Tea-table Talk | Page 6

have grown more complicated; the ten-course banquet, with all that it involves, has substituted itself for the handful of fruits and nuts gathered without labour; the stalled ox and a world of trouble for the dinner of herbs and leisure therewith. Are we so far removed thereby above our little brother, who, having swallowed his simple, succulent worm, mounts a neighbouring twig and with easy digestion carols thanks to God? The square brick box about which we move, hampered at every step by wooden lumber, decked with many rags and strips of coloured paper, cumbered with odds and ends of melted flint and moulded clay, has replaced the cheap, convenient cave. We clothe ourselves in the skins of other animals instead of allowing our own to develop into a natural protection. We hang about us bits of stone and metal, but underneath it all we are little two-legged animals, struggling with the rest to live and breed. Beneath each hedgerow in the springtime we can read our own romances in the making--the first faint stirring of the blood, the roving eye, the sudden marvellous discovery of the indispensable She, the wooing, the denial, hope, coquetry, despair, contention, rivalry, hate, jealousy, love, bitterness, victory, and death. Our comedies, our tragedies, are being played upon each blade of grass. In fur and feather we run epitomised."
"I know," said the Woman of the World; "I have heard it all so often. It is nonsense; I can prove it to you."
"That is easy," observed the Philosopher. "The Sermon on the Mount itself has been proved nonsense--among others, by a bishop. Nonsense is the reverse side of the pattern--the tangled ends of the thread that Wisdom weaves."
"There was a Miss Askew at the College," said the Girton Girl. "She agreed with every one. With Marx she was a Socialist, with Carlyle a believer in benevolent despotism, with Spinoza a materialist, with Newman a fanatic. I had a long talk with her before she left, and tried to understand her; she was an interesting girl. 'I think,' she said, 'I could choose among them if only they would answer one another. But they don't. They won't listen to one another. They only repeat their own case.'"
"There never is an answer," explained the Philosopher. "The kernel of every sincere opinion is truth. This life contains only the questions--the solutions to be published in a future issue."
"She was a curious sort of young woman," smiled the Girton Girl; "we used to laugh at her."
"I can quite believe it," commented the Philosopher.
"It is so like shopping," said the Old Maid.
"Like shopping!" exclaimed the Girton Girl.
The Old Maid blushed. "I was merely thinking," she said. "It sounds foolish. The idea occurred to me."
"You were thinking of the difficulty of choosing?" I suggested.
"Yes," answered the Old Maid. "They will show you so many different things, one is quite unable--at least, I know it is so in my own case. I get quite angry with myself. It seems so weak-minded, but I cannot help it. This very dress I have on now--"
"It is very charming," said the Woman of the World, "in itself. I have been admiring it. Though I confess I think you look even better in dark colours."
"You are quite right," replied the Old Maid; "myself, I hate it. But you know how it is. I seemed to have been all the morning in the shop. I felt so tired. If only--"
The Old Maid stopped abruptly. "I beg your pardon," she said, "I am afraid I've interrupted."
"I am so glad you told us," said the Philosopher. "Do you know that seems to me an explanation?"
"Of what?" asked the Girton Girl.
"Of how so many of us choose our views," returned the Philosopher; "we don't like to come out of the shop without something."
"But you were about to explain," continued the Philosopher, turning to the Woman of the World, "--to prove a point."
"That I had been talking nonsense," reminded her the Minor Poet; "if you are sure it will not weary you."
"Not at all," answered the Woman of the World; "it is quite simple. The gifts of civilisation cannot be the meaningless rubbish you advocates of barbarism would make out. I remember Uncle Paul's bringing us home a young monkey he had caught in Africa. With the aid of a few logs we fitted up a sort of stage-tree for this little brother of mine, as I suppose you would call him, in the gun-room. It was an admirable imitation of the thing to which he and his ancestors must have been for thousands of years accustomed; and for the first two nights he slept perched among its branches. On the third the little brute turned the poor cat out of its basket and slept on the eiderdown, after which no more