Without Prejudice

st into any discussion; there is no topic too small for it, and certainly none too great. The following letters, carefully culled from the annual contributio

8

world is a dank, malarious marsh, with fitful Will-o'-the-Wisp flashes of false rad

ed in too

n, shriek

illusion, maturity a

ely Providence has sen

ic

m,

obed

A P.

8

is more enjoyable than town life, fail to realise how much of our pleasure depends on huma

s in s

the runni

aristocratic radius, they can find many a comfortable villa, with baths (hot and cold), and back gardens which may easily be converted into rustic retreats (I would especially recommend rhododendrons). If you are also not above omnibuses (taking a cab only when it rains, and selecting a driver who does not look as if he would swear), and are satisfied to go to the pi

m,

obed

A P.

8

t for their brave outspokenness. Too long has this mediaeval monstrosity cramped our lives. The beautiful word "Home" conceals a doll's house or whitewashe

air, at sigh

ht wings and in

e Pharisaism! Let us

ness latent in the ble

freedom to love truly

m,

obed

A P.

8

up to the Metropolis for a day's excursion last Bank Holiday, I could not walk anywhere without overhearing ribal

oung idea h

has always been cast

tagion of ill-conduct

nile pop

m,

obed

A P.

8

s (ay, tens of thousands) of hearts that are, languishing in misery because they cannot marry their deceased sist

little brie

us law, I say, and let

o a million d

m,

obed

A P.

ore or after any event? I have met Agatha P. Robins in many other places at many other times. Sometimes she is interested in the best substit

THE SIL

hat groweth gr

nd the sea se

that fails t

dant in a t

ing for dead s

ngs for death,

stress whom h

ge, a French

ng ear or ho

d, or drunk, a

ke these across

Silly Season

g from the task. To take only the last half-century: we have had one supreme satirist who harped eternally on the failings of fashion and the vanity of things. In his novels society saw itself reflected in all its attitudes and postures and posings. Not one meanness or folly escaped. What Professor Huxley has done for the crayfish, that Thackeray did for the Snob. He studied him lovingly, he dissected him, he classified every variety of him. A thousand disciples, less gifted but equally remorseless, followed in the Master's footsteps. "Punch" took up the tale, and week by week repeated the joke. It was heard in drawing-room recitations to the accompaniment of pianos; it even went on the stage. Ladies rushed into print to expose foibles men never guessed, and to say of the sex at large what less gifted women say only of their personal friends. For years we have n

ish things cease to be done under the deodars. Will Hogarth keep wine-bibbers from the bottle, or can you make men sober by acts of "L'Assommoir"? Will "Madame Bovary" stay a sister's fall, or "Sapho" repel an eligible young man? Will "The Dunciad" keep one dunce from scribbling, or "Le Tartufe" elevate a single ecclesiastic? As well expect "long firms" to run short, and the moths to avoid the footlights, and the fool to cease from the land. "How gay they were, and how luxurious, and how important in their little day! How gorgeous were the attendants of their circumstances, on the box with a crest upon their turbans!-there is a firm in Calcutta that supplies beautiful crests. And now, let me think! some of them in the Circular Road Cemetery-cholera, fever, heat-apoplexy; some of them under the Christian daisies of England-probably abscess of the li

S VANI

tuous languo

se of passio

s and some swe

, vague, and t

or life so re

ory while our

casm, the collection of English kings is as incomplete as ever. A passing fad can, perhaps, be made to pass along a little faster, but it only makes room for another. True, "Punch" killed the craze for sunflowers and long necks; but then "Punch" invented it. It was merely made to be destroyed brilliantly, like a Chinese cracker or a Roman candle. Folly is older than "Punch's" jokes, and will survive them. Snobbery and self-seeking, pettiness and stupidity, envy, hate, and all uncharitableness, were no secret to the mummies in the British Museum. "Unto the place whither the rivers go, thither they go again." Are there not a hundred sayings in Ecclesiastes and Menander, in Horace and Molière, as apt to-day as though fresh from the typewriter? One of the learned friends to whom I proposed the thesis contended that Perseus and Juvenal at least are out of date. But this was merely my learned friend's ignorance. Is it not the truest piety

lesque through which he has passed unscathed. What indignity has been spared him? Now at last he is to encounter the supreme test-he is to be taken seriously. The Psychical Society has the matter in hand-or should one say, t

s struck work and went a-shooting with gillies and dogs and appropriate costume. But that is the craftiness of the editors, from Mr. Buckle and Mr. Yates down to the editor of the Halfpenny Democrat-they make the humblest of us feel we are in the best sets, so we all come up to town for the season, and are seen at three parties a night, and we ride in the Park, and we go to Henley and Goodwood to a man; and

e of Melodrama and Burlesque, the same play serving for both genres. Let, say, Mr. Sims-who is so clever in either species-write the pieces-each melodrama being its own burlesque. An extra dash of colour here, an ambiguous line there, with a serious m

the journalists, politicians, and men about town. Yet have the workers and the fighters the nobler part. A genuine emotion, an earnest conviction, vitalises life. The day-dreams of

spapers and the poets who outraced one another to weep upon his tomb. Look upon Mr. Booth's map of East London, with its coloured lines showing the swarms of human beings who live ignobly and die obscurely, and realise for yourself of what import the cult of beautiful form is to these human ant-heaps. Walk down the populous Whitechapel Road of a Saturday night, or traverse the long slimy alleys of

ull of stirrings to write for her-only for her-a book full of beauty and happiness and sunshine, and, oh! such false views of life, such inaccurate pictures of the pleasures of a society she would never know. The hero should be handsome and brave and good, with a curling moustache; and the heroine should be beautiful and true, with an extensive wardrobe; and the clouds would come only to roll by, and the story should die away in an odour of orange-blossom, and in a music of marriage-bells.