PREFACE
　　One or two friends to whom I showed these papers in MS. havingobserved that they were not half bad, and some of my relations havingpromised to buy the book if it ever came out, I feel I have no rightto longer delay its issue. But for this, as one may say, publicdemand, I perhaps should not have ventured to offer these mere "idlethoughts" of mine as mental food for the English-speaking peoples ofthe earth. What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it shouldimprove, instruct, and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow. Icannot conscientiously recommend it for any useful purposes whatever.

All I can suggest is that when you get tired of reading "the besthundred books," you may take this up for half an hour. It will be achange.
ON BEING IDLE
　　Now, this is a subject on which I flatter myself I really am _aufait_. The gentleman who, when I was young, bathed me at wisdom'sfont for nine guineas a term--no extras--used to say he never knew aboy who could do less work in more time; and I remember my poorgrandmother once incidentally observing, in the course of aninstruction upon the use of the Prayer-book, that it was highlyimprobable that I should ever do much that I ought not to do, but thatshe felt convinced beyond a doubt that I should leave undone prettywell 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 tohave done, in spite of my laziness. But I have fully confirmed theaccuracy of her judgment so far as neglecting much that I ought not tohave neglected is concerned. Idling always has been my strong point.

I take no credit to myself in the matter--it is a gift. Few possessit. There are plenty of lazy people and plenty of slow-coaches, but agenuine idler is a rarity. He is not a man who slouches about withhis hands in his pockets. On the contrary, his most startlingcharacteristic is that he is always intensely busy.

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty ofwork to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing todo. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhaustingone. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.

Many years ago, when I was a young man, I was taken very ill--I nevercould see myself that much was the matter with me, except that I had abeastly cold. But I suppose it was something very serious, for thedoctor said that I ought to have come to him a month before, and thatif it (whatever it was) had gone on for another week he would not haveanswered for the consequences. It is an extraordinary thing, but Inever knew a doctor called into any case yet but what it transpiredthat another day's delay would have rendered cure hopeless. Ourmedical guide, philosopher, and friend is like the hero in amelodrama--he always comes upon the scene just, and only just, in thenick 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 amonth, with strict injunctions to do nothing whatever all the whilethat I was there. "Rest is what you require," said the doctor,"perfect rest."It seemed a delightful prospect. "This man evidently understands mycomplaint," said I, and I pictured to myself a glorious time--a fourweeks' _dolce far niente_ with a dash of illness in it. Not too muchillness, but just illness enough--just sufficient to give it theflavor of suffering and make it poetical. I should get up late, sipchocolate, and have my breakfast in slippers and a dressing-gown. Ishould lie out in the garden in a hammock and read sentimental novelswith a melancholy ending, until the books should fall from my listlesshand, and I should recline there, dreamily gazing into the deep blueof the firmament, watching the fleecy clouds floating likewhite-sailed ships across its depths, and listening to the joyous songof the birds and the low rustling of the trees. Or, on becoming tooweak to go out of doors, I should sit propped up with pillows at theopen window of the ground-floor front, and look wasted andinteresting, so that all the pretty girls would sigh as they passedby.

And twice a day I should go down in a Bath chair to the Colonnade todrink the waters. Oh, those waters! I knew nothing about them then,and was rather taken with the idea. "Drinking the waters" soundedfashionable and Queen Anne-fied, and I thought I should like them.

But, ugh! after the first three or four mornings! Sam Weller'sdescription of them as "having a taste of warm flat-irons" conveysonly a faint idea of their hideous nauseousness. If anything couldmake a sick man get well quickly, it would be the knowledge that hemust drink a glassful of them every day until he was recovered. Idrank them neat for six consecutive days, and they nearly killed me;but after then I adopted the plan of taking a stiff glass ofbrandy-and-water immediately on the top of them, and found much reliefthereby. I have been informed since, by various eminent medicalgentlemen, that the alcohol must have entirely counteracted theeffects of the chalybeate properties contained in the water. I amglad I was lucky enough to hit upon the right thing.

But "drinking the waters" was only a small portion of the torture Iexperienced during that memorable month--a month which was, withoutexception, the most miserable I have ever spent. During the best partof it I religiously followed the doctor's mandate and did nothingwhatever, except moon about the house and garden and go out for twohours a day in a Bath chair. That did break the monotony to a certainextent. There is more excitement about Bath-chairing--especially ifyou are not used to the exhilarating exercise--than might appear tothe casual observer. A sense of danger, such as a mere outsider mightnot understand, is ever present to the mind of the occupant. He feelsconvinced every minute that the whole concern is going over, aconviction which becomes especially lively whenever a ditch or astretch of newly macadamized road comes in sight. Every vehicle thatpasses he expects is going to run into him; and he never finds himselfascending or descending a hill without immediately beginning tospeculate upon his chances, supposing--as seems extremelyprobable--that the weak-kneed controller of his destiny should let go.

But even this diversion failed to enliven after awhile, and the_ennui_ became perfectly unbearable. I felt my mind giving way underit. It is not a strong mind, and I thought it would be unwise to taxit too far. So somewhere about the twentieth morning I got up early,had a good breakfast, and walked straight off to Hayfield, at the footof the Kinder Scout--a pleasant, busy little town, reached through alovely valley, and with two sweetly pretty women in it. At least theywere sweetly pretty then; one passed me on the bridge and, I think,smiled; and the other was standing at an open door, making anunremunerative investment of kisses upon a red-faced baby. But it isyears ago, and I dare say they have both grown stout and snappishsince that time. Coming back, I saw an old man breaking stones, andit roused such strong longing in me to use my arms that I offered hima drink to let me take his place. He was a kindly old man and hehumored me. I went for those stones with the accumulated energy ofthree weeks, and did more work in half an hour than he had done allday. 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 inthe pavilion every evening. But the days still passed slowlynotwithstanding, and I was heartily glad when the last one came and Iwas being whirled away from gouty, consumptive Buxton to London withits stern work and life. I looked out of the carriage as we rushedthrough Hendon in the evening. The lurid glare overhanging the mightycity seemed to warm my heart, and when, later on, my cab rattled outof St. Pancras' station, the old familiar roar that came swelling uparound 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 Iought 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 withmy back to the fire, calculating how much I owe, is when my desk isheaped 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 heavyevening's work before me. And if, for some urgent reason, I ought tobe up particularly early in the morning, it is then, more than at anyother 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 forfive minutes." Is there any human being, I wonder, besides the heroof a Sunday-school "tale for boys," who ever gets up willingly? Thereare some men to whom getting up at the proper time is an utterimpossibility. If eight o'clock happens to be the time that theyshould turn out, then they lie till half-past. If circumstanceschange and half-past eight becomes early enough for them, then it isnine before they can rise. They are like the statesman of whom it wassaid that he was always punctually half an hour late. They try allmanner of schemes. They buy alarm-clocks (artful contrivances that gooff at the wrong time and alarm the wrong people). They tell SarahJane to knock at the door and call them, and Sarah Jane does knock atthe door and does call them, and they grunt back "awri" and then gocomfortably to sleep again. I knew one man who would actually get outand have a cold bath; and even that was of no use, for afterward hewould jump into bed again to warm himself.

I think myself that I could keep out of bed all right if I once gotout. It is the wrenching away of the head from the pillow that I findso hard, and no amount of over-night determination makes it easier. Isay to myself, after having wasted the whole evening, "Well, I won'tdo any more work to-night; I'll get up early to-morrow morning;" and Iam thoroughly resolved to do so--then. In the morning, however, Ifeel less enthusiastic about the idea, and reflect that it would havebeen much better if I had stopped up last night. And then there isthe trouble of dressing, and the more one thinks about that the moreone wants to put it off.

It is a strange thing this bed, this mimic grave, where we stretch ourtired limbs and sink away so quietly into the silence and rest. "0bed, 0 bed, delicious bed, that heaven on earth to the weary head," assang 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 motherlylap and hush our wayward crying. The strong man full of care--thesick man full of pain--the little maiden sobbing for her faithlesslover--like children we lay our aching heads on your white bosom, andyou gently soothe us off to by-by.

Our trouble is sore indeed when you turn away and will not comfort us.

How long the dawn seems coming when we cannot sleep! Oh! thosehideous 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 thatdrift so slowly between us and the light. And oh! those still morehideous nights when we sit by another in pain, when the low firestartles us every now and then with a falling cinder, and the tick ofthe clock seems a hammer beating out the life that we are watching.

But enough of beds and bedrooms. I have kept to them too long, evenfor an idle fellow. Let us come out and have a smoke. That wastestime just as well and does not look so bad. Tobacco has been ablessing to us idlers. What the civil-service clerk before SirWalter's time found to occupy their minds with it is hard to imagine.

I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young menentirely to the want of the soothing weed. They had no work to do andcould not smoke, and the consequence was they were forever fightingand rowing. If, by any extraordinary chance, there was no war going,then they got up a deadly family feud with the next-door neighbor, andif, in spite of this, they still had a few spare moments on theirhands, they occupied them with discussions as to whose sweetheart wasthe best looking, the arguments employed on both sides beingbattle-axes, clubs, etc. Questions of taste were soon decided inthose days. When a twelfth-century youth fell in love he did not takethree paces backward, gaze into her eyes, and tell her she was toobeautiful 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 otherman's head, I mean--then that proved that his--the firstfellow'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 fellowto the second fellow, that is, because of course the other fellowwould 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 thefellow who _was_ the-- Look here, if A broke B's head, then A's girlwas a pretty girl; but if B broke A's head, then A's girl wasn't apretty girl, but B's girl was. That was their method of conductingart criticism.

Nowadays we light a pipe and let the girls fight it out amongthemselves.

They do it very well. They are getting to do all our work. They aredoctors, and barristers, and artists. They manage theaters, andpromote swindles, and edit newspapers. I am looking forward to thetime 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 toourselves, and tax our brains with nothing more trying thandiscussions upon the latest patterns in trousers and arguments as towhat Mr. Jones' coat was made of and whether it fitted him. It is aglorious prospect--for idle fellows.
ON BEING IN LOVE
　　You've been in love, of course! If not you've got it to come. Loveis like the measles; we all have to go through it. Also like themeasles, we take it only once. One never need be afraid of catchingit a second time. The man who has had it can go into the mostdangerous places and play the most foolhardy tricks with perfectsafety. He can picnic in shady woods, ramble through leafy aisles,and linger on mossy seats to watch the sunset. He fears a quietcountry-house no more than he would his own club. He can join afamily party to go down the Rhine. He can, to see the last of afriend, venture into the very jaws of the marriage ceremony itself.

He can keep his head through the whirl of a ravishing waltz, and restafterward in a dark conservatory, catching nothing more lasting than acold. He can brave a moonlight walk adown sweet-scented lanes or atwilight pull among the somber rushes. He can get over a stilewithout danger, scramble through a tangled hedge without being caught,come down a slippery path without falling. He can look into sunnyeyes and not be dazzled. He listens to the siren voices, yet sails onwith 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 onthe same heart. Love's handmaids are our life-long friends. Respect,and admiration, and affection, our doors may always be left open for,but their great celestial master, in his royal progress, pays but onevisit and departs. We like, we cherish, we are very, very fondof--but we never love again. A man's heart is a firework that once inits time flashes heavenward. Meteor-like, it blazes for a moment andlights with its glory the whole world beneath. Then the night of oursordid commonplace life closes in around it, and the burned-out case,falling back to earth, lies useless and uncared for, slowly smolderinginto ashes. Once, breaking loose from our prison bonds, we dare, asmighty old Prometheus dared, to scale the Olympian mount and snatchfrom Phoebus' chariot the fire of the gods. Happy those who,hastening down again ere it dies out, can kindle their earthly altarsat its flame. Love is too pure a light to burn long among the noisomegases that we breathe, but before it is choked out we may use it as atorch to ignite the cozy fire of affection.

And, after all, that warming glow is more suited to our cold littleback parlor of a world than is the burning spirit love. Love shouldbe the vestal fire of some mighty temple--some vast dim fane whoseorgan music is the rolling of the spheres. Affection will burncheerily when the white flame of love is flickered out. Affection isa fire that can be fed from day to day and be piled up ever higher asthe wintry years draw nigh. Old men and women can sit by it withtheir thin hands clasped, the little children can nestle down infront, the friend and neighbor has his welcome corner by its side, andeven shaggy Fido and sleek Titty can toast their noses at the bars.

Let us heap the coals of kindness upon that fire. Throw on yourpleasant words, your gentle pressures of the hand, your thoughtful andunselfish deeds. Fan it with good-humor, patience, and forbearance.

You can let the wind blow and the rain fall unheeded then, for yourhearth will be warm and bright, and the faces round it will makesunshine 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 relytoo much upon that unsteady flicker. It will dwindle and dwindle asthe months roll on, and there is no replenishing the fuel. You willwatch it die out in anger and disappointment. To each it will seemthat it is the other who is growing colder. Edwin sees withbitterness that Angelina no longer runs to the gate to meet him, allsmiles and blushes; and when he has a cough now she doesn't begin tocry and, putting her arms round his neck, say that she cannot livewithout 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 thananything else she is anxious to get rid of.

Poor little Angelina, too, sheds silent tears, for Edwin has given upcarrying her old handkerchief in the inside pocket of his waistcoat.

Both are astonished at the falling off in the other one, but neithersees 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 littlenessof poor human nature--join hands over their common failing, and startbuilding their house anew on a more earthly and enduring foundation.

But we are so blind to our own shortcomings, so wide awake to those ofothers. Everything that happens to us is always the other person'sfault. Angelina would have gone on loving Edwin forever and ever andever if only Edwin had not grown so strange and different. Edwinwould have adored Angelina through eternity if Angelina had onlyremained the same as when he first adored her.

It is a cheerless hour for you both when the lamp of love has gone outand the fire of affection is not yet lit, and you have to grope aboutin the cold, raw dawn of life to kindle it. God grant it catcheslight before the day is too far spent. Many sit shivering by the deadcoals till night come.

But, there, of what use is it to preach? Who that feels the rush ofyoung love through his veins can think it will ever flow feeble andslow! To the boy of twenty it seems impossible that he will not loveas wildly at sixty as he does then. He cannot call to mind anymiddle-aged or elderly gentleman of his acquaintance who is known toexhibit symptoms of frantic attachment, but that does not interfere inhis belief in himself. His love will never fall, whoever else's may.

Nobody ever loved as he loves, and so, of course, the rest of theworld's experience can be no guide in his case. Alas! alas! erethirty he has joined the ranks of the sneerers. It is not his fault.

Our passions, both the good and bad, cease with our blushes. We donot hate, nor grieve, nor joy, nor despair in our thirties like we didin our teens. Disappointment does not suggest suicide, and we quaffsuccess without intoxication.

We take all things in a minor key as we grow older. There are fewmajestic passages in the later acts of life's opera. Ambition takes aless ambitious aim. Honor becomes more reasonable and convenientlyadapts itself to circumstances. And love--love dies. "Irreverencefor the dreams of youth" soon creeps like a killing frost upon ourhearts. The tender shoots and the expanding flowers are nipped andwithered, and of a vine that yearned to stretch its tendrils round theworld there is left but a sapless stump.

My fair friends will deem all this rank heresy, I know. So far from aman's not loving after he has passed boyhood, it is not till there isa good deal of gray in his hair that they think his protestations atall worthy of attention. Young ladies take their notions of our sexfrom the novels written by their own, and compared with themonstrosities that masquerade for men in the pages of that nightmareliterature, Pythagoras' plucked bird and Frankenstein's demon werefair average specimens of humanity.

In these so-called books, the chief lover, or Greek god, as he isadmiringly referred to--by the way, they do not say which "Greek god"it is that the gentleman bears such a striking likeness to; it mightbe hump-backed Vulcan, or double-faced Janus, or even drivelingSilenus, the god of abstruse mysteries. He resembles the whole familyof them, however, in being a blackguard, and perhaps this is what ismeant. To even the little manliness his classical prototypespossessed, though, he can lay no claim whatever, being a listlesseffeminate noodle, on the shady side of forty. But oh! the depth andstrength of this elderly party's emotion for some bread-and-butterschool-girl! Hide your heads, ye young Romeos and Leanders! this_blase_ old beau loves with an hysterical fervor that requires fouradjectives to every noun to properly describe.

It is well, dear ladies, for us old sinners that you study only books.

Did you read mankind, you would know that the lad's shy stammeringtells a truer tale than our bold eloquence. A boy's love comes from afull 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 withthe rushing fountain that wells up when a boy's heart is struck withthe heavenly rod. If you would taste love, drink of the pure streamthat youth pours out at your feet. Do not wait till it has become amuddy river before you stoop to catch its waves.

Or is it that you like its bitter flavor--that the clear, limpid wateris insipid to your palate and that the pollution of its after-coursegives it a relish to your lips? Must we believe those who tell usthat a hand foul with the filth of a shameful life is the only one ayoung girl cares to be caressed by?

That is the teaching that is bawled out day by day from between thoseyellow covers. Do they ever pause to think, I wonder, those devil'sladyhelps, what mischief they are doing crawling about God's garden,and telling childish Eves and silly Adams that sin is sweet and thatdecency is ridiculous and vulgar? How many an innocent girl do theynot degrade into an evil-minded woman? To how many a weak lad do theynot point out the dirty by-path as the shortest cut to a maiden'sheart? It is not as if they wrote of life as it really is. Speaktruth, and right will take care of itself. But their pictures arecoarse daubs painted from the sickly fancies of their own diseasedimagination.

We want to think of women not--as their own sex would show them--asLorleis luring us to destruction, but as good angels beckoning usupward. They have more power for good or evil than they dream of. Itis just at the very age when a man's character is forming that hetumbles into love, and then the lass he loves has the making ormarring of him. Unconsciously he molds himself to what she would havehim, good or bad. I am sorry to have to be ungallant enough to saythat I do not think they always use their influence for the best. Toooften the female world is bounded hard and fast within the limits ofthe commonplace. Their ideal hero is a prince of littleness, and tobecome that many a powerful mind, enchanted by love, is "lost to lifeand use and name and fame."And yet, women, you could make us so much better if you only would.

It rests with you, more than with all the preachers, to roll thisworld a little nearer heaven. Chivalry is not dead: it only sleepsfor 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 CrossKnight did war. For no painted, mincing court dame could the dragonhave been slain. Oh, ladies fair, be fair in mind and soul as well asface, so that brave knights may win glory in your service! Oh, woman,throw off your disguising cloaks of selfishness, effrontery, andaffectation! Stand forth once more a queen in your royal robe ofsimple purity. A thousand swords, now rusting in ignoble sloth, shallleap from their scabbards to do battle for your honor against wrong.

A thousand Sir Rolands shall lay lance in rest, and Fear, Avarice,Pleasure, and Ambition shall go down in the dust before your colors.

What noble deeds were we not ripe for in the days when we loved? Whatnoble lives could we not have lived for her sake? Our love was areligion we could have died for. It was no mere human creature likeourselves that we adored. It was a queen that we paid homage to, agoddess that we worshiped.

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 toosoon how truly little Tom Moore sang when he said that there wasnothing half so sweet in life. Even when it brings misery it is awild, romantic misery, all unlike the dull, worldly pain ofafter-sorrows. When you have lost her--when the light is gone outfrom your life and the world stretches before you a long, dark horror,even then a half-enchantment mingles with your despair.

And who would not risk its terrors to gain its raptures? Ah, whatraptures they were! The mere recollection thrills you. How deliciousit was to tell her that you loved her, that you lived for her, thatyou would die for her! How you did rave, to be sure, what floods ofextravagant nonsense you poured forth, and oh, how cruel it was of herto pretend not to believe you! In what awe you stood of her! Howmiserable you were when you had offended her! And yet, how pleasantto be bullied by her and to sue for pardon without having theslightest notion of what your fault was! How dark the world was whenshe snubbed you, as she often did, the little rogue, just to see youlook wretched; how sunny when she smiled! How jealous you were ofevery one about her! How you hated every man she shook hands with,every woman she kissed--the maid that did her hair, the boy thatcleaned her shoes, the dog she nursed--though you had to be respectfulto the last-named! How you looked forward to seeing her, how stupidyou 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 ornight without finding yourself eventually opposite her windows! Youhadn't pluck enough to go in, but you hung about the corner and gazedat the outside. Oh, if the house had only caught fire--it wasinsured, so it wouldn't have mattered--and you could have rushed inand saved her at the risk of your life, and have been terribly burnedand injured! Anything to serve her. Even in little things that wasso sweet. How you would watch her, spaniel-like, to anticipate herslightest wish! How proud you were to do her bidding! How delightfulit was to be ordered about by her! To devote your whole life to herand to never think of yourself seemed such a simple thing. You wouldgo without a holiday to lay a humble offering at her shrine, and feltmore than repaid if she only deigned to accept it. How precious toyou was everything that she had hallowed by her touch--her littleglove, the ribbon she had worn, the rose that had nestled in her hairand whose withered leaves still mark the poems you never care to lookat now.

And oh, how beautiful she was, how wondrous beautiful! It was as someangel entering the room, and all else became plain and earthly. Shewas too sacred to be touched. It seemed almost presumption to gaze ather. You would as soon have thought of kissing her as of singingcomic songs in a cathedral. It was desecration enough to kneel andtimidly raise the gracious little hand to your lips.

Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish andpure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full oftruth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noblelongings and of noble strivings! And oh, these wise, clever days whenwe know that money is the only prize worth striving for, when webelieve in nothing else but meanness and lies, when we care for noliving creature but ourselves!
ON BEING IN THE BLUES
　　I can enjoy feeling melancholy, and there is a good deal ofsatisfaction about being thoroughly miserable; but nobody likes a fitof the blues. Nevertheless, everybody has them; notwithstandingwhich, nobody can tell why. There is no accounting for them. You arejust as likely to have one on the day after you have come into a largefortune as on the day after you have left your new silk umbrella inthe train. Its effect upon you is somewhat similar to what wouldprobably be produced by a combined attack of toothache, indigestion,and cold in the head. You become stupid, restless, and irritable;rude to strangers and dangerous toward your friends; clumsy, maudlin,and quarrelsome; a nuisance to yourself and everybody about you.

While it is on you can do nothing and think of nothing, though feelingat the time bound to do something. You can't sit still so put on yourhat and go for a walk; but before you get to the corner of the streetyou wish you hadn't come out and you turn back. You open a book andtry to read, but you find Shakespeare trite and commonplace, Dickensis dull and prosy, Thackeray a bore, and Carlyle too sentimental. Youthrow the book aside and call the author names. Then you "shoo" thecat out of the room and kick the door to after her. You think youwill write your letters, but after sticking at "Dearest Auntie: I findI have five minutes to spare, and so hasten to write to you," for aquarter of an hour, without being able to think of another sentence,you tumble the paper into the desk, fling the wet pen down upon thetable-cloth, and start up with the resolution of going to see theThompsons. While pulling on your gloves, however, it occurs to youthat the Thompsons are idiots; that they never have supper; and thatyou will be expected to jump the baby. You curse the Thompsons anddecide not to go.

By this time you feel completely crushed. You bury your face in yourhands and think you would like to die and go to heaven. You pictureto yourself your own sick-bed, with all your friends and relationsstanding round you weeping. You bless them all, especially the youngand pretty ones. They will value you when you are gone, so you say toyourself, and learn too late what they have lost; and you bitterlycontrast their presumed regard for you then with their decided want ofveneration now.

These reflections make you feel a little more cheerful, but only for abrief period; for the next moment you think what a fool you must be toimagine for an instant that anybody would be sorry at anything thatmight happen to you. Who would care two straws (whatever preciseamount of care two straws may represent) whether you are blown up, orhung up, or married, or drowned? Nobody cares for you. You neverhave been properly appreciated, never met with your due deserts in anyone particular. You review the whole of your past life, and it ispainfully apparent that you have been ill-used from your cradle.

Half an hour's indulgence in these considerations works you up into astate of savage fury against everybody and everything, especiallyyourself, whom anatomical reasons alone prevent your kicking.

Bed-time at last comes, to save you from doing something rash, and youspring upstairs, throw off your clothes, leaving them strewn all overthe room, blow out the candle, and jump into bed as if you had backedyourself for a heavy wager to do the whole thing against time. Thereyou toss and tumble about for a couple of hours or so, varying themonotony by occasionally jerking the clothes off and getting out andputting them on again. At length you drop into an uneasy and fitfulslumber, have bad dreams, and wake up late the next morning.

At least, this is all we poor single men can do under thecircumstances. Married men bully their wives, grumble at the dinner,and insist on the children's going to bed. All of which, creating, asit does, a good deal of disturbance in the house, must be a greatrelief to the feelings of a man in the blues, rows being the only formof amusement in which he can take any interest.

The symptoms of the infirmity are much the same in every case, but theaffliction itself is variously termed. The poet says that "a feelingof sadness comes o'er him." 'Arry refers to the heavings of hiswayward heart by confiding to Jimee that he has "got the bloominghump." Your sister doesn't know what is the matter with her to-night.

She feels out of sorts altogether and hopes nothing is going tohappen. The every-day young man is "so awful glad to meet you, oldfellow," for he does "feel so jolly miserable this evening." As formyself, I generally say that "I have a strange, unsettled feelingto-night" and "think I'll go out."By the way, it never does come except in the evening. In thesun-time, when the world is bounding forward full of life, we cannotstay to sigh and sulk. The roar of the working day drowns the voicesof the elfin sprites that are ever singing their low-toned _miserere_in our ears. In the day we are angry, disappointed, or indignant, butnever "in the blues" and never melancholy. When things go wrong atten o'clock in the morning we--or rather you--swear and knock thefurniture about; but if the misfortune comes at ten P.M., we readpoetry 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. Theactuality is too stern a thing for sentiment. We linger to weep overa 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 nottoy with sharp swords nor hug a gnawing fox to our breast for choice.

When a man or woman loves to brood over a sorrow and takes care tokeep it green in their memory, you may be sure it is no longer a painto them. However they may have suffered from it at first, therecollection has become by then a pleasure. Many dear old ladies whodaily look at tiny shoes lying in lavender-scented drawers, and weepas they think of the tiny feet whose toddling march is done, andsweet-faced young ones who place each night beneath their pillow somelock that once curled on a boyish head that the salt waves have kissedto death, will call me a nasty cynical brute and say I'm talkingnonsense; but I believe, nevertheless, that if they will askthemselves truthfully whether they find it unpleasant to dwell thus ontheir sorrow, they will be compelled to answer "No." Tears are assweet as laughter to some natures. The proverbial Englishman, we knowfrom old chronicler Froissart, takes his pleasures sadly, and theEnglishwoman goes a step further and takes her pleasures in sadnessitself.

I am not sneering. I would not for a moment sneer at anything thathelps to keep hearts tender in this hard old world. We men are coldand common-sensed enough for all; we would not have women the same.

No, no, ladies dear, be always sentimental and soft-hearted, as youare--be the soothing butter to our coarse dry bread. Besides,sentiment is to women what fun is to us. They do not care for ourhumor, surely it would be unfair to deny them their grief. And whoshall say that their mode of enjoyment is not as sensible as ours?

Why assume that a doubled-up body, a contorted, purple face, and agaping mouth emitting a series of ear-splitting shrieks point to astate of more intelligent happiness than a pensive face reposing upona little white hand, and a pair of gentle tear-dimmed eyes lookingback through Time's dark avenue upon a fading past?

I am glad when I see Regret walked with as a friend--glad because Iknow the saltness has been washed from out the tears, and that thesting must have been plucked from the beautiful face of Sorrow ere wedare press her pale lips to ours. Time has laid his healing hand uponthe wound when we can look back upon the pain we once fainted underand no bitterness or despair rises in our hearts. The burden is nolonger heavy when we have for our past troubles only the same sweetmingling of pleasure and pity that we feel when old knight-heartedColonel Newcome answers "_adsum_" to the great roll-call, or when Tomand Maggie Tulliver, clasping hands through the mists that havedivided them, go down, locked in each other's arms, beneath theswollen waters of the Floss.

Talking of poor Tom and Maggie Tulliver brings to my mind a saying ofGeorge Eliot's in connection with this subject of melancholy. Shespeaks somewhere of the "sadness of a summer's evening." Howwonderfully true--like everything that came from that wonderfulpen--the observation is! Who has not felt the sorrowful enchantmentof those lingering sunsets? The world belongs to Melancholy then, athoughtful deep-eyed maiden who loves not the glare of day. It is nottill "light thickens and the crow wings to the rocky wood" that shesteals forth from her groves. Her palace is in twilight land. It isthere she meets us. At her shadowy gate she takes our hand in hersand walks beside us through her mystic realm. We see no form, butseem to hear the rustling of her wings.

Even in the toiling hum-drum city her spirit comes to us. There is asomber presence in each long, dull street; and the dark river creepsghostlike under the black arches, as if bearing some hidden secretbeneath its muddy waves.

In the silent country, when the trees and hedges loom dim and blurredagainst the rising night, and the bat's wing flutters in our face, andthe land-rail's cry sounds drearily across the fields, the spell sinksdeeper still into our hearts. We seem in that hour to be standing bysome unseen death-bed, and in the swaying of the elms we hear the sighof the dying day.

A solemn sadness reigns. A great peace is around us. In its lightour cares of the working day grow small and trivial, and bread andcheese--ay, and even kisses--do not seem the only things worthstriving for. Thoughts we cannot speak but only listen to flood inupon us, and standing in the stillness under earth's darkening dome,we feel that we are greater than our petty lives. Hung round withthose dusky curtains, the world is no longer a mere dingy workshop,but a stately temple wherein man may worship, and where at times inthe dimness his groping hands touch God's.
ON BEING HARD UP
　　It is a most remarkable thing. I sat down with the full intention ofwriting something clever and original; but for the life of me I can'tthink of anything clever and original--at least, not at this moment.

The only thing I can think about now is being hard up. I supposehaving my hands in my pockets has made me think about this. I alwaysdo sit with my hands in my pockets except when I am in the company ofmy sisters, my cousins, or my aunts; and they kick up such a shindy--Ishould say expostulate so eloquently upon the subject--that I have togive in and take them out--my hands I mean. The chorus to theirobjections is that it is not gentlemanly. I am hanged if I can seewhy. I could understand its not being considered gentlemanly to putyour hands in other people's pockets (especially by the other people),but how, 0 ye sticklers for what looks this and what looks that, canputting his hands in his own pockets make a man less gentle? Perhapsyou are right, though. Now I come to think of it, I have heard somepeople grumble most savagely when doing it. But they were mostly oldgentlemen. We young fellows, as a rule, are never quite at easeunless we have our hands in our pockets. We are awkward and shifty.

We are like what a music-hall Lion Comique would be without hisopera-hat, if such a thing can be imagined. But let us put our handsin our trousers pockets, and let there be some small change in theright-hand one and a bunch of keys in the left, and we will face afemale post-office clerk.

It is a little difficult to know what to do with your bands, even inyour pockets, when there is nothing else there. Years ago, when mywhole capital would occasionally come down to "what in town the peoplecall a bob," I would recklessly spend a penny of it, merely for thesake of having the change, all in coppers, to jingle. You don't feelnearly so hard up with eleven pence in your pocket as you do with ashilling. Had I been "La-di-da," that impecunious youth about whom wesuperior folk are so sarcastic, I would have changed my penny for twoha'pennies.

I can speak with authority on the subject of being hard up. I havebeen a provincial actor. If further evidence be required, which I donot think likely, I can add that I have been a "gentleman connectedwith the press." I have lived on 15 shilling a week. I have lived aweek on 10, owing the other 5; and I have lived for a fortnight on agreat-coat.

It is wonderful what an insight into domestic economy being reallyhard up gives one. If you want to find out the value of money, liveon 15 shillings a week and see how much you can put by for clothes andrecreation. You will find out that it is worth while to wait for thefarthing change, that it is worth while to walk a mile to save apenny, that a glass of beer is a luxury to be indulged in only at rareintervals, 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'tgrumble at a hundred a year pocket-money then. There are some peopleto whom it would do a world of good. There is that delicate blossomwho can't drink any claret under ninety-four, and who would as soonthink of dining off cat's meat as off plain roast mutton. You do comeacross these poor wretches now and then, though, to the credit ofhumanity, they are principally confined to that fearful and wonderfulsociety known only to lady novelists. I never hear of one of thesecreatures discussing a _menu_ card but I feel a mad desire to drag himoff to the bar of some common east-end public-house and cram asixpenny dinner down his throat--beefsteak pudding, fourpence;potatoes, a penny; half a pint of porter, a penny. The recollectionof it (and the mingled fragrance of beer, tobacco, and roast porkgenerally leaves a vivid impression) might induce him to turn up hisnose a little less frequently in the future at everything that is putbefore him. Then there is that generous party, the cadger's delight,who is so free with his small change, but who never thinks of payinghis debts. It might teach even him a little common sense. "I alwaysgive the waiter a shilling. One can't give the fellow less, youknow," explained a young government clerk with whom I was lunching theother day in Regent Street. I agreed with him as to the utterimpossibility of making it elevenpence ha'penny; but at the same timeI resolved to one day decoy him to an eating-house I remembered nearCovent Garden, where the waiter, for the better discharge of hisduties, goes about in his shirt-sleeves--and very dirty sleeves theyare, 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 onshaking hands with him then and there as a mark of his esteem; of thatI feel sure.

There have been a good many funny things said and written abouthardupishness, but the reality is not funny, for all that. It is notfunny to have to haggle over pennies. It isn't funny to be thoughtmean and stingy. It isn't funny to be shabby and to be ashamed ofyour address. No, there is nothing at all funny in poverty--to thepoor. It is hell upon earth to a sensitive man; and many a bravegentleman who would have faced the labors of Hercules has had hisheart broken by its petty miseries.

It is not the actual discomforts themselves that are hard to bear.

Who would mind roughing it a bit if that were all it meant? Whatcared Robinson Crusoe for a patch on his trousers? Did he weartrousers? I forget; or did he go about as he does in the pantomimes?

What did it matter to him if his toes did stick out of his boots? andwhat if his umbrella was a cotton one, so long as it kept the rainoff? His shabbiness did not trouble him; there was none of hisfriends round about to sneer him.

Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is thesting. It is not cold that makes a man without a great-coat hurryalong so quickly. It is not all shame at telling lies--which he knowswill not be believed--that makes him turn so red when he informs youthat he considers great-coats unhealthy and never carries an umbrellaon principle. It is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime. No;if it were men wouldn't be ashamed of it. It's a blunder, though, andis 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 demagogueas by a footman, and not all the copy-book maxims ever set for inkstained youth will make him respected. Appearances are everything, sofar as human opinion goes, and the man who will walk down Piccadillyarm in arm with the most notorious scamp in London, provided he is awell-dressed one, will slink up a back street to say a couple of wordsto a seedy-looking gentleman. And the seedy-looking gentleman knowsthis--no one better--and will go a mile round to avoid meeting anacquaintance. Those that knew him in his prosperity need nevertrouble themselves to look the other way. He is a thousand times moreanxious that they should not see him than they can be; and as to theirassistance, there is nothing he dreads more than the offer of it. Allhe wants is to be forgotten; and in this respect he is generallyfortunate enough to get what he wants.

One becomes used to being hard up, as one becomes used to everythingelse, by the help of that wonderful old homeopathic doctor, Time. Youcan tell at a glance the difference between the old hand and thenovice; between the case-hardened man who has been used to shift andstruggle for years and the poor devil of a beginner striving to hidehis misery, and in a constant agony of fear lest he should be foundout. Nothing shows this difference more clearly than the way in whicheach will pawn his watch. As the poet says somewhere: "True ease inpawning 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 withmore. The assistant is even civil and attends to him at once, to thegreat indignation of the lady in the next box, who, however,sarcastically observes that she don't mind being kept waiting "if itis a regular customer." Why, from the pleasant and businesslikemanner in which the transaction is carried out, it might be a largepurchase in the three per cents. Yet what a piece of work a man makesof his first "pop." A boy popping his first question is confidenceitself compared with him. He hangs about outside the shop until hehas succeeded in attracting the attention of all the loafers in theneighborhood and has aroused strong suspicions in the mind of thepoliceman on the beat. At last, after a careful examination of thecontents of the windows, made for the purpose of impressing thebystanders with the notion that he is going in to purchase a diamondbracelet or some such trifle, he enters, trying to do so with acareless swagger, and giving himself really the air of a member of theswell mob. When inside he speaks in so low a voice as to be perfectlyinaudible, and has to say it all over again. When, in the course ofhis rambling conversation about a "friend" of his, the word "lend" isreached, he is promptly told to go up the court on the right and takethe first door round the corner. He comes out of the shop with a facethat you could easily light a cigarette at, and firmly under theimpression that the whole population of the district is watching him.

When he does get to the right place he has forgotten his name andaddress and is in a general condition of hopeless imbecility. Askedin a severe tone how he came by "this," he stammers and contradictshimself, and it is only a miracle if he does not confess to havingstolen it that very day. He is thereupon informed that they don'twant anything to do with his sort, and that he had better get out ofthis as quickly as possible, which he does, recollecting nothing moreuntil he finds himself three miles off, without the slightestknowledge how he got there.

By the way, how awkward it is, though, having to depend onpublic-houses and churches for the time. The former are generally toofast and the latter too slow. Besides which, your efforts to get aglimpse of the public house clock from the outside are attended withgreat difficulties. If you gently push the swing-door ajar and peerin you draw upon yourself the contemptuous looks of the barmaid, whoat once puts you down in the same category with area sneaks andcadgers. You also create a certain amount of agitation among themarried portion of the customers. You don't see the clock because itis behind the door; and in trying to withdraw quietly you jam yourhead. The only other method is to jump up and down outside thewindow. After this latter proceeding, however, if you do not bringout a banjo and commence to sing, the youthful inhabitants of theneighborhood, who have gathered round in expectation, becomedisappointed.

I should like to know, too, by what mysterious law of nature it isthat 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 youthe time. Nobody even feels the slightest curiosity on the subjectwhen you've got it on.

Dear old ladies and gentlemen who know nothing about being hardup--and may they never, bless their gray old heads--look upon thepawn-shop as the last stage of degradation; but those who know itbetter (and my readers have no doubt, noticed this themselves) areoften surprised, like the little boy who dreamed he went to heaven, atmeeting so many people there that they never expected to see. For mypart, I think it a much more independent course than borrowing fromfriends, and I always try to impress this upon those of myacquaintance who incline toward "wanting a couple of pounds till theday after to-morrow." But they won't all see it. One of them onceremarked that he objected to the principle of the thing. I fancy ifhe had said it was the interest that he objected to he would have beennearer the truth: twenty-five per cent. certainly does come heavy.

There are degrees in being hard up. We are all hard up, more orless--most of us more. Some are hard up for a thousand pounds; somefor 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 itback within a week at the outside, and if any lady or gentleman amongmy readers would kindly lend it me, I should be very much obligedindeed. They could send it to me under cover to Messrs. Field & Tuer,only, in such case, please let the envelope be carefully sealed. Iwould give you my I.O.U. as security.
ON VANITY AND VANITIES
　　All is vanity and everybody's vain. Women are terribly vain. So aremen--more so, if possible. So are children, particularly children.

One of them at this very moment is hammering upon my legs. She wantsto know what I think of her new shoes. Candidly I don't think much ofthem. They lack symmetry and curve and possess an indescribableappearance of lumpiness (I believe, too, they've put them on the wrongfeet). But I don't say this. It is not criticism, but flattery thatshe wants; and I gush over them with what I feel to myself to bedegrading effusiveness. Nothing else would satisfy thisself-opinionated cherub. I tried the conscientious-friend dodge withher on one occasion, but it was not a success. She had requested myjudgment upon her general conduct and behavior, the exact casesubmitted being, "Wot oo tink of me? Oo peased wi' me?" and I hadthought it a good opportunity to make a few salutary remarks upon herlate moral career, and said: "No, I am not pleased with you." Irecalled to her mind the events of that very morning, and I put it toher how she, as a Christian child, could expect a wise and good uncleto be satisfied with the carryings on of an infant who that very dayhad roused the whole house at five AM.; had upset a water-jug andtumbled downstairs after it at seven; had endeavored to put the cat inthe bath at eight; and sat on her own father's hat at ninethirty-five.

What did she do? Was she grateful to me for my plain speaking? Didshe ponder upon my words and determine to profit by them and to leadfrom that hour a better and nobler life?

No! 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 realsentiments more to myself like, preferring to express unboundedadmiration of this young person's actions, irrespective of theiractual merits. And she nods her head approvingly and trots off toadvertise my opinion to the rest of the household. She appears toemploy it as a sort of testimonial for mercenary purposes, for Isubsequently hear distant sounds of "Unkie says me dood dirl--me dotto have two bikkies [biscuits]."There she goes, now, gazing rapturously at her own toes and murmuring"pittie"--two-foot-ten of conceit and vanity, to say nothing of otherwickednesses.

They are all alike. I remember sitting in a garden one sunnyafternoon in the suburbs of London. Suddenly I heard a shrill treblevoice calling from a top-story window to some unseen being, presumablyin one of the other gardens, "Gamma, me dood boy, me wery good boy,gamma; me dot on Bob's knickiebockies."Why, even animals are vain. I saw a great Newfoundland dog the otherday sitting in front of a mirror at the entrance to a shop in Regent'sCircus, and examining himself with an amount of smug satisfaction thatI have never seen equaled elsewhere outside a vestry meeting.

I was at a farm-house once when some high holiday was beingcelebrated. I don't remember what the occasion was, but it wassomething festive, a May Day or Quarter Day, or something of thatsort, and they put a garland of flowers round the head of one of thecows. Well, that absurd quadruped went about all day as perky as aschoolgirl in a new frock; and when they took the wreath off shebecame quite sulky, and they had to put it on again before she wouldstand 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 knowna cat get up and walk out of the room on a remark derogatory to herspecies being made by a visitor, while a neatly turned compliment willset them purring for an hour.

I do like cats. They are so unconsciously amusing. There is such acomic dignity about them, such a "How dare you!" "Go away, don't touchme" sort of air. Now, there is nothing haughty about a dog. They are"Hail, fellow, well met" with every Tom, Dick, or Harry that they comeacross. When I meet a dog of my acquaintance I slap his head, callhim opprobrious epithets, and roll him over on his back; and there helies, gaping at me, and doesn't mind it a bit.

Fancy carrying on like that with a cat! Why, she would never speak toyou again as long as you lived. No, when you want to win theapprobation of a cat you must mind what you are about and work yourway carefully. If you don't know the cat, you had best begin bysaying, "Poor pussy." After which add "did 'ums" in a tone ofsoothing sympathy. You don't know what you mean any more than the catdoes, but the sentiment seems to imply a proper spirit on your part,and generally touches her feelings to such an extent that if you areof good manners and passable appearance she will stick her back up andrub her nose against you. Matters having reached this stage, you mayventure to chuck her under the chin and tickle the side of her head,and the intelligent creature will then stick her claws into your legs;and all is friendship and affection, as so sweetly expressed in thebeautiful 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 intopussy's notions of human goodness. it is evident that in her opiniongoodness consists of stroking her, and patting her, and feeding herwith food. I fear this narrow-minded view of virtue, though, is notconfined to pussies. We are all inclined to adopt a similar standardof merit in our estimate of other people. A good man is a man who isgood 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 wholeworld, with everybody and everything in it, was created as a sort ofnecessary appendage to ourselves. Our fellow men and women were madeto admire us and to minister to our various requirements. You and I,dear reader, are each the center of the universe in our respectiveopinions. You, as I understand it, were brought into being by aconsiderate Providence in order that you might read and pay me forwhat I write; while I, in your opinion, am an article sent into theworld to write something for you to read. The stars--as we term themyriad other worlds that are rushing down beside us through theeternal silence--were put into the heavens to make the sky lookinteresting for us at night; and the moon with its dark mysteries andever-hidden face is an arrangement for us to flirt under.

I fear we are most of us like Mrs. Poyser's bantam cock, who fanciedthe sun got up every morning to hear him crow. "'Tis vanity thatmakes the world go round." I don't believe any man ever existedwithout vanity, and if he did he would be an extremely uncomfortableperson to have anything to do with. He would, of course, be a verygood man, and we should respect him very much. He would be a veryadmirable man--a man to be put under a glass case and shown round as aspecimen--a man to be stuck upon a pedestal and copied, like a schoolexercise--a man to be reverenced, but not a man to be loved, not ahuman brother whose hand we should care to grip. Angels may be veryexcellent sort of folk in their way, but we, poor mortals, in ourpresent state, would probably find them precious slow company. Evenmere good people are rather depressing. It is in our faults andfailings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and findsympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is inour follies that we are at one. Some of us are pious, some of us aregenerous. Some few of us are honest, comparatively speaking; andsome, fewer still, may possibly be truthful. But in vanity andkindred weaknesses we can all join hands. Vanity is one of thosetouches of nature that make the whole world kin. From the Indianhunter, proud of his belt of scalps, to the European general, swellingbeneath his row of stars and medals; from the Chinese, gleeful at thelength of his pigtail, to the "professional beauty," sufferingtortures in order that her waist may resemble a peg-top; fromdraggle-tailed little Polly Stiggins, strutting through Seven Dialswith a tattered parasol over her head, to the princess sweepingthrough a drawing-room with a train of four yards long; from 'Arry,winning by vulgar chaff the loud laughter of his pals, to thestatesman whose ears are tickled by the cheers that greet hishigh-sounding periods; from the dark-skinned African, bartering hisrare oils and ivory for a few glass beads to hang about his neck, tothe Christian maiden selling her white body for a score of tiny stonesand an empty title to tack before her name--all march, and fight, andbleed, and die beneath its tawdry flag.

Ay, ay, vanity is truly the motive-power that moves humanity, and itis flattery that greases the wheels. If you want to win affection andrespect 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 everybodyupon everything, and especially upon what they haven't got. Admireguys for their beauty, fools for their wit, and boors for theirbreeding. Your discernment and intelligence will be extolled to theskies.

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, unlessit be an earl that wears a belt instead of braces. Some men do. Idon't like it myself. You have to keep the thing so tight for it tobe of any use, and that is uncomfortable. Anyhow, whatever particularkind of an earl a belted earl may be, he is, I assert, get-overable byflattery; just as every other human being is, from a duchess to acat's-meat man, from a plow boy to a poet--and the poet far easierthan the plowboy, for butter sinks better into wheaten bread than intooaten cakes.

As for love, flattery is its very life-blood. Fill a person with lovefor themselves, and what runs over will be your share, says a certainwitty and truthful Frenchman whose name I can't for the life of meremember. (Confound it! I never can remember names when I want to.)Tell a girl she is an angel, only more angelic than an angel; that sheis a goddess, only more graceful, queenly, and heavenly than theaverage goddess; that she is more fairy-like than Titania, morebeautiful than Venus, more enchanting than Parthenope; more adorable,lovely, and radiant, in short, than any other woman that ever didlive, does live, or could live, and you will make a very favorableimpression upon her trusting little heart. Sweet innocent! she willbelieve every word you say. It is so easy to deceive a woman--in thisway.

Dear little souls, they hate flattery, so they tell you; and when yousay, "Ah, darling, it isn't flattery in your case, it's plain, sobertruth; you really are, without exaggeration, the most beautiful, themost good, the most charming, the most divine, the most perfect humancreature that ever trod this earth," they will smile a quiet,approving smile, and, leaning against your manly shoulder, murmur thatyou are a dear good fellow after all.

By Jove! fancy a man trying to make love on strictly truthfulprinciples, determining never to utter a word of mere compliment orhyperbole, but to scrupulously confine himself to exact fact! Fancyhis gazing rapturously into his mistress' eyes and whispering softlyto 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 alight drab color shot with red; and telling her as he pressed her tohis 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 bequite up to the average standard of such things!

A nice chance he would stand against the man who would tell her thather face was like a fresh blush rose, that her hair was a wanderingsunbeam imprisoned by her smiles, and her eyes like two evening stars.

There are various ways of flattering, and, of course, you must adaptyour style to your subject. Some people like it laid on with atrowel, and this requires very little art. With sensible persons,however, it needs to be done very delicately, and more by suggestionthan actual words. A good many like it wrapped up in the form of aninsult, as--"Oh, you are a perfect fool, you are. You would give yourlast sixpence to the first hungry-looking beggar you met;" whileothers will swallow it only when administered through the medium of athird person, so that if C wishes to get at an A of this sort, he mustconfide 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 Bis a reliable man, though, otherwise he won't.

Those fine, sturdy John Bulls who "hate flattery, sir," "Never letanybody get over me by flattery," etc., etc., are very simply managed.

Flatter them enough upon their absence of vanity, and you can do whatyou like with them.

After all, vanity is as much a virtue as a vice. It is easy to recitecopy-book maxims against its sinfulness, but it is a passion that can"move us to good as well as to evil. Ambition is only vanityennobled. We want to win praise and admiration--or fame as we preferto name it--and so we write great books, and paint grand pictures, andsing sweet songs; and toil with willing hands in study, loom, andlaboratory.

We wish to become rich men, not in order to enjoy ease andcomfort--all that any one man can taste of those may be purchasedanywhere for 200 pounds per annum--but that our houses may be biggerand more gaudily furnished than our neighbors'; that our horses andservants may be more numerous; that we may dress our wives anddaughters in absurd but expensive clothes; and that we may give costlydinners of which we ourselves individually do not eat a shilling'sworth. And to do this we aid the world's work with clear and busybrain, spreading commerce among its peoples, carrying civilization toits remotest corners.

Do not let us abuse vanity, therefore. Rather let us use it. Honoritself is but the highest form of vanity. The instinct is notconfined solely to Beau Brummels and Dolly Vardens. There is thevanity 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 bevain together. Let us join hands and help each other to increase ourvanity. Let us be vain, not of our trousers and hair, but of bravehearts and working hands, of truth, of purity, of nobility. Let us betoo vain to stoop to aught that is mean or base, too vain for pettyselfishness and little-minded envy, too vain to say an unkind word ordo an unkind act. Let us be vain of being single-hearted, uprightgentlemen in the midst of a world of knaves. Let us pride ourselvesupon thinking high thoughts, achieving great deeds, living good lives.
ON GETTING ON IN THE WORLD
　　Not exactly the sort of thing for an idle fellow to think about, isit? But outsiders, you know, often see most of the game; and sittingin my arbor by the wayside, smoking my hookah of contentment andeating the sweet lotus-leaves of indolence, I can look out musinglyupon the whirling throng that rolls and tumbles past me on the greathigh-road of life.

Never-ending is the wild procession. Day and night you can hear thequick tramp of the myriad feet--some running, some walking, somehalting and lame; but all hastening, all eager in the feverish race,all straining life and limb and heart and soul to reach theever-receding horizon of success.

Mark them as they surge along--men and women, old and young, gentleand simple, fair and foul, rich and poor, merry and sad--all hurrying,bustling, scrambling. The strong pushing aside the weak, the cunningcreeping past the foolish; those behind elbowing those before; thosein front kicking, as they run, at those behind. Look close and seethe flitting show. Here is an old man panting for breath, and there atimid maiden driven by a hard and sharp-faced matron; here is astudious youth, reading "How to Get On in the World" and lettingeverybody pass him as he stumbles along with his eyes on his book;here is a bored-looking man, with a fashionably dressed woman jogginghis elbow; here a boy gazing wistfully back at the sunny village thathe never again will see; here, with a firm and easy step, strides abroad-shouldered man; and here, with stealthy tread, a thin-faced,stooping fellow dodges and shuffles upon his way; here, with gazefixed always on the ground, an artful rogue carefully works his wayfrom side to side of the road and thinks he is going forward; and herea youth with a noble face stands, hesitating as he looks from thedistant goal to the mud beneath his feet.

And now into sight comes a fair girl, with her dainty face growingmore wrinkled at every step, and now a care-worn man, and now ahopeful lad.

A motley throng--a motley throng! Prince and beggar, sinner andsaint, butcher and baker and candlestick maker, tinkers and tailors,and plowboys and sailors--all jostling along together. Here thecounsel in his wig and gown, and here the old Jew clothes-man underhis dingy tiara; here the soldier in his scarlet, and here theundertaker's mute in streaming hat-band and worn cotton gloves; herethe musty scholar fumbling his faded leaves, and here the scentedactor dangling his showy seals. Here the glib politician crying hislegislative panaceas, and here the peripatetic Cheap-Jack holdingaloft his quack cures for human ills. Here the sleek capitalist andthere the sinewy laborer; here the man of science and here theshoe-back; here the poet and here the water-rate collector; here thecabinet minister and there the ballet-dancer. Here a red-nosedpublican shouting the praises of his vats and there a temperancelecturer at 50 pounds a night; here a judge and there a swindler; herea priest and there a gambler. Here a jeweled duchess, smiling andgracious; 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. Theirspeed never slackens, the race never ends. There is no wayside restfor 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, orthey will be trampled down and lost--on, with throbbing brain andtottering limbs--on, till the heart grows sick, and the eyes growblurred, and a gurgling groan tells those behind they may close upanother space.

And yet, in spite of the killing pace and the stony track, who but thesluggard or the dolt can hold aloof from the course? Who--like thebelated traveler that stands watching fairy revels till he snatchesand drains the goblin cup and springs into the whirling circle--canview the mad tumult and not be drawn into its midst? Not I, for one.

I confess to the wayside arbor, the pipe of contentment, and thelotus-leaves being altogether unsuitable metaphors. They sounded verynice and philosophical, but I'm afraid I am not the sort of person tosit in arbors smoking pipes when there is any fun going on outside. Ithink I more resemble the Irishman who, seeing 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 ofpeople getting on in it--battling their way bravely and fairly--thatis, not slipping through by luck or trickery. It stirs one's oldSaxon fighting blood like the tales of "knights who fought 'gainstfearful odds" that thrilled us in our school-boy days.

And fighting the battle of life is fighting against fearful odds, too.

There are giants and dragons in this nineteenth century, and thegolden casket that they guard is not so easy to win as it appears inthe story-books. There, Algernon takes one long, last look at theancestral hall, dashes the tear-drop from his eye, and goes off--toreturn in three years' time, rolling in riches. The authors do nottell us "how it's done," which is a pity, for it would surely proveexciting.

But then not one novelist in a thousand ever does tell us the realstory 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 merchantprinces," 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 inhalf the biographical novels ever written. He relates to us all thevarious steps by which his office-boy rose to be the "ruler of thequeen's navee," and explains to us how the briefless barrister managedto become a great and good judge, "ready to try this breach of promiseof marriage." It is in the petty details, not in the great results,that the interest of existence lies.

What we really want is a novel showing us all the hidden under-currentof an ambitious man's career--his struggles, and failures, and hopes,his disappointments and victories. It would be an immense success. Iam sure the wooing of Fortune would prove quite as interesting a taleas the wooing of any flesh-and-blood maiden, though, by the way, itwould read extremely similar; for Fortune is, indeed, as the ancientspainted her, very like a woman--not quite so unreasonable andinconsistent, but nearly so--and the pursuit is much the same in onecase 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 herlover until he has ceased to care for her; and it is not until youhave snapped your fingers in Fortune's face and turned on your heelthat 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 filled youwith ecstasy? Everything comes too late in this world.

Good people say that it is quite right and proper that it should beso, and that it proves ambition is wicked.

Bosh! Good people are altogether wrong. (They always are, in myopinion. We never agree on any single point.) What would the worlddo without ambitious people, I should like to know? Why, it would beas flabby as a Norfolk dumpling. Ambitious people are the leavenwhich raises it into wholesome bread. Without ambitious people theworld would never get up. They are busybodies who are about early inthe morning, hammering, shouting, and rattling the fire-irons, andrendering it generally impossible for the rest of the house to remainin bed.

Wrong to be ambitious, forsooth! The men wrong who, with bent backand sweating brow, cut the smooth road over which humanity marchesforward from generation to generation! Men wrong for using thetalents that their Master has intrusted to them--for toiling whileothers play!

Of course they are seeking their reward. Man is not given thatgodlike unselfishness that thinks only of others' good. But inworking for themselves they are working for us all. We are so boundtogether that no man can labor for himself alone. Each blow hestrikes in his own behalf helps to mold the universe. The stream instruggling onward turns the mill-wheel; the coral insect, fashioningits 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 theyput a belt of civilization half round the earth. Stephenson, to win afortune, invented the steam-engine; and Shakespeare wrote his plays inorder to keep a comfortable home for Mrs. Shakespeare and the littleShakespeares.

Contented, unambitious people are all very well in their way. Theyform a neat, useful background for great portraits to be paintedagainst, and they make a respectable, if not particularly intelligent,audience for the active spirits of the age to play before. I have nota word to say against contented people so long as they keep quiet.

But do not, for goodness' sake, let them go strutting about, as theyare so fond of doing, crying out that they are the true models for thewhole species. Why, they are the deadheads, the drones in the greathive, the street crowds that lounge about, gaping at those who areworking.

And let them not imagine, either--as they are also fond of doing--thatthey are very wise and philosophical and that it is a very artfulthing to be contented. It may be true that "a contented mind is happyanywhere," but so is a Jerusalem pony, and the consequence is thatboth are put anywhere and are treated anyhow. "Oh, you need notbother about him," is what is said; "he is very contented as he is,and it would be a pity to disturb him." And so your contented partyis passed over and the discontented man gets his place.

If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but grumblewith 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 necessaryto adopt the principle pursued by the plaintiff in an action fordamages, and to demand ten times more than you are ready to accept.

If you can feel satisfied with a hundred, begin by insisting on athousand; if you start by suggesting a hundred you will only get ten.

It was by not following this simple plan that poor Jean JacquesRousseau came to such grief. He fixed the summit of his earthly blissat living in an orchard with an amiable woman and a cow, and he neverattained even that. He did get as far as the orchard, but the womanwas not amiable, and she brought her mother with her, and there was nocow. Now, if he had made up his mind for a large country estate, ahouseful of angels, and a cattle-show, he might have lived to possesshis kitchen garden and one head of live-stock, and even possibly havecome across that _rara-avis_--a really amiable woman.

What a terribly dull affair, too, life must be for contented people!

How heavy the time must hang upon their hands, and what on earth dothey occupy their thoughts with, supposing that they have any?

Reading the paper and smoking seems to be the intellectual food of themajority of them, to which the more energetic add playing the fluteand talking about the affairs of the next-door neighbor.

They never knew the excitement of expectation nor the stern delight ofaccomplished effort, such as stir the pulse of the man who hasobjects, and hopes, and plans. To the ambitious man life is abrilliant game--a game that calls forth all his tact and energy andnerve--a game to be won, in the long run, by the quick eye and thesteady hand, and yet having sufficient chance about its working out togive it all the glorious zest of uncertainty. He exults in it as thestrong 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 therace, he, at least, has had a run. Better to work and fail than tosleep one's life away.

So, walk up, walk up, walk up. Walk up, ladies and gentlemen! walkup, boys and girls! Show your skill and try your strength; brave yourluck and prove your pluck. Walk up! The show is never closed and thegame is always going. The only genuine sport in all the fair,gentlemen--highly respectable and strictly moral--patronized by thenobility, clergy, and gentry. Established in the year one, gentlemen,and been flourishing ever since--walk up! Walk up, ladies andgentlemen, and take a hand. There are prizes for all and all canplay. There is gold for the man and fame for the boy; rank for themaiden 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 therest, why--"The rapture of pursuingIs the prize the vanquished gain."
ON THE WEATHER
　　Things do go so contrary-like with me. I wanted to hit upon anespecially novel, out-of-the-way subject for one of these articles.

"I will write one paper about something altogether new," I said tomyself; "something that nobody else has ever written or talked aboutbefore; and then I can have it all my own way." And I went about fordays, trying to think of something of this kind; and I couldn't. AndMrs. Cutting, our charwoman, came yesterday--I don't mind mentioningher name, because I know she will not see this book. She would notlook at such a frivolous publication. She never reads anything butthe Bible and _Lloyd's Weekly News_. All other literature sheconsiders unnecessary and sinful.

She said: "Lor', sir, you do look worried."I said: "Mrs. Cutting, I am trying to think of a subject thediscussion of which will come upon the world in the nature of astartler--some subject upon which no previous human being has eversaid a word--some subject that will attract by its novelty, invigorateby its surprising freshness."She laughed and said I was a funny gentleman.

That's my luck again. When I make serious observations peoplechuckle; when I attempt a joke nobody sees it. I had a beautiful onelast week. I thought it so good, and I worked it up and brought it inartfully at a dinner-party. I forget how exactly, but we had beentalking about the attitude of Shakespeare toward the Reformation, andI said something and immediately added, "Ah, that reminds me; such afunny thing happened the other day in Whitechapel." "Oh," said they,"what was that?" "Oh, 'twas awfully funny," I replied, beginning togiggle myself; "it will make you roar;" and I told it them.

There was dead silence when I finished--it was one of those longjokes, too--and then, at last, somebody said: "And that was thejoke?"I assured them that it was, and they were very polite and took my wordfor it. All but one old gentleman at the other end of the table, whowanted to know which was the joke--what he said to her or what shesaid to him; and we argued it out.

Some people are too much the other way. I knew a fellow once whosenatural tendency to laugh at everything was so strong that if youwanted to talk seriously to him, you had to explain beforehand thatwhat you were going to say would not be amusing. Unless you got himto clearly understand this, he would go off into fits of merrimentover every word you uttered. I have known him on being asked the timestop short in the middle of the road, slap his leg, and burst into aroar of laughter. One never dared say anything really funny to thatman. A good joke would have killed him on the spot.

In the present instance I vehemently repudiated the accusation offrivolity, and pressed Mrs. Cutting for practical ideas. She thenbecame thoughtful and hazarded "samplers;" saying that she never heardthem spoken much of now, but that they used to be all the rage whenshe was a girl.

I declined samplers and begged her to think again. She pondered along while, with a tea-tray in her hands, and at last suggested theweather, which she was sure had been most trying of late.

And ever since that idiotic suggestion I have been unable to get theweather out of my thoughts or anything else in.

It certainly is most wretched weather. At all events it is so now atthe time I am writing, and if it isn't particularly unpleasant when Icome to be read it soon will be.

It always is wretched weather according to us. The weather is likethe government--always in the wrong. In summer-time we say it isstifling; in winter that it is killing; in spring and autumn we findfault with it for being neither one thing nor the other and wish itwould make up its mind. If it is fine we say the country is beingruined for want of rain; if it does rain we pray for fine weather. IfDecember passes without snow, we indignantly demand to know what hasbecome of our good old-fashioned winters, and talk as if we had beencheated out of something we had bought and paid for; and when it doessnow, our language is a disgrace to a Christian nation. We shallnever be content until each man makes his own weather and keeps it tohimself.

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 sounwelcome. In her own home, the country, Nature is sweet in all hermoods. What can be more beautiful than the snow, falling big withmystery in silent softness, decking the fields and trees with white asif for a fairy wedding! And how delightful is a walk when the frozenground rings beneath our swinging tread--when our blood tingles in therare keen air, and the sheep-dogs' distant bark and children'slaughter peals faintly clear like Alpine bells across the open hills!

And then skating! scudding with wings of steel across the swaying ice,making whirring music as we fly. And oh, how dainty is spring--Natureat sweet eighteen!

When the little hopeful leaves peep out so fresh and green, so pureand bright, like young lives pushing shyly out into the bustlingworld; when the fruit-tree blossoms, pink and white, like villagemaidens in their Sunday frocks, hide each whitewashed cottage in acloud of fragile splendor; and the cuckoo's note upon the breeze iswafted through the woods! And summer, with its deep dark green anddrowsy hum--when the rain-drops whisper solemn secrets to thelistening leaves and the twilight lingers in the lanes! And autumn!

ah, how sadly fair, with its golden glow and the dying grandeur of itstinted woods--its blood-red sunsets and its ghostly evening mists,with its busy murmur of reapers, and its laden orchards, and thecalling of the gleaners, and the festivals of praise!

The very rain, and sleet, and hail seem only Nature's useful servantswhen found doing their simple duties in the country; and the East Windhimself is nothing worse than a boisterous friend when we meet himbetween the hedge-rows.

But in the city where the painted stucco blisters under the smoky sun,and the sooty rain brings slush and mud, and the snow lies piled indirty heaps, and the chill blasts whistle down dingy streets andshriek round flaring gas lit corners, no face of Nature charms us.

Weather in towns is like a skylark in a counting-house--out of placeand in the way. Towns ought to be covered in, warmed by hot-waterpipes, and lighted by electricity. The weather is a country lass anddoes not appear to advantage in town. We liked well enough to flirtwith her in the hay-field, but she does not seem so fascinating whenwe 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 jarsagainst the artificiality of town-bred life, and her ways becomeexceedingly trying.

Just lately she has been favoring us with almost incessant rain forabout three weeks; and I am a demned damp, moist, unpleasant body, asMr. Mantalini puts it.

Our next-door neighbor comes out in the back garden every now and thenand says it's doing the country a world of good--not his coming outinto the back garden, but the weather. He doesn't understand anythingabout it, but ever since he started a cucumber-frame last summer hehas regarded himself in the light of an agriculturist, and talks inthis absurd way with the idea of impressing the rest of the terracewith the notion that he is a retired farmer. I can only hope that forthis once he is correct, and that the weather really is doing good tosomething, because it is doing me a considerable amount of damage. Itis 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 mydear old hats and trousers sinking, prematurely worn and aged, beneaththe cold world's blasts and snows.

There is my new spring suit, too. A beautiful suit it was, and now itis 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 itthat night if it had not been for him. I was just trying it on whenhe came in. He threw up his arms with a wild yell the moment becaught sight of it, and exclaimed that he had "got 'em again!"I said: "Does it fit all right behind?""Spiffin, old man," he replied. And then he wanted to know if I wascoming out.

I said "no" at first, but he overruled me. He said that a man with asuit like that bad no right to stop indoors. "Every citizen," saidhe, "owes a duty to the public. Each one should contribute to thegeneral happiness as far as lies in his power. Come out and give thegirls a treat."Jim is slangy. I don't know where he picks it up. It certainly isnot from meI said: "Do you think it will really please 'em?" He said it wouldbe like a day in the country to them.

That decided me. It was a lovely evening and I went.

When I got home I undressed and rubbed myself down with whisky, put myfeet in hot water and a mustard-plaster on my chest, had a basin ofgruel and a glass of hot brandy-and-water, tallowed my nose, and wentto bed.

These prompt and vigorous measures, aided by a naturally strongconstitution, were the means of preserving my life; but as for thesuit! Well, there, it isn't a suit; it's a splash-board.

And I did fancy that suit, too. But that's just the way. I never doget particular{y fond of anything in this world but what somethingdreadful happens to it. I had a tame rat when I was a boy, and Iloved that animal as only a boy would love an old water-rat; and oneday it fell into a large dish of gooseberry-fool that was standing tocool in the kitchen, and nobody knew what had become of the poorcreature until the second helping.

I do hate wet weather in town. At least, it is not so much the wet asthe mud that I object to. Somehow or other I seem to possess anirresistible alluring power over mud. I have only to show myself inthe street on a muddy day to be half-smothered by it. It all comes ofbeing so attractive, as the old lady said when she was struck bylightning. Other people can go out on dirty days and walk about forhours without getting a speck upon themselves; while if I go acrossthe road I come back a perfect disgrace to be seen (as in my boyishdays my poor dear mother tried often to tell me). If there were onlyone dab of mud to be found in the whole of London, I am convinced Ishould carry it off from all competitors.

I wish I could return the affection, but I fear I never shall be ableto. I have a horror of what they call the "London particular." Ifeel miserable and muggy all through a dirty day, and it is quite arelief to pull one's clothes off and get into bed, out of the way ofit all. Everything goes wrong in wet weather. I don't know how itis, but there always seem to me to be more people, and dogs, andperambulators, and cabs, and carts about in wet weather than at anyother time, and they all get in your way more, and everybody is sodisagreeable--except myself--and it does make me so wild. And then,too, somehow I always find myself carrying more things in wet weatherthan in dry; and when you have a bag, and three parcels, and anewspaper, and it suddenly comes on to rain, you can't open yourumbrella.

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 fiveminutes together, they liken it to a woman; and it is supposed to bevery charming on that account. I don't appreciate it, myself. Suchlightning-change business may be all very agreeable in a girl. It isno doubt highly delightful to have to do with a person who grins onemoment about nothing at all, and snivels the next for precisely thesame cause, and who then giggles, and then sulks, and who is rude, andaffectionate, and bad-tempered, and jolly, and boisterous, and silent,and passionate, and cold, and stand-offish, and flopping, all in oneminute (mind, I don't say this. It is those poets. And they aresupposed to be connoisseurs of this sort of thing); but in the weatherthe disadvantages of the system are more apparent. A woman's tears donot make one wet, but the rain does; and her coldness does not lay thefoundations of asthma and rheumatism, as the east wind is apt to. Ican prepare for and put up with a regularly bad day, but theseha'porth-of-all-sorts kind of days do not suit me. It aggravates meto 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 outsmiling after a drenching shower, and seems to say: "Lord love you,you don't mean to say you're wet? Well, I am surprised. Why, it wasonly my fun."They don't give you time to open or shut your umbrella in an EnglishApril, 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 toldthem so, and they said:

"Yes, sir. What sort of an umbrella would you like?"I said I should like one that would keep the rain off, and that wouldnot allow itself to be left behind in a railway carriage.

"Try an 'automaton,'" said the shopman.

"What's an 'automaton'?" said I.

"Oh, it's a beautiful arrangement," replied the man, with a touch ofenthusiasm. "It opens and shuts itself."I bought one and found that he was quite correct. It did open andshut itself. I had no control over it whatever. When it began torain, which it did that season every alternate five minutes, I used totry and get the machine to open, but it would not budge; and then Iused to stand and struggle with the wretched thing, and shake it, andswear at it, while the rain poured down in torrents. Then the momentthe rain ceased the absurd thing would go up suddenly with a jerk andwould not come down again; and I had to walk about under a bright bluesky, with an umbrella over my head, wishing that it would come on torain 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 thatthere is nothing makes a man look so supremely ridiculous as losinghis hat. The feeling of helpless misery that shoots down one's backon suddenly becoming aware that one's head is bare is among the mostbitter ills that flesh is heir to. And then there is the wild chaseafter it, accompanied by an excitable small dog, who thinks it is agame, and in the course of which you are certain to upset three orfour innocent children--to say nothing of their mothers--butt a fatold gentleman on to the top of a perambulator, and carom off a ladies'

seminary into the arms of a wet sweep.

After this, the idiotic hilarity of the spectators and thedisreputable appearance of the hat when recovered appear but of minorimportance.

Altogether, what between March winds, April showers, and the entireabsence of May flowers, spring is not a success in cities. It is allvery well in the country, as I have said, but in towns whosepopulation is anything over ten thousand it most certainly ought to beabolished. In the world's grim workshops it is like the children--outof place. Neither shows to advantage amid the dust and din. It seemsso sad to see the little dirt-grimed brats try to play in the noisycourts and muddy streets. Poor little uncared-for, unwanted humanatoms, they are not children. Children are bright-eyed, chubby, andshy. These are dingy, screeching elves, their tiny faces seared andwithered, their baby laughter cracked and hoarse.

The spring of life and the spring of the year were alike meant to becradled in the green lap of nature. To us in the town spring bringsbut its cold winds and drizzling rains. We must seek it among theleafless woods and the brambly lanes, on the heathy moors and thegreat still hills, if we want to feel its joyous breath and hear itssilent voices. There is a glorious freshness in the spring there.

The scurrying clouds, the open bleakness, the rushing wind, and theclear bright air thrill one with vague energies and hopes. Life, likethe landscape around us, seems bigger, and wider, and freer--a rainbowroad leading to unknown ends. Through the silvery rents that bar thesky we seem to catch a glimpse of the great hope and grandeur thatlies around this little throbbing world, and a breath of its scent iswafted us on the wings of the wild March wind.

Strange thoughts we do not understand are stirring in our hearts.

Voices are calling us to some great effort, to some mighty work. Butwe do not comprehend their meaning yet, and the hidden echoes withinus that would reply are struggling, inarticulate and dumb.

We stretch our hands like children to the light, seeking to grasp weknow not what. Our thoughts, like the boys' thoughts in the Danishsong, are very long, long thoughts, and very vague; we cannot seetheir end.

It must be so. All thoughts that peer outside this narrow worldcannot be else than dim and shapeless. The thoughts that we canclearly grasp are very little thoughts--that two and two makefour-that when we are hungry it is pleasant to eat--that honesty isthe best policy; all greater thoughts are undefined and vast to ourpoor childish brains. We see but dimly through the mists that rollaround our time-girt isle of life, and only hear the distant surgingof the great sea beyond.
ON CATS AND DOGS
　　What I've suffered from them this morning no tongue can tell. Itbegan with Gustavus Adolphus. Gustavus Adolphus (they call him"Gusty" down-stairs for short) is a very good sort of dog when he isin the middle of a large field or on a fairly extensive common, but Iwon't have him indoors. He means well, but this house is not hissize. 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 hadmarched through it. He breathes, and it puts the fire out.

At dinner-time he creeps in under the table, lies there for awhile,and then gets up suddenly; the first intimation we have of hismovements being given by the table, which appears animated by a desireto turn somersaults. We all clutch at it frantically and endeavor tomaintain it in a horizontal position; whereupon his struggles, hebeing under the impression that some wicked conspiracy is beinghatched against him, become fearful, and the final picture presentedis generally that of an overturned table and a smashed-up dinnersandwiched between two sprawling layers of infuriated men and women.

He came in this morning in his usual style, which he appears to havefounded on that of an American cyclone, and the first thing he did wasto sweep my coffee-cup off the table with his tail, sending thecontents full into the middle of my waistcoat.

I rose from my chair hurriedly and remarking "----," approached him ata rapid rate. He preceded me in the direction of the door. At thedoor he met Eliza coming in with eggs. Eliza observed "Ugh!" and satdown on the floor, the eggs took up different positions about thecarpet, where they spread themselves out, and Gustavus Adolphus leftthe room. I called after him, strongly advising him to go straightdownstairs and not let me see him again for the next hour or so; andhe seeming to agree with me, dodged the coal-scoop and went, while Ireturned, dried myself and finished breakfast. I made sure that hehad gone in to the yard, but when I looked into the passage tenminutes later he was sitting at the top of the stairs. I ordered himdown at once, but he only barked and jumped about, so I went to seewhat was the matter.

It was Tittums. She was sitting on the top stair but one and wouldn'tlet him pass.

Tittums is our kitten. She is about the size of a penny roll. Herback 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 thetruth--mind, this is strictly between ourselves, please; I shouldn'tlike your wife to know I said it--the women folk don't understandthese things; but between you and me, you know, I think it does at mangood to swear. Swearing is the safety-valve through which the badtemper that might otherwise do serious internal injury to his mentalmechanism escapes in harmless vaporing. When a man has said: "Blessyou, my dear, sweet sir. What the sun, moon, and stars made you socareless (if I may be permitted the expression) as to allow your lightand delicate foot to descend upon my corn with so much force? Is itthat you are physically incapable of comprehending the direction inwhich you are proceeding? you nice, clever young man--you!" or wordsto that effect, he feels better. Swearing has the same soothingeffect upon our angry passions that smashing the furniture or slammingthe doors is so well known to exercise; added to which it is muchcheaper. Swearing clears a man out like a pen'orth of gunpowder doesthe wash-house chimney. An occasional explosion is good for both. Irather distrust a man who never swears, or savagely kicks thefoot-stool, or pokes the fire with unnecessary violence. Without someoutlet, the anger caused by the ever-occurring troubles of life is aptto rankle and fester within. The petty annoyance, instead of beingthrown from us, sits down beside us and becomes a sorrow, and thelittle offense is brooded over till, in the hot-bed of rumination, itgrows into a great injury, under whose poisonous shadow springs uphatred and revenge.

Swearing relieves the feelings--that is what swearing does. Iexplained this to my aunt on one occasion, but it didn't answer withher. She said I had no business to have such feelings.

That is what I told Tittums. I told her she ought to be ashamed ofherself, brought up in at Christian family as she was, too. I don'tso much mind hearing an old cat swear, but I can't bear to see a merekitten 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 forthe moment, and when I looked I found that she had squirmed out of mypocket on to the table and was trying to swallow the pen; then she puther leg into the ink-pot and upset it; then she licked her leg; thenshe swore again--at me this time.

I put her down on the floor, and there Tim began rowing with her. Ido wish Tim would mind his own business. It was no concern of hiswhat she had been doing. Besides, he is not a saint himself. He isonly a two-year-old fox-terrier, and he interferes with everything andgives himself the airs of a gray-headed Scotch collie.

Tittums' mother has come in and Tim has got his nose scratched, forwhich I am remarkably glad. I have put them all three out in thepassage, where they are fighting at the present moment. I'm in a messwith the ink and in a thundering bad temper; and if anything more inthe cat or dog line comes fooling about me this morning, it had betterbring its own funeral contractor with it.

Yet, in general, I like cats and dogs very much indeed. What jollychaps they are! They are much superior to human beings as companions.

They do not quarrel or argue with you. They never talk aboutthemselves but listen to you while you talk about yourself, and keepup an appearance of being interested in the conversation. They nevermake stupid remarks. They never observe to Miss Brown across adinner-table that they always understood she was very sweet on Mr.

Jones (who has just married Miss Robinson). They never mistake yourwife's cousin for her husband and fancy that you are thefather-in-law. And they never ask a young author with fourteentragedies, sixteen comedies, seven farces, and a couple of burlesquesin his desk why he doesn't write a play.

They never say unkind things. They never tell us of our faults,"merely for our own good." They do not at inconvenient moments mildlyremind 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"--sarcasticlike. They never inform us, like our _inamoratas_ sometimes do, thatwe are not nearly so nice as we used to be. We are always the same tothem.

They are always glad to see us. They are with us in all our humors.

They are merry when we are glad, sober when we feel solemn, and sadwhen we are sorrowful.

"Halloo! happy and want a lark? Right you are; I'm your man. Here Iam, frisking round you, leaping, barking, pirouetting, ready for anyamount of fun and mischief. Look at my eyes if you doubt me. Whatshall it be? 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 downthe hill, and won't we let old Gaffer Goggles' 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 thearm of the chair and purr, and Montmorency will curl himself up on therug and blink at the fire, yet keeping one eye on you the while, incase 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 beenborn, they don't sit up very straight and observe that we have broughtit all upon ourselves. They don't even hope it will be a warning tous. But they come up softly and shove their heads against us. If itis 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; andif it is a dog he looks up at you with his big, true eyes and sayswith them, "Well you've always got me, you know. We'll go through theworld together and always stand by each other, won't we?"He is very imprudent, a dog is. He never makes it his business toinquire whether you are in the right or in the wrong, never bothers asto whether you are going up or down upon life's ladder, never askswhether you are rich or poor, silly or wise, sinner or saint. You arehis pal. That is enough for him, and come luck or misfortune, goodrepute or bad, honor or shame, he is going to stick to you, to comfortyou, guard you, and give his life for you if need be--foolish,brainless, soulless dog!

Ah! old stanch friend, with your deep, clear eyes and bright, quickglances, that take in all one has to say before one has time to speakit, do you know you are only an animal and have no mind? Do you knowthat that dull-eyed, gin-sodden lout leaning against the post outthere is immeasurably your intellectual superior? Do you know thatevery little-minded, selfish scoundrel who lives by cheating andtricking, who never did a gentle deed or said a kind word, who neverhad a thought 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 youknow that these crawling skulks (and there are millions of them in theworld), do you know they are all as much superior to you as the sun issuperior to rushlight you honorable, brave-hearted, unselfish brute?

They are MEN, you know, and MEN are the greatest, and noblest, andwisest, and best beings in the whole vast eternal universe. Any manwill tell you that.

Yes, poor doggie, you are very stupid, very stupid indeed, comparedwith us clever men, who understand all about politics and philosophy,and who know everything, in short, except what we are and where wecame from and whither we are going, and what everything outside thistiny world and most things in it are.

Never mind, though, pussy and doggie, we like you both all the betterfor your being stupid. We all like stupid things. Men can't bearclever women, and a woman's ideal man is some one she can call a "dearold stupid." It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid thanourselves. We love them at once for being so. The world must berather 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 minoritythat it really doesn't much matter if they are unhappy. So long asthe foolish people can be made comfortable the world, as a whole, willget on tolerably well.

Cats have the credit of being more worldly wise than dogs--of lookingmore after their own interests and being less blindly devoted to thoseof their friends. And we men and women are naturally shocked at suchselfishness. Cats certainly do love a family that has a carpet in thekitchen more than a family that has not; and if there are manychildren about, they prefer to spend their leisure time next door.

But, taken altogether, cats are libeled. Make a friend of one, andshe will stick to you through thick and thin. All the cats that Ihave had have been most firm comrades. I had a cat once that used tofollow me about everywhere, until it even got quite embarrassing, andI had to beg her, as a personal favor, not to accompany me any furtherdown the High Street. She used to sit up for me when I was late homeand 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 believeme when I told her.

Another cat I had used to get drunk regularly every day. She wouldhang about for hours outside the cellar door for the purpose ofsneaking in on the first opportunity and lapping up the drippings fromthe beer-cask. I do not mention this habit of hers in praise of thespecies, but merely to show how almost human some of them are. If thetransmigration of souls is a fact, this animal was certainlyqualifying most rapidly for a Christian, for her vanity was onlysecond to her love of drink. Whenever she caught a particularly bigrat, she would bring it up into the room where we were all sitting,lay the corpse down in the midst of us, and wait to be praised. Lord!

how the girls used to scream.

Poor rats! They seem only to exist so that cats and dogs may gaincredit for killing them and chemists make a fortune by inventingspecialties in poison for their destruction. And yet there issomething fascinating about them. There is a weirdness anduncanniness attaching to them. They are so cunning and strong, soterrible in their numbers, so cruel, so secret. They swarm indeserted houses, where the broken casements hang rotting to thecrumbling walls and the doors swing creaking on their rusty hinges.

They know the sinking ship and leave her, no one knows how or whither.

They whisper to each other in their hiding-places how a doom will fallupon the hall and the great name die forgotten. They do fearful deedsin ghastly charnel-houses.

No tale of horror is complete without the rats. In stories of ghostsand murderers they scamper through the echoing rooms, and the gnawingof their teeth is heard behind the wainscot, and their gleaming eyespeer through the holes in the worm-eaten tapestry, and they scream inshrill, unearthly notes in the dead of night, while the moaning windsweeps, sobbing, round the ruined turret towers, and passes wailinglike a woman through the chambers bare and tenantless.

And dying prisoners, in their loathsome dungeons, see through thehorrid gloom their small red eyes, like glittering coals, hear in thedeath-like silence the rush of their claw-like feet, and start upshrieking in the darkness and watch through the awful night.

I love to read tales about rats. They make my flesh creep so. I likethat 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 thestarving people touch it, but when they prayed to him for foodgathered them together in his barn, and then shutting the doors onthem, set fire to the place and burned them all to death. But nextday there came thousands upon thousands of rats, sent to do judgmenton him. Then Bishop Hatto fled to his strong tower that stood in themiddle of the Rhine, and barred himself in and fancied he was safe.

But the rats! they swam the river, they gnawed their way through thethick 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 hepiped the rats away, and afterward, when the mayor broke faith withhim, 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 itany meaning at all? There seems something strange and deep lying hidbeneath the rippling rhyme. It haunts me, that picture of the quaint,mysterious old piper piping through Hamelin's narrow streets, and thechildren following with dancing feet and thoughtful, eager faces. Theold folks try to stay them, but the children pay no heed. They hearthe weird, witched music and must follow. The games are leftunfinished and the playthings drop from their careless hands. Theyknow not whither they are hastening. The mystic music calls to them,and they follow, heedless and unasking where. It stirs and vibratesin their hearts and other sounds grow faint. So they wander throughPied Piper Street away from Hamelin town.

I get thinking sometimes if the Pied Piper is really dead, or if hemay not still be roaming up and down our streets and lanes, butplaying now so softly that only the children hear him. Why do thelittle faces look so grave and solemn when they pause awhile fromromping, and stand, deep wrapt, with straining eyes? They only shaketheir curly heads and dart back laughing to their playmates when wequestion them. But I fancy myself they have been listening to themagic music of the old Pied Piper, and perhaps with those bright eyesof theirs have even seen his odd, fantastic figure gliding unnoticedthrough the whirl and throng.

Even we grown-up children hear his piping now and then. But theyearning notes are very far away, and the noisy, blustering world isalways bellowing so loud it drowns the dreamlike melody. One day thesweet, sad strains will sound out full and clear, and then we tooshall, like the little children, throw our playthings all aside andfollow. The loving hands will be stretched out to stay us, and thevoices we have learned to listen for will cry to us to stop. But weshall push the fond arms gently back and pass out through thesorrowing house and through the open door. For the wild, strangemusic will be ringing in our hearts, and we shall know the meaning ofits song by then.

I wish people could love animals without getting maudlin over them, asso many do. Women are the most hardened offenders in such respects,but even our intellectual sex often degrade pets into nuisances byabsurd idolatry. There are the gushing young ladies who, having read"David Copperfield," have thereupon sought out a small, longhaired dogof nondescript breed, possessed of an irritating habit of criticisinga man's trousers, and of finally commenting upon the same by a sniffindicative of contempt and disgust. They talk sweet girlish prattleto this animal (when there is any one near enough to overhear them),and they kiss its nose, and put its unwashed head up against theircheek in a most touching manner; though I have noticed that thesecaresses are principally performed when there are young men hangingabout.

Then there are the old ladies who worship a fat poodle, scant ofbreath and full of fleas. I knew a couple of elderly spinsters oncewho had a sort of German sausage on legs which they called a dogbetween them. They used to wash its face with warm water everymorning. It had a mutton cutlet regularly for breakfast; and onSundays, when one of the ladies went to church, the other alwaysstopped at home to keep the dog company.

There are many families where the whole interest of life is centeredupon the dog. Cats, by the way, rarely suffer from excess ofadulation. A cat possesses a very fair sense of the ridiculous, andwill put her paw down kindly but firmly upon any nonsense of thiskind. Dogs, however, seem to like it. They encourage their owners inthe tomfoolery, and the consequence is that in the circles I amspeaking of what "dear Fido" has done, does do, will do, won't do, cando, can't do, was doing, is doing, is going to do, shall do, shan'tdo, and is about to be going to have done is the continual theme ofdiscussion from morning till night.

All the conversation, consisting, as it does, of the very dregs ofimbecility, is addressed to this confounded animal. The family sit ina row all day long, watching him, commenting upon his actions, tellingeach other anecdotes about him, recalling his virtues, and rememberingwith tears how one day they lost him for two whole hours, on whichoccasion he was brought home in a most brutal manner by thebutcher-boy, who had been met carrying him by the scruff of his neckwith one hand, while soundly cuffing his head with the other.

After recovering from these bitter recollections, they vie with eachother in bursts of admiration for the brute, until some more thanusually enthusiastic member, unable any longer to control hisfeelings, swoops down upon the unhappy quadruped in a frenzy ofaffection, clutches it to his heart, and slobbers over it. Whereuponthe others, mad with envy, rise up, and seizing as much of the dog asthe greed of the first one has left to them, murmur praise anddevotion.

Among these people everything is done through the dog. If you want tomake love to the eldest daughter, or get the old man to lend you thegarden roller, or the mother to subscribe to the Society for theSuppression of Solo-Cornet Players in Theatrical Orchestras (it's apity there isn't one, anyhow), you have to begin with the dog. Youmust gain its approbation before they will even listen to you, and if,as is highly probable, the animal, whose frank, doggy nature has beenwarped by the unnatural treatment he has received, responds to yourovertures of friendship by viciously snapping at you, your cause islost forever.

"If Fido won't take to any one," the father has thoughtfully remarkedbeforehand, "I say that man is not to be trusted. You know, Maria,how often I have said that. Ah! he knows, bless him."Drat him!

And to think that the surly brute was once an innocent puppy, all legsand head, full of fun and play, and burning with ambition to become abig, good dog and bark like mother.

Ah me! life sadly changes us all. The world seems a vast horriblegrinding machine, into which what is fresh and bright and pure ispushed at one end, to come out old and crabbed and wrinkled at theother.

Look even at Pussy Sobersides, with her dull, sleepy glance, hergrave, slow walk, and dignified, prudish airs; who could ever thinkthat once she was the blue-eyed, whirling, scampering,head-over-heels, mad little firework that we call a kitten?

What marvelous vitality a kitten has. It is really something verybeautiful the way life bubbles over in the little creatures. Theyrush about, and mew, and spring; dance on their hind legs, embraceeverything with their front ones, roll over and over, lie on theirbacks and kick. They don't know what to do with themselves, they areso full of life.

Can you remember, reader, when you and I felt something of the samesort of thing? Can you remember those glorious days of fresh youngmanhood--how, when coming home along the moonlit road, we felt toofull of life for sober walking, and had to spring and skip, and waveour arms, and shout till belated farmers' wives thought--and with goodreason, too--that we were mad, and kept close to the hedge, while westood and laughed aloud to see them scuttle off so fast and made theirblood run cold with a wild parting whoop, and the tears came, we knewnot why? Oh, that magnificent young LIFE! that crowned us kings ofthe earth; that rushed through every tingling vein till we seemed towalk on air; that thrilled through our throbbing brains and told us togo forth and conquer the whole world; that welled up in our younghearts till we longed to stretch out our arms and gather all thetoiling men and women and the little children to our breast and lovethem all--all. Ah! they were grand days, those deep, full days, whenour coming life, like an unseen organ, pealed strange, yearnful musicin our ears, and our young blood cried out like a war-horse for thebattle. Ah, our pulse beats slow and steady now, and our old jointsare rheumatic, and we love our easy-chair and pipe and sneer at boys'

enthusiasm. But oh for one brief moment of that god-like life again!
ON BEING SHY
　　All great literary men are shy. I am myself, though I am told it ishardly noticeable.

I am glad it is not. It used to be extremely prominent at one time,and was the cause of much misery to myself and discomfort to every oneabout me--my lady friends especially complained most bitterly aboutit.

A shy man's lot is not a happy one. The men dislike him, the womendespise him, and he dislikes and despises himself. Use brings him norelief, and there is no cure for him except time; though I once cameacross a delicious recipe for overcoming the misfortune. It appearedamong the "answers to correspondents" in a small weekly journal andran as follows--I have never forgotten it: "Adopt an easy andpleasing manner, especially toward ladies."Poor wretch! I can imagine the grin with which he must have read thatadvice. "Adopt an easy and pleasing manner, especially towardladies," forsooth! Don't you adopt anything of the kind, my dearyoung shy friend. Your attempt to put on any other disposition thanyour own will infallibly result in your becoming ridiculously gushingand offensively familiar. Be your own natural self, and then you willonly be thought to be surly and stupid.

The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the tortureit inflicts upon him. He is able, to a certain extent, to communicatehis misery. He frightens other people as much as they frighten him.

He acts like a damper upon the whole room, and the most jovial spiritsbecome in his presence depressed and nervous.

This is a good deal brought about by misunderstanding. Many peoplemistake the shy man's timidity for overbearing arrogance and are awedand insulted by it. His awkwardness is resented as insolentcarelessness, and when, terror-stricken at the first word addressed tohim, the blood rushes to his head and the power of speech completelyfails him, he is regarded as an awful example of the evil effects ofgiving way to passion.

But, indeed, to be misunderstood is the shy man's fate on everyoccasion; and whatever impression he endeavors to create, he is sureto convey its opposite. When he makes a joke, it is looked upon as apretended relation of fact and his want of veracity much condemned.

His sarcasm is accepted as his literal opinion and gains for him thereputation of being an ass, while if, on the other hand, wishing toingratiate himself, he ventures upon a little bit of flattery, it istaken for satire and he is hated ever afterward.

These and the rest of a shy man's troubles are always very amusing toother people, and have afforded material for comic writing from timeimmemorial. But if we look a little deeper we shall find there is apathetic, one might almost say a tragic, side to the picture. A shyman means a lonely man--a man cut off from all companionship, allsociability. He moves about the world, but does not mix with it.

Between him and his fellow-men there runs ever an impassablebarrier--a strong, invisible wall that, trying in vain to scale, hebut bruises himself against. He sees the pleasant faces and hears thepleasant voices on the other side, but he cannot stretch his handacross to grasp another hand. He stands watching the merry groups,and he longs to speak and to claim kindred with them. But they passhim by, chatting gayly to one another, and he cannot stay them. Hetries to reach them, but his prison walls move with him and hem him inon every side. In the busy street, in the crowded room, in the grindof work, in the whirl of pleasure, amid the many or amid thefew--wherever men congregate together, wherever the music of humanspeech is heard and human thought is flashed from human eyes, there,shunned and solitary, the shy man, like a leper, stands apart. Hissoul is full of love and longing, but the world knows it not. Theiron mask of shyness is riveted before his face, and the man beneathis never seen. Genial words and hearty greetings are ever rising tohis lips, but they die away in unheard whispers behind the steelclamps. His heart aches for the weary brother, but his sympathy isdumb. Contempt and indignation against wrong choke up his throat, andfinding no safety-valve whence in passionate utterance they may burstforth, they only turn in again and harm him. All the hate and scornand love of a deep nature such as the shy man is ever cursed by festerand corrupt within, instead of spending themselves abroad, and sourhim into a misanthrope and cynic.

Yes, shy men, like ugly women, have a bad time of it in this world, togo through which with any comfort needs the hide of a rhinoceros.

Thick skin is, indeed, our moral clothes, and without it we are notfit to be seen about in civilized society. A poor gasping, blushingcreature, with trembling knees and twitching hands, is a painful sightto every one, and if it cannot cure itself, the sooner it goes andhangs itself the better.

The disease can be cured. For the comfort of the shy, I can assurethem of that from personal experience. I do not like speaking aboutmyself, as may have been noticed, but in the cause of humanity I onthis occasion will do so, and will confess that at one time I was, asthe young man in the Bab Ballad says, "the shyest of the shy," and"whenever I was introduced to any pretty maid, my knees they knockedtogether just as if I was afraid." Now, I would--nay, have--on thisvery day before yesterday I did the deed. Alone and entirely bymyself (as the school-boy said in translating the "Bellum Gallicum")did I beard a railway refreshment-room young lady in her own lair. Irebuked her in terms of mingled bitterness and sorrow for hercallousness and want of condescension. I insisted, courteously butfirmly, on being accorded that deference and attention that was theright of the traveling Briton, and at the end I looked her full in theface. Need I say more?

True, immediately after doing so I left the room with what maypossibly have appeared to be precipitation and without waiting for anyrefreshment. But that was because I had changed my mind, not becauseI was frightened, you understand.

One consolation that shy folk can take unto themselves is that shynessis certainly no sign of stupidity. It is easy enough for bull-headedclowns to sneer at nerves, but the highest natures are not necessarilythose containing the greatest amount of moral brass. The horse is notan inferior animal to the cock-sparrow, nor the deer of the forest tothe pig. Shyness simply means extreme sensibility, and has nothingwhatever to do with self-consciousness or with conceit, though itsrelationship to both is continually insisted upon by the poll-parrotschool of philosophy.

Conceit, indeed, is the quickest cure for it. When it once begins todawn upon you that you are a good deal cleverer than any one else inthis world, bashfulness becomes shocked and leaves you. When youcan look round a roomful of people and think that each one is a merechild in intellect compared with yourself you feel no more shy of themthan you would of a select company of magpies or orang-outangs.

Conceit is the finest armor that a man can wear. Upon its smooth,impenetrable surface the puny dagger-thrusts of spite and envy glanceharmlessly aside. Without that breast-plate the sword of talentcannot force its way through the battle of life, for blows have to beborne as well as dealt. I do not, of course, speak of the conceitthat displays itself in an elevated nose and a falsetto voice. Thatis not real conceit--that is only playing at being conceited; likechildren play at being kings and queens and go strutting about withfeathers and long trains. Genuine conceit does not make a manobjectionable. On the contrary, it tends to make him genial,kind-hearted, and simple. He has no need of affectation--he is fartoo well satisfied with his own character; and his pride is toodeep-seated to appear at all on the outside. Careless alike of praiseor blame, he can afford to be truthful. Too far, in fancy, above therest of mankind to trouble about their petty distinctions, he isequally at home with duke or costermonger. And valuing no one'sstandard but his own, he is never tempted to practice that miserablepretense that less self-reliant people offer up as an hourly sacrificeto the god of their neighbor's opinion.

The shy man, on the other hand, is humble--modest of his own judgmentand over-anxious concerning that of others. But this in the case of ayoung man is surely right enough. His character is unformed. It isslowly evolving itself out of a chaos of doubt and disbelief. Beforethe growing insight and experience the diffidence recedes. A manrarely carries his shyness past the hobbledehoy period. Even if hisown inward strength does not throw it off, the rubbings of the worldgenerally smooth it down. You scarcely ever meet a really shyman--except in novels or on the stage, where, by the bye, he is muchadmired, especially by the women.

There, in that supernatural land, he appears as a fair-haired andsaintlike young man--fair hair and goodness always go together on thestage. No respectable audience would believe in one without theother. I knew an actor who mislaid his wig once and had to rush on toplay the hero in his own hair, which was jet-black, and the galleryhowled at all his noble sentiments under the impression that he wasthe villain. He--the shy young man--loves the heroine, oh sodevotedly (but only in asides, for he dare not tell her of it), and heis so noble and unselfish, and speaks in such a low voice, and is sogood to his mother; and the bad people in the play, they laugh at himand jeer at him, but he takes it all so gently, and in the end ittranspires that he is such a clever man, though nobody knew it, andthen the heroine tells him she loves him, and he is so surprised, andoh, so happy! and everybody loves him and asks him to forgive them,which he does in a few well-chosen and sarcastic words, and blessesthem; and he seems to have generally such a good time of it that allthe young fellows who are not shy long to be shy. But the really shyman knows better. He knows that it is not quite so pleasant inreality. He is not quite so interesting there as in the fiction. Heis a little more clumsy and stupid and a little less devoted andgentle, 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. Iam fully prepared to allow the shy young man that virtue: he isconstant in his love. But the reason is not far to seek. The fact isit 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 ordealwith a second. He stands in far too much dread of the whole femalesex to want to go gadding about with many of them. One is quiteenough for him.

Now, it is different with the young man who is not shy. He hastemptations which his bashful brother never encounters. He looksaround and everywhere sees roguish eyes and laughing lips. What morenatural than that amid so many roguish ayes and laughing lips heshould become confused and, forgetting for the moment which particularpair of roguish ayes and laughing lips it is that he belongs to, gooff making love to the wrong set. The shy man, who never looks atanything but his own boots, sees not and is not tempted. Happy shyman!

Not but what the shy man himself would much rather not be happy inthat way. He longs to "go it" with the others, and curses himselfevery day for not being able to. He will now and again, screwing uphis courage by a tremendous effort, plunge into roguishness. But itis always a terrible _fiasco_, and after one or two feeble floundershe crawls out again, limp and pitiable.

I say "pitiable," though I am afraid he never is pitied. There arecertain misfortunes which, while inflicting a vast amount of sufferingupon their victims, gain for them no sympathy. Losing an umbrella,falling in love, toothache, black eyes, and having your hat sat uponmay be mentioned as a few examples, but the chief of them all isshyness. The shy man is regarded as an animate joke. His torturesare the sport of the drawing-room arena and are pointed out anddiscussed 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 edgeof the chair.""Seems to have plenty of color," sneers a military-looking gentleman.

"Pity he's got so many hands," murmurs an elderly lady, with her owncalmly folded on her lap. "They quite confuse him.""A yard or two off his feet wouldn't be a disadvantage," chimes in thecomic man, "especially as he seems so anxious to hide them."And then another suggests that with such a voice he ought to have beena sea-captain. Some draw attention to the desperate way in which heis grasping his hat. Some comment upon his limited powers ofconversation. Others remark upon the troublesome nature of his cough.

And so on, until his peculiarities and the company are both thoroughlyexhausted.

His friends and relations make matters still more unpleasant for thepoor boy (friends and relations are privileged to be more disagreeablethan other people). Not content with making fun of him amongthemselves, they insist on his seeing the joke. They mimic andcaricature him for his own edification. One, pretending to imitatehim, goes outside and comes in again in a ludicrously nervous manner,explaining to him afterward that that is the way he--meaning the shyfellow--walks into a room; or, turning to him with "This is the wayyou shake hands," proceeds to go through a comic pantomime with therest of the room, taking hold of every one's hand as if it were a hotplate and flabbily dropping it again. And then they ask him why heblushes, and why he stammers, and why he always speaks in an almostinaudible tone, as if they thought he did it on purpose. Then one ofthem, sticking out his chest and strutting about the room like apouter-pigeon, suggests quite seriously that that is the style heshould 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 doanything that you need be ashamed of, Algernon, and then you neverneed be ashamed of anything you do," and, beaming mildly at him, seemssurprised at the clearness of her own logic. The boys tell him thathe's "worse than a girl," and the girls repudiate the implied slurupon their sex by indignantly exclaiming that they are sure no girlwould be half as bad.

They are quite right; no girl would be. There is no such thing as ashy woman, or, at all events, I have never come across one, and untilI do I shall not believe in them. I know that the generally acceptedbelief is quite the reverse. All women are supposed to be like timid,startled fawns, blushing and casting down their gentle eyes whenlooked at and running away when spoken to; while we man are supposedto be a bold and rollicky lot, and the poor dear little women admireus for it, but are terribly afraid of us. It is a pretty theory, but,like most generally accepted theories, mere nonsense. The girl oftwelve is self-contained and as cool as the proverbial cucumber, whileher brother of twenty stammers and stutters by her side. A woman willenter a concert-room late, interrupt the performance, and disturb thewhole audience without moving a hair, while her husband follows her, acrushed heap of apologizing misery.

The superior nerve of women in all matters connected with love, fromthe casting of the first sheep's-eye down to the end of the honeymoon,is too well acknowledged to need comment. Nor is the example a fairone to cite in the present instance, the positions not being equallybalanced. Love is woman's business, and in "business" we all layaside our natural weaknesses--the shyest man I ever knew was aphotographic tout.
ON BABIES
　　Oh, yes, I do--I know a lot about 'em. I was one myself once, thoughnot long--not so long as my clothes. They were very long, Irecollect, and always in my way when I wanted to kick. Why do babieshave such yards of unnecessary clothing? It is not a riddle. Ireally want to know. I never could understand it. Is it that theparents are ashamed of the size of the child and wish to make believethat it is longer than it actually is? I asked a nurse once why itwas. She said:

"Lor', sir, they always have long clothes, bless their little hearts."And when I explained that her answer, although doing credit to herfeelings, hardly disposed of my difficulty, she replied:

"Lor', sir, you wouldn't have 'em in short clothes, poor littledears?" And she said it in a tone that seemed to imply I hadsuggested some unmanly outrage.

Since than I have felt shy at making inquiries on the subject, and thereason--if reason there be--is still a mystery to me. But indeed,putting them in any clothes at all seems absurd to my mind. Goodnessknows there is enough of dressing and undressing to be gone through inlife without beginning it before we need; and one would think thatpeople who live in bed might at all events be spared the torture. Whywake the poor little wretches up in the morning to take one lot ofclothes off, fix another lot on, and put them to bed again, and thenat 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 myself ridiculous--I often do,so I am informed--and I will therefore say no more upon this matter ofclothes, except only that it would be of great convenience if somefashion were adopted enabling you to tell a boy from a girl.

At present it is most awkward. Neither hair, dress, nor conversationaffords the slightest clew, and you are left to guess. By somemysterious law of nature you invariably guess wrong, and are thereuponregarded by all the relatives and friends as a mixture of fool andknave, the enormity of alluding to a male babe as "she" being onlyequaled by the atrocity of referring to a female infant as "he".

Whichever sex the particular child in question happens not to belongto is considered as beneath contempt, and any mention of it is takenas a personal insult to the family.

And as you value your fair name do not attempt to get out of thedifficulty 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 afterwarddepositing their bodies in the water companies' reservoir, you willgain much unpopularity in the neighborhood of your crime, and evenrobbing a church will get you cordially disliked, especially by thevicar. But if you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup ofscorn and hatred that a fellow human creature can pour out for you,let a young mother hear you call dear baby "it."Your best plan is to address the article as "little angel." The noun"angel" being of common gender suits the case admirably, and theepithet is sure of being favorably received. "Pet" or "beauty" areuseful for variety's sake, but "angel" is the term that brings you thegreatest credit for sense and good-feeling. The word should bepreceded by a short giggle and accompanied by as much smile aspossible. And whatever you do, don't forget to say that the child hasgot its father's nose. This "fetches" the parents (if I may beallowed a vulgarism) more than anything. They will pretend to laughat the idea at first and will say, "Oh, nonsense!" You must then getexcited and insist that it is a fact. You need have no conscientiousscruples on the subject, because the thing's nose really does resembleits father's--at all events quite as much as it does anything else innature--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 grand mamma on the other, a group ofadmiring young ladies (not admiring you, though) behind, and abald-headed dab of humanity in front, you will be extremely thankfulfor some idea of what to say. A man--an unmarried man, that is--isnever seen to such disadvantage as when undergoing the ordeal of"seeing baby." A cold shudder runs down his back at the bareproposal, and the sickly smile with which he says how delighted heshall be ought surely to move even a mother's heart, unless, as I aminclined to believe, the whole proceeding is a mere device adopted bywives to discourage the visits of bachelor friends.

It is a cruel trick, though, whatever its excuse may be. The bell isrung and somebody sent to tell nurse to bring baby down. This is thesignal for all the females present to commence talking "baby," duringwhich time you are left to your own sad thoughts and the speculationsupon the practicability of suddenly recollecting an importantengagement, and the likelihood of your being believed if you do. Justwhen you have concocted an absurdly implausible tale about a manoutside, the door opens, and a tall, severe-looking woman enters,carrying what at first sight appears to be a particularly skinnybolster, with the feathers all at one end. Instinct, however, tellsyou that this is the baby, and you rise with a miserable attempt atappearing eager. When the first gush of feminine enthusiasm withwhich the object in question is received has died out, and the numberof ladies talking at once has been reduced to the ordinary four orfive, the circle of fluttering petticoats divides, and room is madefor you to step forward. This you do with much the same air that youwould walk into the dock at Bow Street, and then, feeling unutterablymiserable, you stand solemnly staring at the child. There is deadsilence, and you know that every one is waiting for you to speak. Youtry to think of something to say, but find, to your horror, that yourreasoning faculties have left you. It is a moment of despair, andyour evil genius, seizing the opportunity, suggests to you some of themost idiotic remarks that it is possible for a human being toperpetrate. Glancing round with an imbecile smile, you sniggeringlyobserve that "it hasn't got much hair has it?" Nobody answers you fora 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 asecond chance, which you avail yourself of by inquiring if it can walkyet, or what they feed it on.

By this time you have got to be regarded as not quite right in yourhead, and pity is the only thing felt for you. The nurse, however, isdetermined that, insane or not, there shall be no shirking and thatyou shall go through your task to the end. In the tones of a highpriestess directing some religious mystery she says, holding thebundle toward you:

"Take her in your arms, sir." You are too crushed to offer anyresistance and so meekly accept the burden. "Put your arm more downher middle, sir," says the high-priestess, and then all step back andwatch 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 certainsomething must be done, and the only thing that occurs to you is toheave the unhappy infant up and down to the accompaniment of"oopsee-daisy," or some remark of equal intelligence. "I wouldn't jigher, 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 havenot gone too far already.

At this point the child itself, who has hitherto been regarding youwith an expression of mingled horror and disgust, puts an end to thenonsense by beginning to yell at the top of its voice, at which thepriestess rushes forward and snatches it from you with "There! there!

there! What did ums do to ums?" "How very extraordinary!" you saypleasantly. "Whatever made it go off like that?" "Oh, why, you musthave done something to her!" says the mother indignantly; "the childwouldn't scream like that for nothing." It is evident they think youhave been running pins into it.

The brat is calmed at last, and would no doubt remain quiet enough,only some mischievous busybody points you out again with "Who's this,baby?" and the intelligent child, recognizing you, howls louder thanever.

Whereupon some fat old lady remarks that "it's strange how childrentake a dislike to any one." "Oh, they know," replies anothermysteriously. "It's a wonderful thing," adds a third; and theneverybody looks sideways at you, convinced you are a scoundrel of theblackest dye; and they glory in the beautiful idea that your truecharacter, unguessed by your fellow-men, has been discovered by theuntaught instinct of a little child.

Babies, though, with all their crimes and errors, are not withouttheir use--not without use, surely, when they fill an empty heart; notwithout use when, at their call, sunbeams of love break throughcare-clouded faces; not without use when their little fingers presswrinkles into smiles.

Odd little people! They are the unconscious comedians of the world'sgreat stage. They supply the humor in life's all-too-heavy drama.

Each one, a small but determined opposition to the order of things ingeneral, is forever doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, in thewrong place and in the wrong way. The nurse-girl who sent Jenny tosee what Tommy and Totty were doing and "tell 'em they mustn't" knewinfantile nature. Give an average baby a fair chance, and if itdoesn't do something it oughtn't to a doctor should be called in atonce.

They have a genius for doing the most ridiculous things, and they dothem in a grave, stoical manner that is irresistible. Thebusiness-like air with which two of them will join hands and proceeddue east at a break-neck toddle, while an excitable big sister isroaring for them to follow her in a westerly direction, is mostamusing--except, perhaps, for the big sister. They walk round asoldier, staring at his legs with the greatest curiosity, and poke himto see if he is real. They stoutly maintain, against all argument andmuch to the discomfort of the victim, that the bashful young man atthe end of the 'bus is "dadda." A crowded street-corner suggestsitself to their minds as a favorable spot for the discussion of familyaffairs at a shrill treble. When in the middle of crossing the roadthey are seized with a sudden impulse to dance, and the doorstep of abusy shop is the place they always select for sitting down and takingoff their shoes.

When at home they find the biggest walking-stick in the house or anumbrella--open preferred-of much assistance in getting upstairs. Theydiscover that they love Mary Ann at the precise moment when thatfaithful domestic is blackleading the stove, and nothing will relievetheir feelings but to embrace her then and there. With regard tofood, their favorite dishes are coke and cat's meat. They nurse pussyupside down, and they show their affection for the dog by pulling histail.

They are a deal of trouble, and they make a place untidy and they costa lot of money to keep; but still you would not have the house withoutthem. It would not be home without their noisy tongues and theirmischief-making hands. Would not the rooms seem silent without theirpattering feet, and might not you stray apart if no prattling voicescalled you together?

It should be so, and yet I have sometimes thought the tiny hand seemedas a wedge, dividing. It is a bearish task to quarrel with thatpurest of all human affections--that perfecting touch to a woman'slife--a mother's love. It is a holy love, that we coarser-fibered mencan hardly understand, and I would not be deemed to lack reverence forit when I say that surely it need not swallow up all other affection.

The baby need not take your whole heart, like the rich man who walledup the desert well. Is there not another thirsty traveler standingby?

In your desire to be a good mother, do not 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 notconfine your conversation exclusively to whooping-cough and measles.

My dear little woman, the child is not going to die every time itsneezes, the house is not bound to get burned down and the nurse runaway with a soldier every time you go outside the front door; nor thecat sure to come and sit on the precious child's chest the moment youleave the bedside. You worry yourself a good deal too much about thatsolitary chick, and you worry everybody else too. Try and think ofyour other duties, and your pretty face will not be always puckeredinto wrinkles, and there will be cheerfulness in the parlor as well asin the nursery. Think of your big baby a little. Dance him about abit; call him pretty names; laugh at him now and then. It is only thefirst baby that takes up the whole of a woman's time. Five or six donot require nearly so much attention as one. But before then themischief has been done. A house where there seems no room for him anda wife too busy to think of him have lost their hold on that sounreasonable husband of yours, and he has learned to look elsewherefor comfort and companionship.

But there, there, there! I shall get myself the character of ababy-hater if I talk any more in this strain. And Heaven knows I amnot one. Who could be, to look into the little innocent facesclustered in timid helplessness round those great gates that open downinto the world?

The world--the small round world! what a vast mysterious place it mustseem to baby eyes! What a trackless continent the back gardenappears! What marvelous explorations they make in the cellar underthe 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 lifethat stretches out before them--what grave, old-fashioned looks theyseem to cast! What pitiful, frightened looks sometimes! I saw alittle mite sitting on a doorstep in a Soho slum one night, and Ishall never forget the look that the gas-lamp showed me on its wizenface--a look of dull despair, as if from the squalid court the vistaof its own squalid life had risen, ghostlike, and struck its heartdead with horror.

Poor little feet, just commencing the stony journey! We oldtravelers, 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 tinyin the distance, standing on the brow of the hill, your arms stretchedout toward us. God speed you! We would stay and take your littlehands in ours, but the murmur of the great sea is in our ears and wemay not linger. We must hasten down, for the shadowy ships arewaiting to spread their sable sails.
ON EATING AND DRINKING
　　I always was fond of eating and drinking, even as a child--especiallyeating, in those early days. I had an appetite then, also adigestion. I remember a dull-eyed, livid-complexioned gentlemancoming to dine at our house once. He watched me eating for about fiveminutes, quite fascinated seemingly, and then he turned to my fatherwith--"Does your boy ever suffer from dyspepsia?""I never heard him complain of anything of that kind," replied myfather. "Do you ever suffer from dyspepsia, Colly wobbles?" (Theycalled me Colly wobbles, but it was not my real name.)"No, pa," I answered. After which I added:

"What is dyspepsia, pa?"My livid-complexioned friend regarded me with a look of mingledamazement and envy. Then in a tone of infinite pity he slowly said:

"You will know--some day."My poor, dear mother used to say she liked to see me eat, and it hasalways been a pleasant reflection to me since that I must have givenher much gratification in that direction. A growing, healthy lad,taking plenty of exercise and careful to restrain himself fromindulging in too much study, can generally satisfy the most exactingexpectations as regards his feeding powers.

It is amusing to see boys eat when you have not got to pay for it.

Their idea of a square meal is a pound and a half of roast beef withfive or six good-sized potatoes (soapy ones preferred as being moresubstantial), plenty of greens, and four thick slices of Yorkshirepudding, followed by a couple of currant dumplings, a few greenapples, a pen'orth of nuts, half a dozen jumbles, and a bottle ofginger-beer. After that they play at horses.

How they must despise us men, who require to sit quiet for a couple ofhours after dining off a spoonful of clear soup and the wing of achicken!

But the boys have not all the advantages on their side. A boy neverenjoys the luxury of being satisfied. A boy never feels full. He cannever stretch out his legs, put his hands behind his head, and,closing his eyes, sink into the ethereal blissfulness that encompassesthe well-dined man. A dinner makes no difference whatever to a boy.

To a man it is as a good fairy's potion, and after it the worldappears a brighter and a better place. A man who has dinedsatisfactorily experiences a yearning love toward all hisfellow-creatures. He strokes the cat quite gently and calls it "poorpussy," in tones full of the tenderest emotion. He sympathizes withthe 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 itsgenial influence the gloomy and morose become jovial and chatty.

Sour, starchy individuals, who all the rest of the day go aboutlooking as if they lived on vinegar and Epsom salts, break out intowreathed smiles after dinner, and exhibit a tendency to pat smallchildren on the head and to talk to them--vaguely--about sixpences.

Serious men thaw and become mildly cheerful, and snobbish young men ofthe heavy-mustache type forget to make themselves objectionable.

I always feel sentimental myself after dinner. It is the only timewhen I can properly appreciate love-stories. Then, when the heroclasps "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 adeuce; and when the heroine dies in the end I weep. If I read thesame tale early in the morning I should sneer at it. Digestion, orrather indigestion, has a marvelous effect upon the heart. If I wantto write any thing very pathetic--I mean, if I want to try to writeanything very pathetic--I eat a large plateful of hot buttered muffinsabout an hour beforehand, and then by the time I sit down to my work afeeling of unutterable melancholy has come over me. I pictureheartbroken lovers parting forever at lonely wayside stiles, while thesad twilight deepens around them, and only the tinkling of a distantsheep-bell breaks the sorrow-laden silence. Old men sit and gaze atwithered flowers till their sight is dimmed by the mist of tears.

Little dainty maidens wait and watch at open casements; but "he comethnot," and the heavy years roll by and the sunny gold tresses wearwhite and thin. The babies that they dandled have become grown menand women with podgy torments of their own, and the playmates thatthey laughed with are lying very silent under the waving grass. Butstill they wait and watch, till the dark shadows of the unknown nightsteal up and gather round them and the world with its childishtroubles fades from their aching eyes.

I see pale corpses tossed on white-foamed waves, and death-bedsstained with bitter tears, and graves in trackless deserts. I hearthe wild wailing of women, the low moaning of little children, the drysobbing of strong men. It's all the muffins. I could not conjure upone melancholy fancy upon a mutton chop and a glass of champagne.

A full stomach is a great aid to poetry, and indeed no sentiment ofany kind can stand upon an empty one. We have not time or inclinationto indulge in fanciful troubles until we have got rid of our realmisfortunes. We do not sigh over dead dicky-birds with the bailiff inthe house, and when we do not know where on earth to get our nextshilling from, we do not worry as to whether our mistress' smiles arecold, or hot, or lukewarm, or anything else about them.

Foolish people--when I say "foolish people" in this contemptuous way Imean people who entertain different opinions to mine. If there is oneperson I do despise more than another, it is the man who does notthink exactly the same on all topics as I do--foolish people, I say,then, who have never experienced much of either, will tell you thatmental distress is far more agonizing than bodily. Romantic andtouching theory! so comforting to the love-sick young sprig who looksdown patronizingly at some poor devil with a white starved face andthinks to himself, "Ah, how happy you are compared with me!"--sosoothing to fat old gentlemen who cackle about the superiority ofpoverty over riches. But it is all nonsense--all cant. An achinghead soon makes one forget an aching heart. A broken finger willdrive away all recollections of an empty chair. And when a man feelsreally hungry he does not feel anything else.

We sleek, well-fed folk can hardly realize what feeling hungry islike. We know what it is to have no appetite and not to care for thedainty victuals placed before us, but we do not understand what itmeans to sicken for food--to die for bread while others waste it--togaze with famished eyes upon coarse fare steaming behind dingywindows, longing for a pen'orth of pea pudding and not having thepenny to buy it--to feel that a crust would be delicious and that abone would be a banquet.

Hunger is a luxury to us, a piquant, flavor-giving sauce. It is wellworth while to get hungry and thirsty merely to discover how muchgratification can be obtained from eating and drinking. If you wishto thoroughly enjoy your dinner, take a thirty-mile country walk afterbreakfast and don't touch anything till you get back. How your eyeswill glisten at sight of the white table-cloth and steaming dishesthen! With what a sigh of content you will put down the empty beertankard and take up your knife and fork! And how comfortable you feelafterward as you push back your chair, light a cigar, and beam roundupon everybody.

Make sure, however, when adopting this plan, that the good dinner isreally to be had at the end, or the disappointment is trying. Iremember once a friend and I--dear old Joe, it was. Ah! how we loseone another in life's mist. It must be eight years since I last sawJoseph Taboys. How pleasant it would be to meet his jovial faceagain, to clasp his strong hand, and to hear his cheery laugh oncemore! He owes me 14 shillings, too. Well, we were on a holidaytogether, and one morning we had breakfast early and started for atremendous 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. Shesaid, "I have got you gentlemen a duck, if you like. If you getthrough that you'll do well;" and she held up a bird about the size ofa door-mat. We chuckled at the sight and said we would try. We saidit with self-conscious pride, like men who know their own power. Thenwe started.

We lost our way, of course. I always do in the country, and it doesmake me so wild, because it is no use asking direction of any of thepeople you meet. One might as well inquire of a lodging-house slaveythe way to make beds as expect a country bumpkin to know the road tothe next village. You have to shout the question about three timesbefore the sound of your voice penetrates his skull. At the thirdtime he slowly raises his head and stares blankly at you. You yell itat him then for a fourth time, and he repeats it after you. Heponders while you count a couple of hundred, after which, speaking atthe rate of three words a minute, he fancies you "couldn't do betterthan--" Here he catches sight of another idiot coming down the roadand bawls out to him the particulars, requesting his advice. The twothen argue the case for a quarter of an hour or so, and finally agreethat you had better go straight down the lane, round to the right andcross by the third stile, and keep to the left by old Jimmy Milcher'scow-shed, and across the seven-acre field, and through the gate bySquire Grubbin's hay-stack, keeping the bridle-path for awhile tillyou come opposite the hill where the windmill used to be--but it'sgone now--and round to the right, leaving Stiggin's plantation behindyou; and you say "Thank you" and go away with a splitting headache,but without the faintest notion of your way, the only clear idea youhave on the subject being that somewhere or other there is a stilewhich has to be got over; and at the next turn you come upon fourstiles, all leading in different directions!

We had undergone this ordeal two or three times. We had tramped overfields. We had waded through brooks and scrambled over hedges andwalls. We had had a row as to whose fault it was that we had firstlost our way. We had got thoroughly disagreeable, footsore, andweary. But throughout it all the hope of that duck kept us up. Afairy-like vision, it floated before our tired eyes and drew usonward. The thought of it was as a trumpet-call to the fainting. Wetalked of it and cheered each other with our recollections of it.

"Come along," we said; "the duck will be spoiled."We felt a strong temptation, at one point, to turn into a village innas we passed and have a cheese and a few loaves between us, but weheroically restrained ourselves: we should enjoy the duck all thebetter for being famished.

We fancied we smelled it when we go into the town and did the lastquarter of a mile in three minutes. We rushed upstairs, and washedourselves, and changed our clothes, and came down, and pulled ourchairs up to the table, and sat and rubbed our hands while thelandlady removed the covers, when I seized the knife and fork andstarted to carve.

It seemed to want a lot of carving. I struggled with it for aboutfive minutes without making the slightest impression, and then Joe,who had been eating potatoes, wanted to know if it wouldn't be betterfor some one to do the job that understood carving. I took no noticeof his foolish remark, but attacked the bird again; and so vigorouslythis 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 anothereffort. But Joe was getting unpleasant. He said that if he hadthought we were to have a game of blind hockey with the dinner hewould have got a bit of bread and cheese outside.

I was too exhausted to argue. I laid down the knife and fork withdignity and took a side seat and Joe went for the wretched creature.

He worked away in silence for awhile, and then he muttered "Damn theduck" and took his coat off.

We did break the thing up at length with the aid of a chisel, but itwas perfectly impossible to eat it, and we had to make a dinner offthe vegetables and an apple tart. We tried a mouthful of the duck,but it was like eating India-rubber.

It was a wicked sin to kill that drake. But there! there's no respectfor old institutions in this country.

I started this paper with the idea of writing about eating anddrinking, but I seem to have confined my remarks entirely to eating asyet. Well, you see, drinking is one of those subjects with which itis inadvisable to appear too well acquainted. The days are gone bywhen it was considered manly to go to bed intoxicated every night, anda clear head and a firm hand no longer draw down upon their owner thereproach of effeminacy. On the contrary, in these sadly degeneratedays an evil-smelling breath, a blotchy face, a reeling gait, and ahusky voice are regarded as the hall marks of the cad rather than orthe gentleman.

Even nowadays, though, the thirstiness of mankind is somethingsupernatural. We are forever drinking on one excuse or another. Aman never feels comfortable unless he has a glass before him. Wedrink before meals, and with meals, and after meals. We drink when wemeet a friend, also when we part from a friend. We drink when we aretalking, when we are reading, and when we are thinking. We drink oneanother's healths and spoil our own. We drink the queen, and thearmy, and the ladies, and everybody else that is drinkable; and Ibelieve if the supply ran short we should drink our mothers-in-law.

By the way, we never eat anybody's health, always drink it. Whyshould we not stand up now and then and eat a tart to somebody'ssuccess?

To me, I confess the constant necessity of drinking under which themajority of men labor is quite unaccountable. I can understand peopledrinking to drown care or to drive away maddening thoughts wellenough. I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soakthemselves in drink--oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, ofcourse--very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all thegraces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in dampcellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery intothe warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for abrief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin.

But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at theirill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means.

Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on fromyear to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin insewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed childrenscream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse,and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and thehouse 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 hayand munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennelblinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewyfields, 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 oflight. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed tothe hour when they lounge back into it again they never live onemoment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they knownot the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship,longing, despair, are idle words to them. From the day when theirbaby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when, withan oath, they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out ofsight, they never warm to one touch of human sympathy, never thrill toa single thought, never start to a single hope. In the name of theGod of mercy; let them pour the maddening liquor down their throatsand feel for one brief moment that they live!

Ah! we may talk sentiment as much as we like, but the stomach is thereal seat of happiness in this world. The kitchen is the chief templewherein we worship, its roaring fire is our vestal flame, and the cookis 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. Letus eat, drink, and be merry.
ON FURNISHED APARTMENTS
　　"Oh, 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 thekitchen stairs, untying her apron as she comes and calling downinstructions to some one below about the potatoes.

"Good-morning, sir," says "mother," with a washed-out smile. "Willyou step this way, please?""Oh, it's hardly worth while my coming up," you say. "What sort ofrooms are they, and how much?""Well," says the landlady, "if you'll step upstairs I'll show them toyou."So with a protesting murmur, meant to imply that any waste of timecomplained 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 bawlsover the balusters for Sarah to come and take them away at once. Whenyou get outside the rooms she pauses, with her hand upon the door, toexplain to you that they are rather untidy just at present, as thelast lodger left only yesterday; and she also adds that this is theircleaning-day--it always is. With this understanding you enter, andboth stand solemnly feasting your eyes upon the scene before you. Therooms cannot be said to appear inviting. Even "mother's" face betraysno admiration. Untenanted "furnished apartments" viewed in themorning sunlight do not inspire cheery sensations. There is alifeless air about them. It is a very different thing when you havesettled down and are living in them. With your old familiar householdgods to greet your gaze whenever you glance up, and all your littleknick-knacks spread around you--with the photos of all the girls thatyou have loved and lost ranged upon the mantel-piece, and half a dozendisreputable-looking pipes scattered about in painfully prominentpositions--with one carpet slipper peeping from beneath the coal-boxand the other perched on the top of the piano--with the well-knownpictures to hide the dingy walls, and these dear old friends, yourbooks, higgledy-piggledy all over the place--with the bits of old bluechina that your mother prized, and the screen she worked in those farby-gone days, when the sweet old face was laughing and young, and thewhite soft hair tumbled in gold-brown curls from under thecoal-scuttle bonnet--Ah, old screen, what a gorgeous personage you must have been in youryoung days, when the tulips and roses and lilies (all growing from onestem) were fresh in their glistening sheen! Many a summer and winterhave come and gone since then, my friend, and you have played with thedancing firelight until you have grown sad and gray. Your brilliantcolors are fast fading now, and the envious moths have gnawed yoursilken threads. You are withering away like the dead hands that woveyou. Do you ever think of those dead hands? You seem so grave andthoughtful sometimes that I almost think you do. Come, you and I andthe deep-glowing embers, let us talk together. Tell me in your silentlanguage what you remember of those young days, when you lay on mylittle mother's lap and her girlish fingers played with your rainbowtresses. Was there never a lad near sometimes--never a lad who wouldseize one of those little hands to smother it with kisses, and whowould persist in holding it, thereby sadly interfering with theprogress of your making? Was not your frail existence often put injeopardy by this same clumsy, headstrong lad, who would toss youdisrespectfully aside that he--not satisfied with one--might hold bothhands and gaze up into the loved eyes? I can see that lad now throughthe haze of the flickering twilight. He is an eager bright-eyed boy,with pinching, dandy shoes and tight-fitting smalls, snowy shirt frilland stock, and--oh! such curly hair. A wild, light-hearted boy! Canhe be the great, grave gentleman upon whose stick I used to ridecrosslegged, the care-worn man into whose thoughtful face I used togaze with childish reverence and whom I used to call "father?" Yousay "yes," old screen; but are you quite sure? It is a serious chargeyou are bringing. Can it be possible? Did he have to kneel down inthose wonderful smalls and pick you up and rearrange you before he wasforgiven and his curly head smoothed by my mother's little hand? Ah!

old screen, and did the lads and the lassies go making love fiftyyears ago just as they do now? Are men and women so unchanged? Didlittle maidens' hearts beat the same under pearl-embroidered bodicesas they do under Mother Hubbard cloaks? Have steel casques andchimney-pot hats made no difference to the brains that work beneaththem? Oh, Time! great Chronos! and is this your power? Have youdried up seas and leveled mountains and left the tiny humanheart-strings to defy you? Ah, yes! they were spun by a Mightier thanthou, and they stretch beyond your narrow ken, for their ends are madefast in eternity. Ay, you may mow down the leaves and the blossoms,but the roots of life lie too deep for your sickle to sever. Yourefashion Nature's garments, but you cannot vary by a jot thethrobbings of her pulse. The world rolls round obedient to your laws,but the heart of man is not of your kingdom, for in its birthplace "athousand years are but as yesterday."I am getting away, though, I fear, from my "furnished apartments," andI hardly know how to get back. But I have some excuse for mymeanderings this time. It is a piece of old furniture that has led meastray, and fancies gather, somehow, round old furniture, like mossaround old stones. One's chairs and tables get to be almost part ofone's life and to seem like quiet friends. What strange tales thewooden-headed old fellows could tell did they but choose to speak! Atwhat unsuspected comedies and tragedies have they not assisted! Whatbitter tears have been sobbed into that old sofa cushion! Whatpassionate whisperings the settee must have overheard!

New furniture has no charms for me compared with old. It is the oldthings that we love--the old faces, the old books, the old jokes. Newfurniture can make a palace, but it takes old furniture to make ahome. Not merely old in itself--lodging-house furniture generally isthat--but it must be old to us, old in associations and recollections.

The furniture of furnished apartments, however ancient it may be inreality, is new to our eyes, and we feel as though we could never geton with it. As, too, in the case of all fresh acquaintances, whetherwooden or human (and there is very little difference between the twospecies sometimes), everything impresses you with its worst aspect.

The knobby wood-work and shiny horse-hair covering of the easy-chairsuggest anything but ease. The mirror is smoky. The curtains wantwashing. The carpet is frayed. The table looks as if it would goover the instant anything was rested on it. The grate is cheerless,the wall-paper hideous. The ceiling appears to have had coffee spiltall over it, and the ornaments--well, they are worse than thewallpaper.

There must surely be some special and secret manufactory for theproduction of lodging-house ornaments. Precisely the same articlesare to be found at every lodging-house all over the kingdom, and theyare never seen anywhere else. There are the two--what do you callthem? they stand one at each end of the mantel-piece, where they arenever safe, and they are hung round with long triangular slips ofglass that clank against one another and make you nervous. In thecommoner class of rooms these works of art are supplemented by acouple of pieces of china which might each be meant to represent a cowsitting upon its hind legs, or a model of the temple of Diana atEphesus, or a dog, or anything else you like to fancy. Somewhereabout the room you come across a bilious-looking object, which atfirst you take to be a lump of dough left about by one of thechildren, 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 andglazed certificate to the effect that the father has been vaccinated,or is an Odd Fellow, or something of that sort.

You examine these various attractions and then dismally ask what therent is.

"That's rather a good deal," you say on hearing the figure.

"Well, to tell you the truth," answers the landlady with a suddenburst of candor, "I've always had" (mentioning a sum a good deal inexcess of the first-named amount), "and before that I used to have" (astill higher figure).

What the rent of apartments must have been twenty years ago makes oneshudder to think of. Every landlady makes you feel thoroughly ashamedof yourself by informing you, whenever the subject crops up, that sheused to get twice as much for her rooms as you are paying. Young menlodgers of the last generation must have been of a wealthier classthan they are now, or they must have ruined themselves. I should havehad to live in an attic.

Curious, that in lodgings the rule of life is reversed. The higheryou get up in the world the lower you come down in your lodgings. Onthe lodging-house ladder the poor man is at the top, the rich manunderneath. You start in the attic and work your way down to thefirst 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," andthe world has used them to store a good deal of its lumber in at onetime or another. Its preachers and painters and poets, itsdeep-browed men who will find out things, its fire-eyed men who willtell truths that no one wants to hear--these are the lumber that theworld hides away in its attics. Haydn grew up in an attic andChatterton starved in one. Addison and Goldsmith wrote in garrets.

Faraday and De Quincey knew them well. Dr. Johnson camped cheerfullyin them, sleeping soundly--too soundly sometimes--upon theirtrundle-beds, like the sturdy old soldier of fortune that he was,inured to hardship and all careless of himself. Dickens spent hisyouth among them, Morland his old age--alas! a drunken, premature oldage. Hans Andersen, the fairy king, dreamed his sweet fancies beneaththeir sloping roofs. Poor, wayward-hearted Collins leaned his headupon their crazy tables; priggish Benjamin Franklin; Savage, thewrong-headed, much troubled when he could afford any softer bed than adoorstep; young Bloomfield, "Bobby" Burns, Hogarth, Watts theengineer--the roll is endless. Ever since the habitations of men werereared two stories high has the garret been the nursery of genius.

No one who honors the aristocracy of mind can feel ashamed ofacquaintanceship with them. Their damp-stained walls are sacred tothe memory of noble names. If all the wisdom of the world and all itsart--all the spoils that it has won from nature, all the fire that ithas snatched from heaven--were gathered together and divided intoheaps, and we could point and say, for instance, these mighty truthswere flashed forth in the brilliant _salon_ amid the ripple of lightlaughter and the sparkle of bright eyes; and this deep knowledge wasdug up in the quiet study, where the bust of Pallas looks serenelydown on the leather-scented shelves; and this heap belongs to thecrowded street; and that to the daisied field--the heap that wouldtower up high above the rest as a mountain above hills would be theone at which we should look up and say: this noblest pile ofall--these glorious paintings and this wondrous music, these trumpetwords, these solemn thoughts, these daring deeds, they were forged andfashioned amid misery and pain in the sordid squalor of the citygarret. There, from their eyries, while the world heaved and throbbedbelow, the kings of men sent forth their eagle thoughts to wing theirflight through the ages. There, where the sunlight streaming throughthe broken panes fell on rotting boards and crumbling walls; there,from their lofty thrones, those rag-clothed Joves have hurled theirthunderbolts and shaken, before now, the earth to its foundations.

Huddle them up in your lumber-rooms, oh, world! Shut them fast in andturn the key of poverty upon them. Weld close the bars, and let themfret their hero lives away within the narrow cage. Leave them thereto starve, and rot, and die. Laugh at the frenzied beatings of theirhands against the door. Roll onward in your dust and noise and passthem by, forgotten.

But take care lest they turn and sting you. All do not, like thefabled phoenix, warble sweet melodies in their agony; sometimes theyspit venom--venom you must breathe whether you will or no, for youcannot seal their mouths, though you may fetter their limbs. You canlock the door upon them, but they burst open their shaky lattices andcall out over the house-tops so that men cannot but hear. You houndedwild Rousseau into the meanest garret of the Rue St. Jacques andjeered at his angry shrieks. But the thin, piping tones swelled ahundred years later into the sullen roar of the French Revolution, andcivilization to this day is quivering to the reverberations of hisvoice.

As for myself, however, I like an attic. Not to live in: asresidences they are inconvenient. There is too much getting up anddown stairs connected with them to please me. It puts oneunpleasantly in mind of the tread-mill. The form of the ceilingoffers too many facilities for bumping your head and too few forshaving. And the note of the tomcat as he sings to his love in thestilly night outside on the tiles becomes positively distasteful whenheard so near.

No, for living in give me a suit of rooms on the first floor of aPiccadilly mansion (I wish somebody would!); but for thinking in letme have an attic up ten flights of stairs in the densest quarter ofthe city. I have all Herr Teufelsdrockh's affection for attics.

There is a sublimity about their loftiness. I love to "sit at easeand look down upon the wasps' nest beneath;" to listen to the dullmurmur of the human tide ebbing and flowing ceaselessly through thenarrow streets and lanes below. How small men seem, how like a swarmof ants sweltering in endless confusion on their tiny hill! How pettyseems the work on which they are hurrying and skurrying! Howchildishly they jostle against one another and turn to snarl andscratch! They jabber and screech and curse, but their puny voices donot 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 Ionce shared many years ago. Of all eccentrically planned things, fromBradshaw to the maze at Hampton Court, that room was the mosteccentric. The architect who designed it must have been a genius,though I cannot help thinking that his talents would have been betteremployed in contriving puzzles than in shaping human habitations. Nofigure in Euclid could give any idea of that apartment. It containedseven corners, two of the walls sloped to a point, and the window wasjust over the fireplace. The only possible position for the bedsteadwas between the door and the cupboard. To get anything out of thecupboard we had to scramble over the bed, and a large percentage ofthe various commodities thus obtained was absorbed by the bedclothes.

Indeed, so many things were spilled and dropped upon the bed thattoward night-time it had become a sort of small cooperative store.

Coal was what it always had most in stock. We used to keep our coalin the bottom part of the cupboard, and when any was wanted we had toclimb over the bed, fill a shovelful, and then crawl back. It was anexciting moment when we reached the middle of the bed. We would holdour breath, fix our eyes upon the shovel, and poise ourselves for thelast move. The next instant we, and the coals, and the shovel, andthe bed would be all mixed up together.

I've heard of the people going into raptures over beds of coal. Weslept 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 thearchitect's sense of humor. The arrangement of the whole house was amarvel of originality. All the doors opened outward, so that if anyone wanted to leave a room at the same moment that you were comingdownstairs it was unpleasant for you. There was no ground-floor--itsground-floor belonged to a house in the next court, and the front dooropened direct upon a flight of stairs leading down to the cellar.

Visitors on entering the house would suddenly shoot past the personwho had answered the door to them and disappear down these stairs.

Those of a nervous temperament used to imagine that it was a trap laidfor them, and would shout murder as they lay on their backs at thebottom till somebody came and picked them up.

It is a long time ago now that I last saw the inside of an attic. Ihave tried various floors since but I have not found that they havemade much difference to me. Life tastes much the same, whether wequaff it from a golden goblet or drink it out of a stone mug. Thehours come laden with the same mixture of joy and sorrow, no matterwhere we wait for them. A waistcoat of broadcloth or of fustian isalike to an aching heart, and we laugh no merrier on velvet cushionsthan we did on wooden chairs. Often have I sighed in thoselow-ceilinged rooms, yet disappointments have come neither less norlighter since I quitted them. Life works upon a compensating balance,and the happiness we gain in one direction we lose in another. As ourmeans increase, so do our desires; and we ever stand midway betweenthe two. When we reside in an attic we enjoy a supper of fried fishand stout. When we occupy the first floor it takes an elaboratedinner at the Continental to give us the same amount of satisfaction.
ON DRESS AND DEPORTMENT
　　They say--people who ought to be ashamed of themselves do--that theconsciousness of being well dressed imparts a blissfulness to thehuman heart that religion is powerless to bestow. I am afraid thesecynical persons are sometimes correct. I know that when I was a veryyoung man (many, many years ago, as the story-books say) and wantedcheering up, I used to go and dress myself in all my best clothes. IfI had been annoyed in any manner--if my washerwoman had discharged me,for instance; or my blank-verse poem had been returned for the tenthtime, with the editor's compliments "and regrets that owing to want ofspace he is unable to avail himself of kind offer;" or I had beensnubbed 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 mustbe. We all do it as it was never done before. I don't know how ourgreat-grandchildren will manage. They will have to do it on theirheads by their time if they persist in not clashing with any previousmethod.

Well, as I was saying, when these unpleasant sort of things happenedand I felt crushed, I put on all my best clothes and went out. Itbrought back my vanishing self-esteem. In a glossy new hat and a pairof trousers with a fold down the front (carefully preserved by keepingthem under the bed--I don't mean on the floor, you know, but betweenthe bed and the mattress), I felt I was somebody and that there wereother washerwomen: ay, and even other girls to love, and who wouldperhaps appreciate a clever, good-looking young fellow. I didn'tcare; 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 ishalf the battle. At all events, the young man thinks so, and itgenerally takes him a couple of hours to get himself up for theoccasion. His first half-hour is occupied in trying to decide whetherto wear his light suit with a cane and drab billycock, or his blacktails with a chimney-pot hat and his new umbrella. He is sure to beunfortunate in either decision. If he wears his light suit and takesthe stick it comes on to rain, and he reaches the house in a damp andmuddy condition and spends the evening trying to hide his boots. If,on the other hand, he decides in favor of the top hat andumbrella--nobody would ever dream of going out in a top hat without anumbrella; it would be like letting baby (bless it!) toddle out withoutits 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 roundagain now and I look quite stylish.

But to return to our young man and his courting. If he starts offwith the top hat and umbrella the afternoon turns out fearfully hot,and the perspiration takes all the soap out of his mustache andconverts the beautifully arranged curl over his forehead into a limpwisp resembling a lump of seaweed. The Fates are never favorable tothe poor wretch. If he does by any chance reach the door in propercondition, she has gone out with her cousin and won't be back tilllate.

How a young lover made ridiculous by the gawkiness of modern costumemust envy the picturesque gallants of seventy years ago! Look at them(on the Christmas cards), with their curly hair and natty hats, theirwell-shaped legs incased in smalls, their dainty Hessian boots, theirruffling frills, their canes and dangling seals. No wonder the littlemaiden in the big poke-bonnet and the light-blue sash casts down hereyes and is completely won. Men could win hearts in clothes likethat. But what can you expect from baggy trousers and a monkeyjacket?

Clothes have more effect upon us than we imagine. Our deportmentdepends upon our dress. Make a man get into seedy, worn-out rags, andhe will skulk along with his head hanging down, like a man going outto fetch his own supper beer. But deck out the same article ingorgeous raiment and fine linen, and he will strut down the mainthoroughfare, swinging his cane and looking at the girls as perky as abantam cock.

Clothes alter our very nature. A man could not help being fierce anddaring with a plume in his bonnet, a dagger in his belt, and a lot ofpuffy white things all down his sleeves. But in an ulster he wants toget behind a lamp-post and call police.

I am quite ready to admit that you can find sterling merit, honestworth, deep affection, and all such like virtues of theroast-beef-and-plum-pudding school as much, and perhaps more, underbroadcloth and tweed as ever existed beneath silk and velvet; but thespirit of that knightly chivalry that "rode a tilt for lady's love"and "fought for lady's smiles" needs the clatter of steel and therustle of plumes to summon it from its grave between the dusty foldsof tapestry and underneath the musty leaves of moldering chronicles.

The world must be getting old, I think; it dresses so very soberlynow. We have been through the infant period of humanity, when we usedto run about with nothing on but a long, loose robe, and liked to haveour feet bare. And then came the rough, barbaric age, the boyhood ofour race. We didn't care what we wore then, but thought it nice totattoo ourselves all over, and we never did our hair. And after thatthe world grew into a young man and became foppish. It decked itselfin flowing curls and scarlet doublets, and went courting, andbragging, and bouncing--making a brave show.

But all those merry, foolish days of youth are gone, and we are verysober, very solemn--and very stupid, some say--now. The world is agrave, middle-aged gentleman in this nineteenth century, and would beshocked to see itself with a bit of finery on. So it dresses in blackcoats and trousers, and black hats, and black boots, and, dear me, itis such a very respectable gentleman--to think it could ever have gonegadding about as a troubadour or a knight-errant, dressed in all thosefancy colors! Ah, well! we are more sensible in this age.

Or at least we think ourselves so. It is a general theory nowadaysthat sense and dullness go together.

Goodness is another quality that always goes with blackness. Verygood people indeed, you will notice, dress altogether in black, evento gloves and neckties, and they will probably take to black shirtsbefore long. Medium goods indulge in light trousers on week-days, andsome of them even go so far as to wear fancy waistcoats. On the otherhand, people who care nothing for a future state go about in lightsuits; and there have been known wretches so abandoned as to wear awhite hat. Such people, however, are never spoken of in genteelsociety, and perhaps I ought not to have referred to them here.

By the way, talking of light suits, have you ever noticed how peoplestare at you the first time you go out in a new light suit They donot notice it so much afterward. The population of London have gotaccustomed to it by the third time you wear it. I say "you," becauseI am not speaking from my own experience. I do not wear such thingsat all myself. As I said, only sinful people do so.

I wish, though, it were not so, and that one could be good, andrespectable, and sensible without making one's self a guy. I look inthe glass sometimes at my two long, cylindrical bags (so picturesquelyrugged about the knees), my stand-up collar and billycock hat, andwonder what right I have to go about making God's world hideous. Thenwild and wicked thoughts come into my heart. I don't want to be goodand respectable. (I never can be sensible, I'm told; so that don'tmatter.) I want to put on lavender-colored tights, with red velvetbreeches and a green doublet slashed with yellow; to have a light-bluesilk cloak on my shoulder, and a black eagle's plume waving from myhat, 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. Whyshould we all try to look like ants crawling over a dust-heap? Whyshouldn't we dress a little gayly? I am sure if we did we should behappier. True, it is a little thing, but we are a little race, andwhat is the use of our pretending otherwise and spoiling fun? Letphilosophers get themselves up like old crows if they like. But letme 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. Weabuse them a good deal, we men; but, goodness knows, the old worldwould be dull enough without their dresses and fair faces. How theybrighten up every place they come into! What a sunny commotionthey--relations, of course---make in our dingy bachelor chambers! andwhat a delightful litter their ribbons and laces, and gloves and hats,and parasols and 'kerchiefs make! It is as if a wandering rainbow haddropped in to pay us a visit.

It is one of the chief charms of the summer, to my mind, the way ourlittle maids come out in pretty colors. I like to see the pink andblue and white glancing between the trees, dotting the green fields,and flashing back the sunlight. You can see the bright colors such along way off. There are four white dresses climbing a hill in frontof my window now. I can see them distinctly, though it is three milesaway. I thought at first they were mile-stones out for a lark. It'sso nice to be able to see the darlings a long way off. Especially ifthey happen to be your wife and your mother-in-law.

Talking of fields and mile-stones reminds me that I want to say, inall seriousness, a few words about women's boots. The women of theseislands all wear boots too big for them. They can never get a boot tofit. The bootmakers do not keep sizes small enough.

Over and over again have I known women sit down on the top rail of astile and declare they could not go a step further because their bootshurt 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 thehusbands and fathers of England, I call upon the bootmakers to reform.

Our wives, our daughters, and our cousins are not to be lamed andtortured with impunity. Why cannot "narrow twos" be kept more instock? That is the size I find most women take.

The waist-band is another item of feminine apparel that is always toobig. The dressmakers make these things so loose that the hooks andeyes by which they are fastened burst off, every now and then, with areport like thunder.

Why women suffer these wrongs--why they do not insist in having theirclothes made small enough for them I cannot conceive. It can hardlybe that they are disinclined to trouble themselves about matters ofmere dress, for dress is the one subject that they really do thinkabout. It is the only topic they ever get thoroughly interested in,and they talk about it all day long. If you see two women together,you may bet your bottom dollar they are discussing their own or theirfriends' clothes. You notice a couple of child-like beings conversingby a window, and you wonder what sweet, helpful words are falling fromtheir sainted lips. So you move nearer and then you hear one say:

"So I took in the waist-band and let out a seam, and it fitsbeautifully now.""Well," says the other, "I shall wear my plum-colored body to theJones', with a yellow plastron; and they've got some lovely gloves atPuttick's, only one and eleven pence."I went for a drive through a part of Derbyshire once with a couple ofladies. It was a beautiful bit of country, and they enjoyedthemselves immensely. They talked dressmaking the whole time.

"Pretty view, that," I would say, waving my umbrella round. "Look atthose blue distant hills! That little white speck, nestling in thewoods, is Chatsworth, and over there--""Yes, very pretty indeed," one would reply. "Well, why not get a yardof 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 keptsweeping into view, and they would glance round and say "charming,""sweetly pretty," and immediately go off into raptures over eachother's pocket-handkerchiefs, and mourn with one another over thedecadence of cambric frilling.

I believe if two women were cast together upon a desert island, theywould spend each day arguing the respective merits of sea-shells andbirds' eggs considered as trimmings, and would have a new fashion infig-leaves every month.

Very young men think a good deal about clothes, but they don't talkabout them to each other. They would not find much encouragement. Afop is not a favorite with his own sex. Indeed, he gets a good dealmore abuse from them than is necessary. His is a harmless failing andit soon wears out. Besides, a man who has no foppery at twenty willbe a slatternly, dirty-collar, unbrushed-coat man at forty. A littlefoppishness in a young man is good; it is human. I like to see ayoung cock ruffle his feathers, stretch his neck, and crow as if thewhole world belonged to him. I don't like a modest, retiring man.

Nobody does--not really, however much they may prate about modestworth and other things they do not understand.

A meek deportment is a great mistake in the world. Uriah Heap'sfather was a very poor judge of human nature, or he would not havetold his son, as he did, that people liked humbleness. There isnothing annoys them more, as a rule. Rows are half the fun of life,and you can't have rows with humble, meek-answering individuals. Theyturn away our wrath, and that is just what we do not want. We want tolet it out. We have worked ourselves up into a state of exhilaratingfury, and then just as we are anticipating the enjoyment of a vigorousset-to, they spoil all our plans with their exasperating humility.

Xantippe's life must have been one long misery, tied to that calmlyirritating man, Socrates. Fancy a married woman doomed to live onfrom day to day without one single quarrel with her husband! A manought to humor his wife in these things.

Heaven knows their lives are dull enough, poor girls. They have noneof the enjoyments we have. They go to no political meetings; they maynot even belong to the local amateur parliament; they are excludedfrom smoking-carriages on the Metropolitan Railway, and they never seea comic paper--or if they do, they do not know it is comic: nobodytells them.

Surely, with existence such a dreary blank for them as this, we mightprovide a little row for their amusement now and then, even if we donot feel inclined for it ourselves. A really sensible man does so andis loved accordingly, for it is little acts of kindness such as thisthat go straight to a woman's heart. It is such like proofs of lovingself-sacrifice that make her tell her female friends what a goodhusband he was--after he is dead.

Yes, poor Xantippe must have had a hard time of it. The bucketepisode was particularly sad for her. Poor woman! she did think shewould rouse him up a bit with that. She had taken the trouble to fillthe bucket, perhaps been a long way to get specially dirty water. Andshe waited for him. And then to be met in such a way, after all!

Most likely she sat down and had a good cry afterward. It must haveseemed all so hopeless to the poor child; and for all we know she hadno mother to whom she could go and abuse him.

What was it to her that her husband was a great philosopher? Greatphilosophy don't count in married life.

There was a very good little boy once who wanted to go to sea. Andthe captain asked him what he could do. He said he could do themultiplication-table backward and paste sea-weed in a book; that heknew how many times the word "begat" occurred in the Old Testament;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 yekerry coals?"It is just the same when you want to marry. Great ability is notrequired so much as little usefulness. Brains are at a discount inthe married state. There is no demand for them, no appreciation even.

Our wives sum us up according to a standard of their own, in whichbrilliancy of intellect obtains no marks. Your lady and mistress isnot at all impressed by your cleverness and talent, my dearreader--not in the slightest. Give her a man who can do an errandneatly, without attempting to use his own judgment over it or anynonsense of that kind; and who can be trusted to hold a child theright way up, and not make himself objectionable whenever there islukewarm mutton for dinner. That is the sort of a husband a sensiblewoman likes; not one of your scientific or literary nuisances, who goupsetting the whole house and putting everybody out with theirfoolishness.
ON MEMORY
　　"I remember, I remember,In the days of chill November,How the blackbird on the--"I forget the rest. It is the beginning of the first piece of poetry Iever learned; for"Hey, diddle diddle,The cat and the fiddle,"I take no note of, it being of a frivolous character and lacking inthe qualities of true poetry. I collected fourpence by the recital of"I remember, I remember." I knew it was fourpence, because they toldme that if I kept it until I got twopence more I should have sixpence,which argument, albeit undeniable, moved me not, and the money wassquandered, to the best of my recollection, on the very next morning,although upon what memory is a blank.

That is just the way with Memory; nothing that she brings to us iscomplete. She is a willful child; all her toys are broken. Iremember tumbling into a huge dust-hole when a very small boy, but Ihave not the faintest recollection of ever getting out again; and ifmemory were all we had to trust to, I should be compelled to believe Iwas there still.

At another time--some years later--I was assisting at an exceedinglyinteresting love scene; but the only thing about it I can call to minddistinctly is that at the most critical moment somebody suddenlyopened the door and said, "Emily, you're wanted," in a sepulchral tonethat gave one the idea the police had come for her. All the tenderwords she said to me and all the beautiful things I said to her areutterly forgotten.

Life altogether is but a crumbling ruin when we turn to look behind:

a shattered column here, where a massive portal stood; the brokenshaft of a window to mark my lady's bower; and a moldering heap ofblackened stones where the glowing flames once leaped, and over allthe tinted lichen and the ivy clinging green.

For everything looms pleasant through the softening haze of time.

Even the sadness that is past seems sweet. Our boyish days look verymerry to us now, all nutting, hoop, and gingerbread. The snubbingsand toothaches and the Latin verbs are all forgotten--the Latin verbsespecially. And we fancy we were very happy when we were hobbledehoysand loved; and we wish that we could love again. We never think ofthe heartaches, or the sleepless nights, or the hot dryness of ourthroats, when she said she could never be anything to us but asister--as if any man wanted more sisters!

Yes, it is the brightness, not the darkness, that we see when we lookback. The sunshine casts no shadows on the past. The road that wehave traversed stretches very fair behind us. We see not the sharpstones. We dwell but on the roses by the wayside, and the strongbriers that stung us are, to our distant eyes, but gentle tendrilswaving in the wind. God be thanked that it is so--that theever-lengthening chain of memory has only pleasant links, and that thebitterness and sorrow of to-day are smiled at on the morrow.

It seems as though the brightest side of everything were also itshighest and best, so that as our little lives sink back behind us intothe dark sea of forgetfulness, all that which is the lightest and themost gladsome is the last to sink, and stands above the waters, longin sight, when the angry thoughts and smarting pain are buried deepbelow the waves and trouble us no more.

It is this glamour of the past, I suppose, that makes old folk talk somuch nonsense about the days when they were young. The world appearsto have been a very superior sort of place then, and things were morelike what they ought to be. Boys were boys then, and girls were verydifferent. Also winters were something like winters, and summers notat all the wretched-things we get put off with nowadays. As for thewonderful deeds people did in those times and the extraordinary eventsthat 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 ofyoungsters who he knows cannot contradict him. It is odd if, afterawhile, he doesn't swear that the moon shone every night when he was aboy, and that tossing mad bulls in a blanket was the favorite sport athis school.

It always has been and always will be the same. The old folk of ourgrandfathers' young days sang a song bearing exactly the same burden;and the young folk of to-day will drone out precisely similar nonsensefor the aggravation of the next generation. "Oh, give me back thegood old days of fifty years ago," has been the cry ever since Adam'sfifty-first birthday. Take up the literature of 1835, and you willfind the poets and novelists asking for the same impossible gift asdid the German Minnesingers long before them and the old Norse Sagawriters long before that. And for the same thing sighed the earlyprophets 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 placewhen it was first opened to the public, for it is very pleasant evennow if you only keep as much as possible in the sunshine and take therain good-temperedly.

Yet there is no gainsaying but that it must have been somewhat sweeterin that dewy morning of creation, when it was young and fresh, whenthe feet of the tramping millions had not trodden its grass to dust,nor the din of the myriad cities chased the silence forever away.

Life must have been noble and solemn to those free-footed, loose-robedfathers of the human race, walking hand in hand with God under thegreat sky. They lived in sunkissed tents amid the lowing herds. Theytook their simple wants from the loving hand of Nature. They toiledand talked and thought; and the great earth rolled around instillness, not yet laden with trouble and wrong.

Those days are past now. The quiet childhood of Humanity, spent inthe far-off forest glades and by the murmuring rivers, is goneforever; and human life is deepening down to manhood amid tumult,doubt, and hope. Its age of restful peace is past. It has its workto finish and must hasten on. What that work may be--what thisworld's share is in the great design--we know not, though ourunconscious hands are helping to accomplish it. Like the tiny coralinsect working deep under the dark waters, we strive and struggle eachfor our own little ends, nor dream of the vast fabric we are buildingup for God.

Let us have done with vain regrets and longings for the days thatnever will be ours again. Our work lies in front, not behind us; and"Forward!" is our motto. Let us not sit with folded hands, gazingupon 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 andforgetting the may be that lies before us. Opportunities flit bywhile we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happinessthat 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 tothe 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 knewhim for a brave and well-tried knight, and one that knew not fear;except, maybe, upon such seasons when even a brave man might feelafraid and yet not be ashamed. Now, as this knight one day waspricking wearily along a toilsome road, his heart misgave him and wassore within him because of the trouble of the way. Rocks, dark and ofa monstrous size, hung high above his head, and like enough it seemedunto the knight that they should fall and he lie low beneath them.

Chasms there were on either side, and darksome caves wherein fiercerobbers lived, and dragons, very terrible, whose jaws dripped blood.

And upon the road there hung a darkness as of night. So it came overthat good knight that he would no more press forward, but seek anotherroad, less grievously beset with difficulty unto his gentle steed.

But when in haste he turned and looked behind, much marveled our braveknight, for lo! of all the way that he had ridden there was naught foreye 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 prayedto good Saint Cuthbert, and setting spurs into his steed rode forwardbravely and most joyously. And naught harmed him.

There is no returning on the road of life. The frail bridge of timeon which we tread sinks back into eternity at every step we take. Thepast is gone from us forever. It is gathered in and garnered. Itbelongs to us no more. No single word can ever be unspoken; no singlestep retraced. Therefore it beseems us as true knights to prick onbravely, not idly weep because we cannot now recall.

A new life begins for us with every second. Let us go forwardjoyously to meet it. We must press on whether we will or no, and weshall walk better with our eyes before us than with them ever castbehind.

A friend came to me the other day and urged me very eloquently tolearn some wonderful system by which you never forgot anything. Idon't know why he was so eager on the subject, unless it be that Ioccasionally borrow an umbrella and have a knack of coming out, in themiddle of a game of whist, with a mild "Lor! I've been thinking allalong that clubs were trumps." I declined the suggestion, however, inspite of the advantages he so attractively set forth. I have no wishto remember everything. There are many things in most men's livesthat had better be forgotten. There is that time, many years ago,when we did not act quite as honorably, quite as uprightly, as weperhaps should have done--that unfortunate deviation from the path ofstrict probity we once committed, and in which, more unfortunatestill, we were found out--that act of folly, of meanness, of wrong.

Ah, well! we paid the penalty, suffered the maddening hours of vainremorse, the hot agony of shame, the scorn, perhaps, of those weloved. Let us forget. Oh, Father Time, lift with your kindly handsthose bitter memories from off our overburdened hearts, for griefs areever coming to us with the coming hours, and our little strength isonly as the day.

Not that the past should be buried. The music of life would be muteif the chords of memory were snapped asunder. It is but the poisonousweeds, not the flowers, that we should root out from the garden ofMnemosyne. Do you remember Dickens' "Haunted Man"--how he prayed forforgetfulness, and how, when his prayer was answered, he prayed formemory once more? We do not want all the ghosts laid. It is only thehaggard, cruel-eyed specters 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 neednot seek in dismal church-yards nor sleep in moated granges to see theshadowy faces and hear the rustling of their garments in the night.

Every house, every room, every creaking chair has its own particularghost. They haunt the empty chambers of our lives, they throng aroundus like dead leaves whirled in the autumn wind. Some are living, someare dead. We know not. We clasped their hands once, loved them,quarreled with them, laughed with them, told them our thoughts andhopes and aims, as they told us theirs, till it seemed our very heartshad joined in a grip that would defy the puny power of Death. Theyare gone now; lost to us forever. Their eyes will never look intoours again and their voices we shall never hear. Only their ghostscome to us and talk with us. We see them, dim and shadowy, throughour 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 thebusy street under the glare of the sun. They sit by us in thetwilight at home. We see their little faces looking from the windowsof the old school-house. We meet them in the woods and lanes where weshouted and played as boys. Hark! cannot you hear their low laughterfrom behind the blackberry-bushes and their distant whoops along thegrassy glades? Down here, through the quiet fields and by the wood,where the evening shadows are lurking, winds the path where we used towatch for her at sunset. Look, she is there now, in the dainty whitefrock we knew so well, with the big bonnet dangling from her littlehands 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 canlook into her laughing eyes and hear her voice. She will vanish atthe stile by the wood and we shall be alone; and the shadows willcreep out across the fields and the night wind will sweep pastmoaning. Ghosts! they are always with us and always will be while thesad old world keeps echoing to the sob of long good-bys, while thecruel ships sail away across the great seas, and the cold green earthlies heavy on the hearts of those we loved.

But, oh, ghosts, the world would be sadder still without you. Come tous and speak to us, oh you ghosts of our old loves! Ghosts ofplaymates, and of sweethearts, and old friends, of all you laughingboys and girls, oh, come to us and be with us, for the world is verylonely, and new friends and faces are not like the old, and we cannotlove them, nay, nor laugh with them as we have loved and laughed withyou. And when we walked together, oh, ghosts of our youth, the worldwas very gay and bright; but now it has grown old and we are growingweary, and only you can bring the brightness and the freshness back tous.

Memory is a rare ghost-raiser. Like a haunted house, its walls areever echoing to unseen feet. Through the broken casements we watchthe flitting shadows of the dead, and the saddest shadows of them allare the shadows of our own dead selves.

Oh, those young bright faces, so full of truth and honor, of pure,good thoughts, of noble longings, how reproachfully they look upon uswith their deep, clear eyes!

I fear they have good cause for their sorrow, poor lads. Lies andcunning and disbelief have crept into our hearts since thosepreshaving days--and we meant to be so great and good.

It is well we cannot see into the future. There are few boys offourteen who would not feel ashamed of themselves at forty.

I like to sit and have a talk sometimes with that odd little chap thatwas myself long ago. I think he likes it too, for he comes so oftenof an evening when I am alone with my pipe, listening to thewhispering of the flames. I see his solemn little face looking at methrough the scented smoke as it floats upward, and I smile at him; andhe smiles back at me, but his is such a grave, old-fashioned smile.

We chat about old times; and now and then he takes me by the hand, andthen we slip through the black bars of the grate and down the duskyglowing caves to the land that lies behind the firelight. There wefind the days that used to be, and we wander along them together. Hetells me as we walk all he thinks and feels. I laugh at him now andthen, but the next moment I wish I had not, for he looks so grave I amashamed of being frivolous. Besides, it is not showing proper respectto one so much older than myself--to one who was myself so very longbefore I became myself.

We don't talk much at first, but look at one another; I down at hiscurly hair and little blue bow, he up sideways at me as he trots. Andsome-how I fancy the shy, round eyes do not altogether approve of me,and he heaves a little sigh, as though he were disappointed. Butafter awhile his bashfulness wears off and he begins to chat. Hetells me his favorite fairy-tales, he can do up to six times, and hehas a guinea-pig, and pa says fairy-tales ain't true; and isn't it apity? 'cos he would so like to be a knight and fight a dragon andmarry a beautiful princess. But he takes a more practical view oflife when he reaches seven, and would prefer to grow up be a bargee,and earn a lot of money. Maybe this is the consequence of falling inlove, which he does about this time with the young lady at the milkshop aet. six. (God bless her little ever-dancing feet, whatever sizethey may be now!) He must be very fond of her, for he gives her oneday his chiefest treasure, to wit, a huge pocket-knife with four rustyblades and a corkscrew, which latter has a knack of working itself outin some mysterious manner and sticking into its owner's leg. She isan affectionate little thing, and she throws her arms round his neckand kisses him for it, then and there, outside the shop. But thestupid world (in the person of the boy at the cigar emporium nextdoor) jeers at such tokens of love. Whereupon my young friend veryproperly prepares to punch the head of the boy at the cigar emporiumnext door; but fails in the attempt, the boy at the cigar emporiumnext door punching his instead.

And then comes school life, with its bitter little sorrows and itsjoyous shoutings, its jolly larks, and its hot tears falling onbeastly Latin grammars and silly old copy-books. It is at school thathe injures himself for life--as I firmly believe--trying to pronounceGerman; and it is there, too, that he learns of the importanceattached by the French nation to pens, ink, and paper. "Have youpens, ink, and paper?" is the first question asked by one Frenchman ofanother on their meeting. The other fellow has not any of them, as arule, 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 theother fellow's brother; what he wants to know now is, has the neighborof the other fellow's mother got 'em? "The neighbor of my mother hasno pens, no ink, and no paper," replies the other man, beginning toget wild. "Has the child of thy female gardener some pens, some ink,or some paper?" He has him there. After worrying enough about thesewretched inks, pens, and paper to make everybody miserable, it turnsout that the child of his own female gardener hasn't any. Such adiscovery would shut up any one but a French exercise man. It has noeffect at all, though, on this shameless creature. He never thinks ofapologizing, but says his aunt has some mustard.

So in the acquisition of more or less useless knowledge, soon happilyto be forgotten, boyhood passes away. The red-brick school-housefades from view, and we turn down into the world's high-road. Mylittle friend is no longer little now. The short jacket has sproutedtails. The battered cap, so useful as a combination ofpocket-handkerchief, drinking-cup, and weapon of attack, has grownhigh and glossy; and instead of a slate-pencil in his mouth there is acigarette, the smoke of which troubles him, for it will get up hisnose. He tries a cigar a little later on as being more stylish--a bigblack Havanna. It doesn't seem altogether to agree with him, for Ifind him sitting over a bucket in the back kitchen afterward, solemnlyswearing never to smoke again.

And now his mustache begins to be almost visible to the naked eye,whereupon he immediately takes to brandy-and-sodas and fancies himselfa man. He talks about "two to one against the favorite," refers toactresses as "Little Emmy" and "Kate" and "Baby," and murmurs abouthis "losses at cards the other night" in a style implying thatthousands have been squandered, though, to do him justice, the actualamount is most probably one-and-twopence. Also, if I see aright--forit is always twilight in this land of memories--he sticks an eyeglassin 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 andhalters as the only possible outcome of such reckless dissipation; andthe prediction of his first school-master, that he would come to a badend, assumes the proportions of inspired prophecy.

He has a lordly contempt at this age for the other sex, a blatantlygood opinion of himself, and a sociably patronizing manner toward allthe elderly male friends of the family. Altogether, it must beconfessed, he is somewhat of a nuisance about this time.

It does not last long, though. He falls in love in a little while,and that soon takes the bounce out of him. I notice his boots aremuch too small for him now, and his hair is fearfully and wonderfullyarranged. He reads poetry more than he used, and he keeps a rhymingdictionary in his bedroom. Every morning Emily Jane finds scraps oftorn-up paper on the floor and reads thereon of "cruel hearts andlove's deep darts," of "beauteous eyes and lovers' sighs," and muchmore of the old, old song that lads so love to sing and lassies loveto listen to while giving their dainty heads a toss and pretendingnever to hear.

The course of love, however, seems not to have run smoothly, for lateron he takes more walking exercise and less sleep, poor boy, than isgood for him; and his face is suggestive of anything but wedding-bellsand happiness ever after.

And here he seems to vanish. The little, boyish self that has grownup beside me as we walked is gone.

I am alone and the road is very dark. I stumble on, I know not hownor care, for the way seems leading nowhere, and there is no light toguide.

But at last the morning comes, and I find that I have grown intomyself.

The End