yn Innes.= By GEORGE MOORE.
=Rodman, the Boatsteerer.= By LOUIS BECKE.
=The Romance of a Midshipman.= By W. CLARK RUSSELL.
=The Making of a Saint.= By W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM.
=The Two Standards.= By W. BARRY, D.D.
=The Mawkin of the Flow.= By Lord ERNEST HAMILTON.
=Love is not so Light.= By CONSTANCE COTTERELL.
=Moonlight.= By MARY E. MANN.
=I, Thou, and the Other One.= By AMELIA E. BARR.

* * * * *

London

T. FISHER UNWIN, Paternoster Square, E.C.

ORIENTATIONS

By
William Somerset Maugham
Author of 'Liza of Lambeth,' 'The Making of a Saint'

[Illustration]

London
T. Fisher Unwin
Paternoster Square
1899

[_All Rights reserved_]

TO
MRS EDWARD JOHNSTON

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE PUNCTILIOUSNESS OF DON SEBASTIAN 3

A BAD EXAMPLE 37

DE AMICITIA 97

FAITH 133

THE CHOICE OF AMYNTAS 165

DAISY 219

_C'est surtout, par ses nouvelles d'un jeune ecrivain qu'on peut se
rendre compte du tour de son esprit. Il y cherche la voie qui lui
est propre dans une serie d'essais de genre et de style differents,
qui sont comme des orientations, pour trouver son moi litteraire._

Orientations

THE PUNCTILIOUSNESS OF DON SEBASTIAN

I

Xiormonez is the most inaccessible place in Spain. Only one train
arrives there in the course of the day, and that arrives at two o'clock
in the morning; only one train leaves it, and that starts an hour before
sunrise. No one has ever been able to discover what happens to the
railway officials during the intermediate one-and-twenty hours. A German
painter I met there, who had come by the only train, and had been
endeavouring for a fortnight to get up in time to go away, told me that
he had frequently gone to the station in order to clear up the mystery,
but had never been able to do so; yet, from his inquiries, he was
inclined to suspect--that was as far as he would commit himself, being a
cautious man--that they spent the time in eating garlic and smoking
execrable cigarettes. The guide-books tell you that Xiormonez possesses
the eyebrows of Joseph of Arimathea, a cathedral of the greatest
quaintness, and battlements untouched since their erection in the
fourteenth century. And they strongly advise you to visi