedale — "Ouilp" by name — whose tail was in a state of violent emotion at the prospect of a walk, remarked that when the new taxes came in I should have to pay a guinea for the privilege of keeping that dog. I said I hoped that Mr McKenna would do nothing so foolish. In fact, I said, I am sure he will do nothing so foolish. I know him well, and I have always found him a sensible man. Let him, said I, tax us all fairly according to our incomes, but why should he interfere with the way in which we spend the 18 ON CATS AND DOGS 19 money that he leaves us ? Why should he deny the friendship of that most friendly animal the dog to a poor man and make it the exclusive possession of the well-to-do ? The emotion of Quilp's tail kept pace with the fervour of my remarks. He knew that he was the subject of the conversation, and his large brown eyes gleamed with intelligence, and his expressive eyebrows were eloquent of self-pity and appeal. He was satisfied that whatever the issue I was on his side, and at half a hint he would have given my friend a taste of the rough side of his tongue. But he is a well-mannered brute, and knows how to restrain his feelings in company. What would be the result of your high tax ? I continued with passion. It would be a blow at the democracy of dogs. It would reduce the whole of dogdom to a pampered class of degenerates. Is there anything more odious than the spectacle of a fat woman in furs nursing a lap dog in furs, too ? It is as degrading to the noble family of dogs as a footman in gold buttons and gold braid is to the human family. But it is just these degenerates whom a high tax would protect. Honest fellows like Quilp here (more triumphant tail flourishes), dogs that love you like a brother, that will run for you, carry for you, bark for you, whose candour is so transparent and whose faithfulness has been the theme of countless poets — dogs like these would be taxed out of existence. Now cats, I continued — (at the thrilling word Quilp became tense with excitement), cats are 2o ON CATS AND DOGS another affair. Personally I don't care two pence if Mr McKenna taxes them a guinea a whisker. There is only one moment in the life of a cat that is tolerable, and that is when it is not a cat but a kitten. Who was the Frenchman who said that women ought to be born at seventeen and die at thirty ? Cats ought to die when they cease to be kittens. Cats, said my friend coldly, are the spiritual superior of dogs. The dog is a flunkey, a serf, an underling, a creature that is eternally watching its master. Look at Quilp at this moment. What a spectacle of servility. You don't see cats making themselves the slaves of men. They like to be stroked, but they have no affection for the hand that strokes them. They are not parasites, but independent souls, going their own way, living their own lives, indifferent to applause, calling no man master. That is why the French consider them so superior to dogs. I do not care what the French think, I said with warmth. But they are our Allies, said my friend severely. The Germans, on the other hand, prefer dogs. I hope you are not a pro-German. On the cat-and-dog issue I am, and I don't care who knows it, I said recklessly. And I hate these attempts to drag in prejudice. Moreover, I would beg you to observe that it was a great Frenchman, none other than Pascal, who paid the highest of all tributes to the dog. " The more I see of men," he said, " the better I like dogs." And I think you will find that Madame de Stael adopted the tribute ON CATS AND DOGS 21 as her own. I challenge you to produce from any French source such an encomium on the cat. And it can be paralleled in our own literature again and again. Do you remember Byron's " Inscription on the monument of a Newfoundland dog," with its comparison of the faithfulness of dogs with the un- faithfulness of men, and its close : To mark a friend's remains these stones arise, I never knew but one — and here he lies. No, I continued, the dog is a generous, warm- hearted, chivalrous fellow, who will play with you, mourn for you, or die for you. Why, literature is full of his heroism. Who has climbed Helvellyn without being haunted by that shepherd's dog that inspired Scott and Wordsworth ? Or the Pass of St Bernard without remembering the faithful hounds of the great monastery ? But the cat is a secret and alien creature, selfish and mysterious, a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. See her purring on the hearth-rug in front of the fire, and she seems the picture of innocence and guileless content. All a blind, my dear fellow, all a blind. Wait till night comes. Then where is demure Mistress Puss ? Is she at home keeping vigil with the good dog Tray ? No, the house may be in blazes or ran- sacked by burglars for all she cares. She is out on the tiles and in back gardens pursuing her unholy ritual — that strange ritual that seems so Oriental, so sinister, so full of devilish purpose. I can understand the old association of witchcraft with cats. The sight of cats almost makes me believe in witchcraft, in spite of myself. I can believe any- 22 ON CATS AND DOGS thing about a cat. She is heartless and mercenary. Her name has become the synonym of everything that is mean, spiteful, and vicious. " An old cat" is the unkindest thing you can say about a woman. But the dog wears his heart on his sleeve. His life is as open as the day. He has his indecorums, but he has no secrets. You may see the worst of him at a glance, but the best of him is inex- haustible. A cat is as remote from your life as a lizard, but a dog is as intimate as your own thoughts or your own shadow, and his loyalty is one of the consolations of a disloyal world. You remember that remark of Charles Reade's : " He was only a man, but he was as faithful as a dog." It was the highest tribute he could pay to his hero — that he was as faithful as a dog. And think of his services — see him drawing his cart in Belgium, rounding up the sheep into the fold on the York- shire fells, tending the cattle by the highway, warn- ing off the night prowler from the lonely homestead, always alert, always obedient, always the friend of man, be he never so friendless. . . . Shall we go for a walk ? At the joyous word Quilp leapt on me with a frenzied demonstration. " Good dog," I said. " If Mr McKenna puts a guinea tax on you I'll never say a good word for him again." wmim ^^^^ - • w (Vew*—, "w:g: The worst of spending week-ends in the country in these anxious days is the difficulty of getting news. About six o'clock on Saturday evening I am seized with a furious hunger. What has hap- pened on the East front ? What on the West ? What in Serbia ? Has Greece made up its heroic mind ? Is Rumania still trembling on the brink ? What does the French communique say ? These and a hundred other questions descend on me with frightful insistence. Clearly I can't go to bed without having them answered. But there is not an evening paper to be got nearer than the little railway station in the valley two miles away, and there is no way of getting it except by Shanks' mare. And so, unable to resist the glamour of 24 " W. G." The Star, I start out across the fields for the station. As I stood on the platform last Saturday evening devouring the latest war news under the dim oil lamp, a voice behind me said, in broad rural accent, "Bill, I say, W. G. is dead." At the word I turned hastily to another column and found the news that had stirred him. And even in the midst of world-shaking events it stirred me too. For a brief moment I forgot the war and was back in that cheerful world where we used to be happy, where we greeted the rising sun with light hearts and saw its setting without fear. In that cheerful world I can hardly recall a time when a big man with a black beard was not my King. I first saw him in the 'seventies. I was a small boy then, and I did him the honour of playing truant — " playing wag " we called it. I felt that the occasion demanded it. To have the god of my idolatry in my own little town and not to pay him my devotions — why, the idea was almost like blasphemy. A half-dozen, or even a dozen, from my easily infuriated master would be a small price to pay. I should take the stripes as a homage to the hero. He would never know, but I should be proud to suffer in his honour. Unfortunately there was a canvas round the field where the hero played, and as the mark of the Mint was absent from my pockets I was on the wrong side of the canvas. But I knew a spot where by lying flat on your stomach and keeping your head very low you could see under the canvas and get a view "W. G." 25 of the wicket. It was not a comfortable position, but I saw the King. I think I was a little disap- pointed that there was nothing supernatural about his appearance and that there were no portents in the heavens to announce his coming. It didn't seem quite right somehow. In a general way I knew he was only a man, but I was quite prepared to see something tremendous happen, the sun to dance or the earth to heave, when he appeared. I never felt the indifference of Nature to the affairs of men so acutely. I saw him many times afterwards, and I suppose I owe more undiluted happiness to him than to any man that ever lived. For he was the genial tyrant in a world that was all sunshine. There are other games, no doubt, which will give you as much exercise and pleasure in playing them as cricket, but there is no game that fills the mind with such memories and seems enveloped in such a gracious and kindly atmosphere. If you have once loved it and played it, you will find talk in it enough " for the wearing out of six fashions," as Falstaff says. I like a man who has cricket in his soul. I find I am prejudiced in his favour, and am disposed to disbelieve any ill about him. I think my affection for Jorkins began with the discovery that he, like myself, saw that astounding catch with which Ulyett dismissed Bonnor in the Australian match at Lord's in 1883 — or was it 1884? And when to this mutual and immortal memory we added the discovery that we were both at the Oval at the memorable match when Crossland 26 "W. G." rattled Surrey out like ninepins and the crowd mobbed him, and Key and Roller miraculously pulled the game out of the fire, our friendship was sealed. The fine thing about a wrangle on cricket is that there is no bitterness in it. When you talk about politicians you are always on the brink of bad temper. When you disagree about the relative merits of W. B. Yeats or Francis Thompson you are afflicted with scorn for the other's lack of perception. But you may quarrel about cricketers and love each other all the time. For example, I am prepared to stand up in a truly Christian spirit to the bowling of anybody in defence of my belief that — next to him of the black beard — Lohmann was the most naturally gifted all-round cricketer there has ever been. What grace of action he had, what an instinct for the weak spot of his opponent, what a sense for fitting the action to the moment, above all, what a gallant spirit he played the game in ! And that, after all, is the real test of the great cricketer. It is the man who brings the spirit of adventure into the game that I want. Of the Ouaifes and the Scottons and the Barlows I have nothing but dreary memories. They do not mean cricket to me. And even Shrewsbury and Hay- ward left me cold. They were too faultily fault- less, too icily regular for my taste. They played cricket not as though it was a game, but as though it was a proposition in Euclid. And I don't like Euclid. It was the hearty joyousness that " W. G." "W. G." 27 shed around him that made him so dear to us youngsters of all ages. I will admit, if you like, that Ranjitsinhji at his best was more of a magician with the bat, that Johnny Briggs made you laugh more with his wonderful antics and comic genius, that A. P. Lucas had more finish, Palairet more grace, and so on. But it was the abundance of the old man with the black beard that was so wonderful. You never came to the end of him. He was like a generous roast of beef — you could cut and come again, and go on coming. Other men flitted across our sky like meteors, but he shone on like the sun in the heavens, and like the sun in the heavens he scattered largesse over the land. He did not seem so much a man as an institution, a symbol of summer and all its joys, a sort of Father Christmas clothed in flannels and sunshine. It did you good merely to look at him. It made you feel happy to see such a huge capacity for enjoyment, such mighty subtlety, such ponderous gaiety. It was as though Jove, or Vulcan, or some other god of antiquity had come down to play games with the mortals. You would not have been much surprised if, when the shadows lengthened across the greensward and the umpire signalled that the day's play was done, he had wrapped himself in a cloud of glory and floated away to Olympus. And now he is gone indeed, and it seems as though a part, and that a very happy part, of life has gone with him. When sanity returns to the earth, there will arise other deities of the cricket field, but not for me. Never again shall I recap- 28 W. G." ture the unsullied joy that came with the vision of the yellow cap flaming above the black beard, of the Herculean frame and the mighty bared arms, and all the godlike apparition of the master. As I turned out of the little station and passed through the fields and climbed the hill I felt that the darkness that has come upon the earth in these days had taken a deeper shade of gloom, for even the lights of the happy past were being quenched. ON SEEING VISIONS The postman (or rather the post-woman) brought me this morning among other things a little paper called The Superman, which I find is devoted to the stars, the lines of the hands, and similar mysteries. I gather from it that " Althea," a normal clairvoyant, and other seers, have visited the planets — in their astral bodies, of course — to make inquiries on various aspects of the war. Althea and " the other seers " seem to have had quite a busy time running about among the stars and talking to the inhabi- tants about the trouble in our particular orb. They claim really to have got to the bottom of things. It appears that there is a row going on between Lucifer and Arniel. " Lucifer is a fallen planetary god, whose lust for power has driven him from his 29 30 ON SEEING VISIONS seat of authority as ruler of Jupiter. He is the evil genius overshadowing the Kaiser and is striving to possess this world so that he may pass it on to Jupiter and eventually blot out the Solar Logos," etc., etc. I do not know who sent me this paper or for what purpose ; but let me say that it is sheer waste of postage stamps and material. I hope I am not intolerant of the opinions of others, but I confess that when people talk to me about reading the stars and the lines of the hand and things of that sort I shut up like an oyster. I do not speak of the humbugs who deliberately exploit the credulity of fools. I speak of the sincere believers — people like my dear old friend W. T. Stead, who was the most extraordinary combination of wisdom and moonshine I have ever known. He would startle you at one moment by his penetrating handling of the facts of a great situation, and the next moment would make you speechless with some staggering story of spirit visitors or starry conspiracies that seemed to him just as actual as the pavement on which he walked. I am not at home in this atmosphere of mysteries. It is not that I do not share the feeling out of which it is born. I do. Thoreau said he would give all he possessed for "one true vision," and so long as we are spiritually alive we must all have some sense of expectancy that the curtain will lift, and that we shall look out with eyes of wonder on the hidden meaning of this strange adventure upon which we are embarked. For thousands of years ON SEEING VISIONS 31 we have been wandering in this wilderness of the world and speculating about why we are here, where we are going, and what it is all about. It can never have been a greater puzzle than now, when we are all busily engaged in killing each other. And at every stage there have been those who have cried, " Lo, here ! " and " Lo, there ! ' and have called men to witness that they have read the riddle and have torn the secret from the heart of the great mystery. And so long as men can feel and think, the quest will go on. We could not cease that quest if we would, and we would not if we could, for without it all the meaning would have gone out of life and we should be no more than the cattle in the fields. Nor is the quest in vain. We follow this trail and that, catch at this hint of a meaning and that gleam of vision, and though we find this path ends in a cul-de-sac, and that brings us back to the place from whence we started, we are learning all the time about the mysteries of our wilderness. And one day, perhaps — suddenly, it may be, as that vision of the great white mountains of the Oberland breaks upon the sight of the traveller — we shall see whether the long adventure leads. "Say not the struggle naught availeth," said a poet who was not given to cultivating illusions. And he went on : — For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main. 32 ON SEFING VISIONS Bllt though I want to sec a vision as much as anybody, I am out of touch with the company of the credulous. I am with Doubting Thomas. I have no capacity for beJieving the impossible, and have an entire distrust of dark rooms and magic. People with bees in their bonnets leave me wondering, but cold. I know a man — a most excellent man — whose life is a perfect debauch of visions and revelations. He seems to discover the philosopher's stone every other day. Sometimes it is brown bread that is the way to salvation. If you eat brown bread you will never die, or at any rate you will live until everybody is tired of you. Sometimes it is a new tax or a new sort of bath that is the secret key to the whole contraption. For one period he could talk of nothing but dried milk ; for another, acetic acid was the thing. Rub your- self with acetic acid and you would be as invulner- able to the ills of the body as Achilles was after he had been dipped by Thetis in the waters of Styx. The stars tell him anything he wishes to believe, and he can conjure up spirits as easily as another man can order a cab. It is not that he is a fool. In practical affairs he is astonishingly astute. It is that he has an illimitable capacity for belief. He is always on the road to Damascus. For my part I am content to wait. I am for Wordsworth's creed of " wise passiveness." I should as soon think of reading my destiny on the sole of my boot as in the palm of my hand. The one would be just as illuminating as the other. It would tell me what I chose to make it tell me. ON SEEING VISIONS 33 That and no more. And so with the stars. People who pretend to read the riddle of our affairs in the pageant of the stars are deceiving themselves or are trying to deceive others. They are giving their own little fancies the sanction of the universe. The butterfly that I see flitting about in the sunshine outside might as well read the European war as a comment on its aimless little life. The stars do not chatter about us, but they have a balm for us if we will be silent. The " huge and thought- ful night" speaks a language simple, august, universal. It is one of the smaller consolations of the war that it has given us in London a chance of hearing that language. The lamps of the street are blotted out, and the lamps above are visible. Five nights of the week all the year round I take the last bus that goes northward from the City, and from the back seat on the top I watch the great procession of the stars. It is the most astonishing spectacle offered to men. Emerson said that if we only saw it once in a hundred years we should spend years in preparing for the vision. It is hung out for us every night, and we hardly give it a glance. And yet it is well worth glancing at. It is the best corrective for this agitated little mad-house in which we dwell and quarrel and fight and die. It gives us a new scale of measurement and a new order of ideas. Even the war seems only a local affair of some ill-governed asylum in the presence of this ordered march of illimitable worlds. I do not worry about the vision ; I do not badger the c 34 ON SEEING VISIONS stars to give mc their views about the war. It is enough to see and feel and be silent. And now I hope Althea will waste no more postage stamps in sending me her desecrating gibberish. -<- : 7 si^lyC in my life -44 THE VILLAGE AND THE WAR decided that it we were going to have the pears before the wasps had spoiled them we must pick them at once. " It's a wunnerful crop," said David. " I've k no wed this pear-tree [looking up at one of them from the foot of his ladder] for twenty- five year, and I've never seen such a crop on it afore." Then he mounted the ladder and began to pick the fruit. "Well, I'm blowed," he said, "if they ain't been at 'em a'ready." And he flung down pear after pear scooped out by the wasps close to the stalk. " Reg'lar Germans — that's what they are," he said. "Look at 'em round that hive," he went on. " They'll hev all the honey and them bees will starve and git the Isle o' Wight — that's what they'll git. . . . Lor," he added, reflectively, "I dunno what wospses are made for — wospses and Germans. It gits over me." I said it got over me too. And then from among the branches, while I hung on to the foot of the ladder to keep it firm, David unbosomed his dis- quiet to me about enlisting. " Most o' the chaps round here has gone," he said, " an' I don't like staying be'ind. Seems as though you were hanging back like. 'Taint that I shouldn't like to go ; but it's this way . . . (Hullo, I got my hand on a wasp that time) . . . There's such a lot o' women-folk dependent on me. There's my wife and there's my mother down the village and my aunt ; and not a man to do anything THE VILLAGE AND THE WAR 45 for 'em but me. After my work on th' farm, I keeps all three gardens going and a patch of allot- ment down the valley as well." " You're growing a lot of good food, and that's military work," I said. He seemed cheered by the idea, and asked me if I'd like to see the potatoes he had dug up that evening — they were " a wunnerful fine lot," he said. So after he had stripped the pear-tree he shouldered the ladder, and we went down the village to David's garden. There I saw his potatoes, some lying to dry where they had been dug up, others in sacks. Also his marrows and beans and cabbages and lettuces. A little apologetically, he offered me some of the largest potatoes — "just as a hobby," he said, meaning thereby that it was only a trifle he offered. As I went away in the gathering dark, with my hands full of potatoes, I met the landlord of the Blue Boar, his shirt sleeves rolled up as usual above his brown, muscular arms. " Bad news that about Mrs Lummis," he said, looking towards the cottage on the other side of the road. " What is that ? " said I. " Her son ? " There had been no news of him for two months. '* Yes, poor Jack She's got news that he was killed near La Bassee in June. Nice feller — and her only son." Then, more cheerfully, he added, " Jim's coming home to-morrow. Going to get his officer's rig 4 6 THE VILLAGE AND THE WAR our, you know, and have a rest — the first since he went out a year ago." " You'll be glad to see him," said I. " Not half," said he with a vast smile. til'?- ON RUMOUR I was speaking the other day to a man of cautious mind on a subject of current rumour. " Well," he said, "if I had been asked whether I believed such evidence four months ago I should have said 1 Certainly.' " But after the great Russian myth I believe nothing that I can't prove. I believed in that army of Ghosts that came from Archangel ! There are people who say they didn't believe in it. Some of them believe they didn't believe in it. But I say defiantly that I did believe in it. And I say further that there was never a rumour in the world that seemed based upon more various or more convincing evidence. And it wasn't true. . . . Well, I find I'm a changed man. I find I am no longer a believer : I am a doubter." This experience, I suppose, is not uncommon. The man who believes as easily to-day as he did six 47 48 ON RUMOUR months ago is a man on whom lessons are thrown away. We have lived in a world of gigantic whispers, and most of them have been false whispers. Even the magic word " Official " leaves one cold. It is not what I am "officially" told that interests me: it is what I am "officially" not told that I want to know in order to arrive at the truth. What we have to guard against in this matter of rumours is the natural tendency to believe what we want to believe. It is the habit of mankind, said Thucydides, to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy. The experience of twenty-five centuries has wrought little change in us, and every character of the Peloponnesian war is repeated in the war of to-day. Take, in this matter of rumour, the case of the reported victory in Poland in November 1 914. There is strong reason to believe that a large part of Hinden- burg's army narrowly escaped being encircled, that had Rennenkampf come up to time the trick would have been done. But it wasn't done. Yet nearly every correspondent in Petrograd sent the most confident news of an overwhelming victory. The Morning Post correspondent spoke of it as something " terrible but sublime. There has been nothing like it since Napoleon left the bones of half a million men behind him in Russia." Even Lord Kitchener, in the House of Lords, said that Russia had accom- plished the greatest achievement of the war. And so, just afterwards, with the equally empty rumour of Hindenburg's " victory," which sent Berlin into ON RUMOUR 49 such a frenzy of rejoicing. It believed without evidence because it wanted to believe. And another fruitful source of rumour is fear. The famous concrete emplacement at Maubeuge will serve as an instance. We had the most elaborate details of how the property was acquired by German agents, how in secret the concrete platform was laid down, and how the great 42-cm. howitzer shelled Maubeuge from it. And instantly we heard of concrete emplacements in this country — at Willesden, Edinburgh, and elsewhere. We began to suspect every one who had a garage or a machine shop with a concrete foundation of being a German agent. I confess that I shared these suspicions in regard to a certain factory overlooking London, and could not wholly argue myself out of them, though I hadn't an atom of evidence beyond the fact that the building had been owned by Germans and had a commanding position. I was under the hypnotism of Maubeuge and the fears to which it gave birth. Yet there never was a concrete emplacement at Maubeuge, and no 42-cm. howitzer was used against that fortress. The property belonged, not to German agents, but to respectable Frenchmen, and the apology of the Matin for the libel upon them may be read by anybody who is interested in these myths of the war. I refer to this subject now not to recall these historic fables, but to show what cruel wrong we may do to the innocent by accepting rumours about our neighbours without examining the facts. Was there ever a more pitiful story than that told at the D 50 ON RUMOUR inquest on an elderly woman at Henham in Suffolk. Her husband had been the village schoolmaster for twenty-eight years. The couple had a son whom they sent to Germany to learn the language. The average village schoolmaster has not much money for luxuries, and I can imagine the couple screwing and saving to give their boy a good start in life. When he had finished his training he set out to seek his fortune in South America, and there in far Guatemala he became a teacher of languages. When the war broke out he heard the call of the Motherland to her children and like thousands of others came back to fight. But in the meantime the lying tongue of rumour had been busy with his name in his native village. It was said that he was an officer in the German Army, and on the strength of that rumour his parents were ordered by the Chief Constable to leave the village and not to dwell on the East Coast. It was a sentence of death on them. The order broke the old man's heart, and he committed suicide. The son arrived to find his father dead and his mother distracted by her bereavement. He took her away to the seaside for a rest, but on their return to the village she, too, committed suicide. And the jury did not say, " Killed by Slander": they said, "Suicide while of unsound mind." Oh, cautious jurymen! How do rumours get abroad ? There are many ways. Let me illustrate one of them. In his criticism of the war the other week Mr Belloc said : " The official German communique which ap- ON RUMOUR 51 peared in print last Saturday is a very good example upon which to work. I quote it as it appeared in the Westminster Gazette (which has from the beginning of the