LETTERS ON LIFE CLAUDIUS CLEAR Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES L ETTERS ON LIFE Letters on Life BY . CLAUDIUS CLEAR ii^ LONDON : HODDER AND STOUGHTON '^ -^ 27 PATERNOSTER ROW MCMI 'Oreo SblllindB and 3ispencR Printed by Hazell, Watson cS" Viney, La., London and Aylesbury. U5^~'' L TO M. B. AND J. M. B. IN MEMORY OF OUR AMERICAN JOURNEY AND MANY OTHER THINGS Contents I. The Art of Life II. That Literature is Autobiography III. The Art of Conversation IV. On the Art of taking Things coolly V. Vanity and its Mortifications VI. Some Questions about Holidays VII. "When Three Stars came out" VIII. Midnight Tea IX. Firing out the Fools X. " A Fellow by the Name of Rowan " XI. Taking Good Men into Confidence XII. The Sin of Overwork . XIII. Samuel PAGE I 14 25 36 47 58 69 80 88 100 113 121 130 Vll ^ Contents ^ PAGE XIV. How TO Remember and how to Forget 138 XV. " R.S.V.P." 149 XIV. Concerning Order and Method. . 158 XVII. Should Old Letters be kept? . .168 XVIII. The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae . . 180 XIX. Brilliance 192 XX. On Handwriting 201 XXI. The Happy Life 210 XXII. The Man in the Street . . . 219 XXIII. The Zest of Life 227 XXIV. Good Manners 233 XXV. On Growing Old 247 XXVI. Broken-Hearted 259 XXVII. The Innermost Room . . . .270 VUl The Art of Life At the end of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Grand- father's CJiair, after the Chair has told many- stories, it is asked by the Grandfather to confer a final favour. " ' During an existence of more than two centuries you have had a familiar intercourse with men who were esteemed the wisest of their day. Doubtless with your capacious understanding you have treasured up many an invaluable lesson of wisdom. You certainly have had time enough to guess the riddle of life. Tell us poor mortals, then, how we may be happy.' The Chair assumed an aspect of deep meditation, and at last beckoned to Grandfather with its elbow, and made a step sideways towards him as if it had a very im- portant secret to communicate. ' As long as I have stood in the midst of human affairs,' said the Chair, with a very oracular enunciation, ' I B I The Art of Life have constantly observed that Justice, Truth, and Love are the chief ingredients of every happy hfe.' * Justice, Truth, and Love ! ' exclaimed Grandfather. ' We need not exist two centuries to find out that these qualities are essential to our happiness. This is no secret. Every human being is born with the instinctive knowledge of it.' ' Ah ! ' cried the Chair, drawing back in surprise, ' from what I have observed of the dealings of man with man, of nation with nation, I should never have suspected that they knew this all-important secret' The Chair announced that its lips are closed for the next hundred years. * At the end of that period, if I shall have discovered any new precepts of happiness better than what heaven has already taught you, they shall assuredly be given to the world.' " Here we have the explanation of the fact that precepts on the conduct of life often read like trite, threadbare, incontestable platitudes, and that many are inclined to deny that there is such an art as the art of living. A good heart, sound I principles, and an honest purpose, it is said, will bring you safely through, and the experience of other travellers is of small account. 2 The Art of Life It is not so. Life is never the smooth path it seems to confident youth. It is a rough road cut with dangerous ruts, and apparently little mended by the successive generations of pilgrims. The highest wisdom is to be found in common- places. The best help that can be rendered to humanity is the representation of commonplaces as they are confirmed and illuminated by ex- perience. Pascal said that the best books were the books which each man thought he could have written for himself Few men imagine that they could have written great scientific or historical books. They all think themselves capable of writing observations of life and manners, and in a sense they are, for they have had the opportunities of acquiring the knowledge on which such observations must be founded. La Bruyere, one of the greatest writers on the art of life, says : " I restored to the public what it has lent me." So through the ages we have a line of books on conduct written by men and women of very varying powers, and yet all are valuable in some way, if they arc written honestly from a real experience. Often the lessons of life are 3 The Art of Life best conveyed indirectly. Thus we have a significant, if not very extensive, literature of characters. In Professor Jebb's admirable preface to his edition of Theophrastus — a book which should not have been allowed to go out of print — we have many excellent remarks on character writing. A very good second is Mr. Alfred West's introduction to the Pitt Press edition of Earle's Microcosmography. Mr. West describes the books of Joseph Hall, of Sir Thomas Overbury, of Samuel Butler, and others. Perhaps it scarcely was within his scope to set forth the singular merits of William Law's character sketches, which are, on the whole, the most finished and satisfactory in English litera- ture. But even Law himself must yield without a struggle to La Bruyere. Of him no less a critic than Sainte Beuve said : " Happy La Bruyere ! When so many more lofty glories have sunk, when the eighteenth century has passed away, and men speak of it as of an old fashion — when the seventeenth itself is exposed to attack on all sides, to the irreverence and incredulity of new schools — he, as if by a miracle, is alone respected, he alone The Art of Life holds his own, he is spared. What do I say ? He is read, he is admired, he is praised, precisely for the marked, incisive manner, a little too strong perhaps for his own time, but which is no more than we require now. Of this style he remains the first model. Fenelon, all Fcnelon, pales and trembles ; but his colours stand as bright as when first laid on the canvas. Time has deprived his solid and vigorous manner of no excellence. The artist has not ceased to reverence him. . . . He is still everybody's classic." Among later writers no one has more deeply considered the art of life than Walter Pater, though I do not forget the quiet but sterling merits of such authors as Arthur Helps, P. G. Hamerton and Anne Mozley. In teaching the art of life there can be no more useful books than biographies. I have for years read every biography I could lay my hands on, and not one has failed to teach me something. Mrs. Oliphant, who was herself a skilful biographer, and who observed life more shrewdly and keenly than most, has a passage in which she describes the fascination of watching The Art of Life from the gallery the combat of a human soul, its defeats, its victories, and its last issues. A very able writer of recent times has said the worst that can be said against biographies, and especially the biographies of prophets and sages. The prophets of the Highest, says he, are de- graded and despoiled by ill-judging biographers who in truth's name lay bare the life, not of the man whom they pretend to honour, but of his meaner and mortal double. Of the greater men in any generation, poets, orators, preachers, prophets, biographies should not be written. " Let them be as voices crying, if in that cry they deliver themselves in some measure from the material encumbrances of life. Let them be advantaged thereby themselves, and advantage their hearers. Why replace the voice in its fleshly tabernacle ? " He goes on to compare the practice of biographers to the art of embalming. It preserves bodies of men in a sort of ghastly caricature of those who once wore them. " For a shorter time or a longer it preserves from entire decay that which it better had suffered to perish, but it cannot aid in perpetuating the crying voice or the spirit that, begotten from ^ The Art of Life ^ God, partakes in God's eternity and infinitude. Nay, it tends to abridge the voice's compass and curtail the spirit's power to suffer." He might have said with perfect justice that auto- biography even more than biography gives a less favourable impression than that made on con- temporary observers by the actual characters of its subjects. It may be that a man cannot directly reveal himself, and that his autobiography is written rather in his less personal books than in the book which professes to give his own account of himself. There are luminous ex- ceptions, no doubt, but in a good many cases a man's deliberate self-portraiture is both libellous and indistinct, giving perhaps the picture of a mind occupied with its own past, and reflecting its aspect in the solitude of self-communion, but giving no true idea of what the man was in relation to others. Thus one of the least amiable autobiographies is that of Mark Pattison, in which, as a critic of the time remarked, he stamped with a strange concession of authenticity a supposed caricature of himself in a clever novel. Yet Pattison was a man of whom one of his intimates said, " In tctc-d-tcte he possessed 7 The Art of Life in a rare degree what seems to me essential to good talk — a vivid consciousness of the person to whom he was speaking." And he was the man who put the question, " What is most worth living for ? " and answered it thus : " To deliver one's message." Nevertheless when all is said and done, the world would not part willingly either with its biographies or auto- biographies. The lessons of life are not won lightly, and all that is said against biography reduces itself in the end to this — that the ultimate secret of any human personality remains a secret after all observation and all research and all expression have done their best or worst. That there is an art of life which needs to be cultivated may be shown by various examples. Especially the need is clear when we turn to life's most intimate relations. We are apt to take for granted that natural affection will make them all that they should be without thought or painstaking. A man and woman marry ; they are heartily in love with each other. What more is necessary for a happy life? Much more is necessary. Happiness is neither a vested right 8 The Art of Life nor a self-maintaining state. What is necessary is to make sure that love shall not only last, but grow stronger. It is not a matter of course that this should come to pass. It takes skill and science to maintain life through life's various stages, and both the man and the woman must do their part. La Bruy^re, I believe, never married, but the story of a young girl is woven through the texture of his life. His ideal woman was woman in her early girlhood. After that period, he thought that she deteriorated, that she did not cultivate her gifts, that her moral sense was injured, that she indulged a natural repugnance for things serious and difficult, and that great beauty did nothing more for her than to lead her to hope for a great fortune. He believed, indeed, that a beautiful woman with the qualities of a worthy man had the merit of both sexes, and was the most delightful com- panion in the world. But of these there were very few, and so he was content to regard woman with a kind of fatherly tenderness. The book- seller to whose shop he daily repaired to turn over the new books and hear what was going on, had a bright little daughter, with whom he '^ The Art of Life ^ made friends. One day when playing with the child he took out of his pocket the manuscript of his great work, and offered it to the book- seller, saying, " If you get anything by it, let it be the dot of my little friend here." When the girl married, her husband received with her a fortune of a hundred thousand livres. Married people must look forward to the close of one stage of life, and prepare for the other. This can only be done by self-denial, by the resolute endeavour on both sides to maintain a community of existence. The marriage that is truly suc- cessful is the marriage where each becomes by degrees necessary to the completeness of the other's life, and that happiness will grow more and more if each grows side by side with the other. It is so with the family. Parents must not take for granted that their sons and daughters will love them simply on the strength of the natural bond. They have to win the affection of their children. If they do not they will find that the children will have thoughts and ways of their own into which the parents are not permitted to enter. There are some pathetic passages in the life of the great scholar, F. J. lO The Art of Life A. Hort, where he laments that his dreadful shyness has interfered with his knowledge of his children. He was eminently unselfish. He would put aside the most engrossing work when his children sought him ; he desired to know all that was passing in the nursery world. But he complained of the unwholesome reserve which kept them at a distance, " the main cause of which, whatever the other causes may have been, has been my own miserable shyness, which has cruelly disabled me as a father among you all." Many do not strive for the prize as Hort did, and they miss it, and miss with it much of the best of life. The same is true about brothers and sisters. Every one must have observed in large families apparently happy together that each one lived his own life, that they knew very little of one another. To those who do not know how much strength and joy can be gained by the perfect co-mingling of interests between father, mother, sons, and daughters, this will appear an unspeakable loss ; but many are ap- parently satisfied to share the shelter of the same roof, and have very little else in common, and yet be contented enough. There are many wives I I The Art of Life who know nothing of what their husbands are doing, many husbands who know nothing and care nothing as to what their wives are doing, and yet they would be the first to say that their marriages are happy. They are happy after a fashion, but not after the true fashion. Again, an attention to the art of life will help us to make the best of ourselves and the best of things. For the sake of happiness as well as for greater reasons we should try to do our work in the world, and the finely tempered nature will never be satisfied if the rust eats into the unused blade. By a wise conduct we may avoid the lurid lights and the horrible, creeping shadows. We shall not spend the first years of life in a way to make the last miserable. Even the " powerful distemper of old age," as Montaigne called it, may not mar our happiness. The mere fact of reaching old age is a proof, I think, that life has not been miserable, that more sunshine than shadow has fallen upon it. When we are old we should find something to exercise the faculties that remain. The Cum- berland beggar had the surest mark of old age. 12 The Art of Life He had always seemed old to the people in his valley. Him from childhood I have known, and then ' He was so old ; he seems not older now. But the secret of his continuance was that he still " travelled on." I have heard of a man of ninety-two, whose life had been spent in an in- credible round of toil. He made it his business when he could do no more to study the stars. His last office led him into the open air, and his last words were, " How clear the moon shines to-night ! " 13 II That Literature is Autobiography The other day I came across an observation which set me thinking. It was to the effect that autobiographies are a very unimportant part of our literary treasure. Taking it in the literal sense, this is not true. Taking it with a broad construction, it is so utterly false that it may even be plausibly asserted that all the enduring part in literature is autobiography. This is a bold saying, and I must at the outset define my terms. There are many formal autobiographies which are not literature in any sense ; that is, they are neither sincere nor in any way complete. In other words, they are not autobiographies. Perhaps the truest auto- biographies are those which do not take the prescribed form — which are indirect. Very few people have the courage to tell the true story of their lives. There is a noble modesty ^ Literature h Autobiography ^ of the soul which makes it impossible to draw the veil back which hides from the world its hopes and its joys, its losses and wounds and sacrifices, the struggles, the victories and the defeats of conscience. An autobiography may be true so far as it goes, but unless it admits the reader into the sanctuary of life it makes no impression. This is perhaps the reason why stories written in the first person singular so rarely attain success. To the young an auto- biographical novel appears the easiest. In reality it is the most difficult, and I doubt whether it has ever been successfully accomplished, save by those who have directly or indirectly unveiled the inner secrets of their heart. Often the person who writes it gives no true picture of his experience in the world of action or in the world of thought. He tries to make imagination do a work for which it is not competent. For example, a commonplace prosperous man, incapable of any deeper feeling, may write a novel which he intends to be steeped in melancholy. But the book turns out unreal, mawkish, maudlin, describing not a real agony, but a dull and dismal languor of weakness. Those who have read Lamartine's Jocely^t will 15 That Literature understand what I mean. When Charles Dickens wrote his David Copperfield he told more of himself than is told in Forster's three volumes of biography, and yet even he failed to make his hero vivid and interesting. Sir Walter Scott, who in one sense was the most open and in another sense the most reticent of men, could do nothing with Francis Osbaldistone, though he allotted to him the great prize of Di Vernon. Still the aphorism of Coleridge, that a man of genius is a man of deep feeling, holds good, and so every fragment of autobiography from the elect, even when it is not meant seriously, is apt to be true and memorable. For myself, I often turn to Charles Lamb's little sketch of himself, and find more in it than in Canon Ainger, or Mr. Procter, or Mr. Fitzgerald, or Thomas Westwood. Take such touches as these : " Can remember few specialities in his life ex- cept that he once caught a swallow flying." " Stammers abominably, and is therefore more apt to discharge his occasional conversation in a quaint aphorism or a poor quibble than in set or edifying speeches : has consequently been libelled with aiming at wit, which, as he told i6 is Autobiography a dull fellow that charged him with it, is at least as good at aiming at dulness." " Crude they are, I grant you — a sort of unlicked incondite things — villainously pranked in an affected array of antique modes and phrases. They had not been his if they had not been other than such : and better it is that a writer should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness than to affect a naturalness (so-called) that should be strange to him." Still more authentic and memorable things about Lamb will be found where he professed to speak for other people. And so I am inclined to think it is almost every- where. A writer may appear to be studiously impersonal, and yet be personal nearly all the way through, or personal at least in special passages. It will be found, I think, that these passages of personality are the living part of his work, giving him his power and influence, impressing themselves upon the minds of readers, and defying the assaults of time. Occasionally a biography will give us the key to much from which we have been barred out, or, to change the figure, will throw a flood of light upon what has been obscure. Even if we never c 17 That Literature have that key, when we come upon something that strangely moves us, we may be sure as a rule that the words and thoughts have been passed through the fires of life. I might even say that in the most ephemeral forms of writing, such as journalism, what is most interesting is what has been part of the writer's experience. I have just been reading a review of Mark Pattison's life of Casaubon, by Mrs. Oliphant. As an expert criticism it is ludicrous. Mrs. Oliphant was no scholar, and she had no sym- pathy with scholarship, while Mark Pattison was a true scholar. But when she remarks on Pattison's treatment of Casaubon's domestic arrangements you see at once that she is much wiser than Pattison, and if you have read her autobiography you recognise that she is talking about things she has gone through. Another distinction must be made. There are two lives — the life of actuality and the life of imagination and dream. In many cases the dream life is more real than the other. Some- times the soul goes back and lives in the dis- mantled homes and the long vanished gardens. More often it goes forward, and has its home i8 ^ is Autobiography %» in the life that might have been, that came once so near to being. Wc can often, if \vc read wisely, find out what came true in dream, what was so dear and so cherished that the dull grey world of fact was as nothing in com- parison. And in speaking about autobiography we comprehend the two existences and accord them equal rights. Thus it is the fashion to say that Charlotte Bronte drew from her own experiences, and the commentators try to find a basis in her life for every incident described in her works. They are wrong in one sense, and right in another. Charlotte Bronte's life is written out in her work with a rare frankness and fulness, but it is rather her life in imagination than her life in fact. This is as it should have been, for few and sombre were the outward in- cidents of her days on earth. It was when her spirit took wings that she lived, and lived grandly. I have no space to prove and illustrate my statement. Let one fact suffice meanwhile. If any one has written a story of love in lines of living fire, it is Charlotte Brontti. Yet, do we find it in her life? If any one recognised the sacred obligations of family ties, and suffered 19 That Literature on their account, it was Charlotte Bronte. Her life was a living sacrifice to her sisters, and especially to her father. Has there ever been any woman of her age and position who sub- mitted so meekly to have her marriage put off and nearly made impossible by an unreasonable old father? She lived the life of humble duty, but that was not her true life. That life was in the world of love. Her heroines, let me note, are all of them quite free from family obligations. Jane Eyre, and Shirley, and Lucy Snowe, and the sweetest and dearest of them all, Frances Evans Henri, may have aunts, but they are, so far as I can remember, without father or mother, without brother or sister. They are free to live the life of love, to say, " All for love, and the world well lost," and to fulfil the words. Can we doubt that this was Charlotte Bronte's dream of life, a dream that did not translate itself into what we call actual reality, but a dream so vivid that, in comparison, reality was faint and dim ? Let me give almost at random a few illustra- tions out of the many which immediately fill the mind when this subject comes up. Let us 20 ^ is Autobiography '^ take fiction. I fully grant that for fiction of the first class the gift of story-telling is an absolute necessity. Nothing will make up for the want of it. In this field humour, and passion, and observation, and learning have ex- hausted themselves in vain, because they were unaided by the story-teller's special talent, the talent for making a plot, for creating an over- powering interest in the narrative. For success, a novelist must be able to cover and surround the reader with the story. Unless he can do this, everything seems to slip through the reader's fingers, and the book is merely a quarry from which people may steal with comparative im- punity. And yet the mere art of story-telling is not enough. It may win immense temporary popularity, but it docs not confer immortality. In all the immortal books there are what some one calls touches of blood and of the Old Nieht. revelations of the inner secrets and the last ex- periences of the soul. Without the personal element no work of fiction is vital. This is equally true in poetry. I do not believe that any command of language or matter will win the unwithering leaf Nor will any process of 21 ^ That Literature ^ imitation or assimilation make up for the want of soul. The bard is a maker ; by which I do not mean that he is a creator, but that he works with the materials that his own heart gives him. Hackneyed enough, but eternally true, is the line Mrs. Browning loved to quote, the true Ars Poetica : " Fool," said my Muse to me, " look in thine heart and write." That is why so many clever and delightful volumes of poetry are bound to perish. They may please one very much. I am not ashamed to say that I can repeat many pages of Owen Meredith, but I know, all the same, that Owen Meredith has written nothing at first hand, and that he is dead already. The same thing must apply very specially in preaching. The preacher should not in one sense talk about himself. I knew and revered one old minister who never used the first personal pronoun in the pulpit. And, of course, there are necessary qualifications for preaching which great preachers cannot be without. A great preacher should have certain physical 22 is Autobiography qualities. He should be an orator, he should have magnetic power. Many men have had all these, and have attracted great crowds, and left nothing to be read. No true revelation had been given to their souls. They had never entered into communion with God. They were no nearer than Asoka, who said to the priests at the Buddhist Council of Nice, " What has been said by Buddha, that alone was well said." But Mr. Myers, in his wonderful poem, " St. Paul," caught the true idea that without an inward disclosure to the heart there is no religion, and that if this disclosure is given no argument can ever shake its certainty. Lo ! if some pen should write upon your rafter, Menc and inc7ie in the folds of flame ; Think you could any memories thereafter Wholly retrace the couplet as it came ? Wlioso has felt the Spirit of the Highest Cannot confound, nor doubt Him, nor deny ; Yea, with one voice, oh ! world, though thou deniest, Stand thou on that side, for on this am I. I cannot help adding that one feels this must be so in true art, though I know nothing about painting. The great artist must have seen in 23 '^ Literature is Autobiography the best work, are we justified in dismissing a workman on the ground of incompetency, if that incompetency is his best service ? Commercially and in the light of our competitive system we are, but surely there are other considerations." This shows that I need to explain what I mean by the word " fool." I do not mean an imbecile ; I mean a man who does not use his best faculties in the doing of his work, a man who shirks, or muddles, or idles. If a man is really an imbecile it is the duty of the State to take care of him. If, on the other" hand, he has abilities and will not use them, he is a scoundrel, and ought to be punished. I think that is good Christianity. There was a certain teacher of old time who said that, if men would not work, neither should they eat. That is precisely my doctrine. On socialism I pass no opinion. What we have to face is the fact that we and all the world are more and more living under a competitive system, and that, until it is changed, we must make the best of it. Those who do not believe in it are justified in trying to alter it ; but while it goes on, no good will come of working it in a bad and slovenly way. " A Fellow by the (4) Other correspondents ask why we should try to be first ; why people will not be content with moderate profits. The question, however, is not so much a question between large profits and moderate profits, as a question between moderate profits and no profits at all. If this realm of ours is to endure, capitalists must be able to make a fair profit in business. If they do not, they will simply invest their money. I do not profess to be an expert in commerce ; but I keep my eyes open, and I hear a good deal. Is it not true that the margin of profit in many of our industries is beginning to be very dangerously small, that a very little more, and the industries will be gone ? I want to know how working men are to profit if they take away this margin, with the result that works are closed and the workmen thrown out on the world. Nobody proposes that a capitalist shall be com- pelled to go on trading at a loss. (5) One correspondent directly challenges what I said about the restriction of the output of work. He says emphatically that workmen never try to limit the amount of work that any of them can do in an hour. Well, I meet him with an 104 Name of Rowan." equally direct contradiction. I can quote specific instances where the men have gone to their employers, and threatened to strike if such and such a man was not prevented from doing what he was able and willing to do. I have known also two cases where the employers have yielded, and one case in which the expert workman has had to go. And, further, I have cases in my eye where the result was to transfer very con- siderable portions of trade that might have been British to America. But I will quote from a really great authority in Mr. VV. H. Lever, who writes in the New Liberal Review. He says : " There is another danger that threatens us, and that is the action of trades unionism in favourine restriction of output. In the present century the most important question will be the creation of machinery for the cheap execution of good work." Mr. Lever also confirms me in saying that we have suffered from the disadvantage of low- priced labour, and that in England we must in future pay our workmen better, and the workman must make his services of more value. He says : " America with dear labour can and does to-day produce cheap boots and shoes, watches, and 105 " A Fellow by the many other articles, simply from the fact that the dear price of labour stimulated the manufacturers of these articles in the States to produce machines which would enable them to compete with the watches, etc., made with cheap labour in Europe." (6) There are some letters complaining that I speak of old age as a disqualification for efficient work. I think I gave full justice to old age when I said that efficiency was not a matter depending on the colour of the hair. Some old men, like Lord Roberts, are young, and hold their position simply by virtue of their qualifi- cations. It is " old men with old souls," to use Byron's phrase, who are useless. Still, it must be admitted, and I hope I take the fact home to myself, that nearly all of us, as we grow older, become less open to new ideas and to new methods — more fossilised, less prescient. This should be resisted as far as possible ; but we need not flatter ourselves that we shall be at seventy what we were at forty or fifty. The older men can hold their ground only as they give ear to the younger men, and work with them, not jealously, but sympathetically. Ex- perience, as I have said, is of value ; but if the 1 06 Name of Rowan." conditions change, it is of none. Experience of old conditions will teach you nothing as to what should be done under new conditions, and may indeed be very apt to mislead you. And so young men ought to recognise the drift of things, that drift being altogether against the old, and recognise that if they live, they will in time become old also, and just as incapable of under- standing as their seniors are now. The moral is obvious. In future the period of great success, as a rule, will not be very prolonged. If a man does thirty years' good and successful work he may be well satisfied. What he ought to do in the period of his success is to live soberly, moder- ately, and quietly, to save as much as he possibly can ; then, when the time comes, as come it will, that his powers fail, he will have something to fall back upon. I have seen young men leap into a great success. Some of them have been wise enough to go on in the same modest establishment, and to make a comfortable and solid provision for the future. Others, again, as the income rose, have moved into larger houses, and forced an entrance into what is called a higher class of society. They have dropped their old friends, and ihcir 107 " A Fellow by the new friends despise them, and speculate as to how long they will be able to go on. If prosperous young people are wise, they will not, unless compelled, go to live in more expensive houses. A great deal depends on the rent of a man's house. Their children will be none the worse, but all the better, for being brought up in a simple way, and in time, by the blessing of God, they will be able to face the future without fear. (7) One correspondent says that, if the fools are fired out, they will have to be maintained in workhouses. No such thing. The very best and kindest way of treating a young fool is to fling him on the street. The contact with the pave- ment will waken him up when nothing else will. The boundless conceit and laziness of many young men in our day requires a treatment no less drastic than this. I am of opinion, besides, that if able- bodied people are to be maintained in workhouses, they should be compelled to earn their living. That the honest, hard-working tax-payer should have to provide money for the support of lazy louts is a monstrous thing. There is a great deal of mawkish sentimentalism about ; but the sternness of life is a primary fact, and cannot be evaded. 108 Name of Rowan. 55 (8) I know that these remarks will be read with great impatience by many people. Older folk will say : " We have done very well in the old way, and we shall do very well still." The old way answered in the old time when competition was very little felt, especially the competition of foreign nations, and where people of one trade made it easy for one another. It will not do now ; not at all. But it is to the young I address myself. They are going to find life much harder than their fathers found it, and the only chance for them is to do their very best. I have already said that the words that have done more harm than any others are " This will do." Young men who want to get on must never use them. They must always be able to say, " This is the best I could do." Next to them in mischief is the horrible phrase, " Oh, I forgot." The misery, the anger, the disappointment, the loss caused by forgetting, is unspeakable. You have no right to forget. If you cannot remember, you must keep a notebook. Mark in it every promise you make, and examine it from time to time. Again, when you undertake to do 109 " A Fellow by the a thing, you must find ways of doing it. Who of us does not know the young man who was told to do such and such a thing, and comes back at the end of the day with a variety of excellent reasons for failing to do it ? So the day is wasted, the chance is lost. What you have got to do is to manage the thing some- how. A man goes to get some information about another man, and informs you, after a reasonable delay, that he took the journey and found the man out — as if it had not been his business to run the man to earth somehow ! I have got two copies of an excellent little pamphlet, entitled " A Message to Garcia," issued by Smith's Printing and Publishing Agency. Every word of it is according to my own heart, and if I could I would put a copy into the hands of every young man in London. Briefly, the story is this : When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate with Garcia, the leader of the insurgents, who was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba. No mail or telegraph message could reach him. Nobody knew exactly where I lO Name of Rowan. 5? he was, and yet he had to be found. Some one said to the President : " There's a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you if anybody can." Rowan was sent for, and got the letter, started off at once, landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia. McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia. Rowan took the letter, and did not ask : " Where is he at ? " Now that is a man whose form should be cast in bronze, and the statue placed in every college of the land. This man was loyal to a trust, acted promptly, concentrated his energies, did the thing. What would the average man have done ? What does he do as it is ? He asks : " Where does he live ? How am I to get through ? What shall I do if he will not see me ? " And after all those questions have been laboriously answered, he starts out, and comes back ex- plaining entirely to his own satisfaction why he has failed. This book gives a little picture. I I I ^ " A Fellow named Rowan." ^ You are sitting in your office with six clerks within call. Summon any one, and make this request : " Please look in the encyclopaedia, and make a brief memorandum for me con- cerning the life of Correggio." Will the clerk quietly say : " Yes, sir," and go and do the task ? Certainly not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye, and ask one or more of the following questions : " Who was he ? Which encyclopaedia ? Where is the encyclopedia ? Was I hired for that ? Don't you mean Bismarck ? Why should not Charlie do it ? Is he dead ? Is there any hurry ? Shan't I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself? " He will go off at last, and get another clerk to help him, and then come back and report that there is no such man mentioned in the encyclopaedia, and it will turn out when you inquire that he has looked for Correggio under the letter ' K." Yes, that is the true picture of the average type of man as I have found him ; but there are " fellows by the name of Rowan " about, and they are the saving of their nation. I 12 XI Taking Good Men into Confidence In two previous letters I have expounded the American policy of firing out the fools, and paying good men well. There is a third article in the policy hardly less important than the others, and to this I propose to devote some attention. When you have fired out the fools and paid the right men rightly, you ought to take them into confidence. In America I have been told on good authority that the gulf between employers and employed is far less wide than in this country, and from the little I have seen of American businesses I can well believe it. If an employer is sensible and up-to-date, and if he has a loyal, clever, and diligent staff, he will meet them on equal ground, and try to get all the help he can from their suggestions as to the maintenance and the I I 3 T^aking Good Men extension of his business. Some employers in this country think that talking over things is a mere waste of time. They say that they prefer acting to talking. In my humble opinion no time is so well spent as the time spent in discussing business with capable and friendly helpers. In fact, if a man does not deserve to be consulted he ought not to be employed. The great and serious mistakes in any business are usually made because there has not been sufficient all-round discussion. Discussion, to be worth anything, must not be hurried. When one of the parties to a discussion is taking out his watch every five minutes, it is better he should go at once. To look upon a project in all the possible lights, to provide against the dangers, to take hold of all the chances, needs much thinking, and the thinking cannot all be done by one brain. There are men who are not worth consulting. They cannot teach because they cannot learn. I have known even young men whose brains seemed to be cast in iron. They had learnt one way of doing a thing, and they could not change it. They could not bring their minds into touch with 114 into Confidence any new methods. They listened stolidly or with ill-concealed impatience to any hints that might be given to them. Hints had to be thrown into the form of commands before they were carried out. When it comes to that, mischief is close at hand, for an assistant does not really assist if he takes orders that he does not believe in and hardly understands. Such a man is not a man to carry the orders out. I would have free discussion between flexible, sensible men. Let each state his case to the other till one has convinced the other. Then there is room for satisfaction, then there is hope for success. If the difference is irrecon- cilable after a good talk, then I should say post- pone a decision, let both parties think over the matter and resume the discussion, and it will turn out that the way is clear. In many businesses, I am afraid, there is no such thing as this kind of profitable thrashing out of sub- jects. Employers are distant. They give their orders, and expect to see them carried out. These orders would have been far wiser if they had been the result of conversation, and they would have been executed with far greater efficiency. Taking Good Men Some employers, again, consider that any suggestion is little short of an insult. They take the " mind your own business " attitude, and the result is that nothing is said to them by men who care for their interests, and know that things are going wrong which might easily be put right. One great difference between the wise employer and the foolish ^is the way in which each receives a new idea. The wise employer knows perfectly well that everything must begin with an idea. Unless ideas are brought into a business it must first become stationary, then go back, and at last collapse. So he receives every idea with respect and welcome, gives it the most earnest consideration, looks at it from every point of view, and never dismisses it until he is certain that it is im- practicable. I know men in London who have made immense fortunes lately, and who might very well trust to their own brains for future developments. These men are the men who are always on the watch for ideas, who will give an audience to a man with no credentials, who will hear him out, and who will talk over his plan if it commends itself, and treat him ii6 into Confidence fairly. In fact, a man with ideas will, as a rule, be made far more welcome by a really great firm than by one which is small and diminishing. I have been present at conferences in American publishing houses, and have admired the frankness with which every one spoke. All were speaking on a level. Every thought thrown out was carefully discussed. There was welcome for each new project, and if on consideration the project was condemned, no offence was felt ; in fact, the originator, after the talk, was some- times the first to reject his own notion. Nobody but a fool would feel any offence because his idea was rejected. But the true cause of offence is not the rejection of an idea, but the rejection of it without careful consideration and discussion. It is of no u.se in these days to sit up aloft and to imagine that anything can be kept secret. As a matter of fact, I doubt very much whether there can be such a thing as secrecy in business establishments. In my view there ought to be no attempt at secrecy as between the principals and at least the chief assistants. There should be mutual confidence, mutual aid, mutual conference. What a strength 117 7aking Good Men it gives to the strongest man, if he has with him the thoughts, the energies, and the plans of competent fellow-workers ! It is in this way that leaks are stopped. It is in this way that the machinery is made to go smoothly and efficiently. It is in this way that the path of progress opens up, and the bugbear of competition ceases to terrify. I will conclude with two counsels which deserve the careful attention of young workers. In the first place, in order to gain and keep confidence, you must show that you are worthy of it. In the office there may be the most unreserved frankness between fellow-labourers, but outside of it nothing ought to be said. You must learn to keep a secret. Depend upon it, if you fail in this you will be found out. Indiscre- tion in talking has done as much harm to young men as anything else in the world. The fact that you are trusted ought to make you trust- worthy. In the second place, the more heart you put into your work the more joy you will get from it. Let it not be supposed that the happy worker is the worker who shirks his task. Your task will become hateful to you unless you ii8 into Confidence can take an honest pride in it. When you are doing your utmost, putting all your force into the service, you are happy in that consciousness of duty well done which is one of the sweetest things on earth. Never mind whether you make much money or not. That is not the first thing. The first thing is to be true, to labour with a sweet, composed, invincible energy till you love your work and rejoice in your work. That, no doubt, is the true path to what people call success, but I should much rather say that it is in itself success. Some people write that success is not a thing after which Christians should strive. It all depends upon what you mean by the word. Christians are not to set their hearts on the miserable ambition to create a great fortune. That is often success in the world, but failure and death to the soul. But Christians are to aim day by day at the clean, conscientious, thorough fulfilment of the work appointed them. They are to aim at faithfulness, at punctual, critical, scrupulous virtue. Is there anything more to be prized than that ? As a matter of fact, the world docs prize it, but whether the world prizes it or not, it is still the duty of the 119 ^ Good Men as Confidants ^ Christian, and the Christian ought not to be a worse man of business than the man who is not a Christian, but in the true sense a better man of business, giving nothing that is not his best, and working at all times in the eye of the great Taskmaster and Ruler. 120 XII The Sin of Over- Work There is such a sin as that of being over- busy. I do not think it is a very common form of transgression, but it undoubtedly exists. Its allurements are often such as tempt men of high character and motives, though sometimes they are sordid enough. But I do not mean to speak of those who make haste to be rich, who are fevered and consumed by avarice. I am speaking rather of those who wish to do what they can in this world, who are conscious that the time is .short and shortening, and who desire that what remains of it should be turned to the best account. Such people need to be reminded that the half may be more than the whole, and that there is serious hazard of spoiling everything by over-eagerness, by reckless labour, and by the folly which refuses to recognise that there are 121 ^ The Sin of Over-Work ^ very strict and definite limits which no man may with impunity transgress. Some men have pushed those limits very far away. No life fascinates me more than that of Leonardo da Vinci. I often gaze at the portrait of him prefixed to Mr. Hamerton's Intellectual Life. There was nothing almost that this wonderful man could not do. He was great alike in intellect, in feeling, and in physique. A sublime painter, he was also a sculptor, an architect, a musician, and a poet. In almost every department of science he threw out hypotheses and speculations, some of them wonderfully penetrating and pro- phetic. He was a first-class civil and military engineer. There was no personal accomplishment of which he was not a master. He excelled in dancing, in horsemanship, and especially in fencing, an art about which he was the first to write. He was so strong that he could bend a horseshoe double, and yet such delicacy went with his strength that his face is one of the most winning in the world. His nature was large, sympathetic, and disinterested. He used to buy caged birds that he might have the pleasure of giving them their liberty. Though calmly con- 122 ^ The Sin of Over- Work ^ fident of his real powers, he was very humble, and at the close of his vast achievements he professed -himself deeply dissatisfied with his own work. When, in his thirtieth year, he came to seek his fortune at Milan, he wrote a letter to the then reigning Duke, in which he said : " I can carry through every kind of work in sculpture in clay, marble, and bronze ; also in painting I can exe- cute everything that can be demanded as well as any one whosoever." This was nothing more than the simple truth, and yet he had the yearn- ing of all genius after something higher than it can ever attain, and in an epitaph written for him during his life by a friend of his, and apparently under his own inspiration, he styled himself, " The admirer of the ancients and their grateful disciple." He added: "One thing has been wanting to me — their science of proportions ; I have done what I could. Let posterity pardon me." To lead such a life as that of da Vinci, a union of physical, intellectual, and moral strength is needed such as may never come again in the history of man- kind. But most people feel, even when they judge most humbly of their own powers, that b>' method, by diligence, by purpose, they might do 123 ^ The Sin of Over- Work ^ a great deal more than they have been doing. They also think that it is possible not to wither and decline as life goes on, but to subjugate new provinces year after year, to create fresh interests in life, that so the powers may not shrink and dwindle, but rather expand. In such thoughts and feelings there is certainly nothing dis- honourable. But again, I say, that the wise man will bow to the fact of limitation, and will in this way do the best of which he is capable. There is, to begin with, the fact that no man can do well more than a definite quantity of work. Work to be done well requires to be done at moderate speed. Sometimes a careful toiler will be astonished at the excellence of what he accom- plishes quickly on a sudden call. But he will be most foolish to count upon this. It is no doubt correct to say that to some kinds of work over- much care may be given, but generally speaking, the old criticism holds good : " This work would have been better if more pains had been given to it." So I say there is a work for each of us in life to which we should rise in the morning with our first fresh thoughts full of it, which we should 124 ^ The Sin of Over- Work ^ leave at night with our thoughts lingering around it, work which we love, and of which we are proud, and which we can own before men. There is a strict limit to our power of doing such work, and we shall do well to respect the limit. If we crowd in other tasks, everything becomes muddled and huddled. Life grows peaceless, without satis- faction, or comfort, or rest. Concentration is undoubtedly the rule for commonplace people if they are to succeed in this world. It may be doubted whether we have a right to sacrifice life to the work of life. Life, it has been said, is not for working, neither is life for learning, but learning and working are for life. A man is so eager in pursuit of his toil that he practically sacrifices everything to it. He has no leisure. He scarcely knows his own children — at least, with any degree of intimacy. He has no time to trim the lamp of friendship. In the life of the great critic Ste. Beuve, we read that he surrendered everything to his work. No influence was allowed to interfere with the distinctness and truthfulness of his impressions. During a large part of his career he cultivated no intimacies. He even laid upon the altar all his early friendships. 125 ^ The Sin of Over- Work ^ His haunting dread was that he might have to part with his intellectual youth. The last period of his career was lonely and dark. He suffered from a hopeless and distressing disease, which he bore with the greatest calmness, con- tinuing his critical writing to within a fortnight of his calamitous death. There was a great deal of kindness in his criticisms, though I do not forget such papers as that on Lamartine in the first volume of the Causeries. And yet perhaps he would have lived longer and would have been greater, if he had surrendered himself more freely to the claims of humanity. Admitting everything that can be said in his praise, his large and catholic judgment, his boundless curiosity, his determined attempt to purify his inner conscious- ness, it may well be argued that he would have been greater as a man and greater as a critic if he had been less hard, less impartial, more loving, and, if you insist upon the word, more foolish. The weakness of his personal attachments has already chilled his writing, even as it darkened his life. An excessive restlessness and activity prevents the best fruit of the mind from ripening. The great preacher must not be too much in 126 ^ The Sin of Over- Work ^ railway trains. He must not consider that a morning in his study is wasted if he has not been able to put a line upon paper. Quiet meditation will yield its result sooner or later to the patient. Let us not vv^atch the clock too eagerly. I read with delight Thoreau's vindication of his days of reverie which his fellow-townsmen thought so idle. " My days," said he, " were not days of the week bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor zuere they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock." And the best thing I know about Rousseau is that, when he was modestly provided for, he got rid of his watch, with the singular and joyful reflection that he would never again need to know what time it was. There are people who cannot be condemned for doing too much at their business, but who allow the unpaid work done in the margin of their lives to engross them unduly. One of the most honourable and hopeful things to be noticed in London life is the way in which many hard- working City people devote themselves to religious work in the hard-earned leisure of their evenings. I know many who after days of stress and strife go cheerfully to philanthrophic and religious 127 ^ The Sin of Over- Work ^ meetings. Some of the ablest business men of the day are serving the Churches in this fashion, and find their delight in doing it. With this nobody can find any fault, provided other claims are duly answered. But a phrase I once heard rings in my ears — " The man who was too busy to do his duty." It is no excuse for a business man that he serves his Church well, if he serves his employer ill. And here, too, there is a danger of letting the members of a household drift apart, a danger very real in the London life of busy and engrossed evenings. The first duties are to business and to home. The other duties, however sacred they may be, must come after. I have no patience with women who are too busy to do their duty, women who are great in philanthropic and social work, but who are too busy to look after their husbands and their children. The wife's kingdom must be the home, and her life is a failure and a mistake if the home is unhappy, no matter how much she does for liberty, for progress, even for Christianity. Charles Dickens never did better service than when he made this clear to the dullest, by such pictures as that of Mrs. Jellaby. We are wisest 128 ^ The Sin of Over-Work <$» and happiest, and tread most surely in the way of Hfe, when we do well the work allotted to us, when we find time for the home, when we strengthen the ties that bind us to our friends. The place for us is, generally speaking, the place where we are. Miss Monflathers severely rebuked Little Nell for being a waxwork child. "Don't you feel how naughty it is," said Miss Monflathers, " to be a waxwork child, when you might have the proud consciousness of assisting to the extent of your infant powers the manufactures of your country ; of improving your mind by the constant con- templation of the steam engine, and of earning a comfortable and independent subsistence of from 2s. 9d. to 3s. a week ? " Good Charles Dickens did much to laugh this nonsense out of the world. Very few of us after a certain stage in life can change our place, and if we are miserable in the place, there is a probability, and more than a probability, that we have not done in it what we should have done, that we have not put heart and soul into that which had the first claim upon us. We may have been lazy, and that is far the likeliest thing, but there is just a chance that we may have been too busy to do our duty. K 129 XIII Samuel To prevent misapprehension, let me say at once that this letter is not an article rejected by the Encydopcedia Biblica. It refers to my Persian cat, Samuel, who has brightened our house now for about ten years. Samuel came to us as a kitten from a village in Surrey. He is only half a Persian, but in my opinion half-Persians are the best of cats. They are often magnificently coloured — Samuel's rich black and yellow cannot be surpassed — and they have the inestimable advantage of being healthy and robust. He is a large cat, but there are larger, though I have never seen one more beautiful. I quite admit that his intellect is not remarkable. He is not, so to speak, an eminent cat, though, as will be seen, he sometimes gives us a surprise. That some cats do wonderful things is quite certain. 130 *%» Samuel ^ Sam Slick's cat was fond of the library, because there was a snug carpet there, and he used to wait for the library bell, follow the maid upstairs, and get in. I myself once had a cat in the country, which used to get in by climbing up to the latch of the kitchen door, and putting her paw upon it so that it rattled. But it must be admitted generally regarding cats, Persian and half-Persian, that their intellects, though sound, are somewhat slow. What are the reasons that make the com- panionship of the cat so comforting ? First, I should put their truly Oriental character and their love of Nirvana. I have read that the Romans could never tame cats, which was no doubt one of the reasons for their decline and fall. The Egyptians, as everybody knows, made a great deal of them, and they were a wonderful people ; but I believe in Europe they first appeared as domesticated animals in Constanti- nople. If this is true, it is just what one might expect, for cats have much the spirit of the East. Philosophers have puzzled a great deal as to what Nirvana means, but, if they were to watch Samuel for an hour, they would understand the delicious ^ Samuel ^ state in which it is possible to be nine-tenths asleep, and to use the remaining tenth of one's self in realising the pleasure of rest. Most attractive and Oriental also are their exquisite grace, their stillness and sureness of movement, their style, so to speak. Some of them are unduly ambitious and come to evil ends, but Samuel is not a cat of that sort. In his early years he used to cross the road occasionally and visit the house of Sir Walter, where I believe the servants were kind to him. But now for years he has strictly confined himself day and night to our house and small garden. He has very little curiosity, but when a new room was added to the house he showed great interest and examined every corner of it carefully, and I think he has been over every room of the house in the same way, though habitually he frequents but two. Another reason for liking the companionship of cats is that they are affectionate. It is often said that they care for places only, and not for persons, or that, if they do care for persons, it is merely because they associate certain persons with certain comforts. No one who has studied cats will believe this. Samuel 132 ^ Samuel ^ is anything but demonstrative, but he has distinct likes and dislikes. When the boy was at home, Samuel was wont to visit him every morning and creep into his bed to be stroked, and trot after him down to breakfast. When the little lad went to school the cat was for a time inconsolable, searching for him all over the house, and mewing his discontent. When his friend came back again Samuel received him with a rapturous welcome. Sometimes when they are all out of the house, he comes up to my study, and it takes a great deal of caressing to quiet him. As a rule he does not like the .study. The move- ment of books very much disturbs his comfort. As for strangers, he discriminates very .sharply. He hates people who rush at him, and he must be courted in the old-fashioned, eighteenth- century style. Two or three times he has shown extraordinary partialities. One beautiful lady, who sometimes honours us with a visit, rouses him to the loudest demonstrations of approval. For some other people, again, even people who like cats, he shows a curious distaste. In the Surrey house, where we used to live at intervals, there was an immense and dignified cat, called Thomas. ^ Samuel ^ He was originally wild, but was brought into the house and tamed. A more undemonstrative cat I have never known. It was very difficult to induce him to purr, though when I was writing he would sometimes come upon the table and be very cordial. Once upon a time, however, his master had a severe illness, and was confined to his bedroom for four months. The poor creature missed him, and dimly conceiving that it was his duty to protect him, went up to the room and established himself there, scarcely leaving his master's side day or night till he was better and up again. Once I went to see Thomas, with a distinguished novelist, who is a very big man. The novelist immediately stroked him in a peculiar way, and the animal seemed to waken up and become quite enthusiastic. My friend explained to me that there was a way of stroking cats, but declined to say anything further. Samuel is very fond of attention and very jealous, and these characteristics are common to most cats. True, they sometimes make great friends of dogs, though I always think that the cat is overshadowed by the dog, just as a girl is kept down by a brilliant and loquacious brother. Sometimes, too, they are ^ Samuel ^ friendly with other cats, especially when they begin life together. Samuel, however, objects to any companion. We have a dog in Scotland, whom we should be very glad to have here, but none of us would think of hurting Samuel's feelings. Once, greatly daring, we brought a kitten, William, to share his room, but his un- feigned misery, a misery which changed his whole appearance, was too much for us, and William had to go. Cats are very kind to children, but they dislike babies in the early stage. Samuel likes to be talked about. If he is neglected he will roll him- self on the hearthrug to attract attention. When he is spoken to, or when he hears his name in a conversation, he shows manifest satisfaction. In my opinion the great charm of cats has never been properly noticed. It is their purring. What can be more restful than to listen to the loud purring of a cat ? What can be more in- structive ? There you see pessimistic theories rebuked. Here is one creature in the world heartily and thoroughly content. You know that there are hundreds of thousands like him, and begin to suspect, if you arc in the dumps, that you are disquieting yourself in vain, or at least, ^35 ^ Samuel ^ that things will go better yet. I am persuaded that it is this pleasing habit that has made cats so popular. I wish it were more common in superior beings. What misery is made in human life by the detestable habit of grumbling. No wonder that the early books of the Bible should denounce so bitterly the murmuring of the Israelites. Murmuring just means grumbling. The evil that cursed the first ages of the world curses the last. One should at least be able to refrain from giving himself tongue. If he does, he makes his trouble far worse, and he loads the life of other people, who are just able to go on and no more. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who do not grumble, but who never purr. Purring is not bragging. Purring is an expression of gratitude and content. There are many hard-working folks, wives and mothers especially, who keep toiling all the time and never get a word of thanks. How different their lives would be if their husbands would purr when they came home ! And why should wives not purr also, when it is possible to do so ? Perhaps if they purred at a kind word they would hear more such words. 136 ^ Samuel ^ Samuel prefers to stay out at night, though he never goes beyond the gate. When I come home late he always rushes to me, rubs himself against me, and purrs most cordially. He expects to be care.ssed, and then he retires to his couch. I do not wonder that the old woman in Miss Wilkins' charming story had such comfort in her cat, William, her only companion. It seemed to her that, when William was lost, everything had gone with him. It was no use to go to a prayer- meeting or to church. The alleviation that made life tolerable had been taken away. When it was found that William had hidden away in a cellar and was still alive, how great was the revulsion ! And now to finish this letter. I should not dare to send the remaining paragraph even to the Spectator, and I am by no means certain that you will insert it. But it is a fact that on reading certain minor poets to Samuel I have found the intelligent creature show distinct signs of amusement. More than this, I tried him lately with some of our Laureate's laborious trash about the union between England and America. After hearing two stanzas he delibe- rately left the room. XIV How to Remember and how to Forget. I RECEIVE many letters from persons who are anxious to strengthen their memory. Whenever memory systems are advertised, there are anxious souls who fervently hope they have found the thing they have long been seeking. You do not often hear people complaining very seriously about their memories, but it is clear to me that there are not a few who in secret are much exercised on the point. There are others who desire to forget. It may be worth while to put down a few suggestions on both subjects. As to memory systems I have no personal experience, but I know that some are genuine and have been found very useful. They might, I should think, be specially useful to young persons with poor memories, who have to pre- pare for examinations. But I am not dealing with that class. I am speaking to those whose ■38 ^ How Remember and Forget Should Old Letters he Kept ? '^ The most difficult question of all is the dis- posing of old letters. Are they to be all burnt ? Certainly very many of them should be burnt. There cannot be more than a small proportion worth the trouble of keeping. There is a great deal to be said in favour of preserving letters from notable people, although personally I have not done it to any extent. I sometimes wish that I had, but on the whole the wish is feeble. Letters of affection raise a question which comes home to most people. It has been discussed in an interesting way by a clever American novelist, Mrs. Edith Wharton, in a little book entitled A Gift from the Grave, which John MiuTay has recently published. Mrs. Wharton's treatment is too too — she writes like Henry James when he is most clever and most provoking. She tries to render complexities and sinuosities of feeling and thought which remain obscure after her strength is exhausted. But she has real strength, and her story is well worth reading. Tt tells how a man received love-letters from a famous woman. He did not love her, but she went on writing and writing, till at last she died. He kept the letters, and ultimately he fell in love and wanted to ^11 ^ Should Old Letters be Kept ? ^ marry. He was poor, and in order to make a little money he sold the letters to a publisher, and they were given to the world under the lady's name. His wife discovered what he had done, and naturally did not admire the proceeding. Therefore he passed through a complicated re- pentance, very cleverely described by Mrs. Wharton. The whole thing, however, could have been put by Artemus Ward in one sentence. The man felt himself a " mean cuss," and so he was. Ultimately he and his wife became better friends than ever. He should not have published the letters. We shall all agree about this. Should he have kept them ? I think not ; at least, he should not have kept them after he became engaged to the other woman. No doubt genuine love-letters have an interest. We read them every day in breach of promise cases, and editors show a true instinct in printing them at length. But are they edifying ? Mr. Barrett Browning did a very bold thing when he published the love-letters of his father and mother, but the step he took was fully justified. If we had all the letters which Tennyson and his wife ex- changed during their long engagement, we should ^ Should Old Letters be Kept ? «3 ^ The Secret of Mrs. Frafrae ^ she would have made it for herself, had the chance been given her. The husband and the wife both earned their bread by exercise, and that of the most arduous kind. " Our days were thoroughly occupied ; we used to part every morning at eight o'clock and not meet again till five. But with what sweet rest did the turmoil of each busy day decline ! Looking down the vista of memory I see the evenings passed in that little parlour, like a long circle of rubies circling the dusky brow of the past. Unvaried were they as each cut gem, and, like each gem, brilliant and burning." And the author of Mark Rutherford tells us : "It was a comfort to me to think that the moment the clock struck seven my second self died, and that my first self has suffered nothing by having anything to do with it. Who was to tell the revulsion on reaching home, which I should never have known had I lived a life of idleness ? Ellen was fond of hearing me read, and with a little care I was able to select what would bear reading. Oh, how many times have I left my office humiliated by some silently endured outbreak on the part of my master, the more ■ 184 ^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ galling because I could not put it aside as altogether gratuitous, and in less than an hour it was two miles away, and I was myself again ! " I am thinking, however, of those who, whether they complain or not, feel that their lives are dull. They are drearily situated in remote places, where they have little or no congenial companionship. Their tasks are not outwardly and visibly imposed upon them. Life is grey and sombre. It lacks interest, and there is nothing in the future to promise refreshment. I am not thinking of those who are baffled and heartsore with many anxieties, or stunned by a reverse of fortune, but of men and women who are accounted enviable by their neighbours, and yet feel in their heart of hearts that life is slip- ping away from them, and that they are not making the best of it. To such Mrs. Farfrae's secret should be very useful, and it may be applied in various ways. (i) The first thing to do is to make the best of what you possess, to cultivate a knowledge and a love of your surrounding.s. Imagine, if you can, that the axis of the earth projects from the centre of your village square. According to 185 ^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ The Autocrat this is the belief of good Bostonians about Boston, and it makes them happy. The habit of grumbling at a monotonous, uninteresting environment is very dangerous. Psychologists tell us nowadays that, if we act up to what we wish to believe, we shall attain belief at last. And every part of God's world has its own quality and attraction, did we but know it. I think women are more easily able to do this than men are. There is the feminine instinct of clinging to what is nearest and most familiar. It is notably illustrated in the life of Mrs. Browning. When she went from England to Italy, England became to her almost at once a memory, a vision seen through half-closed eyes. Her whole affections seemed to concentrate at once upon Italy. One would have to make- believe very much, before a Scotch or English village could put on for him the loveliness of Italy. And yet, by taking thought, each may find his home richer in beauty than he had thought it. (2) It is still more necessary to cultivate a kindly interest in your kind. Gossip has been very much denounced, and there is a kind of 186 ^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ gossip which does great mischief. Mrs. Candour has her representatives in these days. I doubt, however, whether the slaughter of character goes on as quickly as in the old time. One does occasionally meet an old lady with an abnormal passion for tea, and an equally abnormal know- ledge of the peerage, both of which seem to belong to an earlier period. But kindly gossip is the salt of conversation. It is inhuman to live in the country and to care nothing for the joys and sorrows of your neighbours. People love and prize sympathy more than anything else, and they will forgive much to a sympathetic gossip. The neighbours who never speak of them because they do not care to know about them are regarded with a just aversion. (3) Still it must be admitted that men and women whose conversation is merely gossip are sure to deteriorate till they become intolerable. It is necessary to be in contact with a broader life than that of the country parish or the little town. Well, there is always the escape of books. The mind in a quiet and leisurely life must be able to a large extent to feed, not upon itself, but upon its own possessions, and to furnish 187 ^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ its own delights. The chief misery of an isolated life is that in many cases it dwarfs and stunts the intellect. It may even kill all intellectual curiosity, and that is death indeed. In order to prevent this it is wise to carry on a course of reading or study. I know a country gentle- man who many years ago took up Egyptology. He has pursued it with great diligence, and has now so good a knowledge of the subject that he is able to meet on fairly equal terms the best experts. It has been a wonderful thing for him in many ways, chiefly because it has kept the current of his mind clear, and has given him a new interest in life. It has also been the means of winning some valuable friend- ships. Be it observed that the study would have been comparatively useless if it had been languidly pursued, but it was carried out with earnest perseverance. I should not greatly pity any friend in his loneliness, if I knew that he had an interest of this kind. I am far from saying that young men should imitate Lord Lytton's hero, who shut himself up in a country house at the age of twenty, that he might read the minor Platonists. I do say that every one i88 ^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ should take care, lest they lose by neglect that power of finding their pleasure in books and thoughts, which is the least alienable perhaps of all our possessions, which may be continued to us when the most precious things are taken, leaving life more than endurable, even happy and peaceful. (4) I should lay great stress also upon corre- spondence. When all is said and done, the chief disadvantage of a life in remote parts is the want of congenial human intercourse. It is not good for a man that he should find everything he wants in that way under his own roof There is a family selfishness as corroding as an indi- vidual selfishness. Now there are many places where a man may live for many years and never find a true comrade, one to whom he can thoroughly open up his mind. The friends of his heart are far distant. The correspondence that once passed has been neglected, and has almost dropped away. One ought to have cer- tain things to look forward to every day, and the chief thing no doubt will be as a rule the letters. You cannot get good letters unless you write them. Your post will be pretty much 189 ^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ what you make it. Very busy men have no time for private correspondence, but most women can write, and they ought to write and keep up the Hnks between their husbands and their old friends until emancipation comes and their husbands can take the pen in their own hands. I am sure that not half enough is made of correspondence as a sweetener and solace of life. Most people at certain periods of their life have had intimate correspondence, and I appeal to them whether they were not greatly helped and cheered and soothed, not only by the letters they received, but by the letters they wrote. Elderly people, in particular, ought to keep their friendships and their correspondence in repair. (5) But, after all, the great secret of happiness is to seek the happiness of others. There is no such peace to be found in the world as the peace that comes to those who are working for the good of their fellow-creatures. A man who gives himself truly to the service of the needy is never, so far as I have seen, an unhappy man. The quest for a selfish happiness will be de- feated, but, as we seek to bring brightness into the lives of others, our own darkness will be 190 ^ The Secret of Mrs. Farfrae ^ strangely lightened. There is something in this world which in the midst of disappointments does not disappoint, and The man whose eye Is ever on himself, doth look on one The least of nature's works. 191 XIX Brilliance What do we mean when we speak of a person being brilliant ? Perhaps some help to the answer will be found in the etymology of the word. Brilliant, I believe, comes from beryl, and thus brilliancy will mean the quality of a jewel, the flashing, lustrous quality. With this clue we may consider the question. A sharp line must be drawn between brilliancy in writing and brilliancy in conversation. It often happens that one who writes brilliantly does not talk in the same way. There are exceptions, of course. Mr. George Meredith, for example, is equally brilliant in his books and in his con- versation. It happens also that people who are brilliant in talk are quiet and tame in writing. There is a lustre in their spoken speech, a fresh- ness and glow in their thoughts when stirred by the stimulus of living presences, which seems 192 Brilli lance somehow to depart when they write for print. They cannot dictate, and when they dip their pen in ink the life of their mind seems to depart, and all becomes conventional. Johnson, no doubt, was a great writer, but, save in occasional passages, hardly a brilliant writer. In conversation, how- ever, his brilliance was incessant. I wish to speak rather of brilliancy in talk than of brilliancy in writing, and this for a reason which will appear immediately. The property of a jewel is to flash, and to flash unexpectedly, to take different aspects as you take it different ways, but always to shine. A few people possess this strange power. Those who are with them cease to be listless. They are eager to watch the gleams of light that flash from them in a rayless, unilluminated world. If there is a Boswell present to take down their talk, it is worth reading when it is reproduced, but not half so much worth reading as it was worth hearing ; for the brilliant person has a certain radiance which comes out in the eyes, in the gestures, in the tones of the voice, in the quick, impetuous way of speech. It is natural for a jewel to flash, and it is natural for the brilliant person to be o 193 Brilliance brilliant. It has been said that nobody was ever eloquent by trying to be eloquent, but only by being so. Grand speeches come only from grand thoughts, and passionate speech from passionate feeling. You may imitate the phrases of an orator, his pomp of words and his rhythm, but you cannot imitate his eloquence. Is it not Ruskin who says that no man need try to be a prophet ? Your business is to go on quietly with your hard camp work, and the Spirit will come to you in the camp, as it did to Eldad and Medad, if you are appointed to have it. If you are not appointed to have it, there is nothing left but submission. A great element of brilli- ancy is that it surprises. The brilliant person can compass strange alliances, can bring together words that have hitherto been strangers, and see the relation between remote facts and make them throw light upon one another. He has almost always a certain gift of style. As a rule his range of knowledge and observation is wide, but perhaps his main power is shown in giving fresh colour and significance to what has become pallid, unmeaning, or, to say the least, hopelessly commonplace. Here De Quincey's dicta about 194 Brilliance style come in well. Style, says De Ouincey, has two functions. The first is to brighten the intelligibility of the obscure ; the second is to regenerate the normal impressiveness of subjects that have become dormant to the sensibilities. The brilliant person will ordinarily have a copious memory for words and facts, but beyond this quality is the power to select, the power to extricate relations to which others have been blind, to refresh and retrace the lineaments that have begun to decay and fade. I may seem to be confusing brilliancy of speech with brilliancy in writing, but it is not so. One of the obscure great critics of England has said that eloquence is heard and poetry is overheard. Eloquence supposes an audience. The poet is unconscious of a listener. Poetry is feeling confessed in moments of solitude to itself, while eloquence pours itself out to other minds, and is magnified in its expression by their presence. Is it not true that the French are the most eloquent and the least poetical of nations ? Brilliancy, it need hardly be said, is very rare, as rare at least as the most precious jewels. In the whole course of my pilgrimage I have met Brilli lance with, perhaps, three persons who might be called brilliant in conversation, who in any room and in any company would soon draw all eyes and ears. That is a small number out of so many, many highly and variously gifted. As things are, or as things have been, one might expect to find that brilliant men are twice as numerous as brilliant women. With the changes in education, however, I should not be at all surprised if the proportion were reversed, and that in no very long time. Just because brilliancy is so uncommon, it will always be prized, will always make an impression greater than perhaps it deserves to make. I read in a newspaper the other day that the price of diamonds was likely to increase very much. Yet a life may be lived in comfort and in peace by people who possess no diamonds. As a matter of fact, I excessively dislike to see a man displaying diamonds in any way, and I think the dislike is not uncommon. Oliver Wendell Holmes allowed a gentleman to wear a signet ring, and one ring ought to be sufficient. I tremble to speak of the other sex, but some persons at least are of the opinion that very few women, if they were wise, would indulge in 196 Brilll lance a lavish show of diamonds. Be this as it may, however, there is little question that to the end of time diamonds will retain their value, and so in the same way a brilliant personality will win for itself wonder and regard to the end of time, in a world that is so drab, so ordinary, so humdrum, so commonplace. The person who considers himself brilliant may complain that he is not properly appreciated. He may comfort himself with the maxim, Margaritas ante porcos, but is he sure that he was strewing real pearls ? It is perhaps more likely that the pearls were mock pearls than that his audience were swine. Still, there is a certain drawback to brilliancy. That, too, is a jewel's quality. It has its hard- ness. Brilliant persons are delightful for the time, but one cannot live upon mere brilliancy, George Henry Lewes, who was qualified to speak on the subject, said very pathetically that in life, as in literature, our admiration for mere cleverness has a touch of contempt in it, and is very unlike the respect paid to character. He goes on to affirm that no talent can be supremely effective, unless it act in close alliance with certain moral qualities. Lewes was much ^97 Brilli lance more remarkable for cleverness than for char- acter : but he knew the better part, even if he did not choose it. I used to think that Kingsley's hne, Be good, my child, and let who will be clever, might be taken as an insult. I see now that o I was wrong. Kingsley was not disparaging cleverness. What he meant was that, however far cleverness may go, life and the happiness of life depend upon it very little, while they abso- lutely depend upon goodness. It is human goodness tried and proved by which we poor creatures are enabled to face the storms of time. We are glad sometimes to see the jewels flashing, but if we never saw them we should not miss them much. Without goodness to look up to and to lean upon, our strivings would soon end. And yet all brilliancy is not hard. There is a certain form of brilliance which draws out in a wonderful way everything that is best in others. Some brilliant talkers coruscate and coruscate, and care for nothing but the respon- sive look and murmur of admiration. There 198 Brilliance are others, not less gifted than they who listen as well as speak, who can take an ordinary remark and light it at the fire of their own bright spirits, and give it back to the astonished speaker irradiated and glorious. That is, indeed, a celestial talent, and there are few finer ex- periences that come to most of us dull people than to have come, whether it be once or twice in a lifetime, within its friendly play. I had intended to say something about brilliant writing, but my space is exhausted. The tendency of the day is to depreciate brilliance in writing, to speak of it as tinsel, as unreal splendour, as mere intellectual fireworks. What was called prose poetry has practically disappeared. Colour and adornment in style are looked upon with considerable suspicion, although such writers as Stevenson and Pater have given individuality a chance. We are told that nowadays style should be simply a trans- parent medium for thought. I set little store by such doctrine. It is the kind of doctrine with which a commonplace generation comforts itself. It knows it cannot be brilliant, and it says that brilliancy is a censurable and even a 199 Brilliance shameful thing. Nonsense ! Let the brilliant writer rise, and he will soon change all that. Do not talk about certain styles as dead and buried ; do not say that even prose poetry will not be revived. Let another Milton rise, just as eloquent as the old Milton, and we shall listen spellbound with delight and awe to his music. We are very tired, it may be allowed, of little Macaulays ; but if Macaulay were to come back again, we should rush for his books as greedily as our fathers did. We knew very well when Ruskin departed that there was much that went with him, and that precious secrets were buried in his grave. The brilliant writer, the brilliant talker, the brilliant speaker — all of them are needed in our day more than they ever were, and will not fail of joyous welcome and full reward. 200 XX On Handwriting I HAVE no doubt that character is revealed more or less by handwriting. There is, I believe, a science of the subject, and books embodying it, but I have never read any of the rules, and am entirely ignorant of it. If any person who has a large correspondence begins to study the hand- writing of his correspondents in connection with their characteristics otherwise known to him, he will find more and more that there is a strange harmony. He will even, in time, perhaps, come to believe that if he closely studies the hand- writing of an unknown correspondent he may be able to make some shrewd guesses as to the history and the disposition of the writer. He will do this, not by the application of rules, but by a kind of instinct. You cannot tell a man how to fish. An expert angler is hardly ever able to put his practical knowledge into propositions and 20I On Handwriting formulas. I doubt whether a good golfer can give hints of much value to other people. He knows that he should do this or that in order to succeed, but in doing it he does not apply rules, but acts from an experience more or less un- consciously built up. So that I do not suppose my reflections will be of any use to other people, though I try to set them down as clearly as I can. The great distinction between handwritings is that between the educated and the un- educated. Broadly speaking, there is an educated handwriting and an uneducated, and there are grades in education which handwriting reveals. But in these days almost everybody is taught up to a certain point, and the uneducated hand- writing cannot be so well classified. I know just one case of a highly educated person writing a thoroughly uneducated hand, and I have no doubt there is some explanation for it She is a highly cultured lady, and brilliant in conversation. Her style, however, when she writes, is poor and uncoloured, and her handwriting resembles that which I have seen come from workhouses. Allowing for this exception, I have never been deceived. The educated hand may be a very bad 202 On Handwriting hand, but it is unmistakable. There is also the handwriting of the scholar, which is, as a rule, very precise and careful, but not beautiful. There is the handwriting of the man of culture, which in many cases is very graceful. Dean Church wrote to the last a most beautiful hand, a handwriting which could not have been owned except by a man of the highest refinement and taste. In his early days, before he dabbled in journalism, Mr. VV. H. Mallock also wrote a singularly beautiful hand. These two, Dean Church and Mr. Mallock, are on the whole the best caligraphers I have ever known. When to culture and scholarship there is added imagination, it is apt to spoil the hand, which becomes then in certain cases sprawling and irregular. From Mr. Swinburne's handwriting of twenty years ago, I think you could have told that he was a poet and a man of genius. Young people ought to persevere with their handwriting, at least until it becomes an educated handwriting. Yet perhaps this is not necessary. If they go on educating themselves and mastering new provinces of knowledge, they will come inevitably to reveal their acquirement by their handwriting. There is also in handwriting much unconscious 203 On Handwriting revelation of character. By far the clearest and the most certain is the revelation of what I may call, for want of a better name, self-consciousness or un-self-consciousness. It would not be a great error to say that this is the difference between modesty and conceit. Everybody knows this up to a certain extent. There is no getting away from an affected signature. When a man has to write a difficult signature for banknotes or for business purposes he may possibly be excused, but the man who, in his ordinary communications, prepares an elaborate and uniform signature, stamps himself not necessarily as a foolish or wicked or unfriendly person, but as one who is accustomed to think much of himself Young men, as well as old, are apt to err in this way. I remember some years ago receiving a letter from a young man in which the signature occupied half a page of ordinary note-paper. I made up my mind that there was nothing for that young man but to wait and learn. Some years after- wards I received another letter from him. The signature was still too large, but not abnormally so. I was not surprised to hear that he was at last beginning to make good progress. When he 204 On Handwriting becomes a really successful man no doubt his signature will be like the signatures of other people. There are a few — a very few — literary people who write their signature in quite another manner from the body of their letters, and every one of them is a person with whom vanity is a disease, and very nearly a madness. There are many authors who do not go so far as this, but go quite far enough to show that they are in reality self-conscious. They never write their names without reflecting that these names are of significance in the world. Another very trustworthy indication is the manner in which the pronoun " I " is written. On this I might say much, but I am afraid of personalities. Suffice it that wherever you have a person who writes the pronoun " I " just as he would write the great letter in the word " Irish," you may be tolerably sure of meeting a decent fellow. If, on the other hand, the " I " is contorted and queer, you are face to face with self-con- sciousness at the very least, and probably with something worse than that. Another fairly safe discrimination in hand- writing is that between the trustworthy and the untrustworthy. I know some handwritings in 205 On Handwriting which no untruth, no false vow, no baseness of any kind could possibly be written ; just as I know faces which tell me in a moment that the soul which looks through them may be trusted all in all and for ever. There are other handwritings so weak, so shifty, so flabby, and so unsettled that one wants to be sure before be- lieving anything, though I am bound to say that often the owners are better than their script. But without going so deep as that, you have handwritings which tell you that in business matters the owner is to be relied on. If he says that he will deliver you a manuscript on Tuesday at twelve o'clock, you may be quite certain it will come, and that it will be decently done. Other handwritings suggest that you will get a letter on Tuesday at the appointed hour, explaining that the author is prostrate with neuralgia, and has not been able to do anything. Of course, there is illness that is disabling and prostrating, but there is illness through which a man can keep on doing his work ; and the people I like least in the world are the numerous class who believe that when any- thing is the matter with them they are at once absolved from every duty but that of attending to 206 ^ On Handwriting ^ themselves. I have through many years been accustomed to judge questions of this sort merely on the indications of handwriting, and I have hardly ever found myself mistaken. Another distinction of handwriting, which is also a very clear one, is that between conciliatory and unconciliatory people. I have before my mind an example of a handwriting well known to me. It would show to all, except very dense people, that the writer was of an anxious, winning, apologetic, deprecating nature. You can see the letters bowing and scraping — sometimes almost kneeling. Other handwritings, again, tell you that the writer has not thought at all whether he will please you or not. He is simply doing what he conceives to be his duty. And there are handwritings of people whom you instinctively know to be deliberately aggravating. They are in the habit of annoying their own people at home. They are accustomed to nag ; the habit has become second nature to them, and they try it with editors, who, as a rule, are not distinguished for patience. The ideal handwriting is the hand- writing which shows the gentleman — not anxiously conciliatory, but still not willing to give offence. 207 On Handwriting I will mention but one more distinction, and that is between the strong and the weak. There are handwritings which show clearly that the writer will see a thing through, will not easily be daunted by difficulties, and will accept defeat only at the sword's point. There are other hand- writings so weak and so characterless that you are sure the possessors will never win a fight. And there are others, and this is a very common type of character, which show what I may call weak strength. The writers imagine their achievements very vividly, and go at them with a rush, but when they meet with determined opposition they soon give in. This kind of character is shown in the use of thick ink, broad pens, and large letters breaking into small letters at the end of a word. I conclude with some cautions. Handwriting depends to a great extent on the teacher. Ladies were' taught in the old days to write an angular hand. They are now taught, apparently, for the most part to write a large black hand, such as might be produced by quills. The old style was the more feminine, and the new style is perhaps the more legible. But it is difficult to draw any sure conclusion from the writing of young persons. 208 ^ On Handwriting ^ As time goes on, however, things clear themselves up, and the character finds its way into the work. Of handwriting done in the way of business not much can be said. The writer knows for what purpose the work is to be used, and does not indulge in individual flourishes. And there are a great many people also of whose handwriting you can only say that it suggests an overworked and hurried life. You can see that the writer is working up to or beyond the limit of his powers, and that when he sits down to pen the letter the whole thought in his mind is to finish it, seal it up, and send it off as soon as possible. 209 XXI The Happy Life If I have previously written on this subject, I make no apology for returning to it. A man is constantly led to think of it anew by fresh observation, and a small experience of mine in the North lately has suggested one or two ideas. In the first place, we must not make the mistake of thinking that the smooth, easy, vegetating life is the best. It may be so in the negative sense. By its very definition it is freed from the higher pains and pangs. But then with these it misses the greater, rarer ecstasies that reveal the possibilities of the soul. Is it true to say that One crowded year of glorious life Is worth an age without a name ? It may be true. The remembrance of a brief grand blessedness may be sweeter and more 2IO The Happy Life precious than years upon years of quiet, un- interrupted content. There is a content which it is possible to enjoy by suppressing capacity, by ceasing from thought, from interest, from effort, from ambition — the content that comes to those who are perfectly satisfied if they can eat comfortably and sleep comfortably, and escape disturbance. But even without Christianity man was noble enough to discover that this was unworthy. In his remarkable essay on the Ancient Stoics, Sir Alexander Grant rightly lays stress on the profound truth which Seneca perceived — the truth, namel)', that the mind and the will evoked into consciousness, and provoked even by suffering, are a greater possession than the blessings, if they were attainable, of a so-called golden age and state of nature. The old picture of mankind in a state of innocence, dwelling together in some far-off island, where every impulse was virtuous and every impulse was to be obeyed, was rejected by the Stoics. They said that in these primitive times there was, in fact, no wisdom. If men did wise things, they did them unconsciously. They had not even virtue ; 21 I The Happy Life neither justice, nor prudence, nor temperance, nor fortitude. Seneca railed at the actual state of the world, but he saw that the remedy was placed rather in the power of the will, in the effort to progress, than in dreams of a bygone state of innocence. Amongst modern writers the most powerful exponent of this view, so far as I know, is Mrs. Oliphant. The burden of all her teaching is that it is infinitely better to live rather than to exist, even though life may bring its full tale of agonies and failures and regrets. She, too, had her own sharp sufferings, and perhaps at last her indomitable spirit yielded and she felt it was good to die. Yet to the last she held to it unwaveringly that these sufferings had been good for her, that blessings had come with them and after them, and that they had awakened in her thoughts and feelings which it was good to have aroused, thoughts and feelings which to leave dormant would have been to impair vitality. It is not wise, it is not right that we should be willing to contract and deaden our natures, to see them shrink, dwindle, draw themselves within meaner lines every day, simply because their 212 The Happy Life development is accomplished at the cost of inevitable and even, it may be, very sharp sorrows. In the second place, there can be no doubt that the way to happiness can only be found if it is not deliberately sought. To seek happiness is almost always to miss it. Always in the long run there is something higher, nearer, and more commanding than our own happiness. There are the claims of duty and of love. I do not know whether, for practical purposes, we can express it better than by saying that we ought to seek in the first place the happiness of others ; and, as has been finely said, we shall discover that, if we bring happiness into the lives of other people, we shall not be able to keep.it out of our own. This is true, and yet it is a truth that surely needs most careful guarding. I have often seen it explained in the wrong way. It does not mean that we are to make other people happy by indulging them, by flattering them, by helping them to the things that they wish. Human nature being what it is, this is impossible, for as a matter of fact, most of us arc injured by flatter}'. We 213 The Happy Life are not injured but benefited by the honest commendation of what we have honestly done. But we are injured by all eulogy which has not been earned. Neither is it good for grown-up people, any more than for children, that they should be indulged. From a friend one expects a kind interpretation of our actions, a generous allowance for our failures ; but he is no true friend who encourages us in a wrong course of action, and makes us believe that we are upon the right, track, when in reality we have greatly erred. No, the way to make others happy is to serve them, to give them all the help in our power, to develop their best, to believe in them, to encourage them when they are taking their slow and difficult steps upward, and to warn them when they are deliberately choosing the poorer and baser way. They may not like the warning, but there are occasions when it ought to be given, and when to be silent is to betray the obligations of friendship. Everybody can see this in the case of children, unless perhaps some parents in the case of their own children. It is cruel to allow a child to have what it wishes, to go on with a will 214 The Happy Life unchecked till it becomes almost too strong for checking. It is the business of a wise parent gently to repress, to teach, to correct, to dis- courage as well as to encourage and praise. So the man or woman who goes grinning about the world and prophesying smooth things may earn a certain worthless kind of popularity, but can never receive the highest guerdon of friend- ship and of love. To " truth it in love," as the Apostle Paul says, is the highest possible service we can render to another. Compare two lives. In the one life a man sets himself to enjoy what is best, to see the best and to know it, to have all the pleasurable experiences that are within his range, to ex- perience the delights of stimulating conversation, to let out the hours of each day to his own advantage. Another turns his back upon such things. He fulfils his daily task, and in the hours that are at his own disposal he seeks to uplift the wretched and the poor. You look at his life and you can see how impoverished and stunted it has been on many sides. You observe how as the years pass this voluntary work of his assumes greater and greater pro- 215 The Happy Life portions in his mind. He begins to be more absorbed with it even than with his business. Though he does the allotted work well, his heart is elsewhere. I should like you to take the two lives and compare them at seventy. You will then find which has been the best and the most rewarding, which has stored up most sunshine in the passing. The first as the end draws near is apt to be weary. The best wine has been drunk, the familiar faces have vanished or grown rebuking and old, a few poor japes are all that remain out of the brilliant conversation. The other is peaceful, with a mellow light lying over it, and not without some humble assurance that it has not been lived altogether in vain. But you say the highest life is neither of these. The highest life must of necessity bear upon it the print of the nails. There must be sacrifice in it. In that curious book, now apparently forgotten, Renan's PJiilosophical Dialogues, there is a noteworthy passage on immortality : " As for myself, I do not precisely claim immortality ; but I should like two things — first, that my sacrifices to goodness and to 2l6 The Happy Life truth should not have been offered up to blank and empty space. (I do not want to be repaid for them, but I want them to fulfil some purpose.) And secondly, that what little I have done should meet with somebody's acknow- ledgment. I want God's esteem, nothing more. This is exorbitant, is it ? Do we reproach the dying soldier with taking an interest in the issue of the battle, and wishing to know whether his general-in-chief is pleased with him ? " One of Renan's sharpest critics found great fault with him for this. He said that Renan had no right to speak of well-doing as a sacrifice. He adds that, when we perform an act of justice to our own detriment, we sacrifice some- thing, but not the self proper, because the self proper, the higher nature, was on the contrary indulged. Why, then, should it claim as a reward for its indulgence a second gratification in consideration for the first ? The individual might as well claim to be repaid in heaven for the steaks which he consumed on earth, on the score that their purchase involved a pecuniary sacrifice. This is ingenious, but it will not bear examination. If the higher nature were sole in 217 The Happy Life us, things would be very much more simple. If we were pure spirits, and not flesh and blood also, then things would be simpler still. But these are not the facts, and the facts being what they are, it remains that, in the highest life, there must be an element of sacrifice. It is true, however, that a great deal that is called sacrifice does not in the very least deserve the name, and the man to whom all well-doing is sacrifice may wisely tremble for the supremacy of his nobler self, 2l8 XXII The Man in the Street I HAVE lately come to know " The Man in the Street." He is, let it be understood, an indi- vidual with a name, a surname, and an address in London. There are any number of men in the street ; but this one, I am convinced, is typical of all. When you understand him, you understand the rest. When you hear his judg- ment, you may be sure that he is speaking for at least a million. In order properly to get at his mind, you should talk to him on his native heath. My last interview with him was in the study where I am writing, and he was less vocal than he would have been in his proper element. In Trollope's excellent story. The Small House at Allington, we are told that the heroine would never interview Hopkins, the gardener, without allurintr him out of his own domain into the overawine neighbourhood of chairs and tables. 219 ^ The Man in the Street ^ " I always like," said Lily, " to get him into the house, because he feels a little abashed by the chairs and tables, or perhaps it is the carpet that is too much for him. Out on the gravelled walks he is such a terrible tyrant, and in the greenhouse he almost tramples on one." But the man in the street talks best in the street. " The Man in the Street " is a pure Cockney, born within the sound of Bow Bells. He had a rough time in his youth — a poor education at a cheap, cruel little school, and an early and bitter apprenticeship. All this made him thoroughly familiar with the streets of London. He became sharp, ingenious, and resourceful. By patient diligence he has now reached a fairly good position, though the nature of his work keeps him very much in the street still. There is little in London that he does not know. He has spoken in his time to people of every kind. His eyes and his ears have been thoroughly trained, and he is by no means a person to be despised. The first thing to say about " The Man in the Street " is that material interests hold by far the first place in his mind. He has lived all his days, 220 ^ The Man in the Street ^ and is living to-day, in an atmosphere of con- tinual and remorseless competition. He knows very well that, if he makes a stumble, he will be immediately trampled down. He knows that he cannot afford to miss a single chance ; he is holding on, as it were, by the nails. There are very few businesses in London nowadays that can be left to themselves for a single week. New enterprises, new energy, new ideas, must be put into them constantly, else they will soon dis- appear. " The Man in the Street " is no whiner. When misfortunes come he is calmly composed. He takes his reverses like a man, and docs not complain. When he succeeds, unless the success be on a great scale, he does not boast. He is aware of the mixture of good and evil in life, and tries to keep an equal mind. In this he is much helped by a curious but keen sense of humour. His humour has a sardonic turn about it; but, such as it is, it fortifies liim. He tho- roughly enjoys London — the crowded streets, the rush of business — and would be miserable in the country. Philosophical, full of mother wit, he gets through his life, day by day, patiently putting up with a thousand rebuffs, and keeping 221 ^ The Man in the Street ^ his head above water to the last, besides paying premiums to make a provision for his family when he dies. " The Man in the Street " has a great and quiet belief in his country. He is deeply moved by our reverses and trials : he may condemn the Government and the officers ; but he is lenient and says little. He knows too well how many of his own careful plans have failed, to be hard on others who have not succeeded. He is fully determined on seeing the war through, and if it were of any use he would go out himself and expose his life in defence of his country. What is gnawing at his heart, though he says little about it, is the apprehansion of what is going to happen to his business during the next six months or so. His thoughts of the economies he can effect have made another wrinkle on his brow. But he has no fear of defeat, and would go on to the last sixpence and the last drop of blood before he would yield. Foreign nations, he thinks, completely fail to understand the English mind — slow to move and hardened by threats and dangers to the temper of steel. " The Man in the Street " is quietly but intensely 222 ^ The Man in the Street ^ and affectionately loyal. He worships Queen Alexandra, thinks the King is a good fellow, and detests attacks on the Royal Family. In politics, " The Man in the Street " is a Con- servative. He used to hate Socialism, but he now despises it. He has a firm conviction that trade is a great thing, and that trade is not good when the Liberals are in power. His favourite statesman is Lord Salisbury. Next to him comes Lord Rosebery. To Home Rule, "The Man in the Street" is so immovably opposed that you cannot get him to discuss it. He simply shakes his head, as if it were criminal for intelligent persons to talk of such a thing. He thinks that Mr. Gladstone was a wonderful man, but he never believed in him. He likes neither the London School Board nor the London County Council. He is firmly convinced that children are in many cases much over-educated, and that, if they want extra education, their parents should pay for it. Many measures have been passed in his name which he has not approved of, and he would be glad to sec them rescinded, though he will not move that way unless the real leader of men calls him. 22^ The Man i7t the Street " The Man in the Street " is not an enthusiast. Life has dealt him many blows, and he does not expect much from it. Being in the street and at work, he is little at home. He approves of marriage as the best thing for a man, but he is by no means enthusiastic on the subject. He is made to feel every day the responsibilities of a wife and children. I am afraid that he is not religious, although he may have a religion of his own. It is certain at least that he disapproves of an aggressive irreligion. Parsons, as he calls them, he especially and particularly despises and distrusts. The scorn with which he regards their discussions about incense and vestments is too great for him to express. But I fear he goes further than that, and thinks them hypocrites. He very rarely goes to church, and never of his own will. In business he dislikes religious people extremely, and would much rather deal with those who make no profession of being better than other people. In the matter of amusements, " The Man in the Street " prefers the music-hall. He likes variety, and enjoys the privilege of smoking, and it means much to him that no great demand is made upon 224 The Man in the Street his attention. I think he very rarely reads books. Mr. Jerome attracted him some years ago, and he was particularly entertained by TJiree Men in a Boat. He knows Rudyard Kipling's name very well, and likes his music-hall ditties, but he has never read any book by Kipling, though he may have tried to. On the other hand he is a diligent reader of newspapers. Till lately his favourite journal was the Daily Telegraph. Nowadays he reads also the Daily Mail. He reads the evening papers, the Star, the Evening News, the Echo, and the Sun ; and sometimes, though rarely, he will buy a copy of the Globe or the Westminster Gazette. On the whole, it is not easy to judge " The Man in the Street." You find, when you get to know him, that he cheerfully pinches himself for wife and children, and that the dearest of all to him in the whole world is a little cripple daughter. He may be seen at the end of a hard day buying a toy to make the child's heart glad. He can appreciate real kindliness of nature, and in his heart he loves dis- interestedness. I remember long ago reading, in an old newspaper, an account of the way in CL 225 ^ The Man in the Street *# which a London crowd showed its admiration of Garibaldi. " The Man in the Street " by the nature of his Hfe becomes cautious, observant, reticent, and even hard to appearance, but I believe when you get at his heart that you find him patient, constant, and latently generous and affectionate. His indomitable courage and tenacity the world may yet come to know. 226 XXIII 'I he Zest of Life When I have a little holiday I like to read biographies. It is good in the brief pauses of life to bethink one's self — to consider the drift and the end. A true life story helps you to do this. It happened this Easter that I found, in the circulating library, Julian Hawthorne's strange book on his father and mother, entitled Nathaniel Hawthorne attd his Wife. I had read it years ago twice at least, and very care- fully, and was ashamed to find how new it was — new, I mean, not in the details, but in the general conception of the whole. The ideal biography should begin with a very clear chronological table, showing at a glance how the life was divided. For want of this we mis- conceive — we do not see how events arc spread about or crowded together in a space of >-cars. I think I have read as much of Hawthorne, and 227 The Zest of Life as much about him, as most people. But some- how it never occurred to me to think how his Hfe was parted. I was rather inclined to agree with Henry James, whose opinion is quoted approvingly by Professor Seeley, that Hawthorne was a comfortable, prosperous person, and any- thing but an unromantic visionary. The facts are against this. Mr. Julian Hawthorne's book contains things that should never have been printed by a son, or even by a friend. But it masses the life, so to speak, rightly, and gives both a painful impression and a salutary lesson. It is surely a great thing to keep up the zest of life. Life is nothing if it loses interest. It was once said by a shrewd critic of good old Dr. Adam Clarke, the commentator, that his heart to the last leapt up when he beheld a rainbow in the sky. So his grey hairs and his many years were to be coveted. Not so the days of which it has to be said that there is no pleasure in them. Now, the peculiar thing about Hawthorne is that, years before he died, he completely lost the zest of life. He was only sixty when he passed away. He had apparently everything to 228 %» The Zest of Life "^ make him happy — the fullest domestic content, a splendid fame, a clear conscience, many warm friends, leisure, competence, and unimpaired powers. He had retired with his wife and children to the home of his own choosing at Concord. He did not wish to leave it, he had no definite complaint to make, and yet years before the end he began to pine away in hope- less dejection. His wife, who adored him, cleverly contrived that he should go to the seaside with his son, and she writes him in this significant way : " I do not know how to impress you with adequate force concerning the absolutely inspiring effect of your absence ! I have been weighed to the earth by my sense of your depressed energies and spirits, in a way from which I tried in vain to rally. I could not sit in the house and think about it, and so I kept as much as possible at work. Of all trials this is the heaviest to me — to see you so apathetic, so indifferent, so hopeless, so unstrung." This went on and grew worse and worse. He no longer seemed to find any sufficient interest in life. " I have been," he wrote to his friend Stoddard, " a happy man, 229 The Zest of Life and yet I do not remember any one moment of such happy conspiring circumstances that I could have rung a joy bell at it." This went on and on till at last Hawthorne was induced to go away with his devoted friend Pierce, and the end came peacefully. How is this to be explained ? Not by ill- ness. Illness is not necessarily depressing. It is depressing when it takes away the strength needed to fulfil a trust faithfully. Let the burden of that trust be lifted, and the heart leaps up. I admit that certain forms of illness do lead to melancholy, and perhaps Hawthorne's time in Rome may have injured him ; but there is no evidence. It was not any sense of failure, for Hawthorne was quite aware of his own greatness, and coveted no man's laurels. It was most assuredly no disappointment of the affections, for Hawthorne's whole heart went out to his own, as theirs to his. What then was the reason of this failure to rejoice in the wonder and bloom of the world, in the richness of God's special gifts to him ? My theory is that it came from a sunless youth. Let us look at the facts. Hawthorne lived some 230 The TjQst of Life sixty years. Of these thirty-eight were spent in loneliness, in obscurity, and in poverty. I have been in Salem, I know the surroundings of his childhood ; but one must understand the intense gloom of all that was nearest him to feel how it must have weighed on a sensitive spirit. Haw- thorne could not have been conscious of his own genius ; but in eager America every one went ahead, and he made no progress year after year, till Sophia Peabody came his way, and life lightened. The day was far spent when he married her. Thirty-eight out of his sixty years were gone. He was forty-six when he wrote The Scarlet Letter, and won his great triumph. It is curious to note that the books on which his fame rests were written between this and his fiftieth year — roughly speaking, in three year.s. He then had his time of fame, was in England and in Rome, saw much and was made much of, and had a little pleasure doubtless for a few years. Then he came back to sink into despondency and die. I think his best years were those after his marriage, when he drudged in anxious, happy poverty at the Salem Custom House. The moral is that childhood and youth should 231 The Zest of Life be made happy as far as possible. Armed with the memory and experience of happy years, a man may meet with unimpaired strength the trials that are sure to come. Break his spirit by sunlessness and suppression at the beginning, and he loses the power to resist, the power to enjoy. Only the power of suffering remains — and some- times the power to die. I find in Dr. Bain's " Mental and Moral Science," a book which is full of just and acute observations on human life and conduct, the following passage : — " The happiness of our later life is in great part made up of the pleasurable memories of early years. The early period of life, so favourable to acquirement generally, is adapted to the storing up of pleasures and pains. The same pleasure happening in youth and in middle age will not be equally remembered as a cheering association in advanced life. The joys of early years have thus an additional value. A pinched, severe, and ascetic bringing up will surely depress the tone of the whole future life ; scarcely any amount of subsequent good fortune will suffice to redress the waste." 232 XXIV Good Manners The other afternoon I had a chance of meeting a man whose name is at present on every one's lips. I came to the conclusion that he was the finest specimen I had ever seen of the thorough- bred English gentleman. This suggested some thoughts on a subject, which in the eighteenth century was the favourite theme of moralists, but is now considerably neglected. I refer to the question of good manners. Good manners must spring from a certain inner fountain of truth and honour and tendcr- ne.ss. This is the beginning, and this is the end. To a certain extent, and even to a very large extent, good manners are learned from converse with good society, and it may be that even manuals of etiquette have their uses, liut it is easy to prove that something more is needed. Dr. Johnson has described for us a Good Manners manner of perfect address : " I soon discovered that he possessed some signs of graciousness and attraction, which books had not taught ; . . . that he had the power of obliging those whom he did not benefit ; that he diffused upon his cursory behaviour and most trifling actions a gloss of softness and delicacy, by which every one was dazzled ; and that, by some occult method of captivation, he animated the timorous, softened the supercilious, and opened the re- served. I could not but repine at the inele- gance of my own manners, which left me no hopes but not to offend, and at the inefficacy of rustic benevolence, which gained no friends but by real service." But it does not follow that a man who shines in company and among his equals necessarily possesses good manners. The test is that he should be courteous to all ; courteous to his equals, to those above him, and to those beneath him ; courteous in society, and equally courteous in his own home circle. Whatever is artificial, whatever is not part of the very nature, will break and fail at a point of strain. Often it happens that men are charming in society and boors at home. Some- Good Manners times a man shines among his own people, and is overbearing and irritable in the outer world. It was so with the great Earl of Chatham, who neither won the personal regard of his Sovereign, nor conciliated the good-will of the House of Commons. When he failed at last to brow- beat his colleagues, he hastily threw up the seals of office and retired into private life. He had the excuse of bodily ailment, for he was racked by gout and suffered severely from breathlessness. Yet at home he was the most amiable of men, loving his wife and doting upon his children. It was well, but it was not enough. I have seen it said by no contemp- tible authority that, in order to have good manners, a man must be in a position where favours can be conferred. He ought to feel that he can oblige others. This induces a certain graciousness which comes naturally only to such an one. I do not believe this in the very least. There is no one so poor that he cannot do a kindness. The highest and the firmest are subject to the power of a kind word or an unkind. In P. S. Worsley's translation of the Odyssey, in some respects the most Good Manners delightful of the translations, there is a perfect line which is also a perfect rendering, *' Love can make a little gift excel." Some of the finest examples of courtesy may be found among the humblest, though I fully recognise that some races have a certain natural grace, which may be admired and envied, but which it is hard to imitate. Once more, an essential condition of good manners is sincerity ; and that takes us back to the fountain. A man should have nothing to hide ; he should have no pretence to make ; he should never affect to be what he is not, or to know when he is ignorant. The least suspicion of falsehood or concealment will undo the manner. Miss Austen acutely notes that Emma could tell when Mr. Knightly came to a dinner party in a shabby conveyance. He was flustered by the consciousness that he had done something beneath his position in the world. An essential condition of the perfect manner is the absence of self-consciousness. There is a kind of self-consciousness that is most ex- cusable, and sometimes pretty and attracting. It is the shyness of the young. This often 236 Good Manners comes from the feeling that they are not under- stood, and that they have not the means of making themselves understood. They do not possess, or at least they do not know how to handle, the weapons of society. Sometimes it has a less worthy source. It springs from a great egotism. Still, on the whole, the charitable view may wisely be taken, provided the shyness does not last too long. Young people should be quick enough to see that their elders are not scrutinising them and judging them, as they imagine. Elderly people who retain their shyness are, as a rule, distinctly disagreeable. When great personages, who have been un- popular through life, on account of their rude, brusque manners, pass away, the newspapers explain that they meant very well, but that they were shy. These explanations are seldom felt to be satisfactory. Egotism is inconsistent with good manners. I need hardly say that a person who is always thinking about etiquette is sure to make blunders, and to convey an impression of vulgarity. The true gentleman is infinitely above such paltriness. He is not thinking about himself ; he is thinking about Good Manners others. He is not miserably comparing his station and his fortune with those of the people he meets. He meets them as a gentleman meets ladies and gentlemen, and his business is to give and receive what pleasure he can. Sometimes, in company, it is one's business to give, and more frequently it is one's business to receive. For example, there are certain occasions on which a well-bred man will find it his duty to talk. He is among a circle of tongue-tied people. His hostess is uneasy, and feels that things are not going well. There is little talk, and that little is forced and artificial. Then good manners prescribe the duty of speech, of an endeavour to thaw the frosty atmosphere. No doubt this is difficult. I have a friend who is certainly not loquacious, and is conscious of this fact. He once visited New Orleans, and was greatly impressed by the cemeteries there. It occurred to him that, at any pause in con- versation, he would skilfully lead up to and introduce a description of the cemeteries in New Orleans. Wonderful as these cemeteries are, I am afraid they became more and more wonder- ful every time he pictured them. One night 238 Good Manners he thought himself peculiarly successful in talking about them to his neighbour at dinner. She heard him out, and then responded with the fearful words, " I was born and brought up in New Orleans." Since then I believe my friend has declined all invitations to dinner parties, but he is on the verge of another and, I trust, safer theme. I have often wondered whether the best talk comes in dialogue or in a small circle of congenial spirits, but I have never asked whether it comes in a society, where some are strangers and others very nearly strangers. For my part, I agree with Bulwer Lytton, who says somewhere that in a circle of friends there is a temptation to attempt cleverness, and that the worst talk is always that which tries to be clever. " Even in the talk of Dr. Johnson, as recorded by Boswell, the finest things are those which he said to Boswell when nobody was by, and which he could just as well have said in the Hebrides." Still, something may be done by a kind-hearted man who is not stupid, even in a mixed company. For one thing, he may listen when the talk has made some commence- ment. It is astonishing how men, otherwise Good Manners virtuous, fail in the art of listening. A public speaker can succeed only if his audience attend. If they rudely interrupt, he cannot do himself justice. In a hushed and eager audience he finds himself, and often is stimulated to say things, above his natural level. So it is in talk. If you have a good listener, if you are sure that you are being attended to with interest, and that you will be allowed to finish, even very commonplace talkers will sensibly brighten. A wise man has said that to appear well pleased with those you are engaged with is the secret of social success. It is an essential of good manners that they should always be maintained. Who are the worst-liked people in the world ? Not, I think, those who are persistently rough and discourteous. They often get the credit of very kind hearts beneath their outward harshness. The people who are thoroughly detested are the people who at one time treat you with effusive civility, and at another meet you with a cold stare. Such people are easily discovered, but apparently they cannot discover themselves ; and I think it may be said that however numerous their 240 Good Manners acquaintances may be, they have no friends. I do not say that we can always be quite the same. Moods and feelings come and go, even in the strongest. One day you are well and bright ; another day you are ill and in pain. It is perhaps impossible to be just the same in one condition as in another, and I fancy, for most of us, the safe rule in days of mental or physical suffering is to say as little as possible, and to keep as much as may be out of other people's way. Still, we can do our best. We should try to be constant in our ways. If we have taken what we think reasonable offence at the doings of a friend, we ought not to show it by an icy manner. It is our business to explain to our friend where he has apparently come short, and to hear what he says about it. In all probability with his explanation the misunderstanding will pass like a summer cloud. It ought not to be necessary to say that good manners forbid all allusions to disagreeable subjects. And yet it is wonderful how this rule is transgressed and forgotten, by men and women who would be very much insulted if they were accused of vulgarity. Want of R 241 Good Manners sympathy is vulgarity. If a man has under- gone a great and humiliating reverse, nobody but a boor would talk of it while the thing was fresh. Of course, this does not mean that an intimate friend should not speak of it. I am speaking of general society. But even after the misfortune is years old, even after the sharp sting of it has ceased, it ought not to be touched. It is wonderful how an inconsiderate word will give life to past sorrows and mortifications. " You are looking very ill to-day." I have known a remark of that kind, made of a morning in a railway train, sicken the heart of a City man through all the long day. Young people are gloriously insolent in the way they sometimes talk about age. They will refer to a man of sixty as an old man, when there are men and women in the room well over sixty, but unwilling to admit they are old. These things appear trivial, and I know there are many of us who do not mind in the least if they are told that they are looking old or looking ill, or that an abusive article about them has appeared in a newspaper. But that is not the point. Dr. Johnson once said to 242 Good Manners Topham Beauclerk that he had never been pained by anything he said to him, but he had often been pained by seeing his intention to give pain. And it must be remembered that the comfort of hfe turns very much upon small things. There is a pleasant sense of safety in the company of some people. You know they will not say anything to fret and chafe you. In the company of other people you are sure to receive a wound, and no wonder you should shun that company. In the old days the people of Nantucket had an enjoyment which they called Squantum. A party of ladies and gentlemen went to one of the famous watering-places and had a happy day together. The principal rules were that no one was to speak of disagreeable affairs, no one was to take offence at a joke, and every one was expected to do his and her part towards creating a general laugh. " Care is thrown to the wind, politics discarded, war ignored, pride humbled, stations levelled, wealth scorned, virtue exalted, and — this was Squantum." Great discrimination should be shown in asking questions. There is one way of asking questions Good Manners which is the height of good manners ; another way which is the height of bad manners. To draw out shy and reticent persons, and to enable them to bring out the best that is in them, is an act of grand courtesy ; and very frequently this can only be accomplished by asking them questions. They have one subject on which they can dilate to the advantage of their hearers, but they have not the art of bringing in this subject skilfully, and so they pass often a dull, unhappy evening. All they need is a chance. Often, however, the asking of questions may be grossly offensive. There are people who will ask you the amount of your income ; they will ask you to give your opinion on people you do not care to speak of, and so on through all the varieties of impoliteness. In order to ask questions well you must have a genuine interest in the answer — I should almost say a genuine interest in the people to whom you are speaking. Any feigned interest is sure to be discovered. And this brings me to my last remark. For good manners it is necessary to consider and to remember, A lady, let us suppose, is happy in the possession of a little daughter. A 244 Good Manners gentleman visits her home, and is introduced to the child. He meets his hostess some months after and asks with great effusiveness, " How is the son and heir ? " There is worse than that. I have known people ask about the health of a little child who was dead — who had taken much sunshine with her. Such want of thought is almost indistinguishable from brutality. But if you seek information from people you must try to remember it, not ask it over again. It is an unmistakable sign of vulgarity not to remember accurately the names of your friends and acquaintances. It is not good to misspell their names ; it is not good to ask them the same questions each time you meet them. Tact does more to smooth life than other qualities that are highly esteemed, and tact is very much a matter of thoughtfulness and recollection. So we end at the beginning. There must be the fountain for good manners. All veneering will come off ; but the soul that is gentle, sympathetic, faithful, and pitiful, will reveal itself unconsciously in all its intercourse with the world. I am not preaching a sermon, but one's mind returns to St. Paul's great chapter on Good Manners Charity, and to the Imitation of Christ, of which Fontenelle's fine eulogy may be recalled : " The most beautiful book that ever came from the hand of man, since not from his hands came the Gospel." 246 XXV On Growing Old People who write about growing old do not, as a rule, take the theme very seriously. They talk about it and joke about it, and expect to be met by pleasant disclaimers, and even to be told that they are younger, and looking younger, than ever. Though middle-age has its drawbacks and burdens, and though its burdens are growing heavier in these days, it has its pleasures too, in a fairly successful life. A middle-aged man who has had good fortune begins at a certain stage of his progress to be aware of it. He is consulted on weighty subjects ; he may be asked to discharge honourable functions or to occupy important positions. Such honours do not elate him, but looking back on an obscure and struggling life, he sees that he has come nearer the realisation of his hopes than he ever anticipated in any sober moment. A certain deference is paid to him ; he 247 On Growing Old finds that his name is known where he did not expect it to be known. Besides, the years have taught him the powder of discriminating. He comes to know that complete victory, ecstatic and unbroken bliss, or great fortune, are things either impossible of realisation, or, to say the least, realised by a very few. He tries to " see life steadily, and see it whole," and in a measure he succeeds. By the way, Matthew Arnold was advised by an impertinent critic to take his own prescription when he lamented that there were so many Philistines in the world, and so few people who knew even as much as he did about Celtic poetry. But when men are unpleasantly reminded that they are really on the verge of old age, they do not play with the thought. It is constantly with them, and they are afraid to speak of it. They try to postpone the period, to reassure themselves from the statistics that life is growing longer, to recall and bring into view the instances of men much older than they, who have held high posts in defiance of all competitors. There are people who like to think that they are growing old, but as a rule they are fortunately placed. They have a competency, they have occupations 248 On Growing Old which they long to take up. They have friends, and they have a fair measure of health. What they hope to do is to escape from their present way of living and begin a new way — a way so new that it will be almost equivalent to a new life. Why do people shrink from the thought of growing old ? First among the reasons I should put the fear of want. Among literary men very few have succeeded in saving enough to live upon in comfort. Very many have been able to save nothing. They know that under modern con- ditions every year makes their present income more precarious, and the mental misery caused by these thoughts is perhaps the most acute in human experience. It is of no use to laugh at it, and very little use to reason with it. In A Window in Thrums Mr. Barrie tells us of Jimsy Duthie, who gave thirty years of his life to the writing and printing of " The Millennium : an Epic Poem in Twelve Books, by James Duthie." Jimsy had saved ;^ioo, and when he was neither able to work nor to live alone, his friends cast about for a home for his few remaining years. He was very spent and feeble, >'et he had the 249 ^ On Growing Old ^ fear that he might be still alive when all his money was gone. After that was the workhouse. He covered sheets of paper with calculations about how long the ^loo would last, if he gave away for board and lodging ten shillings, nine shillings, seven and sixpence a week. At last, with sore misgiving, he went to live with a family, who took him for eight shillings. Less than a month afterwards he died. But how was he to know that he was to die so soon ? " What will become of my wife and children when I am gone, or when I am out of work?" is a question which multitudes brood over till they are nearly insane. Yet it may very well be argued that there are worse things in life than the want of money. Perhaps, but almost every one can realise the meaning of poverty. Almost every one has had at one time or another the experience of actual pecuniary pressure. People with the power of imagining are happily not very numerous. The exercise of the imagina- tion is not needed when the evils of poverty have to be realised. It has been suggested that there is another cause for the dreary eminence which want of money occupies among the woes of humanity. It is often attributed to injustice on 250 On Growing Old the part of men, and it is often caused by the harshness of an employer or by the treachery of a friend. The human mind rages against injustice, especially if it is prolonged and irremediable. When afflictions more dire than poverty come, they seem often to proceed directly from a higher power, and they are therefore more easily acquiesced in. They may be submitted to in a spirit of religious faith, or they may be accepted as the sentence of that fate against which all appeal is vain. I do not need to labour this point. Any one may see how little the ordinary man can afford to talk about growing old. (2) Another great reason for the dislike of old age is the mortification it often inflicts on vanity. Honour, love, obedience are the fit accompani- ments of old age, but old age often looks round and finds that they arc not there. The young have the upper hand, and the man who for many years has been successful, who has been deferred to, and has had as much of his own way as it is good for a human being to have, suddenly finds that no value is set on his opinions. He is perhaps not consulted, or, if he is consulted, his views are quietly set aside. I le is made to feel that younger 251 On Growing Old men regard him as an old fogey, superfluous on the stage, who ought to be cultivating his garden instead of interfering with important affairs. It is pathetic to see how, after the weight of years is heavy, many men still struggle to maintain their place, and are pained even more by the courtesy than by the rudeness of their juniors. They are treated as if they were children, and they know it. They see others pressing to the front while they themselves are civilly, inexorably driven to the background. I have not a great deal of sympathy for them. A man should be content if he has had his day, and the day does not stretch over all the years of a long lifetime. There are men who are not at all troubled, but rather relieved, when they realise that their responsibilities are falling away from them. They have always disliked respon- sibility. They have continued to bear it, because it was their duty ; but they have been ever ready to welcome an honourable dismissal. If the old man who has done his best work will himself be the first to recognise the fact, he will save himself many troubles and heartaches, and reap rich reward. (3) There are many who have done well in 252 On Growing Old ^ business, and can retire whenever they please to live comfortably upon their means. What restrains them in most cases is the dread of eruiui. Mr. C. F. Keary in his little book, A Wanderer, makes his hero say of his work, " Let us leave it behind as soon as may be. If you can save half your income, then in a limited number of years — many, perhaps, but still a limited number — you will have acquired an annuity equal to your usual expenditure, and can be (oh, heaven !) free — free as air, free as ourselves who write these lines. All the labour is kept up in the hope of the hour of freedom, of the lifting of the weight, of the shaking off the dust which years have accumu- lated upon heart and brain." But the rich business man, in most cases, has loved his work and found his life in it. It is not for the sake of money that he pursues it now. It is simply because he likes it He has had little time or thought for anything else. He is not cultivated, not a lover of books, not able to shine in society, but he knows his own work, and he can talk about it with those who also know it, and enjoy himself He has a dread of the time when he will have nothing to do. It must be owned that he has On Growing Old much reason on his side. Emnii, in the full sense of the word, is one of the most terrible things that can befall a man. One need not go to the extreme of the Parisians before the siege, whose whole aim it was to make the hours of the day fly round like wheel spokes, of which neither the form nor tint could be discovered, who regarded it as the chief end of man to contrive that he should never know what it was to be bored. The real way of fighing ennui is to work in one way or another. The dreary, passionless lassitude which settles down upon those who have nothing to do, and are without resources, is apt to end in despair and madness and suicide. The simple want of interest in life explains many deaths. Some well-meaning theorists dream of a world without faith and without work. Such a world, if it ever existed, would have but two outlets — the plunge into debauchery and the plunge into utter despair. A wise man ought to provide interests outside his daily work to which he can betake himself when his strength decays. I should like very much to retire, but if I did I should wish to have a fresh start, to go and live in a new country, learn a new language, study a On Growing Old new literature. I cannot understand how the hfc quite without occupation should be other than a miserable and unbearable thincf. (4) Another fear of old age is the loss of friendship. In their dependence on friends, human beings differ very much. It was said of the man who read perhaps more books than any other man of his generation, that he never was known to read a book twice. He had no favourites, and in the same way he had no close friends. He was courteous and accessible, and able to give a measure of good-will to all good people he met, and he could give no more. Others, again, have a few friends, and when they lose them they are not able to replace them. As the years pass we must grow solitary unless we can make new friends, and the old can make them if they will. They ought to choose, if possible, men younger than themselves ; and I think, as they rule, they do so. The new friend cannot share with you the experiences of the past, but, in spite of that, he may do ver>- much to enrich your life. Old men, with rare exceptions, have had to face the bitterest bereave- ments ; and these bereavements do sometimes On Growing Old leave a most bitter, unalterable, unending, and even savage sense of hunger which continually bites the heart. But far more often the stinging sorrow becomes a sacred, peaceful joy to those who are " sure of a meeting." And for most of us there is a young life springing round us in which we look to have the best happiness of the remaining years. (5) Another terror of old age is the weakening of intellectual faculties. This is apt to show itself in the inaccessibility of the mind, not to new facts, but to new ideas. An old business man will go on enlarging his business. What he finds very difficult to comprehend is that the way in which he has done business successfully is no longer the right way. It is so with military men. The Duke of Wellington showed it in his old age, and even Von Moltke, though he never failed in strategy, could not understand the alteration of the system of discipline. Politicians show it most markedly. Thiers was a conspicu- ous example in his old age. He could take in facts as well as in his youth, but no vivifying thought could break its way into his mind. Lord Palmerston owned this weakness in regard to 256 On Growing Old scientific truth, and any one may see it among old theologians. They lose the acuteness of their sensibility to the atmosphere round them. But one of the best examples I know of is Sainte Beuve's essay on the writings of Prevost Paradol, who, of course, was much his junior. The great critic was irritated by Prevost Paradol's notions about parliamentary government and democracy, and the impossibility of the old state of things. Sainte Beuve was thoroughly satisfied with the Second Empire, and did not see but that it would last. Prevost Paradol seemed to him to be a young man destroying himself, in the vain attempt to do what so many had failed in doing. Yes, but the Second Empire did not last. Old men, and for that matter middle-aged men and young men, are always in the same danger. They think that things will go on much as they are ; but the leader of the future knows that they will not go on, that they will all be changed within fifteen years, and it is this knowledge that gives him the power to change them. I will not say much about the fear of physical suffering in old age, a fear not much spoken of, but very present to some. Even if it comes, it s 257 On Growing Old is by no means fatal to happiness. I have seen close at hand for years human lives gradually being consumed by one of the most terrible of maladies, and yet with many intervals of bright- ness, with many hopes and consolations. If one were asked what blessing he would most desire, the readiest answer would be, " Perfect health " ; and yet I doubt whether on reflection this would be the choice of the wise man. The man who is always in perfect health is ignorant of many things which it is well to know. The thought should not be suffered to rest over-much on what may be between us and the new beginning. " He has won awa ' " — a Scotch phrase for one who has gone through the struggle — says all that need be said. 258 XXVI Broken-Hearted We know that great sorrows sometimes kill ; we know that in many cases they leave their mark on the whole succeeding life, even though the heart that was broken at the time may be more or less handsomely pieced together, and a measure of happiness may remain. The question is whether there are sorrows that have no cure, wounds that do not cease to bleed till they are stanched in death. One of the wisest commentators on human life — La Bruyere — answers this question in the negative. He says : " There are frightful and horrible calamities which we dare not think of, and the mere sight of which makes us shudder. If it happens to a man to encounter them, he finds resources in himself of which he was not aware. He stiffens himself against his misfortune, and bears it better 259 Broken- Hearted than he could have expected." Is it always so? Tennyson says : Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break. It may seem absurd to interpret poetry as an arithmetician would interpret it, but is there not a curious* moderation in this statement? I will not say that Tennyson meant that one human heart was broken every day, and that three hundred and sixty-five were broken in the course of a year. But perhaps it is permissible to suggest that he knew that the broken-hearted were few, but that they did exist. By the broken-hearted, I mean those who, after their great calamity, are never again really happy. Are not hearts sometimes broken for love, and never healed again ? Mr, Hardy is com- monly supposed to have reached the climax of tragedy in Tess when he says : " ' Justice ' was done, and the President of the Immortals (in y^schylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess." But I think the climax of the tragedy is in the closing sentence of the book : " The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to 260 Broken-Hearted the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless : the flag con- tinued to vv^ave silently. As soon as they had strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on." Let it be remembered that Tess had besought her sister to marry Angel. When Tess was scarcely cold, the two, after a brief pause, went out into the world together. What a picture of the fickleness of human love ! that fickleness which, in Mr. Hardy's view, is the last tragedy of life. If all lovers were fickle then there would be no tragedy, but it is because there is constancy on one side and fickleness on the other that agony begins, and will not cease. I am not speaking of the ordinary proposal and rejection, when a suitor is dismissed with a homily, a pastoral benediction, and the honorary rank of brother, and sets out to seek another mate the same evening or, at the latest, the next afternoon. All hearts are not like that. Who can forget the madness, if it was mad- ness, of Farmer Boldwood in Far from the Madding Crowd} " The only signs of the terrible sorrow Boldwood had been combating through the night, and was combating now, were the 261 Broken-Hearted want of colour in his well-defined face, the en- larged appearance of the veins in his forehead and temples, and the sharper lines about his mouth. . . . The clash of discord between mood and matter here was forced painfully home to the heart ; and, as in laughter there are more dreadful phases than in tears, so was there in the steadiness of this agonised man an expres- sion deeper than a cry." Love has much grief as well as much gladness to answer for, and Miss Mary Robinson's poem, " Le Roi est Mort," has a meaning : And shall I weep that Love's no more, And magnify his reign? Sure never mortal man before Would have his grief again. Farewell the long-continued ache, The days a-dream, the nights awake ; I will rejoice and merry make, And never more complain ! King Love is dead, and gone for aye. Who ruled with might and main. Nor with a bitter word one day I found my tyrant slain. And he in Heathenesse was bred, Nor ever was baptised, 'tis said, Nor is of any creed, and dead Can never rise again. 262 Broken-Hearted Bereavements sometimes kill at once, and in many cases, although the pain is softened by the lapse of time and by new friendships and asso- ciations, they are never remembered without a sharp pang. Sometimes they really kill one life of the spirit, though another rises in its stead, and the world thinks that the two lives were one and continuous. The most powerful and painful account of this will be found in the preface which Mrs. Oliphant wrote for her novel Agnes. She wrote the book after her only daughter and most beloved little companion was suddenly struck down. Years after she says : " Now and then my mind fixes on one point, till I get almost to feel as if it was I who had sacrificed my child. First one thing and then another, and my thoughts settle on that, and go round and round it till I feel as if my head was going." Years after, when her last child died, she broke down. She was still able to do work, but her nights were spent in sleep- lessness and in tears, and her heart was broken. She was very glad to die, and the news of the beginning of the end was most welcome, and received with the greatest serenity and happiness. 263 Broken-Hearted She was " sick of believing, sick to see and know." I doubt if true mothers ever forget their lost children. The heartache of a mother who has lost a child is never [ended, though it sometimes sleeps. A great disappointment will sometimes per- manently darken a whole life and cut it short. The Life of Frederick Robertson of Brighton is the saddest book I know. He was so young, so gifted, he seemed to have all the sources of happiness within his reach, with his wife, and his little children, and his work, and his faith. Nothing, however, seemed to touch more than a moment the profound melancholy which was his constant mood. In his biography no light falls on the pages from his little children. Wife and mother are hardly named. His work, outwardly and inwardly successful as it was, seemed to bring him nothing but bitterness, and even his sincere faith opened no fountain of gladness in his heart. One who knew him well attributes his gloom in a large measure to the disappointment of his early ambition to be a soldier. This was the great longing of his heart from the first, and it grew into a settled purpose. When his father proposed to him 264 Broken-Hearted the Church for a profession, his answer was decisive. " Anything but that," he said. Yet it came to pass that he entered the Church, and did his Hfe-work there. Notwithstanding, often, when passing a soldier in the street, he would say : " Well, so I am to have nothing to do with them." I do not attribute the terrible melancholy of Robertson entirely to this. There must have been physical sources besides. He was born with a temperament not easily brightened, with a heart that asked more than life has to give, and which could not make much out of little. Yet the first disappointment was never got over. It is of no use saying that he would not have been happy in the Army. Probably he would not have been happy any- where, but there is a certain content comes to a man when he has his own way. Besides, the bitterness of disappointment is often greatest when the loss sustained is imaginary rather than real. I am sure hearts are sometimes broken simply because a certain position has been denied, a certain career closed. The imagination lingers vainly upon that, and spurns whatever good there is in the everyday existence. 265 Broken-Hearted Shame is very hard to get over. When we can keep our griefs to ourselves or to a small circle, the chances of recovery are numerous. Once they are told to all the world, once we are publicly disgraced, it seems as if the brightness of life had gone for ever. In these times everything is soon forgotten, but the readers and admirers of Montalembert will not forget his tribute to his friend Lamoriciere. General Lamoriciere died in France more than thirty years ago, amidst such mourning and indignation as has seldom been manifested at a funeral. And Montalembert's tribute expresses the thrilling passion of bitter wrong and grief. Lamoriciere had a wonderful career as a soldier, and even as a statesman. He was at one time Minister of War to the Government. Just as he was at the height of his fame, at forty-five, his military and public career was suddenly ended, by one of those miracles of inconstancy and ingratitude of which France has sometimes shown herself capable. He was thrown into disgrace, condemned to inaction and nullity, to " those rendings of impotence, that deadening disgust, that nakedness of books and the daily 266 Broken-Hearted walk, the weariness of ' unoccupied life.' " He did his best, and chose for his habitual reading The Imitation of Jesus Christ and other such books. But the picture of what remained to him is the grey vignette of a life in death, and this though he suffered to the end and overcame, bearing the injuries of fate with a Christian gravity and modesty. The trial was endured, the defile traversed, the yoke borne to the end. Still Montalembert says : " We cannot reveal all, and what we can say is nothing beside the suffering which we have seen, felt, known, and shared." There arc men, and women too, who never recover the loss of faith. A. H. Clough will occur to every one as an example of this. He was broken-hearted ; though he struggled for a time, it was not for long. G. J. Romanes was another, though he found his way back to faith. " The two most precious things," he said, " in life are faith and love. The whole thing is vanity and vexation of spirit without faith and love. Perhaps it is by way of compensation for having lost the former that the latter has been dealt me in such full measure. I never 267 Broken-Hearted knew any one so well off in this respect. Still even love is not capable of becoming to me any compensation for the loss of faith." I will end with what is perhaps an anti- climax, and will fortify myself with the authority of La Bruyere. He says that the only grief that time does not soften is the loss of pro- perty. La Bruyere was anything but a cynic. He was grave and compassionate, as well as rigidly veracious. If you will think of the misery caused by such collapses as those of the City of Glasgow Bank and the Liberator Society, you will understand. I have never known any grief that ended life very quickly, except this single grief of sudden and unexpected pecuniary ruin. Failures like these I have named led in many cases to death or madness. Even when there was fortitude enough to go on with life, the life was often permanently shadowed and embittered. It is so very hard to go on for years and years accumulating by strict frugality a provision for one's self and one's own family circle, and see it all swept away in a moment by the deceit of the men we have trusted. Young men can renew the battle ; so 268 Broken-Hearted can middle-aged men, though they see very well that it means that they must struggle to the very end, and that the end is nearer than it would otherwise have been. But when one is old and weary, and cannot hope to do much in making the loss good, and is condemned to witness, hour by hour and day by day, the privations which he had toiled so hard to avert from him and his, the bitterness seems incurable, the loss without recovery, the life dashed in pieces. I have said nothing in this letter of the con- solations of Christianity. It may suffice to recall that the last book ever written by John Bunyan had for title. The Excellency of a Broken Heart. 269 XXVII The Innermost Room I BELIEVE that every human being has an innermost room in his soul, into which he never admits any one — perhaps because he cannot. When a boy, I was deeply impressed by a passage in John Foster's Journal, in which he says that when he entered a company he was often shy at first, but was reassured when he bethought himself that, after all, no eyes could see what was passing within his soul. It is true we are not known, even when we are well known, by those who live with us, by those who are bound to us by the firmest ties, or by those who have shared with us the closest intimacies of friendship. We have deep secrets, all of us, even though there is nothing in our lives over which we try to cast a veil. We are not known even when we die, and all that can be revealed is revealed, when the secret 270 %» The Innermost Room drawer in our desk is opened, and the lock of the child's hair, " hair that drained the sun for gold," the two or three faded letters, the ring, the photograph, have all been looked upon reverently or irreverently. Our secret has died with us. They have not spared Charlotte Bronte. They have published almost every scrap of her handwriting, and sold almost every one of her few possessions, and criticised her, and theorised upon her without stint. But her secret went with her, I have no manner of doubt. At times in our life we are always living in the innermo.st room, even though we seem to be busy in the outer court. We cannot live anywhere else. But, for the most part, we repair to it only at intervals. The board is spread in the other chambers, and they are crowded and cheerful. We have upon us the stress of life, the hard task that has to be accomplished in the short day. Yet even then at intervals we suddenly quit our surroundings. Have we not seen that look in the eyes, which tells us that even the nearest and the dearest have flown from us to a restful or wistful soli- tude? And whither they go we cannot come. 271 The Innermost Room Sometimes an irresistible impulse comes over a man. He leaves his office and his books for a lonely walk, or he goes, because he cannot help himself, into a quiet room, where he may be alone for a little with his own thoughts. If he cannot quite escape, you will see him in that reverie, that brown study, which is passed not nearly so much in thinking as in feeling. Just because it is spent in feeling, its experiences can never be completely expressed in words. Or you may not have visited the innermost room for months and months, but there comes a time of release when you go on holiday, and find yourself alone in a foreign hotel. Even amidst the crowd of new objects that solicit you, you will spend most of your time, not in the foreign city, but in the innermost room. Look around the innermost room, and you cannot explain how it has been built and furnished. It has built and furnished itself. You gaze at its pictures, its trinkets, its stains of blood, with a dull wonder at the sight of them. These, you think, should not be there. Other things should be there that have been 272 The Innermost Room of more consequence. There have been days in your Hfe, apparently much more important days, that all may know of, when you were crowned in the eyes of men, or visibly struck to the earth in humiliation or woe. How has it come to pass that these days are not recorded in the innermost room ? There are faces that you have gazed into for years and years, and these have vanished ; but on the walls of the innermost room other faces are hanging. The stress is not laid where observers might think it should be laid, where you think yourself it should lie. Life, as it shapes itself to you in the innermost room, has its days, its ghosts, its treasures, but how they have ranked and ranged themselves there you do not know, and there- fore can never tell. That is why you cannot admit others into the innermost room, though you were ever so willing to bring them. There may be nothing to hide, but somehow no one can enter, because the door will open to none but yourself You know that none may enter it now, and yet fancy that once there were those who entered it with you, and sigh for their presence. T 273 The Innermost Room But in the other days 'twas otherwise ; Silence itself conveyed with tender breath That thrill of sound wherein the difference lies 'Twixt life and noiseless death ; In the soft air there rose a murmur sweet, A hum of voice and words, A sound of coming feet, A ring of soft accords, That entering in, filled all the inner room With friendly faces bright, Where there were ceaseless whispers in the gloom, And laughters in the light ; And save some sudden thought fantastical Might flutter in a maiden soul, There all was known to all, . And shared both joy and dole ; Making divine the common days With dearest blame and sweetest praise. It is a dream. The door was as fast to the dead as it is to the living. The innermost room may be a torture chamber, or a shrine of peace. According as it is one or the other, so is Hfe happy or unhappy. For the blessedness of life does not so much depend on what is passing in the outer chambers, as on what is passing in the secret place of the soul. It is because we forget this that we blunder so much, strive so hard, are so bitterly 274 ^ The Innermost Room ^ disappointed with our so-called successes. In the innermost room remorse may be present, infinite repining, infinite sorrow. The very thought of entering it may be an agony, but enter it you must. An unseen force drags you into the place of pain. Or it may be a shrine of rest, a refuge from the storms of life, a veritable chamber of peace. To visit it, to linger in it, may be the chief joy and solace of existence. One may come from it with radiant face and strong heart, able to cope with his difficulties, and perform his allotted task in another spirit. Is this the last word ? No ; the riddle of life is never understood until we know that the torture chamber may become, not all at once, but by sure and slow degrees, a shrine of peace. Most of us know how this comes to pass in sorrow, how a sober joy at last replaces the bitter anguish. It may even come to be so where there has been shame, and treachery, and base surrender of the will. The test of the true religion may be found here. The religion that we need is a religion that will lay all the ghosts, that will cast the instruments of torture from the -innermost room, 275 The Innermost Room that will divide the great glooms, and make it a place of repair. And this is why we must always say to the sufferer, in his most cruel hour of endurance : " Hope on, hope ever. It will not be always as it is now. The place to which you are now dragged, as by furies, may come one day to be your sure and chosen home. You will one day want nothing better than the peace of the innermost room." I love to think of the solitude of the soul, There is no characterisation of human beings that is more hateful and more false than the common saying that there is nothing in them. There is the innermost room. Every human soul is a mystery to the soul that knows it best, and should, therefore, be held sacred. Clouds and darkness are round about it. You may spend hours of every day for years with one whose innermost thought you have never once surprised. Even the child on the street, who runs your message, lives in a world to which you have no entrance. What one knows of himself should teach how little he knows of other people ; should deliver him from too much dependence on their judgments, whether 276 The Innermost Room favourable or unfavourable. They cannot judge, because they do not know. I am not so good as I seem, Yet I seem not so good as I am. The last judgment of our life must be a judg- ment of what has passed in the innermost room. And if thou wilt, draw near, O unknown friend ! Thou somewhere in the world apart, To whose sole ears ascend The outcries of the heart ; Thou all unknown, unnamed, and undivined, Who yet will recognise That which, 'mid all revealings of the mind, Was meant but for your eyes. If you should e'er come sudden through the gloom, In any shape you list to wear, I wait you in this silent room, With many a wonder for your ear. For you the song is sung, the tale is told ; For you all secrets are. Although it was not thus of old ; And the door stands ajar, To let you lightly in, where I alone Wait in the silence, O my friend unknown ! Who, in the noon of life, when gladness ends, Art nearer than all friends. Printed by Hazell, IValson, <$> Vin$y, Ld., London and Aylesbury. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. JUN 9/98 RECEIVED JUN 10 1986 Form L9-30m-ll,'58(,8268s4)444 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 375 943 5110 Nicoll - N547 1 Letters on life PR 5110 N547 1