Chapter II: Part 2

Yet it was a house worthy of description and careful inventory, and for that reason I have appealed to the Muse of History whose business it is to set down everything in order as it happens, judging between good and evil, selecting facts, condensing narratives, admitting picturesque touches, and showing her further knowledge by the allusive method or use of the dependent clause. Well then, inspired, I will tell you exactly how that house was disposed. First, there ran up the middle of it a staircase which, had Horace seen it (and heaven knows he was the kind of man to live in such a house), he would have called in his original and striking way "Res Angusta Domi," for it was a narrow thing. Narrow do I call it? Yes--and yet not so narrow. It was narrow enough to avoid all appearance of comfort or majesty, yet not so narrow as to be quaint or snug. It was so designed that two people could walk exactly abreast, for it was necessary that upon great occasions the ladies should be taken down from the drawing-room by the gentlemen to the dining-room, yet it would have been a sin and a shame to make it wider than that, and the house was not built in the days of crinolines. Upon these occasions it was customary for the couples to go down in order and in stately fashion, and the hostess went last; but do not imagine that there was any order of precedence. Oh, no! Far from it, they went as they were directed.

This staircase filled up a kind of Chimney or Funnel, or rather Parallelepiped, in the house: half-way between each floor was a landing where it turned right round on itself, and on each floor a larger landing flanked by two doors on either side, which made four altogether. This staircase was covered with Brussels carpet (and let me tell you in passing that no better covering for stairs was ever yet invented; it wears well and can be turned, and when the uppers are worn you can move the whole thing down one file and put the steps where the uppers were. None of your cocoanut stuff or gimcracks for the honest house: when there is money you should have Brussels, when you have none linoleum--but I digress). The stair-rods were of brass and beautifully polished, the banisters of iron painted to look like mahogany; and this staircase, which I may take to be the emblem of a good life lived for duty, went up one pair, and two pair, and three pair--all in the same way, and did not stop till it got to the top. But just as a good life has beneath it a human basis so this (heaven forgive me!) somewhat commonplace staircase changed its character when it passed the hall door, and as it ran down to the basement had no landing, ornament, carpet or other paraphernalia, but a sound flight of stone steps with a cold rim of unpainted metal for the hand.

The hall that led to these steps was oblong and little furnished. There was a hat-rack, a fireplace (in which a fire was not lit) and two pictures; one a photograph of the poor men to whom the owner paid weekly wages at his Works, all set out in a phalanx, or rather fan, with the Owner of the House (and them) in the middle, the other a steel engraving entitled "The Monarch of the Forest," from a painting by Sir Edwin Landseer. It represented a stag and was very ugly.

On the ground floor of the House (which is a libel, for it was some feet above the ground, and was led up to by several steps, as the porch could show) there were four rooms--the Dining-room, the Smoking-room, the Downstairs-room and the Back-room. The Dining-room was so called because all meals were held in it; the Smoking-room because it was customary to smoke all over the house (except the Drawing-room); the Back-room because it was at the back, and the Downstairs-room because it was downstairs. Upon my soul, I would give you a better reason if I had one, but I have none. Only I may say that the Smoking-room was remarkable for two stuffed birds, the Downstairs-room from the fact that the Owner lived in it and felt at ease there, the Back-room from the fact that no one ever went into it (and quite right too), while the Dining-room--but the Dining-room stands separate.

The Dining-room was well carpeted; it had in its midst a large mahogany table so made that it could get still larger by the addition of leaves inside; there were even flaps as well. It had eleven chairs, and these in off-times stood ranged round the wall thinking of nothing, but at meal times were (according to the number wanted) put round the table. It is a theory among those who believe that a spirit nourishes all things from within, that there was some competition amongst these chairs as to which should be used at table, so dull, forlorn and purposeless was their life against the wall. Seven pictures hung on that wall; not because it was a mystic number, but because it filled up all the required space; two on each side of the looking-glass and three large ones on the opposite wall. They were all of them engravings, and one of them at least was that of a prominent statesman (Lord Beaconsfield), while the rest had to do with historical subjects, such as the visit of Prince Albert to the Exhibition of 1851, and I really forget what else. There was a Chiffonier at the end of the room in which the wines and spirits were kept, and which also had a looking-glass above it; also a white cloth on the top for no reason on earth. An arm-chair (in which the Owner sat) commonly stood at the head of the table; this remained there even between meals, and was a symbol that he was master of the house. Four meals were held here. Breakfast at eight, dinner at one, tea at six, and a kind of supper (when the children had gone to bed) at nine or so. But what am I saying--_quo Musa Historiae tendis?_--dear! dear! I thought I was back again in the old times! a thousand pardons. At the time my story opens--and closes also for that matter (for I deal of the Owner and the House _in articulo mortis_ so to speak; on the very edge of death)--it was far otherwise. Breakfast was when you like (for him, however, always at the same old hour, and there he would sit alone, his wife dead, his son asleep--trying to read his newspaper, but staring out from time to time through the window and feeling very companion-less). Dinner was no longer dinner; there was "luncheon" to which nobody came except on Saturdays. Then there was another thing (called by the old name of dinner) at half-past seven, and what had happened to supper no one ever made out. Some people said it had gone to Prince's, but certainly the Owner never followed it there.

On the next floor was the Drawing-room, noted for its cabinet of curiosities, its small aquarium, its large sofa, its piano and its inlaid table. The back of the drawing-room was another room beyond folding doors. This would have been convenient if a dance had ever been given in the house. On the other side were the best bedroom and a dressing-room. Each in its way what might be expected, save that at the head of the best bed were two little pockets as in the time of our grandfathers; also there was a Chevalier looking-glass and on the dressing-table a pin-cushion with pins arranged in a pattern. The fire-place and the mantelpiece were of white marble and had on them two white vases picked out in bright green, a clock with a bronze upon it representing a waiter dressed up partly in fifteenth-century plate and partly in twelfth-century mail, and on the wall were two Jewish texts, each translated into Jacobean English and illuminated with a Victorian illumination. One said: "He hath prevented all my ways." The other said: "Wisdom is better than Rubies." But the gothic "u" was ill made and it looked like "Rabies." There was also in the room a good wardrobe of a kind now difficult to get, made out of cedar and very reasonable in arrangement. There was, moreover (now it occurs to me), a little table for writing on; there was writing paper with "Wood Thorpe" on it, but there were no stamps, and the ink was dry in the bottles (for there were two bottles).

Well, now, shall I be at the pains of telling you what there was upstairs? Not I! I am tired enough as it is of detailing all these things. I will speak generally. There were four bedrooms. They were used by the family, and above there was an attic which belonged to the servants. The decoration of the wall was everywhere much the same, save that it got a little meaner as one rose, till at last, in the top rooms of all, there was nothing but little photographs of sweethearts or pictures out of illustrated papers stuck against the walls. The wall-paper, that had cost 3_s_. 3_d_. a piece in the hall and dining-room, and 7_s_. 6_d_. in the drawing-room, suddenly began to cost 1_s_. 4_d_. in the upper story and the attic was merely whitewashed.

One thing more there was, a little wooden gate. It had been put there when the children were little, and had remained ever since at the top of the stairs. Why? It may have been mere routine. It may have been romance. The Owner was a practical man, and the little gate was in the way; it was true he never had to shut and open it on his way to bed, and but rarely even saw it. Did he leave it there from a weak sentiment or from a culpable neglect? He was not a sentimental man; on the other hand, he was not negligent. There is a great deal to be said on both sides, and it is too late to discuss that now.

Heaven send us such a house, or a house of some kind; but Heaven send us also the liberty to furnish it as we choose. For this it was that made the Owner's joy: he had done what he liked in his own surroundings, and I very much doubt whether the people who live in Queen Anne houses or go in for timber fronts can say the same.

ONE THE ILLNESS OF MY MUSE

The other day I noticed that my Muse, who had long been ailing, silent and morose, was showing signs of actual illness.

Now, though it is by no means one of my habits to coddle the dogs, cats and other familiars of my household, yet my Muse had so pitiful an appearance that I determined to send for the doctor, but not before I had seen her to bed with a hot bottle, a good supper, and such other comforts as the Muses are accustomed to value. All that could be done for the poor girl was done thoroughly; a fine fire was lit in her bedroom, and a great number of newspapers such as she is given to reading for her recreation were bought at a neighbouring shop. When she had drunk her wine and read in their entirety the _Daily Telegraph_, the _Morning Post_, the _Standard_, the _Daily Mail_, the _Daily Express_, the _Times_, the _Daily News_, and even the _Advertiser_, I was glad to see her sink into a profound slumber.

I will confess that the jealousy which is easily aroused among servants when one of their number is treated with any special courtesy gave me some concern, and I was at the pains of explaining to the household not only the grave indisposition from which the Muse suffered, but also the obligation I was under to her on account of her virtues: which were, her long and faithful service, her willingness, and the excess of work which she had recently been compelled to perform. Her fellow-servants, to my astonishment and pleasure, entered at once into the spirit of my apology: the still-room maid offered to sit up with her all night, or at least until the trained nurse should arrive, and the groom of the chambers, with a good will that I confess was truly surprising in one of his proud nature, volunteered to go himself and order straw for the street from a neighbouring stable.

The cause of this affection which the Muse had aroused in the whole household I subsequently discovered to lie in her own amiable and unselfish temper. She had upon two occasions inspired the knife-boy to verses which had subsequently appeared in the _Spectator_, and with weekly regularity she would lend her aid to the cook in the composition of those technical reviews by which (as it seemed) that domestic increased her ample wages.

The Muse had slept for a full six hours when the doctor arrived--a specialist in these matters and one who has before now been called in (I am proud to say) by such great persons as Mr. Hichens, Mr. Churchill, and Mr. Roosevelt when their Muses have been out of sorts. Indeed, he is that doctor who operated for aphasia upon the Muse of the late Mr. Rossetti just before his demise. His fees are high, but I was willing enough to pay, and certainly would never have consented--as have, I regret to say, so many of my unworthy contemporaries--to employ a veterinary surgeon upon such an occasion.

The great specialist approached with a determined air the couch where the patient lay, awoke her according to the ancient formula, and proceeded to question her upon her symptoms. He soon discovered their gravity, and I could see by his manner that he was anxious to an extreme. The Muse had grown so weak as to be unable to dictate even a little blank verse, and the indisposition had so far affected her mind that she had no memory of Parnassus, but deliriously maintained that she had been born in the home counties--nay, in the neighbourhood of Uxbridge. Her every phrase was a deplorable commonplace, and, on the physician applying a stethoscope and begging her to attempt some verse, she could give us nothing better than a sonnet upon the expansion of the Empire. Her weakness was such that she could do no more than awake, and that feebly, while she professed herself totally unable to arise, to expand, to soar, to haunt, or to perform any of those exercises which are proper to her profession.

When his examination was concluded the doctor took me aside and asked me upon what letters the patient had recently fed. I told him upon the daily Press, some of the reviews, the telegrams from the latest seat of war, and occasionally a debate in Parliament. At this he shook his head and asked whether too much had not recently been asked of her. I admitted that she had done a very considerable amount of work for so young a Muse in the past year, though its quality was doubtful, and I hastened to add that I was the less to blame as she had wasted not a little of her powers upon others without asking my leave; notably upon the knife-boy and the cook.

The doctor was then good enough to write out a prescription in Latin and to add such general recommendations as are commonly of more value than physic. She was to keep her bed, to be allowed no modern literature of any kind, unless Milton and Swift may be admitted as moderns, and even these authors and their predecessors were to be admitted in very sparing quantities. If any signs of inversion, archaism, or neologistic tendencies appeared he was to be summoned at once; but of these (he added) he had little fear. He did not doubt that in a few weeks we should have her up and about again, but he warned me against letting her begin work too soon.

"I would not," he said, "permit her to undertake any effort until she can inspire within one day of twelve hours at least eighteen quatrains, and those lucid, grammatical, and moving. As for single lines, tags, fine phrases, and the rest, they are no sign whatever of returning health, if anything of the contrary."

He also begged that she might not be allowed any Greek or Latin for ten days, but I reassured him upon the matter by telling him that she was totally unacquainted with those languages--at which he expressed some pleasure but even more astonishment.

At last he told me that he was compelled to be gone; the season had been very hard, nor had he known so general a breakdown among the Muses of his various clients.

I thought it polite as I took him to the door to ask after some of his more distinguished patients; he was glad to say that the Archbishop of Armagh's was very vigorous indeed, in spite of the age of her illustrious master. He had rarely known a more inventive or courageous female, but when, as I handed him into his carriage, I asked after that of Mr. Kipling, his face became suddenly grave; and he asked me, "Have you not heard?"

"No," said I; but I had a fatal presentiment of what was to follow, and indeed I was almost prepared for it when he answered in solemn tones:

"She is dead."

ON A DOG AND A MAN ALSO

There lives in the middle of the Weald upon the northern edge of a small wood where a steep brow of orchard pasture goes down to a little river, a Recluse who is of middle age and possessed of all the ordinary accomplishments; that is, French and English literature are familiar to him, he can himself compose, he has read his classical Latin and can easily decipher such Greek as he has been taught in youth. He is unmarried, he is by birth a gentleman, he enjoys an income sufficient to give him food and wine, and has for companion a dog who, by the standard of dogs, is somewhat more elderly than himself.

This dog is called Argus, not that he has a hundred eyes nor even two, indeed he has but one; for the other, or right eye, he lost the sight of long ago from luxury and lack of exercise. This dog Argus is neither small nor large; he is brown in colour and covered--though now but partially--with curly hair. In this he resembles many other dogs, but he differs from most of his breed in a further character, which is that by long association with a Recluse he has acquired a human manner that is unholy. He is fond of affected poses. When he sleeps it is with that abandonment of fatigue only naturally to be found in mankind. He watches sunsets and listens mournfully to music. Cooked food is dearer to him than raw, and he will eat nuts--a monstrous thing in a dog and proof of corruption.

Nevertheless, or, rather, on account of all this, the dog Argus is exceedingly dear to his master, and of both I had the other day a singular revelation when I set out at evening to call upon my friend.

The sun had set, but the air was still clear and it was light enough to have shot a bat (had there been bats about and had one had a gun) when I knocked at the cottage door and opened it. Right within, one comes to the first of the three rooms which the Recluse possesses, and there I found him tenderly nursing the dog Argus, who lay groaning in the arm-chair and putting on all the airs of a Christian man at the point of death.

The Recluse did not even greet me, but asked me only in a hurried way how I thought the dog Argus looked. I answered gravely and in a low tone so as not to disturb the sufferer, that as I had not seen him since Tuesday, when he was, for an elderly dog, in the best of health, he certainly presented a sad contrast, but that perhaps he was better than he had been some few hours before, and that the Recluse himself would be the best judge of that.

My friend was greatly relieved at what I said, and told me that he thought the dog was better, compared at least with that same morning; then, whether you believe it or not, he took him by the left leg just above the paw and held it for a little time as though he were feeling a pulse, and said, "He came back less than twenty-four hours ago!" It seemed that the dog Argus, for the first time in fourteen years, had run away, and that for the first time in perhaps twenty or thirty years the emotion of loss had entered into the life of the Recluse, and that he had felt something outside books and outside the contemplation of the landscape about his hermitage.

In a short time the dog fell into a slumber, as was shown by a number of grunts and yaps which proved his sleep, for the dog Argus is of that kind which hunts in dreams. His master covered him reverently rather than gently with an Indian cloth and, still leaving him in the armchair, sat down upon a common wooden chair close by and gazed pitifully at the fire. For my part I stood up and wondered at them both, and wondered also at that in man by which he must attach himself to something, even if it be but a dog, a politician, or an ungrateful child.

When he had gazed at the fire a little while the Recluse began to talk, and I listened to him talking:

"Even if they had not dug up so much earth to prove it I should have known," said he, "that the Odyssey was written not at the beginning of a civilisation nor in the splendour of it, but towards its close. I do not say this from the evening light that shines across its pages, for that is common to all profound work, but I say it because of the animals, and especially because of the dog, who was the only one to know his master when that master came home a beggar to his own land, before his youth was restored to him, and before he got back his women and his kingship by the bending of his bow, and before he hanged the housemaids and killed all those who had despised him."

"But how," said I (for I am younger than he), "can the animals in the poem show you that the poem belongs to a decline?"

"Why," said he, "because at the end of a great civilisation the air gets empty, the light goes out of the sky, the gods depart, and men in their loneliness put out a groping hand, catching at the friendship of, and trying to understand, whatever lives and suffers as they do. You will find it never fail that where a passionate regard for the animals about us, or even a great tenderness for them, is to be found there is also to be found decay in the State."

"I hope not," said I. "Moreover, it cannot be true, for in the Thirteenth Century, which was certainly the healthiest time we ever had, animals were understood; and I will prove it to you in several carvings."

He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, saying, "In the rough and in general it is true; and the reason is the reason I have given you, that when decay begins, whether of a man or of a State, there comes with it an appalling and a torturing loneliness in which our energies decline into a strong affection for whatever is constantly our companion and for whatever is certainly present upon earth. For we have lost the sky."

"Then if the senses are so powerful in a decline of the State there should come at the same time," said I, "a quick forgetfulness of the human dead and an easy change of human friendship?"

"There does," he answered, and to that there was no more to be said.

"I know it by my own experience," he continued. "When, yesterday, at sunset, I looked for my dog Argus and could not find him, I went out into the wood and called him: the darkness came and I found no trace of him. I did not hear him barking far off as I have heard him before when he was younger and went hunting for a while, and three times that night I came back out of the wild into the warmth of my house, making sure he would have returned, but he was never there. The third time I had gone a mile out to the gamekeeper's to give him money if Argus should be found, and I asked him as many questions and as foolish as a woman would ask. Then I sat up right into the night, thinking that every movement of the wind outside or of the drip of water was the little pad of his step coming up the flagstones to the door. I was even in the mood when men see unreal things, and twice I thought I saw him passing quickly between my chair and the passage to the further room. But these things are proper to the night and the strongest thing I suffered for him was in the morning.

"It was, as you know, very bitterly cold for several days. They found things dead in the hedgerows, and there was perhaps no running water between here and the Downs. There was no shelter from the snow. There was no cover for my friend at all. And when I was up at dawn with the faint light about, a driving wind full of sleet filled all the air. Then I made certain that the dog Argus was dead, and what was worse that I should not find his body: that the old dog had got caught in some snare or that his strength had failed him through the cold, as it fails us human beings also upon such nights, striking at the heart.

"Though I was certain that I would not see him again yet I went on foolishly and aimlessly enough, plunging through the snow from one spinney to another and hoping that I might hear a whine. I heard none: and if the little trail he had made in his departure might have been seen in the evening, long before that morning the drift would have covered it.

"I had eaten nothing and yet it was near noon when I returned, pushing forward to the cottage against the pressure of the storm, when I found there, miserably crouched, trembling, half dead, in the lee of a little thick yew beside my door, the dog Argus; and as I came his tail just wagged and he just moved his ears, but he had not the strength to come near me, his master."

[Greek: ourae men rh ho g esaene kai ouata kabbalen ampho, asson d ouket epeita dunaesato oio anaktos elthemen.]

"I carried him in and put him here, feeding him by force, and I have restored him."

All this the Recluse said to me with as deep and as restrained emotion as though he had been speaking of the most sacred things, as indeed, for him, these things were sacred.

It was therefore a mere inadvertence in me, and an untrained habit of thinking aloud, which made me say:

"Good Heavens, what will you do when the dog Argus dies?"

At once I wished I had not said it, for I could see that the Recluse could not bear the words. I looked therefore a little awkwardly beyond him and was pleased to see the dog Argus lazily opening his one eye and surveying me with torpor and with contempt. He was certainly less moved than his master.

Then in my heart I prayed that of these two (unless The God would make them both immortal and catch them up into whatever place is better than the Weald, or unless he would grant them one death together upon one day) that the dog Argus might survive my friend, and that the Recluse might be the first to dissolve that long companionship. For of this I am certain, that the dog would suffer less; for men love their dependents much more than do their dependents them; and this is especially true of brutes; for men are nearer to the gods.

ON TEA

When I was a boy--

What a phrase! What memories! O! Noctes Coenasque Deûm! Why, then, is there something in man that wholly perishes? It is against sound religion to believe it, but the world would lead one to imagine it. The Hills are there. I see them as I write. They are the cloud or wall that dignified my sixteenth year. And the river is there, and flows by that same meadow beyond my door; from above Coldwatham the same vast horizon opens westward in waves of receding crests more changeable and more immense than is even our sea. The same sunsets at times bring it all in splendour, for whatever herds the western clouds together in our stormy evenings is as stable and as vigorous as the County itself. If, therefore, there is something gone, it is I that have lost it.

Certainly something is diminished (the Priests and the tradition of the West forbid me to say that the soul can perish), certainly something is diminished--what? Well, I do not know its name, nor has anyone known it face to face or apprehended it in this life, but the sense and influence--alas! especially the memory of It, lies in the words "When I was a boy," and if I write those words again in any document whatsoever, even in a lawyer's letter, without admitting at once a full-blooded and galloping parenthesis, may the Seven Devils of Sense take away the last remnant of the joy they lend me.

When I was a boy there was nothing all about the village or the woods that had not its living god, and all these gods were good. Oh! How the County and its Air shone from within; what meaning lay in unexpected glimpses of far horizons; what a friend one was with the clouds!

Well, all I can say to the Theologians is this:

"I will grant you that the Soul does not decay: you know more of such flimsy things than I do. But you, on your side, must grant me that there is Something which does not enter into your systems. That has perished, and I mean to mourn it all the days of my life. Pray do not interfere with that peculiar ritual."

When I was a boy I knew Nature as a child knows its nurse, and Tea I denounced for a drug. I found to support this fine instinct many arguments, all of which are still sound, though not one of them would prevent me now from drinking my twentieth cup. It was introduced late and during a corrupt period. It was an exotic. It was a sham exhilarant to which fatal reactions could not but attach. It was no part of the Diet of the Natural Man. The two nations that alone consume it--the English and the Chinese--are become, by its baneful influence on the imagination, the most easily deceived in the world. Their politics are a mass of bombastic illusions. Also it dries their skins. It tans the liver, hardens the coats of the stomach, makes the brain feverishly active, rots the nerve-springs; all that is still true. Nevertheless I now drink it, and shall drink it; for of all the effects of Age none is more profound than this: that it leads men to the worship of some one spirit less erect than the Angels. A care, an egotism, an irritability with regard to details, an anxious craving, a consummate satisfaction in the performance of the due rites, an ecstasy of habit, all proclaim the senile heresy, the material Religion. I confess to Tea.

All is arranged in this Cult with the precision of an ancient creed. The matter of the Sacrifice must come from China. He that would drink Indian Tea would smoke hay. The Pot must be of metal, and the metal must be a white metal, not gold or iron. Who has not known the acidity and paucity of Tea from a silver-gilt or golden spout? The Pot must first be warmed by pouring in a little _boiling_ water (the word _boiling_ should always be underlined); then the water is poured away and a few words are said. Then the Tea is put in and unrolls and spreads in the steam. Then, in due order, on these expanding leaves _Boiling_ Water is largely poured and the god arises, worthy of continual but evil praise and of the thanks of the vicious, a Deity for the moment deceitfully kindly to men. Under his influence the whole mind receives a sharp vision of power. It is a phantasm and a cheat. Men can do wonders through wine; through Tea they only think themselves great and clear--but that is enough if one has bound oneself to that strange idol and learnt the magic phrase on His Pedestal, [Greek: ARISTON MEN TI], for of all the illusions and dreams men cherish none is so grandiose as the illusion of conscious power within.

* * * * *

Well, then, it fades.... I begin to see that this cannot continue ... of Tea it came, inconsecutive and empty; with the influence of Tea dissolving, let these words also dissolve.... I could wish it had been Opium, or Haschisch, or even Gin; you would have had something more soaring for your money.... _In vino Veritas. In Aqua satietas. In_ ... What is the Latin for Tea? What! Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.

ON THEM

I do not like Them. It is no good asking me why, though I have plenty of reasons. I do not like Them. There would be no particular point in saying I do not like Them if it were not that so many people doted on Them, and when one hears Them praised, it goads one to expressing one's hatred and fear of Them.

I know very well that They can do one harm, and that They have occult powers. All the world has known that for a hundred thousand years, more or less, and every attempt has been made to propitiate Them. James I. would drown Their mistress or burn her, but _They_ were spared. Men would mummify Them in Egypt, and worship the mummies; men would carve Them in stone in Cyprus, and Crete and Asia Minor, or (more remarkable still) artists, especially in the Western Empire, would leave Them out altogether; so much was Their influence dreaded. Well, I yield so far as not to print Their name, and only to call Them "They", but I hate Them, and I'm not afraid to say so.

If you will take a little list of the chief crimes that living beings can commit you will find that They commit them all. And They are cruel; cruelty is even in Their tread and expression. They are hatefully cruel. I saw one of Them catch a mouse the other day (the cat is now out of the bag), and it was a very much more sickening sight, I fancy, than ordinary murder. You may imagine that They catch mice to eat them. It is not so. They catch mice to torture them. And what is worse, They will teach this to Their children--Their children who are naturally innocent and fat, and full of goodness, are deliberately and systematically corrupted by Them; there is diabolism in it.

Other beings (I include mankind) will be gluttonous, but gluttonous spasmodically, or with a method, or shamefacedly, or, in some way or another that qualifies the vice; not so They. They are gluttonous always and upon all occasions, and in every place and for ever. It was only last Vigil of All Fools' Day when, myself fasting, I filled up the saucer seven times with milk and seven times it was emptied, and there went up the most peevish, querulous, vicious complaint and demand for an eighth. They will eat some part of the food of all that are in the house. Now even a child, the most gluttonous one would think of all living creatures, would not do that. It makes a selection, _They_ do not. _They_ will drink beer. This is not a theory; I know it; I have seen it with my own eyes. They will eat special foods; They will even eat dry bread. Here again I have personal evidence of the fact; They will eat the dog's biscuits, but never upon any occasion will They eat anything that has been poisoned, so utterly lacking are They in simplicity and humility, and so abominably well filled with cunning by whatever demon first brought their race into existence.

They also, alone of all creation, love hateful noises. Some beings indeed (and I count Man among them) cannot help the voice with which they have been endowed, but they know that it is offensive, and are at pains to make it better; others (such as the peacock or the elephant) also know that their cry is unpleasant. They therefore use it sparingly. Others again, the dove, the nightingale, the thrush, know that their voices are very pleasant, and entertain us with them all day and all night long; but They know that Their voices are the most hideous of all the sounds in the world, and, knowing this, They perpetually insist upon thrusting those voices upon us, saying, as it were, "I am giving myself pain, but I am giving you more pain, and therefore I shall go on." And They choose for the place where this pain shall be given, exact and elevated situations, very close to our ears. Is there any need for me to point out that in every city they will begin their wicked jar just at the time when its inhabitants must sleep? In London you will not hear it till after midnight; in the county towns it begins at ten; in remote villages as early as nine.

Their Master also protects them. They have a charmed life. I have seen one thrown from a great height into a London street, which when It reached it It walked quietly away with the dignity of the Lost World to which It belonged.

If one had the time one could watch Them day after day, and never see Them do a single kind or good thing, or be moved by a single virtuous impulse. They have no gesture for the expression of admiration, love, reverence or ecstasy. They have but one method of expressing content, and They reserve that for moments of physical repletion. The tail, which is in all other animals the signal for joy or for defence, or for mere usefulness, or for a noble anger, is with Them agitated only to express a sullen discontent.

All that They do is venomous, and all that They think is evil, and when I take mine away (as I mean to do next week--in a basket), I shall first read in a book of statistics what is the wickedest part of London, and I shall leave It there, for I know of no one even among my neighbours quite so vile as to deserve such a gift.

ON RAILWAYS AND THINGS

Railways have changed the arrangement and distribution of crowds and solitude, but have done nothing to disturb the essential contrast between them.

The more behindhand of my friends, among whom I count the weary men of the towns, are ceaselessly bewailing the effect of railways and the spoiling of the country; nor do I fail, when I hear such complaints, to point out their error, courteously to hint at their sheep-like qualities, and with all the delicacy imaginable to let them understand they are no better than machines repeating worn-out formulae through the nose. The railways and those slow lumbering things the steamboats have not spoilt our solitudes, on the contrary they have intensified the quiet of the older haunts, they have created new sanctuaries, and (crowning blessing) they make it easy for us to reach our refuges.

For in the first place you will notice that new lines of travel are like canals cut through the stagnant marsh of an old civilisation, draining it of populace and worry, and concentrating upon themselves the odious pressure of humanity.

You know (to adopt the easy or conversational style) that you and I belong to a happy minority. We are the sons of the hunters and the wandering singers, and from our boyhood nothing ever gave us greater pleasure than to stand under lonely skies in forest clearings, or to find a beach looking westward at evening over unfrequented seas. But the great mass of men love companionship so much that nothing seems of any worth compared with it. Human communion is their meat and drink, and so they use the railways to make bigger and bigger hives for themselves.

Now take the true modern citizen, the usurer. How does the usurer suck the extremest pleasure out of his holiday? He takes the train preferably at a very central station near the Strand, and (if he can choose his time) on a foggy and dirty day; he picks out an express that will take him with the greatest speed through the Garden of Eden, nor does he begin to feel the full savour of relaxation till a row of abominable villas' appears on the southern slope of what were once the downs; these villas stand like the skirmishers of a foul army deployed: he is immediately whirled into Brighton and is at peace. There he has his wish for three days; there he can never see anything but houses, or, if he has to walk along the sea, he can rest his eye on herds of unhappy people and huge advertisements, and he can hear the newspaper boys telling lies (perhaps special lies he has paid for) at the top of their voices; he can note as evening draws on the pleasant glare of gas upon the street mud and there pass him the familiar surroundings of servility, abject poverty, drunkenness, misery, and vice. He has his music-hall on the Saturday evening with the sharp, peculiar finish of the London accent in the patriotic song, he has the London paper on Sunday to tell him that his nastiest little Colonial War was a crusade, and on Monday morning he has the familiar feeling that follows his excesses of the previous day.... Are you not glad that such men and their lower-fellows swarm by hundreds of thousands into the "resorts"? Do you not bless the railways that take them so quickly from one Hell to another.

Never let me hear you say that the railways spoil a countryside; they do, it is true, spoil this or that particular place--as, for example, Crewe, Brighton, Stratford-on-Avon--but for this disadvantage they give us I know not how many delights. What is more English than the country railway station? I defy the eighteenth century to produce anything more English, more full of home and rest and the nature of the country, than my junction. Twenty-seven trains a day stop at it or start from it; it serves even the expresses. Smith's monopoly has a bookstall there; you can get cheap Kipling and Harmsworth to any extent, and yet it is a theme for English idylls. The one-eyed porter whom I have known from childhood; the station-master who ranges us all in ranks, beginning with the Duke and ending with a sad, frayed and literary man; the little chaise in which the two old ladies from Barlton drive up to get their paper of an evening, the servant from the inn, the newsboy whose mother keeps a sweetshop--they are all my village friends. The glorious Sussex accent, whose only vowel is the broad "a", grows but more rich and emphatic from the necessity of impressing itself upon foreign intruders. The smoke also of the train as it skirts the Downs is part and parcel of what has become (thanks to the trains) our encloistered country life; the smoke of the trains is a little smudge of human activity which permits us to match our incomparable seclusion with the hurly-burly from which we have fled. Upon my soul, when I climb up the Beacon to read my book on the warm turf, the sight of an engine coming through the cutting is an emphasis of my selfish enjoyment. I say "There goes the Brighton train", but the image of Brighton, with its Anglo-Saxons and its Vision of Empire, does not oppress me; it is a far-off thing; its life ebbs and flows along that belt of iron to distances that do not regard me.

Consider this also with regard to my railway: it brings me what I want in order to be perfect in my isolation. Those books discussing Problems: whether or not there is such an idea as right; the inconvenience of being married; the worry of being Atheist and yet living upon a clerical endowment,--these fine discussions come from a library in a box by train and I can torture myself for a shilling, whereas, before the railways, I should have had to fall back on the _Gentleman's Magazine_ and the County History. In the way of newspapers it provides me with just the companionship necessary to a hermitage. Often and often, after getting through one paper, I stroll down to the junction and buy fifteen others, and so enjoy the fruits of many minds.

Thanks to my railway I can sit in the garden of an evening and read my paper as I smoke my pipe, and say, "Ah! That's Buggin's work. I remember him well; he worked for Rhodes.... Hullo! Here's Simpson at it again; since when did they buy _him_?..." And so forth. I lead my pastoral life, happy in the general world about me, and I serve, as sauce to such healthy meat, the piquant wickedness of the town; nor do I ever note a cowardice, a lie, a bribery, or a breach of trust, a surrender in the field, or a new Peerage, but I remember that my newspaper could not add these refining influences to my life but for the _railway_ which I set out to praise at the beginning of this and intend to praise manfully to the end.

Yet another good we owe to railways occurs to me. They keep the small towns going.

Don't pester me with "economics" on that point; I know more economics than you, and I say that but for the railways the small towns would have gone to pieces. There never yet was a civilisation growing richer and improving its high roads in which the small towns did not dwindle. The village supplied the local market with bodily necessaries; the intellectual life, the civic necessities had to go into the large towns. It happened in the second and third centuries in Italy; it happened in France between Henri IV and the Revolution; it was happening here before 1830.

Take those little paradises Ludlow and Leominster; consider Arundel, and please your memory with the admirable slopes of Whitchurch; grow contented in a vision of Ledbury, of Rye, or of Abingdon, or of Beccles with its big church over the river, or of Newport in the Isle of Wight, or of King's Lynn, or of Lymington--you would not have any of these but for the railway, and there are 1800 such in England--one for every tolerable man.

Valognes in the Cotentin, Bourg-d'Oysan down in the Dauphiné in its vast theatre of upright hills, St. Julien in the Limousin, Aubusson-in-the-hole, Puy (who does not connect beauty with the word?), Mansle in the Charente country--they had all been half dead for over a century when the railway came to them and made them jolly, little, trim, decent, self-contained, worthy, satisfactory, genial, comforting and human [Greek: politeiae], with clergy, upper class, middle class, poor, soldiers, yesterday's news, a college, anti-Congo men, fools, strong riders, old maids, and all that makes a state. In England the railway brought in that beneficent class, the gentlemen; in France, that still more beneficent class, the Haute Bourgeoisie.

I know what you are going to say; you are going to say that there were squires before the railways in England. Pray have you considered how many squires there were to go round? About half a dozen squires to every town, that is (say) four gentlemen, and of those four gentlemen let us say two took some interest in the place. It wasn't good enough ... and heaven help the country towns now if they had to depend on the great houses! There would be a smart dog-cart once a day with a small (vicious and servile) groom in it, an actor, a foreign money-lender, a popular novelist, or a newspaper owner jumping out to make his purchases and driving back again to his host's within the hour. No, no; what makes the country town is the Army, the Navy, the Church, and the Law--especially the retired ones.

Then think of the way in which the railways keep a good man's influence in a place and a bad man's out of it. Your good man loves a country town, but he must think, and read, and meet people, so in the last century he regretfully took a town house and had his little house in the country as well. Now he lives in the country and runs up to town when he likes.

He is always a permanent influence in the little city--especially if he has but £400 a year, which is the normal income of a retired gentleman (yes, it is so, and if you think it is too small an estimate, come with me some day and make an inquisitorial tour of my town). As for the vulgar and cowardly man, he hates small towns (fancy a South African financier in a small town!), well, the railway takes him away. Of old he might have had to stay there or starve, now he goes to London and runs a rag, or goes into Parliament, or goes to dances dressed up in imitation of a soldier; or he goes to Texas and gets hanged--it's all one to me. He's out of my town.

And as the railways have increased the local refinement and virtue, so they have ennobled and given body to the local dignitary. What would the Bishop of Caen (he calls himself Bishop of Lisieux and Bayeux, but that is archaeological pedantry); what, I say, would the Bishop of Caen be without his railway? A Phantom or a Paris magnate. What the Mayor of High Wycombe? Ah! what indeed! But I cannot waste any more of this time of mine in discussing one aspect of the railway; what further I have to say on the subject shall be presented in due course in my book on _The Small Town of Christendom_ [Footnote: _The Small Town of Christendom: an Analytical Study_. With an Introduction by Joseph Reinach. Ulmo et Cie. £25 nett.] I will close this series of observations with a little list of benefits the railway gives you, many of which would not have occurred to you but for my ingenuity, some of which you may have thought of at some moment or other, and yet would never have retained but for my patient labour in this.

The railway gives you seclusion. If you are in an express alone you are in the only spot in Western Europe where you can be certain of two or three hours to yourself. At home in the dead of night you may be wakened by a policeman or a sleep-walker or a dog. The heaths are populous. You cannot climb to the very top of Helvellyn to read your own poetry to yourself without the fear of a tourist. But in the corner of a third-class going north or west you can be sure of your own company; the best, the most sympathetic, the most brilliant in the world.