Chapter V: Part 5

It is not pride or incivility on either side that keeps us remote from each other. It is simply our London way. People are so plentiful that they lose their identity. By the Whitestone Pond at Hampstead not long ago I met my old friend John O'Connor--"Long John," as he was affectionately called in the House of Commons, of which he was for so long one of the most popular members--and he said, in reply to inquiries, that he was living in Frognal, had lived there for years, "next door to Robertson Nicoll--not that I should know him," he added, "for I don't think I have ever set eyes on him." And I should have expected to find that Sir William was no better informed about his neighbour than his neighbour was about him. In London men are as lonely as oysters, each living in his own shell. We go out into the country to find neighbours. If the man next door took a cottage a mile away from me in the country I should probably know all about him, his affairs, his family, his calling, and his habits inside a week, and be intimate enough with him in a fortnight to borrow his garden-shears or his bill-hook. This is not always so idyllic as it seems. Village life can be poisoned by neighbours until the victim pines for the solitude of a London street, where neighbours are so plentiful that you are no more conscious of their individual existence than if they were blackberries on a hedgerow.

On the occasions on which we become acutely conscious of our neighbours, the temptation is to think ill of them. For example, we were all late the other morning, and Matilda, whose function it is to keep us up to time, explained that she had overslept herself because of those people next door. Four o'clock it was, m'm, before the din ended. Some of us had lost count of the hours at two and others at three but Matilda was emphatic. She had heard the last of the revellers go away in a car, and had looked at her watch and it was exactly four. No one disputed her word. It was gratifying to know that the hour was four rather than three. If it had been five we should doubtless have been still more gratified. It would have made the case against those people next door still blacker. And it can never be too black for their deserts. Our neighbours are at once too near to us and too far away from us. If they were under our own roof we might be able to make something of them; if they were only in the next street we could forget all about them. But they are just far enough away to escape our celestial influence and quite close enough to be a nuisance.

They are always in the wrong. Consider the hours they keep--entirely different from our hours and therefore entirely reprehensible. If they do not offend by their extravagant piety they shock you by their levity. Perhaps they play tennis on Sunday, or perhaps they don't, and in either case they are vulnerable to criticism. They always manage to be gay when you are sleepy. They take a delight in going away for more holidays than you can possibly have, or perhaps they don't go away for holidays at all, in which case their inferiority is clearly established. If they are not guilty of criminal waste, they can be convicted of shabby parsimony. They either dress too luxuriously or do not dress luxuriously enough for the decencies of the neighbourhood. We suspect that they are no better than they should be. Observe the frequency with which their servants come and go. Depend upon it, they find those people next door impossible. Their habits and their friends, the music they play, the pets that they keep, the politics they affect, the newspapers they read--all these things confirm our darkest fears.

It is possible to believe anything about them--especially the worst. What are those strange sounds that penetrate the wall in the small hours? Surely that is the chink of coin! And those sudden shrieks and gusts of laughter? Is there not an alcoholic suggestion about such undisciplined hilarity? We know too much about them, and do not know enough. They are revealed to us in fragments, and in putting the fragments together we do not spare them. There is nothing so misleading as half heard and half-understood scraps. And the curious thing about those people next door is that, if you ever come to know them, you find they are not a bit like what you thought they were. You find to your astonishment that they have redeeming features. Perhaps they find that we have redeeming features too. For the chastening truth is that we all play the rôle of those people next door to somebody. We are all being judged, and generally very unfavourably judged, on evidence which, if we knew it, would greatly astonish us. It might help us to be a little more charitable about those people next door if we occasionally remembered that we are those people next door ourselves.

But the St. John's Wood case illustrates the frail terms on which immunity from annoyance by neighbours is enjoyed. Two musicians dwelling in one house gave lessons to pupils on the piano, and the man next door, who objected to his peace being disturbed in this way, took his revenge by banging on tin cans, and otherwise making things unpleasant for the musicians. I do not know what the law said on the subject. It may be admitted that the annoyances were equal in effect, but they were not the same in motive. In the one case the motive was the reasonable one of earning an honest living: there was no deliberate intention of being offensive to the neighbours. In the other case, the motive was admittedly to make a demonstration against the neighbours. What is to be done in such circumstances? It is not an offence to play the piano in one's own house even for a living. On the other hand, it is hard, especially if you don't like music, or perhaps even more if you do, to hear the scales going on the piano next door all day.

The question of motive does not seem to be relevant. If my neighbour makes noises which render my life intolerable, it is no answer to say that he makes them for a living and without intending to destroy my peace. He does destroy my peace, and it is no comfort to be assured that he does not mean to. Hazlitt insisted that a man might play the trombone in his own house all day if he took reasonable measures to limit the annoyance to his neighbours; but Hazlitt had probably never lived beside a trombone. I find the argument is leading me on to the side of the tin-can gentleman, and I don't want it to do that, for my sympathies are with the musicians. And yet----

Well, let us avoid a definite conclusion altogether and leave the incident to make us generally a little more sensitive about the feelings of our neighbours. They cannot expect us never to play the piano, never to sit up late, never to be a little hilarious, any more than we can expect never to be disturbed by them. But the amenities of neighbourliness require that we should mutually avoid being a nuisance to each other as much as we can. And if our calling compels us to be a little noisy, we should bear that in mind when we choose a house and when we choose the room in which we make our noises. The perfect neighbour is one whom we never see and whom we never hear except when he pokes the fire.

HOW WE SPEND OUR TIME

I read an entertaining article in the _Observer_ the other Sunday, which set me to the unusual task of making a calculation. Figures are not my strong point, and sums I abhor. But this article launched me on the unfamiliar task of making a sum. I hope I have done it correctly, but any schoolboy who cares to audit the account will be able to convict me if I am wrong. The article was the record of a gentleman who had, in the course of the past twelve years, played twenty thousand rubbers of auction bridge, and had kept a careful account of his experiences, the proportions of games he had won and lost, the average of "hundred aces" and "yarboroughs" he had had, how he had fared with "honours," with many curious points which had arisen, and which were no doubt illuminating to the student of the game.

But it was not these things which set me adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. My knowledge of bridge is as contemptible as my handicap at golf. The author of the article would not sit down at the same table, probably not in the same room, with such a 'prentice hand as I am at the game. Nor was it the financial aspect of the matter that interested me. That side of the story was not without its attractions. The player, on the analysis of his own and his opponents' "hands" over the twelve years showed, had had distinctly the worse of the luck, but he was obviously a good player, for he had won at fifty-five per cent. of his sittings and, playing generally for half-crown rubbers, had won in the twelve years £2750 of the £5000 that had changed hands in the games, each year having shown a profit on his labours.

There was, however, one item which was missing from this elaborate stocktaking, and it was this item that started my sum. I began to be interested in this gentleman from the point of view of the time he had devoted to the game over a period of years, which had not been without their anxieties. This consideration touched a wider question about which I have often thought vaguely and idly--the question, that is, of how the average man passes his time. Here was an average man of a certain class who had incidentally given me a hint to build up his time-sheet form. Taking an hour as the average time occupied by a rubber--which, with intervals and interruptions, seems a moderate estimate--I found that during the twelve years he had spent twenty thousand hours at the card-table--that is, two years and rather more than three months, day and night.

That was a substantial chunk of the twelve years to start with. I came next to the item of sleep, and assuming that, having made up his nightly account of the day's play, our author indulged in the normal eight hours of repose, I found that in the twelve years he had accounted for 34,840 hours in this way, and my schoolboy will, I hope, agree with me that this amounts in sum to approximately four years of sleep, day and night. I came next to meals. A man who can spend five hours a day at cards as an amusement will, I am sure, not hurry over his meals. He will take his lunch at his club, and his coffee and gossip after lunch, and he will dine well and leisurely before turning to the solid work of the card-table, for no doubt most of his card-playing will be done after dinner. Three hours a day is a reasonable allowance for the meal intervals, which, on this basis, account for 12,140 hours, or one year and three-eighths, during the twelve years. Holidays and Sundays (with due deduction on items already accounted for, cards, sleep, meals) account for a further half-year over the twelve years. For all the odds and ends of things, the outdoor recreations, golf, motoring, the daily journeys to and from town, theatres, visits to church, the occasional day at Lord's, the reading of newspapers, parties, public meetings, novel-reading, and so on, an average of two hours a day must be allowed, giving 8760 hours in the twelve years, or, roughly, a year of time. These items make up 75,680 hours out of the 105,120 hours into which the twelve years are divided. There remain 25,060 hours, or two years and seven-eighths, which I will charitably assume are devoted to work. On this basis my sum is as follows:

Sleep 4 years
Work 2 7/8 years
Cards 2 1/3 years
Meals 1 3/8 years
Odds and ends 1 year
Holidays 1/2 year
______
Approximately 12 years

I present the result to the _Observer_ gentleman as a footnote to his entertaining article. Far be it from me to moralise about it. If the misuse of time were a hanging matter, few of us would escape the scaffold. I daresay I have wasted as much time in the twelve years as our bridge-player has done, though in different ways. But I think he will agree that the sum is worth doing and worth thinking about, and that when next he says that he has not time for this, that, or the other, he will know he is not telling the truth.

And while he is thinking about it, I will venture to recall for him an old story which he may have heard, but which is worth telling on the chance that he has not. Herbert Spencer was once staying at an hotel and, being fond of billiards, strolled into the billiard-room where he saw a young man who invited him to play a game. Spencer agreed and "broke," unfortunately leaving his ball on the baulk line, but playable. It was in the days when the "feather" stroke was allowed (I fancy it is now barred) and the young man took his cue and ran out by means of that delicate device. When he had reached his "100," the philosopher, putting up his cue with which he had not scored a point, addressed him thus: "A certain degree of facility in games of skill is a pleasant and desirable accomplishment; but, young man, such facility as you have displayed this evening is evidence of a misspent youth."

A SENTENCE OF DEATH

"The most dramatic thing I remember? I need not pause to answer that question," said my companion. "Do you recall the Lipski case? Ah, well, you will know what a sensation it created. It occurred in the hey-day of the great Stead at the _Pall Mall_. What a flair the fellow had for a sensation, and what a frenzy he could communicate to the public mind. Lipski had been sentenced to death for the murder of his paramour, and doubtless would have been hanged quite quietly but for the fact that Stead became interested in the case and convinced that the man was innocent. There was enough ground for the belief to warrant what would now be called a 'stunt,' and Stead seized his opportunity in his own incomparable fashion, and a raging, tearing propaganda followed in the Press. The public mind was lashed into a fury of indignation. Petitions poured in for the reprieve of the condemned man; demonstrations took place in the streets; crowds assembled in front of Buckingham Palace to wring the Royal prerogative out of the Queen.

"Day succeeded day, and still the storm rose, and still the Home Secretary held his hand. The right of criminal appeal did not exist in those days, and Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary, had no guidance to rely on except that of the judge who had tried the case, Fitzjames Stephen, and Stephen would commit himself to neither 'yea' nor 'nay,' but took refuge behind the jury's verdict, and left the matter there. The Home Secretary was in despair. Daily he saw himself held up to execration as a murderer, daily the petitions poured in, and the crowds gathered in the streets.

"Saturday came, and on Monday the execution was to take place. Appeals to Stephen were in vain, and every detail of the evidence had been examined again and again without a ray of new light. It was not only the condemned man whose fate was involved. If he was guilty and Matthews reprieved him, the latter would have yielded to an ignorant clamour and disgraced his office; if he was not guilty, and Matthews did not reprieve him, he would have executed an innocent man in the face of an unprecedented public warning. The day passed in anxious and ceaseless inquiry. In the afternoon he sent word to Stephen. He must see him once more. They could meet at the Home Office the following (Sunday) evening at five o'clock.

"I was then on the Home Office staff, and it was my duty to be in attendance while this critical conference was in progress. Time passed without a sound or sign coming from the room where the argument of life or death was proceeding. In the quiet of the late Sunday afternoon the chimes of Big Ben sounded the quarters from the Clock Tower. Six o'clock struck. I was tired of sitting alone, and opening the door of the Secretary's room quietly I entered and took a seat in the shadow.

"It was a strange scene that I had broken in on. Absolute silence prevailed; but both men were so engrossed in thought that my entrance passed quite unnoticed. Matthews was seated in his chair, his elbows on his knees, his head buried in his hands. Stephen, his eyes fixed on the carpet before him, strode to and fro across the room.

"I sat and waited. Outside, the church bells had begun ringing for the evening service, and their music alone broke the heavy silence of the room. Then Matthews spoke briefly, raising a point that had been hammered to weariness before. There was a brief answer from Stephen, and the silence was resumed, Matthews with his head still resting in his hands, Stephen still pacing the floor. Time passed. The bells ceased ringing, seven o'clock struck, and we passed into a soundless quiet. Now and then a question was put and an answer given, but there was no discussion. It seemed that the strange scene might continue until the hangman slipped his bolt next morning. I counted the quarters--one--two--three--eight o'clock. Three hours had gone by and no light had broken on the silent struggle.

"I had ceased to expect any change in this drama of indecision, and resigned myself to an all-night vigil. I sat and speculated as to the course of events. What seemed most probable to me was that the silent drama would go on far into the night and that then in sheer exhaustion there would be surrender. They would not be able to hold out to daylight, and in despair of coming to a decision would choose the way of safety. Presently my ears caught the sound of a step in the corridor without. It paused at the door. A sudden thought flashed in my mind as I waited for what should follow. There came a low tap at the door, and I hastily opened it. As I did so a messenger handed me a letter. I took it eagerly, raised the flap sufficiently to catch the words, 'I, Lipski, hereby confess...' and passed it to Matthews. As he read it he leapt to his feet with a cry as of one who had himself escaped a sentence of death, and for a moment the load lifted from the two men made them almost beside themselves with joy. Then Matthews remembered the circumstances and turned grave....

"The next morning Lipski was hanged, and all the world read the confession. It was Matthews' moment of supreme triumph. He was the minister who had defied the ragings of the Press and the mob and been justified in his firm resistance to ignorant clamour. But none knew the torture behind that firmness, or the misery of those silent hours the night before. How would it have ended without that knock at the door? Ah, who can say? But I think Lipski hanged himself."

ON AN ELDERLY PERSON

After a long walk through Richmond Park and by the Thames one afternoon recently, I went with a companion into a refreshment-place for tea. As we waited for service there entered a tall, stout, elderly gentleman in a tall hat. He took a seat at a table not far off. The face seemed familiar to me, notably the heavy under-jaw that projected with a formidable air of determination. I ransacked my memory a moment, and the identity of the stout, elderly gentleman came back to me vividly. I drew my companion's attention to him, and then raised the second finger of my right hand on which the bone between the first and second joints was palpably enlarged. "That," I said, "is a little memorial which that gentleman in the tall hat gave me forty years ago. He was a good bowler in those days, straight and fast, and a good length, but he had a trick of getting up badly, and when he hit you he hit you hard. One day he hit me in practice when I was playing without a glove, and this is his signature."

But it was not this memory that made the elderly gentleman chiefly interesting to me. It was the fact that he was elderly--so flagrantly elderly. The last time I had seen him he was a stalwart young fellow, quick in his movements, with his head and body thrust a little forward as though his legs could not quite keep pace with his purpose, and with that formidable chin sticking out as it were in challenge to the future. Now he would have passed for an alderman, "in fair round belly." He moved heavily and slowly like one who had reached whatever goal he had set out after and had no more use for that determined under-jaw. In looking at him I seemed to see myself in a mirror. I must be elderly like that, too. If he were to recognise me as I had recognised him he, no doubt, would be as surprised as I had been to find what an elderly person I had grown into since the days when I was a fresh-coloured youth and we played cricket together.

It is by these reflected lights that the havoc which the years play with us is visible to us. The approach of age is so stealthy that we do not perceive it in ourselves. Others grow old, but we live on under the illusion of unchanging youth. There may be a bald patch on the head; but that is nothing. Quite young fellows have bald patches on the head. That eminent lawyer, Mr. Billson Stork, was bald at twenty-five, and at thirty-five had not a hair above his ears. No, baldness is no evidence. Nor are grey hairs evidence. We all know people who were grey-headed in their early manhood. It is true that we do not run now as we used; but that is simply because we do not want to run. What is there to run for? All these things are discounted by the dissimulating spirit that dwells in us and refuses to let us know that we are visibly taking our place among the old fellows.

Then some incident like that I have described dissipates momentarily the pleasant illusion that defies the calendar. Perhaps someone in the bus, full of good intentions, offers you his seat. You are glad of the seat and you appreciate the kindness, but your feelings are complicated by the suggestion that you bear about you the stigmata of decrepitude. You have become a person whose venerable years entitle you to consideration. You realise, almost with a shock, that to the eyes of that admirable young man in the bus you are an old gentleman whom it would be indecent to leave hanging on to a strap. It is a disillusioning experience, and if the young man could read your mind he would probably conclude that the higher courtesy would have been to keep his seat and leave you your comfortable fancy. There are cases when politeness cuts deeper than impertinence. I myself saw an illustration of this in a bus only yesterday, when a young fellow rose to make room for a very stout lady, although there was a vacant seat beside him. It is true that the stout lady really needed two seats, but she did not want the fact proclaimed in that public way, and her anxiety to point out to the young man that there was still a vacant seat showed that the stout as well as the elderly can nurse illusions about themselves.

But it is in his own family that the sharpest reminders of the cold truth are borne in upon the elderly. There was a time, it does not seem long ago, when you were an Olympian to your children, when the cloud on your brow had the authority of Jove, and the lightest word on your lips was a Delphic oracle. That phase passed insensibly. You began to measure yourself in your slippers with the new generation. You began to discover that they could wear your boots, and then that they could not wear your boots. A little later and you knew that you had come down from Olympus altogether, and that these young people had ideas which were not your ideas, that they belonged to a new world which was not your old, unchallenged world. They had ceased to be your children and had become something like brothers and sisters. All this accomplished itself so quietly, so naturally, that you did not notice it.

Then, one day, something happens, a trifling action, it may be, a trifling word, an accent, a gesture, but it is enough. It lifts the curtain of your fiction. You know that you have changed places with the children of yester-year. They are no longer your children. They have ceased even to be your brothers and sisters. They are becoming a sort of maiden aunt or benevolent uncle. You realise that to them you have become something of an antiquity, a person who must be humoured because of his enormous past and his exiguous future. You feel that if you are not careful you will be invited to take somebody's arm to steady you. You suspect that your ways are the source of amusement, respectful but undisguised, like the ways of a rather wayward child. In short, you learn that you are no longer the young fellow you have imagined yourself to be, but an elderly person, like any other elderly person of your years. It is not an unpleasant discovery. It may even be a pleasant discovery. And in any case it is only a passing spasm. The indomitable youth within soon puts the revelation aside. I suspect that he never really does grow elderly, no matter what tales the vesture of decay in which he is clothed may tell about him to the outside world.

TAMING THE BEAR

A woman, sitting behind me on the top of a bus, was explaining to her companion how to manage husbands. She was a strong-minded person and very confident on the subject. She had been married fifteen years, she said, and was satisfied that what she had to learn about taming the bear was not worth learning. As far as I could gather her main thesis was that you must not make too much of the bear. We (I speak as one of the husbands under the scalpel of this formidable woman) must not be encouraged to think that we were little tin gods. We must not be allowed to get the idea that our wives were not independent of us. That was fatal. The more a woman showed that she could paddle her own canoe the more humble and manageable we became.

I gathered, too, that we had to be humoured and even humbugged. We were rather like unruly children who needed to have a lollipop stuffed in our mouth occasionally to keep us quiet and in good humour. It was quite easy to fool us. Only that morning her husband wanted to get up to breakfast. "No," said she, "you stay and have your breakfast comfortably in bed." And he did. "I didn't want him downstairs getting in the way and keeping me talking about this, that and the other. I like to have my breakfast in peace."

As she rattled on I seemed to see the whole tribe of husbands drooping abjectly before her withering exposure. Things which had been mercifully hidden from me became suddenly clear. That habit of breakfasting in bed, for example. It was an old habit with me, a relic of other days, when I went to bed as the dawn was breaking and the birds were tuning up for a new day. I had continued it with grave twinges of conscience long after the excuse for it had ceased to exist. I had felt it was an inexcusable laziness. I had determined for years to break it. Some day, I had said to myself, I will stop this hedonish self-indulgence. I will set the household an example. I will be up with the lark. I will give the family an agreeable shock. I pictured the delight with which they would hail my astonishing appearance on that never-to-be-forgotten day when I came down to breakfast.

Now the whole deceit was as plain as a pikestaff. Now I understood, thanks to that masterful voice behind me, why my feeble protests, periodically uttered, against having my breakfast in bed had been so kindly repulsed. "Oh no, stay where you are. It's no trouble." And I had stayed, listening to the chirping of the sparrows, reading my book, and taking my tea and toast in comfortable ease. And now I knew the humiliating truth. It was all a blind. I was not wanted--that was the plain English of it. I was given my breakfast in bed in order that I might be kept out of the way. It was not a beautiful act of affectionate thoughtfulness, but an artful policy, a method of getting rid of a domestic nuisance under the disguise of generous indulgence. I own my blood boiled. Never again, I said.

Meanwhile, the astounding revelation of the way in which the innocent tribe of husbands was chastened and disciplined proceeded. I learned how we were most effectually fleeced and cozened. You feed the brute first. If you want something particular, a new hat or a sealskin jacket, something that you would not get out of us while we were fierce and hungry, you raise the subject when we are well fed, when the hard lineaments of our august countenance relax and the comforting juices of the body begin to spread a benign influence over our emotions. Then we fall. I learned, too, that in the philosophy of this terrific woman a little judicious jealousy was mixed with the diabolical potion with which we were beguiled. "Nothing wrong, of course, my dear, but it does them no harm to know that we are not enslaved, and that there are other fish in the sea beside themselves."

As I heard the disclosure of the net of intrigue with which we were enveloped I felt that something must be done about it. There must be an exposure. The plot must be shown up. The scales must be lifted from the eyes of the blind and credulous victims who sit passively while their doom is woven about them. But this was only the prelude. There must be a crusade. We must have a Husbands' Defence League, with a slogan, "Down with Delilah," and a banner, illuminated by exclusively masculine hands, bearing the portrait of our patron saint, the estimable John Knox, author of that famous and splendid treatise (which I have not yet read) entitled _First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women_. That, said I, was the stuff to give them. Brave old John, the foe of Bloody Mary, hated of Elizabeth, the scourge of the Queen of Scots. Three queens, all of them women and all of them his enemies. Glorious old John!

Meanwhile there must be action at once. My eyes had been opened to the sinister meaning of breakfast in bed. I would deal with that forthwith. I would open my campaign without a moment's delay. To-morrow morning I would certainly get up to breakfast. I would not, of course, give the least hint of the enormous meaning of the act. I would simply get up, just as naturally and unostentatiously as if I were a regular getter-up. I would stroll down negligently, perhaps whistling a bar or two of some familiar air in an absent-minded way that would suggest that I had been doing this sort of thing all my life. If there were comments--as there would be--I would turn them aside with an artful jest. I would not disclose my hand. That would be fatal until I had got my Husbands' Defence League in motion. Then I would open my batteries like thunder. Then the Monstrous Regiment of Women would know the tremendous storm that is foreshadowed when I go down to breakfast to-morrow morning.... Grand old John! I shall read your treatise to-night (perhaps). I shall think of you to-morrow when I throw off the coverlet of the sluggard and begin the first skirmish of the campaign. I will not be unworthy of you, old John. There shall be heard in the land again the blast of your trumpet and fear shall invade the heart of Delilah.

OURSELVES AND OTHERS

I was playing a game of golf the other day with a man whom I had known in other affairs, but whom I had not met before on the golf links. He is one of those men, of whom I wrote some time ago, who are ridden by one idea to the exclusion of all other ideas. At the moment the thing that filled his mind was the Capital Levy, and it filled it so completely that I fancy he went round the links without ever quite realising what he was about. He would pause in the midst of addressing the ball and resume the argument from some new angle. He would make his tee and forget to put the ball on it while he threw another illuminating ray on the absorbing topic. I tried to divert his attention from the Capital Levy by remarks on the game or the beauty of the day, or anything else that was handy, as a red herring, to draw him off the scent; but it was all in vain. He stuck to his theme as precedents stick to law or barnacles to a ship's bottom.

But it was not the subject that was the chief offence to the day and the occasion. What distressed me most was his unconsciousness of the way he was blocking the course. There were a lot of people on the links, and it was clear to me that we were checking those behind us unduly. I gave him hints--slight at first and broad as day as my temper rose--that we must move more quickly. They fell on ears that did not hear. He patted his tee, and looked up to continue his argument; then his ball would roll off the tee, and he would make another little sand-castle; then a new thought would strike him, and he would stop altogether until he had disclosed it. And all the time I was sensible that curses not loud but deep were being uttered, and quite reasonably uttered, by the people behind us.

Now my friend was not an ill-mannered boor, nor even a selfish person. He was simply unconscious of other people; and although he angered me a great deal at the time, I am not holding him up to reprobation entirely. He seemed to me to have an invaluable quality in an extravagant measure. I was conscious that I envied his stolidity and power of divorcing himself from external influences even while I groaned under his intolerable calm. It was a preposterous situation. He was doing all the mischief and I was suffering all the penalty. It reminded me of the younger Pitt who drank the wine while the Clerk of the House got the headache. I was miserable at holding up the people behind, but my opponent who was holding them up was not even aware that they were there, so absorbed was he in the activities of his own mind.

Within reason, this insensibility to the outside world is a precious gift. Many of the Scotch people have it in an aggravating degree. _J'y suis, j'y reste_ is their motto. They have what the Americans love to call "poise," an imperturbable indifference to the emotions of others that is half the secret of their success. They are masters of themselves and are clothed in a good tough skin that makes them proof against all the winds that blow. They are inferior, of course, to the Jews, whose insensibility to the feelings of others sometimes passes belief. It is the heritage no doubt of two thousand years of buffetings by a hostile world, and it enables them to exploit their superior qualities of brain to the maximum. But they are trying and often offensive, even to those of us who loathe the gospel according to Mr. Belloc.

I should be sorry to see this callosity offered as a model; but there is a virtue in it. A too sensitive skin is a heavy handicap in a rough world. There is no more sterilising thing than to be excessively conscious of other people. It is the source of most of our weaknesses and affectations, and of nearly all our insincerities of speech and action. There are some of us who are hardly ever our real selves in our contacts with others. Goldsmith "wrote like an angel but talked like poor Poll," because in the presence of company he lost the rudder of himself and was drowned by the waves of inferior but more aggressive minds. We do and say many foolish and many insincere things because the attractions and repulsions of other personalities play the dickens with our emotions. It was this consideration, I think, that led Hazlitt to rank humility as the lowest of the virtues. He meant that the sense of inferiority subordinated us to the dominion of other minds and defeated the authentic expression of ourselves.

My friend on the golf links, of course, carried insensibility to others too far. Personality should not be like a reed shaken in the wind. It should be stable and erect, standing four-square to all the winds that blow. But while it should not be worried or deflected by what it thinks others may be doing or saying or feeling, it ought not to be forgetful of the rights and conveniences of others. Nor should it forget those small graces that sweeten our intercourse with others. Take the familiar case of birthdays. It is easy to forget other people's birthdays as we grow older and have many birthdays to remember. It is easy to forget them, because we become indifferent to our own. When the light has gone off the morning hills we have no particular pleasure in reminding ourselves how the shadows are lengthening on our path. Years ago we reached a new milestone with the comfortable feeling that there were any number of milestones ahead, and that to pass another one was rather a gay experience. If anything, we did not pass them speedily enough. We could not make the laggard time keep pace with the hurry of the spirit. But when the milestones stretch far behind us and we can count those in front on the fingers of one or two hands the zest for birthdays is diminished. We may even come to regard them in the light of those "third and final" notices which announce the impatience of the tax-collector at our dilatory ways.

But though we may prefer to forget our own birthdays, we like other people to remember them. We like them to remember the day as an assurance that they remember us. We live by the affections, and our happiness depends much more than we are aware of upon the conviction that we have a place in the hearts and memories of others. If we are unfortunate enough to have outlived that place and to have become negligible laggards on the stage, the fact is mercifully concealed from us on 364 days in the year. But on the 365th day it may be blindingly revealed by a silence that stabs to the heart.

I suppose few of us have escaped the experience in some measure. Perhaps Aunt Anne comes down to breakfast on her birthday morning a little conscious of the day and hoping to receive a more cordial greeting than usual on the occasion from her nephews and nieces, whose birthdays are marked with red letters in her own calendar and celebrated by gifts on which she has spent anxious thought. And the breakfast passes without a word on the subject. If Aunt Anne is a sensible woman she makes allowance for the thoughtlessness of youth and remembers that she was once young and careless herself; but she will be an exceptional woman if she does not feel that something of the brightness has gone out of the day.

These little domestic tragedies mean more to us than we care to admit. The small attentions and civilities we bestow or forget to bestow on each other make the atmosphere in which we move. It is many years since I read _Wuthering Heights_, but I remember how the gloom and oppression which hang about that powerful book are created by such trifling incidents as the meeting of father and son in the morning without a word of greeting. They simply glower at each other and pass to their tasks. It is the graces of conduct that give life its flavour and make it sunny for ourselves, as well as for others. Wordsworth uses the perfect image for them when he says:

The charities that soothe and heal and bless,
Are scattered all about our feet--like flowers.

Even remembering the birthday of a friend may help to keep the garden of the mind in beauty and a reasonable regard for the amenities of the links is no bad discipline of conduct. I would not have my friend hurry his shot from a too acute sense of the people behind. Let him take his time and keep his head. But let him give others their place in the sun.

AN OFFER OF £10,000

I had a great and pleasurable shock this morning. I was deep in drab and perplexed thought about the muddle the world had got into and, incidentally, the muddle I was getting into myself, when the postman came and, among other things, brought me a letter from a gentleman named Rosen. I had never heard of him before--shouldn't know him if I met him. Yet he began in this cordial fashion: "Can I be of any service to you?" My heart leapt up at so friendly and handsome an inquiry. This was the sort of man I had dreamt of meeting all my life, a hearty, kindly fellow, full of melting charity who only asked to be allowed to help a lame dog over the stile. I wondered who had told Mr. Rosen about me and induced him to sit down and write in this warm, generous spirit. Or perhaps he was a reader who had been touched by the articles of "Alpha of the Plough." I imagined him reading one of my most agreeable little things--one with just a hint of pathos in it perhaps--and turning to Mrs. Rosen and saying: "We ought to do something for this charming writer, my dear. What would you suggest?" And the sensible woman--just touching her eyes, I think, with the corner of her handkerchief--replied: "Why not write to him and ask what he would like?" And Mr. Rosen exclaimed: "Admirable woman! The very thing," and hastened to his desk and wrote forthwith.

But he did not stop at asking whether he could be of any service to me. With a fine sense of delicacy he raised a subject which he knew I might have some hesitation in mentioning myself. "He is sure, being a literary man, to be hard-up," he said to Mrs. R., "and you can tell he is a sensitive fellow who would starve rather than say anything about it. We must make it easy for him to tell us all about it." And Mrs. R., her eyes shining through her tears--for she is a soft-hearted woman--said: "Yes, poor fellow, make it easy for him." So Mr. Rosen, his heart warming towards me, went on: "If an immediate sum of money, £50 to £10,000, would be useful, you can have same at _first interview or per registered post_ upon your note of hand--i.e., without security."

When I read this I was amazed. How had he hit the sum so perfectly? Why, it was precisely something between £50 and £10,000--rather nearer £10,000 than £50--that I _did_ want. It seemed like manna dropping from heaven. I called to Jane up the stairs and asked her to come and hear of the splendid luck that had befallen us. I declaimed the letter to her in loud and joyous tones. "However can he have heard of us?" she said. "But I wish he wouldn't say 'same.'" "We must not look a gift-horse in the mouth," I said severely. "These noble-hearted people always say 'same.' 'We send same by even post,' they say, 'but if same is not satisfactory, we will take same back and return money for same.' It is very clear and saves time. We must not be fastidious. We must not let our little literary niceties stand in the way of £10,000. I think I shall take the £10,000. He doesn't seem to mind whether it's £50 or £10,000, and I mind a great deal."

Jane thought we ought to see the Rosens first, to make sure there was not a mistake. It would be odious if we wrote accepting, took the money, spent it, and then found it was meant for someone else of the same name, who probably needed it more. I said I thought Mr. Rosen would not like this cold and calculating way of meeting his friendly advances. I had now a clear perception of him. He was an elderly, big-hearted man with a flowing white beard. He wanted to do a little good in the world before he left it, and he had chosen me as the humble vessel of his benefaction because he liked my articles in the _Star_. What need was there to go prying into his motives farther? He would certainly not like it. He did not want the thing to be talked about. "Please retain the card (enclosed) as a guarantee of absolute secrecy," he said in his letter. That showed the sort of man he was. He did good by stealth. It was our plain duty to respect his wishes. If he did not want the matter talked about, why should we worry him with inquiries?

I think this consideration had great weight with Jane and removed any lingering scruples she had about taking the money. She accepted my view of Mr. Rosen as a venerable old gentleman of the Cheeryble type who wanted to make people happy, and she agreed that we ought not to put obstacles in his way. In the evening we went for a walk down New Bond Street, where the dear old man lives, and took a survey of the premises of our fairy godfather from the other side of the road. I fancy we caught a glimpse of him at the window, with flowing white beard and skull-cap and velvet jacket and gold-rimmed spectacles, through which his eyes beamed with benevolence upon the passers-by. To-morrow I think I will write and tell him I will accept his kind offer of service. Or perhaps I will call, for the post is very uncertain. But I don't think I will take the £10,000. It would look grasping. I think I will ask him for £5000. And I will promise him, of course, "absolute secrecy."

IN A LUMBER-ROOM

I went into the lumber-room glowing with an emotion of apostolic fervour. I would clear out this rubbish of the past. It was a shame that it should cumber the ground when space was so exiguous and rents so expensive. Why, this room, said I to myself (looking sternly meanwhile at the chaos within), would take a bed. At a squeeze it would take two beds. Let in the light and the air, and it would be a bedroom fit for the most delicate sleeper, remote alike from the noise without and the disturbing sounds within. I was not sure I would not claim it for myself. Carlyle would have revelled in a room so impenetrable to the cock's shrill clarion and the clatter of the early morning milk-cans.

By this time my eye had grown accustomed to the dim light within and the rubbish began to take definition. I stooped down and picked up--a boot. Not an ordinary boot, but a boot of monumental pattern, weighing between two and three pounds, with leather like the hide of a rhinoceros and with huge nails cunningly shaped to grip the rocks. Here and there a nail was missing. I knew where each had gone. The one missing from the right sole was knocked out on the Pillar Rock one winter's day. That one from the heel was left on the Finsteraarjock, and with that reminder all the splendours of the Oberland, the gloom of the Rhone Valley below, the Dom and the Matterhorn catching the last rays of the sun beyond, came back with a sudden and vivid glory, like the landscape of a dream. Rubbish! This rubbish? ... I found the fellow of the boot and put them aside. They must be oiled again and stuffed afresh with oats to keep them in shape. I might yet kick a nail or two out of them before the curtain of the rocks and the glaciers was rung down upon my journeyings.

Undismayed by this check I turned to the lumber again. From the confusion a handle protruded. I seized it and drew out an old and battered cricket-bat. I had not seen it for years, and had long forgotten its existence, but at the touch and sight of it old scenes submerged me like a tide. It was pregnant with secret records that I alone could read. That fracture at the bottom was done--let me see--yes, at far-away Lancaster more than thirty years ago, when I was a casual member of a wandering team playing the asylum staff. And at the hint my mind went a-travelling to the pleasant pastures of the Fylde, with the Lune dreamily flowing by the castled town, and the fine sweep of Morecambe Bay visible to the mind's eye beyond, with the evening light spreading over the tranquil landscape and flushing the distant peaks of Lakeland.... And that crack down the middle commemorated Whackerley's terrific feat when, last man in against a village team, he went and smote the bowling like a fury and converted an ignominious defeat... But let me tell the story of that heroic day....

Fifteen for nine wickets! The scorer, a heavy youth with a straw in his mouth and his shirt-sleeves rolled up to the shoulders, announced the fact to me with undisguised enjoyment. He was sitting on a tussock of grass that served for pavilion, commanding a good view of the wicket that was set in the midst of the undulations of the common. Around him were strewn the hats and coats of the players, a few derelict pads, and two jars of ale.

"Looks like a wash-out," said the scorer as the last man in a purple cap departed from the vicinity of the tussock, smacking his leg with the bat, whether with nervousness or assurance no one could say, for no one had ever seen him bat.

"Well, you never can tell," said the publican. "Cricket's a rum game, and what I says is this: 'You never know when a dark horse'll turn up.'" He had brought up the refreshments at my request, and he was not the man to desert me in a tight place.

It was a tight place. I had challenged the village team, and had got together a scratch lot from anywhere; a boy home from school, elderly persons who "used to play, but haven't touched a bat for years, y'know," a man who had once played for his "house" at Harrow, another whose brother had been twelfth-man for his college, and so on--a team of great expectations, a team that might astonish the countryside or vanish in laughter.