Chapter III: Foreword: By Sir Arthur Pearson, Bart., G.b.e (3)

Thus for the most part, things look most beautiful when we anticipate them, or as we look back upon them in memory over the fireside. For distance lends enchantment, not only to most views, but also to memories and love. As, metaphorically, we stand on the Mount of Olives gazing down at the city of Jerusalem, thinking of all that tiny corner of the earth has meant to men and women, we forget--as we look back--the beastly little mosquito which bit us on the nose, the interruption or our companion who wondered what the stones might tell us if they could only speak. So (also metaphorically), as we set our faces towards the Holy City, filled with the anticipation of those sublime thoughts and emotions which would surge through our souls when we eventually arrived there, we were happy in our ignorance of the fact that, when we did arrive, we felt unutterably dirty and our head ached, and the corn on our little toe felt more like a cancer than a corn! Meanwhile, the emotion of the soul, which we expected to find upon the Mount of Olives, has sometimes come to us quite unexpectedly while standing in the middle of Clapham Common in the moonlight; and that glorious spirit of adventure, which to us means "travel," we have felt riding on a motor-bike through the New Forest at nightfall when the forest seemed full of pixies and the fading sunset was red and grey and golden like the transformation scene of a pantomime. But alas! the next day we found the forest unromantic, and Clapham Common looked indescribably common in the morning sunlight. Our mood had vanished, and although we tried to reproduce the same uplifting emotion the following evening, we couldn't--we had a headache and the gnats were about. So, although I often yearn to live _two_ lives--one full of travel and adventure, and the other peacefully over the fireside mid the peace and beauty of the country--I am quite sure that, were my wish granted, I should find both lives just the same mixture of unexpected happiness and unanticipated disappointment which I find this one to be, yet still go smiling on. Very rarely the Time and the Place and the Mood. But when they do happen to come together--well, life is so wonderful and so beautiful that to throw in the "Loved one" too would seem like gilding the rose--a heaven worth sacrificing every stolen happiness in life for.

_When?_

One of the greatest--perhaps _the_ greatest--problems which parents have to face is--when to tell their children the truth about sexual life; how to tell it; how little to tell--how much. And most parents, alas! are content to drift--to trust to luck! They themselves have got through fairly well; the probabilities are, then, that their children will get through fairly well too. So they, metaphorically speaking, fold their hands and listen, and, when any part of the truth breaks through the reticence of intimate conversation, they shake their heads solemnly, strive to look shocked--and often are; or else they make a joke of it--believing that their children regard the question in the same reasonable light as they do themselves. But ignorance is never reasonable, and half ignorance is even more excited. There is a "mystery" somewhere, and ignorant youth is hot after its solution. And the "mystery" is solved for them in a dozen ways--all more or less dirty and untrue. Better far be too frank, so long as your frankness isn't the frankness of coarse levity, than not to be frank enough. The reticence of parents towards their children in this matter has turned many a young life of brilliant promise into a life-long hell. We don't _see_ this hell for the most part, and, because we don't see it, we fondly believe that it does not exist--or, if it does exist, that it exists so rarely as scarcely to demand more than a passing condemnation and a sigh. We hear a great deal about the Hidden Plague. We hear of the 80,000 cases of syphilis which are registered every year in the United Kingdom. But we don't know any individual sufferer--or we _think_ we don't; and so, although we take the figure as an acknowledged fact, we nevertheless don't realise it--and in any case, it isn't a nice subject of debate, and, should the word be even mentioned in the presence of our dear, dear children, we would ask the speaker to leave the house immediately and never again return! I, too, was one of these poor fools--although I have no children to suffer from my foolishness. I knew it was a fact, but like others I didn't realise that fact--like we didn't realise the horror and filth and tragedy of war, we who never were "out there"; we who never "went over the top." But lately I have had to visit a friend in one of the largest lock hospitals in London. And one day I was obliged to walk through the waiting-room where the men are forced to sit until they are summoned to see the doctor. And truly I was appalled! There were _hundreds of them_ of all ages--from 16 to 60. They were not the serious cases, of course, and we should pass them in the street without realising that they were any but physically sound men, often of a very splendid type. But each one represented a blighted life--a future robbed of splendid promise, a present of misery and unhappiness stalking through the world like shame beneath a happy mask. I tell you, it brought the truth home to me in a way mere figures and statistics could never do. As I said before, I was appalled: I was also very angry. For I knew that ignorance was at the bottom of many of these sad tragedies--the criminal reticence of the people _who know_, too mock-modest to discuss openly a fact of life which, beyond all other facts of life, should be spoken of bluntly, honestly, therefore decently and cleanly.

_The Futile Thought_

Too many fond parents like to imagine that their children know nothing at all of sexual matters--that they are clean and innocent and ignorant, and that, as long as they can be kept so, they will not run into danger and disgrace. But no parent really knows how much or how little their children know of this matter. Children have ears and imagination, and once they know anything at all--which is at any time from eight years of age, sometimes, alas! earlier--they should be told everything, not in a nasty, furtive fashion, glossing over the ugly part and elevating the decent side until it is out of all proportion to the truth, but quietly, with dignity, laying stress on the fact that sexual morality is not a thing of religion and of God, but of self-respect, of care for the coming generation, and, especially, of that great love which one day will come into their lives. It should not be called a "sin"; at the same time it should not be laughed at and made the subject of a whispered jest. Sexual laxity should be treated in the same way as dishonesty and untruthfulness--a sin against oneself, against the beauty of one's own soul, and against those who believe in us and love us and are our world. Children should be taught to respect the dignity of their own bodies, of their own minds and soul; not by leaving them in half-ignorance, but by telling them everything, and telling them it in the right way--which is the clean and truthful way.

_The London Season_

If only the people who repeat the words of wisdom uttered by philosophers lived as if they believed them, how much happier the world would be! It is, however, so much easier to give, or to repeat, advice, than to follow it, isn't it? Conventionality is far stronger than common sense, and a fixed habit more powerful than a revolution. Besides, most people realise that to give advice is a much more impressive ceremony than merely to receive it. And I think that the majority of people would far sooner look _impressive_ than be _wise_. The _appearance_ of a thing sometimes pleases them far more than the thing itself. Besides, to give advice is a rather pleasant proceeding, and those who habitually indulge in it seem incapable of discouragement. They will inform the "rolling stone" that if he continues his unresisting methods he will gather no moss, but the rolling stone usually continues to roll merrily onward. They will protest to the ignorant that "to be good is to be happy," but very few of them will go out of their way to do good, if, by being "bad," they can snatch a personal advantage without anybody being any the wiser. "Life would be endurable if it were not for its pleasures," they declare in the face of a pile of social invitations. Yet they still endure that treadmill of entertainments which makes up a London season, only showing their real feelings by moaning to themselves in the process. They freely acknowledge that very few of these entertainments really entertain, but to miss being seen at them would be to risk a disaster which they would not dare to take. So they go wearily smiling to amusements which don't amuse, to dances which are too crowded to dance at, to dinner parties at which they pay in boredom for the food they eat; to "at homes" which are the most "homeless" things imaginable--travelling here and there, from one entertainment to another which proves as unutterably dull as the first one. Not content with these things, they must perforce be seen at the Opera--although they _hate_ music; visit all the exhibitions of art--when Maude Goodeman is their favourite painter; talk cleverly of books which they would never read did not people talk about them, and generally follow for three long months a time-table of "enjoyment" which very few of them really enjoy. In the meanwhile, the only affairs which give them pleasure are the little impromptu ones arranged on the spur of the moment between friends.

Of course I am not speaking of the débutante. She, "sweet young thing," always enjoys any entertainment at which there are plenty of young men and ices. Nor, judging from observation, do I include among those who willingly go through the three months' hard labour of a London season those henna haired ladies--thickening from anno domini--who seem perfectly happy in the delusion that their juvenile antics are still deliciously girlish, and whose décolleté dresses would seem to declare to the world that, though their faces may begin to show the wear and tear of life, their plump backs don't look a day over twenty-five. The one is so young that she will enjoy anything which requires the endurance of youth. The other is of that age which is happy hugging to its bosom the adage that a woman can't possibly look a day older than champagne makes her feel.

No, the person whose life of amusement I pity is the person who accepts invitations because she daren't refuse them. If the world doesn't see her in all places where she _should be_ seen, the world always presumes her to be dead--and people would rather die in reality than live to be forgotten. But what a price they have to pay to keep their memories green.

No, as I said before, the only entertainments which people really enjoy are those at which they can be perfectly natural--natural, because they are perfectly happy. Rarely are they fixed affairs, advertised weeks beforehand. Mostly are they unpremeditated---delightful little impromptu amusements made up of people who really desire to meet each other. Large entertainments are almost invariably dull. Upon them hangs the heavy atmosphere or a hostess "paying off old debts in _one_." The only really amusing part of them is to watch the amazement on the faces of one half of the guests that the other half is there at all! That is invariably funny. In the big affairs the chef and the champagne are the real hosts of the evening. If England went "dry," I think the London season would join the dodo--people couldn't possibly endure it on ginger "pop" and cider. But champagne and a good chef could, I believe, make even a Church Congress seem jolly. They only bring an illusion of happiness--but what's the odds? A London season is but an illusion of joy after all.

_Christmas_

Christmas comes but once a year--and the cynic cries, "Thank God!" And so, perhaps, do the very lonely. But then Christmas is not a festival for either the cynic or the desolate. The cynic is as welcome at the annual feast of turkey and plum pudding as Mr. "Pussyfoot" would be at a "beano"; while the lonely--well, one likes to imagine that there are no lonely ones at Christmas-time; or, if there are--that somebody has asked them out, or they have toothache and so wouldn't appreciate even the society of jolly seraphims. Christmas, except to the young, is essentially a festival of "let's pretend"--let's pretend that we love everybody, that everybody loves us, that Aunt Maria isn't a prosy old bore, that Uncle John isn't a profiteer; that everybody has his or her good points and that all their bad ones are not sticking out, as they usually appear to us to be, as painfully apparent as those on the back of a porcupine should you happen to sit down upon one in a bathing costume! And it is quite wonderful how this spirit of good will towards all men can be self-distilled, as it were! You try to feel it, and, strangely enough, you do feel it--at least, up to tea time. The public exhibition of ecstacy you give at receiving a present you don't want seems to come to you quite easily and naturally on Christmas morning. Even Aunt Maria can pretend enthusiasm quite convincingly at the gimcrack you have given her which her artistic soul loathes, the while she furtively examines its base to discover if peradventure you have forgotten to erase the price. You yourself declare, while regarding the sixpenny pen-wiper, that it is not the gift so much as the _thought_ which pleases you, and you can declare this lie to the satisfaction, not only of yourself, but, more difficult by far, to the satisfaction of the wealthy donor who gave it to you because she couldn't think what to give you--and because, as she piously declares, "Thank God, you have everything you want!" Yes, indeed, there is something about Yuletide which makes all men benign, and the joyful hypocrisy of Christmas Eve sounds quite the genuine emotion when uttered on Christmas Day. I am bound, however, to confess that the "good will" becomes a trifle strident towards nightfall. Many things conduce to this. The children are suffering from overfeeding; Mother is sick of Aunt Maria, her husband's sister; and Father is more than fed up with the pomposity of Uncle John. There is a general and half-uttered yearning among everybody to go upstairs and lie down. The jollifications of the coming evening, when the grown-ups come into their own and the children are being sick upstairs, presume the necessity for such a retirement--a kind of regeneration of that charitable energy required for the festival "jump off." After which the digestive organs begin to realise what sweated labour means, and Father makes a speech about his pleasure at seeing so many members of the family present, and Mother weeps silently for some trouble which always revives over Christmas dinner and nobody has yet been able to sympathise with, because nobody has yet known what it is. And, because Christmas night would otherwise prove somewhat trying even to a family determined to be loving or to die in the attempt, somebody or other has invented champagne. It is quite wonderful how the dullest people seem to take unto themselves wings after the third bottle of Veuve Clicquot has been opened.

So Christmas Day is thus brought to a triumphant conclusion of good will. And the next morning, of course, is Boxing Day--a most appropriately named event. Even if fighting isn't strictly legal, backbiting unfortunately is. Still, the wise relation seeks the frequent seclusion of his own bedroom during that mostly inglorious day of Christmas aftermath. You see, there is no knowing what sparks may fly when the digestions of a devoted family have gone on strike!

Only the children seem to be able to raise the jolly ashes of their dead selves, phoenix-like from the carcase of the devoured turkey (whose bones in the morning light of Boxing Day resemble somewhat the Cloth Hall at Ypres by the end of the war). Even they (bless 'em!) seem able to recover from the fact that the lovely toys which Uncle John gave them lie broken at their feet because Uncle John would insist upon playing with them all by himself. Children can always become philosophers in half a day. It is their special genius.

Only grown up people have forgotten how to forget. And Christmas, although the most lovable of all the festivals of the year, is also the saddest--and the most lonely, alas! There are so many "gaps"--so many empty places in the heart which the passing of the years will never, never be able to fill. That is why Mother weeps--it is her privilege. And, truth to tell, so many people would like to weep too, only they dare not--they dare not. So they throw themselves into the feverish jollity which Christmas seems to demand for the sake of the children, and for the sake of the young people who, because they were so young, will never realise the aftermath of loneliness which to-day elder people know _meant war_! So they say to themselves, "Let us eat and drink and appear merry because to-morrow . . . to-morrow--who knows?--peradventure we may all meet again!" Thus the true spirit of Christmas is always as a benediction.

_The New Year_

There is something "tonic" about the New Year which there isn't about Christmas, and Birthdays certainly do not possess. After thirty, you wake up on Christmas morning, look back into the Long Ago, and sigh; after forty, you wake up on the morning of your birthday, look forward, and ofttimes despair. But New Year's Day has "buck" in it, and, when you wake up, you lay down the immediate future with those Good Intentions which somebody or other once declared paved the way to Hell, but are nevertheless a most invigorating exercise. Christmas, besides, has been seized upon by tradesmen and others in whose debt you happen to be to remind you of the fact. I suppose they hope that the Good Will of the Season will make you think kindly of their account--which, in parenthesis, perhaps it might, did not that same Good Will run you into debt in other directions. As for Birthdays--well, the person who remembers Birthdays is the person at whose head I should like to hurl the biggest and heaviest paving-stone with which, as I lie in bed on New Year's morning, I lay out my way to Hell. No, as I said before, Christmas Days and Birthdays are failures so far as festivity goes. The former brings along with it bills and accounts rendered, and you are fed with rood which immediately overwhelms any feeling of kindliness you may happen to have in your heart, while the latter is like a settlement day with Time, and Time certainly lets you have nothing off your account. But New Year's Day, except in Scotland, where, I believe, you are expected to go out and get drunk--always an easy obligation!--brings with it nothing but another year, and possesses all the "tonic" quality of novelty, besides the promise of a much happier and luckier one than the Old Year which has just been scratched off the calendar. It is like an annual Beginning Again, and beginning again much better. Besides, New Year's Day seems to be an anniversary which belongs to you alone, as it were. On Christmas Day you are expected to do things for other people, and you do (usually just the things they don't want); while on Birthdays people do things for you (and you wish to Heaven they'd neglect their duty). But New Year's Day doesn't belong to anybody but yourself, and you prospect the future with no reference to anybody whomsoever, and, better still, with no one likely to refer to you. Oh, the New Leaves you are going to turn! The blots you are going to erase! The copy-books you are going to keep spotless! The Big Things you are going to do with what remains of your life, and the big way you are going to do them! Besides, say what you will, there comes to you on New Year's Day the very first breath of Spring. The Old Year is dead, and you kick its corpse down the limbo of the Past and Done-with the while you plan out the New. So, looking forward in anticipation, you feel "bucked." You aren't expected to show "good will to all men" after a previous night's debauch on turkey, plum-pudding, and sweet champagne. Nobody comes down to breakfast on New Year's morning and weeps because "Dear Uncle John" was alive (and an unsociable old bore) "this time last year." Nobody adds to the day's joy by wondering if they will be "alive next New Year's Day," nor become quite "huffy" if you cheerfully remark that they very probably _will_. It doesn't invite the melancholy to become reminiscent, nor the prophet to assume the mantle of Solomon Eagle. New Year's Day belongs to nobody but yourself, and what you are going to make of the 365 days which follow it. You regard the date as a kind of spiritual Spring Cleaning, and to good housewives there is all the vigorous promise of a Big Achievement even in buying a pot of paint and shaking out a duster. And, though Fate usually helps to enliven Christmas-time by arranging a big railway accident or burning a London store down, and the newspapers, in search of something to frighten us now that the war is over, by referring to Germany's "hidden army" and an unprecedentedly colossal strike in the New Year, the human spirit soars above these things on the First of January, and Hope, figuratively speaking, buys a "buzzer" and makes high holiday. Who knows if the New Year may not be your year, your _lucky_ year? And in this feeling you jump out of bed, clothe yourself in your "Gladdest Rags," collect your "Goodest" intentions, and sally forth. Nobody wishes you anything, it's true, but you wish yourself the moon, and in wishing for it you somehow feel that the New Year will give it to you.

_February_

February is the month when, cold-red are the noses--and so (oh help!) are the "toes-es." No one ever sings about February: scarcely anyone speaks about It. It is indeed unspeakable. Its only benefit is that, once every four years, it keeps people younger a day longer. If you're thirty-nine, you're thirty-nine for an extra twenty-four hours, and at that period of life you're glad of any small mercy. It is the month when the new-rich depart to sun themselves in their new-found sun, and the new-poor, and others who are quite used to poverty, swear at them in secret. Oh, yes, indeed! If the Clerk of the Weather has a left ear it must surely at this moment be as 'ot as 'ell! Nobody likes February--it is the step-child of the months.

One simply lives through it as one lives through a necessary duty. It's a month--and that's all. Thank Heaven! somebody once made it the shortest! By the end of January most people have had more than enough of the English Winter even if the English Winter thinks we can ever have enough of it, and comes back saying "Hello!" to us right into Summer, and starts ringing us up, as it were, to tell us it's coming back again as early as October. Just as if we didn't know--just as if we ever wanted to know! The English Summer is far more modest. Usually it's gone before we have, so to speak, washed our hands, tidied our hair, and dressed ourselves up to meet it. But Winter in England not only comes before it is wanted, but outstays its welcome by weeks. And of all the months it brings with it, February, though the shortest, seems to linger longest. March may be colder, but the first day of Spring is marked on its calendar; and we wait for it like we wait for a lover--a lover in whose embrace we may not yet be, but who is, as it were, downstairs washing his hands, he has arrived, he is here--and so we can endure the suspense of waiting for him with a grin. April may fill the dykes fuller than February, whose skies are supposed to weep all day long, but generally only succeed in dribbling, but April belongs to Spring--even though our face and hands and feet are still in Mid-Winter.

February always reminds me of the suburbs--appalling but you've got to go through them to get to London. Were I a rich man, I would follow Spring round the World. In that way I should be able to smile through life like those people who, in snapshots from the Riviera, seem composed principally of wide grins and thin legs, and whose joie de vivre is usually published in English illustrated journals in seasons when the English weather makes you feel that Life is just a Big Damn in a mackintosh. To follow Spring round the world would be like following a mistress whose charms never palled, whose welcome was never too warm to be sultry, whose friendship was never too cold to freeze further promise of intimacy. What a delightful chase! and what a sweet-tempered man I should be! For, say what you will, the weather has a lot to do with that spotless robe of white which is supposed to envelop saints. If you can't be pure and good and generous and altogether delightful in the Spring, you might as well write yourself off for evermore among the ignoble army of the eternally disgruntled. And if you _can_ be all these things in weather that is typically English and typically February, then a hat would surely hide your halo.

And this is about all the good that February does, so far as I can see. True, once in four years it also allows old maids to propose. But the three years when they had to wait to be asked have usually taken all their courage out of them. Besides, the married people and others who are otherwise hooked and secure have turned even that benefit into a joke--and no woman likes to place all her heart-yearnings at the mercy of a laugh. So that, what Leap-Year once allowed, people have turned into a jeer. But then, that is all part and parcel of February. Somebody once tried their best to make it as attractive as possible, even if it could only be so once every four years. But everybody else has since done their best to rob it of its one little bit of anaemic joy. Perhaps we ought not to blame them! Nobody ought to be blamed in February. It is a month which brings out the very worst in everybody.

_Tub-thumpers_

I often wonder what born tub-thumpers are like in their own homes. Perhaps they are as meek and mild as watered buttermilk. Thinking it over, I think they must be. No self-respecting woman could be tub-thumped at daily without eyeing furtively the nearest meat-carver. For the genius of a tub-thumper is that he is usually born deaf. I don't mean to say that he cannot hear, but he only hears what is convenient for his own arguments to hear, and the more an explanation is convincing the more he tries to shout it down, deafening himself as well as the poor fool who is struggling to make his meaning clear. Each one of us, I suppose, has to "let off steam" some time somewhere, and round about the Marble Arch, where fiery orators "let themselves go," must be the safety-valve of many an obscure home. Occasionally I go there--just to listen to men and women giving an example of that proverb about "a little knowledge being a dangerous thing." Moreover, there is a certain psychological interest in this rowdy corner of a peaceful park. It is typical of England, for one thing. I don't mean to say that tub-thumping is typical of England, but England is certainly the harbour of refuge of the crank. You can see there the crankiest of cranks being as cranky as they know how to be; and you can see also the utterly good-humoured indifference with which the crowds who listen to them regard their crankiness--which also has its meaning. The other evening a middle aged woman of untidy locks was crying that England alone was responsible for the war. Another--in this instance a young man--was deploring the recent blockade of Germany, viewing at the same time in quite a tender light the Zeppelin raids on towns and villages and the bombardment of undefended ports. In any other country, I think, these people would have been lynched. But D.O.R.A., as a strenuous female, is now as dead as 1914 fashions, and the people who heard these friends or Germany crying out their friendliness listened to them in laughing tolerance, which must have annoyed the speakers considerably, seeing that laughter renders unconvincing the very fiercest argument. But they laughed, and, passing on their way, heard God being described as an "old scoundrel," and this seemed to amuse them even more.

_I Wonder If . . ._

But I sometimes wonder if this indifference towards the facts which are "big" to so many people and ought, perhaps, to be "big" to everybody, be a sign of national weakness or of national strength. Personally, I longed, metaphorically speaking, to tear that female limb from limb and send that young man to a village under bombardment, there to make him stay a week in the very hottest portion of Hell's Corner. But had I done so, I realised that I should not have accomplished the very slightest good. The moment that you take a crank seriously, from that very moment he imagines that his "crankiness" is divinely inspired. Far better laugh at him and let him alone. Laughter is the one unanswerable contradiction, and ridicule is a far more deadly thing to fight against than fury, no matter if fury wields a hatchet. Perhaps this utter indifference to the firebrand is our national strength--even though it comes from a too-sluggish imagination, a too great imperviousness to new dangers. English people possess too great a sense of humour ever to become Bolshevik. They may not be witty and vivacious and effervescingly bright, but they possess an innate sense of the ridiculous which is their national safeguard against any very bloody form of revolution. So we suffer infuriated cranks--if not gladly, at least, in the same manner as we suffer baboons in the Zoo--interesting, and even amusing in their proper place, but to be shot at sight should they venture to play the "baboon" amid those hideous red-brick villas which have been termed an Englishman's castle and his home. After all, every new system has its ridiculous side, and strangely enough, it is this ridiculous side which is most apparent at the outset. Only after you have delved below the "comic froth" do you begin to realise that there is a very vital truth hidden beneath. Well, a sense of humour blows away that froth in time, and then--as for example after the Suffragette antics--the real argument behind the capers and the words becomes known. Thus in England all revolutions are gradual, and in their very slowness lies their incalculable strength of purpose.

_Types of Tub-thumpers_

But the various types of cranks always provide a psychological interest to the student of intellectual freakishness. There are the "cranks" you laugh at; others who make you wish to murder them outright. Then there are a few pathetic cases--elderly men, who bring their own little wooden box as well as the vast majority of their own audience, including a wife, a sister, and a convert in spectacles--men who, in a mild tone of voice, earnestly strive to paint as a real story the fable of Jonah and the Whale to a few casual passers-by--those same passers-by who, because there is no real "fun" to be got out of such lecturers, pass by with such unsympathetic rapidity. Yet I always love to listen to these speakers. They are such an illustration of "a voice crying in the wilderness," and they are so dead-in earnest, and they mean so well--two direct invitations, as it were, to the world's ridicule. You can't help admiring them, although mingled with your admiration there is a strong streak of pity. The simplicity of their faith is colossal. They believe _everything_. They believe in the miraculous conversion of drunkards in a single night through one verse of the Gospel; they believe that we shall all rise again and sing on and on eternally; they believe that all men and women are born to evil, and they would feel positively indignant were not the whitest soul among us really steeped in double-dyed sin. And how they believe in God!--Oh, yes, how they do believe in God! I cannot say whether they bring God into their daily lives, but they certainly drag Him to the Marble Arch. And all the while a very sedate, middle-aged woman and a grim bespectacled maiden of forty-five try their utmost--or seem so to do--to look as if they had led lives of the most scarlet sinfulness until they had heard their elderly friend preach The Word. Nothing ever disturbs these meetings. They just go on to their appointed close, when the "stand" is promptly taken by someone who believes in nothing at all, God least of all, and will tell you the reasons of his disbelief for hours and hours, and still leave you unconvinced.

_If Age only Practised what it Preached!_

The Boy Scouts have, I believe, a moral injunction to do at least one good action every day. Older people applaud that injunction wildly. It is so admirable--_for Boy Scouts_. They consider it to be so admirable, indeed, that they declare it should form part of the moral curriculum of every young boy and girl. In fact, they declare it to be applicable to everyone--everyone except themselves. Personally, I think it would be even more admirable when followed by grown-up people. But most grown-up people seem to consider that they have done their one world-beneficial action when they get out of bed in the morning. The rest of the day they will be unselfish--if it suits their purpose. If only grown-up people practised what they preached to children we should have the millennium next Monday. If the world is still "wicked," it isn't because there are not enough moral precepts being flung about all over it. The trouble is that the people to whom they most apply pass them on. They consider they don't apply to them at all.

If only children could chastise their parents for telling lies, and being greedy and selfish, and doing the hundred and one things which they ought not to have done, ninety-nine per cent. of the mothers and fathers, spiritual pastors and masters, and "all those who are set in authority over them"--would not be able to sit down without an "Oo-er!" for weeks. Happily children are born actors, and can simulate an air of belief, even in the face of their elders' most bare-faced inconsistency. But--if you can cast back your memory into long ago--you will remember that one of the most "shattering" moments or your youth was the time when it first burst upon your inner vision that all men, and especially grown-up men, are liars. Certainly, if we really do come "trailing clouds of glory," the clouds soon evaporate and we lose the glory, not through listening to what men tell us, but in watching what men _do_.

Selfishness is surely of the deadly sins the most deadly. Yet selfishness is what elder people tell youth to avoid most carefully. If everyone only lived up to half the moral "fineness" which they find so admirable in the tenets of the Boy Scouts, the world would be worth living in to-morrow. Think of the hundreds of millions of unselfish acts which would then take place every day! In a short time there would surely be hardly any more good to do! As it is, a few kind-hearted, generous, sympathetic people are kept so busy trying to leaven the selfishness, the hardness, the all-uncharitableness of those who are out to live entirely for themselves, that, poor things, they are usually worn to a shadow long before their time!

The virtues are very badly distributed. Some people have so many, and in such "chunks," and others possess so few and even seem determined to get rid of those they have as soon as they can. If only youth had a sense or humour it would surely die from laughing. But it hasn't. It has only faith. Besides, as I said before, it is a born actor--and in face of the big stick it is far safer to pretend faith than show ridicule. If we can have children in the next world--and I have just received a communication from an ardent spiritualist informing me that an earthly wife can become a mother through keeping in touch with her dead husband--I think that, metaphorically speaking, the paternal cane will be "sloshed" both ways. That is to say, Little Johnny, who has been laid across mother's knee and beaten by her with a slipper for stealing jam, will, in his turn, strike mother across the knuckles with a ruler when she, too, is caught "pinching" half-a-crown out of father's trouser pocket. If heaven be nothing else, it will surely be a place of justice. The trouble with this old earth is that justice is only meted out by those who have not yet been found out. In heaven I hope that people who preach will be punished if they do not put their preaching into practice. It will, I fear, empty any number of pulpits--alike in the churches, the public parks, and the home.

But heaven will be none the worse for a little silence. As it is, we earth-wallahs hear such a lot of high-falutin and observe so much low cunning that no wonder youth, as it grows more "knowing," becomes more cynical. It is only when a young man has arrived at years of discretion that he realises that the most discreet thing to do is to be indiscreet while holding a moral mask up. When he realises this, he will find it more politic to keep one eye closed. Brotherly love has to be blind in one eye. Justice finds it safer to be blind in both. And the fool is he who keeps both eyes open, yet sees nothing. And so most grown-up people are fools! That is why they stick together in war-time and always _quarrel_ at a Peace Conference.

_Beginnings_

Beginnings are always difficult--when they are not merely dull. People worth knowing are always hard to get to know. On the other hand, people with whom you become friendly at once usually end by boring you unto death by the end of the first fortnight. People whom it is easy to get to know, as a rule know so many people that to be counted among their acquaintances is like belonging to a friendly host, each one of whom ought to wear around his neck a regimental number to differentiate him from his neighbour. But the friend who is born a friend--and some people are born friends, just as other people are born married--dislikes to be one of a herd. Friendship, like love, is among autocrats, the most autocratic. There is no such thing as communism among the passions. But, as I said before, the people worth getting to know are so difficult to get to know. One has to hack away, as it were, and keep on hacking away, until one breaks through the crusts of reserve and prejudice and shyness which always surround the "soul" of pure gold--or, in fact, the "soul" of any type or quality. But "to hack" is a very dull occupation: that is why I say all beginnings are difficult when they are not merely drab. I always secretly envy the people who let themselves be known quite easily, although I realise that, when you get to know them, there is usually very little worth knowing. But there are so many lonely men and women wandering through this sad old world of ours who are lonely, not because there is not plenty of sympathy and understanding ready, as it were, to be tapped by the rod of friendship and love, but because they are too shy to make friends, too reserved to show the genius of friendship which burns within them. So they go through the world with open arms which merely clasp thin air. They are too difficult to get to know, and they do not possess the key which unlocks the secret of dignified "self-revelation." Between them and the world there is thrust a mask of reserve and shyness--a mask the expression of which they positively hate, but are unable to tear it down from their faces. Thus they live lonely in a world of other lonely souls; no one can help them, and they are too timid of rebuff to help themselves.

But Friendship cannot be cultivated and tended by a third party--that is an axiom. It either springs to life inevitably or, metaphorically speaking, it doesn't turn a hair. The well-meaning person who introduces one friend to another with the supreme assurance that they will both get on splendidly together, usually begins by making two people enemies. The friends of friends are very rarely friends with one another. And jealousy is not entirely the cause of this immediate estrangement. One friend appeals to one side of your nature and another friend appeals to a different side, but very, very rarely do you find two people who make the same appeal--since Heaven only knows how great is the physical attraction in Friendship as well as in Love! On the whole, then, the wise man and woman keep their friends apart. And this for the very good reason, that, either the two friends will become friends with each other, leaving you out of their soul-communion altogether, or else they will wonder in a loud voice what on earth you can find in your other friend to make him seem so attractive to you! In any case, a tiny thread or malignity is woven into that fabric of an inner life in which there should be nothing whatever malign.

Friendship resembles Love in the fact that there are usually three stages. The first stage seems thrilling--but how thankful you are, when you look back upon it, that it is over! The second stage is full of disappointment--how different the friendship realised is from the friendship anticipated! The third stage is philosophical, peaceful, and so happy!--since the worst is known and the best is known, but how immeasurably the best outweighs the worst! and how deliciously restful it is to realise that you, too, are loved, as it were, in spite of yourself and for those qualities in you which are the _real_ you, although you need must hide them under so much dross. Thus you both find happiness and peace. And surely friendship--true friendship--is the happiest and most peaceful state in life? It is the happiest and most peaceful part of Love: it is the one thing which, if you really find it, makes the Everyday of life seem worth the while; seem worth the laughter and the tears, the failures and the victories, the dull beginnings, and the even more tedious beginnings-over-again, which are, alas! inevitable, except in the Human Turnip, who, in parenthesis, is too pompously inert ever to make a start.

A very well-known actress once confessed to me that, no matter how warm had been her welcome, she invariably felt a feeling of hostility between the audience and herself when she first walked on the stage. But I rather think that everyone, except the Human Turnip, who feels nothing except thirst and hunger and cold, has that feeling at the beginning. No matter if your advent has been heralded by a fanfare of trumpets, you invariably feel within yourself that your _début_ has been accompanied by the unuttered exclamation: "Oh, my dear! Is that all?" It wears off in time, of course; but it only bears out my theory that beginnings are always difficult--when they are not merely dull. I can quite imagine that the first day in Heaven will be extremely uncomfortable. I know there is no day so long as the first day of a holiday--or any day which seems so short as the last one. For one thing, at the beginning of anything you are never your true, natural self. The "pose," which you carry about with you amid strange surroundings, hangs like a pall upon your spirits, to bore you as much as it bores those on whom you wish to make the most endearing impression. Later on, it wears off--and what you are--_you are_! and for what you are--you are either disliked intensely or adored. But you are never completely happy until you are completely natural, and you are never natural at the beginning. That is why you should forgive beginnings, as you, yourself, hope to be forgiven when you, yourself, begin.

_Unlucky in Little Things_

They say it is better to be born lucky than beautiful. Which contains, by the way, only small consolation for those of us who have been born both lucky and ugly. For, after all, to have been born beautiful is a nice "chunk" of good luck to build upon, and anyway, if you are a woman, constitutes a fine capital for the increase of future business. But to have been born lucky is much more exciting than to have been born beautiful; moreover the capital reserve does not diminish with time. All the same, I don't want to write about either lucky people or beautiful ones. There are already too many people writing about them as it is. I want to write about the _unlucky_ ones--because I consider myself one of them. I do so in the hope that my tears will find their tears, and, it we must drown, metaphorically speaking, it is a crumb of comfort to drown in company.

Most unlucky people when they speak about their ill-luck always refer to such incidents as when they backed the Derby "favourite" and it fell down within a yard of the winning post. True, that is ill-luck amounting almost to tragedy. But there is another kind of unlucky person--and about him I can write from experience, because it is my special brand of misfortune. He is the unlucky person who is unlucky in _little things_. After all, not many of us back horses, and presently fewer of us than ever will be able to do more in the gambling line than play Beg-o'-my-Neighbour with somebody's old aunt for a thr'penny-bit stake. Let me give a few instances of this ill-luck, in the hope that my plaint will strike a responsive chord in the hearts of those who read this page.

(_a_) If I am sitting on the top of a 'bus and a fat man gets on that 'bus, that fat man will sit down beside me as sure as houses! (_b_) If I am sitting in a railway carriage hugging to my heart the hope that I may have the compartment to myself throughout the long non-stop run, for a surety, at the very last moment, the Woman-with-the-squalling-brat will rush on the platform and head straight for me! Or, I have only to see the Remarkably Plain Person hesitating between two tables in a restaurant to know that she will invariably choose _mine_! (_c_) If there is a bad oyster--_I get it_! If a wasp flies into the garden seeking repose--I always look to it like a Chesterfield couch! If one day I have not shaved--my latest "pash" _is sure to call_! Should I invest my hard-earned savings in Government Stock it is a sign for an immediate spread of Bolshevism, and consequent depreciation in all Government securities. If one day I plan to make a voyage to Cythere--I will surely catch a cold in my head the night before and, instead of quoting Swinburne, shall only sneeze and say, "Dearest, I do hope I didn't splash you!" I fully expect to wake up and find myself rich and famous--the day I "wake up" to find myself _dead_! And of course, like everybody with a grievance, I could go on talking about it for ever. Still, I have given a sufficient number of instances of my ill-luck for ninety per cent. of people to respond in sympathy. The "big things" so seldom happen that one can live quite comfortably without them.

But the "Little Things" are like the poor--they are always with us; or like relations--perpetually on the doorstep on washing day. Perhaps one ought to live as if one were not aware of them. To have your eyes fixed steadfastly on some "star" makes you oblivious, as it were, to the creepy-crawly things which are creepy-crawling up your leg. The unfortunate thing, however, is, that there seem so few stars on which to fix your gaze. If you are born beautiful, or born lucky--you have no use for "stars." To a certain extent you are a "star" in yourself. But for _nous autres_ there only remains the exasperation of Little Things which perpetually "go wrong." The only hope, then, for us is to cultivate that state of despair which can view a whole accumulation of minor disasters with indifference. When you are indifferent to "luck" it is quite astonishing what good fortune comes your way. Luck is rather like a woman--it is, as it were, only utterly abject before a "shrugged shoulder."

_Wallpapers_

Life is full of minor mysteries--conundrums of the everyday which usually centre round the problem: "Why on earth people do certain things and what on earth makes them do them?" And one of these mysteries is that of their choice in wallpapers. Of course some wallpapers are so pretty that it is not at all difficult to realise why people chose them. On the other hand, some are so extraordinarily hideous that one would really like to see, for curiosity's sake, the artist who designed them and the purchaser whose artistic needs they satisfied. Those bunches of impossible flowers linked together by ribbons, the whole painted in horrible combinations of colour--how we all know them, and how we marvel at their creation! One imagines the mental difficulty of the purchaser as to which among the many designs most appealed to her artistic "eye." Then one pictures how her choice wavered among several. One figures to oneself how she sat in consultation with that friend whom most people take with them when they go out to choose wallpapers, asking her opinion concerning the design which showed nightmare birds swarming about among terrible trees, and the one which illustrated brown roses with blue buds growing in regulated bunches on trellis-work of a most bilious green. One can almost hear the arguments for and against, and at last, the definite conclusion that the one with the brown roses and blue buds was the more uncommon--therefore the better of the two. And one day fate leads your steps towards the bedroom wherein that wallpaper hangs. As you throw yourself into the one easy chair you take out your cigarette case to enjoy that "just one more" which is the more enjoyable because it symbolises that feeling of being "enfin seul" which always follows conversations with landladies or several hours making yourselves agreeable to hostesses.

Then you see it!