Chapter VI: Part 6

It looked like vanishing in laughter. We had begun very hopefully. The village team had straggled up from the valley straight from the harvest fields that stretched below over the countryside. A few, including Alec, an enterprising young farmer, with a round cherubic face, who captained the team, were in flannels; the rest in their harvesting clothes. Alec won the toss and declared that he would take first smack. It was a wicket of fire, outwardly smooth and amiable, but charged with volcanic possibilities that made the ball work miracles, plunging, shooting, bumping, breaking like an untamed colt or an infuriated bull. We missed a catch or two in the first over, but two wickets fell in the second, and when Tom Wilkins, the local Jessop, was run out and six wickets were down for twenty we seemed to have the villagers at our mercy.

We found unsuspected support from an aged umpire--a responsible-looking person with a bowed back and a massive grey beard, sexton, bell-ringer and parson's factotum--who followed one simple rule. Whenever he was appealed to he held up his hand, gravely and benignantly, like a bishop administering a blessing. With his help we got rid of two or three truculent fellows who looked like scoring, and all the team were out for forty-nine. They would have been out for less if I had not, in a weak moment, put Jim Whelks on to bowl. Jim is the local higgler and had assured me that he had captained a team "down in the sheers," and that his bowling--underhand--was such a whirlwind affair that the local men stood in terror of him. "Don't suppose they'll let me bowl, sir," he said, confidentially, the night before. But they did. I wished they hadn't, for his whirlwind piled up twelve byes for them.

It seemed a small thing to score fifty runs. The publican was sure we should do it. "It's a team of dark horses," he said to me cheerfully, "and it stands to reason there's one flier amongst 'em." To Alec I fancy he had another tale, for the publican is above party, with a foot planted securely in each camp. But the dark horse did not appear. Our misfortunes began in the first over, and continued with remarkable regularity during the succeeding overs. If anyone looked like making a stand the venerable umpire, pursuing his sovereign rule with inflexible impartiality, held up his hand. Fifteen for nine, and as the last man went in smacking his leg with his bat, we wondered how we were to steal from the stricken field unobserved by the village folk, who were sitting in the shade under the hedge.

But what was this? Purple Cap, who had gone in last because he was so confident that he "wasn't worth a run," had cracked the first ball to the ditch for four and snicked the next for one. Twenty! Well, well, this was not disgraceful. He had the bowling again. The first ball went over the hedge--six; the second bounded down the hill towards the valley--four-thirty. "Well, he is a one-er," said the scorer, changing his straw to the other side of his mouth. Panic seized the bowlers; the fielders went farther and farther out into the landscape. But Purple Cap was insatiable. He seemed not a man but a hurricane. He leapt at everything with a devouring fury and the ball flew here, there, and everywhere. Once the stumper appealed, but he had the wrong umpire for judge. My bat was smashed, but I didn't care. "Send him more bats," I shouted. The score rose like magic. "A regular pelthoria of runs," said the publican. Forty--fifty (the match was won)--sixty--seventy----eighty--eighty-five--then a well-directed throw-in from the long-field knocked the wicket down. "How's that?" Up went the venerable umpire's arm like a semaphore at the familiar sound. And Purple Cap came back to the tussock in triumph.

"It was just as I said," remarked the publican when I saw him standing before the inn later in the evening. "'Mark my words,' I said, 'there's a dark horse in that lot somewhere,' and a dark horse there was. I ain't seen anything like it since my soldiering days in India. Killed a python we did--dead as a door-nail down to the last two-foot of his tail. I put my arm on his tail and he closed round it that tight you couldn't pull him away until his tail was dead too. I ain't seen such a lively tail since until I set eyes on that chap in the purple cap this evening. He's stirred this place up and no mistake. They won't forget him in a hurry."

Of course, the bat must remain. It was not a bat, but a living memorial, a thing that talked to me a joyous private language and seemed to secrete by some magic the very essence of myself. To destroy it would be a sort of suicide. As well might Nelson have broken up the timbers of the old _Victory_ to heat the kitchen fire. I rubbed the dust from its battered face and put it honourably in the corner.

I began to feel as though I had been caught desecrating a cemetery. The vision of that additional bedroom, with windows, fresh air and electric light, was fading. I bent a little doubtfully and seized a large tome. It was an old album, one of those huge and ugly volumes that no household was without a generation ago, but no household visibly possesses to-day. And I began to turn over its leaves.... What is there more poignant than an old, forgotten album? Here are "the children" again, miraculously resurrected from the past, playing on the sands at Dawlish, swimming in the sea, standing against the sky-line of the cliffs at Sheringham with the sunshine upon their laughing faces and their hair streaming in the wind. How long I spent over that old album I do not know, for it stirred many thoughts that made me forgetful--thoughts that do not easily find words to clothe them. But I put the album aside for dusting. Really this lumber-room might be kept more tidily and reverently.

And what is this vast cover, sticking out, dog-eared, from the lumber? My old portfolio, given me forty-six years ago as a tribute from admiring parents to my artistic achievements. How I gloried in its ample blue covers. Why, Landseer himself, the incomparable Landseer, must have such a portfolio as that. And I laboured with my pencil to fill it with things worthy of its dignity, and here they were to-day, old portraits of grandmothers and aunts and copies of Landseer's dogs and horses and Peter Paul in his big hat, and the serene Dürer, with his long flaxen curls, and, on each one, in large, bold, boyish writing, "Drawn by ----" and the date carefully put in lest posterity should not know that these miracles were done by one so young. Ay de mi, as old Carlyle used to say. Ay de mi....

I have changed my mind about the lumber-room. We have plenty of bedrooms, and if we haven't we must go short. That lumber-room is the abode of finer things than bedsteads. It is a chamber of the spirits. But it must certainly be kept more tidy.

OUR NEIGHBOUR THE MOON

Jane observed just now that she was sure the days were drawing out. We laughed, as we were expected to, at the immemorial remark, but we cheerfully agreed that there was truth in it. We looked at our watches. It was past four and the landscape of half a dozen counties still lay, darkening but visible from the hillside, while in the garden the thrushes were singing as though it were a summer evening. The moon, which had been faintly visible long before the sun had set, was beginning to take up "the wondrous tale." It was that bewitching moment of the day when the two luminaries are about equally matched and the light of the moon filters through the light of the day and a new scheme of shadows begins to take shape about you as you walk.

If I were asked to name the chief difference between living in town (as I used to do) and living in the country (as I now chiefly do), I think I should say that it consisted in the place which the moon fills in our everyday life, especially of course in the dark season of the year. It might almost be said that we do not discover the moon until we live in the country. In town it is only another and a rather larger lamp hung aloft the street. We do not need it to light us on our way and are indifferent to its coming and going. If it shines, well; if it does not shine, no matter. We go about our business in either case, and do not consult the calendar to know whether such-and-such a night will be light enough to go to the theatre or to dinner with Aunt Anne at Kensington, as the case may be. Nothing but fog can interfere with these amenities and the calendar is uninformed as to the vagaries of the fog.

But in the country the moon is not an unconsidered and casual visitor whose movements are of such little account that we do not trouble to study them. It is, on the contrary, the most important and most discussed neighbour we have. In town we do not think of the moon in neighbourly terms. It is something remote and foreign, that does not come within the scope of our system. We should miss the lamp across the road that sends a friendly ray through our window-curtains all night, and if we went down to Piccadilly Circus one evening and did not see the coloured signs twinkling on the shop-fronts we should feel lonely and bereaved. But if the moon did not turn up one evening according to plan, hardly one Londoner in a thousand would notice the fact. He would read about it in the newspapers next day and talk about it coming up to the City in the tube, but he would not have discovered the fact himself or have been sensible of any loss.

It is otherwise with us country bumpkins. The neighbourliness of the moon and of the stars is one of the alleviations of our solitude. We have no street lamps or pretty coloured sky-signs to look at, and so we look at the Great Bear and Orion, the Sickle and the Pleiades, trace out Cassiopeia's chair and watch to see Sirius come up over the hilltop like a messenger bearing thrilling tidings. We know they are far off, but there is nothing between us, and intimacy seems to make them curiously near and friendly. A cloudy night that blots out the stars is as gloomy an experience for us as an accident at the electric power-house that puts out the street lights and plunges the house in darkness is to the dweller in Hampstead or Clapham.

But it is the moon that is our most precious neighbour. Its phases are as much a part of the practical mechanism of life as the winding-up of the clock, and the hour of its rising and setting regulates our comings and goings. If it failed to turn up one night all the countryside would know about it. There would be a universal hue-and-cry and no one would sleep in his bed for watching. When the sickle of the new moon appears in the sunset sky the cheerful nights set in. There is no need to light the lantern if we want to go to the wood-shed or to the chicken-run at the end of the garden to investigate some unfamiliar sound that proceeds from thence. If there is anything contemplated at the village schoolroom down in the valley it is fixed for an evening when the moon is high to light us by road or field-path; and when the moon is near the full we reach the high festival of our country nights. Then, no matter how busy the day has been or how comfortable the fireside is, the call of our neighbour the moon to come out and see the magic he can throw over the landscape is irresistible.

It is irresistible now. While I have been writing, the moon has been gathering power. The night is clear and full of stars. There is the glisten of frost on the grass. The wind has fallen and the plain that glimmers below in the moonlight is soundless. It would be a sin not to be abroad on such a night. Moreover Ben and Jeff need a run before settling down for sleep. They love the moonlight too, not for its poetry but for its aid in the ceaseless, but ever unrewarded, task of exploring rabbit-holes and other futile hints of sport. "Come, Ben! Come, Jeff! ... Walk."

ON SMILES

If I were to be born into this world again and had the choice of my endowments I should arrange very carefully about my smile. There is nothing so irresistible as the right sort of smile. It is better than the silver spoon in the mouth. It will carry you anywhere and win you anything, including the silver spoon. It disarms your enemies and makes them forget that they have a grudge against you. "I have a great many reasons for disliking you," said a well-known public man to a friend of mine the other day, "but when I am with you I can never remember what they are." It was the flash of sunshine that did for him. He could not preserve his hostility in the presence of the other's disarming smile and gay good-humour. He just yielded up his sword and sunned himself in the pleasant weather that the other carried with him like an atmosphere.

At the Bar, of course, a pleasant address is worth a fortune. I suppose there has been no more successful figure in the law courts in our time than Rufus Isaacs, but I fancy he won as many of his victories by the debonair smile with which he irradiated the courts as by his law. You could see the judge on the bench and the jury in the box basking in the warmth that he shed around them. The weather might be as harsh as it liked outside; but here the sky was clear and the sun was shining genially. It was a fine day and the only blot on the landscape was the unhappy counsel for the other side, who thumped the table and got red in the face as he saw his client's case melting away like snow before a south wind.

And among politicians it is notorious that a popular smile is the shortest cut to the great heart of democracy. In an estimate of the qualities that have contributed to Mr. Lloyd George's amazing success a high place would have to be given to the twinkling smile, so merry and mischievous, so engagingly frank and so essentially secret and calculating, with which, by the help of the photographer, he has irradiated his generation. If Mr. Asquith had learned how to smile for public consumption, the history of English politics, and even of the world, would have been vastly different; but Mr. Asquith's smile is private and intellectual and has no pictorial value, and I doubt whether anyone ever heard him laugh outright. He was born without the chief equipment of the politician in a democratic age. No one knew the value of that equipment more than Theodore Roosevelt. He was the most idolised public man America has produced for half a century, and he owed his popularity more to his enormous smile than to any other quality. It was like a baron of beef. You could cut and come again. There was no end to it. It seemed to stretch across the Continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and when it burst into laughter it shook the land like a merry earthquake. There was not much behind the smile, but it was the genuine article, the expression of a companionable spirit and a healthy enjoyment of life, and it knocked the Americans "all of a heap." Woodrow Wilson's smile was almost as spacious as Roosevelt's, but it was less infectious, for it was thoughtful and reflective; came from the mind rather than the feelings, and never burst into laughter. It was the smile of the schoolmaster, while Roosevelt's was the smile of the uproarious schoolboy who was having no end of "a bully time."

Really first-rate smiles are rare. For the most part our smiles add little to our self-expression. If we are dull, they are dull. If we are sinister, they are only a little more sinister. If we are smug, they only emphasise our smugness. If, like the Lord High Everything Else, we were born sneering, our smile is apt to be a sneer, too. If we are terrible, like Swift, we shall have his "terrible smile." Only rarely do we light upon the smile that is a revelation. Harry Lauder's smile is like a national institution or a natural element. It is plentiful enough to fill the world. It is a continual and abundant feast that requires neither words nor chorus, and when he laughs you can no more help feeling happy than he can. Lord Balfour's smile is famous in another way. It has the untroubled sweetness of a child's, and there are few who can resist its charm; but it is elusive and seems too much like a mask that has little to do with the real man. You feel that he would send you to the scaffold with the same seraphic sweetness with which he would pass you the sugar. It is not an emanation of the man like that abundant smile, at once good-humoured and sardonic, with which Mr. Birrell sets the company aglow.

The most memorable smiles are those which have the quality of the unexpected. A smile that is habitual rarely pleases, for it suggests policy, and the essence of a smile is its spontaneity and lack of deliberation. Archbishop Temple said he hated people who were always smiling, and then, looking across the luncheon table at the vicar who had been doing his best to ingratiate himself with the terrible prelate, added: "Look at the vicar there--_he's_ always smiling." It was a cruel affront, but the smile that has the quality of an artifice is hard to bear. It was so in the case of Mrs. Barbauld, of whom it was said that she wore such an habitual smile that it made your face ache to look at her. One would almost prefer the other melancholy extreme, illustrated by that gloomy fanatic, Philip II., who is said to have laughed only once in his life, and that on receiving the merry news of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The smiles that dwell in the mind most are those that break suddenly like sunshine from unexpected places. That was the quality of the curiously wistful smile that played over the ascetic features of Lord Morley in conversation. You could forgive all his asperities when he smiled. But the most delightful example of the unexpected smile that I know is that of the pianist, Frederic Lamond. The intensity of his countenance forbids the suggestion of a smile, and at the piano he seems to descend into unfathomable depths of gravity and spiritual remoteness. But when the piece is over and the house breaks out into thunders of applause, he emerges from the depths with a smile that suggests that the Land of Beulah has broken on his sight. It is so sudden a transition that you almost seem to catch a glimpse of the Land of Beulah yourself.

But it is no use for those of us who have only humdrum smiles to attempt to set up a smile that is an incantation. Smiles, like poets, are born, not made. If they are made, they are not smiles, but grimaces, and convict us on the spot. They are simply an attempt to circulate false news. There is no remedy for us of the negligible smile, but to be born again and to be born different, not outside but within, for the smile is only the publication of the inward spirit.

WHEN IN ROME...

I have not seen any reply from a certain distinguished Englishman who has recently been in America to the resolution passed by an American women's society, and published in the Press, denouncing certain alleged proceedings of his as a moral affront to public opinion in America. The allegations were to the effect that he had invited people to drink from his private store of alcoholic liquor in the ante-rooms of some chapel where he had been speaking, and that his daughter had smoked cigarettes in public. Whether the statements were well-founded or an invention of the Press I do not know, nor for the purpose I have in view does it matter. The incident interests me, not as a question of morals but of manners. Morals are largely a local thing, a question of latitude and climate, of custom and time. They vary with the conditions of life and the habit of thought.

When we eat our morning rasher we are conscious of no moral offence, but to the Jew it would be not merely a moral offence, but an irreligious act. The difference is probably traceable to nothing more than climatic conditions. With us a pig is a perfectly safe article of diet, but in the East it is a perilous food; and being also a tempting food it needed the inhibitions both of morality and religion to prevent its consumption. I have no doubt that if the Jewish religion had originated in the Western world, there would have been no ordinance against pork in it. But while we may regard that ordinance as irrelevant in this country, we should be wanting in good manners if, on inviting a Jew to dinner, we offered him nothing but a varied choice of pig's meat. We may consider his morality absurd, but we have no right to flout it because we do not approve of it.

And the same thing, I think, applies to those who visit foreign countries. It is their business to respect the morals and conventions of those countries even if they do not share them or like them. It is, for example, one thing for an American citizen who loves wine and liberty to denounce Prohibition in his own country, and quite another thing for a stranger on a visit to show disrespect to the law of the land, however mistaken he may regard it. It seems silly to us to try to get morally indignant at women smoking cigarettes. It has become a commonplace which we accept without comment. But it is not long since such a thing would have been undreamed of in our world, and when a visitor from abroad who did it deliberately would have given great and very proper offence. The axiom "When in Rome do as Rome does" is a counsel of civility. It does not mean that it is our duty to kiss the Pope's toe or adopt the moral code of Rome ourselves; but it does mean that we should not scoff at Roman ways or publicly, or semi-publicly, indicate that we dislike them.

When I go to a foreign country I do my best to be inconspicuous, and to pass myself off as one of the people. I do not succeed, for I happen to be an insular person, who carries the marks of his origin on him in every gesture, accent and movement. If I dislike a law in my own country and think it should be altered, I have no hesitation in holding it up to opprobrium, and even breaking it, if only in that way can it be successfully fought. But it would be an impertinence on my part to go to France and defy the liquor laws of that country because I did not think they were stringent enough, or denounce the inspection of women because I think it is a loathsome practice, liable to the vilest insults and misuse. French morality accepts these things, and I have no right of interference if I go there.

I am not sure that I even like moral missionaries from one country to another. The offence, if it is an offence, is in a different category from that of the man who publicly flouts the laws and customs of another land in which he happens to be a visitor; but it certainly borders on bad manners. I express no opinion about "Pussyfoot" Johnson's gospel, but I confess I always feel an irritation at his intrusions here. However much I wanted the country to be converted to his point of view, I should still wish that he would stay at home and cultivate his own garden, and leave us to look after our own morals and practices. And by the same token I should resent the idea of a person going from this country to America and openly flouting its public morality, or taking sides in a domestic controversy that happened to be raging there. In short, it is a question not of morals, but of manners.

I do not think the idea I have in my mind could be better illustrated than by a famous story of Spurgeon. I daresay it is familiar to some of my readers, but it is so apposite and so good that they will not object to renew its acquaintance. In the days of his unparalleled popularity, when the great preacher filled the Tabernacle from floor to ceiling, it was the custom of the young bucks sometimes to show by their ill-manners their contempt for something they did not understand. One night three of them went into the gallery with their hats on, and refused to remove them when the attendant requested them to do so. Spurgeon watched the incident, and when the preliminaries of the service had been concluded and the time came for the sermon, he prefaced his remarks with something like these words: "In all the occasions of life it is our duty and should be our pleasure to respect the feelings of others and the customs of others, even if we do not share them. The other day I went into a Jewish synagogue and, according to my practice when entering a place of worship, I removed my hat. But, having done so, an attendant came to me and reminded me that in the Jewish synagogue it was necessary that the head should be covered. I thanked him and, of course, obeyed the reminder. Now" (looking up to the gallery and raising his voice) "will those three young Jews in the gallery show that respect to the customs of this place of worship which I showed to theirs?"

THE JESTS OF CHANCE

There is one story in Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson's autobiography that is sure of a place among the legends of celebrated men. It is that in which he tells by what a lucky accident he was saved, when "a raw recruit," from deserting from the Army, of which he was destined to become one of the most illustrious ornaments. Another young private who occupied a bed in the room in which he slept stole the civilian clothes in which Robertson contemplated making his escape, and vanished. I daresay Robertson said some harsh things at the time about the thief, who had put temptation out of his way; but he must have thanked him almost every day of his life since. For in taking away Robertson's clothes the thief had put a field-marshal's baton in his knapsack.

Not many of us have the luck to become field-marshals through the purloining of our trousers, but few of us are without experience of the part which trifles that seem of small moment at the time play in our careers. "Character," says Victor Hugo, "is destiny," and a greater than Hugo has observed that it is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are thus and thus. This is no doubt true, though the doctrine may be carried too far. For example, I think that Hazlitt is a little unjust to Charles James Fox when he says that the history of his failure is written in his fluctuating chin. I doubt whether, if the parts had been reversed, Pitt would have done any better. But no one can compare the easy, good-natured profile of Fox with the haughty masterfulness of Pitt's without knowing which of the two would win in an encounter of will-power where the circumstances were even.

I remember Lord Fisher once describing to me with great admiration a wonderful feat of navigation by which that famous sailor, Admiral Wilson, had brought the fleet through great perils in a fog, fighting all the way with his obstinate chief officer over charts and calculations. "But Wilson had his way," said Fisher. "You see, his jaw stuck out half an inch farther than the other fellow's." There is much virtue in a jaw that will stand no nonsense. You can read the whole history of the most wonderful one-man achievement in the annals of trade in the stubborn chin of Lord Leverhulme, just as you can read the tale of Mr. Balfour's political purposelessness in his amiable but indecisive countenance. "I can see him now," wrote a friend quoted in Mrs. Drew's _Some Hawarden Letters_. "I can see him now, standing at the top of the great double staircase, torn with doubts which way to go down. 'The worst of this staircase,' he would say, 'is that there is absolutely no reason why one should go down one side rather than the other. What am I to do?'"

But though destiny is much a matter of chins, the Imp of Chance who comes in and steals our trousers has no small part in determining our lives and shaping events. I have read that Wallenstein in his youth had a crack on the head which he, no doubt, felt was a misfortune, but it gave him just the surgical treatment that converted him from a dullard into a great general. Loyola got wounded in battle, and, thanks to that circumstance, found his true vocation and became the creator of the greatest religious order in history, and, with Luther, perhaps the greatest maker of history for six centuries. Newton, according to the legend, sees an apple fall and starts a train of thought that reveals one of the profoundest secrets of the universe. I suppose no one who has advanced far in life can fail to recall trifles that shaped the whole course of his career--a broken engagement, a misdirected letter, a chance meeting. At the time it seemed nothing, and now, in the retrospect, it is seen to have meant everything. The chin may dictate events within limits, but the Imp of Chance has as often as not the final word.

There is an interesting speculation on the theme of what might have happened in Mr. Asquith's book on the origin of the war. Referring to the appointment of Baron Marschall von Bieberstein as German Ambassador to London in 1912 and his death a few months later, he says that he is confident, so far as one can be confident in a matter of conjecture, that if Marschall had lived there would have been no European War in 1914. I fancy that is a common view in informed quarters. Marschall stood intellectually, as well as physically, head and shoulders above the petty men with whom the Kaiser had surrounded himself, and it is inconceivable that he would have allowed his country to drift into war under an entire misapprehension as to the mind and power of this country.

It is in this way that the chapter of accidents plays havoc with the affairs of men. All the woes of Ilium sprang from an elopement, and it is a commonplace that if Cleopatra's nose had been a shade longer--or shorter, for that matter--the whole story of the ancient world would have been altered. I suppose the most momentous political event in the history of the last thousand years was the rupture between England and America, which is said to have happened as the result of a shower of rain. But for that rupture, the British Commonwealth to-day would include the whole North American Continent, and its word would be sovereign over the earth. Perhaps the seat of authority would have been in Washington, instead of London, but wherever it was it would have stabilised this reeling world and given its people a security that now seems unattainable. The speculation which attributes the enormous calamity of the loss of America to a shower of rain is more fanciful, but hardly less reasonable, than that which Mr. Asquith advances in regard to the European War. The Earl of Bute was the evil genius of George III., and the inspiration of his disastrous policy. And the origin of his sinister power was a storm at Epsom which kept the royal party from going home. The Prince of Wales needed someone to make up a hand at cards to pass the time while the shower lasted, and Bute, then a young man, being handy, was selected, and from that incident ingratiated himself with the Prince and still more with the Prince's wife. She established his influence over her son whom later, as George III., he led into the ruinous part of personal government which culminated in the Boston Tea Party, the War of Independence, and the Republic of the Stars and Stripes.

Chance does not, of course, always play a malevolent part like this. It sometimes works as if with a superb and beneficent design. Lincoln, on the threshold of fifty, regarded himself as having failed in life and he died at fifty-six, one of the world's immortals. It was the quite unimportant incident of his debate with Douglas that threw him into prominence on the eve of the crisis which, but for his wisdom and magnanimity, would have left America like Europe, a group of warring States. But in the end chance betrayed him. On the night he was murdered the faithful guardian who had shadowed and protected him throughout the war was sick, and his place was taken by a substitute who became absorbed in the play, and allowed Booth to slip unseen into the President's box and fire the fatal shot. But it might be argued that even in this felon betrayal, chance only completed the splendour of its design, for Lincoln's work was done, and it was the circumstances of his death that threw the nobility of the man into relief for all time.

And while the accidents of life so often seem to take control of events, it is no less true that our most deeply calculated schemes sometimes turn round and smite us. When Queen Victoria's eldest daughter married the King of Prussia's eldest son, it was universally agreed that a grand thing had been done for the peace of the world, and when later a child was born, the rejoicings in London, as you may read in the contemporary records, were like those that welcome a great victory. That child was the ex-Kaiser William, now an exile in Holland. In the light of to-day those rejoicings of sixty odd years ago read like a grim comment on this queer and inexplicable world.

It is one of the agreeable features of the diverting adventure of life that our triumphs so often come clothed in misfortune and that the really big things that happen to us take the shape of trifles. Whenever we are tempted to inveigh against things that go wrong, we might do worse than remember the Field-Marshal's trousers.

IN DEFENCE OF "SKIPPING"

A few days ago Mr. Chesterton expressed a doubt whether he had ever read Boswell "through." Knowing Mr. Chesterton, and having a life-long acquaintance with Boswell, I share his doubt. G.K.C. has an amazing gift for seizing the spirit and purport of a book by turning over the pages in handfuls and sampling a sentence here and there. He treats books as the expert wine-taster treats wines, not drinking them in great coarse gulps, but moistening his lips and catching the bouquet on his palate. The parallel is no doubt as misleading as most parallels are apt to be. Good wines have to be "tasted" in this way, but the better the book the deeper should be the draught or the more deliberate and patient the mastication. "Chewed and digested" is Bacon's phrase.

But I am far too much addicted to "skipping" myself to treat the practice as a crime in others. When I was young and industrious and enthusiastic I read as solemnly and slavishly as anyone. I was like a dog with a bone. The tougher the theme the more I exercised my intellectual molars on it. Stout fellows like Zimmermann _On Solitude_, and Burke on _The Sublime and Beautiful_, and Mill _On Liberty_ were the sort of men for my youthful ardour. I cannot honestly say I enjoyed them, but I can honestly say that I read them, and I can also honestly say that I shall never read them or their like again. I finished my drudgery long ago, and have become a mere idler among books, a person who has served his apprenticeship and can go about enjoying himself, taking a sip here and a longish "pull" there, passing over this vintage, and returning to that and generally behaving like a freeman wandering over the estates of the mind, without a duty to anything but his own fancy.

I, too, doubt whether I have read Boswell through. Why should I read it through? I have read the conversations a hundred times and I hope to read them a hundred times more; but I will make no affidavit about the letters. I suspect that I have been "skipping" the letters unconsciously all my life. And _Paradise Regained_? My conscience is clear about _Paradise Lost_, and I can still mouth the speeches of the first author of our misfortunes whom the judgment of time had converted into the hero of that immortal poem. But can I put my hand on my heart and say I have read the _Regained_ right through? I cannot. I am not even sure that I have read Shakespeare through. I have a vague notion that in the lusty youth of which I have spoken I did read _Titus Andronicus_ and _Pericles_ with the rest, but I am quite prepared to believe that I only like to believe I did.

There is high precedent for those of us who "skip." Johnson himself was a famous "skipper," and confessed that he seldom finished a book. It is true that he performed the amazing feat of rising two hours before his usual time to read Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_. He was a truthful man, or I should find difficulty in believing him. Of course the achievement was not so great as it seems, for though Johnson believed in early rising on principle and recommended all young men to practise it, he did not himself rise until noon. But the idea of getting up, if only at ten in the morning, with a feverish desire to read Burton tries my faith even in Johnson's veracity. It is pleasant to dip occasionally into that astonishing rag-box of learning, but most of us are as likely to read Bradshaw's Time Table through as Burton's _Anatomy_ through. It is not a book; it is a curiosity.

It is a common experience to find that the habit of "skipping" grows on us as we grow older. It is not merely that we are more tired or more lazy: it is that we are more discreet and more delicate in our intellectual feeding. It is with reading as with eating. When we are young we can eat anything. If we are offered a bun before dinner we express no astonishment, but consume it recklessly. But, grown older and wiser, as Holmes remarks, we receive the offer of a bun before dinner with polite surprise. And so with books. When the magic of Shelley seizes us at seventeen we can devour _The Revolt of Islam_ as we devoured that large boggy bun, but later we learn to discriminate even with Shelley, and to take great spaces of him as read. And even the most fervent Wordsworthian would admit that his reading of Wordsworth is patchy, and that if the poet had not written a line after he left Grasmere for Rydal Water, his indebtedness to him would not have been sensibly diminished. Who, for example, can honestly say that he has traversed the Sahara of the _Ecclesiastical Sonnets_?

This is not a plea for skimpy reading. It is good for the young to worry their bone even if there is little meat on it. I would have them serve an arduous apprenticeship in the great world of books, cleaving their own way laboriously through the wilderness. The anthology business for the young is a little over-done. The youthful digestion ought not to be weakened by an exclusive diet of "elegant extracts," and spoon-feeding robs us of the joys of discovery and adventure. What delight is there like encountering in the wilderness some great unknown of whom we have never heard? It is like coming into a fortune, or rather it is better than coming into a fortune, for these are "riches fineless" that grow with compound interest and are not subject to the vicissitudes of things. I found a young maiden of my acquaintance the other day in a mood of unusual exaltation. She had fallen in love and was hot with the first rapture of passion. She had encountered _Emma_ and was aflame with ardour for more adventures in the serene world that Jane Austen had opened out before her. That is the way, casual and unsought, that the realms of gold should be invaded. Youth should be encouraged to fashion its own taste and discriminate for itself between the good, the better and the best. When that is done we can "skip" as we like, with an easy mind and a good conscience. We have learned our path through the wilderness. We know where the hyacinths grow and where we can catch the smell of the wild thyme, and the copse where the nightingale sings to the moon. And if with this liberty of knowledge we "skip" some of the high-brows, and are found more often in the company of Borrow than of Bacon--well, we have done our task-work and are out to enjoy the sun and the wind on the heath.

AN OLD ENGLISH TOWN

It was a wish of Seneca's that the wise and virtuous when they slept could lend their thoughts and their feelings out to less wise and less virtuous people. It would be equally admirable if we could occasionally let our spiritual selves take wing and go on holiday, leaving the body at home to carry on the routine business, receive callers, answer the telephone, pay the bills, and so on. If it were possible for me to take such a holiday I should go to Tewkesbury, where the eighth centenary of the famous Norman church of that town is being celebrated. There was a time when I had no desire to go to Tewkesbury. It was one of the places I did not want to go to because I feared that seeing it would destroy the Tewkesbury of my fancy. No one would hesitate to go to a place like Birmingham or Glasgow, for their names awaken no emotions in the mind, and experience of them can shatter no pleasant images.

But Tewkesbury is a name to conjure with. It belongs to the poetry of things. It is entangled in history and comes with the pomp of trumpets and the echoes of far-off deeds. It has the tang of Shakespeare about it. Was it not with its name that that great star swam into our ken with the earliest of our remembered lines?--

... false, fleeting, perjured Clarence
That stabbed me on the field by Tewkesbury.

Observe, not "the field at Tewkesbury" or "of Tewkesbury," but "the field by Tewkesbury." A subtle difference, but enough to convince anyone who has been to that field that Shakespeare wandered there in his young days, perhaps boating thither from Stratford some summer day with Ann Hathaway. Was it not Tewkesbury's mustard that Falstaff hurled at Poins--or was it Pistol? "His wits are as thick as Tewkesbury mustard," he said. I like to think that Falstaff stayed at the "Hop Pole" at Tewkesbury on that famous recruiting journey into Gloucestershire, when he ate a pippin in Squire Shallow's orchard, and that it was the mustard he got there that made his eyes water and stuck in his memory. It was certainly at the "Hop Pole" that Mr. Pickwick stopped for dinner on his journey from Bath. That is the last time, I think, that anything important happened at Tewkesbury. Since then it has slept, and one liked to think it was sleeping in a beautiful mediæval dream, undisturbed by anything more modern than an occasional stage-coach or the horn of the red-coated huntsman clattering through the street.

That was how I liked to think of Tewkesbury, and I stayed away from it, lest I should find it was all cinemas, fried-fish shops and tin tabernacles. But one day last summer I was journeying by road from Wales and found Tewkesbury in my path, and that it was convenient to stay like Mr. Pickwick at the "Hop Pole." And now I know that Tewkesbury is as good as its name, and that I can go there and see as perfect a bit of old England as can be seen from the Tamar to the Tweed. Of course, a city like York will give you infinitely more, layer on layer of history written on its stones, telling of the England of the Britons, of the Romans, the Saxons, the Normans, and so onward.

But these are remains--the splendid litter of the centuries. The wonderful thing about Tewkesbury is that it is a living whole, a single town of Tudor England left apparently almost untouched--certainly unspoiled. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century timbered houses, with their upper floors overhanging the pavements, line the three broad compact streets, and between these reverend buildings little doorways admit to multitudinous courts where the poor live. I daresay it oughtn't to be so. I daresay the courts ought to be swept away and the people housed with gardens far afield. But at this moment I am not a social enthusiast, but a lover of the picturesque, and no doubt it is this compact structure of the place that has kept it so perfect a survival of the past. By the gardens and the courts flows Shakespeare's Avon, and just beyond the town it joins the broad flood of the Severn near the Bloody Field where the Wars of the Roses ended--a place of rank grass, left, I was told, untouched since that day of slaughter, nearly half a thousand years ago. "They're afeard o' what they might find," said the old man who directed me. And over all is the great Abbey Church, next to Durham Cathedral perhaps the finest piece of Norman ecclesiastical architecture in England. Thither from the Bloody Field on that day of battle long ago were borne the corpses of the two rivals, and there their bones lie side by side, preaching, for those who care to hear, more potent sermons on the fitful fever of life than ever came from the pulpit.

And this beautiful town is set in a landscape as gracious as "a melody that's sweetly played in tune"--a wide, rich vale, the most fertile part of England. The sun comes up over the Cotswolds in the morning, and sets over the great range of the Malverns in the evening. Between these two sheltering ramparts Tewkesbury lies, dreaming of the Middle Ages. I daresay it has its worries like any other place. But I refuse to be a realist about Tewkesbury. I will indulge my love of romance. I will remember only that as I came away from the "Hop Pole" a vehicle with four jolly-looking fellows inside came up tooting a horn that played old-fashioned airs, and bringing in its train a swarm of boys. And as the boys gathered round the car one of the jolly-looking fellows put his hand in his pocket and drew out a heap of coins that he scattered among them. It was in the true spirit of the place. I fancy Mr. Pickwick did the same thing when he left the "Hop Pole," and I am sure that Falstaff did--in spite of the mustard. I would have done the same thing myself, if I had had the courage and the coppers. The next time I go to Tewkesbury I will fill my pockets with coppers.

ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA

I was travelling down to Devonshire the other day when I met a man in the train with whom I fell into conversation. It was a wonderful day. We had left the fog behind us in London and the countryside glowed, rich and warm, under the sunshine of a cloudless November day. It seemed an occasion on which one could have found a thousand agreeable things to talk about, but I noticed that wherever the conversation with the stranger started it always got round to the taxation of land values. Now I happen to be in favour of the taxation of land values. It is a question about which my mind is as clear as it is about anything in this perplexing world. I am prepared to vote in favour of it in due season and to speak in favour of it when I think any useful purpose can be served. But I confess I got painfully bored by this well-meaning man and that I hailed the opportunity of going to the restaurant car to lunch with secret thanksgiving. I don't think I shall ever be caught _tête-à-tête_ with that missionary of the One Idea again. I have got him on the list of People I Can Do Without.

It is a list made up largely of those who wear a bee in their bonnet. There is no surer prescription for the Complete Bore than the tyranny of an idea. We flee instinctively from the man who is always telling us the same thing, who comes into the circle with one ceaseless theme, to which he hitches the heavens above and the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth. There is that excellent publicist, Vernon Pizzey, for example. You have but to say "Good day" to him in the street, and he will buttonhole you, and, with the abstracted air of one who has seen a vision, will open the flood-gates of Birth Control upon you.

When I first knew him he was the passionate pilgrim of Prohibition. Banish alcohol from the face of the earth, and all the problems of life would be solved, and sorrow and sighing would flee away. He has passed out of that phase. It is no longer the abolition of Drink that lights the fires of fanatical faith in his eyes: it is the Abolition of Children. The New Jerusalem which he will build in England's green and pleasant land will have no children playing in its streets. When he hears of a childless home, a ghost of a smile flits over his features, and when he hears of a family of six he looks as though he has heard of some unmentionable sin. He dreams of a golden age when the propagation of children among the poor will be a punishable offence, and when the people of whom he does not approve will be sterilised by order of the court. His prophet is Dean Inge.