I felt as he strolled with me
round my garden on the following morning that he was regarding my
paltry, unadventurous life with a sincere pity, as the life of one who
had stolen from the brisk encounters of wit and revelry to a quiet
bedroom and a basin of gruel. And yet the curious thing was that I felt
no kind of resentment about it at all. I did not envy him his youth and
his pride; indeed, I felt glad to have escaped from it, if I was like
what he was at his age. The world seemed full to me of a whole range of
fine sensations, gentle secrets, remote horizons, of which he had no
perception. Indeed, I think he despised my whole conception of patient
and faithful art. His idea rather was that one should not spend much
time over work, but that one should break at intervals into a spurting,
fizzing flame, and ascend like a rocket over the heads of the crowd,
discharging a shower of golden stars.
I may, of course, be only coming down like a burnt-out stick; and this
is where the humiliation lies; but I feel rather as if I were soaring
to worlds unknown: though perhaps, after all, that is only one of the
happy delusions, the gentle compensations, which God showers down so
plentifully upon the middle-aged.
I have had two visitors lately who have set me reflecting upon the odd
social habits of the men of my nation. They were not unusual
experiences--indeed I think they may fairly be called typical.
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