From a College Window | Page 9

games which
were worth playing were the games which one enjoyed. I used to
undergo miseries in staying at uncongenial houses, in accepting
shooting invitations when I could not shoot, in going to dances because
the people whom I knew were going. Of course one has plenty of
disagreeable duties to perform in any case; but I discovered gradually
that to adopt the principle of doing disagreeable things which were
supposed to be amusing and agreeable was to misunderstand the whole
situation. Now, if I am asked to stay at a tiresome house, I refuse; I
decline invitations to garden parties and public dinners and dances,
because I know that they will bore me; and as to games, I never play
them if I can help, because I find that they do not entertain me. Of
course there are occasions when one is wanted to fill a gap, and then it
is the duty of a Christian and a gentleman to conform, and to do it with
a good grace. Again, I am not at the mercy of small prejudices, as I

used to be. As a young man, if I disliked the cut of a person's whiskers
or the fashion of his clothes, if I considered his manner to be abrupt or
unpleasing, if I was not interested in his subjects, I set him down as an
impossible person, and made no further attempt to form acquaintance.
Now I know that these are superficial things, and that a kind heart and
an interesting personality are not inconsistent with boots of a grotesque
shape and even with mutton-chop whiskers. In fact, I think that small
oddities and differences have grown to have a distinct value, and form a
pleasing variety. If a person's manner is unattractive, I often find that it
is nothing more than a shyness or an awkwardness which disappears
the moment that familiarity is established. My standard is, in fact,
lower, and I am more tolerant. I am not, I confess, wholly tolerant, but
my intolerance is reserved for qualities and not for externals. I still fly
swiftly from long-winded, pompous, and contemptuous persons; but if
their company is unavoidable, I have at least learnt to hold my tongue.
The other day I was at a country-house where an old and extremely
tiresome General laid down the law on the subject of the Mutiny, where
he had fought as a youthful subaltern. I was pretty sure that he was
making the most grotesque misstatements, but I was not in a position to
contradict them. Next the General was a courteous, weary old
gentleman, who sate with his finger-tips pressed together, smiling and
nodding at intervals. Half-an-hour later we were lighting our candles.
The General strode fiercely up to bed, leaving a company of yawning
and dispirited men behind. The old gentleman came up to me and, as he
took a light, said with an inclination of his head in the direction of the
parting figure, "The poor General is a good deal misinformed. I didn't
choose to say anything, but I know something about the subject,
because I was private secretary to the Secretary for War."
That was the right attitude, I thought, for the gentlemanly philosopher;
and I have learnt from my old friend the lesson not to choose to say
anything if a turbulent and pompous person lays down the law on
subjects with which I happen to be acquainted.
Again, there is another gain that results from advancing years. I think it
is true that there were sharper ecstasies in youth, keener perceptions,

more passionate thrills; but then the mind also dipped more swiftly and
helplessly into discouragement, dreariness, and despair. I do not think
that life is so rapturous, but it certainly is vastly more interesting. When
I was young there were an abundance of things about which I did not
care. I was all for poetry and art; I found history tedious, science
tiresome, politics insupportable. Now I may thankfully say it is wholly
different. The time of youth was the opening to me of many doors of
life. Sometimes a door opened upon a mysterious and wonderful place,
an enchanted forest, a solemn avenue, a sleeping glade; often, too, it
opened into some dusty work-a-day place, full of busy forms bent over
intolerable tasks, whizzing wheels, dark gleaming machinery, the din of
the factory and the workshop. Sometimes, too, a door would open into
a bare and melancholy place, a hillside strewn with stones, an
interminable plain of sand; worst of all, a place would sometimes be
revealed which was full of suffering, anguish, and hopeless woe,
shadowed with fears and sins. From such prospects I turned with
groans unutterable; but the air of the accursed place would hang about
me for days.