I can remember—but then I can remember a long time ago.  You, gentle Reader, just entering upon the prime of life, that age by thoughtless youth called middle, I cannot, of course, expect to follow me—when there was in great demand a certain periodical ycleped The Amateur.  Its aim was noble.  It sought to teach the beautiful lesson of independence, to inculcate the fine doctrine of self-help.  One chapter explained to a man how he might make flower-pots out of Australian meat cans; another how he might turn butter-tubs into music-stools; a third how he might utilize old bonnet boxes for Venetian blinds: that was the principle of the whole scheme, you made everything from something not intended for it, and as ill-suited to the purpose as possible.

Two pages, I distinctly recollect, were devoted to the encouragement of the manufacture of umbrella stands out of old gaspiping.  Anything less adapted to the receipt of hats and umbrellas than gas-piping I cannot myself conceive: had there been, I feel sure the author would have thought of it, and would have recommended it.

Picture-frames you fashioned out of ginger-beer corks.  You saved your ginger-beer corks, you found a picture—and the thing was complete.  How much ginger-beer it would be necessary to drink, preparatory to the making of each frame; and the effect of it upon the frame-maker’s physical, mental and moral well-being, did not concern The Amateur.  I calculate that for a fair-sized picture sixteen dozen bottles might suffice.  Whether, after sixteen dozen of ginger-beer, a man would take any interest in framing a picture—whether he would retain any pride in the picture itself, is doubtful.  But this, of course, was not the point.

One young gentleman of my acquaintance—the son of the gardener of my sister, as friend Ollendorff would have described him—did succeed in getting through sufficient ginger-beer to frame his grandfather, but the result was not encouraging.  Indeed, the gardener’s wife herself was but ill satisfied.

“What’s all them corks round father?” was her first question.

“Can’t you see,” was the somewhat indignant reply, “that’s the frame.”

“Oh! but why corks?”

“Well, the book said corks.”

Still the old lady remained unimpressed.

“Somehow it don’t look like father now,” she sighed.

Her eldest born grew irritable: none of us appreciate criticism!

“What does it look like, then?” he growled.

“Well, I dunno.  Seems to me to look like nothing but corks.”

The old lady’s view was correct.  Certain schools of art possibly lend themselves to this method of framing.  I myself have seen a funeral card improved by it; but, generally speaking, the consequence was a predominance of frame at the expense of the thing framed.  The more honest and tasteful of the framemakers would admit as much themselves.

“Yes, it is ugly when you look at it,” said one to me, as we stood surveying it from the centre of the room.  “But what one feels about it is that one has done it oneself.”

Which reflection, I have noticed, reconciles us to many other things beside cork frames.

Another young gentleman friend of mine—for I am bound to admit it was youth that profited most by the advice and counsel of The Amateur: I suppose as one grows older one grows less daring, less industrious—made a rocking-chair, according to the instructions of this book, out of a couple of beer barrels.  From every practical point of view it was a bad rocking-chair.  It rocked too much, and it rocked in too many directions at one and the same time.  I take it, a man sitting on a rocking-chair does not want to be continually rocking.  There comes a time when he says to himself—“Now I have rocked sufficiently for the present; now I will sit still for a while, lest a worse thing befall me.”  But this was one of those headstrong rocking-chairs that are a danger to humanity, and a nuisance to themselves.  Its notion was that it was made to rock, and that when it was not rocking, it was wasting its time.  Once started nothing could stop it—nothing ever did stop it, until it found itself topsy turvy on its own occupant.  That was the only thing that ever sobered it.

I had called, and had been shown into the empty drawing-room.  The rocking-chair nodded invitingly at me.  I never guessed it was an amateur rocking-chair.  I was young in those days, with faith in human nature, and I imagined that, whatever else a man might attempt without knowledge or experience, no one would be fool enough to experiment upon a rocking-chair.

I threw myself into it lightly and carelessly.  I immediately noticed the ceiling.  I made an instinctive movement forward.  The window and a momentary glimpse of the wooded hills beyond shot upwards and disappeared.  The carpet flashed across my eyes, and I caught sight of my own boots vanishing beneath me at the rate of about two hundred miles an hour.  I made a convulsive effort to recover them.  I suppose I over-did it.  I saw the whole of the room at once, the four walls, the ceiling, and the floor at the same moment.  It was a sort of vision.  I saw the cottage piano upside down, and I again saw my own boots flash past me, this time over my head, soles uppermost.  Never before had I been in a position where my own boots had seemed so all-pervading.  The next moment I lost my boots, and stopped the carpet with my head just as it was rushing past me.  At the same instant something hit me violently in the small of the back.  Reason, when recovered, suggested that my assailant must be the rocking-chair.

Investigation proved the surmise correct.  Fortunately I was still alone, and in consequence was able, a few minutes later, to meet my hostess with calm and dignity.  I said nothing about the rocking-chair.  As a matter of fact, I was hoping to have the pleasure, before I went, of seeing some other guest arrive and sample it: I had purposely replaced it in the most prominent and convenient position.  But though I felt capable of schooling myself to silence, I found myself unable to agree with my hostess when she called for my admiration of the thing.  My recent experiences had too deeply embittered me.

“Willie made it himself,” explained the fond mother.  “Don’t you think it was very clever of him?”

“Oh yes, it was clever,” I replied, “I am willing to admit that.”

“He made it out of some old beer barrels,” she continued; she seemed proud of it.

My resentment, though I tried to keep it under control, was mounting higher.

“Oh! did he?” I said; “I should have thought he might have found something better to do with them.”

“What?” she asked.

“Oh! well, many things,” I retorted.  “He might have filled them again with beer.”

My hostess looked at me astonished.  I felt some reason for my tone was expected.

“You see,” I explained, “it is not a well-made chair.  These rockers are too short, and they are too curved, and one of them, if you notice, is higher than the other and of a smaller radius; the back is at too obtuse an angle.  When it is occupied the centre of gravity becomes—”

My hostess interrupted me.

“You have been sitting on it,” she said.

“Not for long,” I assured her.

Her tone changed.  She became apologetic.

“I am so sorry,” she said.  “It looks all right.”

“It does,” I agreed; “that is where the dear lad’s cleverness displays itself.  Its appearance disarms suspicion.  With judgment that chair might be made to serve a really useful purpose.  There are mutual acquaintances of ours—I mention no names, you will know them—pompous, self-satisfied, superior persons who would be improved by that chair.  If I were Willie I should disguise the mechanism with some artistic drapery, bait the thing with a couple of exceptionally inviting cushions, and employ it to inculcate modesty and diffidence.  I defy any human being to get out of that chair, feeling as important as when he got into it.  What the dear boy has done has been to construct an automatic exponent of the transitory nature of human greatness.  As a moral agency that chair should prove a blessing in disguise.”

My hostess smiled feebly; more, I fear, from politeness than genuine enjoyment.

“I think you are too severe,” she said.  “When you remember that the boy has never tried his hand at anything of the kind before, that he has no knowledge and no experience, it really is not so bad.”

Considering the matter from that point of view I was bound to concur.  I did not like to suggest to her that before entering upon a difficult task it would be better for young men to acquire knowledge and experience: that is so unpopular a theory.

But the thing that The Amateur put in the front and foremost of its propaganda was the manufacture of household furniture out of egg-boxes.  Why egg-boxes I have never been able to understand, but egg-boxes, according to the prescription of The Amateur, formed the foundation of household existence.  With a sufficient supply of egg-boxes, and what The Amateur termed a “natural deftness,” no young couple need hesitate to face the furnishing problem.  Three egg-boxes made a writing-table; on another egg-box you sat to write; your books were ranged in egg-boxes around you—and there was your study, complete.

For the dining-room two egg-boxes made an overmantel; four egg-boxes and a piece of looking-glass a sideboard; while six egg-boxes, with some wadding and a yard or so of cretonne, constituted a so-called “cosy corner.”  About the “corner” there could be no possible doubt.  You sat on a corner, you leant against a corner; whichever way you moved you struck a fresh corner.  The “cosiness,” however, I deny.  Egg-boxes I admit can be made useful; I am even prepared to imagine them ornamental; but “cosy,” no.  I have sampled egg-boxes in many shapes.  I speak of years ago, when the world and we were younger, when our fortune was the Future; secure in which, we hesitated not to set up house upon incomes folks with lesser expectations might have deemed insufficient.  Under such circumstances, the sole alternative to the egg-box, or similar school of furniture, would have been the strictly classical, consisting of a doorway joined to architectural proportions.

I have from Saturday to Monday, as honoured guest, hung my clothes in egg-boxes.

I have sat on an egg-box at an egg-box to take my dish of tea.  I have made love on egg-boxes.—Aye, and to feel again the blood running through my veins as then it ran, I would be content to sit only on egg-boxes till the time should come when I could be buried in an egg-box, with an egg-box reared above me as tombstone.—I have spent many an evening on an egg-box; I have gone to bed in egg-boxes.  They have their points—I am intending no pun—but to claim for them cosiness would be but to deceive.

How quaint they were, those home-made rooms!  They rise out of the shadows and shape themselves again before my eyes.  I see the knobbly sofa; the easy-chairs that might have been designed by the Grand Inquisitor himself; the dented settle that was a bed by night; the few blue plates, purchased in the slums off Wardour Street; the enamelled stool to which one always stuck; the mirror framed in silk; the two Japanese fans crossed beneath each cheap engraving; the piano cloth embroidered in peacock’s feathers by Annie’s sister; the tea-cloth worked by Cousin Jenny.  We dreamt, sitting on those egg-boxes—for we were young ladies and gentlemen with artistic taste—of the days when we would eat in Chippendale dining-rooms; sip our coffee in Louis Quatorze drawing-rooms; and be happy.  Well, we have got on, some of us, since then, as Mr. Bumpus used to say; and I notice, when on visits, that some of us have contrived so that we do sit on Chippendale chairs, at Sheraton dining-tables, and are warmed from Adam’s fireplaces; but, ah me, where are the dreams, the hopes, the enthusiasms that clung like the scent of a March morning about those gim-crack second floors?  In the dustbin, I fear, with the cretonne-covered egg-boxes and the penny fans.  Fate is so terribly even-handed.  As she gives she ever takes away.  She flung us a few shillings and hope, where now she doles us out pounds and fears.  Why did not we know how happy we were, sitting crowned with sweet conceit upon our egg-box thrones?

Yes, Dick, you have climbed well.  You edit a great newspaper.  You spread abroad the message—well, the message that Sir Joseph Goldbug, your proprietor, instructs you to spread abroad.  You teach mankind the lessons that Sir Joseph Goldbug wishes them to learn.  They say he is to have a peerage next year.  I am sure he has earned it; and perhaps there may be a knighthood for you, Dick.

Tom, you are getting on now.  You have abandoned those unsaleable allegories.  What rich art patron cares to be told continually by his own walls that Midas had ass’s ears; that Lazarus sits ever at the gate?  You paint portraits now, and everybody tells me you are the coming man.  That “Impression” of old Lady Jezebel was really wonderful.  The woman looks quite handsome, and yet it is her ladyship.  Your touch is truly marvellous.

But into your success, Tom—Dick, old friend, do not there creep moments when you would that we could fish up those old egg-boxes from the past, refurnish with them the dingy rooms in Camden Town, and find there our youth, our loves, and our beliefs?

An incident brought back to my mind, the other day, the thought of all these things.  I called for the first time upon a man, an actor, who had asked me to come and see him in the little home where he lives with his old father.  To my astonishment—for the craze, I believe, has long since died out—I found the house half furnished out of packing cases, butter tubs, and egg-boxes.  My friend earns his twenty pounds a week, but it was the old father’s hobby, so he explained to me, the making of these monstrosities; and of them he was as proud as though they were specimen furniture out of the South Kensington Museum.

He took me into the dining-room to show me the latest outrage—a new book-case.  A greater disfigurement to the room, which was otherwise prettily furnished, could hardly be imagined.  There was no need for him to assure me, as he did, that it had been made out of nothing but egg-boxes.  One could see at a glance that it was made out of egg-boxes, and badly constructed egg-boxes at that—egg-boxes that were a disgrace to the firm that had turned them out; egg-boxes not worthy the storage of “shop ’uns” at eighteen the shilling.

We went upstairs to my friend’s bedroom.  He opened the door as a man might open the door of a museum of gems.

“The old boy,” he said, as he stood with his hand upon the door-knob, “made everything you see here, everything,” and we entered.  He drew my attention to the wardrobe.  “Now I will hold it up,” he said, “while you pull the door open; I think the floor must be a bit uneven, it wobbles if you are not careful.”  It wobbled notwithstanding, but by coaxing and humouring we succeeded without mishap.  I was surprised to notice a very small supply of clothes within, although my friend is a dressy man.

“You see,” he explained, “I dare not use it more than I can help.  I am a clumsy chap, and as likely as not, if I happened to be in a hurry, I’d have the whole thing over:” which seemed probable.

I asked him how he contrived.  “I dress in the bath-room as a rule,” he replied; “I keep most of my things there.  Of course the old boy doesn’t know.”

He showed me a chest of drawers.  One drawer stood half open.

“I’m bound to leave that drawer open,” he said; “I keep the things I use in that.  They don’t shut quite easily, these drawers; or rather, they shut all right, but then they won’t open.  It is the weather, I think.  They will open and shut all right in the summer, I dare say.”  He is of a hopeful disposition.

But the pride of the room was the washstand.

“What do you think of this?” cried he enthusiastically, “real marble top—”

He did not expatiate further.  In his excitement he had laid his hand upon the thing, with the natural result that it collapsed.  More by accident than design I caught the jug in my arms.  I also caught the water it contained.  The basin rolled on its edge and little damage was done, except to me and the soap-box.

I could not pump up much admiration for this washstand; I was feeling too wet.

“What do you do when you want to wash?” I asked, as together we reset the trap.

There fell upon him the manner of a conspirator revealing secrets.  He glanced guiltily round the room; then, creeping on tip-toe, he opened a cupboard behind the bed.  Within was a tin basin and a small can.

“Don’t tell the old boy,” he said.  “I keep these things here, and wash on the floor.”

That was the best thing I myself ever got out of egg-boxes—that picture of a deceitful son stealthily washing himself upon the floor behind the bed, trembling at every footstep lest it might be the “old boy” coming to the door.

One wonders whether the Ten Commandments are so all-sufficient as we good folk deem them—whether the eleventh is not worth the whole pack of them: “that ye love one another” with just a common-place, human, practical love.  Could not the other ten be comfortably stowed away into a corner of that!  One is inclined, in one’s anarchic moments, to agree with Louis Stevenson, that to be amiable and cheerful is a good religion for a work-a-day world.  We are so busy not killing, not stealing, not coveting our neighbour’s wife, we have not time to be even just to one another for the little while we are together here.  Need we be so cocksure that our present list of virtues and vices is the only possibly correct and complete one?  Is the kind, unselfish man necessarily a villain because he does not always succeed in suppressing his natural instincts?  Is the narrow-hearted, sour-souled man, incapable of a generous thought or act, necessarily a saint because he has none?  Have we not—we unco guid—arrived at a wrong method of estimating our frailer brothers and sisters?  We judge them, as critics judge books, not by the good that is in them, but by their faults.  Poor King David!  What would the local Vigilance Society have had to say to him?  Noah, according to our plan, would be denounced from every teetotal platform in the country, and Ham would head the Local Vestry poll as a reward for having exposed him.  And St. Peter! weak, frail St. Peter, how lucky for him that his fellow-disciples and their Master were not as strict in their notions of virtue as are we to-day.

Have we not forgotten the meaning of the word “virtue”?  Once it stood for the good that was in a man, irrespective of the evil that might lie there also, as tares among the wheat.  We have abolished virtue, and for it substituted virtues.  Not the hero—he was too full of faults—but the blameless valet; not the man who does any good, but the man who has not been found out in any evil, is our modern ideal.  The most virtuous thing in nature, according to this new theory, should be the oyster.  He is always at home, and always sober.  He is not noisy.  He gives no trouble to the police.  I cannot think of a single one of the Ten Commandments that he ever breaks.  He never enjoys himself, and he never, so long as he lives, gives a moment’s pleasure to any other living thing.

I can imagine the oyster lecturing a lion on the subject of morality.

“You never hear me,” the oyster might say, “howling round camps and villages, making night hideous, frightening quiet folk out of their lives.  Why don’t you go to bed early, as I do?  I never prowl round the oyster-bed, fighting other gentlemen oysters, making love to lady oysters already married.  I never kill antelopes or missionaries.  Why can’t you live as I do on salt water and germs, or whatever it is that I do live on?  Why don’t you try to be more like me?”

An oyster has no evil passions, therefore we say he is a virtuous fish.  We never ask ourselves—“Has he any good passions?”  A lion’s behaviour is often such as no just man could condone.  Has he not his good points also?

Will the fat, sleek, “virtuous” man be as Welcome at the gate of heaven as he supposes?

“Well,” St. Peter may say to him, opening the door a little way and looking him up and down, “what is it now?”

“It’s me,” the virtuous man will reply, with an oily, self-satisfied smile; “I should say, I—I’ve come.”

“Yes, I see you have come; but what is your claim to admittance?  What have you done with your three score years and ten?”

“Done!” the virtuous man will answer, “I have done nothing, I assure you.”

“Nothing!”

“Nothing; that is my strong point; that is why I am here.  I have never done any wrong.”

“And what good have you done?”

“What good!”

“Aye, what good?  Do not you even know the meaning of the word?  What human creature is the better for your having eaten and drunk and slept these years?  You have done no harm—no harm to yourself.  Perhaps, if you had you might have done some good with it; the two are generally to be found together down below, I remember.  What good have you done that you should enter here?  This is no mummy chamber; this is the place of men and women who have lived, who have wrought good—and evil also, alas!—for the sinners who fight for the right, not the righteous who run with their souls from the fight.”

It was not, however, to speak of these things that I remembered The Amateur and its lessons.  My intention was but to lead up to the story of a certain small boy, who in the doing of tasks not required of him was exceedingly clever.  I wish to tell you his story, because, as do most true tales, it possesses a moral, and stories without a moral I deem to be but foolish literature, resembling roads that lead to nowhere, such as sick folk tramp for exercise.

I have known this little boy to take an expensive eight-day clock to pieces, and make of it a toy steamboat.  True, it was not, when made, very much of a steamboat; but taking into consideration all the difficulties—the inadaptability of eight-day clock machinery to steamboat requirements, the necessity of getting the work accomplished quickly, before conservatively-minded people with no enthusiasm for science could interfere—a good enough steamboat.  With merely an ironing-board and a few dozen meat-skewers, he would—provided the ironing-board was not missed in time—turn out quite a practicable rabbit-hutch.  He could make a gun out of an umbrella and a gas-bracket, which, if not so accurate as a Martini-Henry, was, at all events, more deadly.  With half the garden-hose, a copper scalding-pan out of the dairy, and a few Dresden china ornaments off the drawing-room mantelpiece, he would build a fountain for the garden.  He could make bookshelves out of kitchen tables, and crossbows out of crinolines.  He could dam you a stream so that all the water would flow over the croquet lawn.  He knew how to make red paint and oxygen gas, together with many other suchlike commodities handy to have about a house.  Among other things he learned how to make fireworks, and after a few explosions of an unimportant character, came to make them very well indeed.  The boy who can play a good game of cricket is liked.  The boy who can fight well is respected.  The boy who can cheek a master is loved.  But the boy who can make fireworks is revered above all others as a boy belonging to a superior order of beings.  The fifth of November was at hand, and with the consent of an indulgent mother, he determined to give to the world a proof of his powers.  A large party of friends, relatives, and school-mates was invited, and for a fortnight beforehand the scullery was converted into a manufactory for fireworks.  The female servants went about in hourly terror of their lives, and the villa, did we judge exclusively by smell, one might have imagined had been taken over by Satan, his main premises being inconveniently crowded, as an annex.  By the evening of the fourth all was in readiness, and samples were tested to make sure that no contretemps should occur the following night.  All was found to be perfect.

The rockets rushed heavenward and descended in stars, the Roman candles tossed their fiery balls into the darkness, the Catherine wheels sparkled and whirled, the crackers cracked, and the squibs banged.  That night he went to bed a proud and happy boy, and dreamed of fame.  He stood surrounded by blazing fireworks, and the vast crowd cheered him.  His relations, most of whom, he knew, regarded him as the coming idiot of the family, were there to witness his triumph; so too was Dickey Bowles, who laughed at him because he could not throw straight.  The girl at the bun-shop, she also was there, and saw that he was clever.

The night of the festival arrived, and with it the guests.  They sat, wrapped up in shawls and cloaks, outside the hall door—uncles, cousins, aunts, little boys and big boys, little girls and big girls, with, as the theatre posters say, villagers and retainers, some forty of them in all, and waited.

But the fireworks did not go off.  Why they did not go off I cannot explain; nobody ever could explain.  The laws of nature seemed to be suspended for that night only.  The rockets fell down and died where they stood.  No human agency seemed able to ignite the squibs.  The crackers gave one bang and collapsed.  The Roman candles might have been English rushlights.  The Catherine wheels became mere revolving glow-worms.  The fiery serpents could not collect among them the spirit of a tortoise.  The set piece, a ship at sea, showed one mast and the captain, and then went out.  One or two items did their duty, but this only served to render the foolishness of the whole more striking.  The little girls giggled, the little boys chaffed, the aunts and cousins said it was beautiful, the uncles inquired if it was all over, and talked about supper and trains, the “villagers and retainers” dispersed laughing, the indulgent mother said “never mind,” and explained how well everything had gone off yesterday; the clever little boy crept upstairs to his room, and blubbered his heart out in the dark.

Hours later, when the crowd had forgotten him, he stole out again into the garden.  He sat down amid the ruins of his hope, and wondered what could have caused the fiasco.  Still puzzled, he drew from his pocket a box of matches, and, lighting one, he held it to the seared end of a rocket he had tried in vain to light four hours ago.  It smouldered for an instant, then shot with a swish into the air and broke into a hundred points of fire.  He tried another and another with the same result.  He made a fresh attempt to fire the set piece.  Point by point the whole picture—minus the captain and one mast—came out of the night, and stood revealed in all the majesty of flame.  Its sparks fell upon the piled-up heap of candles, wheels, and rockets that a little while before had obstinately refused to burn, and that, one after another, had been thrown aside as useless.  Now with the night frost upon them, they leaped to light in one grand volcanic eruption.  And in front of the gorgeous spectacle he stood with only one consolation—his mother’s hand in his.

The whole thing was a mystery to him at the time, but, as he learned to know life better, he came to understand that it was only one example of a solid but inexplicable fact, ruling all human affairs—your fireworks won’t go off while the crowd is around.

Our brilliant repartees do not occur to us till the door is closed upon us and we are alone in the street, or, as the French would say, are coming down the stairs.  Our after-dinner oratory, that sounded so telling as we delivered it before the looking-glass, falls strangely flat amidst the clinking of the glasses.  The passionate torrent of words we meant to pour into her ear becomes a halting rigmarole, at which—small blame to her—she only laughs.

I would, gentle Reader, you could hear the stories that I meant to tell you.  You judge me, of course, by the stories of mine that you have read—by this sort of thing, perhaps; but that is not just to me.  The stories I have not told you, that I am going to tell you one day, I would that you judge me by those.

They are so beautiful; you will say so; over them, you will laugh and cry with me.

They come into my brain unbidden, they clamour to be written, yet when I take my pen in hand they are gone.  It is as though they were shy of publicity, as though they would say to me—“You alone, you shall read us, but you must not write us; we are too real, too true.  We are like the thoughts you cannot speak.  Perhaps a little later, when you know more of life, then you shall tell us.”

Next to these in merit I would place, were I writing a critical essay on myself, the stories I have begun to write and that remain unfinished, why I cannot explain to myself.  They are good stories, most of them; better far than the stories I have accomplished.  Another time, perhaps, if you care to listen, I will tell you the beginning of one or two and you shall judge.  Strangely enough, for I have always regarded myself as a practical, commonsensed man, so many of these still-born children of my mind I find, on looking through the cupboard where their thin bodies lie, are ghost stories.  I suppose the hope of ghosts is with us all.  The world grows somewhat interesting to us heirs of all the ages.  Year by year, Science with broom and duster tears down the moth-worn tapestry, forces the doors of the locked chambers, lets light into the secret stairways, cleans out the dungeons, explores the hidden passages—finding everywhere only dust.  This echoing old castle, the world, so full of mystery in the days when we were children, is losing somewhat its charm for us as we grow older.  The king sleeps no longer in the hollow of the hills.  We have tunnelled through his mountain chamber.  We have shivered his beard with our pick.  We have driven the gods from Olympus.  No wanderer through the moonlit groves now fears or hopes the sweet, death-giving gleam of Aphrodite’s face.  Thor’s hammer echoes not among the peaks—’tis but the thunder of the excursion train.  We have swept the woods of the fairies.  We have filtered the sea of its nymphs.  Even the ghosts are leaving us, chased by the Psychical Research Society.

Perhaps of all, they are the least, however, to be regretted.  They were dull old fellows, clanking their rusty chains and groaning and sighing.  Let them go.

And yet how interesting they might be, if only they would.  The old gentleman in the coat of mail, who lived in King John’s reign, who was murdered, so they say, on the outskirts of the very wood I can see from my window as I write—stabbed in the back, poor gentleman, as he was riding home, his body flung into the moat that to this day is called Tor’s tomb.  Dry enough it is now, and the primroses love its steep banks; but a gloomy enough place in those days, no doubt, with its twenty feet of stagnant water.  Why does he haunt the forest paths at night, as they tell me he does, frightening the children out of their wits, blanching the faces and stilling the laughter of the peasant lads and lasses, slouching home from the village dance?  Instead, why does he not come up here and talk to me?  He should have my easy-chair and welcome, would he only be cheerful and companionable.

What brave tales could he not tell me.  He fought in the first Crusade, heard the clarion voice of Peter, met the great Godfrey face to face, stood, hand on sword-hilt, at Runny-mede, perhaps.  Better than a whole library of historical novels would an evening’s chat be with such a ghost.  What has he done with his eight hundred years of death? where has he been? what has he seen?  Maybe he has visited Mars; has spoken to the strange spirits who can live in the liquid fires of Jupiter.  What has he learned of the great secret?  Has he found the truth? or is he, even as I, a wanderer still seeking the unknown?

You, poor, pale, grey nun—they tell me that of midnights one may see your white face peering from the ruined belfry window, hear the clash of sword and shield among the cedar-trees beneath.

It was very sad, I quite understand, my dear lady.  Your lovers both were killed, and you retired to a convent.  Believe me, I am sincerely sorry for you, but why waste every night renewing the whole painful experience?  Would it not be better forgotten?  Good Heavens, madam, suppose we living folk were to spend our lives wailing and wringing our hands because of the wrongs done to us when we were children?  It is all over now.  Had he lived, and had you married him, you might not have been happy.  I do not wish to say anything unkind, but marriages founded upon the sincerest mutual love have sometimes turned out unfortunately, as you must surely know.

Do take my advice.  Talk the matter over with the young men themselves.  Persuade them to shake hands and be friends.  Come in, all of you, out of the cold, and let us have some reasonable talk.

Why seek you to trouble us, you poor pale ghosts?  Are we not your children?  Be our wise friends.  Tell me, how loved the young men in your young days? how answered the maidens?  Has the world changed much, do you think?  Had you not new women even then? girls who hated the everlasting tapestry frame and spinning-wheel?  Your father’s servants, were they so much worse off than the freemen who live in our East-end slums and sew slippers for fourteen hours a day at a wage of nine shillings a week?  Do you think Society much improved during the last thousand years?  Is it worse? is it better? or is it, on the whole, about the same, save that we call things by other names?  Tell me, what have you learned?

Yet might not familiarity breed contempt, even for ghosts.

One has had a tiring day’s shooting.  One is looking forward to one’s bed.  As one opens the door, however, a ghostly laugh comes from behind the bed-curtains, and one groans inwardly, knowing what is in store for one: a two or three hours’ talk with rowdy old Sir Lanval—he of the lance.  We know all his tales by heart, and he will shout them.  Suppose our aunt, from whom we have expectations, and who sleeps in the next room, should wake and overhear!  They were fit and proper enough stories, no doubt, for the Round Table, but we feel sure our aunt would not appreciate them:—that story about Sir Agravain and the cooper’s wife! and he always will tell that story.

Or imagine the maid entering after dinner to say—

“Oh, if you please, sir, here is the veiled lady.”

“What, again!” says your wife, looking up from her work.

“Yes, ma’am; shall I show her up into the bedroom?”

“You had better ask your master,” is the reply.  The tone is suggestive of an unpleasant five minutes so soon as the girl shall have withdrawn, but what are you to do?

“Yes, yes, show her up,” you say, and the girl goes out, closing the door.

Your wife gathers her work together, and rises.

“Where are you going?” you ask.

“To sleep with the children,” is the frigid answer.

“It will look so rude,” you urge.  “We must be civil to the poor thing; and you see it really is her room, as one might say.  She has always haunted it.”

“It is very curious,” returns the wife of your bosom, still more icily, “that she never haunts it except when you are down here.  Where she goes when you are in town I’m sure I don’t know.”

This is unjust.  You cannot restrain your indignation.

“What nonsense you talk, Elizabeth,” you reply; “I am only barely polite to her.”

“Some men have such curious notions of politeness,” returns Elizabeth.  “But pray do not let us quarrel.  I am only anxious not to disturb you.  Two are company, you know.  I don’t choose to be the third, that’s all.”  With which she goes out.

And the veiled lady is still waiting for you up-stairs.  You wonder how long she will stop, also what will happen after she is gone.

I fear there is no room for you, ghosts, in this our world.  You remember how they came to Hiawatha—the ghosts of the departed loved ones.  He had prayed to them that they would come back to him to comfort him, so one day they crept into his wigwam, sat in silence round his fireside, chilled the air for Hiawatha, froze the smiles of Laughing Water.

There is no room for you, oh you poor pale ghosts, in this our world.  Do not trouble us.  Let us forget.  You, stout elderly matron, your thin locks turning grey, your eyes grown weak, your chin more ample, your voice harsh with much scolding and complaining, needful, alas! to household management, I pray you leave me.  I loved you while you lived.  How sweet, how beautiful you were.  I see you now in your white frock among the apple-blossom.  But you are dead, and your ghost disturbs my dreams.  I would it haunted me not.

You, dull old fellow, looking out at me from the glass at which I shave, why do you haunt me?  You are the ghost of a bright lad I once knew well.  He might have done much, had he lived.  I always had faith in him.  Why do you haunt me?  I would rather think of him as I remember him.  I never imagined he would make such a poor ghost.

Occasionally a friend will ask me some such question as this, Do you prefer dark women or fair?  Another will say, Do you like tall women or short?  A third, Do you think light-hearted women, or serious, the more agreeable company?  I find myself in the position that, once upon a time, overtook a certain charming young lady of taste who was asked by an anxious parent, the years mounting, and the family expenditure not decreasing, which of the numerous and eligible young men, then paying court to her, she liked the best.  She replied, that was her difficulty.  She could not make up her mind which she liked the best.  They were all so nice.  She could not possibly select one to the exclusion of all the others.  What she would have liked would have been to marry the lot, but that, she presumed, was impracticable.

I feel I resemble that young lady, not so much, perhaps, in charm and beauty as indecision of mind, when questions such as the above are put to me.  It is as if one were asked one’s favourite food.  There are times when one fancies an egg with one’s tea.  On other occasions one dreams of a kipper.  To-day one clamours for lobsters.  To-morrow one feels one never wishes to see a lobster again; one determines to settle down, for a time, to a diet of bread and milk and rice-pudding.  Asked suddenly to say whether I preferred ices to soup, or beefsteaks to caviare, I should be nonplussed.

I like tall women and short, dark women and fair, merry women and grave.

Do not blame me, Ladies, the fault lies with you.  Every right-thinking man is an universal lover; how could it be otherwise?  You are so diverse, yet each so charming of your kind; and a man’s heart is large.  You have no idea, fair Reader, how large a man’s heart is: that is his trouble—sometimes yours.

May I not admire the daring tulip, because I love also the modest lily?  May I not press a kiss upon the sweet violet, because the scent of the queenly rose is precious to me?

“Certainly not,” I hear the Rose reply.  “If you can see anything in her, you shall have nothing to do with me.”

“If you care for that bold creature,” says the Lily, trembling, “you are not the man I took you for.  Good-bye.”

“Go to your baby-faced Violet,” cries the Tulip, with a toss of her haughty head.  “You are just fitted for each other.”

And when I return to the Lily, she tells me that she cannot trust me.  She has watched me with those others.  She knows me for a gad-about.  Her gentle face is full of pain.

So I must live unloved merely because I love too much.

My wonder is that young men ever marry.  The difficulty of selection must be appalling.  I walked the other evening in Hyde Park.  The band of the Life Guards played heart-lifting music, and the vast crowd were basking in a sweet enjoyment such as rarely woos the English toiler.  I strolled among them, and my attention was chiefly drawn towards the women.  The great majority of them were, I suppose, shop-girls, milliners, and others belonging to the lower middle-class.  They had put on their best frocks, their bonniest hats, their newest gloves.  They sat or walked in twos and threes, chattering and preening, as happy as young sparrows on a clothes line.  And what a handsome crowd they made!  I have seen German crowds, I have seen French crowds, I have seen Italian crowds; but nowhere do you find such a proportion of pretty women as among the English middle-class.  Three women out of every four were worth looking at, every other woman was pretty, while every fourth, one might say without exaggeration, was beautiful.  As I passed to and fro the idea occurred to me: suppose I were an unprejudiced young bachelor, free from predilection, looking for a wife; and let me suppose—it is only a fancy—that all these girls were ready and willing to accept me.  I have only to choose!  I grew bewildered.  There were fair girls, to look at whom was fatal; dark girls that set one’s heart aflame; girls with red gold hair and grave grey eyes, whom one would follow to the confines of the universe; baby-faced girls that one longed to love and cherish; girls with noble faces, whom a man might worship; laughing girls, with whom one could dance through life gaily; serious girls, with whom life would be sweet and good, domestic-looking girls—one felt such would make delightful wives; they would cook, and sew, and make of home a pleasant, peaceful place.  Then wicked-looking girls came by, at the stab of whose bold eyes all orthodox thoughts were put to a flight, whose laughter turned the world into a mad carnival; girls one could mould; girls from whom one could learn; sad girls one wanted to comfort; merry girls who would cheer one; little girls, big girls, queenly girls, fairy-like girls.

Suppose a young man had to select his wife in this fashion from some twenty or thirty thousand; or that a girl were suddenly confronted with eighteen thousand eligible young bachelors, and told to take the one she wanted and be quick about it?  Neither boy nor girl would ever marry.  Fate is kinder to us.  She understands, and assists us.  In the hall of a Paris hotel I once overheard one lady asking another to recommend her a milliner’s shop.

“Go to the Maison Nouvelle,” advised the questioned lady, with enthusiasm.  “They have the largest selection there of any place in Paris.”

“I know they have,” replied the first lady, “that is just why I don’t mean to go there.  It confuses me.  If I see six bonnets I can tell the one I want in five minutes.  If I see six hundred I come away without any bonnet at all.  Don’t you know a little shop?”

Fate takes the young man or the young woman aside.

“Come into this village, my dear,” says Fate; “into this by-street of this salubrious suburb, into this social circle, into this church, into this chapel.  Now, my dear boy, out of these seventeen young ladies, which will you have?—out of these thirteen young men, which would you like for your very own, my dear?”

“No, miss, I am sorry, but I am not able to show you our up-stairs department to-day, the lift is not working.  But I am sure we shall be able to find something in this room to suit you.  Just look round, my dear, perhaps you will see something.”

“No, sir, I cannot show you the stock in the next room, we never take that out except for our very special customers.  We keep our most expensive goods in that room.  (Draw that curtain, Miss Circumstance, please.  I have told you of that before.)  Now, sir, wouldn’t you like this one?  This colour is quite the rage this season; we are getting rid of quite a lot of these.”

“No, sir!  Well, of course, it would not do for every one’s taste to be the same.  Perhaps something dark would suit you better.  Bring out those two brunettes, Miss Circumstance.  Charming girls both of them, don’t you think so, sir?  I should say the taller one for you, sir.  Just one moment, sir, allow me.  Now, what do you think of that, sir? might have been made to fit you, I’m sure.  You prefer the shorter one.  Certainly, sir, no difference to us at all.  Both are the same price.  There’s nothing like having one’s own fancy, I always say.  No, sir, I cannot put her aside for you, we never do that.  Indeed, there’s rather a run on brunettes just at present.  I had a gentleman in only this morning, looking at this particular one, and he is going to call again to-night.  Indeed, I am not at all sure—Oh, of course, sir, if you like to settle on this one now, that ends the matter.  (Put those others away, Miss Circumstance, please, and mark this one sold.)  I feel sure you’ll like her, sir, when you get her home.  Thank you, sir.  Good-morning!”

“Now, miss, have you seen anything you fancy?  Yes, miss, this is all we have at anything near your price.  (Shut those other cupboards, Miss Circumstance; never show more stock than you are obliged to, it only confuses customers.  How often am I to tell you that?)  Yes, miss, you are quite right, there is a slight blemish.  They all have some slight flaw.  The makers say they can’t help it—it’s in the material.  It’s not once in a season we get a perfect specimen; and when we do ladies don’t seem to care for it.  Most of our customers prefer a little faultiness.  They say it gives character.  Now, look at this, miss.  This sort of thing wears very well, warm and quiet.  You’d like one with more colour in it?  Certainly.  Miss Circumstance, reach me down the art patterns.  No, miss, we don’t guarantee any of them over the year, so much depends on how you use them.  Oh yes, miss, they’ll stand a fair amount of wear.  People do tell you the quieter patterns last longer; but my experience is that one is much the same as another.  There’s really no telling any of them until you come to try them.  We never recommend one more than another.  There’s a lot of chance about these goods, it’s in the nature of them.  What I always say to ladies is—‘Please yourself, it’s you who have got to wear it; and it’s no good having an article you start by not liking.’  Yes, miss, it is pretty and it looks well against you: it does indeed.  Thank you, miss.  Put that one aside, Miss Circumstance, please.  See that it doesn’t get mixed up with the unsold stock.”

It is a useful philtre, the juice of that small western flower, that Oberon drops upon our eyelids as we sleep.  It solves all difficulties in a trice.  Why of course Helena is the fairer.  Compare her with Hermia!  Compare the raven with the dove!  How could we ever have doubted for a moment?  Bottom is an angel, Bottom is as wise as he is handsome.  Oh, Oberon, we thank you for that drug.  Matilda Jane is a goddess; Matilda Jane is a queen; no woman ever born of Eve was like Matilda Jane.  The little pimple on her nose—her little, sweet, tip-tilted nose—how beautiful it is.  Her bright eyes flash with temper now and then; how piquant is a temper in a woman.  William is a dear old stupid, how lovable stupid men can be—especially when wise enough to love us.  William does not shine in conversation; how we hate a magpie of a man.  William’s chin is what is called receding, just the sort of chin a beard looks well on.  Bless you, Oberon darling, for that drug; rub it on our eyelids once again.  Better let us have a bottle, Oberon, to keep by us.

Oberon, Oberon, what are you thinking of?  You have given the bottle to Puck.  Take it away from him, quick.  Lord help us all if that Imp has the bottle.  Lord save us from Puck while we sleep.

Or may we, fairy Oberon, regard your lotion as an eye-opener, rather than as an eye-closer?  You remember the story the storks told the children, of the little girl who was a toad by day, only her sweet dark eyes being left to her.  But at night, when the Prince clasped her close to his breast, lo! again she became the king’s daughter, fairest and fondest of women.  There be many royal ladies in Marshland, with bad complexion and thin straight hair, and the silly princes sneer and ride away to woo some kitchen wench decked out in queen’s apparel.  Lucky the prince upon whose eyelids Oberon has dropped the magic philtre.

In the gallery of a minor Continental town I have forgotten, hangs a picture that lives with me.  The painting I cannot recall, whether good or bad; artists must forgive me for remembering only the subject.  It shows a man, crucified by the roadside.  No martyr he.  If ever a man deserved hanging it was this one.  So much the artist has made clear.  The face, even under its mask of agony, is an evil, treacherous face.  A peasant girl clings to the cross; she stands tip-toe upon a patient donkey, straining her face upward for the half-dead man to stoop and kiss her lips.

Thief, coward, blackguard, they are stamped upon his face, but under the face, under the evil outside?  Is there no remnant of manhood—nothing tender, nothing, true?  A woman has crept to the cross to kiss him: no evidence in his favour, my Lord?  Love is blind-aye, to our faults.  Heaven help us all; Love’s eyes would be sore indeed if it were not so.  But for the good that is in us her eyes are keen.  You, crucified blackguard, stand forth.  A hundred witnesses have given their evidence against you.  Are there none to give evidence for him?  A woman, great Judge, who loved him.  Let her speak.

But I am wandering far from Hyde Park and its show of girls.

They passed and re-passed me, laughing, smiling, talking.  Their eyes were bright with merry thoughts; their voices soft and musical.  They were pleased, and they wanted to please.  Some were married, some had evidently reasonable expectations of being married; the rest hoped to be.  And we, myself, and some ten thousand other young men.  I repeat it—myself and some ten thousand other young men; for who among us ever thinks of himself but as a young man?  It is the world that ages, not we.  The children cease their playing and grow grave, the lasses’ eyes are dimmer.  The hills are a little steeper, the milestones, surely, further apart.  The songs the young men sing are less merry than the songs we used to sing.  The days have grown a little colder, the wind a little keener.  The wine has lost its flavour somewhat; the new humour is not like the old.  The other boys are becoming dull and prosy; but we are not changed.  It is the world that is growing old.  Therefore, I brave your thoughtless laughter, youthful Reader, and repeat that we, myself and some ten thousand other young men, walked among these sweet girls; and, using our boyish eyes, were fascinated, charmed, and captivated.  How delightful to spend our lives with them, to do little services for them that would call up these bright smiles.  How pleasant to jest with them, and hear their flute-like laughter, to console them and read their grateful eyes.  Really life is a pleasant thing, and the idea of marriage undoubtedly originated in the brain of a kindly Providence.

We smiled back at them, and we made way for them; we rose from our chairs with a polite, “Allow me, miss,” “Don’t mention it, I prefer standing.”  “It is a delightful evening, is it not?”  And perhaps—for what harm was there?—we dropped into conversation with these chance fellow-passengers upon the stream of life.  There were those among us—bold daring spirits—who even went to the length of mild flirtation.  Some of us knew some of them, and in such happy case there followed interchange of pretty pleasantries.  Your English middle-class young man and woman are not adepts at the game of flirtation.  I will confess that our methods were, perhaps, elephantine, that we may have grown a trifle noisy as the evening wore on.  But we meant no evil; we did but our best to enjoy ourselves, to give enjoyment, to make the too brief time, pass gaily.

And then my thoughts travelled to small homes in distant suburbs, and these bright lads and lasses round me came to look older and more careworn.  But what of that?  Are not old faces sweet when looked at by old eyes a little dimmed by love, and are not care and toil but the parents of peace and joy?

But as I drew nearer, I saw that many of the faces were seared with sour and angry looks, and the voices that rose round me sounded surly and captious.  The pretty compliment and praise had changed to sneers and scoldings.  The dimpled smile had wrinkled to a frown.  There seemed so little desire to please, so great a determination not to be pleased.

And the flirtations!  Ah me, they had forgotten how to flirt!  Oh, the pity of it!  All the jests were bitter, all the little services were given grudgingly.  The air seemed to have grown chilly.  A darkness had come over all things.

And then I awoke to reality, and found I had been sitting in my chair longer than I had intended.  The band-stand was empty, the sun had set; I rose and made my way home through the scattered crowd.

Nature is so callous.  The Dame irritates one at times by her devotion to her one idea, the propagation of the species.

“Multiply and be fruitful; let my world be ever more and more peopled.”

For this she trains and fashions her young girls, models them with cunning hand, paints them with her wonderful red and white, crowns them with her glorious hair, teaches them to smile and laugh, trains their voices into music, sends them out into the world to captivate, to enslave us.

“See how beautiful she is, my lad,” says the cunning old woman.  “Take her; build your little nest with her in your pretty suburb; work for her and live for her; enable her to keep the little ones that I will send.”

And to her, old hundred-breasted Artemis whispers, “Is he not a bonny lad?  See how he loves you, how devoted he is to you!  He will work for you and make you happy; he will build your home for you.  You will be the mother of his children.”

So we take each other by the hand, full of hope and love, and from that hour Mother Nature has done with us.  Let the wrinkles come; let our voices grow harsh; let the fire she lighted in our hearts die out; let the foolish selfishness we both thought we had put behind us for ever creep back to us, bringing unkindness and indifference, angry thoughts and cruel words into our lives.  What cares she?  She has caught us, and chained us to her work.  She is our universal mother-in-law.  She has done the match-making; for the rest, she leaves it to ourselves.  We can love or we can fight; it is all one to her, confound her.

I wonder sometimes if good temper might not be taught.  In business we use no harsh language, say no unkind things to one another.  The shopkeeper, leaning across the counter, is all smiles and affability, he might put up his shutters were he otherwise.  The commercial gent, no doubt, thinks the ponderous shopwalker an ass, but refrains from telling him so.  Hasty tempers are banished from the City.  Can we not see that it is just as much to our interest to banish them from Tooting and Hampstead?

The young man who sat in the chair next to me, how carefully he wrapped the cloak round the shoulders of the little milliner beside him.  And when she said she was tired of sitting still, how readily he sprang from his chair to walk with her, though it was evident he was very comfortable where he was.  And she!  She had laughed at his jokes; they were not very clever jokes, they were not very new.  She had probably read them herself months before in her own particular weekly journal.  Yet the harmless humbug made him happy.  I wonder if ten years hence she will laugh at such old humour, if ten years hence he will take such clumsy pains to put her cape about her.  Experience shakes her head, and is amused at my question.

I would have evening classes for the teaching of temper to married couples, only I fear the institution would languish for lack of pupils.  The husbands would recommend their wives to attend, generously offering to pay the fee as a birthday present.  The wife would be indignant at the suggestion of good money being thus wasted.  “No, John, dear,” she would unselfishly reply, “you need the lessons more than I do.  It would be a shame for me to take them away from you,” and they would wrangle upon the subject for the rest of the day.

Oh! the folly of it.  We pack our hamper for life’s picnic with such pains.  We spend so much, we work so hard.  We make choice pies, we cook prime joints, we prepare so carefully the mayonnaise, we mix with loving hands the salad, we cram the basket to the lid with every delicacy we can think of.  Everything to make the picnic a success is there except the salt.  Ah! woe is me, we forget the salt.  We slave at our desks, in our workshops, to make a home for those we love; we give up our pleasures, we give up our rest.  We toil in our kitchen from morning till night, and we render the whole feast tasteless for want of a ha’porth of salt—for want of a soupcon of amiability, for want of a handful of kindly words, a touch of caress, a pinch of courtesy.

Who does not know that estimable housewife, working from eight till twelve to keep the house in what she calls order?  She is so good a woman, so untiring, so unselfish, so conscientious, so irritating.  Her rooms are so clean, her servants so well managed, her children so well dressed, her dinners so well cooked; the whole house so uninviting.  Everything about her is in apple-pie order, and everybody wretched.

My good Madam, you polish your tables, you scour your kettles, but the most valuable piece of furniture in the whole house you are letting to rack and ruin for want of a little pains.  You will find it in your own room, my dear Lady, in front of your own mirror.  It is getting shabby and dingy, old-looking before its time; the polish is rubbed off it, Madam, it is losing its brightness and charm.  Do you remember when he first brought it home, how proud he was of it?  Do you think you have used it well, knowing how he valued it?  A little less care of your pots and your pans, Madam, a little more of yourself were wiser.  Polish yourself up, Madam; you had a pretty wit once, a pleasant laugh, a conversation that was not confined exclusively to the short-comings of servants, the wrong-doings of tradesmen.  My dear Madam, we do not live on spotless linen, and crumbless carpets.  Hunt out that bundle of old letters you keep tied up in faded ribbon at the back of your bureau drawer—a pity you don’t read them oftener.  He did not enthuse about your cuffs and collars, gush over the neatness of your darning.  It was your tangled hair he raved about, your sunny smile (we have not seen it for some years, Madam—the fault of the Cook and the Butcher, I presume), your little hands, your rosebud mouth—it has lost its shape, Madam, of late.  Try a little less scolding of Mary Ann, and practise a laugh once a day: you might get back the dainty curves.  It would be worth trying.  It was a pretty mouth once.

Who invented that mischievous falsehood that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach?  How many a silly woman, taking it for truth, has let love slip out of the parlour, while she was busy in the kitchen.  Of course, if you were foolish enough to marry a pig, I suppose you must be content to devote your life to the preparation of hog’s-wash.  But are you sure that he is a pig?  If by any chance he be not?—then, Madam, you are making a grievous mistake.  My dear Lady, you are too modest.  If I may say so without making you unduly conceited, even at the dinner-table itself, you are of much more importance than the mutton.  Courage, Madam, be not afraid to tilt a lance even with your own cook.  You can be more piquant than the sauce à la Tartare, more soothing surely than the melted butter.  There was a time when he would not have known whether he was eating beef or pork with you the other side of the table.  Whose fault is it?  Don’t think so poorly of us.  We are not ascetics, neither are we all gourmets: most of us plain men, fond of our dinner, as a healthy man should be, but fonder still of our sweethearts and wives, let us hope.  Try us.  A moderately-cooked dinner—let us even say a not-too-well-cooked dinner, with you looking your best, laughing and talking gaily and cleverly—as you can, you know—makes a pleasanter meal for us, after the day’s work is done, than that same dinner, cooked to perfection, with you silent, jaded, and anxious, your pretty hair untidy, your pretty face wrinkled with care concerning the sole, with anxiety regarding the omelette.

My poor Martha, be not troubled about so many things.  You are the one thing needful—if the bricks and mortar are to be a home.  See to it that you are well served up, that you are done to perfection, that you are tender and satisfying, that you are worth sitting down to.  We wanted a wife, a comrade, a friend; not a cook and a nurse on the cheap.

But of what use is it to talk? the world will ever follow its own folly.  When I think of all the good advice that I have given it, and of the small result achieved, I confess I grow discouraged.  I was giving good advice to a lady only the other day.  I was instructing her as to the proper treatment of aunts.  She was sucking a lead-pencil, a thing I am always telling her not to do.  She took it out of her mouth to speak.

“I suppose you know how everybody ought to do everything,” she said.

There are times when it is necessary to sacrifice one’s modesty to one’s duty.

“Of course I do,” I replied.

“And does Mama know how everybody ought to do everything?” was the second question.

My conviction on this point was by no means so strong, but for domestic reasons I again sacrificed myself to expediency.

“Certainly,” I answered; “and take that pencil out of your mouth.  I’ve told you of that before.  You’ll swallow it one day, and then you’ll get perichondritis and die.”

She appeared to be solving a problem.

“All grown-up people seem to know everything,” she summarized.

There are times when I doubt if children are as simple as they look.  If it be sheer stupidity that prompts them to make remarks of this character, one should pity them, and seek to improve them.  But if it be not stupidity? well then, one should still seek to improve them, but by a different method.

The other morning I overheard the nurse talking to this particular specimen.  The woman is a most worthy creature, and she was imparting to the child some really sound advice.  She was in the middle of an unexceptional exhortation concerning the virtue of silence, when Dorothea interrupted her with—

“Oh, do be quiet, Nurse.  I never get a moment’s peace from your chatter.”

Such an interruption discourages a woman who is trying to do her duty.

Last Tuesday evening she was unhappy.  Myself, I think that rhubarb should never be eaten before April, and then never with lemonade.  Her mother read her a homily upon the subject of pain.  It was impressed upon her that we must be patient, that we must put up with the trouble that God sends us.  Dorothea would descend to details, as children will.

“Must we put up with the cod-liver oil that God sends us?”

“Yes, decidedly.”

“And with the nurses that God sends us?”

“Certainly; and be thankful that you’ve got them, some little girls haven’t any nurse.  And don’t talk so much.”

On Friday I found the mother in tears.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing,” was the answer; “only Baby.  She’s such a strange child.  I can’t make her out at all.”

“What has she been up to now?”

“Oh, she will argue, you know.”

She has that failing.  I don’t know where she gets it from, but she’s got it.

“Well?”

“Well, she made me cross; and, to punish her, I told her she shouldn’t take her doll’s perambulator out with her.”

“Yes?”

“Well, she didn’t say anything then, but so soon as I was outside the door, I heard her talking to herself—you know her way?”

“Yes?”

“She said—”

“Yes, she said?”

“She said, ‘I must be patient.  I must put up with the mother God has sent me.’”

She lunches down-stairs on Sundays.  We have her with us once a week to give her the opportunity of studying manners and behaviour.  Milson had dropped in, and we were discussing politics.  I was interested, and, pushing my plate aside, leant forward with my elbows on the table.  Dorothea has a habit of talking to herself in a high-pitched whisper capable of being heard above an Adelphi love scene.  I heard her say—

“I must sit up straight.  I mustn’t sprawl with my elbows on the table.  It is only common, vulgar people behave that way.”

I looked across at her; she was sitting most correctly, and appeared to be contemplating something a thousand miles away.  We had all of us been lounging!  We sat up stiffly, and conversation flagged.

Of course we made a joke of it after the child was gone.  But somehow it didn’t seem to be our joke.

I wish I could recollect my childhood.  I should so like to know if children are as simple as they can look.